Suggestions from my own sad attempt to brainstorm a game

[timothymtorres]

Suggestions from my own sad attempt to brainstorm a game

[timothymtorres]

So a lot of what you're suggesting falls into the what about modding question in the FAQ. I already have plans and ideas to implement new themes while reusing most of the code. There are other browser based games that have some mechanic features similar to the ones you are suggesting:

• Shintolin
• Shartak
• Nexus Clash
• Gothador
• Vampires

Alot of these games have either lots of different playable classes/races, terrain manipulation, magic/skills systems, and crafting/alchemy systems. Some of those games goal is exploration, survival, or combat. I've played them all and I found a lot of their features to offer some flexible and interesting gameplay possibilities.

With that said, ZT will be aimed at only humans vs zombies. I have no plans to alter this anytime soon. But, a spinoff/mod that I plan on making after ZT is finished is based on a game called Space Station 13.

SS13 has different game modes revolving around an antagonist attacking the station:

• Plant Blob - Is trying to spread it's infestation and takeover the station
• Rogue AI's - That try to self-destruct the station and kill the crew.
• Space wizards - That attempt to assault the station with magical spells.
• Cultists - That attempt to convert the crew into their cult and summon a god of destruction.
• Changelings - Basically the monster from "The Thing" that absorbs the crew and takes over the station.
• Traitors and Nuclear Operatives - Normal humans with the objective to sabotage or destroy the station and it's crew.
• Aliens - That try to infect the crew and spread infestation.

I really want to remake SS13 game using ZT's code. I'd try to include all the playable classes/races mentioned in the scope of the game. Some of the features you are suggesting would be implemented in a remake like this. This would be made after ZT is launched and completed.

[RedDustBowl]

/removes hat
/places hat over heart
/salutes

Well, I guess that would be two games I would like to help you with. ZT first, then the sequel.

Thanks for the tip on SS13. I've played Shartak and Shintolin before, but they just didn't grab me like Q19 did. I got the impression of games that had lost all their players with just a few diehards clinging on, even more so than Q19. Hell Rising was a bit like that too.

Whatever you do, please please please implement a tutorial level. There were so many people who made characters in Q19, then couldn't climb in buildings, died on the streets and left the game. I chatted with people who played for a month without figuring out what a radio did or how to turn one on, who never figured out how to check messages or turned into a zombie and didn't know they could become human again. I sent my human around the board, messaged every new player I found, and counted 71 new accounts in two weeks. I think most of them got confused and frustrated and left.

Second, please please please make all new accounts go through Facebook or Google Play or VK, some platform that requires proof of identity. Trolls get kicked off a game, spoof an IP address and get right back on. A few months later, every player who doesn't want to be called a f#$%ing c$%^ every day has left the game. I'm not thrilled with FB / Google / Amazon Big Brother stuff, but anonymous trolls ruin games.

[timothymtorres]

Just to elaborate on some of these comments.

I imagine a fog-of-war system in which your side only knows what is going on if some other member of your side has visited the square recently. Maybe the large map for the entire species gets updated only if the person uploads the building status to the metamap, but the information fades after six hours or when an enemy goes in.

The fog of war sounds really cool. To some extent the Terminal system (which functions like NecroNet computer network) has a large data map for positions of zombies that have been actively scanned. I thought about doing something like this for the zombie side to track humans, but considered it too powerful. Instead one of the zombie classes (Hunter) has skills devoted towards tracking.

To keep the information current, the side must set up an alarm (flags the metamap when set off)

To keep the Terminal system useful, humans must scan zombies frequently, as any action the zombie performs removes the scan.

or a camera system (records the actions performed within the building in the last eight hours, or records the last 100 actions)

Another feature I am toying with is CCTV's for humans to setup inside/outside buildings. This will be a feature added at a much later time, (not in the 1.0.0 release) and probably will be very basic. (not record events, only display which mobs are in the location)

or leaves a trap (metamap flagged when set off, enemy character is harmed in some way). These would function like generators, and make the building's stuff (greenhouses, altars, etc.) harder to ruin.

How about using the players' time away from the game as game content? Perhaps the characters can set traps for each other instead of just walking up and killing them.

I really like these both, although it would be tricky to implement due to balance reasons. This type of feature would be a must have for the SS13 spinoff because there are lots of traps in the game that can be made.

I also imagine a crafting system which will make looting more important. You know all that stuff lying on the floor when you spend 35 ep looking for a vial or a medkit in Q19? What if you could consolidate the items into a better item?

Someone on the discord mentioned something similar to this. The ability to use a workbench in a building to repair items. It would need two items of the same type, but result in a better quality item by salvaging the parts of the worse quality item.

It makes sense, and would be trivial to implement. I would like this feature to be apart of the 1.0.0 release but it needs to be heavily tested to balance it out.

I've played Shartak

One thing that I thought was unique to Shartak was environmental manipulation. The terrain jungle would grow and it could tangle a player inside it. It could even be set on fire! I haven't seen something like this setup in a grid/browser based game before. Although this would not be a system that would do ZT any good, it'd be a cool feature to have in a different spinoff.

Whatever you do, please please please implement a tutorial level.

A tutorial level indeed sounds necessary. I wouldn't want new players rage quitting and leaving with a bad impression of the game. A quick how to play guide should be simple and easy to add.

Second, please please please make all new accounts go through Facebook or Google Play or VK

I already have plans to let Facebook do the authentication so I don't have to mess with setting up an account/password system for players. It should save me a decent amount of development time.

Lastly, thank you for all the ideas, concerns, and suggestions. :)

[RedDustBowl]

You are quite welcome. In fact, you may wish to stop encouraging me . . .

I had given some thought to map design too. If there's one useful suggestion in all of this, it would be to use as little text as possible to convey important information, especially for players on a mobile device. Q19 had plenty of players whose native language was not English; that's just an extra barrier to entry. Color and symbols are more efficient anyway.

Paraphrased from an email:
The late lamented game Zombie Pandemic had a pretty elegant solution to the map problem: two maps. Zoom in to move your character and perform actions in one building. Zoom out to do what the metamap does. There were no other characters in single-player Zombie Pandemic, so that would have to be different. I also imagined a flag function that would update location of enemies, call for healing, mark a location for attack, etc. I don't know the best way to not chew up memory and cause crashes. Maybe like how Dawn2055 puts your icon and other people's icons over that one static background?

​

Here are a few image files I posted in the Quarantine 2019 facebook group before I abandoned facebook. I had

The border is yellow, which means it has been barricaded and trapped and the alarm set. The border always shows the color of the strongest barrier, or is green for an open building.

The candle icon shows what kind of building it is-- a candle shop. This is a resource building for cultists, but not worth barricading for anyone else (unless you are fighting the cultists, of course).

The red border around the icon shows that someone on your team is injured in that spot. It always drove me nuts to blow my ep running halfway across the map to find someone already dead. So now, if you earn the skill "Craft Medic Alert," you can create (and give away to others, if you want) an item that will automatically make you show up on the map when injured, even if you haven't logged in to call for help.

I always hated how you would have to open up the metamap separately to see where you were. I imagine this map zooming in and out, like the map in Rebuild 3. (Love that Sarah Northway!) If the map is zoomed all the way out, the icons change to the simplest form.

Here's a candle shop. This is as small as I could make it without losing information.

I'm imagining this as the general store.

I made a 5 x 5 grid of 32 x 32 pixel tiles. I stuck in some white dots to show where the tiles stop. The border ones can be reused for all the map squares. The building ones can get switched out. If I loaded this correctly, the size should be about what you would see on the smart phone playing the game.

The goal is to show as much information as possible using colors, not words. Red border means it has been barricaded. Orange border means it has been trapped-- dismantling the trap means you either take damage doing it or earn the new "Dismantle Trap" skill. Yellow border means an alarm has been set up and the human side can see on the metamap if the building has been taken over. ("Set Alarm" would also be a new skill.)

Without the barricades, traps, and alarms, the square border would just be green. When taken by the other side, the borders would be some other colors.

Don't laugh at my little people. It was getting late.

Last one, a sample opening screen just for fun:

I had imagined the new game with the name Capgras Corners, named for the Capgras delusion in which you are convinced that the people around have been replaced with exact duplicates. Paranoid! And yes, this was made with crayons and markers. I was drawing with my four-year-old. I like how the button makes it clear that there is an ongoing ROUND with a beginning and an end, not just an eternal sameness like UD and Hell Rising, etc.

Also, because SerpentariY isn't here to ask it: Could you put in a Cree face somewhere?

[RedDustBowl]

The other thing I had spent some time considering was a money model. The game needs to be at least self-supporting, and I had read some articles about how the supply of game ad revenue was drying up, or at least, not as profitable as it used to be. I came up with an alternative that met with a universal and probably well-deserved "Meh. I don't see that happening," but there were a few elements within that bear a second look.

From an email I had sent to Sv7, hoping to talk him out of abandoning the game and giving him a reason to improve it:

*__I had an idea for in-game micropayments that I haven't seen elsewhere, and thought I'd share it on the off chance that it would make developing a sequel to Q19 into a profitable venture.

Have you checked out the Amazon Mechanical Turk? Amazon.com pays human beings small amounts of money to do small tasks that algorithms can't manage-- tagging images or typing text found in images, for example, or removing false positives from their "Customers Also Bought . . . " recommendations so customers don't get suggestions like this:_ *

*I'm not sure if that means lots of eighty-year-olds are playing CoD:MW, or if college kids can't be bothered to get up to pee. Either way, these days someone gets paid about $.04 to edit those dumb suggestions out.

Let's assume that Amazon would allow the game to make a corporate account. Earnings from all work performed would be paid to the account, and players would have agree to that in the terms of service.

Suppose that part of the MMORPG is for each player to have a "job." Before the player's action points start to accrue, each player must perform ten small actions per day on the Mechanical Turk, earning ten job points. Job points could be banked indefinitely. If each player performs ten tasks daily averaging $.05 each, the game would earn $15 per player each month. (A player could choose not to perform the job by paying a small subscription fee, say, $3.00 a month.)

I would further suggest that each round, groups should be required to pay group dues, either as cash or as job points donated by group members. If a group has not achieved its dues goal by the end of the round, the members will not automatically be allowed to play together next round. The group may be split apart to balance the number of players on each side.

Developing a game is a job, and a game developer deserves to be paid. I hope this would provide a bit of inspiration to improve and continue a project that quite a few people enjoyed. Let me know what you think. (It's okay if the answer is that you are burned out on the whole project and want to move on. I wouldn't ask the question if I weren't ready to hear a real answer.)_*

Okay, so forget most of that. Getting real money involved is a terrible idea bound to get people feeling used and angry. But it is still a good idea to encourage people who want in-game goodies like group membership instead of playing as a feral to pony up something for the privilege.

Hence; idea #2. Some games make users watch ads or take surveys or download apps or upvote the game itself on game sites. Did you know that there are a whole bunch of citizen science websites (and yes, even games!) that rely on volunteer labor to help scientists analyze data? Do you think they might possibly shoot a bit of cash your way if you asked players to spend a little time on their sites?

NASA has one, for example: https://beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov/welcome , as explained by this article in the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8364865.stm. Most projects, like the ones on Zooniverse, are much smaller and have microscopic budgets, but who knows? Maybe they'd have ten bucks a year to be included in your list of places to earn in-game points.

If you ask players to post a few pictures of clouds or identify some sea stars in a picture for a few minutes a week in exchange for a personalized weapon, or the ability to edit your avatar, or even the ability to get a building in which you will not be attacked for a week (great for vacations!), maybe they'd do it. Plus, there's that feel-good vibe from doing something positive in the world that you don't get from clicking through the same ad for Final Fantasy XXXXVIII every three minutes.

Before bringing this up with you, I emailed Chandra Clark of the Citizen Science Center to ask if this is an idea worth pursuing. She suggested getting in touch with individual projects at Zooniverse to see if such a thing would be feasible, as some projects do have issues with recruitment and turnover. I'll forward you the email exchange if you are interested.

Anyway, if the ads don't turn out to be quite as profitable as you hoped, there's at least one alternative that hasn't been tried before.

[timothymtorres]

I had given some thought to map design too. If there's one useful suggestion in all of this, it would be to use as little text as possible to convey important information, especially for players on a mobile device. Q19 had plenty of players whose native language was not English; that's just an extra barrier to entry. Color and symbols are more efficient anyway.

This is something that I already realized and was transitioning to. Communicating all the game data to graphics is a much more efficient way to communicate, and appeals to lots of players. (not everyone likes text descriptions, lol)

The late lamented game Zombie Pandemic had a pretty elegant solution to the map problem: two maps. Zoom in to move your character and perform actions in one building. Zoom out to do what the metamap does.

Wow. This is a really good idea and solves a few problems for my UI. Definitely going to implement this.

Icons stuff

While I am going to be using more higher resolution sprites, I would try to communicate barricade/power information in the sprite color somehow.

If the map is zoomed all the way out, the icons change to the simplest form.

This is pretty smart. I'll look into doing this.

Could you put in a Cree face somewhere?

Haha, I'm sure I can slip this into the game discreetly. -____-

---

I have examined different possibilities for funding regarding monetization. The options I have come up with are:

In-App Ads (measured in eCPM, Cost-Per-Mile) [ie. 1,000 views]

• In game ads (only displayed when AP is used up)
• Ad free purchasable mode

In-Add Purchases

• Naming rights to character
• Naming rights to buildings/tiles
• In game cosmetic store for clothing and (harmless) weapons (attacking with a hug, banhammer, etc. that does no damage)
• Charge money for alts (limited to only a few)

There would be virtual tokens that a player could earn by surviving x days. They could use this to purchase cosmetic items. All other purchasable items would be restricted to being bought with real money.

[RedDustBowl]

I definitely approve of the ads, especially for a few more AP. There were times that I stayed up late to get into a building and not die on the street. Not only would I have sat through a graphic ad for a protologist to get into that damn building, I would have seriously wavered about sitting through a proctologist's exam. My only concern comes from the stuff I had been reading about the amount of money ads generate, stuff like this.

Naming rights to tiles would be useful, but there's going to be a finite number within the city, especially if not all the map gets used until the population expands. I'm more enthusiastic about costume purchases, maybe even the right to edit your own sprite and upload the result?

The harmless weapons for humans served a purpose in Q19. Before injecting a zombie for resurrection, they had to be below 10 hp, and not every zombie put their most recent hp in their character description. Hitting with a harmless weapon gave a message like "You hit Grayface McGee with your Yo-Yo for 0 points of damage. Grayface McGee has 14 hp," or something like that. It would tell you the hit points without killing them and making them blow ap to stand up again. If that would be useful within your game's mechanics, it would be unfair to ask players to pay for it. If it bears no relevance to the game mechanics, I'm not sure it would be a popular purchase.

There's something that doesn't quite sit right about charging to rename your character or make an alt. Because games in the past have given that away for free, there's an impression of nickel-and-diming players to access enough of the game to be worth playing. Paying for unlimited server hits might go over better, especially for players who like to hunt by refreshing the screen every minute or two.

Speaking personally, when I buy something from a game, I like it to be permanent, at least through the end of the round. There may be people out there who don't mind buying a gun for $.99 and watch it get used up in a day or two, but that would piss me off to no small extent. The game needs to be playable (and winnable) without purchases, but if players want added benefits or convenience, that should be payed for.

One problem Q19 had with its payment system was that longstanding players paid once, then kept using the services. The Undeadites group, for instance, paid to form once and just kept adding members. There was no point to making a new group when a kick-ass one already existed that would add you for free. There's got to be a way of getting money from the same people month after month (or at least round after round) without annoying them.

My suggestions along those lines:

1. Group dues. Like Q19, forming a clan larger than 20 (or whatever) people should require money. Q19 also let only paid groups invite new people that were not in the same physical place on the map as the person who issued the invitation. If there were a way of paying dues every round for a group to stay together (even just a quota of watching x number of ads, with a counter to see how the group as a whole is doing), that might be a way to incentivize people to spend a bit of cash or time watching ads.

2. Customized weapon and radio. The biggest pain in the backside at the start of the game for the human side was the choice between reinforcing doors and the need to find all the tools at the beginning-- the wheelbarrow, backpack and whatever the third carrying thing was, the crowbar or axe, and the radio, much less the disposable stuff like vials and medkits. Paying a small price to get the baggage, the weapon, and the radio at the beginning is not game-breaking and could prove popular. I would suggest allowing a short custom description of the items, and if the human character dies, any newly made character would keep the stuff through the end of the round. One payment per round maximum-- if I died instantly and lost it all on my first day, I would definitely rage quit and might even dispute the charge on my credit card if I were annoyed enough. More trouble than it's worth, I'm sure. I don't have a good equivalent for the zombie players, unless it's an extra level of skills or a special attack. Paying zombies grow a prehensile tail? I dunno.

3. Add extra text in journal form, maybe even side quests, for an extra payment, Everyone, even zombies, should have a journal space for in-game events that can be checked whenever the player wants (as opposed to a wall of text dropping in the middle of a fight or something. Check at leisure. It would just describe what happened at that moment, before the fight happened.) Suppose upon entering a building, you get a little notification along the lines of "Ping! Journal has been updated!" You take care of business, then read a little story in your journal about what happened when you walked into the building. These could be one-off anecdotes, short text adventures with choices, maybe even a few side quests. I would suggest giving the player a choice of how often they wanted to see repeat text, either "turn off repeats" or "just keep it random."

Small sample (with a little shout-out to fans of Resident Evil 2):

As you walk into the abandoned police station, you absentmindedly pick a tourist pamphlet out of a wall rack in the foyer. It is an informational brochure about the history of the building in which you stand. You open the pamphlet and glance at a random paragraph inside.

" . . . rejection of the concept of the open office in favor of the puzzle-based work space. The architecture of the Townnameville Police Station is reminiscent of his earlier work in Raccoon City, especially his award-winning design for the Raccoon City Police Department. Every trip to the Townnameville Police Station evidence locker required moving fourteen separate blocks shaped like chess pieces, while a trip to the bathroom without inserting twelve jeweled keys in a specific order triggered an avalanche of venomous snakes."

Snakes?!? You look around, scan the ceiling for trapdoors, then continue reading.

"The Townnameville Police Station was completely gutted and renovated within six weeks of its original opening after an unfortunate incident involving mirrors, lasers, a flamethrower and a temp who tried to find more typewriter ribbons in the supply cabinet. Recent attempts to restore the structure to the architect's original vision have been met with resistance from the staff."

You crumple the pamphlet into a ball and throw it to the floor.

4. Speaking of journal entries, remember the Quarantine 19 custom taunt? What if people could pay to insert a special kill paragraph into the journal of the person they just maimed or killed? Maybe even an image or a GIF or an audio file, should they so desire? Nothing NSFW, of course, just a slightly advanced form of taunt. Ideally, the killed player would be inspired to buy a taunt paragraph for themselves and get a bit of revenge.