timothymtorres
commented
6 years ago So a lot of what you're suggesting falls into the what about modding question in the FAQ. I already have plans and ideas to implement new themes while reusing most of the code. There are other browser based games that have some mechanic features similar to the ones you are suggesting:
Alot of these games have either lots of different playable classes/races, terrain manipulation, magic/skills systems, and crafting/alchemy systems. Some of those games goal is exploration, survival, or combat. I've played them all and I found a lot of their features to offer some flexible and interesting gameplay possibilities.
With that said, ZT will be aimed at only humans vs zombies. I have no plans to alter this anytime soon. But, a spinoff/mod that I plan on making after ZT is finished is based on a game called Space Station 13.
SS13 has different game modes revolving around an antagonist attacking the station:
- Plant Blob - Is trying to spread it's infestation and takeover the station
- Rogue AI's - That try to self-destruct the station and kill the crew.
- Space wizards - That attempt to assault the station with magical spells.
- Cultists - That attempt to convert the crew into their cult and summon a god of destruction.
- Changelings - Basically the monster from "The Thing" that absorbs the crew and takes over the station.
- Traitors and Nuclear Operatives - Normal humans with the objective to sabotage or destroy the station and it's crew.
- Aliens - That try to infect the crew and spread infestation.
I really want to remake SS13 game using ZT's code. I'd try to include all the playable classes/races mentioned in the scope of the game. Some of the features you are suggesting would be implemented in a remake like this. This would be made after ZT is launched and completed.
RedDustBowl
The border is yellow, which means it has been barricaded and trapped and the alarm set. The border always shows the color of the strongest barrier, or is green for an open building. 
I always hated how you would have to open up the metamap separately to see where you were. I imagine this map zooming in and out, like the map in Rebuild 3. (Love that Sarah Northway!) If the map is zoomed all the way out, the icons change to the simplest form. 
I'm imagining this as the general store. 
Sorry about the length. Really. (Hangs head in shame). Cannibalize or ignore at will.
I had posted some ideas about a replacement game on the Q19 forum, but Sv7 seems to have wiped a bunch of threads. Let's see what I can reconstruct from pitch emails:
We reached peak zombie a few years ago. The cultural time we live in isn't the same one as the time that zombies became popular. If anything, today's threats are more like Invasion of the Body Snatchers-- is that person who lives next door or works in the next cubicle or drives that truck really just like us or is there something inside their heads that makes them a threat?
I had suggested a new game with a series of rotating monsters trying to take over the same town. The winner of the round becomes the home team and faces a new invader in the next round. For example, humans and zombies fight in round one. Zombies win, so they fight people controlled by alien plants in the next round. Maybe the plants win the next round and fight cultists possessed by a Cthulu-type evil god or people controlled by Illuminati brain chips or something. Humanity just becomes one more set of monsters to cycle through.
Who's to say that the different species can only infect or inject the other? Maybe there's a species of changling that can take the shape of some other player, or a clan of gnomes that can kidnap you and drop you in random spots on the board, etc. Let your imagination run.
Imagine that both sides playing, no matter what species they are, have a goal to reach that does not involve ruining the entire city. Both sides need to build something or accomplish a goal, both sides barricade or tear down barricades, both sides destroy the other side's work. You can play a more complicated strategy game (like the humans) or just destroy stuff (like the zombies) for either team. For example: the humans want to knock out the zombified / infiltrated humans, sample their brains and find a cure. The plant people want to inject spores into enemies to control them and ultimately build a giant greenhouse for the Triffid Queen. The brain chip people want to spread more brain chips around and build a quantum computer to take over the world. The cultists want to possess enough humans to fill the city with enough evil altars to summon the god.
Both sides need to build artifacts within buildings and keep them secure, both sides need to destroy the other's artifacts, both sides can barricade and must destroy the other team's barricades to pass. Humans nail up plywood and pour concrete; plants can grow Sleeping Beauty- type brambles around a house; cultists create a wall of psychic energy or hang up some really unnerving tapestries, etc.
By giving each side a positive goal (find a cure, build an altar, etc. like what the Q19 humans did) and a negative goal (ruin stuff and attack the enemy like Q19 zombies), players can play for either side while keeping their preferred play style. Changing the species around would also encourage people to try something new and keep the game from growing stale. Also, if one species turns out to be no fun to play, it can be dropped or replaced, or fixed behind the scenes while the game goes on for the players.
Players can choose to make a character (or two) on either side (or both) upon entering the game. If there's an option for choosing "Surprise me!," the game could assign the new player to the side with fewer players to keep things fair, or perhaps tell a new player that X humans and Y plant people are playing. People playing on teams could enter a side together. The win conditions the teams need to reach should be flexible and reflect the number of active players on the board. In case of one side outnumbering the others, the game will adjust the goals so the outnumbered side doesn't need to grind through a stomp and hope for a better round in a few months.
Suppose the next game round is Plant People versus Evil Cultists. You are playing for the first time and decide to be a Plant Person. The round has started several weeks ago, so there are characters in the game who are already much better than you and the barricades are already up. Now what?
Tutorial Level: You start with a small set of practice buildings in which to find items, download your "radio app" (in-game chat), find a weapon, practice defeating a cultist, tear down their altar, flag the map and whatever else is important to know how to do. Perhaps the cultists barricade by casting evil spells, so you need to remove the spell and raise your own barricade of prickly thorns. The tutorial will also explain that the goal of your side is to build greenhouses to grow enough plants to take over the area, so you loot a building for supplies and build a greenhouse. The goal of the other side is to build evil altars all over town to raise the Death God, and you must destroy their altars.
You finish the tutorial level and move to the main game. Because some of the buildings are not useful to either side in this round, and the goal is not to repair or destroy the whole town, there are buildings that are not worth barricading. Now you don't have to spend your energy climbing repeatedly into a building, failing, and dying on the street (and getting annoyed and rage quitting the game immediately, like the 71 new accounts I found at the end of last round.) There are places to hide besides the street while you build your skills.
Because you have unlocked a radio app in the tutorial, you can contact other members of your side and tell them you have joined the game. (Perhaps the higher level players have a recruitment skill that tells them when new players join the game.) Also, the information on the metamap is available to all players of the same species.
I imagine a fog-of-war system in which your side only knows what is going on if some other member of your side has visited the square recently. Maybe the large map for the entire species gets updated only if the person uploads the building status to the metamap, but the information fades after six hours or when an enemy goes in. To keep the information current, the side must set up an alarm (flags the metamap when set off) or a camera system (records the actions performed within the building in the last eight hours, or records the last 100 actions) or leaves a trap (metamap flagged when set off, enemy character is harmed in some way). These would function like generators, and make the building's stuff (greenhouses, altars, etc.) harder to ruin.
I also imagine a crafting system which will make looting more important. You know all that stuff lying on the floor when you spend 35 ep looking for a vial or a medkit in Q19? What if you could consolidate the items into a better item? Zombie Pandemic also did this. A crowbar at 15% strength plus a crowbar at 25% strength equals a crowbar at 30% strength, (then 35%, then 40% as your repair skill goes up.) There would be a point to finding all that stuff, and you wouldn't need so much inventory space for spare weapons.
Quarantine 2019 players have been complaining about the brain/ ruin ratio for years, as far as I can tell by reading older forum posts. What if the goal changed depending on the number of active players in the game? Urban Dead does something similar by making revivification syringes easier to find when there are more zombies in the game. Fewer plant people means fewer greenhouses needed. More evil cultists means more altars needed. No more stomps.
Triggering the win should automatically announce the new invading enemy and reset the game for the next day, just enough time for players to decide which side to play and line up teams for the next round.
The city remains the same in each round. Create all the artwork only once. However, different resource buildings would be more or less important depending on which monsters are playing. Humans would need hospitals and labs for the cure; plant people might need the window glass factory and hardware stores and lumber yards for their greenhouses, etc. No one would need the abattoir or the Candle Shoppe until the cultists show up and need to build altars, etc. Since ruining the entire city isn't the goal, there would always be some open buildings for new players to hide in, so they won't die on the street after not finding an unbarricaded building and rage quit immediately.
How about using the players' time away from the game as game content? Perhaps the characters can set traps for each other instead of just walking up and killing them. Maybe a cultist character might expend action points to set a trap in a building to possess a human character who chooses to sleep there (log out for an hour). Triggering a low level trap would cause the human to climb outside the safety of a house where she could be eaten. A high level trap that takes, say, 25 action points to set might give the trapper control of the possessed character for 50 ap and force the possessed character to find the nearest teammate and attack him or break his own team's artifacts or de-barricade some doors, etc. Possessing the character in real time would be a blast too.