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Post by [CDF] Brandon on Jan 28, 2015 14:57:56 GMT -5
Now I am a huge gamer, I spend an unreasonably huge amount of time playing games, and I found myself coming back to this game. I played it a lot in middle school and I wanted to join back in, maybe get into some groups like I always wanted to.
Yet I get back 4 years after the fact and everything is gone. No real updates on UD, no real activity. The game is as dead as the zombies. Sure there's some activity here and there, but why has this happened. Why has the developer stopped caring for this game?
Talking about that, this game was a pretty great idea, why doesn't someone else try making a text based zombie MMORPG. I'm sure with some effort, code, and advertisement they could get some people along onto the game. Of course easier said than done. But it could possibly work. I think the biggest problem that happened to this game was a multitude of things. *No updates *No competition (If UD had some competition with another MMORPG Text based games not only would it usher in more need for updates, but more publicity, competition is good all around) *Got stale (Mostly due to no updates) *Little to no moderation of the actual game
Now of course I'm no veteran like some of you may be so possibly someone could shed some light on the situation for me. Call me crazy but I could still see a text based MMORPG being popular even in 2015 only if some effort was put into it. Hell i'd make my own zombie text based MMORPG if I knew a lick of code, and wasn't afraid of some copyright claims.
I don't know, it just made me sad to see this, I always wanted to get into this game, especially at it's high time, but I was like 14 and dumb. I missed my chance man :/
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Post by [CDF] Spider on Jan 28, 2015 17:31:28 GMT -5
I guess there wasn't enough fresh blood entering the game. Plus it rode the height of the wave of zombie popularity. There's also been a few UD-like games. Nexus War and Monroeville. I don't know if Kevan gave the code away for those. Nexus War was fantasy themed and had a heavy clan element involved with things like crafting. Monroeville had some interesting additions like multi-level buildings, automatic respawning and would reset when the survivors completed research in the NTs or zombies killed everybody. I think they were popular for a while, and had the same playerbase. I think in the end, the lack of updates killed the game. It's easy to just not play the game and completely forget about it.
Nowadays the player numbers are more like the early days. There's not a high enough density to get the really interesting stuff happening. Back then, we had massive sieges and huge zombie mobs crushing everything in their path.
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Post by [CDF] Brandon on Jan 29, 2015 0:07:07 GMT -5
What I would give for some people to get together and start updating this game again. Imagine a new drive to play this game. Either way I'll do with what I have here. Would you say the CDF is one of the more active groups? Or are there more? don't worry I won't leap out of CDF. If I join something I won't flake out easily. I'm here to stay awhile.
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Post by arkenbrand on Jan 29, 2015 7:22:27 GMT -5
Why don't we think about that then? Why don't we look around for other players who still love UD and think about getting it away from Kevan and giving it a dedicated team who can update it and share the burdens of running the game? We could talk to the zombie groups, Pkers and others and come together for a meeting to discuss the future of the game or at least talk about coming up with a successor.
I know we all have real world concerns and stresses but I believe many of us together could do this.
I am really up or this.
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Post by [CDF] Brandon on Jan 29, 2015 12:31:42 GMT -5
Well before any of this happens you'd have to consider some initial things like copyright. We can't make the same game, but we can take inspiration from it.
I have two friends, twins, who do these things called game jams, it's where a small development team will get together and in two or three days, make a video game. I'm going to present UrbandDead to them in a few weeks to see if they can make something like this. Reason I brought them up is because i've been apart of their development teams a time or two. The first thing we do before we make a game is create a basis.
So basically we'd make a game a lot like Urbandead. Move by energy which is only regained over time. A huge map for the players to roam with two layers on the map, an interior and an exterior. Include human players, and zombies players. A giant tug of war game where the zombies can kill survivors over to their side, and humans can revive zombies back to their side. Then you add in weapons, upgrades, items, consumables, etc. There you go. UD in a very quick nutshell. So you take the basis of that, and you add to it, albeit you have to be balanced. Whenever you add something to the human side, you have to add something to the zombie side so no which side is better than the other. So here are some ideas I'd imagine could be added to UD.
I was thinking up some ideas for the game last night so here they are.
*Better forms of communicating (It's a team game afterall) -Talking shouldn't cost AP in my opinion. People can just go and quickly message each other on third party programs. Of course doing this could spam someone so openly talking to a group of people should register an ap to be used. There should be something called privately talk, where you walk up to someone in the same building without using AP and so a conversation could be had. Of course someone could just go around and take a ton of time talking to each and every person in private chat, which should render a collapse able chat log after 20 something messages, then the player can choose to mute the person. -Possibly a phone chat could be implemented if there are cell phone towers up. If a team of players are occupying an area and want to converse easily they can take the time to repair their cell phone tower. -Finally a group radio chat. I imagine something like in Terminator salvation where Christian Bale talks to his whole army, giving them motivation, then giving them an order to attack skynet, that was awesome. So implement that with radio chat. Set it to a certain radio frequency and anywhere in the map you can hear chat from any of your clan memebers, especially the leader.
*More options to transverse the map -Subways, train tunnels, sewers, a third level of map, the basement. This would allow zombies and players another means of getting around. Possibly humans can set up ladders at manhole areas to access areas easier from the basement levels, then zombies can tear them down, but to never forever be trapped in these basement areas there will be stair ways out that cannot be destroyed but may be more of a pain to get around because they are hotspots. -Vehicles for humans. Cars will take a ton of parts to create, and once made the owner will have the keys to them, they can park the vehicle in blocks, and need fuel to keep them going. Zombies could get mass exp for destroying a car, and if enough zombies are at one block when a car is going through it will take enough damage it will stop, the zombies will obviously be hurt but will get linked exp for helping destroy it in a sense. Then the humans will take damage due to the crash, and then have to transverse on foot. After vehicles are destroyed they cannot be salvaged or repaired again. Also they can be decorated. Also whoever kills the owner of the car could get the keys to it, put some PK access into it, idk this one is iffy.
*More rare items and armours, and clothes -Imagine searching an arms place for a pistol just to survive the night, then you hit the lottery of like 0.0001% and get an old timey gatling gun that was in the way back of the arms place. Now you can set it up ontop of the building and shoot zombies 1 square away from the building easily securing it. Now that would be fun, there are no incredibly rare items in UD that make me flip whenever I get them. Of course with these new rare items there would have to be new additions to zombies that would make this fair which I didn't think of a way to balance that.
Now what do you guys think, those are some initial things I think would help a ton with the game. I think just a few changes like that would give such a breath of fresh air to the game.
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Post by [CDF] Spider on Jan 29, 2015 17:51:36 GMT -5
I don't think Kevan has much interest in UD any more. Monroeville and Nexus Wars took UD experience in new and interesting ways which showed that there's a lot of scope for expansion of the game. There's a lot of things you can do with a UD clone is UD is so basic. It would be hard to get people interested in UD again. Popularity feeds on itself and once a game starts declining it's almost impossible to reverse the trend. I'm not a programmer so I can't say much.
The biggest group right now is Knights Templar. The stats page says they have 25 members and they did a great job of defeating a huge meta-mob that attacked their suburb awhile ago. The stats page shows there's still a lot of groups out there doing their thing.
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Post by [CDF] Brandon on Jan 29, 2015 18:15:39 GMT -5
I don't think Kevan has much interest in UD any more. Monroeville and Nexus Wars took UD experience in new and interesting ways which showed that there's a lot of scope for expansion of the game. There's a lot of things you can do with a UD clone is UD is so basic. It would be hard to get people interested in UD again. Popularity feeds on itself and once a game starts declining it's almost impossible to reverse the trend. I'm not a programmer so I can't say much. The biggest group right now is Knights Templar. The stats page says they have 25 members and they did a great job of defeating a huge meta-mob that attacked their suburb awhile ago. The stats page shows there's still a lot of groups out there doing their thing. What was Monroeville and Nexus Wars? I'm still learning about some of the things I've missed out on. As for the game I'd imagine Kevan was making oodles of money over this game due to the fraction of advertisement he has on it. I especially doubt the servers cost that much to uphold. I mean it's literally a text based game. There isn't a lot to worry about. Plus if the servers were a burden I'd imagine since Kevan is tired or bored of Urban Dead he'd just let it go. I feel Kevan had a good thing here and with some more effort could have made it great. Of course I'm not a guy who created and host a 1.5 million player text mmorpg. But I'm sure with enough people and want for It. It can be done. Look at the endless zombie survival clones. Most of them are crap, but more are being made to this day because people crave it. Here's a question I have to ask, why do you play Urban Dead? There's gotta be a reason you've come back to the game years after its prime.
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Post by arkenbrand on Jan 30, 2015 15:15:37 GMT -5
Well before any of this happens you'd have to consider some initial things like copyright. We can't make the same game, but we can take inspiration from it. I have two friends, twins, who do these things called game jams, it's where a small development team will get together and in two or three days, make a video game. I'm going to present UrbandDead to them in a few weeks to see if they can make something like this. Reason I brought them up is because i've been apart of their development teams a time or two. The first thing we do before we make a game is create a basis. So basically we'd make a game a lot like Urbandead. Move by energy which is only regained over time. A huge map for the players to roam with two layers on the map, an interior and an exterior. Include human players, and zombies players. A giant tug of war game where the zombies can kill survivors over to their side, and humans can revive zombies back to their side. Then you add in weapons, upgrades, items, consumables, etc. There you go. UD in a very quick nutshell. So you take the basis of that, and you add to it, albeit you have to be balanced. Whenever you add something to the human side, you have to add something to the zombie side so no which side is better than the other. So here are some ideas I'd imagine could be added to UD. I was thinking up some ideas for the game last night so here they are. *Better forms of communicating (It's a team game afterall) -Talking shouldn't cost AP in my opinion. People can just go and quickly message each other on third party programs. Of course doing this could spam someone so openly talking to a group of people should register an ap to be used. There should be something called privately talk, where you walk up to someone in the same building without using AP and so a conversation could be had. Of course someone could just go around and take a ton of time talking to each and every person in private chat, which should render a collapse able chat log after 20 something messages, then the player can choose to mute the person. -Possibly a phone chat could be implemented if there are cell phone towers up. If a team of players are occupying an area and want to converse easily they can take the time to repair their cell phone tower. -Finally a group radio chat. I imagine something like in Terminator salvation where Christian Bale talks to his whole army, giving them motivation, then giving them an order to attack skynet, that was awesome. So implement that with radio chat. Set it to a certain radio frequency and anywhere in the map you can hear chat from any of your clan memebers, especially the leader. *More options to transverse the map -Subways, train tunnels, sewers, a third level of map, the basement. This would allow zombies and players another means of getting around. Possibly humans can set up ladders at manhole areas to access areas easier from the basement levels, then zombies can tear them down, but to never forever be trapped in these basement areas there will be stair ways out that cannot be destroyed but may be more of a pain to get around because they are hotspots. -Vehicles for humans. Cars will take a ton of parts to create, and once made the owner will have the keys to them, they can park the vehicle in blocks, and need fuel to keep them going. Zombies could get mass exp for destroying a car, and if enough zombies are at one block when a car is going through it will take enough damage it will stop, the zombies will obviously be hurt but will get linked exp for helping destroy it in a sense. Then the humans will take damage due to the crash, and then have to transverse on foot. After vehicles are destroyed they cannot be salvaged or repaired again. Also they can be decorated. Also whoever kills the owner of the car could get the keys to it, put some PK access into it, idk this one is iffy. *More rare items and armours, and clothes -Imagine searching an arms place for a pistol just to survive the night, then you hit the lottery of like 0.0001% and get an old timey gatling gun that was in the way back of the arms place. Now you can set it up ontop of the building and shoot zombies 1 square away from the building easily securing it. Now that would be fun, there are no incredibly rare items in UD that make me flip whenever I get them. Of course with these new rare items there would have to be new additions to zombies that would make this fair which I didn't think of a way to balance that. Now what do you guys think, those are some initial things I think would help a ton with the game. I think just a few changes like that would give such a breath of fresh air to the game. Could we not approach Kevan about procuring the game? Surely he has no real monetary value in the game. Then we can take it down, re-write it and put it back up. Or would we just start again? I started playing this game because I found it by accident, and I fell in love with the RPG elements and the camaraderie that you can build with random people from all over the place. The sewer idea would be awesome, or even build able bridges to put between several buildings to avoid the streets. To be honest, I am not very good at code, but I CAN write decent segments to give the game an overarching storyline. I would look at a third option for a faction too, with the military being a hostile element where they are trying to cleanse the city of survivors and zombies to cover up what happened. Arkenbrand
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Post by [CDF] Spider on Jan 30, 2015 19:06:41 GMT -5
I just remembered, Monroeville was just UD with no revives and was created as a promotion for one of the zombie movies. The actual game that I was talking about was called Quarantine 2019. I didn't play much Quarantine 2019 and Nexus Wars, so I've already given all the information I can.
For me, I keep playing because it's a quick 10 minute game every day, and it's enjoyable enough.
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Post by [CDF] Adamus on Jan 30, 2015 22:06:05 GMT -5
Quarantine was ridiculous after a while. There weren't enough zombie characters so the new operator added an admin controlled character named Zedzilla or some nonsense with 9999 hp and the ability to break open safehouses and ruin them in a single hit, many left after that. Before that though, it was pretty fun, I liked the multiple floors, the ability to climb extremely heavy barricades, the ability to pick up dropped items, and being able to light entire suburbs with the power plants.
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Post by [CDF] Brandon on Jan 30, 2015 23:51:36 GMT -5
Kevan must be having to pay a decent amount per month to maintain the servers unless he got a great deal. Yet let me tell you after having months with tens of thousands of active players, with maybe even a hundred thousand of players on at a time he must have gotten decent money from advertisement. When you have that many people you must be making some amount of money.
The idea of a third faction with the military is interesting but it's a simple game of zombies kill humans to make more zombies and keep going. Humans kill zombies to hopefully put them down for good. I think the idea of a kill everyone else faction as being a bit to complicated for Urban Dead, but i'll run it by my friends to see what they think. Anymore ideas are heavily appreciated.
I would love it if you helped us with the flavor text of the game. Adding books, flavor text, etc into the game would flesh it out more, and that's always needed. Detail is essential to a text game in order to create the imagination of it.
I like Urban Dead cause I picked it up as a 10 minute game as well. Then I saw how in depth one could get with it. Getting in a faction, running operations, killing zeds together. Huge amounts of camaraderie. There's so much that could be capitalized on with this game.
Monroeville sounds like such a cool concept. Maybe that being an alternative mode where people have a week period to join, then play until all humans or zeds are dead.
To keep the players from waiting to join their could be multiple Monroeville servers that could start up every month while the earlier ones finish off.
Also all the characters in Monroeville would most likely be temp characters that once dead you could add onto your main UD account as a badge of participation along with their stats. Stats being. -how many zeds killed/humans eaten -blocks walked -barricades made -amount healed -etc
This Zedzilla, was it an NPC or a player? Also the idea of that is so lame. Throwing in an Overpowered creature like that isn't fun. It could have been done right with didn't classes like "Fast zombies" "Fat Zombie" etc.
How long have you and Spider been playing Urban Dead if I may ask?
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Post by [CDF] Adamus on Jan 31, 2015 16:11:35 GMT -5
Zedzilla was controlled directly by the site's owner or alternately by one of the other administrators but there was only ever the one at a time. And there were different zombie classes for players like fast and fat with slightly different skills for each class.
I've been playing UD since February 2006. I think Spider started a few months before me. Back then, Creedy didn't even have walls and revive syringes only used 1 ap, good times.
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Post by [CDF] Spider on Jan 31, 2015 18:04:22 GMT -5
Well, one of the problems with UD is that playing as a zombie is less popular. In normal times the number of zombies is around 30-40%
I joined the forum in November 2005, so I guess that's around when I started playing.
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Post by [CDF] Brandon on Jan 31, 2015 19:17:16 GMT -5
Adamus do you recall what was directly different about these fat and fast zed classes?
And yeah Spider playing a zombie does kinda suck a ton. In your opinion what would be a good way to motivate players back to playing zeds?
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Post by [CDF] Adamus on Feb 1, 2015 7:07:00 GMT -5
Not off the top of my head but I pulled this list off the Q2019 page.
Smart Zombies :have the unique ability to open doors, which not even humans can do, allowing a zombie to avoid having to completely destroy a door to get inside a building. Also makes the last 2 ranks of Infection available, allowing a zombie to get 8% and 10% infect per bite. Smart zombies are also the only class that can make pack calls, which lets the groaning zombie determine how many other zombies there are in the area. Strong Zombies: the only class able to ruin buildings, which is how zombies win the game. While strong zombies have access to the highest and most powerful claw and bite skills, their real important lies in being able to ruin buildings. Infiltrator Zombies: previously known as "fast zombies", Infiltrator zombies are the only zombies able to climb into buildings, allowing them to completely bypass doors when preying on humans. A useful scout class if playing in a group, infiltrators have the easiest access to fresh meat although climbing fails result in high deaths until players have adequate climbing skills.
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Post by [CDF] Spider on Feb 1, 2015 17:52:34 GMT -5
I guess one problem with zombies is that they don't have much interaction with their fellow zombies. It was especially bad in the early days, when all you could in-game to communicate was zombie-speak. Nowadays you can gesture and groan, but it's still a far cry from survivors with their many varied choices, and actual ability to communicate and be identified.
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Post by [CDF] Brandon on Feb 6, 2015 1:59:42 GMT -5
I think zombie appearance changes would be nice. Maybe show their clothes, just all tattered and junk, allow them to be clickabled, instead of just another zed in the masses.
Also their skills should say something about them. Like maybe if they went for more fast skills they would be labeled something less generic but along the lines of "fast zombie" and then for strong traits "strong zombie". Once they max out they can achieve "killer zombie" and then roll like that.
Spider what changes would you like to see be made to the zombies to make them more playable?
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Post by [CDF] Spider on Feb 7, 2015 17:16:44 GMT -5
Probably not to make them zombies, I guess. Once they stop being a faceless horde they stop being zombies.
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Post by lifebeyondapocalypse on Mar 10, 2016 6:52:55 GMT -5
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Post by Michelle Sim on Jul 2, 2016 10:35:44 GMT -5
You have a couple of your facts wrong. Urban Dead peaked at 60,000 alts within 2 months of it's creation. By the 4th month it had already dropped to 40,000 alts. And it was only down hill from there, though it took a long time to get to the present state. As for Keven giving up on his creation, I think he just got board. Urban dead is almost 11 years old at this point. Also, Keven did not have anything to do with Nexus Wars. That was Jorum. Not only are they two different people, they live in two different countries. Keven lives in England, and Jorum in the United States.
Urban Dead is not yet dead, and I for one intend to stick it out to the last gasp. That said lifebeyondapocalypse offers a reasonable alternative.
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Post by [CDF] Willard on Jul 3, 2016 0:00:37 GMT -5
Urban Dead should have been given to a new owner or made open source years ago, but I guess Kevan keeps it around for some small bit of ad revenue that comes in. I'm sure the upkeep isn't that much so he just lets the game run itself. I think that whole survey thing last year was just a token gesture. He probably got all gung-ho to do something then got caught up in something else or lost interest. It is a shame because UD could be something with the advent of smartphones and tablets where simple games that only require you to point and click have exploded in popularity. That said lifebeyondapocalypse offers a reasonable alternative. Apparently the game was taken offline.
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Zarathrustra Daemon
CDF Security
Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, hearing the lamentations of their women. --Conan
Posts: 746
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Post by Zarathrustra Daemon on Jul 3, 2016 18:59:57 GMT -5
Holy crap! So CDF is still alive? I like to see this, I certainly do. We've made it longer than damn' near every other group in Malton, despite the crazed attacks by PKers, griefers, zergers, spammers, organized zombie groups, moronic survivor groups, and general idiots that have run this place down for 10 years without success. I don't know what the future holds for Urban Dead, Malton, survivors, or the CDF but it's been a lot of fun, and what a long strange trip it's been. Cheers guys. I'm alive for the moment, lurking about and calling on my usual haunts to see if any of the old guard are about. Good to see Spider again. And what the heck happened to everyone's avatars? Looks like Imageshack went legit and sold their founding members down the river for 3 pieces of silver. Nothing lasts forever, but this group sure has tried. Cheers guys!
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Post by [CDF] Taka on Jul 4, 2016 18:07:27 GMT -5
I'm just waiting for the ultra-zerg master who is dominating our districts to finally get bored and then we can move back in, at the moment it's just impossible to get close
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