Non linear fps zombie survival game
by Matthew Aldridge · in Game Design and Creative Issues · 11/15/2007 (6:42 pm) · 29 replies
I am new to torque and still learning programming, but here is my idea of a game i have wanted to make for a very long time although some details i'm not dead set on yet, just interested in some opinions.
The setting is a large city in which a massive zombie outbreak has just occured. To start out you will choose your name, your father, mother, brother, sister, girlfriend and best friends name which will be used for npc's
you will want to find and protect throughout the game to help give some direction in the game.
Other then that you will roam through the city trying to stay alive finding food, water and weapons and avoiding being eatten and finding other survivors along the way that will either help you, slow you down or try to kill you and take any supplies you have.
As far as the map goes i want to have a good size map for plenty of exploring while the edges will be restricted by military barricades and soldiers who will shoot if you approach close enough trying to keep the infected quarintined off from the rest of the world, which will be part of the games goal to figure out a way to escape.
For inventory i want to go very realistic I.E. you can't carry an assault rifle in your pocket.
I had an idea to use your clothing and jacket along with finding a backpack. If you have ever played parasite eve 2 for PSX it will be very much like that.
I want to include a way to barricade yourself inside buildings, for example you would run into an apartment building shut and lock the door, then pile furniture and such to hold it shut, board up the windows and hope it holds the zombies at bay. My thoughts were to have a weight value for the doors and windows which the zombies have their own value and as they pile up on the door their weight adds up together until it is over the doors limit and it caves in, to counter as you pile things in front of the door it adds to the doors limit and reinforces it.
I also had an idea of a population counter to try to help the frame rate while still keeping the feeling tense as zombies keep coming and coming.
The way it works in my head is the map is divided into sections with the number of zombies in that section which basicly keeps a number of non-spawned zombies. The player has an invisible circle around him, as he kills zombies more will spawn at the edge of the circle and creep in on him. Also as he makes more noise and draws attention to himself the number of zombies from surrounding sections will migrate to the section he is in adding more and more enemies.
I have alot more specific ideas in mind, i won't post them all right now just wanting some feedback.
thanks, Matt
The setting is a large city in which a massive zombie outbreak has just occured. To start out you will choose your name, your father, mother, brother, sister, girlfriend and best friends name which will be used for npc's
you will want to find and protect throughout the game to help give some direction in the game.
Other then that you will roam through the city trying to stay alive finding food, water and weapons and avoiding being eatten and finding other survivors along the way that will either help you, slow you down or try to kill you and take any supplies you have.
As far as the map goes i want to have a good size map for plenty of exploring while the edges will be restricted by military barricades and soldiers who will shoot if you approach close enough trying to keep the infected quarintined off from the rest of the world, which will be part of the games goal to figure out a way to escape.
For inventory i want to go very realistic I.E. you can't carry an assault rifle in your pocket.
I had an idea to use your clothing and jacket along with finding a backpack. If you have ever played parasite eve 2 for PSX it will be very much like that.
I want to include a way to barricade yourself inside buildings, for example you would run into an apartment building shut and lock the door, then pile furniture and such to hold it shut, board up the windows and hope it holds the zombies at bay. My thoughts were to have a weight value for the doors and windows which the zombies have their own value and as they pile up on the door their weight adds up together until it is over the doors limit and it caves in, to counter as you pile things in front of the door it adds to the doors limit and reinforces it.
I also had an idea of a population counter to try to help the frame rate while still keeping the feeling tense as zombies keep coming and coming.
The way it works in my head is the map is divided into sections with the number of zombies in that section which basicly keeps a number of non-spawned zombies. The player has an invisible circle around him, as he kills zombies more will spawn at the edge of the circle and creep in on him. Also as he makes more noise and draws attention to himself the number of zombies from surrounding sections will migrate to the section he is in adding more and more enemies.
I have alot more specific ideas in mind, i won't post them all right now just wanting some feedback.
thanks, Matt
#2
11/17/2007 (3:42 pm)
Mathew Mathew Mathew, where have you been? I have been working on this same project for a month..... Just found torque and was attempting to learn the scripting part of it. How flexible are you on your ideas as far as staging and contect? Our ideas are very similar and if you like maybe we can team up on this project after a quick chat to see where our ideas are taking us...
#3
slappyafguy
11/17/2007 (4:22 pm)
By the way you can contact me through email mike_preston@excite.com or aol instant messengerslappyafguy
#4
The food and water thing i really do want to hold onto to be realistic, but as realisim goes no one has to
eat and drink every minute like alot of annoying games that you know of, i would time it out to be
hours of actualy time before needing food or water, not kill a zombie take a drink, then eat...repeat.
I am still kinda debating in my head about vehicles whether i want them or not, co-op is a very nice
idea over multiplay, having 10 or more people exploring a large city together, organizing and surviving
together online. and best of all hiding the fact you've been infected from the other survivours until you
change.
11/17/2007 (8:02 pm)
@JeremyThe food and water thing i really do want to hold onto to be realistic, but as realisim goes no one has to
eat and drink every minute like alot of annoying games that you know of, i would time it out to be
hours of actualy time before needing food or water, not kill a zombie take a drink, then eat...repeat.
I am still kinda debating in my head about vehicles whether i want them or not, co-op is a very nice
idea over multiplay, having 10 or more people exploring a large city together, organizing and surviving
together online. and best of all hiding the fact you've been infected from the other survivours until you
change.
#5
Having others explore the city with you does sound pretty interesting. I like that players might not change into a zombie right away too. That gives them time to convince their partners to give them the shotguns and other important weapons before they change. :)
11/17/2007 (8:20 pm)
Sounds good. I guess the food and water system would be a good feature since your aren't constantly thinking about it. I understand about the vehicles.(might just be a lot of extra work) Having others explore the city with you does sound pretty interesting. I like that players might not change into a zombie right away too. That gives them time to convince their partners to give them the shotguns and other important weapons before they change. :)
#6
RE vehicles: I think they're a must, if you can make them work the way you want them to. Torque has passable vehicle physics, so I don't see why you shouldn't go the little way to make them driveable by Players and have some fun mashing zombies in a pick-up truck. Of course, vehicles would have to be damageable, and you'd want to add things like the zombies pulling you out of it, etc. But I can imagine situations when vehicles would be extremely useful, as well as provoking some downright 'holy blue smoke, Batman, that was teh pwnz0r' moments.
RE multiplayer: As with vehicles, I think it'd be an awesome feature. It'd add replayability, and sheer fun to the game. It'd be so much more conforting to be exploring the city with more than a bunch of AIs. And since Torque is already rigged for multiplayer, you've got no excuse ;)
RE food and water: Your approach sounds good. I agree that you should make the interval between needing drinks as long as possible, same for food. I think the best incentive to at and drink wouldn't be health, but simply effectiveness. The longer you go without food or water, the slower you move and aim, the worse a shot you are, the less equopment you can carry, etc. Just knocking health off a player isn't realistic, nor is it fun.
11/18/2007 (9:20 am)
I won't offer my opinion on zombie games in general, I'll just talk about your specific ideas... ;)RE vehicles: I think they're a must, if you can make them work the way you want them to. Torque has passable vehicle physics, so I don't see why you shouldn't go the little way to make them driveable by Players and have some fun mashing zombies in a pick-up truck. Of course, vehicles would have to be damageable, and you'd want to add things like the zombies pulling you out of it, etc. But I can imagine situations when vehicles would be extremely useful, as well as provoking some downright 'holy blue smoke, Batman, that was teh pwnz0r' moments.
RE multiplayer: As with vehicles, I think it'd be an awesome feature. It'd add replayability, and sheer fun to the game. It'd be so much more conforting to be exploring the city with more than a bunch of AIs. And since Torque is already rigged for multiplayer, you've got no excuse ;)
RE food and water: Your approach sounds good. I agree that you should make the interval between needing drinks as long as possible, same for food. I think the best incentive to at and drink wouldn't be health, but simply effectiveness. The longer you go without food or water, the slower you move and aim, the worse a shot you are, the less equopment you can carry, etc. Just knocking health off a player isn't realistic, nor is it fun.
#7
I had thought about adding a measure of stamina, it would be basicly what you were talking about when you go without food or water for too long you start to get weaker and sluggish and it throws off your aim.
I was going to have it drain some when you run instead of walk and the like but not enough to be frustrating.
To tell you the truth as far as realism is concerned i hate the idea of a health bar at all. i haven't completely figured out what to replace it with but i had a couple ideas, things to factor in loss of stamina and blood loss but i still don't know exactly how well they would work if at all.
Vehicles would be fun and i really have no reason to not include them, i had thought they might shift the gameplay but i really don't think it would upset the games balance. plus it would be sheer fun to pile up zombie skulls on your bumper.
11/18/2007 (7:38 pm)
@ DanielI had thought about adding a measure of stamina, it would be basicly what you were talking about when you go without food or water for too long you start to get weaker and sluggish and it throws off your aim.
I was going to have it drain some when you run instead of walk and the like but not enough to be frustrating.
To tell you the truth as far as realism is concerned i hate the idea of a health bar at all. i haven't completely figured out what to replace it with but i had a couple ideas, things to factor in loss of stamina and blood loss but i still don't know exactly how well they would work if at all.
Vehicles would be fun and i really have no reason to not include them, i had thought they might shift the gameplay but i really don't think it would upset the games balance. plus it would be sheer fun to pile up zombie skulls on your bumper.
#8
RE health, good thinking. I agree that a 'health bar' system isn't good enough for 'realistic' games. You think of games like Ghost Recon for a 'realistic' health simulation, but really, all it's doing is taking away your ability to see the health bar - instead of a number or percent, you see three different vague indicators. That's realistic, but the health system is the same - get shot, your hit points decrease.
I was thinking about how you'd implement a realistic health system, then realised I don't know wnough about it to even start. You'd have to make a list of things that are important to 'health'. I don't know what these are, but probably things like heart rate, blood pressure, whatever. Then you'd have other factors like bleeding wounds, broken bones, etc. You could generalise those as numbers as well - percentage bones broken (that sounds bad :P), percentage blood lost per second, etc. Then with all that information, you can do different things - a broken toe might not affect your aim, but it would affect your speed.
The second problem is getting all that information to the player. A simple diagram with pain points would suffice, but it's not very elegant.
Meh. That was a fun little ramble.
11/19/2007 (10:27 am)
RE vehicles, if you implement them carefully, they won't shift gameplay so much as expand it. If vehicles have a distinct set of pros and cons compared to just walking, then you can encourage players to not just rely on driving around running everything over. Things like, for example, being able to run over zombies - but the impact damages your car, as it should. Basically, I think the difference is that you're not going for a totally action-oriented shooter. In Halo, for example, it would have been an absolute pain if running over people damaged your vehicle. In your game's setting though, I think it'd add an extra element of tension and realism.RE health, good thinking. I agree that a 'health bar' system isn't good enough for 'realistic' games. You think of games like Ghost Recon for a 'realistic' health simulation, but really, all it's doing is taking away your ability to see the health bar - instead of a number or percent, you see three different vague indicators. That's realistic, but the health system is the same - get shot, your hit points decrease.
I was thinking about how you'd implement a realistic health system, then realised I don't know wnough about it to even start. You'd have to make a list of things that are important to 'health'. I don't know what these are, but probably things like heart rate, blood pressure, whatever. Then you'd have other factors like bleeding wounds, broken bones, etc. You could generalise those as numbers as well - percentage bones broken (that sounds bad :P), percentage blood lost per second, etc. Then with all that information, you can do different things - a broken toe might not affect your aim, but it would affect your speed.
The second problem is getting all that information to the player. A simple diagram with pain points would suffice, but it's not very elegant.
Meh. That was a fun little ramble.
#9
Thats pretty much what i thought about doing with vehicles except i wanted to include fuel in the mix.
when you jump in a vehicle it would have a random amount of gas in it but you can find more to replace the fuel, or as i thought up last night when i was debating it in my head, why not syphon gas out of a car use it to make molotov cocktails, or just soak a zombie in gas and light him up.
Health:
When i was trying to come up with a realistic health system i had way to much to keep track of to be fun
so something will have to be figured out.
I had factored in heart rate, stress, fatigue, pain, blood loss and broken bones.
The way i thought it would work was... Your running away from zombies up to a rooftop where you get cornered so you jump to a nearby rooftop, but its alot lower then the one your on so when you land you break your leg, which spikes your pain and stress immediatly causing your vision to get blurry, movements are alot slower and your stamina drains fast. Your heart rate increases so you hear your heartbeating loudly, your aim is wild because your body is going through all this trauma but your adrenaline is pumping so you don't just pass out right away so you can have time to get away and try to find pain meds and something to splint your leg. And get cut you bleed until you patch yourself up slowly decrease your heart rate and you also attract zombies with the smell of blood.
11/20/2007 (9:07 am)
@ DanielThats pretty much what i thought about doing with vehicles except i wanted to include fuel in the mix.
when you jump in a vehicle it would have a random amount of gas in it but you can find more to replace the fuel, or as i thought up last night when i was debating it in my head, why not syphon gas out of a car use it to make molotov cocktails, or just soak a zombie in gas and light him up.
Health:
When i was trying to come up with a realistic health system i had way to much to keep track of to be fun
so something will have to be figured out.
I had factored in heart rate, stress, fatigue, pain, blood loss and broken bones.
The way i thought it would work was... Your running away from zombies up to a rooftop where you get cornered so you jump to a nearby rooftop, but its alot lower then the one your on so when you land you break your leg, which spikes your pain and stress immediatly causing your vision to get blurry, movements are alot slower and your stamina drains fast. Your heart rate increases so you hear your heartbeating loudly, your aim is wild because your body is going through all this trauma but your adrenaline is pumping so you don't just pass out right away so you can have time to get away and try to find pain meds and something to splint your leg. And get cut you bleed until you patch yourself up slowly decrease your heart rate and you also attract zombies with the smell of blood.
#10
RE health, yeah, it's complicated. What you have there looks pretty good. The problem is keeping trck of everything, and adjusting it in tandem with everything else (for example, blood rate and stress gradually lower, wounds heal slowly, etc...).
11/20/2007 (10:05 am)
Love the fuel idea, that'd definately go a long way to balancing vehicles, as well as adding suspense.RE health, yeah, it's complicated. What you have there looks pretty good. The problem is keeping trck of everything, and adjusting it in tandem with everything else (for example, blood rate and stress gradually lower, wounds heal slowly, etc...).
#11
EDIT:
A thought I had back when I was making my game was the player having zombies on him would cause a sequence where the player had to press an action key repidly to push the zombies off him. The more zombies, the faster you need to press. Too many will overwhelm you and you wont be able to escape the batch of zombies that have a hold of you. Maybe you can add a similar concept into your wieght idea. It would be a nice touch. Just thought I would throw out the idea.
12/08/2007 (7:54 pm)
I posted a similar idea that was only a bit different back when I first bought torque. I like the idea, and I got some work in it done. But then I fell off because I was working alone and it was a large scale project to build a city (even a small one) for me alone. I just started getting back into torque recently and am working on a smaller project. But if you can do this, try and get a team so the same doesn't happen to you. Because it's a kick butt idea and would be very fun if someone could ocmplete this idea (or similar) for other people out there.EDIT:
A thought I had back when I was making my game was the player having zombies on him would cause a sequence where the player had to press an action key repidly to push the zombies off him. The more zombies, the faster you need to press. Too many will overwhelm you and you wont be able to escape the batch of zombies that have a hold of you. Maybe you can add a similar concept into your wieght idea. It would be a nice touch. Just thought I would throw out the idea.
#12
The character you play could have different skill sets and would have to learn to adapt and adjust to the world around him.
Perhaps his driving skills are appalling while he is an excellent shooter. This would reinforce the need to team play. If its a multiplayer game, clans or gangs would form to team up and survive, if its a one player game then the player would still have to seek out other non infected characters to help him(her) on their way.
I like the food and water system but only as a boost. If he finds food maybe his character can have an extra one or two bars added to his aim, running, driving, concentration skills etc.
Perhaps he needs to cross over a village but he cant drive worth a crap, so he needs to take someone with him that can do the driving while he does the shooting. Maybe he can gain exp point by taking a risk and perform certain tasks... look there's a helicopter... no one here knows how to fly it, some takes a risk and tries to figure it out... on the one hand he can die or gain a handicap against his future playing or on the other hand he may actually succeed and the next time he attempts to drive a helicopter he will have an easier time doing it.
If it's a multiplayer game, a more limited number of supplies would be cool. It would force different teams to either work together or likely gang up on each other and steal each others weapons and supplies LOL.
Maybe an antivirus is available... if you have been bitten you would be infected for the rest of the game, but a doze of antibody would help keep you under control for a while....
Hmmm multiplayer... how massively could something like this be... how agile would the zombie character be. Would they be lame and slow like the ones in the 80's movies, or fast and agile like modern zombies (resident evil, i am legent) would the zombie abilities make it feasable for a multiplayer game where the player himself could play as a zombie? That would be a whole new set of chanllenges. Go around killing humans and try lot to get your head blown off.
01/03/2008 (7:12 am)
Customizable character traits (or random character trait generator). The character you play could have different skill sets and would have to learn to adapt and adjust to the world around him.
Perhaps his driving skills are appalling while he is an excellent shooter. This would reinforce the need to team play. If its a multiplayer game, clans or gangs would form to team up and survive, if its a one player game then the player would still have to seek out other non infected characters to help him(her) on their way.
I like the food and water system but only as a boost. If he finds food maybe his character can have an extra one or two bars added to his aim, running, driving, concentration skills etc.
Perhaps he needs to cross over a village but he cant drive worth a crap, so he needs to take someone with him that can do the driving while he does the shooting. Maybe he can gain exp point by taking a risk and perform certain tasks... look there's a helicopter... no one here knows how to fly it, some takes a risk and tries to figure it out... on the one hand he can die or gain a handicap against his future playing or on the other hand he may actually succeed and the next time he attempts to drive a helicopter he will have an easier time doing it.
If it's a multiplayer game, a more limited number of supplies would be cool. It would force different teams to either work together or likely gang up on each other and steal each others weapons and supplies LOL.
Maybe an antivirus is available... if you have been bitten you would be infected for the rest of the game, but a doze of antibody would help keep you under control for a while....
Hmmm multiplayer... how massively could something like this be... how agile would the zombie character be. Would they be lame and slow like the ones in the 80's movies, or fast and agile like modern zombies (resident evil, i am legent) would the zombie abilities make it feasable for a multiplayer game where the player himself could play as a zombie? That would be a whole new set of chanllenges. Go around killing humans and try lot to get your head blown off.
#13
01/03/2008 (7:27 am)
Twilight Creations has a game called 'ZombieTown'. It's a board game, so it's obviously a bit different than your game, but you might want to talk to them about licensing, etc. There could be a mutually-beneficial relationship there, but I don't know.
#14
thats alot of what i had in mind, the food and water system i feel would be important to make this a survival game like the idea of multiplayer with only limited supplies it would make them more worthwhile if you actualy needed them to keep playing, and the npc's would be important as well for their skill sets. as far as the zombies they will start both the single and multiplayer game slow and plodding but as the game goes on they will get tougher to kill and faster, in multiplay the person playing the zombie or infected player will be able to slow the infection down but once he has turned into a zombie, the more humans he kills and feeds on he will be able to upgrade himself, becoming faster, more resistent to damage and the like.
@jason
i have seen that game before but its been awhile, i dunno it is a possibility though.
also if anyone can suggest a good 3d modeling program that doesn't cost 2000 bucks like maya i would appreciate it.
01/03/2008 (5:58 pm)
@ibis thats alot of what i had in mind, the food and water system i feel would be important to make this a survival game like the idea of multiplayer with only limited supplies it would make them more worthwhile if you actualy needed them to keep playing, and the npc's would be important as well for their skill sets. as far as the zombies they will start both the single and multiplayer game slow and plodding but as the game goes on they will get tougher to kill and faster, in multiplay the person playing the zombie or infected player will be able to slow the infection down but once he has turned into a zombie, the more humans he kills and feeds on he will be able to upgrade himself, becoming faster, more resistent to damage and the like.
@jason
i have seen that game before but its been awhile, i dunno it is a possibility though.
also if anyone can suggest a good 3d modeling program that doesn't cost 2000 bucks like maya i would appreciate it.
#15
01/03/2008 (8:45 pm)
Blender if you havent tried it Matthew, its a great tool if you get the hang of it. Hit me up on msn messenger if you want, or yahoo. my email is bennikane@yahoo.com and Id love to hear more of your idea.
#16
http://www.milkshape3d.com
It costs about $50 or $25 (I forgot). I already bought it and it's hard to master at first, but with some practice you can make some amazing things. It can also animate the characters (so basically it's 2 in 1).I believe that Milkshape was used to create the popular FPS game called Half Life 2. If you're not sure about it, try the 30 day trial thingy.
I like the ideas about the vehicles, health, and that the zombies grow stronger with every kill. But there is one thing that concerns me the most, how are you going to create different types of zombies or enemies. For example - I used to play Warcraft III (an RTS game) and the thing that got me addicted to it was the fact that there were over 100 characters. And once i played a game with barely any enemies (well alot of enemies, just in the same race) and I got bored...very quickly...and that's how i forgot the name of game. So basically my question is - How are you going to create a range of different enemies?
01/03/2008 (9:36 pm)
There also is another tool/software that is called Milkshape3D. Here's the link to the website:http://www.milkshape3d.com
It costs about $50 or $25 (I forgot). I already bought it and it's hard to master at first, but with some practice you can make some amazing things. It can also animate the characters (so basically it's 2 in 1).I believe that Milkshape was used to create the popular FPS game called Half Life 2. If you're not sure about it, try the 30 day trial thingy.
I like the ideas about the vehicles, health, and that the zombies grow stronger with every kill. But there is one thing that concerns me the most, how are you going to create different types of zombies or enemies. For example - I used to play Warcraft III (an RTS game) and the thing that got me addicted to it was the fact that there were over 100 characters. And once i played a game with barely any enemies (well alot of enemies, just in the same race) and I got bored...very quickly...and that's how i forgot the name of game. So basically my question is - How are you going to create a range of different enemies?
#17
01/04/2008 (6:59 am)
I dont think they used Milkshape to make the models, but I know it has an exporter for hl2 models among other types. And plus ts about 25 if I remember right. 
#18
01/04/2008 (7:33 am)
I believe Valve is a Max house. Milkshape, as a mod tool, has adapted itself to new engine formats.
#19
@ Jamal
as far as different enemies me and a buddy are starting to work on concepts, my basic ideas though were that as the zombie plague gets worse the bodies detiriorate more and more and then start to change and evolve to survive, growing new limbs or claws, things like that, nothing specific right now but thats the basic thought, also the possibility of animal zombies to give different possibilities.
01/04/2008 (2:54 pm)
Thanks for the info about 3d modelers, i really appreciate the help. @ Jamal
as far as different enemies me and a buddy are starting to work on concepts, my basic ideas though were that as the zombie plague gets worse the bodies detiriorate more and more and then start to change and evolve to survive, growing new limbs or claws, things like that, nothing specific right now but thats the basic thought, also the possibility of animal zombies to give different possibilities.
#20
01/04/2008 (4:09 pm)
Not all zombies need to be the same though, different kinds of people could present themselves as different kinds of zombies. 
Torque Owner Jeremy Jenkins
You may also want to think about one or two driveable vehicles and may co-op through multiplayer.
Basically I think its a good idea, good luck!