Raiders are non-zombie AI that attack, well, basically everything. They will spawn randomly, and also have some specific areas where they frequently spawn. Raider driven events are in the works where a raiding party can spawn and hunt down the player and raid their base.
Survivors are neutral AI that can spawn around the world who are just trying to get by. Players can rescue Survivors and recruit them to help in your own base, or send them to help a faction of your choice. Survivors will be able to help players with many tasks like harvesting wood, collecting crops, defense, crafting items, and more. Survivors will get a set of randomized stats that make them more efficient at specific tasks.
Factions each have their own motives, goals, and will be heavily integrated in to the task / questing system. Increasing reputation with a faction will open new items on vendors, additional tasks, and also build out their base if the player decides to help them.
The upcoming Vendor Rework will also go live with the faction system. The vendor UI is going to change quite a bit, as will how the vendors restock and offer items.
Zombie Hordes have been in development for quite some time. It's a tricky situation to try and balance playability with high numbers of AI, but I'm working on some specific things that I hope will really push the limit on how many zombies are around the world, especially in the city center areas. Once these changes are finished up, players will also have some more options on changing how many zombies spawn.
A fairly large Loot Spawning Overhaul is nearing completion. The main goal behind overhauling the loot spawning system is to begin giving different areas more specific purpose. DeadPoly will always kind of favor the randomness of anything being able to spawn anywhere, but having a lot of specific areas / zones on the map which are higher in specific categories is a much needed and overdue change.
Map Markers and visible area names after discovering areas for the world map are on the way.
After the above features are live, I will begin heavily working on making Garden City not feel so empty. Finishing up every remaining empty building, along with adding more fill to the world outside of buildings, sound scaping different areas to have more unique atmospheres to the game overall, and just really trying to polish up the entire map to feel more vivid and alive rather than empty and boring.
Please note that these features are in progress and not all set to release with the next update, but should begin rolling out over the next few months.
I'd like to send out a very heartfelt thank you to everyone who continues to support DeadPoly. I know the updates have been a little sparse as of late, which can be super frustrating as a player. I almost always tend to spend the time working on the game directly rather than trying to come up with things to share and post. I'm really excited about how the development of these new features is going and how they will affect the game as a whole. I'll try to keep you posted as these features get closer to being ready to go, and with new features that aren't quite ready to show off just yet.