Hi gamedev community,

I'm new here. Please excuse my bad english, I'm not a native speaker. Are you still reading this? Great! :> I don't know much about programming, I'm more into audio production, and thats very related to the idea I wanted to share with you: Imagine a zombie survival first person shooter for a larger amount of players (25 - 50). Imagine it to be somewhat like Left4Dead, but with a more open, sandbox-y envrionment. As we all know, sound effects are very effective to scare people and create atmosphere, so the game's "centerpiece" is a complex sound engine, which not only creates (to some extent) realistic sound effects (e.g. reverb when walking through a tunnel), but also has an integrated speak-feature.

Sue me for being idealistic, but let's say the game comes with a optimized headset with a decent microphone. There's no "speak-button", and there is no group-function. The loudness of your voice in-game depends on how far you're away from other characters and on how loud you speak, just like in reality.

There should be no introduction to the game. You adjust your headset, create a character (maybe a webcam could help you with recreating your own face for your avatar) and as soon as you connect to a server, you're thrown into a safe position on the map (like a casual appartment or something everybody can relate to from their everyday lifes). There is no story sequence or anything, just the TV in your room, talking about a zombie apocaplyse that is happing right now in your area. You are just you, in a MUTHAFUKKIN' ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE.

There are no health bars, no briefings, only hints like a NPC telling you about another city where it's safer or places where you can find one of the few firearms of the world.

All those features should encourage the player to actually experience the feeling of this situation. I'm pretty sure that most gamers (more or less) secretly like the idea of getting involved in a zombie apocalypse, because you can shine with intelligence and leadership abilities. You'll be a hero, but you'll also be yourself.

There are even more random ideas for a game like that spinning in my head, like a chainsaw engine, which allows the player not only to cut down a lot of materials in the game world (e.g. cutting a hole into a door to escape) but also enables him to craft things from wood, like a barricade or a stake.

All in all, it should be as open-world as possible, provide only a few big goals and let the players be creative and organize themselves.
Just imagine walking with a handful of allies through a dark wood, hearing the voices of strangers echoing through the trees. How will you react? Will you hide, remain silent and try to observe them? Will you scream: "Friend or Foe??"



Well, I hope you got an idea of what I'm fantasizing about here.
I guess the whole concept is too complex at the moment, even for a high budget game studio, but what's your opinion on it?
As i've said before, I'm not a programmer, but I think the average internet connection speed wouldn't be high enough to support the required sound quality for a bunch of players. Also the crafting system seems impossible to me when combined with a huge open world. Every change to the world map would have to be saved and synchronised with every player. Despite those big problems, do you guys see any opportunities in this concept?

How about a minimalistic 3d-space where you can talk to another player over headset with realistic acoustic, depending on the angle and distance? This could be achieved in a short time, I guess.

Anyhow, thanks for reading!
Share your thoughts!
(flaming also appreciated)

:>

There's no "speak-button", and there is no group-function. The loudness of your voice in-game depends on how far you're away from other characters and on how loud you speak, just like in reality.
... All those features should encourage the player to actually experience the feeling of this situation.

The Arma series of games has this feature -- it also has a speak-button and radio-group features... but one of the radio-groups is "direct communication", which makes your voice come out of your character's mouth in the 3d world, just like you're suggesting.
It also tries to lip-sync your character to your voice, and supports head-tracking (to make your in-game character's head mimic your real-world head movements).

These features are incredibly immersive, more games should use them! When (in a multi-player, non-scripted environment) you see someone turn around and yell something at you over their shoulder, or hear faint voices in the woods, or have a conversation with a car passenger where you're both naturally looking for threats out the windows but also making occasional "eye contact", it's just plain awesome.

Your sound idea sounds neat, thought I hate it to speak in a multiplayer game when not playing with friends.

Just some points about your idea you could use to improve it (IMHO):
You mix story and immersion with gameplay, to be honest, you're talking more about a story/movie then a game. Both is important, but gameplay is more important in a multiplayer environment once the player is through the story. You can see this very often in games: MP = no story, but intensive gameplay, SP = story driven interactive movie

What I mean is, that it will be really hard to deploy a player in an immersive situtation when suddenly a door jumps open and a fully equiped veteran player comes in and give you some jack-ass uber weapon, this sounds like fun at first, but the player never will experience the exploration factor.

So,ask yourself, once the player has left the appartment, met some other survivors what will be the motivation to continue ?


But back to your sound idea. Why don't you try to mod L4D to use your sound ideas ? When you don't have much coding experiences, modding could be the easiest way.Thought I don't know if modding L4D is possible in this way.