(Challenge) Escape from the City

[DarkandStar]

It’s a very simple idea that i came up with making a new world, so i thought i’d share it here and see how it goes, if anyone tries it out.

1.)Create a new character and world, set the city size to it’s max, effectively creating just one giant city. Those’re the only things, you can use any mods or any other settings you want, but it’s got to be on a map that’s just one large city.

2.)Survive, as long as you can, and then describe it here. The more detail you put into your ‘report’ the better.

Good luck, have fun, and as a tip: you might want to pick a scenario or starting location that has in-city buildings.

[Wyzack]

Joshua Young was a razor boy and assassin for hire. Before the cataclysm hit he had been doing some research on his next mark in the massive metropolis of Hall Summit, and staying with a contact while he was in town. Everything started to deteriorate once the Cataclysm hit, and his priorities sharply shifted from completing his contract to simply surviving. As creatures began to fill the streets and panic descended people attempted to escape to the evacuation shelters as the government commanded. All this did was bring the bulk of people out of their homes and make them easy prey for the abominations that were now everywhere.

Rather than take a chance on a worse than useless government evacuation, Joshua decided to lay low in his contact’s house. Five days he hid, the sounds of crashing cars, screams of the dying and far off explosions becoming less and less frequent. The power gave out, then the running water. Emergency broadcasts stopped. Joshua was pretty sure that no government help was coming, and from what he could see in the streets the city was overrun.

Josh was torn. For now the house was safe, but supplies were quickly running out and he was already out of cigarettes. His train of thought was cut off by a few loud reports of gunfire, making his bionically augmented ears ring. The creatures had found the safehouse. There was nowhere left to hide

[Wyzack]

From the next room he heard what could only be the dying screams of his contact. Thinking quickly, he opened the rear window to the house and jumped through. In front of him was a creature that clearly used to be a human. Josh had seen them on the news broadcasts before they had stopped, as well as seeing them through the windows, but seeing one up close was still very jarring. Black ichor dripped from its mouth, and it moved towards him at an aggressive shuffle.

His wired reflexes kicked in as the creature approached, and he fell into a practiced combat stance. Small blades protruded from each of his fingertips as he snapped at the monster. He slashed its jugular and dug deep into its torso and the joint of its left knee. Expecting it to be paralysed from bloodloss and pain, he was taken aback when the monster raked its nails across his face, drawing blood through his subdermal armor. Reacting quickly to the situation he slashed the tendons in both arms and kicked it in the chest, sending it sprawling to the ground. He stomped on the head for good measure, crushing the skull beneath his boot. It seemed the creatures did not feel pain nor were they bothered by bloodloss. This would take some getting used to.

He blinked and looked around. There were tons of these creatures of various shapes and sized, all shambling towards his exposed position. Reflex kicked in once again, and he darted across the street to a neighbouring house. Diving through a window, he grabbed anything around that might be of use, scoring some warmer clothes and some food. The monsters were hot on his trail, and he weaved through several houses before ducking into a basement for shelter

[Dorian]

Huh, I’m somewhat tempted to try this. Does anyone who has done this know if altering the worldgen this way would eradicate labs/bunkers/outlying features, or would they just be interspersed randomly throughout the city instead?

(Also trying to come up with a suitably catchy name for a Blade Runner/zombie hybrid and failing.)

[pisskop]

Sounds neat. Nobody get mad when I gen a mechanic with engineering skills and minmax this challenge to oblivion and back. Ill live in basements.

[deoxy]

[quote=“Dorian, post:4, topic:11041”]Huh, I’m somewhat tempted to try this. Does anyone who has done this know if altering the worldgen this way would eradicate labs/bunkers/outlying features, or would they just be interspersed randomly throughout the city instead?

(Also trying to come up with a suitably catchy name for a Blade Runner/zombie hybrid and failing.)[/quote]

From what’s been said by those in the know around here, it would appear that stuff only generates where it’s legal to do so, so no, that stuff wouldn’t generate much at all.

I don’t think city size 10 is ALL city (could be wrong), so there may still be chunks of non-city here and there for some of those things to generate.

Lab challenge is likely to be instantly won… heh. Free points!

[evilexecutive]

So I have a new computer, and I just started up this challenge, here’s my results. The game right now is on a 16x City Generation, and so far doesn’t appear to be -purely- cities(An annoying fact of life). I spawned in an Open Field between two major cities, 3 rural areas, with a tiny road in the center of the field leading to a hotel. By virtue of no available forests to go looking for secluded areas to setup shop, I am forced to clear out the hotel and snag myself a room.

My first priority was to find a weapon, as my character is a HEMA Instructor with good melee skills. So after hunkering down inside of the Hotel for night(I got Scout and snagged some Binoculars from a crashed helicopter), I ran over to the nearest Pawn Shop inside one of the districts. My attempt was rewarded with an Arming Sword! SCORE!!!

I trained up my melee and dodging skills by fighting every zombie in sight while gathering medical supplies, perishable food, and clothing. While I’m still diligently marking points of interest such as basements, helicopters, rare vehicles, and such. My diligence found a room with gun mods, a basement with spiders(Fuck spiders as it’s marked on my map), a drug basement in case I need to blaze it, and a basement full of medical supplies(Also a good score!)

Now that I’m settled with some meager supplies, I need to spend every possible moment not looting, as fortifying my hotel. Underneath it is a Swimming Pool, so as long as I have batteries I can make water on a whim. But if a horde shows up anywhere, I will be seriously screwed as there’s nowhere to run. It’s just me and my sword skills trying to get a base going. In the long term, I need to get a land crawler going to get me safely out of the city, that is if the city ever actually ends… There’s nothing but buildings as far as the eye can see.

Here’s my current map. I still need to explore the area to my Southeast, but as far as I can guess, there’s probably going to be another rural neighborhood there.

[evilexecutive]

Damnit! So there’s one section of a city that’s now off limits to me for the time being! I would have been dead in a big hurry if it wasn’t for an NPC wandering around in the dark. While I was checking out a Garage to see if there would be an intact vehicle inside, a car headlight suddenly came on and revealed both of our positions. A large group of zombies(Including a hulk?!?) suddenly converged on my position. When suddenly, a Tank Drone laser locked the NPC, and fired a cluster of grenades into him while I desperately sprinted out of the light. In my haste, a second hulk smacked me away from my shopping cart(Which had good armor and CBMS in it!), so now I’m down some good kit that I could have used.

[evilexecutive]

And, unfortunately I have died to an NPC. After lasting 5 days, I had finally secured my shelter, and was ready to get settled into the Long Haul of construction, and things were looking up. I was out gathering leather for making funnels to secure a better water supply(Since the pool water causes me to spend entirely too much time shitting out my intestines), when a Bandit Showed Up. My Scar-H was sitting on the desk back at the house, and I had only a sword. She had an M4. It didn’t end well at all.

This was quite the interesting experiment. Honestly I was more worried about an inescapable horde roaming into my shelter than anything else. So much that I forgot the most important rule of dealing with NPC spawns, and that’s to keep your gun on hand and fully loaded. This was quite the interesting challenge, but it’s not all that hard if you understand the consequences of long term planning and take the right precautions.

[Wyzack]

It is a whole other pile of shit when you spawn in the actual city, try the missed start

[evilexecutive]

Yea, I’m going to do that on my next attempt, except this time disable random NPCs. I’m just going to go on with the assumption that I’m the last person still in the city, which obviously no sane person would ever want to go in now that there’s zombies everywhere. What should my goal be then? Would I be considered to have ‘won’ the challenge if I find my way to a LMOE?

[evilexecutive]

Time to start praying to RNGESUS

[Rot]

[quote=“evilexecutive, post:12, topic:11041”]
Time to start praying to RNGESUS[/quote]

At this point i’d bunker down, secure with windows and whatnot and try and train some skills like tailoring.

[Wyzack]

I died a shitload of times before I got it right, but the best move is to collect what supplies you can, wait until night time and sneak in to the sewers. I lucked out, I now have an atomic nightlight and roll mat, I leave to raid houses at night

[crumist]

[quote=“evilexecutive, post:12, topic:11041”]
Time to start praying to RNGESUS[/quote]

What on earth does the green “Z” signify on the (m)ap? A horde?

[Rot]

[quote=“crumist, post:15, topic:11041”][quote=“evilexecutive, post:12, topic:11041”]
Time to start praying to RNGESUS[/quote]

What on earth does the green “Z” signify on the (m)ap? A horde?[/quote]

Yup.

[DarkandStar]

[quote=“Dorian, post:4, topic:11041”]Huh, I’m somewhat tempted to try this. Does anyone who has done this know if altering the worldgen this way would eradicate labs/bunkers/outlying features, or would they just be interspersed randomly throughout the city instead?

(Also trying to come up with a suitably catchy name for a Blade Runner/zombie hybrid and failing.)[/quote]

I did some tests beforehand and any non-city zones seem not to spawn, or else spawn VERY infrequently. There are often spots of just empty field, but as for bunkers or labs, they don’t seem to spawn.

[DarkandStar]

Yea, I’m going to do that on my next attempt, except this time disable random NPCs. I’m just going to go on with the assumption that I’m the last person still in the city, which obviously no sane person would ever want to go in now that there’s zombies everywhere. What should my goal be then? Would I be considered to have ‘won’ the challenge if I find my way to a LMOE?

Theoretically, i suppose. There really isn’t a set goal that i’ve made, just “survive as long as you can.” If you need an exact goal in mind, try surviving a year, from whatever season you start in til the point that that season starts again. If you succeed that, then go for 2 years, 5, until you die or get bored of the challenge xD