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[Jonathan S. Fox]

This last weekend, I graduated from DigiPen with a Bachelor of Science in Game Design, with honors, and as degree Valedictorian. I said that this week I would begin full-time development of the Zombie Game. With that, I have a couple of updates on the vision for the game, as it was outlined in the first post.

The game takes place after the fall of civilization, in a city completely overrun by zombies. One possibility I'm currently mulling is doing something like the experience of Rogue Survivor if you turn the number of humans up high in the early game, and having the start point be the moment of panic when civilization is collapsing around you, and you go running through the street, trying to find supplies, while an anarchy of zombies and humans are fighting around you. I wasn't planning on doing this, but I have to admit, it's a pretty badass start to the game in Rogue Survivor, and it leads nicely into the rest of the game. If there is power or running water, they will soon be lost.

You start with one person, you, and if you die the game is over. Originally, I was planning to allow you to recruit up to party of five people, but my work last week on LCS has made me lean toward allowing more characters, and allow you to develop a settlement yourself, along the lines of the game Rebuild.

The current plan is for the game to have two main game modes. The first is a strategic overhead map, with the ability to organize your survivors and direct their activities. The second game mode allows you to run around in the streets, and uses a large view, with many more tiles of vision than in LCS. Combat will take place on this map as you shoot at Zombies chasing after you in other tiles; I have this system prototyped and working, including Zombie pathfinding and your field of view/line of sight calculations.

Originally, I was planning the second game mode to be used only to clear buildings, just as in LCS. However, my prototype supports a 1000x1000 map large enough to encompass the entire city, with truly insane numbers of zombies on the map at once, without taking an inordinate amount of memory. If the game doesn't simulate other survivors, I can make it a continuous open world game, and have the strategic view interfaced through a cell phone or laptop. This strategic layer would require power to access (at least to charge the batteries), so you'd have value in setting up a safehouse with a generator. An open world game should also have the ability to jump around the map; this fast travel could come through use of cars. Car usage would depend on fuel. On the other hand, if I do want to do a lot of active humans in the city, this could slow down the game significantly for the type of large map needed to make it an open world game. It may be possible to abstract this convincingly in the background as you move around the city, but there are no guarantees.

I hate how followers usually work in Roguelikes, with them trailing behind you, getting stuck, distracted, blocking your movement, obstructing your aim, ugh, yuck. I'm strongly leaning toward putting your entire party in a single tile, and having you move and act as a unit, with attack command giving everyone the command to start shooting. After all, everybody knows that in a Zombie apocalypse, "let's split up" is the last decision you'll ever make. This leads to a possibility that I could re-assess the scale of the tiles, and make things consistent by having tiles be big enough to support multiple zombies as well, potentially allowing five or six zombies to move into the same tile as they close in on you.

I want combat to be fast. One of the strengths of LCS is that if anything gets boring, you can start speeding through it, including massive combat. To that end, I'm strongly leaning toward abstracting shooting from the way Roguelikes do it, and having the attack command auto-attack some of the nearby enemies, without prompting you to select a target. You might get a focus fire command to supplement this, in case you feel strongly about killing a specific enemy first.

[Yannanth]

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[EuchreJack]

I agree with Yannanth's comment about dividing the game up into different areas.  The rest...not so much.

Many game divide the map up among areas based upon theme.  For example, your average Zombie-Infested City would probably have a Downtown area, a University area, an Industrial area, and an Outskirts area.

As long as each area is decent, so as the player can avoid having to change areas every five seconds, it'll be fine.

Glad to hear you've got a prototype working!  Let us know when you got something to test!

[quinnr]

Sounds very cool, and I am greatly looking forward to it

[Jonathan S. Fox]

I don't disagree with anything! I see this as bringing the LCS vibe to more mainstream games, which is a good thing in any case!

Originally, I was planning the second game mode to be used only to clear buildings, just as in LCS. However, my prototype supports a 1000x1000 map large enough to encompass the entire city, with truly insane numbers of zombies on the map at once, without taking an inordinate amount of memory.

Have you added a graphical interface to it yet? If you haven't, you might be very disappointed at the game's performance afterwards.

At the moment, the prototype is just running around and pressing a button to shoot as zombies shamble toward you. It has graphics, of a rudimentary (but proof of concept) form, but there isn't a graphical interface in the sense of buttons on screen, since there isn't much need for it yet. I'm in full agreement that the Roguelike/LCS style "memorize your keyboard" interface can't stand.

If the game doesn't simulate other survivors, I can make it a continuous open world game, and have the strategic view interfaced through a cell phone or laptop. This strategic layer would require power to access (at least to charge the batteries), so you'd have value in setting up a safehouse with a generator. An open world game should also have the ability to jump around the map; this fast travel could come through use of cars. Car usage would depend on fuel. On the other hand, if I do want to do a lot of active humans in the city, this could slow down the game significantly for the type of large map needed to make it an open world game. It may be possible to abstract this convincingly in the background as you move around the city, but there are no guarantees.

While I feel this has become a staple of game design that tried to incorporate too much--simply dividing the world into sections would be a much easier solutions. Yeah, walking from one open area to the same open area is unrealistic but it's acceptable. Changing the design of the map or whatever you are calling the world would be too much of a stretch and would ruin the openness I believe.

Oh, and do avoid dungeons! The last thing I want to see in an open world game is dungeons in which treasure shows up out of nowhere and the character is somehow destined to enter these seemingly worthless places.

I don't fully understand what you're saying here, when you're talking about walking from one open area to the same open area, and changing the design of the map. If you don't mind spending a bit more time to explain, will you give an example of a game that does this well/poorly, and point out what was good or bad about it?

The closest thing I can envision having to dungeons is notable buildings you may want to fully explore and loot. For example, a military base, hospital, science lab, or mall. They would be essentially what you expect.

My main concern with the game is its length. If you're going to do a flash game, I can imagine it ending up on Newgrounds and such websites where many people don't have huge attention spans. I used to play large-scale RPGs and similar games on NG a lot a while ago but I got fed up by the updates to Flash and what-not that deleted my savegames. So you shouldn't be aiming for something too similar to LCS in scope, but something that can be finished or played to an extent that satisfied the player in 2 hours TOPS. Things move fast on Newgrounds and you get the big hits of users when the game is first released and when it gets featured on the front page, which I trust it will!

I think Flash games with larger scope actually do quite well. For example, in my market research, the most played Zombie flash game of all time was Sonny 2, an extended RPG. With that said, players do need to have fun in a short amount of time; the game can't have a learning curve that require pounding your head against a brick wall or checking a wiki. But, if the game doesn't end any time soon -- well, as long as they're having fun, many will come back, and that will make the game more successful.

Some of the conventions for how Flash games work are just conventions that evolved from the developers that work on them. I think there's definitely room for growth in the field.

Many game divide the map up among areas based upon theme.  For example, your average Zombie-Infested City would probably have a Downtown area, a University area, an Industrial area, and an Outskirts area.

As long as each area is decent, so as the player can avoid having to change areas every five seconds, it'll be fine.

One of the things that really sells using a larger map instead of going building by building is the ability to move from building to building in search of supplies, allowing you to quickly cover more ground in a single day. Your example of using districts, such as the LCS districts, fits nicely with that. It also enables easily creating a woodsy area that is distinct from a city area. I'll definitely consider this possibility.

Glad to hear you've got a prototype working!  Let us know when you got something to test!

One unfortunate convention in Flash game development is that it's not common practice to publicly share builds of the game prior to release. The reason for this is purely commercial; sponsors like to have a big reveal, a first time release of the game, to cash in on the wave of initial plays. I'm of two minds about this. On one hand, that's not really how I want to do it. My background with LCS is community-driven development. Even though this game won't be open source, I'd far rather have players actively playing the game and giving feedback. On the other hand, I don't want to risk one of the main sources of income for Flash games. I definitely have to think about this more.

[Yannanth]

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[Keita]

Looks very interesting.

[EuchreJack]

RE: Testing:

First and foremost, you'd best ask any potential advertisers what their limits are in regards to pre-testing.  They likely have strict limits on what can and can not occur prior to release.

That said, also ask if a closed beta is possible.  Your LCS regulars can recieve and review the game via email, and perhaps even hype the game a bit prior to release.  Just make sure nobody runs off and uploads it on you (AKA, keep it to whom you can trust).

Good luck, we'll support you however it goes.

[Supercharazad]

That said, also ask if a closed beta is possible.  Your LCS regulars can recieve and review the game via email, and perhaps even hype the game a bit prior to release.  Just make sure nobody runs off and uploads it on you (AKA, keep it to whom you can trust).

If you do do this, remember your old pal, Supercharazard. You know, that guy thhat sometimes posts here, on this forum? Great guy, I'd trust him with my life.

[slowbeard]

Congrats on your graduation

I am unbearably excited about this project; to an almost embarressing degree!

As an instant reaction to finding this post, I'd second the mention of Rebuild as a good source of inspiration - for a light-weight game, I thought the system worked well, especially in the sense of actually feeling a sense of community in your reclaimed town. I just thought it lacked a bit of depth and life, which I found much more in LCS and am just finding in DF, which I've only just discovered - the combination of both would be awesome. The ideas of loose goals to frame open ended play is also a good one.

As for gameplay mechanics, have you ever played Gangsters and/or Gangsters II? Ultimately flawed to the point of teethgrinding, however I thought the strategic (turn-based) planning had lots of potential

I'd certainly favour streamlined, report based combat over rogue-like fiddlyness also.

Keep up the good work!

Oh, and if there are vehicles to be had - please include the obligatory barricading-yourself-into-a-shopping-mall-with-trucks functionality. Ta.

[mainiac]

Belated Grats on the graduation.

BTW, I don't think Sonny 2 was much of a zombie game since Sonny wasn't much of a zombie.  What was the second most popular zombie flash game in your research?

[Jonathan S. Fox]

BTW, I don't think Sonny 2 was much of a zombie game since Sonny wasn't much of a zombie.  What was the second most popular zombie flash game in your research?

Regarding Sonny not being much of a Zombie, tell me about it. I never really understood that classification. Then again, I didn't play much of them (the combat system bored me tears). But, even if we take the Zombie out, the real point is that their complexity and length drew plenty of repeat plays and high ratings, rather than alienating audiences. Of course, I imagine the voice acting helps for making a strong first impression and getting goods reviews to draw in more viewers.

I think second most popular I found was the two The Last Stand games. This research wasn't exhaustive or authoritative; it was a manual survey of view counts on several major Flash portals.

As an instant reaction to finding this post, I'd second the mention of Rebuild as a good source of inspiration - for a light-weight game, I thought the system worked well, especially in the sense of actually feeling a sense of community in your reclaimed town. I just thought it lacked a bit of depth and life, which I found much more in LCS and am just finding in DF, which I've only just discovered - the combination of both would be awesome. The ideas of loose goals to frame open ended play is also a good one.

I have played Rebuild and I like the theme of it. Like you, I found it lacked replayability. I feel an ambition to do better than Rebuild, though it's certainly a solid game. Part of that is what LCS makes possible by opening up a world to you, and giving you the freedom to play in it. Want to go on shooting sprees? Want to kidnap people? Start a newspaper? Manage a sleeper network? There are many ways to win the game and many ways to lose horribly. It's up to you to figure out what you want to do, and how to execute that effectively. Even recruiting has lots of choices, from how you want to recruit, who you want to recruit, how many people you want in your squad, the structure you want your organization to have... there are ramifications to each choice you make, and reasons to weigh on all sides.

As for gameplay mechanics, have you ever played Gangsters and/or Gangsters II? Ultimately flawed to the point of teethgrinding, however I thought the strategic (turn-based) planning had lots of potential

Yes, I have played Gangsters, but not its sequel. I've been wondering if something along those lines is appropriate for the strategic play of this kind of game. You could certainly deal with multiple safehouses, and secured zombie-free territories in that way. I'm leaning toward having all out-of-safehouse actions be manually controlled, however, and using automation only for actions that kept inside the safehouse. I'm not sure though.

Oh, and if there are vehicles to be had - please include the obligatory barricading-yourself-into-a-shopping-mall-with-trucks functionality. Ta.

I'm not sure if I'll support manually managing barricades at all. It's not that it's unfun to construct barricades -- I personally like strategy defense games, and enjoy pushing wrecked cars to block a store entrance in Rogue Survivor -- but it might be out of the game's scope, with barricades managed through the equivalent of the [A]ctivation screen in LCS. To be determined, though.

[nenjin]

I'm not sure if I'll support manually managing barricades at all. It's not that it's unfun to construct barricades -- I personally like strategy defense games, and enjoy pushing wrecked cars to block a store entrance in Rogue Survivor -- but it might be out of the game's scope, with barricades managed through the equivalent of the [A]ctivation screen in LCS. To be determined, though.

I concur. For what you have to do to adequately barricade in many games, the pay out is minimal. And they're always a second's reprieve from a decent hoard, and little else. So, not having to manually build barricades, and abstracting how good they are or how many you get to how many people you have on hand...would be preferable to me. 

[jester]

Dont bother with gangsters 2.  There is no weekly orders screen and it was dumbed down to the point where it was nothing like the original, basically just an rts.

[Zangi]

Dont bother with gangsters 2.  There is no weekly orders screen and it was dumbed down to the point where it was nothing like the original, basically just an rts.

It was dumbed down yes... but if it had a custom/random map mode, I'd have played it so much more...