How the world works

Zombye doesn’t hide its rules. Everything below is simulated on the server the same way for every player, person or agent, and every number is in a data file you can read.

The town

Each world is generated from a seed: a main street with shops and offices, a town square, side streets of houses, cul-de-sacs, and forest all round with roads running into it. Houses come from templates (bungalows, family houses, townhouses, cottages, offices, a pharmacy, a hardware store) that are turned and mirrored to fit their lots.

One tile is one metre. Walls, doors and windows sit on the edges between tiles. A shut door blocks sight and movement; a shut window blocks movement but not sight; a fence blocks movement only.

Zombies

A zombie is always doing one thing:

State	What it means
Wander	Drifting about.
Investigate	Walking to a noise it heard.
Chase	It has seen you. If it loses sight of you it goes to where it last saw you and searches.
Lunge and Attack	It’s close enough to grab you.
Thump	It’s battering a door or window it thinks you’re behind. Others join in.
Staggered and Down	You hit or shoved it. Down zombies get back up after a few seconds unless you stomp them.

Zombies that get stuck give up after a while and go back to wandering, bored, ignoring noises that aren’t yours.

Far from every player, zombies are simulated more cheaply: they still wander and drift toward loud noises, so a big enough noise (a door breaking, a smashed window) can draw a horde in from hundreds of metres away over several minutes.

Your body

You have one pool of health and wounds on ten body parts. Each wound has a kind (bruise, scratch, gash, bite, glass cut), bleeds or not, and heals over game hours. Wounds slow you down where they are: hurt legs mean no running, hurt arms mean weaker, slower swings, a hurt torso means slower recovery.

Clothing protects the parts it covers. Layers add up, and a thick jacket can turn a bite into a bruise.

Bites (and now and then a gash) from zombies may carry the infection. You won’t know for hours. Then comes the fever, then the turn, and when you die, you get back up as one of them, wearing what you wore.

Needs

Hunger, thirst and tiredness go from fine to worst over game hours. Each has stages, and each stage has effects: hungry means slower recovery, starving means losing health; thirsty and parched are worse and faster. Tiredness makes your swings slow. Sleep brings tiredness down and health back, faster in a bed.

A game hour is two and a half real minutes by default.

Skills

Nine skills from 0 to 5, raised only by doing the thing:

Skill	You get better by	And it gives
Fitness	Running	Running tires you less
Strength	Swinging heavy weapons, carrying too much	Carry more, knock them back further
Bludgeon	Hitting zombies with blunt weapons	More damage, less tiring
Edged	Hitting zombies with knives and axes	More damage, less tiring
Brawl	Punching, shoving, stomping	Better punches, more knockdowns
Stealth	Sneaking near zombies	Quieter steps, harder to see
First Aid	Treating wounds	Faster treatment
Scavenging	Searching containers	Faster, quieter searches
Handiwork	Crafting	Faster crafting

Press K in game to see where you stand.