~The Flesh Forest~

Game Talk The Drawing Board
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In this topic the ideas are to be a frame work for a living forest similar to the myconoid creatures we have in the game. With some differences…of course. Open discussion and additions are welcome. As usual in my threads. I like exploration of ideas and any help in making the idea FLESHED out so to speak :wink:

The forest is one gigantic creature. Acting as an in game area that spreads across the map devouring pretty much everything in its path. The horror aspect is in my mind a culmination of several stories one can google search. Here are a few films for easy to view reference, that you may view or read about and see pictures of online.

-Silent Hill; both game series and the films. Janitor scene in the first film touches the wall and flesh material grows outward and tries to eat the main character. The flesh also has large boils that burst open with hungry insects.
-Jeepers Creepers films; the main creature eats humans for regeneration of his body.
-War of the Worlds(Tom Cruise version); The aliens use their people catching vehicles to pulp humans and animals and expunge the slurry all over the landscape to form a fast growing red plant, similar to vines.

-Vampire the Masquerade ;Tzimisce clan(flesh manipulation powers).

-Anime film Akira; when the dumb teenager has lost his control over his powers and body and begins growing into a flesh monster that crushes and absorbs literally everything.

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The Flesh Forest:

The forest is actually one large creature as a whole. The surface that we see is the how the beast feeds. The entire forest eats anything biological and tries to mimic what it ate. So a tree that is eaten looks like a tree made out of arms and legs and such. Same goes for bushes and shrubs. The ground floor is a tendril mass of “flesh” material that spreads and expands similar to Fungus and Triffids.

Similar to Fungal creatures and Triffid creatures in how they behave on the map. The forest spreads up and over buildings. Collapsing the building when sufficiently grown over. Vehicles too if they are not moving.

Player will require Environmental protection when even walking on the Flesh Forest(technically it is a creature, even though in code terms it is a map/building?) Every turn/tile the player or any creature walking around in The Flesh Forest moves, must role the dice to see if they begin taking damage from the Forest trying to consume them via acid? A non specifc(the tendrils clawing at them?

In the center of the initial spawn of this map creature should be a cave. The cave entrance similar to a standard entrance in game except made out of bones and flesh. Under ground and inside the creature are chambers of organs, veins, and pretty much what you would expect walking around inside a large living creature.

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Monsters:

-The “Boss” creature, “The Creeper” (inside the cave acting as the caretaker of the larger beast) could be the Jeepers Creepers monster. When you harm him, he can regenerate and heal really fast. You have to do a LOT of damage to kill him or use explosives and/or fire.

Boss dissection will result in the standard parts of a human. Except named Creeper(part in question) and the consumption of these bits will allow temporary regenerative function(so long as they are eaten before they rot). Also the Morale of eating these bits will be vastly negative; because they taste like dog $h!t and because you are eating this horrid monster(seriously wtf is wrong with you!!) :wink:
The regenerative properties can also mend a broken limb. So you have a negative morale debuff coupled with nausea and possible puking and poisoning. But the chance of heeling a broken limb and healing quickly all other damage. Is it worth the attempt killing this beast? Up you to you.

-Creepy Crawly; Sacks like a giant egg grow out of the Forest and inside it in the underground too. Similar to the Aliens of the Ridley Scott film. When the egg is attacked or damaged, they burst splashing acid around it like the lab scientists and their special acid circle move. Out pops the Creepy Crawly insects. While NOT acidic. They spawn from 1-5 critters that try and chew(like ants) anything around them.(Half Life Head Crab? But smaller)

-Flesh Tree; the trees of arms and legs will occasionally attempt to grab anything moving near them. The successful grab will then proceed to be a Chew/Bite attack which can do damage if the being does not break free of this grab.

-The Taken; Just about every creature that wanders through the forest can be absorbed and spat out into a Flesh form. All with the same color hue and replete with flittery tendrils wagging about looking for more living matter to absorb. Examples: Flesh Forest Zombie, FF Dog, FF Human(with the gear the NPC once had), etc. and so on.

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Reason to Risk?:

So ok. Why the hell would anyone sane enter into one of these beasts in the first place? Discuss Options.

Treasure Hunt: The Creeper “boss” being crazy difficult to kill could provide a body part that when eaten/consumed could mend broken limbs and heal you quickly. That could be balanced by the part rotting like any other food item. Also if “cured”, it would extend the expiration date of the organ/limb but heal you at a slower rate than when fresh.

Any other items or resources?

Quest for the Beasts destruction: There could be a stationary NPC. Inside the Shelters or something. Like the(whats the group called…) Old Guard? The government guy that chills in the refugee center. He or another NPC could provide a quest that his crew were killed and absorbed by it. Gives you a location for it and tells you you can keep all the military gear they had on his friends if you manage to kill them. Putting them “out of their misery”. Burning the beast could also be just for the grins.

Anything else?

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oh yeah


bonus points if forest would transmit SS2 like quotes directly to player

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that looks like one of those big pimples from half-life alien world…

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Thanks for the reference. I had forgotten this. Yeah, the game is pretty good. Anyone can use any references they like. I dig the discussion and hope more people like this.

I like how the female creatures say stuff like “The children need Mmmmeat…” Meaning they want to eat you lol

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the many are parasitic creatures who utilize biomatter (bodies people plants) as main resource aswell they are connected with hivemind

cyborg maids are actual people with heavy bionic replacements to prevent them from poisoning from grubs and flesh, researching implant of one says that it was made to hotwire emotions and link to hivemind

when needed they may take a lot of forms like spiders (while not being actual spiders), rumblers (hybrid evolution) and reavers (psionics and “noble” evolution)

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I’m actually working on underground overhaul which will vastly expand subway system by adding underground locations like labs, bunkers, vaults, maybe NPC settlements, and also cave systems. I was thinking about adding highly radioactive flesh caves, with monsters like tentacle dogs, human snails etc… I think the underground setting would be much more fitting for a flesh biome.

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to add this Flesh Forest topic, as time progress, the Flesh Forest will start to mutate into much more dangerous type. which is :

  1. Acidic Flesh Forest.

this mutation caused the flesh forest to have hundreds of yellow sac on its surface (like infected blisters). this act as a proximity mine that if a human or zombies gets too close to this yellow sac, it will explode and showering the victim with corrosive acid similar to that acid on human stomach but more corrosive and deadly. the result are different in that human will have 0% chance to survive due to its corrosion power that will melt organs at 20-25 seconds, while zombies will have 10% chance to survive and turn into acidic zombies. not only they have proximity blister acid on the surface, the creatures living in the forest also has acidic ability and thus increasing the danger of the mutated flesh forest (imagine a tentacle from flesh and bones covered in thick corrosive sticky liquid)

  1. Gas Flesh Forest

this mutation caused the forest to release a constant stream of dangerous gas to the air around the flesh forest, it may look like a thin mist but once a human inhale this thin mist, the victim will suffer a burning sensation on its lung that is unbearable, the gas contain high concentration of Carbon dioxide and sulfur so high that once inhaled will cause your lungs to burn inside out, this will lead to fatal death to the victim as the lungs will fail after inhaling the thin mist released from this forest. but the zombies and creatures inside the flesh forest is not affected and instead will gain regeneration if they have any fatal injury.

  1. Chitinous Flesh Forest

this mutation caused the flesh forest to have hard, strong shells that cover the trees, this shells is really hard that even a conventional bullet from assault rifle and pistol will bounce away. and the only bullet that can penetrate this shells is from high-caliber or armor penetrating bullet (.50 BMG or 20MM bullet) the shells is made from unknown material that is heat-resistant and strong enough to deflect small to medium caliber bullet. due to the shells, the trees of this forest doesn’t have any means to attack any human that gets too close to the forest but the creature inside the forest is the one that needs extreme caution due to their skin is now replaced with the same shells the forest has.

  1. Infectious Flesh Forest

this mutation caused the forest to have black, gaseous sac on the surface of the trees, this sac is filled with dark gas that when inhaled by human being, will cause the victim to start coughing blood heavily and in a matter of seconds, will turn into zombies. this gas is constantly building up in the sac and like a time bomb, will explode in any moment the victim could never expect. what makes the gas dangerous is that zombies who were close to the sac when it explode will mutate into infector, a type of zombie that will easily infect any human being bitten by it. thus extreme caution must be taken if one is brave enough to take care of this forest.

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Well that would be great and all. But if you were to begin such a biome. Would you be able to do it so that someone else could match it up with the top side? If assuming you aren’t going to do a topside. That way half the work would be completed =D

I won’t dictate what you should do. Everything is up to whoever wants to take on the task. But having it(the map biome) a living beast would make a logical reason to exist more than another lab.

Tentacle dogs would be cool. I forgot to add the monsters that get turned into Flesh mobs. Thanks for the reminder.

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that would be scary… to know that you’re in the dark and not knowing you are stepping on fleshy ground…

nightmare increase//

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You bring up an interesting point. I wonder if the beast(the map biome being the Flesh Beast) could start small in other locations. Like a subway or a basement etc. Take up root so to speak and creep across the floor, walls, ceiling moving up into a house or other structure 0_0

That would make me $h!t my pants wandering down a normal looking basement to find that as I turn on the light. Those tendrils stretching out toward the stair case…yikes.

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i want eggs that pop swarms and toxic contents

and annelids with suicide attack that on success gives a general parasite

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That would a good idea. Similar to the way Fungus monsters in game creature “Spore clouds”, correct?

We also have anti-parasitic drugs in game already that I think are not used as often as they could be. If a suicide creature infects as a trait. Then the drugs could be used more often.

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extracting glands from eggs and other “fruits” to gain regenerative/stimulant/poisonous glands used in crafting and healing

most of basic hostiles are better to be controlled creatures ranging from zombies and animals to specops and scientists, dead corpses do not revive but expire with message like “a body dissolves into ground” spawning a decoy item that after expiring (again) spawns egg or biomassed creature

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It depends. If I make them as locations, adding more levels would be easy. However, if I make them as randomly generated terrain, then I don’t know. I’m still messing with json to figure how far I can push things.

Evolving terrain is tricky to do. I guess it’s the same as freezing rivers feature that’s often being mentioned.

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I dig most of this. The stuff about differences in the between each forest changing. Although to make it easier to code. I think each of those ideas would be a different beast unto itself. Or a combination of those ideas. The chitin one is a LITTLE over powered though in regard to needing massive artillery to kill it. Sorry. xD

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as i though, the chitin flesh is OP… but im looking for type of flesh forest that has high armor and not easy to kill.

maybe change the chitin to some type of armor that if one focus firing on the armor it will shatter… bones should do it.

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Over Powered doesn’t mean kill the idea. It could be a few Warrior class mobs may sprout and have a tough chittin that could be harvested…assuming THEY don’t harvest YOU lol

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Well I wasn’t thinking the creature level would be exceptionally huge underground. The topside would grow and expand. Whilst the underground “belly of the beast” would be a rather small space. Perhaps a few rooms. Like walking inside of a blue whale. Big. Certainly. But finite. In this way, it would make programming it a lot easier.

Perhaps if it is an open file. Look at the giant wasp/bee hives. Not only could there be houses taken over. The Flesh beast could live in a basement of the take building.

The random nature of honey combs in a building is a decent model for the Flesh Forest. The beast can take over buildings and live in basements. Under a forest and take over the forest.

The idea has potential =D
(also making it the largest of monsters in the entire game)

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This is a dope-ass idea. I can’t help with any coding, but you have my full support and a suggestion that perhaps the Forest should deal bashing damage, rather than Acid, to better simulate it trying to envelop and crush you into itself.

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I’ve done some .json stuff here and there, and this seems possible. I feel like ditching my current project for this. This would be a badass thing to implement.

The egg sacs your talking about would be pretty cool, though I’m a newbie at this stuff so I have no clue to how put it in. The egg sacs could be put in the game as a monster and spawn creepy crawlies on death similarly to the goo monster. I don’t know how to make monsters spawn a creature other than little goo balls on death.

Flesh trees are possible. Just give them high morale and aggression and add a “grabs” flag. Would have to make their speed 0 and (I think) apply an immobile flag.

The Taken would be the same as infected zombie creatures (except in the flesh faction): z-cougars, z-wolves, infected humans, etc.

The dev would have to employ the triffid and fungoid system (like was suggested) to make the little fleshies go beserk and take over towns.

Some of the Creeper’s limbs should give you a good chance of beneficial mutation, like those weird fetuses that show up in labs.

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