Category: Rebuild3

Colin and I are still in South Africa, because screw winter. The days are getting longer, the weather hotter, just the way it should be. Perpetually.

We’ve fallen in to a routine here of working, then doing more work, then working when we have some time between work and work. Progress is being made on Rebuild 3, which eases the feeling I’ve had for the last year of being in a tunnel whose end gets further away the faster I walk. Finally, I’m gaining on it!

Since we finally have some purdy Adam-art for all the equipment, and close-to-final descriptions and effects, praps it’s time I publish the definitive (*cough version 0.71 cough*) list.

Melee Weapons:

The mandala of pain. And gardening.

Boring old hand-to-hand. I added some silly melee weapons in Rebuild like the shovel and golf club because I just love the image of bashing a zombie’s skull in with things you find lying around. Once to graduate to firearms, they’re also useful for scavenging or recreation, respecitvely.

Equipment	Description	Effect
Knife	Officially Licensed RAMBO First Blood MC-RB2 Survival Knife	+2 defense
Stick	Everyone knows Donatello has the longest range attack	+1 defense
Nail Board	A board with a nail so big it will destroy them all	+2 defense
Fire Ax	A scavenger’s best friend	+2 defense, +2 scavenging
Baseball Bat	Swing away	+1 defense, perk: Recreation
Shovel	Good for digging your way through a zombie’s skull	+1 defense, +1 scavenging
Golf Club	FOOOOOORE	+1 defense, perk: Recreation
Sledgehammer	Useful for construction or deconstruction of zombie skulls	+2 defense, +2 building
Pickaxe	Can I pick your brain for a minute?	+2 defense, +1 building
Chainsaw	Find some meat!	+2 defense, +1 building
Sword	Don’t hold it by the pointy end	+2 defense
Named Sword	Makes you feel like a Ninja	+3 defense, perk: Ninja
Nunchuks	Hope the nose you break is not your own	+1 defense
Mierfa’s Nunchuks	Mierfa made these herself after a harrowing incident	+3 defense
Whip	Reinact your favorite scenes from Raiders of the Lost Ark	+1 defense
Andy’s Whip	More a toy than a useful weapon	+3 defense, perk: Recreation

Ranged weapons:

Be prepared.

Things that go boom. Or in some cases “twack”. Most of these use ammo, which is of the one-size-fits-all variety in Rebuild, working in both your pea shooter and your rocket launcher. It’s easy to make more ammo in a workshop… perhaps too easy… so enjoy all that free ammo now before it gets nerfed in the next update and you’ve got to trade Gustav your firstborn just to make your guns work.

And how does ammo work? You use up one unit (obviously not one BULLET, duh) for every 3 days spent shooting at stuff. If you run out of ammo, all guns grant +0 defense. There’s a policy that lets you increase or decrease ammo usage.

Equipment	Description	Effect
Pistol	Useless without bullets	+2 defense
Pea Shooter	Literally shoots peas	+3 defense, perk: Green Thumb
Shotgun	Aim in the general direction of the head	+3 defense
Named Shotgun	Sturdier than the average shotgun	+4 defense
Hunting Rifle	Without me, my rifle is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless	+3 defense
Van Dijk’s Rifle	I must master my rifle as I must master my life	+4 defense
Submachine Gun	Ratatatat	+3 defense
Assault Rifle	This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine	+4 defense
Flamethrower	Smores?? My favorite!	+4 defense
Minigun	Can cut a zombie in half at 100 yards, not that that would kill it	+5 defense
Rocket Launcher	Eliminate everything in your path, including your path	+5 defense
Crossbow	Uses ammo like guns	+2 defense
Boomerang	She might fly off, but she always comes back to me	+1 defense
Melanie’s Boomerang	Tipped with razors for taking off zed heads	+2 defense

Tools:

One of the Kickstarter reward tiers was getting to name an item, which is where things like the “Octonoo Binocs” and “Walter’s Go Bag” came from. These souped-up versions of regular items often give a perk as well as an extra skill bonus.

Yes, the “See Further” perk stacks with the Improved Scouting tech, letting your survivors scout a 3×3 grid instead of just one measly building at a time.

Equipment	Description	Effect
Hammer	Bang bang went Maxwell’s silver hammer	+1 defense, +2 building
Wrench	It’s all about torque	+1 building
Saw	Man those were some bad movies	+1 building
Crowbar	Can open almost any object, or at least smash it	+1 defense, +2 scavenging
Named Crowbar	For prying open stuff… including rib cages	+1 defense, +3 scavenging
Flashlight	Find useful stuff in darkened buildings	+1 scavenging
Binoculars	For more efficient long distance scavenging	+1 scavenging
Moore’s Binocs	Spy on your neighbors up to 4 blocks away	+2 scavenging, perk: See Further
Octonoo Binocs	Official Binoculars of the Octonoo City Bird Watching Club	+2 scavenging, perk: See Further
Toolbox	All the tools you need to build your first bidhouse	+3 building
Backpack	You could live out of one of these for years	+3 scavenging
Pitchfork	Good fer pokin’	+1 scavenging, perk: Green Thumb
Chemistry Kit	A good set of glass beakers and a bunsen burner	+3 engineering
Doctor’s Bag	Lets you diagnose almost anything, just not cure it	+2 engineering
Walter’s Go Bag	Lets you diagnose almost anything, just not cure it	+5 engineering, perk: First Aid
The Doctor’s Scalpel	Lets you diagnose almost anything, just not cure it	+5 engineering, perk: First Aid
Mirror Earth	A tale of teamwork by Crawford and Yeo	+3 leadership, perk: Team Player
Terrible Comic	So badly written that it inspires you to do better	+3 engineering, perk: Easygoing
Calculator	Ancient but solar powered, these things last forever	+1 engineering
Science Book	Sleep with it under your pillow and learn by osmosis	+2 engineering
Named Science Book	A first edition! Before they fixed all the mistakes!	+4 engineering
Flare Gun	Works as a weapon in a pinch	+3 leadership, +1 defense
Radio	Communication is the key to good leadership	+3 leadership
Megaphone	Can be heard a mile away on a windless day	+2 leadership
Multi-tool	Reid Co’s bestselling five-in-one multi-tool	+1 to all
Guitar	Soothe the savage beasts and lift the sombre spirits	+2 leadership
Helmet	For more effective headbutt attacks	perk: Defended
Top Hat	A top-notch hat or the truly refined leader	+1 leadership
Cowboy Hat	This town ain’t big enough for two sheriffs	+1 leadership

Pets:

Children also count as equipment in the code. They grant -1 to all perks (to represent the time it takes to take care of them), and grant a happiness perk called Babysitter. Yes, babysitting is a source of great joy for survivors in Rebuild. When you compare it to other possible duties anyway.

You might remember the black cat from Rebuild 2 where it was a reward for cleaning our the gambler’s bank. Kickstarter backers got to name it this time around, so you might win: “Yoshi”, “Stevens”, “Gromit”, “Pepsi”, “Cooper”, “Caboose”, “Kamstra”, or “Linus”

Equipment	Description	Effect
Cat	Nobody can resist this cat’s charms	+1 leadership, perk: Pet Owner
Black Cat	A very special cat	+1 to all, perk: Pet Owner
Pomeranian	Adorable, when it finally stops yapping	+2 leadership, perk: Pet Owner
Retriever	Wants to be your bestest friend	+1 defense, +1 scavenging, perk: Pet Owner
Bulldog	The jowls say it: this is one mean dog	+2 defense, perk: Pet Owner

Vehicles:

Oh, there are plenty of vehicles lying around. But good luck getting any of them to start after rusting in the rain for a decade.

I haven’t quite figured out vehicles yet… right now they grant the Has Vehicle perk which eliminates the danger of doing missions further than 1 city block away from the fort. But I have several vehicle-related events planned that should make them more interesting than that, and something you’ll definitely want to have.

Equipment	Description	Effect
Bicycle	Keep fit and stay ahead of the mob	perk: Has Vehicle
Motorcycle	Drive right through those traffic jams	+1 defense, perk: Has Vehicle
Car	Surprisingly spacious trunk	+1 scavenging, perk: Has Vehicle
Armored Truck	Bulletproof and full of cash	+2 defense, +2 scavenging, perk: Has Vehicle

Deluxe edition bonus equipment:

(The Fox rocks!)

One of the Kickstarter rewards (and now deluxe edition bonuses) is some special starting jobs for your main leader, which come with gussied-up versions of some items. They are:

Equipment	Description	Effect
Handle with Care	Groovy	+5 defense, +2 building
KITT	Heavily armored, but doesn’t actually talk	+3 defense, +3 scavenging, perk: Has Vehicle
The Feynman Lectures	Arm yourself with physics	+4 engineering, perk: MacGyver
Note’s Guitar	Smooth sound but a sharp edge	+4 leadership, +2 defense, perk: Musician
Construction Hat	Doin’ it like a Doozer	+3 building, perk: Defended

Build 0.70x is live on Steam for PC and Mac. This update’s going to be Steam only, so I can get on with the process of making a game and stop fiddling with builds all day. My apologies to standalone & Android players – I’ll aim for an early all-platforms build next month to make up for it.

We’re in Cape Town, South Africa this winter. Our first time in Africa, so we had to do a safari and see us some Big Five. We chose Etosha national park in Namibia and rented a 4×4 with two friends, two tents on top. I nearly had this release ready to go into testing before we left, but a last minute bug stopped me from uploading it in time.

That’s okay. Game development rule #5: Never release the day before you go on vacation, or on a Friday afternoon… unless you’re indie work all weekend anyway.

The biggest change in the new version is children. Tiny humans (called Goats in the code justcuz) who are born and grow up, assuming they’re spectacularly lucky enough not to die in the process. Luck is indeed on their side in build 0.70.2, since the events that might kill them aren’t in yet. They’re treated as equipment… I know, I know, it isn’t a very kind metaphor, but it keeps them from getting underfoot in a gameplay-and-ui sense. They DO each have a “Colin ID” in the code, which is kind of the Rebuild equivalent of a soul.

Children must be equipped by a caretaker at all times. Equipping a child lowers your skills to represent the time needed to raise them, but they provide a happiness boost because they’re such inspirational little devils. They eat half as much food as adults but don’t take up a house. They can be born (to a married couple only right now) and grow up to be full adults at age 14, whether they’re actually mature enough for it or not.

This is just the start for children. Next month we’ll be adding events to make them more interesting and useful. Young Sophia Sassy-socks will soon be able to:

• help her dad out around the farm
• ask her parents to check for monsters under the bed
• get lost and need to be rescued by mom
• climb down a narrow well to see why the bucket’s stuck
• go to school
• make friends with the boys from St Micheals
• find a cool toy and learn an important lesson about sharing

Any other suggestions? Let me know.

Namibia was intense btw – we saw lions DOIN’ IT and all kindsa other animals: two kinds of zebra, thirsty giraffes, snoozing hyenas, the delicious kudu and graceful springbok, common warthogs and baboons (both are suburban pests here), snoozing hyenas, and the terribly endangered black rhino.

‘Tis the season of zombies, horror, and also pumpkins, which there are a surprising number of here in South Africa, I think it’s like the national vegetable or something. To celebrate, Rebuild is on sale!

You can pick up Rebuild Mobile (aka Rebuild 2) in the Humble Mo(BOO!)ile Bundle with five other creepy as hell Android games and pay whatever price you want. Then hide under the covers and play Five Nights at Freddy’s until you’re too scared to sleep.

This weekend, Rebuild 3: Gangs of Deadsville will also be 25% off on Steam Early Access, so now’s your chance to get into the beta if you haven’t yet.

Colin and I are now settled in Cape Town for the first half of winter (their summer). Colin’s going to spend it kiteboarding on the endless, beautiful beach and I’m going to put my head down and work. This is what I’ve said every month for the last year, and does it ever happen? Rarely. Life is just too full of distractions to spend it crunching, I guess. That or I’m paralyzed with fear that I’m going to screw up this wonderful, already successful game somehow because I don’t truly understand why people like it.

Let’s hope it’s that first one.

Version 0.69

So October’s version 0.69 (hahah… yeah) was big on balancing and increasing the importance of happiness and faction rivalry towards the end of the game. It’s still not right; with so many random elements I’ve got to do a helluva lot of testing to know if I’ve made something too easy or hard, and I’m trusting a lot of that testing to the community. I’m not sure if I’ve told you this lately, beta testers, but I love you. You’re great.

I also included Adam’s final versions of the faction leaders, which are really fun and make me want to write them all some new events. I’ve decided every faction will have a special requirement before they’ll ally with you (in addition to needing 75 respect). Like, the Luddies want you to have a lot of farms, the Government wants you to make ammunition for them, the Pharmacists want you addicted to Bath Salts etc. I’m looking for more suggestions.

Also making it in are the start of relationships, the Kickstarter stretch goal chosen by popular vote. Survivors assigned together will gradually become friends, which gives them a happiness boost if they spend enough time together. They can even fall in love and get married. And yes, there are same-sex relationships too.

Sometimes people just don’t get along, and they hate to work together. Force them on missions together too often and it could end badly. Don’t miss the warning signs!

Next month we might see children finally make an appearance in the game. Colin’s helping me brainstorm how they’re going to work right now. It’s pretty swell having him on the team!