Workout

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

Because the zombie apocalypse can get very damn boring some times. Those long waits until sunset, with a full belly and thirst slaked and nothing to read, where all you can do is wait. Where you even consider crazy things such as wearing those fabulous heels or… even do some pushups.

Requirements: At least neutral mood. Anything below that and you won’t be able to convince your own ass to move from the cold floor.

Immediate Effects:

  • Slight mood boost after finishing.
  • More tired (amount depends on length of workout)
  • Thirsty (very) and hungry (moderately)

Maximum length of a workout:
It would depend on every workout, but say five minutes each. The standard length would be reduced by things like being addicted to cigarettes (lungs are a mess), health of torso, pain, tiredness level before working out, etc, which would also affect the effectiveness of the exercise.

Long term effects:
It could either increase both strength and dexterity or each exercise could enhance one specific attribute. Alternatively it could only give a temporal boost for both or any of both attributes.

In any case, I think you never should be able to boost them more than, say, 3 points (to simulate natural body limits).

How would you workout?
Ideally you’d be able to do things that don’t require any equipment, such as pushups, right off the bat, by accessing a menu through a key press. There you’d select the type of routine you want to execute.

Some exercises would require specific objects or structures, such as a jumping rope (or just a rope), a punchbag, a fixed bar, weights, etc.

Alternative ways of working out
You could also exercise just by doing your average survivor stuff. Smashing zombie skulls with a bat would slowly increase your strength. Jumping over counters and climbing fences would slowly increase your dexterity. All this, again, up to your maximum str and dex capacity (+3 or whatever the number is).

But… this spiced cougar is soooo tasty
Eventually you’d lose all your gained strength and dexterity if you decide to vegetate in your farm fortress or LMAO shelter, as in real life. It could be fun to expand this by allowing your character to get fat and slow. I’m sure your neighbor zombies would appreciate it.

This is just the idea in rough terms. It could certainly be expanded, but that would be by others more knowledgeable about this fitness subject than myself. Me, I think I’m going to try this new bear-on-a-stick snack. It looks delicious.

2

Improving attributes over the course of the game is sort-of outside the simulation as it is.
Maybe if you were able to keep up a regimen of this stuff over MONTHS of gametime it would make sense.

People don’t go to the gym one day a week and then come home ripped. It takes months of work with a very strict and planned out diet.

Also I’m not sure what poses as an extra strenuous workout in DDA? The average stuff your survivor does while sprinting all over armageddon is a pretty intense workout already.

3

Recall that in this game, a season is over in 15 days. At that rate, 5 days ~ 1 month :slight_smile:

4

The life of a survivor is strenuous just until you set up, which can take from a few hours to just a few days. From then on all becomes pretty easy as long as you don’t do anything stupid. That’s the kind of situation I was thinking of when making this suggestion.

Working out is just something you can do in the mean time, when there’s really nothing much to do but wait until the four-legged snacks come to you (as some forumite defined cougars and wolves, love it) and boiling some water. Maybe explore a bit in your death-machine on wheels.

I guess it would really make sense if there would be a fitness/unfitness system in-game, so you have to keep training, to still be “competitive”. But what I really like is that it’d be another tool to keep your mood up, and give your survivor something else to do. Something that I think a lot of survivors would end up doing to stop inserting the .45 in their mouth. You have to keep yourself busy.

5

perhaps it can either help your mood or hurt it.

6

[quote=“An0n3, post:2, topic:452”]Improving attributes over the course of the game is sort-of outside the simulation as it is.
Maybe if you were able to keep up a regimen of this stuff over MONTHS of gametime it would make sense.

People don’t go to the gym one day a week and then come home ripped.[/quote]
They don’t go to the library, check out a few books and learn the applicable principles of direct energy weapons by the end of the week, either, and yet you can pump out charge rifles by that point with enough food and time.

As to the topic at hand, I don’t know if EXERCISE would be a good route for stat boosts, but it could be neat if there was a slim chance every time you gained a skill level that you gained a point in its appropriate attribute, or perhaps a tier in the appropriate mutation that boosts said attribute. Like the more you learn about medicine or science or mechanics the smarter you become, the more you refine your marksmanship the more perceptive you become, so on and so on. Likewise, if you let your skills rot you stand a chance of losing those bonuses, just like how you have to maintain a healthy lifestyle to remain fit.

7

I think exercise would be good direction for this game. You could get stat boost but you’d have to commit to upkeeping those stat point - aka. dedicate time and effort. The more you push to stat points trough this route the more you dedicate - upto the point where you have to do raids to towns to find food that supplements your training - or you have to choose between training for stats vs. spending that time fortifying your base etc.

I think exercise could give maximum of 3 stat points per physical stat. +1 you get if you do basic stuff. +2 is bi-daily routines and +3 requires extra effort in form of good diet, being healthy, refraining from cigarettes/ excessive alcohol / drugs etc and several different exercises.

The bigger the boost also easier it erodes, so you’d have to seriously commit if you want maximum benefit. That becomes good enough excuse to allow this tweak.

8

Yes, I think exercising should both take time and a toll on your general status (thirst and hunger) while providing something positive. The bonus being something you have to develop over time is fine with me. I proposed the immediate bonus alternative as I thought it might be simpler to code, although I’d like this to be something that lasts longer and is therefore more difficult to achieve.

On the other hand, I’d also be fine if it only works as another means to provide a morale boost. But, being morale as irrelevant for the most part as it is right now I don’t think this is a good enough reason for this suggestion to be considered. Heck, it seems survivors in this game take their role as “the last remnant of humanity on Earth” quite optimistically. “Oh, I’m quite alright. This is my default mood. Alright. Not too good, not too bad. The same mood as when I had a family, and a job, and friends, and a life. There’s zombies out there that want to eat my brain, and wolves, and cougars, and creatures beyond human comprehension… but I’m alright. Wait, I’m wet now. Rats! Now I won’t be able to raise my skills! All my plans to become the super-genius renaissance man of the wasteland are in shamb-- no, wait, I’m OK again. In fact, I’m quite alright. This is my default mood…”.

I think LazyCat has included some aspects of this idea in his “Metal Gear Solid” mod. At least it seems that some kind of fitness/unfitness system is in place.

–
EDIT: damn you, AseaHeru!

9

You sir are a great writer.

10

Damn it, now I’ll have to go and fix all the typos and grammar!

(Thanks, mate, but I’m really not :))

11

better than I am. my standard story connsists of page long discriptions and oddness.

12

I like this, getting +4 or -4 to any one stat because you have or have not been using it a lot lately sounds good. More things to do in your hideout is good as well, especially if they will give you some sort of edge later on down the line. You may think of it as ‘grinding’ but I’m thinking of it as ‘training up to take on that science lab’. Gaining stats from skills use though, I’m not sure is the greatest idea. You learn faster when you’re smarter, so you could become strong more quickly if you are smart to begin with, which might unbalance the intelligence stat.

13

As it stands right now, getting your strength above 14 starts costing you an extra point on character creation. (Me, I think that penalty should come in at 10 or 12 but whatever.) So let’s say 14 is a well built physique. You should be able to reach that with steady workouts and a healthy diet. Physical fitness with an upkeep alone sounds interesting to me. Tank-people need to eat more, right?

But how do we balance this? Getting -1 permanent strength because you spent two days reading books isn’t fun at all. Oh no! So, uh… how about an alternate experience pool? A physical one. A sloooow one. One worthwhile! Eat well, stay away from depression, drugs and preferably don’t mutate too much and you’ll have room to grow. Oh boy! Strain your body too much and your well built physique will start to deteriorate until your body can handle the daily strains you have it go through. Almost sounds ground breaking, doesn’t it? BUT HOW DO WE BALANCE SOMETHING LIKE THIS OH GOD!

That’s my take on all of this.

Agreed. The fabulous heels part made me snicker. Writing stories is fun whenever a game or some such puts you in a fitting (and almost automatically written) scenario.