Salvaging my DayZ ideas from June 2011 and March 2012

[Bearded McGee 121]

June 14th, 2011. I came up with my own version of the ideal free-roam, survival zombie game and made a lengthy thread about it on the Bungie.net off-topic forum.

March 24th, 2012. I tried my hand at it again, trying to refine my ideas and taking in a lot of feedback from the first thread.

While they are quite different in spirit, direction and scope to what DayZ turned out to be or even what is promised of the standalone, reading through them again I see a lot of ideas and points of references which can be translated to DayZ.

Amazingly, I used Arma 2's engine as a reference point a whole lot through both threads. Often linking to youtube clips taken from the effective ancestors of DayZ; The pure-assets zombie scenarios of olde.

If you want to give the original threads a read, go ahead:

http://www.bungie.ne...postID=61600276

http://www.bungie.ne...postID=71047754

Maybe, my biggest dream was to get the hypothetical game to run over a highly complex procedural generator.

Many people instinctively buck when they hear about using a procedural generation method in a videogame, myself included, but I never rejected the technology altogether. A lot of tech demos showed that it could be pushed a great bit. Too often, however, the application developed by private firms would only cover a tiny part of what is needed to create a world fully.

Interestingly, I came up with a dynamic zombie spawn system back then though significantly different than my current suggestion for the standalone. Instead of having the spawn rates go down as players killed zombies, i had thought about raising the zombie spawn rates over time if survivors didn't move out of an area. Encouraging players to often move out of their comfort zone and preventing them from creating a static home-bases. Effectively making them nomad by necessity.

I had also thought about making zombies much harder to kill. Unlike rocket, I thought (and still think) actual old-school undead were better suited as you could go around some biological laws (while maintaining a simulacrum of authenticity). For example, I would have loved if zombies were nigh-unstoppable, but not really fast. At least, not as fast as Rocket's Zs. Their speed being dictated by their state of decay and how damaged their bodies were, be it from randomly generated levels of from player input (i.e. break a zombie leg, they limp or crawl/blow their legs away, they would have been force to crawl using only their arms). Severing the head or damaging the brain would have been the only way to assuredly stop a zombie.

"Animals....Hunt deer for meat, or avoid zombified dogs. Or see a few actual hawks flying high in the sky (yes for hunting, meh for zombie dogs)." Directly quoted from the first thread. I had forgotten about this actually. How queer, almost prophetical of me.

"Players are almost one-bite kill (one bite and you are infected). An antidote must be administered within 10 hours or the player will turn after 24h.". Fiddling back then with the idea that zombies are to be feared as much as possible. Enticing players to avoid and sneak as much as possible. Also making a meta-game out of keeping infected players out of a group. to the point of executing another player because everyone else think he/she might be infected and they can't take the risk.

"Inventory works on TWO values; WEIGHT and VOLUME. A character would only have a certain weight added in item to his own he could carry without slowing down. That would be a rather low value. I say slowing down because simply not being able to move at all is stupid. The speed loss in percentage would be a parabolic curve increasing the speed loss in % the more "overweight" a player is." The link is from the second thread, circa June 15th 2012. This is one of the few ideas that are totally salvageable and could be implemented.

"Vehicles. From a skateboard to an 18-wheeler, provided it is in working condition and fuelled up. Since we're talking about an open-world game, vehicles are to be an important part of gameplay. Lest you wish to be stranded in the middle of a field, low on ammo and surrounded by zombies out for dinner. Of course, vehicles can be damaged. Either from simple long-term use to you-just-ran-over-dozens-of-zombies-your-car-is-done. Gas/fuel is also a factor. Gasoline could be siphoned from unused vehicles and transported about in jerricans. Also, vehicles can serve as material transport. Enabling you to move a great deal more stuff than you can carry on yourself." Not much more to add here.

"Extensive equipment and gear to use. In this, I'm talking about guns of all sorts, medical supplies such as bandages and antibiotics, long-views, binoculars, maps, compass, GPS, flashlights, batteries (to power GPS/flashlights for example), night-vision goggles, melee weapons, tools, clothing (from a complete soldier suit to a g-string), watches, handheld radios, big marker pens (writing on walls?), jerrycans (see point three), explosives, backpacks (more capacity?), etc." Alright, now this is getting creepy.

"Zombie Behavior/AI. In season 2 of The Walking Dead, we got to witness that the zombies are not totally devoid of primal instinct beside hunger. They like to keep together, somewhat and will often move as "packs" in a random direction. Zombie herds could prove to be the biggest threat there is, as ammo would run out before they do. I'm thinking that herds could be somewhat rare events. I'm also thinking about whether or not zombies should wail at the sight of survivor, attracting more zombies. Maybe another toggleable option." It's been discussed as is before, I'd like to point how good of an idea it was back then.

"Say you killed a deer and you don't want to cut the meat out right there, can you tether it to a quad bike and drag it to somewhere safer? Hello Ragdoll physics!"

"Can zombies be simply knocked out? A good baseball bat hit to the head would know them down for a few minutes but no kill them. You'd either need to keep on hitting them a bit or use a more lethal weapon to finish them."

"Do zombies also go for the fauna? How do fauna react? Can they be caught off-guard and killed? How would a deer carcass, for example, affect zombies? Would it attract them?"

"Predators, how common are they? Wolves, cougars, bears? Can you scare them off? Do bears "one-shot" you?"

"Zombies can see and hear, but smell? This might be important in the process of sneaking. Get too close to a zombie and it'll eventually smell you. If you run from a zombie and hide behind something, he'll be looking for you and might lose you unless it gets too close and smell you out."

"Weapon degradation. I'm thinking we should keep it out for firearms but in for melee weapons. It would just be obtuse for firearms but it could be useful to balance out close quarter combat. A metal pipe might take a few dozen hits but a wooden plank might break after four-five hits."

"Talking about melee, what about butting with a pistol (pistol-whip) or giving a good hit with your rifle's cross? Should it damage the weapon? Have a chance of breaking?"

"Fire; how does it work? Does it work like in Far Cry 2? Burns grass for a while before extinguishing itself or does it only burn up what gets set on fire directly? If a zombie is on fire, does it propagate to other zombies if they get too close? If a zombie catches fire, does it become heedless and just flail about or does it keeps on coming toward you? How long must a zombie be completely on fire before it dies? Ideally, it might work like in Alone In The Dark on a small scale."

"What about unique infected? Infected modeled and using the voice of particular celebrities or fictional characters? Personally, I'd love a Justin Bieber zombie. How about a Michael Jackson zombie dressed like he was in his Thriller videoclip? An Austin Power zombie? A James Tiberius Kirk zombie? All with their own unique lines. Having fun tossing them around for an hour trying to hear them say everything they can. Let's see if we can get Obama to record a few lines"

There's quite many more small ideas in the two original threads but these are the one that still sound the most right to me. A few others I didn't quote but I,ll probably bring them up in their own threads eventually.

Edited September 13, 2012 by Axelord FTW

[starwarsfan@gmx.de 450]

Mostly quite valid suggestions you make. But most of all I like the Romero/Walking Dead type zombies, they are just simply better in my opinion. Especially because of the whole getting infected part you describe and the tension it could create within a group.

[Timmymachine109 (DayZ) 235]

Id love to see the unique zombies modelled after people, that would be well funny and it could make hunting unique zombies a bit of a sport!!

[apache25 133]

a few of these ideas are quit good but the romero zombies are a big no no. the infected the zombies were better and scarier and more realistic

[Bearded McGee 121]

Id love to see the unique zombies modelled after people, that would be well funny and it could make hunting unique zombies a bit of a sport!!

Oh, oooohh

Edited September 13, 2012 by Axelord FTW

[Exenima 45]

I like the idea's, but especially the melee with weapons idea. I would love for a zombie to get too close and i can hit it back with the butt of my weapon. It just seems so practical, but of course with an Arma 2 engine i don't think it's possible at the moment. The funny thing is, i use to pistol whip the shit out of everyone in the original CoD, but developers seem not to recycle the idea anymore. I hope your idea's get built on, you have my beans good sir.

[Intake 1]

you have my beans, i very much like pretty much all of these ideas