I see the wood spear got nerfed pretty badly. Kinda stinks as a starting weapon now.
Yes, spears and stabbing weapons are their own thing now. Since they just pierce zombies, the damage is not that great, unless you get a critical, in which case it's pretty much a one-hit kill. It's also quite possible for a spear to be pulled from your hand after stabbing it into a zombie; if this occurs, that zombie will be slowed greatly, but you won't get your spear back until you kill them.
And yes, melee in general has been nerfed. It's slower, especially with torso encumberance, and cutting weapons have a good chance of being lodged in your enemy. This was a completely necessary change--before, it was too easy to grab a machete and just go Rambo, plowing through zombies. This is not a Rambo game; fleeing should be your tactic a good percentage of the time.
Certain preset classes should get something to start with. For ex., a student gets a backpack
I am planning to scrap the Skills tab of character creation, and replace it with a Class tab, which will determine a few starting skills and equipment.
But fleeing isn't easy. Zombies don't move a great deal slower than your character, and a lot of stuff moves as fast as you do, and sometimes faster. Will there be an actual run command that increases speed, or will monsters be slowed in general to compensate for melee being less useful?
No. It's more about picking your battles, and using the terrain to your advantage. Use bashing weapons over cutting ones, unless you're high strength or high in the cutting skill. Kill the zombies you have to, then retreat behind a door. Use windows to your advantage. Watch what you're wearing--an overencumbered torso makes melee much more difficulty. And above all, carry a firearm--just a handgun, with one box of ammo, for emergencies. And a couple molotovs. Molotovs are very, very effective. One or two can take out a pack of wolves at distance.
Does meleeing zombies with a spear create any noise at all ingame?
No, meleeing is perfectly silent.
EDIT: Pardon me, it's not quite silent. It makes noise, but not enough noise to make zombies spawn faster; but it will let those within a few tiles know where you are, even if they can't see or smell you. Normal movement does the same thing. Not sure if any of you have encountered giant worms and graboids, but they are particularly responsive to noise (it's the only way for them to find you!).
Also can you actually die directly from thirst/hunger as opposed to accumulating huge (>100% 
) penalties to speed?
Heh, nope. Oversight on my part--it very rarely comes up. I'll put it in an update soon.
Each time you start, about a square mile of the world is generated. All new characters are placed inside this area. In the future, I'm planning to make new characters get generated outside of this beginning area, so that resources are more available to new characters.
I see. Is there a way I can delete that world save to generate a new square mile of the world? I've gone in and the likely place for it being the Save folder seems to be locked and I can't delete it or anything in it, if not I'll make due and explore outward.
But fleeing isn't easy. Zombies don't move a great deal slower than your character, and a lot of stuff moves as fast as you do, and sometimes faster. Will there be an actual run command that increases speed, or will monsters be slowed in general to compensate for melee being less useful?
It all depends honestly, make sure your paying attention to what you're wearing and on what part since even if your not over encumbered you still may receive small penalties to different things. However, I can't comment all that much since my usual character is a Fleet Footed/Inconspicuous/Light Step build.
There is one thing that even I can't escape though, Wolves. It's the only thing that ever kills me, so it just goes to show that no matter how sneaky or quick you are there's always something sneakier and faster.
Also, I vote butter knives be use able as a makeshift screwdriver, heh.
Done.
Each time you start, about a square mile of the world is generated. All new characters are placed inside this area. In the future, I'm planning to make new characters get generated outside of this beginning area, so that resources are more available to new characters.
I see. Is there a way I can delete that world save to generate a new square mile of the world? I've gone in and the likely place for it being the Save folder seems to be locked and I can't delete it or anything in it, if not I'll make due and explore outward.
I'm afraid the only way is to run "rm save/*" which will delete all the files in the save directory. The save folder is locked? That is odd. Are you running cataclysm as root ("sudo ./cataclysm" instead of "./catalysm")? If so, a) stop it. Nothing should be done as root. and b) "sudo rm save/*" will delete the saves, and "sudo chmod a+rw save" will unlock the directory.
What have you got planned, Whales, for the next few updates in terms of content? Any description on banks and mines?
Banks:
Basically your standard reception/tellers area; lots of windows or glass walls and some counters. Perhaps a back office or two. If anyone has any ideas for items to put in these areas, I'm open.
In the back, a safe, possibly with a new item: gold bars. Rather heavy and not much good in melee, but can be traded at high value to NPCs.
The door to the safe in banks will be controlled by a computer, which requires intelligence/computer skill to hack into. I will also be expanding this to police stations; a central computer will control the doors to the cells, possibly the evidence room (the one near the front, with drugs and stuff in it sometimes). The computer skill is woefully underutilized (only in labs and missile silos, and even then it's not very important), and I'm going to try to expand the presence of computers in the future.
Mines:
One entrance, located at the end of a road (it will be treated as a town when the overmap generation plots out roads). Easy to enter, unlike labs and missile silos. Underground, it will be basically one long tunnel, with one or more passages to lower levels. Mining tools (jackhammers, hard hats, flashlights, random trash) all over. Near the bottom, nasty surprises and fantastic rewards--I'll leave that for you to find out
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Topic: Cataclysm: A Zombie-Survival Roguelike (Read 1263057 times)