Zombies! 2 -- Survivor's Handbook.md

Zombies! 2 Survivor's Handbook

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Day-To-Day Basics
• Equipment
• Appendix A: Preferences
• Appendix B: Map Making

Introduction

Zombies! 2 is a weird kind of game. This guide can't tell you exactly how to play or how to win. There are a few reasons for this, the biggest being that there are different ways to play: you could be by yourself at a console, or on- line via IRC, or on some graphical UI that has yet to be invented. The point is that while there are no specific commands that will work across all of the clients. This handbook can only give directions and suggestions; refer to the manual or README for whatever frontend you use.

Maps are another story alltogether. Each map and campaign is different, coded by some person in a faraway land. There's no way to predict how each one will need to be won, but there's one sure strategy that holds true across every game. Zombies! is a survival game, which means that you will most certainly lose if your characters die. Staying alive is one step in the right direction.

Day-To-Day Basics

Dealing with zombies is not for the faint of heart. You'll have to encounter a whole lot of them thoughout your adventures, and it's likely you'll lose a piece of yourself fighting them. You have to prepare for the worst, which is an idea you should grasp tightly at all times. This entails:

• Keep yourself well-stocked. This means both ammo (you can never have too much) and weapons (why have on machete when you can have two?)
• Watch your entrances and exits. Keep an escape route in mind so when you start getting overwhelmed by zombies.
• Make use of explosives to clear overly crowded rooms, or to cut yourself an escape route if none exists.
• Don't corner yourself unless you absolutely have to. Many maps spawn new zombies at a certain rate; you wouldn't want it to get too crowded just outside of your only exit.
• Be sure to use bandages when you have them. They can't stop anything but bleeding, but bleeding by itself is pretty deadly, let alone bleeding in front of a few hungry zombies.

Equipment

This is a comprehensive list of all the weapons and items included in the core backend of Zombies! 2. Modified copies might not stick to this list.

Melee Weapons

• Switchblade Pretty much a joke of a knife. Don't expect to do any real damage with it.
• Machete This is a real knife. Decent blade that's a good backup weapon.
• Axe A heftier weapon that hits more often, but with a low critical.
• Chainsaw The ultimate zombie-killing device. High chance of hitting, and the highest critical range for any weapon

Ranged Weapons

• Pistol Your basic weapon, a good sidearm. Not very impressive by any means. Fires 9mm bullets.
• Uzi Basically an automatic Pistol, slightly less accurate. Shares 9mm rounds with its cousin.
• Hunting Rifle A high-power and accurate rifle that fires .308 Winchester bullets.
• Assualt Rifle Less accurate and powerful than the hunting version, this rifle is at least automatic. Fires 5.56mm NATO rounds.
• Shotgun The classic gun for any wannabe zombie hunter. High damage and a critical that rivals the Chainsaw. Uses Buckshot rounds.

Explosives

• Grenade Your standard anti-zombie explosive. You never know what you'll hit, but a high damage rating means it'll cause some serious blood splatters.
• Claymore Exactly like a grenade, but more accurate. Can be placed and then remotely detonated from afar, or can be set to trigger when a zombie walks past.

Ammunition

• 9mm rounds Low-impact pistol rounds. Used by the Pistol and the Uzi.
• .308 Winchester rounds Low-caliber but high-velocity hunting bullets. The Hunting Rifle fires them.
• 5.56mm NATO rounds Standard-issue combat ammunition. Fired by the Assault Rifle.
• Buckshot 12-gauge shotgun shells that pack a lot of damage into a little casing. Only used by the Shotgun.

Extranneous

• Bandages These handy first-aid wraps staunch bleeding wounds, delaying your death. Take an action to use, however, so be careful.
• Barricades Those who are thrifty can erect barricades in a direction to block access from that direction- both ways. These can take damage from zombies, though, so keep an eye on them; an untimely breakage would mean bad things for you.

Appendicies

Appendix A: Preferences

Players can set the following preferences for their characters:

• starting-weapon-class determines what kind of weapon you want to start with. Accepts random (default), melee, or ranged.

Appendix B: Map Making

Maps are easy to make, being only linked rooms described in plain text. This chapter will describe the options availible to a mapmaker.

Before you begin, every map must be in some kind of campaign. All this requires is for the map to be stored in a subfolder of data/maps/; for example, all of the legacy maps from Zombies! 1 are in the "legacy" campaign, which can be found at data/maps/legacy/. Maps should be saved as plain text with the .map extension.

Map files read like JSON or Python code:

attribute: value

For areas, the value is more sets of attributes. You could honestly do that any way you wanted, but it would be best to indent the sub-elements:

area XX:
	attribute: value

Maps are described by two main blocks: the map description and a list of areas.

Map Metadata

All of these must be present:

• start-text Introductory text for the map. Could be story, or just yelling incoherently at the players. Shown before anything happens.
• objective Should display the objectives required to win the game in plain English.
• start-location An area name that the players start in.
• conditions Another attribute that has more attributes as values. It should contain a list of condition attributes (see below).

Conditions

At least one of these is required if you want the players to win. Otherwise, they will lose eventually and/or get bored. Note that if there are multiple win conditions, all of them must be true for the players to win.

• no-zombies-in A comma-separated list of areas that no zombies may be in for the players to win. All of the areas must be cleared at the same time for victory to occur.
• spawn-frequency A number that determines how many turns it takes for a new set of zombies to spawn (in the "spawn-zombies" areas). 5 would mean every 5th turn, a new zombie is created.
• spawn-zombies A comma-separated list of areas to create a zombie in. They spawn as often as specified by the "spawn-frequency" attribute.
• time-limit A number that represents the number of player turns the game will last. Players cannot win before this many turns pass.

Areas

These should be prefaced by an area XX attribute, where XX is a number (of any length). Only the tags marked by "required" are needed in the description; all others may be omitted.

• name (required) Name of the area for the players to read.
• desc (required) The text to show for the area; a description.
• zombies A number (or "none") describing how many zombies should start the game in that location.
• items A list of items that should be generated in the area. Acceptable values are gun, melee, ammo, gun with ammo and weapon. These item types can be prefaced with a number (the 1 is implied), and separated by a comma if you want more than one.

Any other attribute is treated as an exit; the value for it should be the number of another area. Examples include:

east: 02
up: 23