Anomalies

[i2amroy]

True. Which is the reason I always take 10 PE. (And yeah, that’s a char build restriction I deal with because I don’t like mine instadeaths.)

Or just keep your eye out for suspicious mounds of dirt. If you see a some #'s on the ground then it can only mean one of two things, either landmines or worms. Both things are a great reason to avoid that area.

[Sheb]

Can you farm on a landmine’s mound of dirt? Or use worms to plough your field?

[kevin.granade]

Regarding anomaly visibility, I think we’d do something to make them stand out visually so you don’t accidentally encounter them. Artifact spawns are a good example of this actually, they convert an area of the terrain around them to rubble, which sets it off from the surroundings.

If we did any of these anomaly-ish things, we’d be doing something similar so that if you interact with an anomaly, it’s by choice. Also we’d want to give it a description that describes its out-of-the-ordinariness when examined.

Frankly I think it’s absurd for someone to be wandering around in the wilderness, see a rip in the fabric of reality, and want to interact with it. This is game play programming we get from everything in the game being something we’re supposed to interact with.

[moist_zombie]

Agreed on the danger aspect… I don’t mind life-ending risk if there is life-enhancing reward. I keep thinking about an anomaly that animates plants and trees in its range…

Maybe an event that takes control of your character for a certain amount of turns, with different intents involved probably ranging between strange to downright harmful (rarely it’d be lethal, like losing control of yourself right after activating a grenade). Killing sprees, stripping clothing and throwing random items, attempting to consume every consumable in the inventory, shouting at the top of your lungs, rampaging against inanimate objects, self inflicted (potentially lethal?) injury, starting fires, I guess the possibility is endless… Cutting all cloth into rags, disassembling everything, grabbing every item in sight, opening all doors in sight, eating nearby corpses, dropping items or digging holes in patterns, ETC! ETC is the big one…

An anomaly that turns zombies into NPCs… One that destroys all buildings in a radius… I’d like to see snakes made out of fiery 4’s swimming around Decent storyline-ish event could be an NPC from the future (or a parallel dimension), maybe to give you a futuristic edge or… possibly to take your eyeball-meat because the future is lacking in eyeball-meat An event that duplicates all nearby inanimate objects one square to their right (this would make buildings have double-thickness walls on the east and west sides, plus double windows… it could also be applied seven or eight times (duplicated to the right) to make strange smeared areas). Earthquakes and tornados are good, anomalous or not. A strange being of energy issues forth and halves one stat (or skill) while doubling another. An anomaly that turns all present water into fire, or all liquids into something else (blood, acid, vomit, gasoline, because I know I’d like to light a river of gas, or swim in a river of jelly. An anomaly could change seasons, or day to night. Fill nearby houses with water (or acid, or vomit, or blood). Mentioned animated trees up top, but fighting a herd of toilets and refrigerators and cabinets would be good too… A rift that vomits up creepy items like fetuses or scalpels or human flesh… A rift that spawns a naked, weak, and brainless clone of you. An odd creature offers you the object of your wildest dreams (and has a 50/50 shot of simply giving you what you wished for, or giving basically a cursed version, where food poisons and weapons attack you and clothing clings to you and has to be worn to shreds to be removed).

Or one that births a Dwarf Fortress-ish randomized mutant horror, ranging between absolutely defenseless or too deformed to function, up to acid-breathing winged spike-encrusted murder machines.

(From the rift comes a (insert random color)-skinned
descriptor (gigantic, armless, legless, metallic, eyeless, skinless, formless,etc)
----like (ratlike, amphibian, skeletal).
It is totally (void of or encrusted) with (spines/flowers/eyeballs/teeth),
and its (harmless or dangerous) claws/fangs/tentacles/discharge is (toxic/paralytic/without effect).
Its ----- look(s) terribly effective. (muscles, bulging brain, aerodynamic nature, keen eyes, sharp claws)…

That’s getting difficult and confusing all at the same time

It’d maybe be easier just to closely simulate the Dwarf Fortress beast generator, just with more useless creature features. Either way, you’d get results like:

From the rift squirms an emerald-colored serpentine creature. It is eyeless and its skeletal body is totally crusted in long spines. Its blunt fangs look terribly effective, while its milky eyes seem useless. The creature appears docile but may have capacity for violence. Occasionally it releases a high-pitched wail.

Where serpentine would have a bonus, say +5hp while something stronger like skeletal would get +20hp (or whatever is challenging, anyway). Eyeless could be -2 perception and -75% chance to hit. Crusted in long spines +5damage/+4defense. Blunt fangs +2damage +2blunt.
“look terribly effective” would apply a bonus to whatever it refers to in the description, which would turn +2dam +2blunt fangs into +3dam +3blunt fangs, and something like “looks useless” or “are thin and weak-looking.” would deduct from whatever its applied to… And here my own example creation bumps into a problem because its both eyeless and also has milky eyes Can’t have both! Anyway, “creature seems docile” would mean it is a neutral creature and won’t attack unless provoked. “may have capacity for violence” would appear when it has body parts capable of attack (some formless blob would have something like “The creature seems thoughtless, and has no means of defending itself.”). “Occasionally it releases a high-pitched wail.” speaks for itself, I guess Any of the character possession things I gave above work here, too. “It looks around ravenously, intent on eating.” “It begins to mindlessly rampage!” “The pitiful creature constantly injures itself.”. “The creature begins to dig holes.” “The curious creature seems intent on exploring.” “This creature glows bright, and begins to burn its surroundings!” (a lot of these would need legs to move with as a prereq)…

snaps out of it Ahem! In summarization, randomly spawned enemies are cool, especially when they can be mottled-grey tumors crusted in useless hands that cries like a human being (+20 dexterity for being crusted with hands!)… Or a humanoid stone-man that discharges gunpowder and fire

I shall end all my posts with apologies, for spam, and for my incoherent wishlisting

[woflsipder]

Anomalies make me sad.
I think if they get added they must appear near portals and maybe for short time before a portal appears.

About the monsters crawling out of anomalies , this is a zombie survival game , not fantasy rpg.
With those monsters you would end up slaying dragons and giant lizards instead of surviving the apocalypse.

The monsters could appear in labs , not randomly spawn right next to your shelter and spit acid over your equipment while burning down the whole region , all while you are sleeping tight in your bed.

[Fniff]

This is a lovecraftian zombie survival RPG. As a DF player which has a similar system (Forgotten Beasts), the majority of them won’t be anything like fantasy creatures. They’d more resemble horrible eldritch beings, which wouldn’t clash with this game at all.

[moist_zombie]

Yeah, there would have to be some kind of proximity rules for a lot of it, or massive fires and destruction of bases would easily be possible… For the monsters out of portals, I was thinking less monster, more deformed afterbirth (and very rare anyway, besides), although having some actual danger come out now and then wouldn’t hurt… Gives something to screenshot and brag about on the forums. And I guess they’d have to have a time limit for their lifespan, where after a while they die due to our atmosphere or gravity regardless… Guess areas could be marked as potentially unstable, base-builder beware!

But yeah, if the pillow of reality is indeed splitting at the seams, then some stuffing is going to leak through the cracks…

And as far as this not being a fantasy rpg, then I shouldn’t already be able to dress in platemail and broadsword and spend an entire life killing bears/cougars/spiders/mushrooms King Arthur is as easy to make as a decrepit old lady or a punk rock drug-queen…

Just needs added to world generation options when they come around, so you can just experience neighborhoods and handguns and school buildings where the only out-of-place thing at all is the zombies, or alternatively gear it to where the generic zombies are the most normal thing around… Personally almost all my hours playing cata have been on “classic zombies” mode anyway

[Fniff]

Maybe the signs could be weird objects found around the area. You might find an artifact, but you could also find black scorched trees, unusual lack of wildlife, or perhaps a weird tendency for the lights around the area to stop working. Things like that would indicate an anomalous area is not for hanging around.

[FunsizeNinja123]

Maybe the signs could be weird objects found around the area. You might find an artifact, but you could also find black scorched trees, unusual lack of wildlife, or perhaps a weird tendency for the lights around the area to stop working. Things like that would indicate an anomalous area is not for hanging around.

The flashlight bobs and sways. Dirt. Dirt. Grass? Dirt. Grass. Root. Tree! A loud crunch is heard from the survivor running into a tree. The cougar growled behind him. The survivor ran into the forest, hopping over underbrush and whipping past dark and twisted trees. The trees were slowly turning darker, until the grass too was blackened. Like ash. He stopped and looked behind him. The cougar stopped at an imaginary border, panting and looked disappointed at its hunt. It slowly walked back into the greener parts on the forest. The man smiled, happy at getting away from certain death. The flashlight started flickering. Shaking it, the man sighed in disgust. Batteries were getting out of charge faster and faster, it seemed. He threw it into the darkness, scattering a large bunch of birds. The flashlight briefly illuminated them, and the man was shocked. They looked blood red, feathers plucked off. The flashlight finally sputtered off.

In the distance, a bright light is seen. Disturbed, but not enough to turn back, he walked towards the light. Tired, he reached the source of the light. It looked like a small stone. He reached down and touched it.

[woflsipder]

Your survivor has just escaped a horde of zombies and has some incredible loot that will boost his survival to the fun level where he can easily modify cars and live the real life.
As he walks out of the forest he applies first aid kits on his wounds and notices something is pulling him.
It appears a super gravity anomaly is pulling him , as he curiously goes to look closer , he notices the pull becomes unbearable and decides to leave.
As he tries to leave , his backpack tears off his back and starts sliding to the middle of the crater over the solidified dirt.
His last attempts to grab the backpack result in just pushing it deeper in the crater and pulling him with the backpack.
He is completely exhausted and can barely get off the ground , he watches as his backpack with everything he had looted gets slowly compressed.

Do you really want to commit suicide? Y/N.
[size=3pt]he clicked Y :P[/size]

[Fniff]

That’s not really a good argument against it, cos that can’t actually happen in Cataclysm as of now. Hell, I don’t think it could happen later without special coding, and that’d be just to be a dick at that point.

[woflsipder]

It wasn’t a true argument. It was just me goofing around with stories.
I am still oppose anomalies.