jimdattilo

Games by JimD Newsletter – Game Updates, Schedules for Games

Added 2024-11-20 20:17:23 +0000 UTC

Welcome to my 85th newsletter! Happy Thanksgiving to those of you in America. I admit I am sometimes very America-centric and not I don’t know all of the international holidays. So Happy Thanksgiving to everyone, because we all have things to be happy about.

I think most of you will be happy about some of the things in this newsletter. It’s November, and I plan to submit Part 4 of Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven, Part 4 in the first half of next year. I am shooting for April. I will talk more about my plans below, but you are going to see me ramping up a lot of writing to get ready for production.

In this newsletter, I will also go over my other games in development, like I always do.

Let's get started.

Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven, Part 4

Part 4 is 678,000 words, with over 16,000 words added this month! I should have no problem hitting at least 20,000 words this month, but I would like to hit 25,000 words before the next private beta in five days.

I have been writing as much as I can for Safe Haven and Stronghold, but I'm starting to feel pressured to wrap up more content for Safe Haven. I want to get it to 900,000 words by April 2025. I do have some code that I'm not including in my word count estimate since it's the huge trade hub I will include in Part 4. There is little content, but coding such an enormous system is huge.

With the trade hub, you can trade with alliance members, such as the Red Mamba Biker Club or River Dogs. It will effectively allow you to sell them items for credit and then use those credits to purchase items that they sell. Some items will be cheaper or more expensive, depending on who you are trading with. For example, the Red Mambas have a lot of guns, so selling them guns will get you less value than it would by trading with the Silverthornes.

Besides the trade hub, I also have to code a very long chapter, 17, which will be the last chapter of Part 4. I plan to do that throughout January, February, and March. I will up my usual monthly word count to 30,000 from 20,000 words. That means that I will have less time for Stronghold. Dedicating my time to one game may work best for the short run.

Once Part 4 is released, I will go back to writing both games more equally.

Zombie Exodus: Stronghold

Stronghold is up to 150,000 words so far. That means I have added 17,000 words this month. If you are interested in testing each new chapter, please check out the link below:

https://cogdemos.ink/play/jimd/zombie-exodus-stronghold-public-beta/mygame/

I’m going to post chapter 6 this weekend. I also added an opportunity to raise skills at the end of chapter 5. At this stage, the group is running from soldiers trying to kill them while also being chased by a horde of zombies.

I have already completed half of chapter 7 and hope to finish it by the end of the month. Since I will be slowing down writing this game to focus on Part 4 of Safe Haven, I will probably not finish Stronghold until the B end of next year.