Left 4 Dead is a potential for best zombie game ever...it has everything i want.

Funny you should talk about that, my brother came up with a idea for a zombie game that sounds like what you just said Windexglow. here is the linkWWW Link. It does have some spelling errores so bear with it

I'd like to see a game that incorporates The Walking Dead into it's plot. What exactly I mean by that, I'm not totally sure of, but you should definitely read The Walking Dead. Social commentary perhaps?

And Left 4 Dead looks amazing to me. The team based survival is a much better idea than one person against unsurmountable odds (i.e. get big guns and lots of ammo to survive). Left 4 Dead makes you care about your mates because if one dies, you're pretty much dead too.

Now, taking a village of people standing against a horde would absolutely have to involve character interactions. Otherwise I'd just feed everyone else to the Zombies.

Brains! BRAINS!!!!!! brainnnnsssssss!!!!!!

Left 4 Dead does sound like it really stays true to the spirit of zombie horror.

My ideal zombie game would try to capture the horror, desperation, and social commentary of the genre. Art direction would be extremely important: I need to feel like I'm wandering the empty husk of an abandoned world, and I want to be reminded that these grotesque monsters used to be my neighbors and friends.

The point of zombie horror isn't really the zombies- its how living humans behave when the social order breaks down and they become desperate. Desperate humans without rules- thats even scarier than zombies. So, there would have to be strong role-playing elements. A big part of the game would be managing relationships with other people in order to survive. Like the Left 4 Dead tagline says: fight together or die alone. Sooner or later, you'd run into some people who will lie to you, try to take advantage of you, or even outright harm or try to kill you for various reasons.

There wouldn't be much of mowing down zombies, either. Its really hard to shoot a moving target in the head (zombies shamble, wobbling back and forth), especially if you're not trained to use a handgun. Even if you got explosives or an automatic weapon (many cities have armed forces bases, and the police always have MP5s stored somewhere), you're going to have limited ammo. Guns jam and break down in combat as well. A realistic melee combat system would be needed- some lucky zombie is going within arm's length of you sooner or later.

You'd have to worry about food, water, tools, proper rest, shelter from zombies and the elements, medical supplies (and knowledge), finding other survivors, etc. You get tired if you run too long, zombies don't. Injuries can severely reduce mobility, or even get infected and lead to death. Rotten food can lead to food poisoning. The list of dangers and worries goes on and on...

The biggest advantage people have over zombies is being smart and creative. Interactive scenery to represent the various uses of tools and what not would be great- welding sheet metal over car windows, fortifying a home by removing a hallway door and nailing it to the front door, digging a pit in your yard and filling it with flammable oil as a trap, or sharpening a farm tool to use as a makeshift melee weapon. All you need to make chain mail is metal twine, a wooden dowel and a lot of patience. Of course, chain mail is very heavy and hot when you're running from the undead...

Have a somewhat sort of "cache" Of ammo. If it's going to be a -shooter with limited ammo and needs to be wise- kind of game.

If not, then have so you have good fall-back defenses, or just defenses that prevent them from hitting you first and them hitting like a box or something blocking their path but you can still shoot them. have them all rangers or whatever unit is the human shooter, and have it a hero class. Obviously, you'll be somewhat better at shooting if you shot 100 zombies! Surly you can't get Worse at shooting . Heck, this'll add some very useful abilities, such as an ability to have everyone in a radius shoot faster, run faster, construck obstructions faster,

A self defense melee thingy would be very helpful, such as for saving your sorry-self.

Have it so it's easier with teammates helping you, not nessicarly focus fire though, but like easier to take down zombies; And have it noticiably harder with the lack of a minimum of players ( like 3-4 ), just don't go extream hard.

Capn_danger has nice ideas, and I read, not everyones accurate hitting with a pistol, but since its WC3, Make an increase chance to dodge or miss an attack?

Traps is a very good idea, such as a certain character should be able to lay specific traps, such as slowing an area or someone multi-shooting a volley of like 2, or have an extreamly strong 1 shot kill every 3 minutes. Abilties to make the game more fun and possible. ( since the game of zombies should be realisiticly impossible )

BrAiNZzZzz!!

The Zombie Survival Guide is awesome. I had to put it down several times while reading and remind myself that it was just satire and the zombies weren't really coming.

Then I felt sad, because I was really looking forward to the zombie apocalypse. My first stop is the Scuba Store: all the harpoons and anti shark-bite mesh that I could ever need!

Where's my chain saw? and sawed off shot gun?

B movies though they are, the Evil Dead, ED2, and Army of Darkness were hysterical.

You would absolutely have to include a variety of melee weapons, including some of the less obvious. Croquet mallet, anyone?

And on a more serious note, how would you handle improvised armour? I for one am not going out with less than a coat on (protect the arms from bites) and some kind of football helmet with an added neck guard.
I know that in the movies, the heroes always get bitten and turned. Why would you even consider going out with less than 100% body coverage?

This brings up the encumbrance penalty we all love to hate so much from D&D, but without it, you could carry a ton of armor, weapons, ammo, and food.

And any realistic game is going to have to include vehicles, fuel, spare parts, armoring up said vehicles, raiding the nearest army base for that ever important Bradley mobile home.

I love the idea, but at least consider all aspects before you launch some half-assed version that turns everyone off before you come out with the "full" version.

Nequa; I'm going to check out the Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z tomarrow, thanks for the heads up.

Dax;

Where's my chain saw? and sawed off shot gun?
The game will place more importance over survival than being a Zombie-Fest 2008. However making it the least repetitive as possible is one of the main goals, and item-combining will on the to-do list (Rather low, due to the tremendous amount of work for something like that)

You would absolutely have to include a variety of melee weapons, including some of the less obvious. Croquet mallet, anyone?
As with above, I plan for many types of weapons and many tools to be usable as weapons.
Later updates will allow a greater number of these tools and more weapons to be used.

And on a more serious note, how would you handle improvised armour? I for one am not going out with less than a coat on (protect the arms from bites) and some kind of football helmet with an added neck guard.
I know that in the movies, the heroes always get bitten and turned. Why would you even consider going out with less than 100% body coverage?

Before it was more or less planned that body armor would be the only use; however it would be a great idea to allow improvised armor.
For simplicity, there won't be slots for Head, neck, and other body parts protection. A jacket will help protect from X% of bites.
You bring up a good point I haven't put much thought into; attack types. Bashing, piercing, biting, and others will be the main types of attacks zombies can do.

This brings up the encumbrance penalty we all love to hate so much from D&D, but without it, you could carry a ton of armor, weapons, ammo, and food.
The more you carry the slower you'll be; yes, and your sanity (basically how tired you are) will drop faster. But if you carry alot often, than you'll slowly become stronger and able to carry more.


And any realistic game is going to have to include vehicles, fuel, spare parts, armoring up said vehicles, raiding the nearest army base for that ever important Bradley mobile home.
There will be no vechiles, simply because I don't want to have players parking their cars in their home. Wc3 lacks an effeciant way to control a car without causing lag, even using JASS.
There will be no military or nuclear warhead bases. It's just a small, average American(?) town. Since the military "Swooped through here scattering zombies" a few days earlier, there will be military outposts which might have ammo inside. Nothing major.
On a side note, the game will never reference to anything that can point hte towns location down, it's name, or what country it is in. In fact, the game takes place in a fictional world with modern technologies (allows us to be creative with weapon names and how they work)

I love the idea, but at least consider all aspects before you launch some half-assed version that turns everyone off before you come out with the "full" version.
Hence the reason for this topic eh?

All the stuff here is concept and can easily change.

the toliet? just kidding. I did not do it yet, but I have notice that several of my other articles go over to other stardock sites.

bump