Thread: Game idea

I have a game idea that I want some opinions on. I don't have it finished, but it would be nice for some CONSTRUCTIVE criticism and helpful opinions.

Basic Info: It's a cross between Borderlands, Fallout, and Left 4 Dead. Borderlands and Fallout in the sense that you can level up get new abilities, it would have many giant maps, and there would be lots of guns. Left 4 Dead in the sense that there's a lot of zombies and it’s a zombie apocalypse. Basically there's been a zombie outbreak going on for a few months, some are immune, and you've been in an underground military hospital after being infected for the past three months, but you were immunized. The infection gets to the hospital and those that aren't immunized are infected and roaming the halls. You start of in a hospital room being helped by a mysterious group of people wearing gas masks. If you're doing 4 player co op then you all wake up in separate rooms and meet up after a while. This game will be constant free roam like borderlands and fallout, but the characters will have back stories, and instead of certain people have certain specialties, it's loadouts that you can switch when you get to safe havens. There would also be cut scenes and in depth dialogue between the characters so you grow attached to the characters


Weapons: Weapons would be like in borderlands with a few key differences. There would be a lot of different weapons, but a limited number of weapons. Another thing is that some weapons are rare. You can't just go anywhere and find a light machine gun or a grenade launcher. They can be found, but they are rare. Same goes for ammo; you can't just go anywhere and find light machine gun ammo or assault rifle ammo. It can be found on dead soldier’s bodies or sometimes dead scavengers. There are heavy weapons (light machine guns, grenade launchers and the occasional extremely rare rocket launcher), light weapons (rifles, side arms, and sub machine guns), support weapons (shotguns, carbines), melee weapons, explosives, unorthodox/improvised, and mounted weapons. Unorthodox and improvised weapons are weapons that you created using the engineer skills. It's made up of things like home made flame throwers and improvised grenade launchers and the shrapnel gun, a homemade shotgun. Mounted weapons could be carried but could not be fired and would severely slow you down. They are meant for fortifying safe havens (to be continued)


Tidbits: The maps would be big and houses would be preset random, which means there are areas specified for them to spawn, but they switch where they spawn everyday in the game. The game has a time system, so there's night and day. When they respawn that resets their locations and the loot in them. Loot is random, and usually in the appropriate area for it, like shotguns and rifles in gun cases, bottles in the kitchens, hoses in garages, things like that. Another thing is that some houses have generators and security systems, and setting them off will cause zombies to surround the house, or sometimes if you have night vision goggles and they are on you might see a ghost, something that would be put in at appropriate amounts for appropriate situations, and they might go up to something like a TV or a radio and turn it on, which would alert zombies to your presence. You can barricade doors and windows if you have certain things like if you’re carrying a nail gun as a weapon, or you could set traps up. Traps are made at work benches which can sometimes be found in the garages of houses, or at every single safe haven. Houses can be blown up, usually by finding a gas valve and cutting it. After doing that you leave the house (or maybe if you wanna be a hero and save your team stay in the house) and throw some sort of fire and throw it into the house, but it will take away for it to explode if enough time hasn't passed in between the gas line being cut and you throwing the fire, or you could use you engineering skill to create a small powder charge you trigger like an IED, giving the zombies less time to get to you before it explodes. Another way to remove a house is fire. If some sort of fire is caused in an area of the house then the entire house will start to go up in flames unless you have some way of putting it out like a fire extinguisher. If it is not put out, you will only have a while to finish scavenging before the house burns to the entire house is in flames and you start taking damage and parts of the house start falling apart(to be continued)


Vehicles: vehicles can be found in garages sometimes, and can be fitted with certain things, or found with attachments already fitted. You can outfit any vehicle with scrap metal armor, plows, reinforced tires, and specialty attachments like chainsaws sticking out of the side of the vehicle, or a mounted weapon in the back of a truck. Not all special attachments can go on every vehicle, and no mounted weapons have infinite ammo, unless it's a part of a certain mission like helping the military, you must find ammo in military bases or on other vehicles with mounted weapons. Vehicles do require fuel and must be repaired if broken. Safe havens have garages and if you put a vehicle in a garage it will be at any safe haven, but can be lost. Replacement vehicles can be bought, which means if you lose a certain vehicle you will have a back up one waiting for you, but you will lose all special attachments and must be refueled, and another replacement vehicle must be bought if you want another vehicle waiting for you if you lose this one. Vehicles can be pushed if they run out of gas (to be continued)


Safe havens: safe havens are where you go to receive missions, store loot, sell and buy things, use work benches and other things. Safe havens can start out in a variety of ways, their population and size is random for misc safe havens, but some are preset due to their role in the story line. Their size and population determines things like shops and mechanics and infirmaries. The larger the population, the bigger the safe haven, the more diverse shops and items the shops have is. Populations are based on a few things: zombies in the general area, how the people are armed, and how you react with the safe haven. If you shoot the place up and loot everything they will be small and very few shops. If you do a lot of survivor rescue missions for them and succeed they will be large and prosper. Another thing about safe havens is that later on in the game after you gain enough fame, money, and guns you can form your own safe haven, get supplies, equipment, and money from it. It would require smaller missions beforehand like escorting hired engineers to a build site and they slowly build as you defend, or you can hire guards to do this which takes more money but ensures it'll be done. After 5 of those missions, you must bring 20 survivors there, set up scavenging parties, guard patrols and arm them both, and as you form a larger safe haven you'll get more and more supplies from the safe haven. You'll also receive a discount on everything there, but nothings free, but it might cause some nice little perks for you, like no longer having to supple your guards and scavenging parties with certain ammo. The larger the safe haven the better types of ammo they can use for free. Same for first aid and vehicles (to be continued)


Scavenging: Scavenging items works in many ways. It could be from a cupboard to a drawer to a dead body. A dead body would require holding a button for a couple of seconds, while other objects like cupboards and drawers just require you to open them and pick up what you choose. Sometimes things can be taken from dead bodies without holding the button, like a sidearm or a bandolier of ammo. Gasoline can be siphoned with a hose and any container that isn't full, like a glass bottle or a real gas can. Cars can be searched by opening their doors. Some cars are locked, and can be broken into by picking the lock or smashing the window. Smashing the window will cause an alarm to go off, which alerts zombies. Zombies can be searched for items once dead, well more dead anyways, and sometimes have good items on them depending on what they were before dying, which can be determined by their clothes usually. A business man will always give you more than a homeless man in rags (to be continued)


Neat ideas: Side quests will sometimes be trivial repetitive things without back-story sometimes, but many will have some incredible back stories, like one I recently dreamed up. A quest will turn up after a while from a man sitting near an open manhole and a cage with some bear traps. He will offer you large amounts of money and supplies to do some missions for him. He'll first need you to trap and cage 10 common infected, which will require using the bear traps. The next one would be a bit more difficult, he'll need you to bring back 2 of each special infected, of which I would like to have 12 varieties of. So overall that would be 24 zombies. After that, he will have you follow him into the sewers(not as bad an idea as it sounds) where you will end up watching a cut scene of you and your crew walking down a smelly hallway leading to what appears to be a makeshift gladiator arena. The zombies you captured were for some fights people are paying top dollar to watch, which will help this person set up an entire staff base to help him wrangle up some undead, making this a fully fledged zombie arena. You can bet on the arena and even fight in it, which will be you with just a knife taking on a steadily increasing horde until you get knocked down, which is when the "refs"(large men with equally large guns) step in and break it up. You will earn money and supplies depending on how long you lasted, and on the bodies of the zombies too, as they have had supplies to help you in the tournament like bigger melee weapons taped to their bodies, so you'll see something like a zombie with a chainsaw on (or in) his chest, or a zombie with a pistol on its back, giving you a fight chance as the amount of zombies increase. (To be continued)


Infected: Normal infected: Fast guys that will vary in appearance from time to time, usually based on their location but sometimes you'll see one that’s kinda wacky for where it is because zombies wander around (a zombie in a Burger King outfit wandering around in an office building). The loot you find on them can also be determined by what their wearing, like homeless people with either nothing or some parts used to make some things like scrap metal for scrap metal vehicle armor or general repair. Draw you in infected (NEED BETTER NAME!): This can be called a Smoker rip off, and I will admit that's kind of what it is but that's not what I did. It's basically the same concept, an infected that draws you in via some weird long distance tentacle things, but I can explain these. It's an infected whose stomach acid has reacted to the infection by becoming more acidic and dissolving through their stomach and their bellies. They use their intestinal track to catch you and drag you in. When you are right in on them the acid will start doing a lot of damage. Luckily, you can use your knife to cut your way out of his bindings using or be saved by a teammate. Brute: An extra buff and fast infected that can take large amounts of damage, and can dish out a lot too. They can get you in a real-time event (button masher) where they hold to the ground and mound on you, and will also throw things from the surrounding area at you. They cause a certain type of damage that most infected do, but that’s all they do, its bruising damage. It's damage that heals over time by itself but he does a large amount to you. Keep in mind if you're going to call this a left 4 dead rip-off keep in mind there was another game before them with this idea, and one before that, and one before that. The snatcher: Grabs survivor and runs away carrying them with its freakishly long arms, holding them above their head but staying low to the ground so that normal infected can get them. Zombie dogs: CLICHE ALERT! Zombie dogs are what their name implies, and have different sub-types, so beware the zombie ankle biter! The screamer: The screamer is an infected thats vocal cords have become longer and in result can produce an extremely high pitch scream that alerts other zombies and disorients the survivors. The tumor: these are kind of sad infected. These are cancer patients whose tumors were affected by the virus by becoming explosive. They'll have an entire leg arm, or even their head covered in a disgusting red pulsation that explodes when hit hard enough by something, like them slamming it into you.


The Characters (how they work): These characters I have in mind are based off of 8 people who know each other. I will have their actual interactions together and have that as their dialogue in the game. The reason there are 8 playable characters but only 4 playing at a time is because you grow more attached to the four in the game and also because they all have different natural abilities and enhancements, like my friend Bill who has worked as a prison guard and at a mental institution would have an enhancement called Experienced, which means he is more accurate and does more damage to the zombies as he has experience with brainless idiots running toward him with no idea with what they're going to do once they get to him, and I'm yet to think of his ability yet, which is basically something he does passively like running faster or being able to see very well in the dark naturally(already being used). Another thing is that some people have overlapping interactions, like for instance two people might have interactions together, but if a character who is closer to that character is a computer or player will have dialogue done over the other characters dialogue. I believe this is an innovative and do-able idea



Classes: Hunter, Weapons specialist, Scavenger, Engineer, Tank, Stealth/Ninja/Assassin (debating names).

Let's beta test it? When will you have it ready?

It's actually more of an idea in progress but I was talking to THQ for a while but they passed it up do to the release of Dead Island and said it would be too soon to start working on a free roam zombie game after the announcement for it. That made me kind of mad, but I can see what they were getting at. They don't want to look like copiers. Currently I want to get the skeleton and organs of the idea in place, and work on the flesh with a major game company, preferably EA because their new Frostbite 2.0 engine is exactly what I would need. I want you guys to help me with ideas. I have a lot of things I still need to add to the above that I already know but I really want ideas. Infected ideas would help a lot because I need like 10 more special infected.

I think that this sounds like a great game idea. Let us all know when you get it completed.

Well I'm thinking about it all the time and have a lot of the ideas in my head still but not written down, and it's more that I don't have the time than I don't feel like doing it, and also I've tapped out the resources around me for ideas and I'm mainly using my own imagination to put it together, and simply bounce ideas off of the people around me and get their opinions on my ideas rather than getting opinions for it in general. I would really like if the people who post here to give me some opinions. I've got the characters mapped out and everything but I still need to get more of the systems of how the gameplay is mapped out. I know this game has potential because I talked to THQ for a while but after the announcement trailer for dead island came out they immediately backed off to avoid looking like they copied the ideas, so I'm hoping to grab EA's attention next, but I'll need A LOT of it finished to do that.

Very well thought out game. I like all the details. The idea of scavenging in a game appeals to me.