Iv'e been thinking about a few types of games I, as a kid(i'm 13), would like to play. As i thought about it i came to the conclusion that i wanted to play some sort of a zombie horror survival. When i went online, to the store, and viewed magazines i found there were almost none that were any good or worth playing. Recently i've found a decent one called Dead Frontier, its not all that great and so i've been starting to think about what i would like in a game about zombie survival. I read an article that covered some of it, but then i read some more and found out that the company wasn't even going to bother making. The article talks about starting in a tiny hotel in a small city, you and a team of survivors managed to meet up there, you have a hunger meter and zombies have found out where you are, you will need to keep the hotel safe and get food and ammunition for guns at the same time, so you will have a team of eight and you will have to send four men out to go get food and ammo and four men need to stay to keep the hotel from being overrun. Also while doing this there are seven other teams of eight out there that you can choose to help, if there in trouble, or just leave to die. This seems like a very good idea and there are really no other games like it. Some ideas i would like to add about this project(i hope you guys work on it because im only 13 and dont have much experience). I would like for their to be multiple buildings, each with stuff inside of it, for ex. one house had a gang member living in it who had an uzi, or something like that. Also when you use a microphone depending on how far from each other, in the game, depends on how loud or quiet you hear the guy talking. Also you can form an alliance with another team, if you can find them, then you can move to a bigger building, like a store or a mall, and try to defend all, or part of it. The zombies should run about 80% as fast as you, but there should be enough of them you cant simply run by them. I want multiple maps, the more the merrier, and perhaps something realistic like a part of NY, NY. Also when you start your multiplayer account you choose a class/profession, for example your guy was a police man or a doctor who survived(other possible classes/professions are thief, can get into buildings better and search them better, computer technician, can run a security system, if the building has one, and with the help of a doctor to get a zombie sample can make a device that tells when a zombie is near, construction worker, can smelt down metals to make bullets and can make metal into pieces to help secure a building). When a person gets bit a doctor can work on them, if the doctor gets there in time, and can cut the disease out of your skin before you turn into a zombie. A system rates players before the game so they can determine who they play against so its fair. However it should be some what like a normal city and should not have unlimited ammunition or food. But your construction worker can make some bullets for you, depending on what metals you can find will determine the bullets, and he will need to go to the gun shop and bring back a bullet making and filling device, and there are also farms on the outside of the town, unless its NY, NY or any other big city, that you can get food from and plant food in that you can harvest, if you live long enough, and use(i personally dont think the plant and harvest idea is very good but i want the communities ideas and opinions on it). Also if you can get to a radio station and have your computer technician work on it to make it work, you can call for an air drop of supplies, the supplies should only be able to be called two times per team. There should be an assortment of weapons from pistols to shotguns, maybe one rocket launcher or two if you can break into the police building and get into their gun stash. How To Win How to win should simply be last team standing, but you cant kill other people, that would make it too easy simply to go out and shoot the other teams so your team is last alive. If one man survives his whole team gets some sort of reward, for example next time the man that lived will have a gun to start with. Also, i think their should be some sort of a level system and skill system so players have something to look forward to with the end of a round. Depending on a class/professions level determines how fast they can make stuff, and determine how good they are at their jobs, for example a computer technician can break a police stations password lock depending on his level. I hope you like my idea, and I really hope that someone will start to work on it(but I really doubt anyone will). Thanks for reading this and I hope you see the untapped potential of this genre as well. Please comment and tell me new ideas and thoughts, or complaints about this idea. [Edited by - Blarkage on May 14, 2008 8:25:48 PM]

no-one's going to make it for you... why not start learning how to program?

sounds like it could be a good game, if it was implemented correctly. it also sounds like you're pretty sure of how you'd want it to be implemented. motivation?

Alright sweet, your probably right funkymunky but i still wanted to see if i could get someone to do it for me, and i will start working on it a little bit but i doubt ill get very far, even though i want the game to go all the way into multiplayer and beyond.

Also thanks for the idea of the game ill check it out, thanks.

yes Resident Evil and Dead Rising do fall under these categories, but they do not have the sandbox survival style (sandbox style means you can do whatever whenever, kind of like the GTA series). I think a sandbox zombie game would bring a lot of attention and be played by gamers.

I was thinking of making a game like this, I haven't started anything yet becausce i've been busy with school work and stuff. I was thinking of starting it over the summer holidays, learning code along the way. Also depends on my friend who would be doing the modeling/animation and wheter we agree on this concept. Another thing is that Left 4 Dead would completly overshadow this, hopefully it'd be released a year or two after.

Anyway, i think your idea is pretty good, it'd be great if the maps were large cities with random weapon+supply placement to stop players running straight for the sniper rifle, but smart players would be rewarded for looking in logical places for weapons. I.E The Police Station, or the Crack House. I also think players should only carry 1 Primary Weapon to avoid players hoarding, and maybe you could only pick up the better guns after killing X amount of zombies to stop the less usefull players grabbing the guns while the good players are getting eaten.

I'd prefer it if the players didn't spawn in groups, but started in random houses, and would have to band together using some sort of radar. The zombie numbers should increasce as the game goes on so eventually players must hide in a larger building as you said. But I think having players all go to the same building everytime would get old very fast, so maybe sometimes you go to the mall, and it's full of zombies, but other times it's ready to be used.

It'd be boring if you were dead forever so you would respawn as a zombie, however you will have a motivation to kill your former friends becausce killing two of them will allow you to be "reborn" as a human.

I guess surviving for a time limit would be fine, but I think it'd be better if a helicopter/boat/convoy appeared after that timers up, and the players would have to get to it. It'd be more fun if it appeared in an area that the players would have been unlikely to set up in so you have to make a desperate fight through the streets to the objective. Maybe the use of vechiles would be good here, for example you all pile into a bus, Dawn of the Dead remake style and make a break for the evac point.

Well, I think i've mumbled on long enough now, so i'll let you all tear it to shreads now.

EDIT: Also how long were you thinking rounds should last? Long=Boring for people that died at the start (5 min grace period maybe?), but Short=No Depth and emersion.

Well I think you made several good points and ideas that i had not thought about when i was writing the original log. Weapons not spawning in the same spot, needing a certain number of kills to use a gun seems a little much because if a party dies and theirs just two noobs left their going to need some weapons and if their stuck with melee weapons they might as well try to just keep running. A convoy/helicopter/boat escape from the level seems like a very good idea for the game, as for the time limit i think it should be as long as a player can survive(so the rounds are long enough to enjoy) but when you die you can either become a zombie or just leave the game. I think after 10-20 minutes into the game they should be told via radio or some other means of communication(which theyve aqcuired in a building) that a rescue is coming, and then their given a general idea of where it will be, then they can load up in their war buses and make a sprint to the convoy, then here is where you will find out if you have friends or not, example: the convoy has came and someone reached it before you, they now have the option of telling the pilot of the helicopter that A)their are more survivors wait for them or B) everyones dead take off.
if the copter leaves you behind you lose.

just some more ideas and good luck with the game i havent been working on it very much so i hope yours goes very good.

keep the replies coming guys i love reading your ideas and suggestions.

Yeah, I'm not using the kill limit on weapons anymore. a few more things I thought of adding was the ability to pick up physics objects and move them infront of doors, but if the object is too heavy when you try and pick it up you push it a little way instead. To counteract impenatrable fort's, all objects that can be moved are destroyable.

The idea and concept is old, but you are right that there are not many "professional" games in the store today that are built in this manner. There are some simpler online ones, for example last stand 2 (http://armorgames.com/play/1443/the-last-stand-2).

"Give me enough time and cash and I'll make it happen" ;)