NOMBZ ONLINE Roadmap (The What The Future Holds Post)

[Bren]

Hello all!

I’m taking a moment to catch my breath following the major update after the first two weeks of our open beta!

First, thank you to everyone who has checked out the game and provided comments and suggestions. Although these forums have been pretty quiet, there has been very valuable feedback on other sites where news of NOMBZ ONLINE’s beta release have been posted, including Evil Avatar and Undead Games. There’s been a lot of constructive criticism (which is great!) and encouraging praise (which is also great!).

Most people lament the lean feature set and lack of content at the moment, which is absolutely true. PowerUp is a very small studio, and we are taking baby steps in an effort to make sure we get it right, while keeping the scope of the game under control. Still, we do have big plans for the future, so I wanted to write up a post that will give you an idea where we, the developers, want to take NOMBZ ONLINE. We want to make NOMBZ ONLINE the very best free 3D browser-based zombie game on the web!

That said, first and foremost, we want to make a game that YOU want to play, so we are very interested in hearing your suggestions and opinions! And don’t confine the discussion to response to our ideas, we want to hear things we haven’t thought of. So feel free to blue sky!

I am also very interested in what you think the priority of these various elements should be.

So, with that preamble out of the way, here’s the Big List of Ideas for the Future of NOMBZ ONLINE!

The main area that will be my focus in February is PLAYER PROFILES AND PROGRESSION, which I plan to accomplish by tying the game into a PHP-driven backend. This is a big priority for me, and will open the door for things like Leaderboards & Accomplishments, player development, character customization, skill improvement, and other good stuff like that. The current Alpha Male/Alpha Female choice of player avatars from the main menu, and the saving of single player progress, is only a token nod in that direction. For example, I want you to be able to spend earned skill points to improve and upgrade your character and weapons, and give sort of an RPG-lite flavor to the game. My goal is to tie your in-game character(s) to your web site profile, so people can see your characters, scores, and achievements from your board profile, etc. This will be a huge task, and will probably be a bumpy ride in terms of occasional character wipes, lost save data, etc, so bear with me! Not to mention, usernames will be unique, so if you have a favorite handle, register now while it’s still available!

Many people have commented on the lack of WEAPONS in the game. There just isn’t much gameplay there, and that’s true! However, now that we have the core gameplay element of running from A to B killing zombies in, we can begin to experiment with other weapons. NOMBZ PC had a variety of weapons and characters in addition to the gun/tire iron character, such as a Cop with a shotgun and taser, a Lumberjack with chainsaw and molotov, a Nurse who could heal and buff, and a Mailman with a SMG and letter bomb. Natch, I’d love to get all of these weapons and items in, and more! (You didn’t hear it from me, but I already have an SMG and hand grenade implemented, it’s just a matter of how these items should be deployed.) In order to make sure I don’t put the cart in front of the horse, the whole profile & progression thing should be in before I start introducing new weapons/items/abilities and the like.

Others have mentioned the lack of OBJECTIVES beyond running to the exit, and this is part of the current lean core feature set. Yes, we need variation in gameplay, for sure! (Again, you didn’t hear it from me, but I have prototyped a pretty cool “arena” style defend-against-waves-of-zombies game mode that’s really fun… but again, horse, cart, etc.) NOMBZ PC ended with a “defend the helicopter for 5 minutes” scenario that was a nice break from the A-to-B model. There are lots of great “side missions” that could be done during a zombie apocalypse. Find your wife, and escort her out of the level! Defend the police station! Sterilize the area of all zombies! And natch, accomplishing these optional objectives will be a great way to earn skill points. All these ideas are on the whiteboard. Do you have any to add?

One thing I have always been interested in adding to NOMBZ has been the idea of PROCEDURAL LEVEL GENERATION, or basically, randomly generated maps. Designed levels are great, and often the best way to accomplish a given gameplay goal, but the idea of letting the computer create the level, and never really knowing what you’re going to be thrown into, is really cool. Not to mention, procedural level generation ties in really, really well with the next idea…

Another element that I think could be very cool and add a lot to gameplay, is the idea of running an INFECTION SIMULATION. I’m a huge fan of Kevan Davis’ Zombie Infection Simulator and its derivatives, and would love to see something like this running in NOMBZ ONLINE. In essence, you would be plopped down in a city full of civilian AIs and a small number of zombies, which would then run around killing civilians and creating more zombies. (The last thing you didn’t hear from me is that we have prototyped this idea with very encouraging results…) Of course, there are implications with a feature like this. Running a large-scale simulation in a real-time 3D environment is very demanding in terms of computing power. There are gameplay issues as well. For example, you will often start off in a part of the city where nothing much is happening, and spend several minutes just trying to find some action. But these things can be surmounted. I’ve picked up a few tricks over the years to improve performance. And there are ways of guiding a player towards the action, like for example, a huge smoke plume from an infection-laden asteroid rising from the centre of the city…

I guess this brings me to the end of a massive post (whew!), and you have an idea what our plans are. So, now it’s your turn! I’d really like to hear your feedback, comments, suggestions, love, hate, whatever! What do you think the priority should be? Are you more interested in some ideas than others? Do you have any killer idea that hasn’t been mentioned here? Whatever it is, I’d like to hear it.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the zombie apocalypse!

Bren

[ubersenses]

Clay is making a pile of money with his own music video network --> http://www.madrapvideos.com

Clay misses lunches in Vancouver with the Nombz Crew... I am surprised to see you guys still working on this game! What happened to blood butchers block?

I see your going for an Adsense Money approach with the online thing... funny because that's basically what I"m doing with the Music Videos website, making revenue from Adsense and Clickbank Sales.

Anyways its trippy posting here after literally disapearing there under rough circumstances...

I now live on Salt Spring Island.

[Bren]

Hiya Clay, nice to see you drop by!

We were sorry to see you go. You did good work for us, and I'm happy things are going well for you now. I wish you continued success with your site -- it looks great!

Yep, we are still plugging away on NOMBZ. Progress has been slow on the web game for the last month, as we are cooking up yet another addition to the NOMBZ universe, soon to be unveiled. Watch this space!

Blood (the movie) is still in post-production, so the game is waiting on that. One of these days...

SSI is beautiful. A good friend/colleague of mine lives there, and I leap at any opportunity to visit. I'll be there in early April, actually. If the timing works out, maybe we can get together.

[Franck]

Hello, i don't know if I can post here or if I have to do another thread, so please apologize me if i'm wrong n__n


I've played to NOMBZ and I saw some things that can be changed

- first i play on a AZERTY keyboard, so moving the character can be tricky, and if I play with the directionnal keys, my right SHIFT doesn't work to run

- I find the game very dark, I know it's for the atmoshpere, but sometimes I just can't see dark zombies ahead of the street

- I would love to play the game in full screen

- some people have problems with the right click, who open windows during the game, even with the mouse lock, I think it can be a good idea to assignate a fire key and a melee key on the keyboard

- an eventually, while you are maybe developping in this way, level design is always really orthogonal, it can be more fun to play levels with larges avenues, little streets, road who draws curves, wide open space a little narrow corridors


Of course, it will be fun to have the more types of gameplays, of weapons, characters, zombies... but you already know it.

In any case, I take a lot of fun on NOMBZ, and I patiently wait for updates !

[Franck]

Oh yeah, and it can be great if we can put the music off

[Franck]

Somes ideas :

- different levels of difficulty

- it can be annoying wen you know fast zombies that you've just push down (sometimes several times) will stand up in your back

- Paradoxally, it can be great if sometimes, zombies spawn in your back (but in big groups, to force players fighting on 2 fronts)

- sometimes, it takes a lot of try to headshot a zombie, it can be great if they can definitively die after a few downs

- if precision decrease while runing, it may be more fun when you face a lot of zombies, as you'll have to remain static to shoot them efficiently

- apart from "the strip", levels are very long. It can be interesting to have shorter levels.

- it can be great to have to defend the end circle against a final zombie rush

- the melee attack could push the zombies away

- i'd love a level in a commercial center

[Knightkrawler]

Just found your game and it's got me really excited - especially reading your future road map. I've thought often about running the Zombie Infection Simulation in an environment like the one you've created. When I first saw it a couple years ago I was thinking how awesome it would be to run on google maps (someone's doing that now). Then when Unity was released with a free license and seeing the Procedural City Engine, Suicidator City Builder plugin(Blender) and the Building Generator script for 3dsMax I figured someone somewhere would finally come along and put it all together. There's a boardgame called Zombies!!! that I always thought would be a great adaptation as well (each game map is constructed using tiles) - each tile has a location and set numbers of zombie population/powerups, but each game is different because the players lay tiles as play progresses.

Suggestions for gameplay:

1 - Single hit knockdown with melee weapon of first zombie it connects with.
2 - Finishing move with melee weapon when standing over a downed zombie.
3 - Instead of all zombies automatically attracted to the players(non-infected civilian AI's if you get the Zombie Infection Simulation running) - have zombies randomly moving until they "see" a target, and when they see that target they can "call"(moan) any other zombies within hearing distance. Zombies that heard will go to the last location they heard called out or head to the nearest new calling. This could add a bit of stealth play mechanics.

[Knightkrawler]

BTW - here's a great discussion of the development of a procedurally generated city - http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2940