Overview
Hello everybody,
As I have mentioned before in my previous announcement and comments here on the community HUB, we are working on a brand new Camp Management gameplay functionality. The new gameplay will allow players to take control of the leader and visit the camp.
In this announcement I will be talking about some of the features that will be presented with this new gameplay, functionality that will become available shortly with our upcoming update, and the final vision of the camp management as we want it to be down the road.
Most of the heavy lifting is already behind us as we have expanded our Environment Manager system responsible for day / night cycle, visual and audio effects (and weather control in a near future), to operate in the turn based camp management gameplay. Below you can see the screen taken directly from the game engine editor as we are reconstructing the camp. There is not much to see, since the majority of work were done in code, but I still wanted to share these with you, so we all can be on the same page.
Upcoming features
In the next update players will be able to visit and explore the camp, all of the currently implemented features will be available in the new gameplay, with a possible exception of the defense gameplay elements as these will still need to undergo major restructuring.
The new camp will reflect all of the buildings, upgrades and survivor models. Which means that players will be able to see everything developed in the camp from sandbags defensive upgrades to the main radio tower building and all of it's levels.
Players will be able to gain access to the camp interface by interacting with NPCs and objects in the camp, advance phases and travel to Free Roam and Sites. As well as all of the other camp management functionality currently available.
Long term features and expansion
I would like to mention a few of the features and major changes that we are going to implement down the road in regards to the camp management gameplay. We are going to expand the building management system to increase the maximum levels of all buildings, add new buildings to the mix, such as Garage for example, where players will be able to manage their vehicles, upgrade and customize them.
The crafting system will be drastically changed, with much more recipes for both weapons and equipment as well as combining items together, for example combining several different medicine items will result in a medkit, and combining several of those with additional materials will result in medicine resources, and so on. Some of the crafting will become available during the real time action gameplay as well.
The camp population system will undergo major refinement, survivors will have their own personality traits and skills, and players will be able to assign lieutenants to oversee some of the tasks in the camp, for example an engineer can be assigned to the workshop and provide additional bonuses to production, etc..
The defense gameplay will be redesigned so players can fight to protect their camp in real time action combat.
Overall camp design will be changed, we want the camp to grow larger than 12 survivors, and as players will upgrade their camp it will look more and more like a small community town, with makeshift shelters and cargo container repurposed for homes.
It is a little bit early to dive in more details, but I will be posting additional updates as the development progresses!
Thank you!