First I would like to say “kick @$$” for this idea finally coming to someone who can do something…like make it. I have put my application in at “Undead Labs”, and wait anxiously. Until then I have had plans for a similar game, and since many of the others have decided to share ideas please let me do the same.
My plan was to infect 3 cities in the US, New York area, Texas area, and California. All of these have a coast to help limit the borders. Realistically the second 2 would be expansions or something.
The game starts with either a quick character or you can build your own through a series of questions about the players themselves. Basics at first, how old?, sex?,race?,height?,weight? Then more personal questions like music you enjoy, job, recreational activities.
Answers to these questions would allow the program of the game to build a character, and the character would end up having very similar characteristics to the player. Every starting stat, from shooting a gun to growing vegetables will be governed by these questions. Want to learn a new skill in-game?, spend a good deal of time with someone who already has that skill. The higher their skill is the faster you will learn.
I agree with the multi-server thing so u can start a character anytime.
I agree with realistic carrying weight.
Safety zones are certainly required, 2 or 3. These zones would be a %100 safety area. This means that the military has gunners or just guns all around the outside of the safety area. Military also lines the edge of the border of the entire infected area. (no one in or out) A player can come here and log out for the morning, and know for certain that their character will be there when they wake up at noon. If you try to log off and you are not in the safe zone you will be given a “chance to make it through the night” percentage. The player could fortify an area to up the percentage. Fortifying could be as simple as stepping into a broom closet and locking the door, or as complicated as building a new safe zone. Player made safe zones, such as malls or stores could exist, but would never have a %100 safety rating, but they could get as high as 95% if the traffic was high enough. (Starwars Galaxies players could run their own city, this would be lots of players creating a small community). In game made safe zones programing dictates no one can draw a weapon, ANYWHERE else there can be player vs player kills. The drawback to this would be “KARMA” the sliding scale of good and evil that we all live on. It affects the outcomes of almost every action in the game. The more good karma you have the more likely it is for you to find things that you need when you search for them or lucky things will happen to you in times of need, like gunfights. The more bad karma you have.. even if you find the things you need they may be busted or rotten making them much less useful, just cause you’re a jerk. On the subject of being a jerk, if you just cant help but line up every poor guy in your scoped sniper rifle, and you dont mind the bad karma, get together with some other friends who are all jerks and go raid the player made safe zones. Or raid the NPC military guarded medical supply trucks that travel, once a week, between the safe zones and the outer edge. How else are you going to eat?
So potentially you could create your own safe haven with lots of friends, or start a biker gang powerful enough to keep programed safe zones from getting their supplies, this causes the zones to have less food and bullets to give out, this pisses off the good karma players and causes them to hunt the player controlled biker gang.
Players collect stuff. Its what we do. We are saving it for something or another, and when a zombie bites you out in the thick of the urban survival, that stuff should stay with you..or your corpse. So if a friend, or enemy, or your next character sees your zombiefied self walking around he can remember you raided a vending machine and you have bags of snacks in your backpack, which your zombie self is still wearing. When i say next character, if you get bitten or scratched just once by the infected, you turn. No doubt about it. Depending on the severity of the infection,(unless you get completely eaten) it may take between 1 hour of in-game time and a in-game day. You could have time to stash your things somewhere, or take them to a friend. Playing as a zombie is something i dabbled with but no decision has been made. If you were to play as a zombie, you would get very little choice on what you did. The zombie would be programmed to move as fast as possible toward the nearest human. Basically the player could only watch (for as long as they continued to be log in) as their former self try to eat their friends.
{That’s kinda what i imagine it to be like as a zombie, you can see whats going on, but can do nothing to stop your horrible actions}
There would be FPS view for your basic aiming,and a 3rd person view for sneaking like in splinter cell. Avoiding the zombies would usually be smarter than trying to kill them all the time, so sneaking would be pretty important. But not everyone is good at aiming and sneaking, it depends on the job and recreations. I’m planning for this game to have a very large amount of players per server almost WOW amount. The game itself would come with special headphones that have 3 speakers per ear. This is for characters to be able to sneak around and hear the zombies well and actually be able to tell where it might be coming from. Allowing for the sound designers to play with the idea of tricking the players with echoing sounds. It will also be used to secretly listen to other peoples conversations better or worse depending on how their own character is facing, or make it harder to hear if the wind is blowing right in your ear. A whisper button would be needed so that the actual player doesn’t actually have to whisper into a microphone.
Leveling a character may not be something I play with, if i do, it will not be something that the player could see in his stats, more just something that would happen from continual usage. For instance, most of us gamers would shoot like a stormtrooper ( if we were able to find a gun at the start of the game) but the more you used that gun the more accurate you get. Also the more you use the run button the less quickly you would get fatigued. On that note, everyone should be able to use a gun or kick in a door, but some are far more superior. If your not good at kicking in doors, hack at it with the ax or crowbar or whatever you found. Or maybe you got lucky and found a shotgun, shoot the thing open, depending on the kind of bullets in the gun, it might actually do some damage. Starting a 45 year old character they would naturally be better than a 17 year old character with the same traits, he has been using those abilities for a longer time. But he is older, and will not be able to do certain things, like run for as long or climb up onto things as easily. When the older man crouches his knees will pop adding percentage to the zombie finding him.
Zombies, however, don’t get fatigued. There will be different kinds of zombies in the aspect that some are more decayed or in less good shape than others, therefor they are slower.

Now on to the fun stuff. I would like to contact Max Brooks in order to modify his “zombie survival guide” and use it for a players handbook. Contacting people like Bruce Campbell, Tom Savini, Rob Zombie, maybe even Mr. George Romero himself and offering them specially made playable characters. Giving them special stuff or special missions to give to the players they meet(the death rule may have to be broken for special guest players. special guest players would be announced, on the website, to be playing during certain hours, but they wouldn’t be told where. Along with all the normal things you see in a games site, new, updates, screenshots, the site would also have a “myspace” style area that lets people see who the longest running character is, who has killed the most infected, the most UN-infected…. and allow them to get to journal their findings if they like as well as get to know each other and set up plans as a group. This part is very important, the “myspace” aspect alone will draw people to the game. Another very important thing is product placement, the more actual name brands we can use the more real the game will feel, and they might even give money!

Thanks for reading.
PooFler

Perhaps there could be some undead NPC that can think, so that the zombie players can get their quests. As for the living it will be easy, the generals in the safe bases and others can give quests, like “Gather me this supply, or temporarily clear this area”.

I know that ressuracting as a zombie if you’re killed might sound more logical, but this would just piss off most players, so I doubt it. + it woukd be unfair for the undead, since they can’r stay dead for too long.

PVP, oh well that’s obvious, open fight zombies vs. humans.

As for leveling and powering up, well it’s easy for humans, you get faster, you can perhaps unlock door, gain access to places to ehich lower lvl players can’t etc… As fot the zombies, perhaps the more humans they kill (not nessecairly player, NPCs are ok) they can lvl up. While they cannot develop skills similar to humans’, they can grow tenctacles and stuff, unlocking new skills. Ever played resident evil 5? You’ll understand what I mean with the tenctacles.

Oh well, I look forward to playing it, sure sound fun, even if they haven’t even bothered giving us the slightest bit of details.