<img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" /><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I remember being a system administrator of our school server (debian iirc) and once we found ourself under a "zombie attack". Basically the processes didn't exit but were left in this zombie state. This happened on all processes that finished. We figured it would have something to do with the init as it adopted the zombies. After few hours we had literally tens of thousands of them, and we're running out of PIDs! So we went to the server room and we saw getty (login program) was all capital and wasn't accepting our login. We pressed enter, it redisplayed the login prompt, and bam, all the zombies were gone. Almost a cool story for a horror movie.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I remember being a system administrator of our school server (debian iirc) and once we found ourself under a "zombie attack". Basically the processes didn't exit but were left in this zombie state. This happened on all processes that finished. We figured it would have something to do with the init as it adopted the zombies. After few hours we had literally tens of thousands of them, and we're running out of PIDs! So we went to the server room and we saw getty (login program) was all capital and wasn't accepting our login. We pressed enter, it redisplayed the login prompt, and bam, all the zombies were gone.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The year was 2004. In a quiet suburban public school, during a run-of-the-mill English lesson, <!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki <!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->was again fast asleep while the uncharismatic Mr. Johnson was spewing chapter after chapter of Romeo & Juliet. Suddenly a faint scream was echoing in the distance, down the labyrinth of corridors and fire doors. The scream was like a crescendo, gradually getting louder and coming from multiple sources. <!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki <!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->was startled by the sound and wiping the dust from his eyes he stood up and headed towards the door, Mr. Johnson ordered <!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki <!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->to sit back down but the sharp tongue of Johnson was lost. As <!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki <!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->reached the door to Room 4b, about to open his classroom to the corridor it blew open in his face. A young girl bellowed into his face and the class beyond him; "<!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->ZOMBIES<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->!"
After getting some sensible words from the young girl, <!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki <!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->found that the <!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->Zombie<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> attack was coming from the school's central computer server, running a version of Debian Linux. <!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki <!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->made his way to the I.T. Class to find a hysterical Mr. Roberts hunched over his laptop, half-giggling and half-crying. He was muttering under his breathe, from what <!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki <!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->could make out; "The processes... shut them down... they... they're not shutting down! The children... they're... changing!" <!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki <!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->deduced that the server was initiating processes, but not exiting them and the children were being turned into an undead, '<!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->Zombie<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> State'. It was happening to all the children and <!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki <!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->knew it would only be a matter of time before there was a full-blown infestation of processes being made redundant and children craving brains!
A few hours had passed since Jiriki had been sitting in his English class asleep, <!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki <!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->was now facing the possibility of having his whole future erased by rogue <!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->Zombie<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> brain-lusters crawling the hallways of his high-school. All his friends had either perished in the stampede that followed the initial encounter, or had their grey-matter devoured.
As the 'init's (the name Mr.Roberts gave to the initial zombie outbreak) devoured more brains and bit more innocent children, their numbers grew and there were literally thousands of <!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->Zombies<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> roaming the crepuscular halls of <!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->'s school. And with every <!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->Zombie<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> mutation there were less and less PIDs (People In Decent states) remaining!
Mr. Roberts finally snapped out of his trance and spoke up, he told <!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki <!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->that the only chance of fixing the <!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->Zombie<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> Attack was getting over to the server room. The only problem was that the courtyard between the I.T. room and the Server room was completely filled with the living dead! They had one last hope though, Damien - A drepraved child who was renowned for coming to school with concealed weapons - burst out of the stock-cupboard across the room. Fortune had it that Damien just so happened to be in the I.T Room's cupboard when the attack began. Damien had become trapped in there when the stampede commenced, tables were thrown against the door locking him in.
Damien agreed to help <!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki <!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->and Mr.Roberts get to the Server Room and they all departed the safety of I.T Room 2a. Damien hacked his way through the crowd of undead with the seasoned nonchalance of a ghetto-born thug. <!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki <!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->had picked up a fire-axe and was slicing through whatever Damien missed.
When they arrived at the Server they locked the door behind them and let out a long drawn breath of relief. As they turned the corner to approach the quietly humming computer tower, they noticed a silhouetted figure in the corner of the room. Getty (the school janitor) was hulking there, he got up and denied them access to the computer. Getty was screaming over and over: "NO, YOU WILL NOT DEFEAT MY BABIES". It turned out Getty had started this whole <!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->Zombie<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> attack with a powerful mental domination over the school.
Damien had no hesitations about slicing his throat and ending Getty. As he lay there with his entire contents of blood spilling onto the cold concrete floor his strange psychic connection was severed and all the <!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->Zombies<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> returned to their previous state. Obviously the children who were trampled to death were not so easily returned to the land of the living.
<!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki <!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->was back in Mr. Johnson's English class when the Bell rang and awoke him. Apparently it had all been a rather crazy dream. Again.
Glad the credit crunch made you happy <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
They can do community work, be used as prison guards (what convict would want to open the cell door???).
And much more if you think of it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I agree. You have the perfect opportunity to save a lot of money in employment cost by putting these Zombies to work!
In the current economic climate the last thing we want is Zombies taking our jobs. Zombies who will work for brains, making redundant all the money-craving humans of the world!
In response to Charlie looking for Fade abilities...
Remember Starcraft? There was a Zerg unit called a defiler. It had an acid spray ability that would damage all units or structures down to 1 HP. It was strong enough to make it a viable, useful weapon, but it also gave the victim a chance to recover, as it didn't actually destroy everything, just severly maim it.
Like alien spit/blood from the movie Aliens. Maybe it could be used similar to a Skulk's xenocide. The Fade spews a fountain of acid blood onto whatever, in a projectile (arcing) path towards the crosshairs. The exit velocity of said fountain could be changed for balance, as it would determine the maximum distance from which a Fade could stand and still hit something.
With a skulk xenocide, you get medium damage in a large area, at the expense of a cheap unit.
As the Fade spews this acid blood onto a structure or marine, its health would drop accordingly. The acid blood deals significant damage, but as it reacts with whatever it comes on contact with first, it does no splash damage.
So, maybe 1/4 to 1/2 a Fade's health could take out a marine. But very, very quickly. And maybe 1/2 to 2/3 of the Fade's health could take out a resource tower. Again, though, very very quickly.
No ammunition to code, the player judges how much more he/she can spew based on remaining health. Maybe it could be recovered simply by healing, or maybe lowers the Fade's max health for that life. Or maybe it temporarily lowers max health, then recovers at a rate much slower than regular heal, and the max health is unaffected by healing structures.
I'm sure whether you choose to use, modify, or discard this idea, NS2 will be AWESOME.
Shoot them in the head! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/asrifle.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="::asrifle::" border="0" alt="asrifle.gif" />
Comments
<img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" /><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I remember being a system administrator of our school server (debian iirc) and once we found ourself under a "zombie attack". Basically the processes didn't exit but were left in this zombie state. This happened on all processes that finished. We figured it would have something to do with the init as it adopted the zombies. After few hours we had literally tens of thousands of them, and we're running out of PIDs! So we went to the server room and we saw getty (login program) was all capital and wasn't accepting our login. We pressed enter, it redisplayed the login prompt, and bam, all the zombies were gone. Almost a cool story for a horror movie.
<!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro--><!--sizeo:3--><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><b>Zombie High</b><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec--><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
The year was 2004. In a quiet suburban public school, during a run-of-the-mill English lesson, <!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki <!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->was again fast asleep while the uncharismatic Mr. Johnson was spewing chapter after chapter of Romeo & Juliet. Suddenly a faint scream was echoing in the distance, down the labyrinth of corridors and fire doors. The scream was like a crescendo, gradually getting louder and coming from multiple sources. <!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki <!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->was startled by the sound and wiping the dust from his eyes he stood up and headed towards the door, Mr. Johnson ordered <!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki <!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->to sit back down but the sharp tongue of Johnson was lost. As <!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki <!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->reached the door to Room 4b, about to open his classroom to the corridor it blew open in his face. A young girl bellowed into his face and the class beyond him; "<!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->ZOMBIES<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->!"
After getting some sensible words from the young girl, <!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki <!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->found that the <!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->Zombie<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> attack was coming from the school's central computer server, running a version of Debian Linux. <!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki <!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->made his way to the I.T. Class to find a hysterical Mr. Roberts hunched over his laptop, half-giggling and half-crying. He was muttering under his breathe, from what <!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki <!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->could make out; "The processes... shut them down... they... they're not shutting down! The children... they're... changing!" <!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki <!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->deduced that the server was initiating processes, but not exiting them and the children were being turned into an undead, '<!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->Zombie<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> State'. It was happening to all the children and <!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki <!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->knew it would only be a matter of time before there was a full-blown infestation of processes being made redundant and children craving brains!
A few hours had passed since Jiriki had been sitting in his English class asleep, <!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki <!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->was now facing the possibility of having his whole future erased by rogue <!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->Zombie<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> brain-lusters crawling the hallways of his high-school. All his friends had either perished in the stampede that followed the initial encounter, or had their grey-matter devoured.
As the 'init's (the name Mr.Roberts gave to the initial zombie outbreak) devoured more brains and bit more innocent children, their numbers grew and there were literally thousands of <!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->Zombies<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> roaming the crepuscular halls of <!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->'s school. And with every <!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->Zombie<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> mutation there were less and less PIDs (People In Decent states) remaining!
Damien agreed to help <!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki <!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->and Mr.Roberts get to the Server Room and they all departed the safety of I.T Room 2a. Damien hacked his way through the crowd of undead with the seasoned nonchalance of a ghetto-born thug. <!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki <!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->had picked up a fire-axe and was slicing through whatever Damien missed.
When they arrived at the Server they locked the door behind them and let out a long drawn breath of relief. As they turned the corner to approach the quietly humming computer tower, they noticed a silhouetted figure in the corner of the room. Getty (the school janitor) was hulking there, he got up and denied them access to the computer. Getty was screaming over and over: "NO, YOU WILL NOT DEFEAT MY BABIES". It turned out Getty had started this whole <!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->Zombie<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> attack with a powerful mental domination over the school.
Damien had no hesitations about slicing his throat and ending Getty. As he lay there with his entire contents of blood spilling onto the cold concrete floor his strange psychic connection was severed and all the <!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->Zombies<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> returned to their previous state. Obviously the children who were trampled to death were not so easily returned to the land of the living.
<!--coloro:#48D1CC--><span style="color:#48D1CC"><!--/coloro-->Jiriki <!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->was back in Mr. Johnson's English class when the Bell rang and awoke him. Apparently it had all been a rather crazy dream. Again.
at approximately head level
nothing can go wrong.
also, molotovs, because human flesh is totally flammable.
i don't get it.. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/nerd-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="::nerdy::" border="0" alt="nerd-fix.gif" />
You mean infected marine corpses? <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/asrifle.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="::asrifle::" border="0" alt="asrifle.gif" /> <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/asrifle.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="::asrifle::" border="0" alt="asrifle.gif" /> <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/marine.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="::marine::" border="0" alt="marine.gif" />
They can do community work, be used as prison guards (what convict would want to open the cell door???).
And much more if you think of it.
They can do community work, be used as prison guards (what convict would want to open the cell door???).
And much more if you think of it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree.
You have the perfect opportunity to save a lot of money in employment cost by putting these Zombies to work!
Zombies who will work for brains, making redundant all the money-craving humans of the world!
Remember Starcraft? There was a Zerg unit called a defiler. It had an acid spray ability that would damage all units or structures down to 1 HP. It was strong enough to make it a viable, useful weapon, but it also gave the victim a chance to recover, as it didn't actually destroy everything, just severly maim it.
Like alien spit/blood from the movie Aliens. Maybe it could be used similar to a Skulk's xenocide. The Fade spews a fountain of acid blood onto whatever, in a projectile (arcing) path towards the crosshairs. The exit velocity of said fountain could be changed for balance, as it would determine the maximum distance from which a Fade could stand and still hit something.
With a skulk xenocide, you get medium damage in a large area, at the expense of a cheap unit.
As the Fade spews this acid blood onto a structure or marine, its health would drop accordingly. The acid blood deals significant damage, but as it reacts with whatever it comes on contact with first, it does no splash damage.
So, maybe 1/4 to 1/2 a Fade's health could take out a marine. But very, very quickly. And maybe 1/2 to 2/3 of the Fade's health could take out a resource tower. Again, though, very very quickly.
No ammunition to code, the player judges how much more he/she can spew based on remaining health. Maybe it could be recovered simply by healing, or maybe lowers the Fade's max health for that life. Or maybe it temporarily lowers max health, then recovers at a rate much slower than regular heal, and the max health is unaffected by healing structures.
I'm sure whether you choose to use, modify, or discard this idea, NS2 will be AWESOME.
Thanks for your time and consideration!
~Phoenix