Preview Dead State Preview at PC Gamer

[villain of the story]

Didn't PC Gamer cover Dead State already? I remember seeing the magazine scans.

That would be this preview, presumably.

Brian has used that example before and I'm still dumbfounded. Since he's using the same example, it's likely that it's not just a random thing he made up but an actual example from the game, right? And in that case, wtf kind of reasoning is that, I still wonder. Janitor = morale booster. Perhaps that's just one particular character?

Maybe if you only think of a janitor as someone who mops the floor. Instead, it could be a multifunctional job where he keeps track of supplies, makes sure everyone gets what they need, takes care of hygiene, and does whatever odd job is around in repairs or helping where people need an extra pair of hands. That was the janitor's job at my old school.

I've thought about all that and still find it to be an over-generalisation, but that's ok I guess.

 

[Naked Ninja]

Brian has used that example before and I'm still dumbfounded. Since he's using the same example, it's likely that it's not just a random thing he made up but an actual example from the game, right? And in that case, wtf kind of reasoning is that, I still wonder. Janitor = morale booster. Perhaps that's just one particular character?

Possibly the janitor has a friendly personality and good people skills which ease tension in your little band, useful regardless of the fact that he doesn't bring any survivalist skills to the mix.

Your confusion seems to stem from the fact that you're treating 'janitor' as a class of NPC instead of the profession of one of the unique NPCs. I think all the recruitable characters in Dead State are unique.

 

[1eyedking]

Janitors and garden-planting.

In a fucking zombie apocalypse.

Are game designers brainless nowadays or what?

BONUS: For fuck's sake, they can't even keep simple shit together: antibiotics keep your infected people from becoming undead? Fuck, man, that's the first time I ever read antibiotics and undead in a same sentence. Dead State: cheap-ass Sci-Fi pulp or third-party Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting? You decide, but meanwhile let's hooray for a new low.

 

[Gragt]

Are game designers brianless nowadays or what?

fix0rz

 

[4too]

Building Maintenance Engineer

Building Maintenance Engineer




Dead State: resource management in a Zombie Apocalypse, or a Castles mini-game?

""Splendid Elementary School in Texas"", depends on when constructed, WPA or post modern-e', but most likely (if form follows function) have a whole lot of glass and a lot of air conditioning. Depending on the heating-cooling technology when constructed, might even aspire to' H-V-A-C 'pretensions.

In this context alone, 'janitor' is an archaic profile. Yet most facilities management is top heavy, lots of paper pushers, and reluctant to employ (the true bane of capital) skilled labor, much less pay a 'living wage', so the lone, jack of all trades might apply and simplify this possible attention to detail, this potential RTS construct. WE all know in the utopia to come that companies will have zero employees, so the single janitor will be more then enough until that brave new tomorrow.

An office building might be more readily converted to a castle keep, but lack the surrounding structures to create a larger compound for long term survival. DLC might star B-soft's Bethesda office space! Cool huh!

If allowing for subsistence agriculture, then the game time fame assumes the *game play* will involve more than pop-a-mole bashing of a few zombie Zerg rushes. So maxing the characters abilities involves a degree of thought and detail in the base of operations.

Water means survival. It might not be too tedious an upgrade to rout the roof downspouts to a cistern and thus increase the potable water supply for the castle - compound. Toilets functional, hands washed, Mom's Proud +3 hygiene!


How to abstract this spreading sheet of survival conditions and still have action - combat play, well that might put Dead State on the bleeding edge of RPG's , and distinct from that madding crowd of copy cats and sycophants that are extruding this endless array of FPS-er A-RPG's. Perhaps 'The Janitor' skill set will facilitate optimal survival support.

Since the designers appear to be allowing a fortified compound to enhance the defense of PC and friendly NPC's, got a building maintenance mini-game brewing in the mix. 'The Janitor' might be perched in the appropriate skill tree to bring all the diverse technologies together, toilets flushed and coffee maker working.
'The Janitor' would know where all the keys are, where the ass wipe is locked up, if and where an emergency generator would be located and how it operates. Whether on the coast or in land (hurricane and tornado contingencies)
where the 4 X 8 sheets of plywood are to cover most or all that exposed glass. + 1 or + 2 barricade?

If 'The Janitor' is a -good old boy- would have a hunter's familiarity with riles and shotguns, and so be functional in the combat gameplay.

If not give 'em this:

I vote for the Building Maintenance Engineer, I vote for 'The Janitor'.






4too

 

[Roguey]

Okay, I guess I'll be the graphics whore here: What's with all the bloom? In the first and third pictures those shirts are blindness-inducing from the bright light and in the second picture it looks like the sun is exploding right outside the windows. I expect this tasteless crap from the big brainless people, not the ones who should know better. AoD doesn't look like that.

The exclamation marks in dialogue also bother me for some reason. I think I'd rather LARP whether or not I'm raising my voice at someone when giving a terse command. Aside from those issues, sounds fun.

Awesome. Looks way better than I imagined. Who wants to bet it comes out before AoD?

Considering both teams share Nick/Oscar/Ivan, I don't see that happening, especially with AoD's large head start. Dead State just has the benefit of having Mitsoda working fulltime on it.

 

[Achilles]

Imagine if Dead State, Age of Decadence and Xenonauts all turn out to be fantastic turn-based games... 2011 will truly be a year to remember.

 

[ghostdog]

Apart from the fact that it looks like a bland, low budget Sims clone, it sounds pretty good.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Janitors and garden-planting.

In a fucking zombie apocalypse.

Are game designers brainless nowadays or what?

BONUS: For fuck's sake, they can't even keep simple shit together: antibiotics keep your infected people from becoming undead? Fuck, man, that's the first time I ever read antibiotics and undead in a same sentence. Dead State: cheap-ass Sci-Fi pulp or third-party Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting? You decide, but meanwhile let's hooray for a new low.

Pray tell me. Which version of 'I AM A FUCKING MORON' do you fall into?

Are you the guy who is so unbelievably fucking stupid that he managed to watch Romero's Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead and somehow not comprehend the scenes where people are using antibiotics to delay dying from necrotic wounds left by the zombie bites. Are you that motherfucking thick that the concept that a rotting diseased mouth might cause serious bacterial infection from bites, and that antibiotics might slow that infection without being sufficient to cure it. OMG JUST LIEK KOMODO DRAGON BITES IN REEL LIEF HEEY!!!!

OR are you in category #2: Are you the guy who is so fucking stupid that he is trying to call his l33t zombie knowledge about what can or can't be in a game that is based on the Romero zombie films, without ever having watched those films? OMG WHY DOES LORD OF THE RINGS HAVE HOBBITS IN IT? WHAT DO THEY HAVE TO DO WITH RINGS - I'VE NEVER READ THE SOURCE MATERIAL BUT IT JUST LOOKS WRONG!!

Seriously. I can understand folks who are too young or not into the zombie genre, and hence associating zombies with D&D or something, but if you're in the category why the fuck would you think to start calling what's in a genre you know nothing about. Who talks about what you can and can't have in a Romero-style zombie setting without even realising that in that setting EVERYONE rises as a zombie, regardless of the cause of death, and the only reason why the bites lead to zombie-dom is because of bacterial infection (if the zombie-plague is an infection or some bio-weapon - and it's never clarified other than characters debating the different possibilities - everybody in the world is already infected and will rise upon dying) . It's clarified over and fucking over again in both Dawn and Day.

 

[felipepepe]

Has great potenticial, and it will probably deliver. Since you're fighting for survival, I hope they have Easy/Normal/Hard/Hardcore settings, this is the kind of game that the more tense you get while playing, the best. Would be really lame to be able to keep farming zombies for unlimited supplies.

OR are you in category #2: Are you the guy who is so fucking stupid that he is trying to call his l33t zombie knowledge about what can or can't be in a game that is based on the Romero zombie films, without ever having watched those films? OMG WHY DOES LORD OF THE RINGS HAVE HOBBITS IN IT? WHAT DO THEY HAVE TO DO WITH RINGS - I'VE NEVER READ THE SOURCE MATERIAL BUT IT JUST LOOKS WRONG!!

Welcome to the generation Zombies = Resident Evil. The same that thinks Cthulhu is a internet meme, like the Pedobear. Source material is waste of time for these kids, Wikipedia can sum up anything in 3 lines anyway.

 

[RPGMaster]

Is this an indie game or a real game?

 

[Clockwork Knight]

BONUS: For fuck's sake, they can't even keep simple shit together: antibiotics keep your infected people from becoming undead? Fuck, man, that's the first time I ever read antibiotics and undead in a same sentence. Dead State: cheap-ass Sci-Fi pulp or third-party Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting? You decide, but meanwhile let's hooray for a new low.

"So yeah, you know exactly what to expect of our zombies"

"Fucking rehashes, why no original ideas anymore, I weep for the future of gaming"

-

"So yeah, our zombies aren't like the others"

"Fucking hell, zombies aren't supposed to work like that, I weep for the future of gaming"


lol, gamers. Reminds me of the complaints about Left 4 Dead zombies being fast. This is why the big corporations don't give a single fuck about what fans want.

 

[Elhoim]

Okay, I guess I'll be the graphics whore here: What's with all the bloom? In the first and third pictures those shirts are blindness-inducing from the bright light and in the second picture it looks like the sun is exploding right outside the windows. I expect this tasteless crap from the big brainless people, not the ones who should know better. AoD doesn't look like that.

For some reason, the color in those screens look quite bad. Seems almost scanned from the magazine version. The ones we sent them look fine. We'll upload the originals to the site.

 

[ghostdog]

Textures and lightning need a lot of work, i think. Everything needs to be dirtier , less tidy and the clothes people wear need to look ... worn out or something. Maybe you should try and make the textures look more like they're hand-drawn and less like shopped photographs. As it is, the game doesn't look like a zombie-apolaclypse game. Even the "scary" pic where the zombies surround the player looks like some parody or something. (scooby-doo actually came to mind). Also everything is too shiny, darkness and lighting effects are your friend in such games, the engine does support multiple light sources and shadows, right ? As for the dialog UI... ugh, very bland.

I'm probably being very harsh here, since you may still be a long way from finishing it, but you need to build the right atmosphere for a horror-survival themed game to work visually. Especially when it has an isometric viewpoint.

 

[SharkClub]

Jeez guys, I can't believe you. How can a janitor fighting zombies with a mop not cheer people up and boost morale?

 

[kentable]

Why would everything need to be dirty or in disrepair? IRC, Brian stated that the game takes place during the initial stages of the outbreak not the gory aftermath. Things don't suddenly turn grimdark in the first week or so of Zombpocalypse unless there's chaos already like riots or war. The game is focused more on societal breakdown and the choices evolving from that than straight up zombie survival horror. ::Ace::

 

[curry]

Imagine if Dead State, Age of Decadence and Xenonauts all turn out to be fantastic turn-based games... 2011 will truly be a year to remember.

What is the last cRPG that was supposed to be good that actually turned out to be good?

 

[villain of the story]

Imagine if Dead State, Age of Decadence and Xenonauts all turn out to be fantastic turn-based games... 2011 will truly be a year to remember.

LOL Xenonauts. I say 2013 and that's being optimistic.

The same for Dead State.

 

[villain of the story]

Well, FNV was supposed to be shit but it turned out ok, decent even.

 

[sser]

I think a janitor would be a morale booster because his quality of life would incline in the event of a zombie apocalypse. His upbeat attitude toward the new world would be infectious!

 

[Krash]

With all the debate about gun stats and what kills zombies the best lately, I thought it was time to bring the discussion back to why we’re making this game. In the last decade, the zombie genre has morphed from a horror genre into a gunchuks and teenage revenge fantasy fulfillment vehicle. The zombies are no longer scary, but moving targets for whatever badass weaponry people hope to get some use out of after gun show buyer’s remorse. There’s this pervasive personal delusion that a crisis situation is going to unleash someone’s inner hero and they’re going to run around the ruins of modern civilization dual-wielding shotguns and yelling “come get some” like it’s an endless game of drunken paintball. The everybody’s stupid/unprepared/panicked/sheeple but me mentality is in full-effect in the modern zombie fan scenario.

Here’s what it would actually be like (and what we’re aiming for in our presentation). Imagine yourself outside your usual supermarket. It’s the middle of a sunny day. There are only a few cars in the parking lot. You hear a lot of birds, but no automobiles, no people talking, no music – none of the white noise that makes up the average human soundscape. It’s quiet in a way that modern man cannot fathom, stripped completely of the drone of civilization.

The doors to the supermarket are open, but it’s pitch black inside. You haven’t eaten in over a day and you’re pretty hungry, but there’s something about the store that makes your heart sink into your gurgling stomach. There are other buildings, apartments in the area, but nobody around. It’s been two weeks since you’ve seen a human being. You had a gun, but it’s locked in your gun safe over sixty miles away, because you had to abandon your car when the traffic never cleared. All you have on you is the shirt on your back, a backpack containing nothing but an empty water bottle, and a wooden pole that formerly had a rake attached.

All of the sudden you see a faint shape at the entrance of the supermarket, just hanging out there. You can’t tell if it’s an actual human. The last actual human you saw took a shot at you, so you don’t want to draw attention to yourself immediately. You’ve learned that it’s better in general to stay quiet as a rule. That last gunshot you heard from the last actual human you saw brought out dozens of the dead from within those darkened storefronts and apartment buildings. Just the sight of them, the way their sun-ripened heads turn at you on their flimsy necks like you’ve hooked them with a fishing line, makes you want to instinctively run until you reach safety. But there is no safety – no police stations, no military patrols, no house with loved ones to comfort you. You don’t even know if your loved ones are safe. Sometimes you pull out your cellphone like a rabbit’s foot, just to hold it and hope that someone calls you – anyone – just to hear a voice. But it doesn’t even have any juice left – it’s a fetish now, nothing else.

The figure is still standing there, just out of the light a few feet inside the supermarket. Human or not, your stomach rumbles, and you realize that you need to get in there and eat something or you won’t be able to keep moving. You start walking toward it, hand firmly grasping your stick, driven more by the instinctive need to feed than courage. As you close the distance, it hits you as a spring breeze wafts in your direction – the cloud of rot overtaking your nose and making you gag. The shape moves forward and you can see its feet – burs stuck to its pants and a nail sticking right up through the unlaced sneaker. It makes a loud, painful moan like someone choking on tacks and you freeze right in place. Then you hear more noise, behind the shape, weight being dragged on linoleum, metal being knocked onto the floor. Your eyes adjust as a cloud blocks out the sun for a second. There are a dozen bodies in there wobbling in the darkness - they are all moving toward you.

--

And that's kind of what Dead State's about.

I'm sold

 

[obediah]

You can only control your main character during combats... That SUCKS!!

As long as they have decent AI, I don't have a problem with this at all. In fact, I think it's preferable.

I do have a problem with it because there's no such thing as decent companion AI, at least I've never seen any. I hope what they mean is that it's going to be like X-com where you just lose control of your guys if they panic, but can order them normally otherwise. I think they said sometime that the player character is immune to morale effects.

If it's like fallout where your companions just wank about randomly like lemmings then this game will be a 100% skip for me

Same thoughts here. They'll either have to balance it so that companions are mostly superfluous (as in Fallout) or dumb it down all to hell so the AI can contribute ("rpgs" since 2000).

 

[1eyedking]

Re: Building Maintenance Engineer

Building Maintenance Engineer




Dead State: resource management in a Zombie Apocalypse, or a Castles mini-game?

""Splendid Elementary School in Texas"", depends on when constructed, WPA or post modern-e', but most likely (if form follows function) have a whole lot of glass and a lot of air conditioning. Depending on the heating-cooling technology when constructed, might even aspire to' H-V-A-C 'pretensions.

In this context alone, 'janitor' is an archaic profile. Yet most facilities management is top heavy, lots of paper pushers, and reluctant to employ (the true bane of capital) skilled labor, much less pay a 'living wage', so the lone, jack of all trades might apply and simplify this possible attention to detail, this potential RTS construct. WE all know in the utopia to come that companies will have zero employees, so the single janitor will be more then enough until that brave new tomorrow.

An office building might be more readily converted to a castle keep, but lack the surrounding structures to create a larger compound for long term survival. DLC might star B-soft's Bethesda office space! Cool huh!

If allowing for subsistence agriculture, then the game time fame assumes the *game play* will involve more than pop-a-mole bashing of a few zombie Zerg rushes. So maxing the characters abilities involves a degree of thought and detail in the base of operations.

Water means survival. It might not be too tedious an upgrade to rout the roof downspouts to a cistern and thus increase the potable water supply for the castle - compound. Toilets functional, hands washed, Mom's Proud +3 hygiene!


How to abstract this spreading sheet of survival conditions and still have action - combat play, well that might put Dead State on the bleeding edge of RPG's , and distinct from that madding crowd of copy cats and sycophants that are extruding this endless array of FPS-er A-RPG's. Perhaps 'The Janitor' skill set will facilitate optimal survival support.

Since the designers appear to be allowing a fortified compound to enhance the defense of PC and friendly NPC's, got a building maintenance mini-game brewing in the mix. 'The Janitor' might be perched in the appropriate skill tree to bring all the diverse technologies together, toilets flushed and coffee maker working.
'The Janitor' would know where all the keys are, where the ass wipe is locked up, if and where an emergency generator would be located and how it operates. Whether on the coast or in land (hurricane and tornado contingencies)
where the 4 X 8 sheets of plywood are to cover most or all that exposed glass. + 1 or + 2 barricade?

If 'The Janitor' is a -good old boy- would have a hunter's familiarity with riles and shotguns, and so be functional in the combat gameplay.

If not give 'em this: http://demotivationalpics.com/albums/us ... rRifle.jpg


I vote for the Building Maintenance Engineer, I vote for 'The Janitor'.






4too

Ah, it's good to enjoy a little double-sarcasm every now and then.

 

[Trash]

Perhaps the only game I am really looking forward to. The more I read, the more I want it. Zombie apocalypse, focus on managing your survival, large map to explore...

I do hope this won't be a disappointment.

 

[Ion Flux]

With all the debate about gun stats and what kills zombies the best lately, I thought it was time to bring the discussion back to why we’re making this game. In the last decade, the zombie genre has morphed from a horror genre into a gunchuks and teenage revenge fantasy fulfillment vehicle. The zombies are no longer scary, but moving targets for whatever badass weaponry people hope to get some use out of after gun show buyer’s remorse. There’s this pervasive personal delusion that a crisis situation is going to unleash someone’s inner hero and they’re going to run around the ruins of modern civilization dual-wielding shotguns and yelling “come get some” like it’s an endless game of drunken paintball. The everybody’s stupid/unprepared/panicked/sheeple but me mentality is in full-effect in the modern zombie fan scenario.

Here’s what it would actually be like (and what we’re aiming for in our presentation). Imagine yourself outside your usual supermarket. It’s the middle of a sunny day. There are only a few cars in the parking lot. You hear a lot of birds, but no automobiles, no people talking, no music – none of the white noise that makes up the average human soundscape. It’s quiet in a way that modern man cannot fathom, stripped completely of the drone of civilization.

The doors to the supermarket are open, but it’s pitch black inside. You haven’t eaten in over a day and you’re pretty hungry, but there’s something about the store that makes your heart sink into your gurgling stomach. There are other buildings, apartments in the area, but nobody around. It’s been two weeks since you’ve seen a human being. You had a gun, but it’s locked in your gun safe over sixty miles away, because you had to abandon your car when the traffic never cleared. All you have on you is the shirt on your back, a backpack containing nothing but an empty water bottle, and a wooden pole that formerly had a rake attached.

All of the sudden you see a faint shape at the entrance of the supermarket, just hanging out there. You can’t tell if it’s an actual human. The last actual human you saw took a shot at you, so you don’t want to draw attention to yourself immediately. You’ve learned that it’s better in general to stay quiet as a rule. That last gunshot you heard from the last actual human you saw brought out dozens of the dead from within those darkened storefronts and apartment buildings. Just the sight of them, the way their sun-ripened heads turn at you on their flimsy necks like you’ve hooked them with a fishing line, makes you want to instinctively run until you reach safety. But there is no safety – no police stations, no military patrols, no house with loved ones to comfort you. You don’t even know if your loved ones are safe. Sometimes you pull out your cellphone like a rabbit’s foot, just to hold it and hope that someone calls you – anyone – just to hear a voice. But it doesn’t even have any juice left – it’s a fetish now, nothing else.

The figure is still standing there, just out of the light a few feet inside the supermarket. Human or not, your stomach rumbles, and you realize that you need to get in there and eat something or you won’t be able to keep moving. You start walking toward it, hand firmly grasping your stick, driven more by the instinctive need to feed than courage. As you close the distance, it hits you as a spring breeze wafts in your direction – the cloud of rot overtaking your nose and making you gag. The shape moves forward and you can see its feet – burs stuck to its pants and a nail sticking right up through the unlaced sneaker. It makes a loud, painful moan like someone choking on tacks and you freeze right in place. Then you hear more noise, behind the shape, weight being dragged on linoleum, metal being knocked onto the floor. Your eyes adjust as a cloud blocks out the sun for a second. There are a dozen bodies in there wobbling in the darkness - they are all moving toward you.

--

And that's kind of what Dead State's about.

I'm sold

Yes. I like the way Brian thinks about this. As fun as the teenage revenge fantasy/gun show buyer's remorse type of zombie game can be, it's obviously totally different. He has the right intentions for this game, so it will be interesting to see if they can reproduce what he has described here. I hope so, because it sounds really entertaining.