Zombie simulator

[Neil]

Strangely facinating http://www.class3outbreak.com/zombie...eak-simulator/ Binary Space have released "Zombie Outbreak Simulator" (ZOS), a sandbox application running on Google Maps(R). ZOS allows players to unleash waves of zombies on the unsuspecting people of Washington DC. Players can tweak a number of zombie and infection variables such as zombie speed, infection rate, number of civilians and shooting accuracy to create their own version of a zombie outbreak. Watch as up to 15,000 civilians are chased down, attacked and infected by hundreds or thousands of shambling (or terrifyingly fast!) zombies over a 1km square area. Zombie Outbreak Simulator is Binary Space's "teaser app" for their upcoming zombie RTS, "Class 3 Outbreak", which also runs on Google Maps. Game designer, Jay Weston says, "ZOS and Class 3 Outbreak are by far the most ambitious games to be released on Google Maps, we can't wait to see what the reaction is like. A large scale zombie infection has never been simulated like this before." Programmer, Saxon Druce has coded each of the 15,000 map inhabitants to behave individually and interact with terrain on Google Maps, meaning that characters move under trees, around walls and into buildings, all while running at 30+ frames per second on very average PCs. More details about ZOS and Class 3 Outbreak can be found on the Binary Space (www.binaryspacegames.com) and Class 3 Outbreak (www.class3outbreak.com) websites.

[DjfunkmasterG]

Nice. I se the zombies to superfast, was quite fun to watch

[Neil]

Watch the police officers The two of them really seem to turn the tide! 10,000 10% 10% 500 West Slow 1min 2 50%

[SRP76]

That's a lot of fun, but the damned ads are having a MUCH larger outbreak than the dead.

[deadpunk]

[Neil]

That's a lot of fun, but the damned ads are having a MUCH larger outbreak than the dead. Firefox + ablocker?!

[Publius]

Pretty cool. Would be cooler if the police weren't completely oblivious to what was going on. Must be a town before the invention of cars, telephones, or radios. :P

[Wooley]

If you have 10-20% of your citizens armed, with a 50% accuracy, slow to normal zombies you can keep it a class 1 or 2 outbreak easy. I think 50% accuracy is believable since the zombies aren't shooting back and people can concentrate on their aim. Now I wish I could up the numbers of armed citizens as things went on, have the people abandon the streets, and vector my police towards the outbreak as it gets rolling. That'd be interesting to see.

[Thorn]

Thanks Neil this is mad fun.

[krakenslayer]

If you have 10-20% of your citizens armed, with a 50% accuracy, slow to normal zombies you can keep it a class 1 or 2 outbreak easy. I think 50% accuracy is believable since the zombies aren't shooting back and people can concentrate on their aim. Now I wish I could up the numbers of armed citizens as things went on, have the people abandon the streets, and vector my police towards the outbreak as it gets rolling. That'd be interesting to see. Yeah, realistically you'd have almost no armed civilians walking the streets at the start of the outbreak, with the number of armed people increasing fast as the outbreak gets out of control and surviving civilians take measures to defend themselves. Their aim should also improve over time as people who are initially inexperienced with weapons become more practised in their use.

[Wyldwraith]

Something I found interesting. The most pivotal setting is accuracy % of whatever # of armed civilians you set. Even at 10% armed civilians with 40% accuracy the zombies take over 21 minute to break the 225 undead mark. On slow zombies of course. I fiddled with all the settings alot, but from scenario to scenario nothing else gave even remotely as much impact besides setting the % of armed civilians to something unrealistically high. If you check the violent crime statistics for Washington D.C it is COMPLETELY believable that at any one time one is 10-12 people are packing *some form* of weapon. Whether they be juvenile offenders in the suburbs playing mailbox baseball (thus equipped with bats), to gangbangers with the ubiquitous Mac-10s, its not unrealistic to say 1 in 10 ppl in that specific city are armed. Armed with firearms no, but all weapons combined, yes. Just my thoughts.

[Mike70]

i ran this sim with 30% armed civilians at 40% accuracy. 7 cops with 60% accuracy and it took 2 mins and 27 secs to reduce the number of zombies to 0. fun little program. also interesting to note that the larger the civilian pop is, the faster the outbreak is controlled. even 10% armed (with 30% accuracy) out of 15,000 very quickly reduces the number of zombies to zero.

[Publius]

also interesting to note that the larger the civilian pop is, the faster the outbreak is controlled. even 10% armed (with 30% accuracy) out of 15,000 very quickly reduces the number of zombies to zero. That's counterintuitive. We typically assume that high population densities are worse, because low densities give news of the outbreak (and time to prepare) a chance to spread faster than the outbreak itself. Of course, in this simulator even the cops don't communicate with each other, which negates that factor.

[Mike70]

That's counterintuitive. We typically assume that high population densities are worse, because low densities give news of the outbreak (and time to prepare) a chance to spread faster than the outbreak itself. Of course, in this simulator even the cops don't communicate with each other, which negates that factor. yes, it is counter intuitive. i was quite surprised the first time i ran the sim with 15,000 people. but after re-running a few more times, it does seem to hold, at least for this simulator. i think the major factor is that it seems like every armed civilian who comes across a zombie is automatically "oh shit, there's a zombie. let me bust a cap in its head." this sim doesn't seem to take into account the amount of time that a person would need to mentally process what is happening and be able to bring themselves to shoot folks in the head. that wouldn't be an automatic response, in anyone but khardis of course. and with that i am verging way too far into the logical quicksand of applying what is a fictional scenario to real world behavior.

[Publius]

i think the major factor is that it seems like every armed civilian who comes across a zombie is automatically "oh shit, there's a zombie. let me bust a cap in its head." this sim doesn't seem to take into account the amount of time that a person would need to mentally process what is happening and be able to bring themselves to shoot folks in the head. that wouldn't be an automatic response, in anyone but khardis of course. Also a good point. They could (roughly) account for all of these factors by allowing accuracy and % of armed citizens to increase over time. Plus allow the police to move towards the zombies after a certain period of time. Add in those features and the sim would be pretty nifty.