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Development Info Zombie Randomization

VentilatorOfDoom

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Tags: Brian Mitsoda; DoubleBear Productions

<p>Brian explains <a href="http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,1740.0.html" target="_blank">random design</a> in <strong>Dead State</strong>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I don&rsquo;t know how many people replay games &ndash; I often don&rsquo;t &ndash; but I do know that I like knowing that a game isn&rsquo;t always going to offer the same exact experience to everyone or that it won&rsquo;t always offer the same experience to players who liked it enough to give it a second go. Player decisions and character builds are one way we can change the experience, but one thing that seems to be missing from a lot of games is randomization. Some games will do this with maps, but very few do this with events.&nbsp; Today I thought we would cover a few ways that Dead State changes things up so that even the best FAQ can&rsquo;t always prepare you for what&rsquo;s in store.<br /><br />In Dead State, there are multiple ways we randomize the events of the game outside of just reacting to player choice or from resource shortfalls. On our area map, for instance, some locations for allies and resources are randomized at the start of the game. You may never even find some of these locations on your first playthrough or you may discover them much later than your first playthrough/friend&rsquo;s playthrough. Everyone will have the chance to discover these locations &ndash; we always spawn them &ndash; but prior knowledge of these events won&rsquo;t make finding them any easier. Some locations/allies will always be in the same place, so you&rsquo;ll somewhat of an advantage when playing a second time, but not for everything.</p>
</blockquote>
 

Turisas

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Sounds great; have they mentioned anything specific on the size of the game world? Seems pretty extensive if you can miss out on events like that.
 

Mister Arkham

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Turisas said:
Sounds great; have they mentioned anything specific on the size of the game world? Seems pretty extensive if you can miss out on events like that.

I don't think that they have said what size or type of environment that we can hope for, but I'd assume it will be a decently sized city. It would be kind of nice to get a choice at the beginning though; something to determine if you want to be in an urban area, or something more suburban, or even out in the country, and then determine what kind of climate you want to play in and have all of those factors present the need for differing play-style.
 

MisterStone

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I must say, Mr. Mitsoda seems to have exactly the same taste in gameplay that I do. Carry on good sir. :obviously:
 

Elhoim

Iron Tower Studio
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Mister Arkham said:
Turisas said:
Sounds great; have they mentioned anything specific on the size of the game world? Seems pretty extensive if you can miss out on events like that.

I don't think that they have said what size or type of environment that we can hope for, but I'd assume it will be a decently sized city. It would be kind of nice to get a choice at the beginning though; something to determine if you want to be in an urban area, or something more suburban, or even out in the country, and then determine what kind of climate you want to play in and have all of those factors present the need for differing play-style.

It's not set inside a single city. It's set in Central Texas and there are quite a few towns and areas from that region in the game.
 

Gragt

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At last! Randomisation can be such a great tool in games that I wonder why it isn't used more often given the potential it holds. After playing SWAT 4, I hoped that we would see more FPS with random placements of enemies but that turned out to be only a wish. I hope DS will manage to have some influence on the genre.
 

1eyedking

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Kron said:
L4D relies heavily on randomisation.

Then again, I don't know what I'm doing talking about an fps in the codex.
That said, Dead State could learn a lesson or two from L4D's fantastic atmosphere.

Something tells me it isn't heading that way, though, since safehouses in Dead State (at least according to Oscar) are supposed to be organized, clean, and Vault-like. In the middle of a goddamn apocalypse everything should be a fucking chaos, no exceptions.

Things get a chance of being better only when you add the "post-" prefix.
 

Garm

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1eyedking said:
Kron said:
L4D relies heavily on randomisation.

Then again, I don't know what I'm doing talking about an fps in the codex.
That said, Dead State could learn a lesson or two from L4D's fantastic atmosphere.

Something tells me it isn't heading that way, though, since safehouses in Dead State (at least according to Oscar) are supposed to be organized, clean, and Vault-like. In the middle of a goddamn apocalypse everything should be a fucking chaos, no exceptions.

Things get a chance of being better only when you add the "post-" prefix.

That wouldn't make much sense, considering one of the first things the survivers would do is make sure their safehouse is secure and as organized as possible, like in Dawn/Day of the Dead.
 

Elhoim

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1eyedking said:
Kron said:
L4D relies heavily on randomisation.

Then again, I don't know what I'm doing talking about an fps in the codex.
That said, Dead State could learn a lesson or two from L4D's fantastic atmosphere.

Something tells me it isn't heading that way, though, since safehouses in Dead State (at least according to Oscar) are supposed to be organized, clean, and Vault-like. In the middle of a goddamn apocalypse everything should be a fucking chaos, no exceptions.

Things get a chance of being better only when you add the "post-" prefix.

I totally agree with you, but there are a couple of things wrong in your understanding of my statement. For starters, I could have never said safehouses (plural) as the game has only one shelter for the player. I'm certain I was referring exclusively to that one.

Now, there is a good ingame, story reason for it not being in total chaos at the start of the game. After the survivors start settling in, I see no reason for them to start throwing things around or not keeping it clean. As a matter of fact, you can assign characters to jobs to keep the shelter clean and running, which increases morale. Furthermore, without maintenance, things break down, generating morale penalties.
 

1eyedking

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OK, one safehouse then. But whatever the case, it's still an apocalyptic game.

Oscar, you don't freaking care about a clean environment when there's about a million zombies just across the street. You're just not in that state of mind. It's the kind of thing CEDA and the military talk about in L4D, for example, but the survivors know that there's no time and use for that kind of bullshit. Furthermore, having everything dirty and broken helps set the mood and atmosphere of the game.

Also, jobs for cleaning and maintenance? What is this, The Sims? AFAIK even games like X-COM didn't have such gay stuff.

Let me say it again: you're in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

Zombie.

Apocalypse.

A-poc-a-lypse.

"Yeah guys, clean those corners till they shine, nothing brings a smile to a survivor's face like staring at spotless furniture!"
 

Phelot

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1eyedking said:
Oscar, you don't freaking care about a clean environment when there's about a million zombies just across the street. You're just not in that state of mind.

That's why a good leader tends to have weaker people do mundane tasks like clean. Anything to keep their minds off the situation. And just because they're in an apocalypse doesn't mean they wouldn't want to live in a clean environment. I mean, they have to live in this safe house so should they just start shitting on the floor to help set the mood that civilization is falling?

Furthermore, having everything dirty and broken helps set the mood and atmosphere of the game.

Honestly, I see no reason why everything would have to be burning and destroyed. I mean, it might be cool that every gas station in the city explodes and burns, but why would this realistically happen?
 

Mortmal

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1eyedking said:
Oscar, you don't freaking care about a clean environment when there's about a million zombies just across the street.

No, you would try to keep a semblance of normal life, keep shaving, keep washing yourself , try to keep a clean shelter with electricity .Not to mention while cleaning you focus your mind on something else than the apocalypse.
Let those guys do their gameworld as they envision it.They want a realistic apporach of the subject, like a lethal disease spreading in the world like in stephen king book, they are not making resident evil.
 

mahdi

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Elhoim said:
It's not set inside a single city. It's set in Central Texas and there are quite a few towns and areas from that region in the game.

Does that mean we can expect Ft. Hood area in the game? What about other centex towns like Killeen, Belton, Temple? It would be p awesome to barricade my party in my old high school.
 

CraigCWB

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Gragt said:
At last! Randomisation can be such a great tool in games that I wonder why it isn't used more often given the potential it holds.

I think it's mainly because it was over-used to the point of abuse by Bethesda. I think Arena (the first TES) was entirely randomized. As I recall they even created and populated entire dungeons on the fly, often as quest locations. In cities you could enter a house, reload a game outside, re-enter the house - and it was a totally different house.

May sound cool but Arena was the dullest RPG I ever played. It was 10 years before Bethesda weaned itself off all the random crap, but you can still see the legacy of their old design philosophy in the leveled-lists for location populations and the "generic" NPC chatter and dialog trees.

Random encounters and even randomly generated locations are good, as long as they are "extras" and not the core gameplay mechanic.
 

Gragt

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I agree that too much randomness might be overkill, but a smart bit of it can make things interesting. My favourite exemple is Diablo, which has a list of quest it randomly picks from, with different rewards attached to each. Even the monsters are taken from a random list, and in one game you might find the caves filled with snake-men but they'll be absent for your next character. Icewind Dale also had some loot containers giving loot chosen from a fixed list and I found it rather nice for my next playthrough.

Speaking of latest Bethesda games, Oblivion (which I am playing suffering through) has a lot of randomised content due to the leveling, but here randomisation works against the sense of surprise: you can always guess the kind of stuff you'll get based on your level and there will never be something immensely powerful thrown with the rest. Even ennemies offer no surprise since they all get the same kind of equipment at the same time. Even unique rewards have their stats based on your character level.

So yeah, making things random just for the sake of it isn't terribly interesting, but doing it for some key element and with a bit of control can open some new doors. I'm thinking of stuff like a quest that has the same premise for each game but the line after that would be randomly picked from a fixed pool. In theory it sounds fun but I wonder how it would fare in practice.
 

Silellak

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1eyedking said:
Also, jobs for cleaning and maintenance? What is this, The Sims? AFAIK even games like X-COM didn't have such gay stuff.
What, exactly, would you suggest other survivors do in their spare time at the Shelter, once the immediate safety needs of the group are taken care of? Wouldn't it make sense for at least some of those not being sent on missions to spend their time maintaining the shelter, through regular maintenance of the building - including making sure everything stays running, and keeping things as clean as possible?

X-COM didn't have "such gay stuff" (what are we, 12?) because it wasn't the same sort of game. In X-COM, you were supreme commander of a multi-national military group who gave orders to soldiers, scientists, and engineers who were involved in a covert war against alien invaders - "cleaning" and "maintenance" are irrelevant to this scenario. In Dead State, you are just trying to keep a band of survivors together in a single place for an extended period of time, and a large part of this is helping to maintain their morale - including making sure shit doesn't break and things stay clean and organized.

Remember, these aren't L4D-style temporary safehouses to hang out at in between running through the area looking for rescue. The survivors in Dead State intend for the shelter to be their permanent home, at least until the "situation" is resolved and they are rescued. Remember, the game takes place at the start of the outbreak - people are still hopeful that the government/military/whatever will regain control of the situation and return some semblance of normalcy to their lives.
 

bert

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but will there be french maid costume mods?
 

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