The Nomad Project

[TimmerC]

theNOMADproject

Though this has been in the works for quite some time, today is the day you all become privy to our project. So here we are, nearly a year and a half since conception, and a decent seven months into development. "We" being the impossibly small two man army that has brought us this far. Myself, (Tim aka TimmerC) with a long ago history of two released games and a background in film. My co-conspirator (Phill aka .Wrath) had a solid mind for programming, insane drive to learn and a background in sound design and zombie physiology.

So I blurted it out, this is a zombie game. But to clarify, not just any zombie game... The "first true zombie game." Phill thought that too harsh of a marketing line and he's probably right but I cannot think of a better more concise way say it. I believe that claim to be well founded for our given genre and enforced by a few of our governing ideals:

• First and foremost; our zombies will bite, not just start a mosh pit around the player. That bite will have consequences; there is no cure and once bitten the player will turn unless otherwise rendered brainless. No more immunity excuses.
• There are no special zombies. We do not really understand why most games divert so far from the canon; they're undead...not demons or superheroes. With that being said we are trying to embrace multiple schools of zombie-dom, without shunning either fast or slow moving zombies. I find them both terrifying and realistic given certain circumstances.
• Survival is the name of the game. This will include the need for self-protection, food, and shelter, which will become more and more necessary as the game progresses. Moving through the city, from building to building, and having the option of using them as safe houses or defense points.
• The world will change; albeit quickly, from a normal day in the city to the flesh consuming post-apocalyptic world we're accustomed to in such titles.
• Our story is your story. Every game will be different, viewing the outbreak from varying perspectives, as different people, with different choices to make in different parts of the city.

We feel this should be enough at the moment to give you a sufficient idea of our aim and some of this has been achieved already. To further whet the corners of your mouth we have some WIP images to show our interpretation of the city and the visual feel of things. We're going for low poly everywhere to help facilitate our open world full of the undead. Characters for instance are between 2 and 3k tris. Keep in mind everything you see is WIP and much will change soon.

A few comparison shots, google street view on left:



And a few higher res:
















We are so excited to make our game known publicly for the first time and anxiously await whatever all you talented lot have to say/give. We've already been fortunate enough to grab up one super gifted member of these forums- welcome Will!

We will have more updates soon so stay tuned and drop a line, we love to hear any and all!

[slowJusko]

Interesting.
I have to agree with your decision to not have special zombies.
I never understood that either.
Assuming its first person?

[Jarro]

hmm 2 days ago I was reading some parts of Viasat History program about what would be with our Earth if there werent human.. So if this is a zombie apocalypse, why are these walls (the third screenshot for example) and floors so clean ? You made some blood here but there should be at least random paper, junk and other stuff... Why are these bushes so nicely cutted out ? (the fourth screen) after weeks of zombie infection spread there should be a dirty and wild environment. You all made it too clean (especially it can be looked at a gas station screenshot), looks like if the zombies were cleaning the streets and were cutting the bushes .. Also, the cars are placed too good, police wont stop their own cars so nicely (the 5th screen) while they were attacked by the zombies

Otherwise is amazing, hope your project wont repeat the destiny of other zombie projects. Really, they have the same description, almost the same screenshots. The same ideas, even the words of the description is being repeated for n-times per thread.. Nobody can even distinguish if this is a project that will be turned a hit or wont sorry for english, I'm really want to see that my own dreams will find a good home in other projects, at least because my own dreams are like the dreams for all the indie-community..

PS. why not slowJusko ? The special zombies would require some special abillities of the players and would make different sides of the game even better

[slowJusko]

@Jarro : Personal preference mainly.
The closer a thing is to being human, the harder it is to destroy.
Make a zombie into a special monster or in some way 'less human', you don't hesitate at all.
Then again, all us gamers are supposed to be desensitized trained killers by now, right? :P

[.Wrath]

Assuming its first person?

Yes, it will be first person.

We're still debating multiple cameras similar to GTA's cinematic camera which has multiple angles you can cycle through to get a better feel for the area around yourself. We're not sure yet as it makes the whole shooting part of the game much more difficult and can severely limit the amount of effective "Oh Sh@*!" moments the player has. Also, Rockstar only implemented this while driving as it needs to be constrained to outdoor use b/c it wouldn't work well in enclosed spaces, etc.

So if this is a zombie apocalypse, why are these walls (the third screenshot for example) and floors so clean ? You made some blood here but there should be at least random paper, junk and other stuff... Why are these bushes so nicely cutted out ? (the fourth screen) after weeks of zombie infection spread there should be a dirty and wild environment. You all made it too clean (especially it can be looked at a gas station screenshot), looks like if the zombies were cleaning the streets and were cutting the bushes .. Also, the cars are placed too good, police wont stop their own cars so nicely (the 5th screen) while they were attacked by the zombies

What? your zombies don't cut your grass for you? God they're so lazy....

Just Kidding. I totally agree, however the time-frame of gameplay begins before the outbreak, so we need a clean slate to begin with, that will become more dilapidated as the outbreak happens. We did throw in some blood here and there for the exact reason you're mentioning...it looked too clean. But I'm sure my associate can shed more light on this for you.

PS. why not slowJusko ? The special zombies would require some special abillities of the players and would make different sides of the game even better

Rather than giving the zombie players special abilities that give them an advantage and distinguish them from the rest of the horde, we'd like for them to be the "smart zombies" which kind of regulate the horde (indirectly) with their choices. This allows them to take the time to find weak-points in the survivor's defenses and in this way they can blend in with the horde, and the human players will be unaware of their presence until its too late.

Otherwise is amazing, hope your project wont repeat the destiny of other zombie projects. Really, they have the same description, almost the same screenshots. The same ideas, even the words of the description is being repeated for n-times per thread.. Nobody can even distinguish if this is a project that will be turned a hit or wont

We are aware of the overwhelming amount of people trying to make zombie games, not only in the udk engine, but others as well (Class3, Survivor Zero, etc.). However, rather than being discouraged by this, we're using it as fuel. We feel that the reason so many people are still trying to make zombie games is that most of the time they're severely lacking in one aspect or another; and that just gives us more drive to try and succeed. This is the game that we've always wanted to play ourselves, and we figured that if no one else is going to make it right, then we must.

________________________________

I've been working on a few things script-wise lately, but I'm currently out of town visiting a few friends/professionals in LA. Hopefully I'll have some updates posted this weekend when I get some free time. Thanks for the input/responses.

Cheers,
.Wrath

[slowJusko]

We feel that the reason so many people are still trying to make zombie games is that most of the time they're severely lacking in one aspect or another;

This is the same reason I want to use a true first person view in the tactical FPS I am (slowly) working on. Anytime I play a modern tactical FPS, it seems to be lacking or have other issues.

Speaking of which, why not a true first person view? :P

[TimmerC]

@slowJusko
We'd love to have a 'true first person' system like the one you're currently working on(which looks great so far, btw). We will be using iron sights and lose any crosshair, to increase in that realism. The problem for us is that while it would be nice, we don't feel it absolutely necessary- because of that we don't see it being worth all the extra needed resources involved. We're trying to save everywhere we can atm so we don't have to cut so much later on- only add the sweetness So if it turns out we have the room to add such things, we definitely will!

why are these walls [...] and floors so clean ? You made some blood here but there should be at least random paper, junk and other stuff... Why are these bushes so nicely cutted out ? [...] after weeks of zombie infection spread there should be a dirty and wild environment. You all made it too clean (especially it can be looked at a gas station screenshot)

.. Also, the cars are placed too good, police wont stop their own cars so nicely

I think .Wrath said most all of it, but again you are right and that will come soon. We are starting somewhat fresh with the city- but the bits of trash (that are there already pre-apocalypse no doubt!) will come.
This is a bit of playground area for me to test new meshes and so that is why so much seems to be placed without a lot of thought about how it got there- all kind of temporarily thrown together. I must say the bushes do look oddly perfectly trimmed and that has inspired me to get busy making an overgrown version- you'll be seeing that in the next day or so

Also, feel I should post some screenies with every post so here are some!

[slowJusko]

...we don't see it being worth all the extra needed resources involved.

Sure, there is more attention required in certain areas of the code, but otherwise it should require less time and effort. There is no need to make two versions of the models, animations, effects etc.

The time you save not making two versions of everything can be put in improving player movement, world interaction etc.

I guess a lot would depend on the details you want to include.

Wanna chat?

[.Wrath]

@SlowJusko: Totally, I sent you a PM. Hopefully we can speak sometime soon.

Also, since I promised an update this weekend...here's my latest test vid for the vaulting system I've been playing with the past couple of days:




For awhile I was trying to alter theAgent's placeable vaulting system....but it was way to rigid (no offense Agent you do great work), and I couldn't stand the thought of having to place hundreds of actors in our level strictly to handle vaulting (you may notice that the brick wall is registering as a vaultactor, but I've removed all of that functionality script-wise... I was just too lazy to re-place the static mesh).

So I started from scratch and started throwing procedural traces to find the height of staticmeshes & bsp in the level. The green trace at about groin height is the first and does an initial check to see if there's an object in front of us, and then the red traces start from there and move up in increments checking for where the top of the object ends. When we finally miss one, we figure we're now above the object and start throwing diagonal (yellow) traces back down towards the player trying to find the edge of the object. When we find it, we calculate the height difference between the edge and the pawn, and tell the pawn how to handle the vault. Currently its still pretty crude and has this basic functionality based upon the height difference:

if it's 0 - 30 units, do a quick vault (Swim_lt/rt_rif anim)
if 31 - 90 units, do a jump vault (FeignDeath_getup_back anim)
if its 91 - 150 units, do a climbing vault (FeignDeath_getup_front anim)

I didn't disable movement input during the vault, that's why alot of times I vault and then fly forward a bit b/c I'm holding 'W' but, I did account for situations where the player has no forward velocity, and it works 9 out of 10 times from a stand-still (as you can see at about 2:13 in the vid).

Still using ut anims & player meshes as our player skelmeshes are in the process of being rigged to get ready for custom anims. please excuse my makeshift HUD, as I'm no artist and it's totally for debugging purposes, which is why it's mostly text. You'll also notice the 3rd person camera as well , just threw it in there so I could see what my pawn looks like to other players.

[TheAgent]

Hey no offense taken. I always wanted to rework my vaulting system.

Glad you went and did it the correct way. Its looking great : D

[nbullard]

I like where you guys are going with this. Reminds me a bit of Humans vs Zombies, where you are starting out pre-contamination which i think is more fun that way. Pretty sure everyone here has imagined what they would do if an outbreak really did hit . Just because it's my favorite part of games, any Coop in the works?

[.Wrath]

Absolutely. Co-op will be a main stay for us so that we can focus most of our AI scripting on the baddies and not have to worry about friendly npcs until the beta (or shortly thereafter).

Also, it's nice to see a fellow SCAD grad on the forums; Tim and I also received our education there. Does the El Cheapo look familiar?

[nbullard]

Awesome well now i'm really excited to see this in action.

Now that you say it, it does remind me of one of them. When did you guys finish up at SCAD?

[TimmerC]

It's been a few...but as I recall, we both finished our BFA's in 2009. Phill is in the last quarter of his MFA

If The Cheap didn't ring a bell; This, maybe the monument will -



just started working on it again. Should have it finished and textured in the next few days.
And why not a couple more? The arms are being rigged so these are for scale ingame, not as a final work.

[White Paper Games]

Wow, some sweet stuff in there guys. Realy feeling the atmosphere in the images. It's almost got an 'I Am Legend' feel to it. Although I know your staying true to the nature of the 'Zombie' and not having any super zombies in there. Looking forward to seeing continual updates. Coming on nicely guys, this is the first chance I've had to check this stuff out.

More information of the design stuff your doing, seems really interesting and good use of the UDK vault stuff!

[nbullard]

oh yes, gone by that one at least a 1000 times haha. Love the street shot, coming along nicely.

[$Crazy$]

Exceptional work, absolutely fantastic! And I dig the direction you're going for... Back when Left 4 Dead was announced, this is the game I wanted/expected to see.

...We will be using iron sights and lose any crosshair, to increase in that realism.

We have the same thought process here. After around two straight decades of shooters being common releases, we oughta be able to scrap the crosshairs for pleasing aesthetics without hindering ability to hit things.

[K7-Avenger]

Glock 17 WIP

[Hellclown]

I'll be following this. It looks really promising.

I'd like to chat with you guys, add me on Skype?