Dwarf Fortress/CIV/God Game [Zombie Survival] Thread

Hello All,

I've been thinking about this idea for awhile now, but only recently decided to start working on the concept.

Basically, we're rolling into another Zombie Survival setting, but don't let the theme put you completely out just yet!

This rolls out like a god game. You spawn with a small group of survivors on a map of a city with it's outskirts.

The aim of the game is to obviously survive the horrors of the apocalypses and all that this brings.

The graphics etc would just be a 2D top down view of a city grid, with dots representing your survivors.
Green for your guys, Orange for Zombies and Red for Hostile (enemy survivors).

The idea is that you don't have direct control over your survivors, but can give directives, assign tasks and apply gear.
There would be an icon next to the dot for the assigned task and icons for a specific gear slot (like weapon or tool) to help quickly identify the unit.

Your can enter any of the buildings in the city and they all have different values.
To set up a base, you need to fortify it and depending on the type and size of the building will depend on how long this process takes.

Your field of vision is dependant around a set perimeter of the surviving group, so if certain members stray too far out you wont be able to see them.
This comes into play when you assign tasks such as scavenging which can reap benefit of food and gear. But can also result in infection of a survivor or death.

Survivors have a random attribute pools (Fitness, Intellect, Agility, Will and Perception) and all have statuses (Life, Health, Thirst, Hunger, Happiness, Loyalty, Fear and Stamina).

This means that you assign roles/tasks to certain members who's attributes shine in relation to that role.
Roles are things such as: Cooking, Crafting, Scavenging, Scouting, Raiding, Protecting, Reinforcing, Doctor etc.

You also have resources for the group, Food, Water, Tools, Supplies and Armaments. All of which are consumable by your survivors and can be found by the various roles and tactics chosen. Buildings can net you the above resources and different types of buildings have more chance of finding certain items.

Certain buildings will also provide status and role bonuses (a factory +% to effectiveness of crafting and reinforcing) and deciding where to make your home will ultimately decide the role you will take. They also have their own attributes that effect there role in a situation (eg, fortifying, or being raided etc).

Within a building you can craft traps, create or delegate rooms etc, clicking on a building will show the inside layout and the dots inside and where they are in the room, so setting up fortifications in certain locations and could become much like a tower defence game (in the event zombies attack on mass).

The game would start off slow, and you 'attract' survivors to your group and as it becomes larger you find you have to move to a new location. The bigger the group the more attraction you get from zombies. And the total game just becomes about management of resources, and making sure desires of the group are met (keep them healthy, happy and loyal).

Thoughts?

Sounds great

At the first couple of lines, I thought it would be something usual, but after reading further I personally believe this is a great game idea. It would require a lot of testing though with all the parameters.
I understood that Zombies will be attracted to your own survivors and that attraction will increase as your group gets bigger. What about the Hostiles? What will they be doing?

Thanks for the feedback.

At this time, hostiles would be randomly spawned groups that search over the map creating their own goals, much the same as you.

I would think that a lot of the AI revolves around checking of variables, and its just that a unit has a lot of variables that can form its actions.

So if you have 1 unit by itself, its actions check against it's statuses and come up with a primary goal of the unit. If its hungry, it will look for food.
If you have 3 units in a group, it will check each units statuses then apply a multiplier against Will, then grab the highest scored status for the group and all units will fall into line. If you think about it in the real world, those with the will/want/need the most will force their rule open others.

I think it would check against the outcome, then for those units that didn't get their variable, it will then decrease their Loyalty by an amount that correlates to how much they wanted their variable as the primary goal.

For example, 2 units in a group are thirsty, and 2 are hungry. One of the thirsty units is much more thirsty than the other unit, but has very low will compared to the rest of the group which would bring down the overall score or 'need' for that variable for the group, so the thirsty units loose out and the group looks for food. The two thirsty units then have a check against how thirsty they were and then decreases loyalty and happiness based on their score.

When loyalty gets low enough they will attempt to leave the group.

This set up also applies to your survivors, and you have to manage the roles of the group to make sure that you have enough resources coming in to keep the team happy.

The Zombies on the other hand don't really have a set of variables to live by, its just will I stand now, or will I move on. And engage with hostiles and survivors when they're within proximity.

On that topic, I feel that a units attributes will create a score that is then transposed into a % for chance of being detected by a zombie in proximity. Buildings will decrease this % vs units outside the building and different streets will decrease the % vs inside buildings.

This score will also be effected by the current statues of the unit, if the unit is very unhealthy then the % for detection will increase because in their desperation for survival they start getting careless. But even then, a units attributes will effect the amount that being unhealthy effects the % of detection.
This is how you make every unit individual and form their 'personality'.

Another example of variables is how engaging zombies will occur; units have a check against whether they will fight, defend, run or flee (in this example run and flee are separate, run is where the unit will escape the zombie but try to stay with the group. Whereas flee will cause the unit just to run and think for themselves).

To work out what will occur we check against attributes for Fitness, we check against statuses for Stamina, Fear and Life. We then will check against Armaments. When zombies come into sight of a survivor it will increase fear based on the number of other survivors in proximity to that survivor and will do so for every zombie that comes into range. It will then do a check against the current fear level and then check if Life is too low and if so, will then increase fear a further percentage.

It if overall Fear is not above the threshold, it will then do a check against Stamina to confirm if its got enough energy to engage. If so, it will fight the zombie. If more and more zombies start coming and the number of survivors in proximity is not very high compared to the number of zombies appearing this will automatically decrease fear to the point that the unit will run or flee.

I am making this up as I go , but do have a most of this being constructed in my head.

Another level is the variables created by your actions in the group, which then creates the culture of that group. Is your group made up of raiders? You captured an enemy. What is the overall fear and happiness of the group? They decide to kill the prisoner. Alternatively if your group was happy and fear was manageable maybe they would have attempted to let the prisoner go, or even join you.

Any sort of situation like this is developed by how you manage the group, they will then lead to choices base on those actions.

You could find that your management leads some units to actually commit suicide, because they would rather not live in this world. Some units may turn and kill allies in fear of them being infected from a scavenge, or maybe the group just votes to put them in isolation for the time being to confirm if the unit has been infected. Maybe they don't and it turns out the unit was infected, then turns and kills another survivor before having the chance to be put down by the rest of the group.

I feel all of these situations could arise, and it would all be from many variables that run the game .

You would have control over what to 'build' inside buildings, so if you build a containment section, then this would allow your scavengers to be placed into isolation.

Good for you that you have thoroughly thought about many of the gameplay mechanics. You should start making a prototype of this game and see how well all these mechanics work together. If it feels like it's working well, then proceed with making the full game. If you start making this game, I'll be expecting to see it making progress via this website.

Heh, it just so happens that I have a project that is somewhat like what you describe. Just started though

-FPS
-Dark Ages
-Many types of magic
-Many skill trees like the Elder Scrolls series
-Need to learn of the existence of a skill tree before being able to use it. For example, reading. You need to find someone who can teach you to read before you can read.
-Building of houses, fortresses and castles
-Voxel engine for acquiring resources
-Hunger, Thirst, Nourishment, Tiredness and Stamina bars.
-Form a settlement and assign tasks, or join one and take assignements.
-Be a lone wolf and survive on your own.
-Different kinds of guilds and groups that do what they do, raid, help and so on, zombie are not the only danger.
-Many kinds of zombies, not just different human ones but animals as well

I'd like an "RTS" type zombie apocalypse game though.

The idea is good but it seems very very similar to another game called zafehouse diaries...

Just a quick thought. I think something like this could be done with L4D modding. There is actually AI director that worries about things like if the game is too easy or hard on the survivors and spawns the monsters / health packs accordingly.

Wouldn't be a god game, just sort of asymmetric multiplayer where others play zombies / survivors and 1 guy is being the director.