RS revived

[L33TMaster]

I myself am having no problems with R5, however i feel as though my san meter is decreasing more rapidly than normal.

[zaimoni]

If that's early game, quite likely it's those NPC cops (the NPC cops seem to have 2x-3x kills in my testing game for R5, than alpha 9).

[zaimoni]

RC 6 has been released. Savefiles are compatible; using the binary-only release to overwrite RC 5 with RC 6 should work.

Critical: multi-threaded crash bug on district change mitigated (or fixed).

Trading with the player should work more reasonably now (one of the legacy reduced reality checks for the player actually was needed)

The text description for expired and spoiled food should be correct now.  Icons and nutrition value were correct.

EDIT: Don't like your skill choices?  Get wiser ones.

[Fool]

I'd just go with upfront district generation. That doesn't change needing to do simulation before entering a new district, but I'm sure it would help. Unless I'm misunderstanding something?

[zaimoni]

The problem was that both the UI and the simulator were modifying the district being entered. (I was using my own savegame as the test case. Run, enter next district: crash two times in three with highly inconsistent error messages.) So it had nothing to do with district generation. Part of the C# dynamic memory overhead is that Object has an integral operating-system lock as one of its implicit members (otherwise the lock keyword wouldn't work; it *doesn't* work correctly on raw types like int).

Basically, the simulator thread wasn't reacting immediately to the Abort() call on it so explicitly locking the district was required. The official documentation advice not to do this (not a private data member) is mostly wrong-headed. (The technical issues mentioned are real, but need to be solved at a project management level.)

I'm not positive it's 100% fixed, but it is fixed in the normal cases. The code in question is up for a savefile-breaking invasive rewrite as part of supporting multiple player characters, so getting a perfect fix is not needed.

[Fool]

Every time I've had to implement objects that access and modify the state of other objects, I've regretted it. And its always been because
I was 1. working with someone elses code, 2. didn't work out the object model beforehand.

UI should be strictly pulling data from districts, and if its doing any modification at all it should be through events or setters.

But its easy to give advice than to follow it, so ymmv.
I'm not complaining. Keep up the interesting work, especially the technical details.

[zaimoni]

One more day to shake down bugs on my end, then final release in this series followed by immediately breaking savefile format.

[zaimoni]

I'm running behind on the shakedown testing.

Key features after savefile format breaking

• Re-introduce sound.
• Generally unbreak CharGuardAI and SoldierAI : these two do not have proper item search/retrieval/use as the current code only works for CivilianAI/GangAI (which need food).
• Early steps to prepare the game for single player multi PC
  
  • We have two authoritative sources for the player: Actor::IsPlayer and the underlying Playercontroller, and RogueGame::m_Player (which dictates the UI). Make sure the correct authority is used in all cases
  • Loading a savegame should restart on the map the save was made from, not give free turns to all earlier maps.
  • The overall savegame's current time should not race far ahead of the current map's sense of time.
  • After the above, it will be possible to evaluate how to revise the district simulation. Typical current machines appear powerful enough to simply simulate all districts without PCs at once. The current simulator identifies the district to not simulate as the district RogueGame::m_Player is in.

Impressions regarding setting:

• I have been advised that there are similarities with the Resident Evil series, and have read the spoilers for both the movies and the games.
• Conspicuously absent: gas stations. The building construction has zombie-proof walls (i.e. even the interior walls are not highly destructble gypsum drywall). The wrecked cars could be retconned as electric cars. Recall that the car flip is a strongman competitive event, so the stamina cost for pushing them may need adjusting at high levels of Strong.
  
  • The Bikers/Gangsters/Survivors may not be able to leave the way they came if they arrived in gasoline/diesel vehicles. Likewise, the helicopters are almost certainly gasoline/diesel based.
• The emergency generators are both zombie-proof, and do not require normal fuel. The latter part is probably best ret-conned as Nikolai Tesla technology (that is, they pull power from the bow shockwave of the magnetosphere.)
• The gun control laws are U.S. Red State Red city: we have gun shops, and the general store also has firearms. One in five basements has that survivalist shelf with grenades. Very few other real world nations have public legal gun shops for civilians. A few more real world nations have public illegal gun shops for civilians [and police who are explicitly forbidden to go there without direct orders.] There's some room for difficulty-increasing options here.
• We have no manufacturing districts.
• The district setup is hard to visualize; the limited exits on the surface could be retconned as doorways through peace walls (cf. Ireland), but other parts of the map don't confirm this.
• The communications radios used to trigger district-wide aggression when a cop or National Guardsman is attacked, are class props that do not have an inventory presence. They appear to be hyper-efficient and recharged automatically by walking or running around.
• There almost certainly is a specific "conversion serum/infection/process" for making zombie masters. The Prisoner Who Should Not Be was a test subject for them.
• The CHAR Offices are stocked with food, but the CHAR Guards don't need to eat it. The offices do have both zombie detectors and "those guys" detectors.
  
  • This suggests that CHAR has/had a damage control plan for the outbreak, that predates a conversion process to eliminate the need to eat but leave sleep intact. This conversion process is also used on National Guard and "those guys", but not on police.

Policy decisions needed:

• Are multiple tactical classes of living AI needed, beyond what is currently there? Police and soldiers should have a better tactical sense than civilians, at least until they panic.
• The police station needs reimplementing. I'm also generally unhappy with the container interface (there is no easy way to put items on shelves, or to pick a specific item off of a shelf).
• It's hard to see how to extend the gameplay past the CHAR Underground Base. It would be exceptionally convenient to have the origin of the outbreak documented there.

[zaimoni]

RC 6 is the final release before savefile format breaking.

EDIT The savefile corruption issue (making it rarely impossible to load a savegame that had just been saved) appears to have been another multithreading issue. I think taking the lock explicitly should make things work, but actually testing that would take days to weeks.

[Fool]

A lot of what needs improvement isn't even mechanics. Its just whats there needs streamlined. Barricading isn't even worth it. The business district is bland like my mum. Every map seems like it could use better building generators, and buildings that are more distinct
(like the gas station you mentioned).

And interaction could use a rework like you said, putting things on containers and so forth mate. But then I'd probably just play CDDA.
Got to ask what distinguishes it from CDDA.

[zaimoni]

Right. (Note: I find CDDA very hard to "pick up".) Barricading is there as a genre thing; the AI shouldn't play "optimally", it should play "thematically".

I don't see gas stations as an immediate "add in" -- I'm trying to fix/extend the game within the lines it already has, and the gas stations not being there isn't an oversight. It's a hint to how to retcon what CHAR was doing.

[zaimoni]

The WAV files are about 10x-12x as large as their corresponding MP3 and OGG -- but they do play. Next release (no ETA) will not have a binary-only archive in order to change around the sound files.

[zaimoni]

Shakedown testing continues to reveal gross lack of artificial intelligence in living AIs. The pathfinding failures were unmasked by adjusting the item priorities when taking from stacks. ("Fixing", is not really an option at this time. While I'm policy-clear to break savefile format at this time, that
does mean abandoning the test game and its turn-zero backup. It's a moderately good start [business district with subway entrance, sewer entrance, and an atypically high rate of residences, one of which is an apartment complex.)

[roguedjack]

Wow! You are both insane and awesome! Not only you revive the source code but you also revived me!
Don't worry, I'm fine with you decompiling the code and doing your own thing, as long as you don't go commercial and don't name it exactly like the original (Rogue Survivor Revived is fine by me).
You are free to streer the game in any way you want, don't feel obiglated to follow my original intents!
I also don't plan to update the game, so go ahead!

I also happen to have make the source code open source on github just a few hours ago:
github.com/roguedjack/Rogue-Survivor-Alpha-9link
This is the original source code from 2012 with all comments, region blocks etc... that might help you understand stuff and other people start their own thing.
Sorry for not doing that earlier! I hope you won't feel your hard work decompiling and understand the code is wasted! From what I understand you already did some improvements!

I'm afraid I won't be available to answer many questions, but you seem to do fine on your own!
So good luck to you and others!
With love - The original Zombie Grand Master!

[zaimoni]

Going commercial is a non-option, yes.

I Am Not A Lawyer, but from what I read up on back in 2000 the copyright status for decompiled source code is jurisdiction-dependent. In particular, the European Union looks like it would assign the decompiled source copyright to you, which completely blacklists commercial use for anyone else.