Ok, I am back and have been working on the idea of a Zombie Survival Squad.
As I explained earlier, the idea would to try to organise a survival squad during a zombie infestation. A target could be to have as many survivors as possible surviving with you when the outbreak is finished.
There a few different types of zombies in people mind. The one like is the quite recent "infected but alive" type. Such as those in "28 days later". Original hey ! Their main caracteristics :
- They are live humans. Infectifed but lives. The infection causes them to be stupid, violent and wanting to bit/heat any not infected human around. They don't fell fear or pain, but are as easy to kill as non infected humans are. They need to eat to survive, but are too stupid to eat anyhting but (relatively) fresh flesh. Human being better but non exclusive. Which means that with the lack of reaction to pain (thus indulging itself quite a lot), and the capacity to gather a prepare food, all people turned in zombie are doomed to die in a few weeks. Well, maybe months if they are lucky enough to find now and then a bit of flesh, and not to indulge itself too much.
- As they before were well feed uninfected humans, and are likely to have some difficulties to feed correctly during a long period of time, the zombies evolve during time : Fresh infected would be runners; than as they can get enough food, move slowly; ending in kinds of crawling and weak things trying to bite anything they can find.
- The infection is spreaded in two ways : direct contact with body fluids, which would lead to very quick infection ( a few seconds : see "28 days later" ), or through contact with germs in the air or on the hands (like flue). That second type of infection is much slower and would not succend in every case. Technically it could be considered that the agent causing the infection needs to be in given quantity in the body to cause the person to turn into a zombie. The saliva or blood of the zombies as a very high concentration of that, turning you straight away in that type of violent creature, also able to contaminate other. Someone indirectly infected, would have recieved a quantity below the "zombification level", but the agent normaly slowly grows in the body. A person with such a type of infection can contaminate its environment before he actually becomes a zombie.
- Zombies don't bite other zombies, or people with a very high level of agent, but which haven't turned into zombie yet. But remember : a zombie is biting someone partly it is reflex, but also it wants to eat. And the infection takes a few seconds to develop into the body, and thus repel the other zombies. So many people bitten by zombies simply die (are eaten) before turning into such a monster or just after. Those who survive will often badly injured, which would reduce even more than lifespan. However, you would allways have some fresh and dynamic zombies who simply recieved some infected blood spaters in the eyes, light scars or mouth.
So the type I see is definitally not the "super tank" type coming back from death, where even each severed part of the body keep going, and you could be strangeld by the crawling guts of someone else... It could be fun also, but we have to make decision !
That type of zombie provide some interresting challenges :
- There is a potential end of the infection : when all zombie die, and noone has recently been infected. It makes sence to try to survive long enough, and organise the survivors to avoid new infections.
- Evereybody is a potential threat, specialy into the crowd : in case of violent/direct infection, one zombie could rapidly turn everybody into zombies, with all the panick that would go with that !
- The possibility of indirect infection would also bring the nice paranoid atmosphere, with all the quarantines, hygiene, and never feeling safe even with friends that goes along with that.
- Infected (zombified, but also sick but not zombified yet) are your friends, familly, relatives... With all the psycological things coming along that. (ok, maybe once everyone has fully understood what is going on, people might take the decision to kill quick enough their former lover, now zombie. But what with the person who is sick, will become a zombie or contaminate ten other people, but not zombie yet ?)
Ok. I have never managed to play much LCS, but are the few things in the structure of LCS that would fit well that type of game :
- In terms of structure, LCS is organised in different level of interaction :
-- Layer 3 : The country - Thats were the elections are held, the laws are voted... Through its actions and the consequences on the population, the player has an indirect inlfuence on it. But ha can only hope that he influenced well enough the people. Hand in the good way. On the other hand the country level has an indirect impact on the player : depending on the regulation, would weapons be banned...
-- Layer 2 : The city level - It would roughly be the sleepers, and the heat system. You influence it direclty, but it is not absolutely obvious. And it is the sum of many actions added together which would have an impact. The consequences to the player can also be felt direclty : Sleeper lawyer or judge helping you. Raid by the police.
-- Layer 1 : Direct influence area - These are the places you visit, and can shut down; or your own shelter. The player acts there directly through its key strokes, most of the players interraction is a that level and the main results are usually pretty obvious.
- On player action there also different interresting things :
-- The player is playing for the whole squad : many people with specific characteristics. Each can do a specific action each turn. Most player interaction with the game world are through these little guys (except for moving equipment from one shelter to an other). That group of people is organised in a structured network. Cutting the chain causes to loose a part of the network.
-- Each caracter act dayly. And usually can do on action. I see three main type of actions :
--- In a squad, going on a site and causing some mess or recruiting others. The player plays direclty for the squad.
--- A caracter (whithout squad) can perform some "automatic" action. Once specified, the player will only receive a message, or more, providing the result.
--- A caracter (whithout squad) can perform some "interactive" action. For example stealing a car. At the end of the day, the player will be asked to make a few choices as the action is being performed.
-- On the top of that, the game can force a character or a squad to perfom some extra action :
--- the seduction game, to recruit people
--- the attack of the shelter by the police.
- In terms of geography, which almost reflect the game structure in 3 layers :
-- The city is divided in different districts. Each of them has a few different location. A very rough distance system is implemented with the "Outskirts of the city", for which you need a car to get there. Other wise, I don't think that the distance or any other type of geographical links are implemented. If I remember correctly most caracter are physically in one of these places.
-- Some non specified places : a caracter can travel with someone in a place which does not exist in the town geography. It might be the case for the sleepers too ? (or it changed in a recent version ?)
-- The country. you don't have much description. But you know, thourgh elections and stuff that these guys must be somewhere. And that they are rulling something bigger than your town. So there must be a country around the town.
That structure of geography going from a few accessible and varied places to things which we know exist and can have some very limiter interraction, makes the game world really bigger than what the player can acces.
A Zombie Survival Squad could benefit of many of these points :
- The structure : The game would be set during an infection. The equivalent of the liberal agenda would be the progression of the epidemia. Of course the progression of the epidemia would have a very high impact on the game ! So the player would between a global phenomenon that he can see be can't control, and its local life where he can't act and influence what surround him. One might wonder if in the same way as LCS, how good the player performs, shoud impact its whole town or country. I am not sure.
- The network with the caracters, and all the variety of actions they can do. With different types of action it implies for the player, wich look like subgames, or mini interractive stories. A big part of adapting LCS is to redesign all these actions for a infection game. Also, I really love that network system ofr the caracters. though I think that form the survival game, it should be structured a bit differently. More later. Someone proposed to play in hours instead of days. Thus having to look for a shelter during the day to survive the night. It might be a very good idea.
- Geography. I love that abstract map. Though, it would also like to have see the infection spreading in the town, with eventually different things happening in different places. It might also be fun to be able to choose a specific path when travelling from one place to an other. That might imply that the connection between the various locations are a bit more preciselly defined. Even if the player does not have full acces to it. (Maybe all location in a district are in the same heap, with no organisation. But the districts are linked together ?). An other question : are we given a fixed list of places ? Or should we be able to discover new ones when searching ? (for example :in the past you would have never thought of going into that house. But today it seems to shelter some survivors. Ok, new point in the map in downtown.). Also I amp pretty sure that we need new type of places, such as the streets. Where tons of zombies can chase you ! I have new real idea yet of whether they should be connected to buildings. Or buildings be smaller on the same maps ... Also is the Squad exploration screen the best for such a game ? Zombies are every where. There many survivors. you should be able to place the guys in differents places to try to control every opening in the room.
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Ok, now a bit more about the epidemia at world or city level. How do I imagine it happening ? There would be different steps :
- Pre infection. (a few days before)
You hear info in the news about some weird cases of cannibalism (see how original I am !), and also some type of flue spreadin (However the media, and maybe states don't make the link). Yourself, for some weird reasons you understan what is happening. In terms of game play, you try to gather as much equipment as possible and convince people that something bad will happen. In terms of actions, I could see things related to money making, goods buying, researching news to have better material to convince people and know how to react, convincing people, teaching them how to protect themselves. Maybe, we could allow the player if he is very good to have some influence on the city. (Behing better prepared). But it is likely that most people would think that the little man in totally crazy. Some illegal operation should be allowed too, causing problems with the police. We might allow the player to catch 1 or 2 zombies and show htem to the autorities, Managing to change a bit the course of the infection.
- First big breakthrough in an other town/country + first cases in our town (day 1):
Many people understand that something messy will happen. They rush to the shops/airport/trains causin hundreds cases of people being crushed by the crowd. They also jump in their cars, blocking most circulation. At the same time the police/army come into action to oblige people to stay home, protect some crucial buildings, and eventually begin to organise some quarantine. In terms of game play, the player can send his caracters in town with the crowd. But they are likely to be injured or killed, and most goods would probably be gone. It might be time to tell to everybody to come to their designed shelter and prepare for survival ? Thus fun part, would probably more to watch all the panic and reaction than trying to loot anything. However who knows, we might find 1 or 2 interresting opportunities for the player. Police control is likely to be very strict. Also, where shopkeepers managed not to be looted, prices jumped a lot ! Phone and internet are saturated but might eventually be used.
- Beginning of the infection in town (day 3). This is real panic. People run everywhere with zombies chasing them. Quickly turning into zombies themselves. It is likely that the players looses a big part of its team at this time. It is also a good first test of the protection. The situation is very different depending on the part of the town : In some place the police has managed to secure the place, with strong quarantine, and they start to understand that they should shoot people running at them. Phone and internet is saturated or simply dead (the poeple managing them are running behind other guys to eat their brain...)
- The infection keeps going (day 5). It is spreading even in quarters with quaratine. When the managed to stay there the police reaction is becoming very strong : There is no more quarantine. People who might be infected but still look healthy are simply shot. All network systems begin to collapse, more or less quickly. That is : electrical power, phone, internet, radio/TV, tap water, sewage treatment, food and fuel supply. Also it is difficult to get any news ! (while before, we received new paper pages in the same way as LCS)... In some case, replacment systems might have been set up.(such as a generator, or a radio emitter, or the radio of an other town). Also some big a accident occur, such a major pollution by a factory exploding... Well, the challenge for the player is have as many caracter as possible to survive, hoping that he managed to gather enough goods !! In some places, people are gathering to try to find those they have lost (such the tsunami in Thailand for lost famillies)
- City quarantine (day 7). I am not sure with that. Maybe it could be random depending on the status of the infection in the country. But the army could involved closing the whole city, and eventually spreading toxic gases in the most infected areas (see 28 weeks later). Killing everybody in these sectors (how to implement that in terms of game play ? There should be enough warning so it can be an exiting experience, with great threat but a chance of survival). The population of uninfected people in the city is terribly low, while the number of running zombies is probably at its maximum. There are dead bodies everywhere
- Survival (day 9). This could be quite a long phase : the main infections is gone as most people are dead. The survivors have learned how to survive, but still get infected sometimes. All networks are totally dead now, fresh food as rotten leaving only some canned one, once domesticated animals are running in the street, and are hungry too. Survivors are also getting short of food and water. Implying a lot of dangerous looting, and eventually raiding. Those who used to be army, police, might have simply become the worst raiders, or taken control of important storage facilities (food, fuel). As it is likely that most of the things that the player had managed to organise before are gone now, he has to reorganise his squads, and survival strategy. Some other new challenges are to be faced : risk of coleara epidemia with all these dead bodies around. It is also a source of food for the zombies around, so the player might have to find a way to dispose them to make its place cleander.
- End of epidemia (day 30 or 60 ?).
Progressively food has been more difficult to gather for the zombies and the non infected. But the zombies died first. The player won !
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Now the structure of the network :
- In LCS, if I remember correctly, the network is structured depending on who recruited who. It very relevant for a semi-secret organisation where you want to avoid information leak. Here the target is a bit different, there is an other system I wanted to implement since a long time : The player follows a group of caracters. He can control them and see what they see. In LCS while the network is not cut (by police or anything else), the player can move freely to any caracter. For ZSS, I would see a system where the player can move to an other group of caracter only if the caracters can directly or indirectly communicate (they are in the same building, they have a radio, a phone, internet...). If a group of caracters can emit information but not receive it, the player can jump from the group which emitted to the one which received, but can not come back. Leaving them on their own. For example : a squad of four is blocked in a building. The player is playing them. They can not come back to the shelter. The player can either : stay with them, and try to go back to the shelter. But during that time, he can not control the main group of survivors. Or send a detress signal, and thus switch to the main group, which would have seen it. The player can then decide to send a squad to save the four poor lads.
I see a problem there as all squads behave at the same time. So to implement that, we would have to find a fair system to decide where the player focus would stay in case of problem with one of the squads...
- Also, the idea of leaders which control others is also interresting. For example, we could imagine that the player decides decides to shelter a group of armed people, hopping that they would join the group. However, he discovers very soon, that they think the local leader is crap, and take over. A big part of the groups prefers to follow them, and the player is left only few caracters, little supply, and lost maybe his shelter.
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There is still an awfull lot to do, in terms of desin :
- Define the different action, and the competences required
- Create interresting encounters, zombies...
- Transform the scenario I gave into events and decide how they should implemented
- Define the tools, objects
- Design the locations
- Decide how the whole stuff will be implemented, and see to wich extend existing code can, or can not be reused.
- write all these wonderfully little bit of text that made LCS so fun.
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Topic: Zombie Survival Squad (Read 34359 times)