Suggestion:20080226 Urban Dead Adventures + revision

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20080225 Urban Dead Adventures

Jon Pyre 18:04, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion type
New game mode

Suggestion scope
Nothing currently in existance

Suggestion description
The creation of Monroeville gave me an idea for a new type of game that could exist alongside Malton and Monroeville.

I suggest making a third game with the following premise:

The military is bombing a large infected area, and urging survivors to evacuate before their bombardment begins. They're clearing roads and rebuilding bridges to allow the evacuation.

The gameplay significance of this is that map is slowly shrinking on one side, and expanding on another. This can be easily accomplished through random map generation. This forces everyone, zombies and survivors, to keep on the move.

If your character is caught behind they're bombed. This kills your character, but not permanently. It just moves them and penalizes them. The flavor text would be something like:

"Dazed and burned, it takes effort for your dead flesh to move again. You managed to drag yourself to the edge of the new quarantine zone before collapsing."

If the square you're in is deleted you just get moved to the new border and fined a high AP amount - since the whole point of the game is to keep on the move I think a high penalty of a 15AP stand up would be fair.

The bombing would not be hard to escape. Perhaps it would move somewhere around 5-10 squares daily. You'd be able to travel a little bit each day, or make one big trip every couple of days. This is to give players time to explore and temporarily hold the new zones.

Characters that idle into hiding wouldn't be harmed by the bombing. Zombies would just appear on the edge of the new zone, it being assumed they just shuffled along. Logged out survivors would appear at a railway station close to the border, the logic being that they caught an evacuation train there.

Now what I think is the most promising use of a travel mode version of Urban Dead is that Kevan could alter the new areas the players move into to test out various scenarios. If he doesn't want to do any work he could create a program to just randomly generate new city blocks but he could create custom scenarios when he felt like it. For example:

• The survivors (and zombies) need to cross a river but there are only a few bridges across. They need to find the escapes routes before the bombs catch up.
• The game moves through a wooded area with very few buildings, forcing survivors to concentrate in a few widely separated structures.
• The game comes to a city with many necrotechs but there are almost no hospitals.
• All the survivors have to take shelter in an immense 10x10 fort complex while the area around them is continually bombed.
• The game moves through a swamp area where movement in many squares costs 2AP.
• The survivors have to cross a desert and need to gather equipment to last them for the days of moving through a few towns with no resource buildings.
• The quarantine zone becomes very small, condensing everyone in a town only two suburbs large.
• A cold area freezes dead flesh, weakening zombies, but there are almost no buildings or supplies.
• There are several possible routes but some of them lead to dead ends, requiring plenty of exploration to not get caught down the wrong path.
• The survivors find an area with buildings that can barely be barricaded but resources abound.
• The players come to a city with one immense 6x6 mall and no other resource buildings.
• The survivors have to take shelter on a highway, but there's no barricades, just blockades that once overcome can't be rebuilt.
• An area with no resource buildings but steady airdrops.

etc.

There's clearly a lot to flesh out here but I think the idea of a constantly changing map that requires continual exploration and adaptation has promise.

Things an Adventure Mode Will Do

1. Give Kevan a sandbox to play with game balance.
2. Put heavy emphasis on scouting as there will be no maps.
3. Force groups to adapt to changing terrain - guarding one spot indefinitely will not be an option, revive points will have to be relocated.
4. Force survivors to ration resources in some areas.
5. Create heavy reliance on radios and cell phones - how else to coordinate with allies during an exodus through uncharted areas.
6. Allow players to experience different sizes of cities, new building types, and different kinds of land - forest, mountain, desert, rivers, etc.
7. Keep the game eternally surprising.

Voting Section

Voting Rules

Votes must be numbered, justified, signed, and timestamped. # justification ~~~~ Votes that do not conform to the above may be struck by any user.

The only valid votes are Keep, Kill, Spam or Dupe. If you wish to abstain from voting, do not vote.

Keep Votes

1. Keep Here's a revision. I brought the bombing penalty down to 15, respectable but not crushing, and described the rate of movement. It'd just be 5-10 daily, enough that anyone can keep well ahead and even be gone for a day or two without getting too close to the line of destruction. Also players that idle out suffer no penalty. Yeah, we just got a new city. But this doesn't take anything away from Malton or Monroeville. One is classic mode, the other survival mode, this is travel mode. --Jon Pyre 20:43, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
2. Keep - I liked it before, and I like it again. --Anotherpongo 21:00, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
3. Change - Make the bombing move slower, and make it irregular, where a few bombs fall, then a lot fall, then the "cuirtan" hits. --BoboTalkClown 21:25, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
   • re That would be another way of doing it. Have one territory, then open the next territory and have the older territory get destroyed at once at a certain time. of course that makes it unsafe to stay too far back in the city since it'll be hard to escape the area. This way you can stay just twenty or thirty spaces ahead and be safe. --Jon Pyre 22:55, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
4. Keep - I still like it.--Jamie Cantwell3 22:26, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
5. Keep as above--Corndoghero^T-S-Z 23:40, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
6. Keep As before --FXI 23:49, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
7. Keep Most imaginative suggestion I've seen yet. --Alphonse Burr 00:18, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
8. Keep - Change! --Heretic144 02:34, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
   • Re I'm sure that if Kevan adopts this he'll make it his own and change it heavily anyway. The root idea that's most important is a changing game area. --02:38, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
9. Keep As before--Carnexhat 06:59, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
10. Keepish-As before--Studoku 13:38, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
11. Keep - I promised that if you changed the ap loss to 15 I'd vote keep... So there ya go... --/~Rakuen~\^Talk I Still Love Grim 16:00, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
12. Keep - I still like it. - Headshot Hal 17:25, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
13. Keep - I like this! --Johaen 20:48, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
14. Keep - Awesome!! This would spice up the game rather than just having the "cade, kill, retreat, be eaten" cycle. --Lt Tassadar 21:48, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
15. Keep For some reason, I like this. Are you suggesting new characters in this city or existing ones copied across? Jonny12 ^talk 22:32, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
    • Re It'd be entirely separate from Malton. New characters. --Jon Pyre 03:12, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
16. Keep - Well hey, I like it. --Howard Bentley 01:12, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
17. Keep - It's a nice idea. --Kaysakado 01:42, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
18. Keep - I love it. I don't care about the issues people have with flavor/realism - the idea sounds like great fun. Three ideas: One, let's say five rows get bombed a day - how about these five rows stick around for a day or two (your dead body will stay there as well) as "Wastelands" before being sucked into the void? Second (and I know this'll get a lot of people upset) - instead of nuking AP (i.e.: forcing people to play the game less), how about taking a skill? Something along the lines of "You have forgotten how to open doors..." - giving even the most advanced players a reason to get XP. Finally, How about randomly bombing squares not due for a wipe from the scroll? Perhaps areas that have large hoardes of people (and thus, large hoards of infected) would draw Military attention and they'd bomb that square/area in advance to try and help clear the infection. This could help keep people from cluttering up too often and overwhelming any particular area of the map... TheUncleBob 03:15, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
    • Re I like your wasteland idea! --Jon Pyre 04:46, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
19. Keep-Good idea. RegUD is too static.--Rofl. 18:18, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
20. I am on a voting spree, but to make this vote valid, I'm in agreement with the above voters. --•▬ ▬••▬ • •••• •▬ ▬•▬• ▬•▬ ^{#nerftemplatedsigs} 15:14, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
21. Keep -I'm bored, this game needs something new. --Blobdude^{Talk TM MC} 00:22, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
22. Keep - We need something new. --The Gecko PKer 03:52, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
23. Keep - Not too bad an idea, actually. The thing is, how will the server hits (and bandwidth costs) be sustainable? It'd be a significant increase. It has to be accomidated somehow. I guess Kevan would look into that if it was possible. Also, slow down the bomb rate, else people won't live long enough to idle out unless they were on the front of the map.--Kolechovski 04:13, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
24. Keep - Although I'll most probably get lost halfway while evacuating. --_LH779 08:38, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Kill Votes

1. kill your clutching at straws now! This whole concept is deeply flawed in a game of this nature, half the players would sign in "bombed" every monday morning and would not be very amused! --Honestmistake 20:55, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
   • Re If a player is gone the weekend then the map has advanced 10 spaces. If Malton was being bombed from west to east a person in the middle of the city wouldn't have to move for days - more than a week - before the bombs caught up with them. just keep your character away from the edge and you can be gone for a while without risking your character. Really the bombing isn't a challenge here. It's surviving from the zombies in unfamiliar areas.--Jon Pyre 22:49, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
   • Re engage your brain for a second and try to imagine any possible reason for the military to herd survivors and zombies about their fair nation. Come up with a plausible reason for them to do this and i will change my vote! As it is this sounds like you thought "hey, that would be cool" and put it straight into suggestions!--Honestmistake 09:24, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
2. Kill/Change - the idea of all these different locales is great. The idea of the scrolling map I dislike. --Funt Solo ^QT 09:07, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
   • Re The problem with a fixed world with many different zones is that it diffuses your player population. If UDA gets 20,000 players scrolling the map keeps all 20,000 in the same area. If there are five cities open at once then it'll divide up the players into whichever zone they prefer. That means fewer mega-hordes, less enemies to attack, etc. It'd be like those suburbs in Malton where it's hard to find anyone. --Jon Pyre 14:20, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

   • Re - I still like the idea of the different locales, and I still hate the scrolling idea. --Funt Solo ^QT 15:05, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

3. kill - still don't like it. it just doesn't sound like fun, all these restrictions and penalties and stuff. --WanYao 09:17, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
4. Kill - While something like this could be interesting, the flavour is just silly. Even the military wouldn't be stupid enough to bomb their entire country in an effort to exterminate the zombies using a tactic that they can see has absolutely no effect. --Midianian|T|T:S|C:RCS| 15:11, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
   • Re Actually I think the military would destroy huge swathes of territory if only to delay the inevitable. Just look at napalm bomb usage. --Jon Pyre 16:20, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

   Re: Let's see. Two choices; bomb a mobile area, or bomb a static area (the borders). Exactly the same result. One choice destroys the country in the process, the other doesn't. Gee, what do you think they'd choose? --Midianian|T|T:S|C:RCS| 12:49, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

5. Kill If you're going to bomb a city, to stop the spread of zombies, you'd go nuclear. Short term bad/long term good. --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 16:45, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
   • Re Zombies aren't hurt by radiation, the living are. Nuking your own country is a great way to guarantee that all your survivors die, and that even if they survive the land will be poisoned for years. --Jon Pyre 01:09, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
6. Kill - No Death Drome --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[cloned] [mod]} 16:52, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
7. Change - Spam voters are right, the flavour is silly. Instead of bombing, how about just making the areas seriously infected, so that humans can't survive there. Every action takes hp or something. Then you can have new area exploration without bad flavour. I like it in principle, but the flavour spoils it. Cutlet 02:14, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
   • Re The idea is to move both humans and zombies along. Plus an environmental zombie toxin isn't normally found in zombie movies. --Jon Pyre 18:25, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
8. Kill - Reasoning: I'm partially against creating new game modes in general, seeing as the current one heavily lags gameplay in the main city. Secondly, herding zombies, infected humans, and the unlucky survivors doesn't sound like good flavor, because as above, the government would want to quarantine a deadly plague, and then seek to eliminate the threats, as opposed to herding those inflicted around the country, infecting even more civilians, and potentially permanently killing others. Sorry Jon. --Private Mark 03:16, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
   • Re Unless they were unable to create a quarantine zone. Maybe none of these areas are secure enough to surround indefinitely and they're herding everyone towards a final site (not that it would ever be reached in game) --Jon Pyre 16:33, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
9. Kill- I think it would just fall apart. Getting herded like cattle with bombs falling on our heads? Interesting concept, but no thanks--Airborne88^{T Zom MIS} 11:11, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Spam/Dupe Votes

1. Spam - You've made it sound worse than it did before. Instead of bombing the crap out of multiple cities, why aren't the military arranging evac points and then wiping the area out? Scrolling maps were great on computer games... in the 80s. -- Iscariot 21:06, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
   • Re They are arranging evac points - the text territory for everyone to move to. Unfortunately that gets infested before long too so the survivors have to move on. --Jon Pyre 22:51, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
2. Spam - I absolutely abhor this idea. --The Hierophant 06:25, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
3. Spam - you suggestion for the game is to create a new game? seems a bit silly to me. if Kevan wanted to do it, i think he would not need a suggestion from here--Scotw 23:57, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
   • Re: Well why don't we apply this to the whole suggestions page then? I mean, come on... Jonny12 ^talk 22:32, 28 February 2008 (UTC) Non-author RE struck. --Aeon17x 23:54, 28 February 2008 (UTC)