Rebuild 3: Maptastic new cities

Rebuild 3 rivers
Temp art for Rebuild: Gangs of Deadsville showing new rivers and oceans. The walled-in blueish areas are the forts of NPC factions.
I’m adding some exciting new features to the cities in Rebuild: Gangs of Deadsville.

Well exciting to me, since playing with the map generation code is pretty fun. There will be coastlines where you might find a boat to help you escape the city, and rivers that make great barriers because zombies can’t cross them. Zombie mobs have to do some pathfinding to get around now. I know zombies shouldn’t be that smart, but it’s pathetic to see them bumping into a river over and over.

Rebuild 2 small map
A typical small, square city from Rebuild 2
Oh and cities aren’t square anymore. One of the best strategies for Rebuild 2 / Rebuild Mobile was to beeline for one of the corners and build your fort with two safe sides – useful but not realistic. The new cities will be round and unevenly shaped, with denser urban areas in the center and farmland around the outside. Your fort will usually start in a balanced area, but some maps might be all farms, all suburbs, or all downtown core.

Rebuild 3 map creation
Map creation command line output. ^ are forests, ~ means water, Xs are forts and the numbers indicate urban zones.
The cities in the main campaign mode will use predetermined random seeds, which means you won’t be able to keep restarting until you get a layout you like. For better or worse you’ll be stuck with the same city for however many tries it takes to save it.

I’ll also include a skirmish mode where you can jump into a city with a random seed and whatever settings you want just like in Rebuild 2 / Rebuild Mobile. Giant size, easy difficulty, winter, with a coastline and two rivers? You got it.

Rebuild 3 giant maps
Zooming out on a new GIANT sized map
Yes and I’ve finally added zooming, which honestly you’re going to need with some of the new giant sized cities. They average around 1000 squares, whereas in Rebuild 2 the max was 256.

That oughta keep ’em busy.

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10 thoughts on “Rebuild 3: Maptastic new cities

  1. Guys u are amazing, much adore to your works.
    Even i am a local chinese, your games has been famously throughout all the game websites in china.
    We all love your game, you are awesome.

  2. I like. Varied starting positions will force players to adapt their play style to the circumstances. e..g, If there’s no nearby farmland, you’ll have to focus more on scavenging to keep the food supply up, which will leave less time for recruiting survivors, capturing defensive/strategic buildings, etc.

    The mention of pathfinding suggests that zombies will attack specific points in the fort now? i.e., that if your fort is surrounded by water on all sides except for one tile, and just that tile is heavily fortified, your fort is well protected? I’m probably misunderstanding.

    Anyway, it looks good. Thanks for the updates—and I, for one, would be interested to hear any technical details you care to share. Like, are you using any particular algorithm for map generation?

    I presume the NPC factions aren’t just enemies/competitors—that you can trade with some, ally with some, go to war with some?

  3. I really admire your work and I read this throw and I think that it both sounds and looks great! Can’t wait!

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