Those windows

[Keyreper]

just a idea here, how about there being some windows that are destroyed before you even see the town, it’s kinda unrealistic to find ever single window intact when you go into a fresh town in the apocalypse, although this has probably been addressed many times before.

[Inadequate]

Not an inherently terrible idea, although I’m worried that this may lead to a larger trend of destroyed buildings replacing regular buildings to the point where cities are practically uninhabitable, with a proportionate decrease in loot to the point of complete unplayability. Such topics always seem to come up whenever a topic like this is discussed, often attempting to insinuate themselves under the thin veneer of realism that the original idea provides.

Upon reflection, this may be a bad idea after all.

[Keyreper]

it wouldn’t be that bad if it turned out to be that every one turned into a zombie extremely fast, like no time to react to it but where given a small warning and people tried to flee, which would explain why there are random corpses of scientists and soldiers far from the roads

[ted]

I support this idea in general, but think cities are bad and should (will?) be redone to actually resemble cities at some point. But I guess the current “cities” would stay in as towns, so changes are still relevant.

Broken windows have no connection to the amount of loot generated.

[FrankyPlaysGames]

I like the idea, I’d like to see the occasional broken wall, as well.

[Belteshazzar]

[quote=“Inadequate, post:2, topic:5372”]Not an inherently terrible idea, although I’m worried that this may lead to a larger trend of destroyed buildings replacing regular buildings to the point where cities are practically uninhabitable, with a proportionate decrease in loot to the point of complete unplayability. Such topics always seem to come up whenever a topic like this is discussed, often attempting to insinuate themselves under the thin veneer of realism that the original idea provides.

Upon reflection, this may be a bad idea after all.[/quote]

I wouldn’t expect, say… Nagasaki… or Detroit (unless ‘scorched zone’ was a sort of biome type) but the occasional bit of riot damage ‘would’ be nice.

[Dzlan]

Thats a nice idea, though honestly I find this (in a sense) already happening.
The moment I walk into town windows become shattered by Z’s trying to get out of the buildings to me.
But I do support for some broken windows and buildings spawning, as long as it is not too frequent.
Though it would be nice to have to search for a suitable shelter instead of finding perfect maintained houses everywhere (aside from the scattered mess inside). On the contrary, making houses as simple as walking through a shattered window without breaking them first (noise) for loot seems pointless.

[StopSignal]

Sorry, but this was posted by basically all of us at least once, including your server here. It is a neat idea, but the devs always leave graphical things for later, even if this would have a gameplay impact, maybe. I still think it would be a neat idea.

Inadequate, don’t be such a downer.

http://youtu.be/eaCCkfjPm0o?t=2m28s
[size=4pt]You are like a constant downer, huh?[/size]

[kevin.granade]

The nice thing about this feature is it would be a sizeable payoff for relatively little work. Someone can add a function that randomly or semi-randomly decides how smashed up a building should be, and based on that goes over the building hitting things with the bash() function, it already handles chance to break, creating debris, etc.
The main thing to watch out for is having just one wrecked house and the ones around it being pristine. Especially tricky with large buildings.
Another interesting possibility is to pick two points opposite each other on the border of the building, and path through the building, smashing things as you go.

[Zireael]

Kevin, this is a great idea!

[Gideon]

Could also have a center point and radius of damage system, to model explosions.

Like if a car or gas station goes up.

I can see this being feasible in map generation. There is already “wreckage” you can find randomly that can play a part in this. I’ve even found houses that are partially filled with debris, but still have intact walls, roofs, and windows.

Perhaps eventually something that can be done in a “live” world?

It also makes sense to have some just broken windows. The Survivor Zombie does imply that other people survived the apocalypse but not the aftermath. Some evidence of those individual’s presence pre-zombie would be interesting. Perhaps a “wrecked survivor camp” structure in the world as well.