Zombie Invasion mode

[Sick Ness Monster]

I'm sure some people will roll their eyes at this idea, I think it'd work. 

I've always been a big fan of the concept of a zombie invasion mode in SS13 - complete with infection, bites slowly turning you into a zombie, etc. I brought it up in OOC earlier today, and there seemed to be fans of the idea - MBC said that it'd definitely need new sprites, different zombies, etc. I'm pretty shit at spriting, but if this concept were to get some traction I'd certainly be up for trying to do my part. 

The way I see it in my mind at the moment is with one person acting as 'Patient Zero' - a sentient, thinking infected who could begin the spread of the virus wherever they wanted. This person would be asymptomatic, and could subtly infect people somehow? Could also be some kind of virus hivemind, similar to a blob overmind. I think it'd probably need a combination of: 

Zombie mobs: Perhaps summoned out of the ground? Pretty weak, but many of them. Attack by biting, with a % chance to infect someone. Could be summoned by Patient 0 and special infected. Once bitten, players would have a possibility of contracting the virus. It wouldn't definitely kill, but like necrotic degeneration it would kill someone after being in their system for a certain amount of time, rising them as a zombie 10-20 seconds later. 

At the moment, I've been trying to think of how you'd avoid a certain meta coming in with infections: For example, figuring something out so that if you got hit by a mob your fellow players won't just immediately beat the shit out of you and throw you back to the horde. Some kind of benefit to keeping an infected player alive but not zombified? Or perhaps the ability to hide a bite? 

At any rate, players would start as normal zombies, with special bite attacks to spread the virus. Somehow (upgrading, Patient Zero, overmind selection, certain jobs/roles?), they could become special infected - the concepts, naturally, would be completely cribbed from Left 4 Dead. Please consider my lame zombie names placeholders.

Prowler - very fast zombie with a pounce attack - can pin someone and do lots of damage. 
Snatcher - Zombie with a ranged grab. Can shoot the ranged grab through other zombies to specifically grab a human, and drag them back to be devoured.
Digester - Large zombie with acid vomit, similar to mass emesis.
Behemoth - Large, tanky zombie who hits hard. Through walls, maybe? They'd be rare.


The gameplay would be a 'hold the line' mode - once the virus is noticed and begins spreading, the crew has to summon a shuttle, or construct a unique teleporter or something at a specific location. Kinda like nukies! Afterwards, humans would need to gather there in a few minutes to catch the last shuttle outta dodge. As with any good zombie media, you could set up barricades, create safe zones, and presumably learn that, despite the rampaging hordes, humans were the real monsters all along.

Let me know what you think of the basic concept! It's pretty bare at the moment, but as I said, I like the concept and I'm curious as to what others would think of it. If there's something that you reckon could be different to make it sound cooler/more fun, please contribute! I'm no game designer, so there's no doubt a lot that could be improved in terms of the bare bones.

[DJ-Fireball_did_this]

I feel like spawnable zombies defeats the purpose of making it a conversion antag.

Also, are the converted humans NPCs or still themselves? That part is important.

[Technature]

Currently, being converted by an NPC zombie kills you. Your corpse reanimates as another NPC zombie with your name.

[Frank_Stein]

It should be a midround event where a wave of cosmic space radiation reanimates any dead bodies lying around when it happens

[Sick Ness Monster]

I feel like spawnable zombies defeats the purpose of making it a conversion antag.

Also, are the converted humans NPCs or still themselves? That part is important.

I see where you're coming from with the spawning zombies. The reason I suggested that is because I feel like if it were to occur on some rounds, especially low-pop rounds, you might end up with a 'horde' of 1-4 zombies, which doesn't seem to fit the horde name!

You would continue playing as the zombified human. Enakai gave me the zombie disease a couple days back, and it's pretty fun. Rose from the dead, got beaten to death, rose again. Only thing is they'd need some kind of bite special attack as I mentioned, because at the moment they just play like normal.

[Frank_Stein]

I feel like spawnable zombies defeats the purpose of making it a conversion antag.

Also, are the converted humans NPCs or still themselves? That part is important.

I see where you're coming from with the spawning zombies. The reason I suggested that is because I feel like if it were to occur on some rounds, especially low-pop rounds, you might end up with a 'horde' of 1-4 zombies, which doesn't seem to fit the horde name!

You would continue playing as the zombified human. Enakai gave me the zombie disease a couple days back, and it's pretty fun. Rose from the dead, got beaten to death, rose again. Only thing is they'd need some kind of bite special attack as I mentioned, because at the moment they just play like normal.

Give em the hunger motivation, have it only satisfied by brains, and  when it's low enough they start acting like they have rajaijah

[Section Chief]

If we are talking undead, how about a Mummy antag? A nice mix of the scorpion king with a dash of the failed DC Dark Universe. Converting the station into a burial chamber slowly extending his power to command the undead, making sure everyone is entombed with him by shift end.

Just a thought, the overall arch is some kind of undead horde.

[DJ-Fireball_did_this]

If we are talking undead, how about a Mummy antag? A nice mix of the scorpion king with a dash of the failed DC Dark Universe. Converting the station into a burial chamber slowly extending his power to command the undead, making sure everyone is entombed with him by shift end.

Just a thought, the overall arch is some kind of undead horde.

I love the theme but what about the gameplay would be distinct?

[Enakai]

I like this, but I think that's probably pretty obvious. I've been playing around with the necrovirus disease reagent and have had a lot of fun with it. I think the game mode could be relatively interesting as a "disaster" like round. In my mind, it'd start off slow - A zombie or two gradually picking off crew and growing their horde. Later down the track the survivors would have to defend against an onslaught of the undead. Having them able to transmit the disease via a "bite" would be awesome.

[Sick Ness Monster]

I like this, but I think that's probably pretty obvious. I've been playing around with the necrovirus disease reagent and have had a lot of fun with it. I think the game mode could be relatively interesting as a "disaster" like round. In my mind, it'd start off slow - A zombie or two gradually picking off crew and growing their horde. Later down the track the survivors would have to defend against an onslaught of the undead. Having them able to transmit the disease via a "bite" would be awesome.

The thing that's been percolating in my mind is how to avoid an unfun meta. What I mean by that is - "Oh, Pointer got whacked by a zombie - let's kick the shit out of him and throw him to the horde." Although that does sound fun, it should be saved for when people are being shitty - not just because they got bit.

I think the mode would need a few different things:

In my opinion - Getting bitten shouldn't definitively mean you're going to turn. It should give you a reagent or disease that has a chance to turn you, similarly to how epinephrine rolls a chance to stop cardiac arrest. Perhaps this could be managed via an anti-zombie drug, like Zombrex from Dead Rising? It could be bought or brewed up in a chem machine. Having the anti-zombie drug in your system would drastically reduce the likelihood for the infection to finish you off - but it doesn't make it impossible (just for extra tension)!

Similarly, it shouldn't be abundantly clear whether someone has been bitten or not. In all the movies, people never notice the bite as it happens - they either find out after a character quietly shows someone they trust or when they suddenly start trying to chew their friend's face off. The player would be alerted though, via HUD messages about feeling worried about this wound they've received, or via a status effect.
To ensure it wouldn't be too easy to find out whether someone was infected, I think it should require some kind of full body inspection that would need to take 15-20 seconds to complete. It shouldn't show up on health analysers, because again - that's too easy. Got in a scrap with zombies? Analyse everyone with a quick scan and- oops, Pointer's infected, let's beat him and throw him into the horde. Requiring a full inspection would allow people to hide their bite if so inclined. 

I was also toying around with the idea of some kind of incentive to hide a bite wound for players. So someone doesn't go 'I've been bit, I'm gonna wander off and zombify somewhere else', and are more inclined to possibly screw the survivors over later. But I'm not sure about that! Maybe people's natural inclinations to be bastards would be incentive enough. Maybe some kind of strength/ability boost? To demonstrate how they're mutating into a zombie, they get some new abilities that could be helpful to the survivors if managed effectively? I dunno.

[DJ-Fireball_did_this]

Maybe an anti-zombie antag that's a little more trigger happy than normal crew?

[OMJ]

this is a great idea, PVE is a concept that goon hasn't rly explored imho, a random event zombie invasion would be fucking sick and get people off their asses

[DJ-Fireball_did_this]

this is a great idea, PVE is a concept that goon hasn't rly explored imho, a random event zombie invasion would be fucking sick and get people off their asses

Nuclear take: There should be gamemodes centered around fighting NPCs antags/phenomenon.

[GORE]

this is a great idea, PVE is a concept that goon hasn't rly explored imho, a random event zombie invasion would be fucking sick and get people off their asses

Nuclear take: There should be gamemodes centered around fighting NPCs antags/phenomenon.

Psssst,...

Disaster rounds,...


But yeah - more PVE would be nice.

[Technature]

to be fair, once you figure out the trick to disaster rounds (and defensively dealing with mobs in general), there's not much PVing going on.