An untapped Genre, and an idea of a possible game.

Blarkage · 2008-06-24T10:38:23

Iv'e been thinking about a few types of games I, as a kid(i'm 13), would like to play. As i thought about it i came to the conclusion that i wanted to play some sort of a zombie horror survival. When i went online, to the store, and viewed magazines i found there were almost none that were any good or worth playing. Recently i've found a decent one called Dead Frontier, its not all that great and so i've been starting to think about what i would like in a game about zombie survival. I read an article that covered some of it, but then i read some more and found out that the company wasn't even going to bother making. The article talks about starting in a tiny hotel in a small city, you and a team of survivors managed to meet up there, you have a hunger meter and zombies have found out where you are, you will need to keep the hotel safe and get food and ammunition for guns at the same time, so you will have a team of eight and you will have to send four men out to go get food and ammo and four men need to stay to keep the hotel from being overrun. Also while doing this there are seven other teams of eight out there that you can choose to help, if there in trouble, or just leave to die. This seems like a very good idea and there are really no other games like it. Some ideas i would like to add about this project(i hope you guys work on it because im only 13 and dont have much experience). I would like for their to be multiple buildings, each with stuff inside of it, for ex. one house had a gang member living in it who had an uzi, or something like that. Also when you use a microphone depending on how far from each other, in the game, depends on how loud or quiet you hear the guy talking. Also you can form an alliance with another team, if you can find them, then you can move to a bigger building, like a store or a mall, and try to defend all, or part of it. The zombies should run about 80% as fast as you, but there should be enough of them you cant simply run by them. I want multiple maps, the more the merrier, and perhaps something realistic like a part of NY, NY. Also when you start your multiplayer account you choose a class/profession, for example your guy was a police man or a doctor who survived(other possible classes/professions are thief, can get into buildings better and search them better, computer technician, can run a security system, if the building has one, and with the help of a doctor to get a zombie sample can make a device that tells when a zombie is near, construction worker, can smelt down metals to make bullets and can make metal into pieces to help secure a building). When a person gets bit a doctor can work on them, if the doctor gets there in time, and can cut the disease out of your skin before you turn into a zombie. A system rates players before the game so they can determine who they play against so its fair. However it should be some what like a normal city and should not have unlimited ammunition or food. But your construction worker can make some bullets for you, depending on what metals you can find will determine the bullets, and he will need to go to the gun shop and bring back a bullet making and filling device, and there are also farms on the outside of the town, unless its NY, NY or any other big city, that you can get food from and plant food in that you can harvest, if you live long enough, and use(i personally dont think the plant and harvest idea is very good but i want the communities ideas and opinions on it). Also if you can get to a radio station and have your computer technician work on it to make it work, you can call for an air drop of supplies, the supplies should only be able to be called two times per team. There should be an assortment of weapons from pistols to shotguns, maybe one rocket launcher or two if you can break into the police building and get into their gun stash. How To Win How to win should simply be last team standing, but you cant kill other people, that would make it too easy simply to go out and shoot the other teams so your team is last alive. If one man survives his whole team gets some sort of reward, for example next time the man that lived will have a gun to start with. Also, i think their should be some sort of a level system and skill system so players have something to look forward to with the end of a round. Depending on a class/professions level determines how fast they can make stuff, and determine how good they are at their jobs, for example a computer technician can break a police stations password lock depending on his level. I hope you like my idea, and I really hope that someone will start to work on it(but I really doubt anyone will). Thanks for reading this and I hope you see the untapped potential of this genre as well. Please comment and tell me new ideas and thoughts, or complaints about this idea. [Edited by - Blarkage on May 14, 2008 8:25:48 PM]

Blarkage

Author

122

June 12, 2008 07:43 PM

Thats Great!!!

Its good to know youve made quite a bit of progress, and hopefully we can get a team together to work on this project, cant wait to see the screenshots and other things!!!!!!

LOOY

134

June 13, 2008 06:08 AM

So Vipperr, will you be making a map editor to make construcing levels easier? If so I have some mapping experience, I could help that way :D

Blarkage

Author

122

June 13, 2008 08:11 AM

yay : ) as far as the map goes it seems like we have people who could do that : )

Lopherus

132

June 14, 2008 02:27 PM

Quote: Original post by LOOY
I was thinking of making a game like this, I haven't started anything yet and[...] emersion.

I think these are very nice ideas.
This kinda a game gives u the kind of feeling you are really inside the game, outside its not safe! Inside it is! You and your friends gotta survive!

What if u could put bariers and yeah, make things in a way that endless strategies could be used by u and your teammates to defend and survive!

The insides of buildings could be very groomy! In many places the lights wouldnt work or the generators and u had to go fix them! And it would be a mess around, so you would be afraid to turn your back to anyplace and always think where u are and ur comrades!!!

I myself would like to help do a game like this, unfortunetely programming its not my thing, i am very newbie modeler(can model a glass and a door maybe :D),
i can make some simple music for it and i can help with ideas so if anybody wants to do this LETS GO ! :D

Lopherus

132

June 14, 2008 02:44 PM

Quote: Original post by PaulCesar
Except I would remove the radar :). One of the fun things about zombie/horror games is you dont see things coming. Your afraid of opening that door because there could very well be some undead brain sucking mutant on the other side of it. Honestly this could be one of the best co-op style online FPS games out there if it were done up right. I mean take 10 people, stick them in a fairly decent sized city in their bedrooms armed with only a pistol, and set them loose. And respawns can be very painfull aswell, you know that if you lose a guy to a zombie, said person becomes a zombie, and his actual charactor responds in another bedroom or something.

I dont really like the "last man standing" gameplay.

Thats the core of it!

Lets make a web place whre we can get things together and discuss them, something like irc channel or another threat.

Blarkage

Author

122

June 14, 2008 05:31 PM

Quote: Original post by Lopherus
Lets make a web place whre we can get things together and discuss them, something like irc channel or another threat.

Alright guys, mainly LOOY and Viperr,(if we start this they will be head workers) it all pretty much comes down to this:

Do we make a website etc. and officially start working on this project as a team?

Well tell me what you guys think.

I Am Legend

122

June 14, 2008 05:50 PM

For the barricading feature, you could use ODE (Open Dynamics Engine)

Let he who will move the world first move himself--Socrates

Lopherus

132

June 14, 2008 06:02 PM

I am ready.

Maybe no need for a website but just somewhre we can exchange files and talk.

Lillebror

122

June 14, 2008 06:25 PM

This is a genre of games that I've been looking for as well. A large scale sandbox world with survival horror style gameplay, just like the OP said. Something like a "Cloverfield" or "of the Dead" theme could be really interesting.

I think games of this type would really benefit from procedural content generation. That way you could have immense areas with cities etc which you could fight to take control over (or complete some other goal). Then for the next "round" it could be a completely different area. I don't think the procedural tech is quite were it needs to be to create something of adequate quality, yet, but certainly it's something that will be done eventually.

It would be nice to see an MMO around something like this that wasn't about killing 1000 zombies to "earn" a new shiny shotgun. Instead it should be something more realistic where any weapon basically could do the job and more focus would be on player skill and strategy, instead of the ability to enter a semi-vegetative state like in today's typical MMO grinds.

Obviously there should be vehicles, the possibility to make barricades, as much features as possible. You should basically be able to try and do all the stuff right, which the zombie movies survivors inevitably end up doing wrong. :)