Zombies: A Videogame Design Document That Isn't Very Well Organized

[Squirminator2k]

There are a lot of videogames about zombies, but none of them have quite achieved what I want to see out of a zombie game. Left 4 Dead comes dangerously close, but I want to outline what I think would make the perfect zombie game.

IT'S GRAND THEFT AUTO MEETS ELITE, WITH ZOMBIES

Synopsis
You are alone in a city infested with zombies. Your goal: Escape. It's that simple. No story, no plot, no character development - just you, your wits, and whatever you can find to help you survive. The aim of the game is to present a 'realistic' take on a zombie apocalypse scenario.

The Game World

Location, Location, Location
The game takes place within a large, sprawling, autonomous city, not unlike GTA's Liberty City. The only difference is that the people are gone, the police are no more, the fire department aren't taking calls and no ambulances will come if you get run down. In their places - Zombies. Faahzands of 'em.

You can interact with many objects in the city. You can pick up virtually anything and use it as a weapon. You can steal vehicles, but some will have alarms in them which will attract zombies when sounded. You can use anything you see that you think will help you achieve your goal of getting out of town.

There are multiple routes out of the city. There's the underground subway system. There's the bridge out of town. There's a Helicopter on the roof of the local TV center. There are more I haven't thought of yet. The freedom of choice is in deciding which method you're going to use to escape, although each option faces its own challenges and obstacles.

In all likelihood the city would have to be built from scratch, but the idea of randomly-generated cities appeals.

Character creation
The initial process of creating one's character is largely aesthetic - you customize your character's appearance as you would, say, a Rock Band character, only without having to buy/unlock costume items. Once that's done, it gets more interesting: You choose your starting point in the city from the following: Apartment, Hospital, Police Station, Hotel, Amusement Park, Community Center. You choose where you begin your story, and hope it ends with you reaching your destination of choice.

(Note: I considered a Fallout-style stat allocation screen, but I don't much like the idea of leveling up within the context of the game. Any stat attribution would likely start at the beginning of the game and remain fixed.)

Zombies
There is only one type of zombie, and it's As Advertised - dead, rotting, but unerringly strong and with a thirst for living tissue. Zombies vary in speed, with the player encountering faster zombies the closer they get to their destination. To start with they will be largely unintelligent, but they will become smarter and more adept and figuring out how to reach you as the game progresses.

Zombies would have a low-level form of communication with each other - a sort-of "morphic memory", if you will. For example, say you decide to run from zombies by climbing up the ladder on an exterior fire escape, then pull the ladder up. Early zombies are less likely to figure out how to pull the ladder down, but once a zombie figures this out all zombies will be capable of performing this task.


Interacting with the game

Camera and screen display
The game would work best from a third-person perspective, possibly with an option to switch to a first-person camera if the player desires. Minimal HUD - you'd use your character's appearance, posture etc. as indication of health. For instance slightly torn clothes and a bit of a hobble means you've lost some health. Dragging a leg while wearing clothes that are practically shredded is indication that you need to find health badly.

A HUD would be presented for weapons, however simply picking up a gun isn't going to tell you how many bullets you have left in the chamber. You can stop and check how many are in the barrel, at which point an ammo counter will appear on the screen, but performing this check leaves you vulnerable to attack. As in Resident Evil you can carry multiple weapons at a time, but each weapon and its ammo uses up varying space in the player's inventory depending on size.

Controls
As well as the standard two-stick movement/camera controls prevalent in most FPS games, the game would have buttons for Jump, Crouch, ready weapon, use weapon, and interact. The interact button would be used to open doors, use electronic equipment, pick up items, and generally interact with objects, items and so on in the game world.




...I'd love to write more, but it's nearly 2am and I'm very, very sleepy. I'll add to this later. G'night for now.

[SupSuper]

Actually it sounds like Grand Theft Auto meets Dead Rising. Not that that's a bad thing. :p

Not a fan of Tetris-inventory though, realism be damned.

[SargeMcCluck]

A well programmed tetris inventory that could automatically move all your items around to create the right spot for an item you're trying to pick up would work. Remove the tetris bit, so it's just a limitation on what you can carry.

[Pigbuster]

Or just use the Nethack method, in which you can carry a whole ton of stuff, but there are varying levels of encumbrance, the higher of which damage or immobilize you.

[SargeMcCluck]

Encumbrance is good, but not on its own. As an example, violin weighs nearly nothing, so with a purely weight system I could carry hundreds.

[Squirminator2k]

I like the idea of not having to spent five minutes in the inventory screen juggling items around, so that's a plus. Liberation: Captive II on the CD32 has a fine Tetris-style inventory system which is pixel-based rather than grid based (although you could argue that it is grid based, just on a much grander scale), and picking up a new item will automatically shuffle other items to accommodate.

Anyway, yes - GTA meets Dead Riding by way of Frontier: Elite II. I'd be making it right now if I had the skillz.

[FutureWorm]

Minimal HUD - you'd use your character's appearance, posture etc. as indication of health. For instance slightly torn clothes and a bit of a hobble means you've lost some health. Dragging a leg while wearing clothes that are practically shredded is indication that you need to find health badly.

afro samurai (not much of a game, btw) uses something like this to display health. it works all right, but the big problem is that it is somewhat difficult to tell at a glance just how much health you currently have until you're seriously injured. much of the problem here is in execution - how can you make progressive damage look believable without being too overt? afro samauri indicates it by the amount of blood on the player character - total saturation means death - but it feels a little sloppy.

[bonz]

That sounds like a mash-up of System Shock 2 and 28 Days Later.
Maybe substitute the research feature in from SS2 with the Zombie Survival Guide. ;)

[Squirminator2k]

afro samurai (not much of a game, btw) uses something like this to display health. it works all right, but the big problem is that it is somewhat difficult to tell at a glance just how much health you currently have until you're seriously injured. much of the problem here is in execution - how can you make progressive damage look believable without being too overt? afro samauri indicates it by the amount of blood on the player character - total saturation means death - but it feels a little sloppy.
I was thinking something along the lines of a cross between Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, where the more battered your character is the more damage is done to their physical appearance, the Resident Evil 2, where your character limps and struggles the lower their health is (L4D does this as well, although there's a health meter as well).

[M3ntal]

I like it; pure simple action gameplay. Here's my opinions:

Randomly generated levels would be wicked, but only if they could be done to a similar level of quality as bespokely designed ones. IIRC Soldier of Fortune 2 had randomly generated maps, but they were very sparse and samey.

For the inventory, i reckon even a tetris-style one would be too much. I think it'd fit more with the style of the game to simplify it to, say, x amount of weapons at once (eg. any single melee and any single gun) and a health item. What else would you need or want? You're not packing for a camping holiday, you're getting the hell outta there. Fast. In fact, maybe even scrap health items, and instead have either "safe" areas dotted around that you can rest in to regain health, or have your character recover slowly over time when not being attacked. I like the idea of keeping it as simple as possible, and putting the emphasis on killing zombies.

Also, no precise health meter. It makes those near-death situations more intense when you can't tell if you're going to die or not. Precise health can take away from gameplay sometimes, for example half-life, in which you know exactly how much a head crab attack will take off and so can play mathematics with your health packs.

I disagree with having only one kind of zombie. It'd be difficult to keep it interesting as people would just find one effective killing strategy and stick to it (eg. in half-life the head crab zombies can be killed flawlessly every time using a crowbar, if this was the only type of enemy the game would get boring quickly). I reckon you need at least a few different kinds to keep it interesting; keep in mind that anything living can congruently be zombified - household pets, vermin, the city zoo animals, etc. Maybe the "harder" levels could take place somewhere like Australia or Africa where the local wildlife is dangerous enough anyway, so even more dangerous when zombified.

That gives me a loose single-player storyline idea (i know you stated no storyline but meh..) in which each level sees you controlling a different character from a different part of the world. That way, there are new and harder zombies each level due to the differing wildlife around the world.

[Squirminator2k]

For the inventory, i reckon even a tetris-style one would be too much. I think it'd fit more with the style of the game to simplify it to, say, x amount of weapons at once (eg. any single melee and any single gun) and a health item. What else would you need or want? You're not packing for a camping holiday, you're getting the hell outta there. Fast. In fact, maybe even scrap health items, and instead have either "safe" areas dotted around that you can rest in to regain health, or have your character recover slowly over time when not being attacked. I like the idea of keeping it as simple as possible, and putting the emphasis on killing zombies.

I agree.

I disagree with having only one kind of zombie. It'd be difficult to keep it interesting as people would just find one effective killing strategy and stick to it (eg. in half-life the head crab zombies can be killed flawlessly every time using a crowbar, if this was the only type of enemy the game would get boring quickly). I reckon you need at least a few different kinds to keep it interesting; keep in mind that anything living can congruently be zombified - household pets, vermin, the city zoo animals, etc.

As in Half-Life 2, where the further into the game you get the more cunning and intelligent (and, importantly, the more dangerous) the Headcrab zombies get, my thoughts were the further you get to the edge of the city the more dangerous and intelligent the zombies become. So while there's only one "type" of zombie - i.e. people - the level of difficulty and variety increases. Plus I figure the zombies can be randomly generated themselves using the same/similar assets as those used in the Player Character Creation screen at the start of the game (in fact, having been playing Plants Vs. Zombies a fair bit this week, the idea of throwing in a custom zombie creator is pretty tempting - imagine turning a corner and being savaged by a zombie you made yourself!).

I like the idea of zombie housepets, too. It does give variety. The reason I originally went for "just regular zombies" is because I didn't want any stylized boss fights a la Resident Evil or special-infected a la Left 4 Dead. I don't really want to overcomplicate the concept.

Maybe the "harder" levels could take place somewhere like Australia or Africa where the local wildlife is dangerous enough anyway, so even more dangerous when zombified.

My intent is that the game is basically one big sprawling city a la GTA, but if the game is randomly generating the city then there's no reason why it couldn't use different "terrain styles" like Worms, but if it's a prefab as in GTA IV then the game would either have to just have the one city, or have a couple of cities from different locations around the world, or have room for expansion in the future.

That gives me a loose single-player storyline idea (i know you stated no storyline but meh..) in which each level sees you controlling a different character from a different part of the world. That way, there are new and harder zombies each level due to the differing wildlife around the world.

You could still have that mechanic without needing a story. And I like it.

[bonz]

Mincraft has nearly infinite (4x the Earth surface) randomly generated terrain.
And zombies.

[SupSuper]

Mincraft has nearly infinite (4x the Earth surface) randomly generated terrain.
And zombies.So does Dwarf Fortress, you kinda have an advantage when your world is made out of squares. :p

For something like this you'd probably need a large collection of interchangable parts that you'd connect together like a puzzle to make a random world.

[bonz]

So does Dwarf Fortress, you kinda have an advantage when your world is made out of squares. :p

For something like this you'd probably need a large collection of interchangable parts that you'd connect together like a puzzle to make a random world.
Still, if high-res textures and high-polygon models are used, it'll get utterly bland very fast if you travel around, unless you prefabricate a huge amount of different ones beforehand.

[Xinos]

Wait, are you saying minecraft isn't totally bland and boring to look at.. and that is because it's graphics are terrible?? :confused:

I think that if you generated Dwarf Fortress in an engine using Diablo 3 assets/graphics you would not get bored any quicker playing it than you would now with graphics that look like somebody opened a jpg in notepad.