Talk:X:00

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FAQ

q- how do you pronounce "X:00"?
a- X:00 = x o'clock = ecks oh klok. Or "agz ar grag", for the post-living crowd.


Scent Death info

What sort of results have folks gotten using Scent Death? I put a section regarding questions about its use on the main page, and would like to collect data / anecdotes here. --Swiers X:00 15:38, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, I'm getting some weird results. If I'm at Blackmore Building in Ridleybank and sniff I get "You scent a single zombie from your horde in this block./You scent a mob of zombies three blocks to the north./The strongest local scent is that of the pile of corpses in this block." However if I move just 1 square away to the Rogers Building I get "You cannot detect any members of your horde nearby./You scent a mob of zombies in or outside the Blackmore Building./An overwhelming stench of decaying bodies carries from in or outside the Blackmore Building." At the Acout library I get "You scent a single zombie from your horde in or outside Adalbert General Hospital./You scent a mob of zombies in or outside the Blackmore Building./An overwhelming stench of decaying bodies carries from in or outside the Blackmore Building." At Adalbert I get "You scent a single zombie from your horde in this block./You scent a mob of zombies two blocks to the south and one to the west./An overwhelming stench of decaying bodies carries from two blocks to the south and one to the west."

In summary either you can smell your horde member if they are inside the bulding you are outside, but not from other squares, or, more disturbingly, if there are equal numbers of your horde equal distance from you then they kinda cancel out and you smell nothing --Ozzzy 04:14, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Discussion:

All users- feel free to post discussion / questions here.

Question from Slopface of the Minions of the Apocalypse-

How would the first person who logged in know where to go? It seems they would still have to know where the target was....

Answer from --Swiers 03:42, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

There is no "first person logged on".
The idea is to get a bunch of people logged on as members of the same group, the name of that group being the attack time. They all have to be on a fair amount of time before the attack, and they all "vote with their feet" by standing outside the building they think would be worth bashing the 'cades on. Of course, if there's gorans nearby, you'd go there to "vote".
Then at X:00, everybody hits "scent death", and finds out where the nearest concentration of folks who want to rip down 'cades is at. Everybody goes there, rips down cades, and see's if there is anything worth eating inside. If not, they use other means (groans, gestures, death rattle) to co-ordinate (or not) movement to another location.
Its not quite the same as a normal group- its a technique to cause zombies to exhibit a group "emergent behavior". It's a hell of a lot better than working as a feral, groupless zombie, because you'd never have to tear down 'cades solo. But its probably not as good as knowing WHY you are attacking a given location, as you (should) get with current metagame organization.

Question from Rolo Tomasi: AWESOME idea I love it, but...what clock will we use? GMT seems best, but not everyone is bright or dedicated enough to figure GMT in relation to where the live. What is the best way to proceed? Rolo Tomasi

Yes, the times are meant to be GMT. I've edited the main page to make this (hopefully) clearer. I think the best way to proceed at this point is for 20 or so folks intrested in trying the idea to all head to one suburb and try it at one time- likely 0:00- to see if it actually does accomplish anything. Idea-wise it looks OK, but the bit of testing I've done reveals practical issues, since you generally can't look at the profiles of the zombies you have joined up with. It may end up playing out more like zombie marco-polo than zombie telepathy... --Swiers X:00 04:48, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Response from Ev933n: Umm... this has a cool and neat little bit that not only auto-detects your time zone, but as well... shows you the math... and does it for you... and simultaneously displays GMT and whatever your time zone is. --Ev933n / Talk 18:36, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Or if you're really lazy and running Windows, you can open open your clock thingy, change it to GMT, and you'll know what the GMT time is when its whatever your time.--Lachryma 18:40, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Sounds like a great idea! It would be good to have a trial run somewhere advertised through the Wiki page and all the other forums that you're plugging this on (I've seen several). I realize you have suggested this elsewhere but I think it should happen sooner rather than later otherwise people might quickly think of this as a bold suggestion that never really got off the ground. I would advise setting a day and a place in a few days from now to give time to get the word out and for people to shamble over with an alt. Then on that day everyone logs in whenever they can doing the hourly X:00 and see how effective it is!--Ozzzy 07:57, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I like this idea, do you know how many people are involved? I know it is difficult to tell. --Ducis DuxSlothTalk 04:31, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Awesome idea. So good to see fellow zambahz taking the initiative and trying to use the skills they've been given, rather than sulking and going on strike cos they didn't get what they want. --Keith Drudgely 22:16, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Cool...

...idea. My zombie might use this sometimes.--J Muller 03:54, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I too think this is a great idea. Well done. --Rip purr 14:57, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

You might want to know...

Kevan's zombie character Bub has joined your initiative! --Matthew Fahrenheit YRC☺T☺+1 00:50, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Suggestions

1. You need to have a call-sign for each of the four sub-groups. IE: ar!argrag for 0:00. This way, folks can walk over to the square where their comrades are, and say "hi" in a group specific way in order to facilitate adding one another to contact lists. Once one sees their group call-sign, one can add the Zed who spake it. -- Ev933n / Talk PPGC
Suggested Call-signs
  • ar ar grag = 00:00
  • zagz ar grag = 06:00
  • nahn ar grag = 12:00 (noon)
  • ahnahn ar grag = 18:00 (afternoon)
2. Having callsigns is a good way to get zombies to add each other, but most zombies hold off on the Death Rattle skill until higher levels. I propose having the above callsigns, yes, but also adding the following from basic speech:
Suggested Basic Groan Call-signs
  • Graagh. = 00:00
  • Grrrh. = 06:00
  • Grh. = 12:00
  • Brnhr. = 18:00
This way even low-level zombies can participate in this project. - Dr Cornblum

inside buildings

Swiers said:
Can members be detected if they are inside buildings? If larger groupings are preferentially detected, do members in one block but not all inside / outside count as one larger grouping?

I have a question in response to that: Does Scent Death turn up Survivors in your group? If so, then no. Scent Death does not penetrate buildings. If not, someone needs to stand in a building, and I will scent, or vice-versa. --Ev933n / Talk PPGC 11:56, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't turn up survivors, but it does pick up zombies who are inside nearby buildings. I should update that one. --Swiers X:00 15:30, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Spreading the Word

Have you guys thought of taking this strategy to the Mall Tour crowd? I think that this strategy is something that zombies could really use to ramp up their game, but only if it became common practice. I'll be sticking the URL in my description, but have you thought of leaving comments on, say, the Feral Undead discussion page? This seems right up their ally.

I think also that you should get some human sympathizers to start adding tags outside about X:00 to inform the zombie populace. *shrugs* This just seems like a really great idea. Dr Cornblum 07:13, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Nope, I had not brought it up to Xyu, but do have a character in the tour and talk on that board a lot. X:00 wasn't designed with mall sieges in mind, rather the opposite, given that "scent death" is all but useless in a siege. I suppose the "Grab mah zambah gab" and profile description tactic might work. Its a very interesting idea, but at a mall siege your temporal co-ordination usually needs to be VERY tight. People have tried spray-painting attack times before, but maybe talking would be less prone to be seen as "spoofing" and get better response.
I'm not in contact with any of the Feral Undead, but Bullgod comes around some boards where I initially posted the idea... though that doesn't mean much. Also, about the time I was putting these pages together, they were on strike. Now that they are off, it may be worth going to their group talk page, yeah.
Part of the problem I have publicizing is that its a pretty abstract idea, and doesn't yield big visible results, and certainly not with only a dozen folks using it. Its the sort of thing somebody has to be looking for already, I think, for it to grab them. Slow momentum seems the way at this point, though I'd hate to see it wither... --S.Wiers X:00 02:14, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Just added a proper entry in the Zombie Lexicon. I was gonna suggest adding an entry to the guides page but I see that you have already done so.--SporeSore 19:31, 13 February 2007 (UTC) p.s. an X:00 member template would go a long ways in terms of advertising.

I reserved 28.24MgHz for X:00. Zombies can listen to (but not re-tune or broadcast on) radios, so maybe there will be a trend towards zeds picking up radios when revived. Its not like the put much else in their inventory. Just another possible in-game method of tactical communication. --S.Wiers X:00 19:46, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

About the Template

Could you design a template that says something about supporting X:00 but include a space to say what time they attack? It could link either to the X:00 User Registration page, or to that handy GMT timezone coordinator thing that I can't find the link for.

Now, I don't know how these things work, but adding the MFD template to your userpage adds you to a Category or something of MFD wiki users. Again, I don't know how it works, but it could be really useful for adding users to your contacts.

-Dr Cornblum 06:18, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Dr- I know exactly how that works. I've already got X:00 set up as a category, so adding a catergoy tag to the X:00 template would be very easy, and would put every page the template appears on in the X:00 category. Good idea. Click the "category X:00" linke at the bottom of this page to see what I mean. --S.Wiers X:00 16:48, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Something like..? {{X:00_Time|Time=00:00}}
Xoclock.jpg {{{Time}}}
This zombie likes to go munching around {{{Time}}} (UTC+0)
You could edit the colors and maybe change texts, but that's the idea of yours? --Niilomaan GRR!•M! 07:58, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Hey, that looks really sweet. I may pinch some of that code.  ;) --S.Wiers X:00 16:44, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Go ahead. That's why it's there. Just try to keep the time thingie intact. Allows you to place the exact time of your usual attack. Also now that we're talking, you should create your own personal "groupbox" on the main group page. Remove useless stuff like "Group Numbers" or "Leadership" and possibly change others to better fit your needs. --Niilomaan GRR!•M! 23:14, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
I could, but there's a certain charm / point to be made in taking a typical group-box and showing how it doesn't work for X:00, which isn't a typical group. I'd actually love it if other people made such things though. Hell, I'd be happy to see whole new X:00 type pages; just put "category X:00" on them. I've already "registered" pages like @:00 and *:00 and would be happy if they were more than re-directs, or folks could do something like X:00/a better page, or situation and group specific pages like Mall Tour '07/X:00. --S.Wiers X:00 00:32, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
I updated the 6:00 page and turned it into something more interesting than a redirect. It's kind of rough right now, but it's a start. I know I want to include a timezone-by-city thing, but maybe it could be better arranged into a table, rather than a list. I imagine that the timeslot pages would be used for people to decided which slot was best for them, and to determine where to go once they decided (which is why I included a "Currently Staging" section), as well as providing helpful information.
It might be fun to just arbitrarily give the different timeslots slogans they could use in their profile. "It's 6:00—time to bring the hell." That could go under the "Unique to 6:00" section. - Dr Cornblum X:00 06:27, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Looks pretty sweet. The 6:00 slot is pretty wide open, so any sloganaeering or propaganda that works there is a great. I think Kevan's zombie "Bub" (character id 11, the lowest in the game) was at one time a 6:00 member. He's over outside the Whippey building right now, you might try and bring him back into the group. --S.Wiers X:00 16:01, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

A Strangely Relevant Quote

X:00 is an intentional effort at creating a useful, strongly self-reproducing meme for zombie characters, and it seems to have begun functioning as such. So I've been reading a bit about memes, and came across this fun quote that has odd resonance with the goals of X:00, with the nature of barhah, and perhaps partly explains the fascination / horror that zombies arouse.

The most obvious (and scary) conclusion from modern neuroscience is that there is simply no one inside the brain. The more we learn about the way the brain functions the less it seems to need a central controller, a little person inside, a decider of decisions or an experiencer of experiences. These are just fictions - part of the story the brain tells itself about a self within (Churchland and Sejnowski, 1992; Dennett, 1991). <snip> Why do we believe in a self that does not exist? Someone may yet explain this in evolutionary terms, but at least superficially it appears pointless. Why construct a false idea of self, with all its mechanisms protecting self-esteem and its fear of failure and loss, when from the biological point of view it is the body that needs protecting. Note that if we thought of ourselves as the entire organism there would be no problem, but we don’t - rather, we seem to believe in a separate self; something that is in charge of the body; something that has to be protected for its own sake. I bet if I asked you "Which would you rather lose - your body or your mind?" you wouldn’t spend long deciding.

-Susan Blackmore, Waking From the Meme Dream

What to Call Time-Slot Groups (eg 0:00, 6:00, etc) ??

This is something that has bothered me since I wrote up the X:00 concept. What should these things be called? In the write up, I called them things like "X:00 user groups", but that was just a cop out to avoid naming them. I didn't really conceive them as groups, though they use the group-structure as a tool. What they really are is strike times, but that also doesn't make total sense, because most people associate a strike time with a specific target, and X:00 user groups exist independent of targets, and should (if fully functional) be a means of seeking out targets.

So, whats the best singular / collective terms for the various "X:00 user groups"? Should I just stick with that term, or can anybody think of something better?

--S.Wiers X:00 16:17, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
I like the whole "going to work" theme that we have going on with this. Why don't we call them "shifts"?
"Yeah, I've got a zombie on the 6:00 shift and one on the 12:00; I like to mix things up."
- Dr Cornblum X:00 00:48, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
"Shifts" sounds nice. Are there any groups currently using shifts with their group name? (For example.. "Mall Tour '07 - 12:00") --Niilomaan GRR!•M! 11:13, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
I've been trying it out in a few posts, and "shifts" works well for me. And no, there currently are no conventional groups with shift listings. I tried it for the Mall Tour '07/X:00 effort, but 0:00 took off faster (you can't really control viral marketing) and happened to coincide closely with some existing publicized attacks, so 0:00 got the main push. I'd actually rather stick to promoting plain X:00 names, because having a shift show up on the stats page is a) a hell of a lot of fun b) helps promote its growth and c) lets people know when to attack even if they don't join the group.
If the idea gets big enough, I think people will adapt group names whith shifts in them on thier own- no need to promote that. I could also see use for combine location / shift names. For example, "0:00 55,47" would be a group that (plans) attacks on the Blackmoore Building at 0:00. Such a group would probably start out small, but if a few zombies hit up big zombie mobs and started recruiting, you'd eventually see it on the stats page, and would know you had a mob worth striking with. Such groups would be a natural offshoot for large shifts anyhow- if 0:00 had 200 members, for example. This would (imo) be a good (maybe the only) way to co-ordinate something as massive as a city wide effort to shut down every necrotech building, or other such absurd schemes involving literally thousands of zombies. Not that I expect this go go so far, but I don't want to be accused of not thinking big... --S.Wiers X:00 16:01, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
"Shoot for the moon; even if you miss, you'll land amongst the stars." Now, you don't want people to put "6:00 shift" in their profile, right? You're still just intending it to be "6:00?"
- Dr Cornblum X:00 05:38, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
-Yeah, plain 6:00 seems best. It matches the X:00 name (which has some recognition now) and the stripped down "numeral only" version seems to have caught on best for 0:00. Anyhow, the more you add, the more chance of mispelling, the more chance scent death / group stats don't work right. --S.Wiers X:00 16:36, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
- Just a tought, you could create pages for each existing shift and place the link in the main page. That way every x:00 keeps redirecting here, but in the shift pages people could leave their zed profile if they want, and tell where they are to help newbie zombies--♠ Che ♠-T GC X 00:40, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
I've actually drawn up a rough page for the 6:00 shift. Once I finish the table I'm working on on the discussion page (please, share your thoughts; I've never done a table before so I don't know how best to organize the info there) I was planning on doing one for 0:00, 12:00, and 18:00. They'd all be basically the same. - Dr Cornblum X:00 06:59, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
- So I see this is old but what they hay, might as well. Why not just call them Morning Shift (12:00am-06:00am) Day Shift (06:00am-12:00pm) Evening Shift (12:00pm-06:00pm) and Night Shift (06:00pm-12:00am)--Hammer 07:23, 26 August 2010 (BST)

Payroll Officers

I think we should encourage a harman or group of harmanz that would make radio announcements for the X:00 zombies. They could call themselves "The Payroll Officers" or whatever. Who are the people that make sure employees get the right shifts? I can't think of the name. Anyway, they could make radio announcements and tag X:00 propaganda all around.

•"Attention all 6:00 zombies: there are currently"
•"shifts working in the following suburbs: Dulston,"
•"Ridleybank, Pitneybank, Lockettside, and Ketchelbank."
•"All 6:00 zombies are advised to report in to work or"
•"announce a new worksite on the 6:00 shift wiki page."
•"http://wiki.urbandead.com/index.php/6:00"

How cool, right? Note that this is thinking in the long-term : ) . - Dr Cornblum X:00 03:35, 28 February 2007 (UTC)


Yeah, that's VERY long term thinking, but more or less what I had in mind when I grabbed 28.24MgHz. Not many zombies have radios, and even fewer would know to tune them to get revived and tune them 28.24MgHz. There's also not enough X:00 zombies to make a dent in even ONE suburb right now, which is why I encourage all X:00 users to join the Mall Tour. Its a great place to

  • recruit using death rattle
  • gain xp's
  • gain contacts

The radio thing could however be even more effective than you suggest above. What if, at 23:58, a broadcast was put out designating specific targets in each suburb for the 0:00 shift to attack? Each target requires 6 characters to designate, so you could jam 7 targets plus some other info a single broadcast action, covering the entire city with 15 AP worth of broadcasting. I imagine those broadcasts would look something like this: "0:00 06,13/12,15/20,11/32,19/44,12/57,18/63,10". Putting 5 suburbs in each broadcast, and covering first the west side of the city, then the east side, would result in a pretty nice layout to the broadcast info, but would require 20 broadcasts. Still not bad...

The obvious term for humans who make this sort of broadcast would be "Shift Dispatchers." The question would be (asside from the obvious one of how to select targets) how to prevent false dispateches. Both would likely boil down to using metagame communication, which makes the radios pretty pointless. So maybe the sort of ultra-specicif info I mention above would never come to pass. But I still like the idea of "shift dispatchers" as a term for humans who broadcast useful info on the 28.24MgHz band. --S.Wiers X:00 17:01, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

"Shift Managers" could work as well. I just figured that it would be useful to get zombies to approximately the right place, so they could wander until they Scented a group member and then they could talk in game.
  • A zombie said: "Ganna zmaz za bangbang haz ah zagz ar grag!"
  • A zombie flails south.
  • A zombie said: "Ganna ram za barragahz!"
I figure they would move like amoebas, kind of sliding between buildings and things. If we want this to be a non-meta tactic we'll probably just have to accept that we won't have laser-quick strikes all the time. It'd be fun to play like this though, and would foster a lot of feral community if everyone's gabbing and stuff, heh.
And considering my examples, I think we should make a big deal about the Zombie Lexicon. Link to it on every X:00 page and talk about it a lot too. A good working knowledge of Zamgrh is going to be paramount. - Dr Cornblum X:00 01:38, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
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