Word for the living dead

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World of the Living Dead: Resurrection
Challenging and Cerebral
Developer(s)	Ballardia
Designer(s)	Dave Barton, Kulpreet Singh
Series	World of the Living Dead (Now Closed)
Engine	OpenStreetMap
Platform(s)	Web browser iPhone iPad Android Tablet Mac Linux Ubuntu
Release	21 February 2014 -23 June 2014
Genre(s)	Survival horror, MMORPG, Browser Game, Strategy Game, Role Playing Game
Mode(s)	Multiplayer

World of the Living Dead (WoTLD) : Resurrection was a real-time zombie survival strategy browser game developed using OpenStreetMap to provide the underlying game world, with in-depth gameplay features to make a browser-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game accessible on desktop, tablet and mobile devices.

The game was set in a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, overrun by the zombie apocalypse.^[1] Players were tasked with commanding, sustaining, and protecting one or more squads of survivors as they roamed the deserted streets and fought for survival. Players assumed the role of an operative taking a satellite view of the situation, and radioing in orders akin to classic early 1990s of the National Emergency Control and Relief Agency (NECRA),^[2] a government agency tasked with rebuilding civilization. Players couldn’t control the survivors individually, but instead used squad-level controls to accomplish objectives.^[3] The game had player vs. player PvP, Faction gameplay and player vs. environment PvE elements.

WoTLD: Resurrection ran its first round of Closed Beta Testing in October 2013. The second test began in December 2013, with the game being released to the public on 21 February 2014.^[4]

WoTLD: Resurrection announced its permanent shutdown on 23 June 2014. ^[5]

In 2016, the heading of the official website changed to ‘World of the Living Dead book coming in 2016’ along with the website name to ‘World of the Living Dead — Do you love reading about zombies?’.

Gameplay[edit]

The interface of WoTLD made use of OpenStreetMap and was set in a post-Apocalyptic Los Angeles . Much of the gameplay consisted of moving around the game world, a grid made up of 500m x 500m squares with occasional skirmishes with the zombies and the injuries that occur from such battles. In each zone, players had options to engage «zeds» scavenge for items, engage opponents, collect research samples or construct safehouses.

There were several thousand locations on the map, once a player had moved his/her team onto these locations several actions became available. These actions ranged from scavenging the zone for resources to tagging the walls to mark your passing. Squads were marked with small icons on the map, and opposing players, as well as notable buildings are scattered around the map. Movement consisted of moving through the game world step by step. Combat was not «seen» first-hand, instead popping up as a series of combat reports, detailing any injuries, kills and/or deaths.^[6] As your characters progress, fear, and fatigue start to take its toll, making your survivors less efficient.

With a complex system of needs, food and water became critical resources in the game and players had to manage hunger and thirst. After passing a certain number of days at maximum thirst or hunger, survivors would go AWOL, moving to a random location on the map, from which they needed to be recovered by the player. Hunger and dehydration would also hinder the survivor’s performance, slowing him/her down in combat, making them an easier target. Thus, every expedition had to be carefully planned before ordering your people to leave the relative safety of your safehouse. Players who returned between gameplay sessions to their safehouse would see their health recover, and fear and fatigue drop, and these could be sped up through development of the appropriate skills.

Instead of defining hordes as specific beings, or even as a number, WoTLD used a unique definition of «z-density», defining the density of zombies within a block instead of the actual zombie count.^[7] Level of density is defined by a scale of colors, providing a better visual at a first glance.

Development[edit]

World of the Living Dead: Resurrection was developed by Irish indie games developer Ballardia, which consisted of Dave Barton and Kulpreet Singh.^[8] Dave and Kulpreet were both senior development staff at pre-GameStop Jolt Online, then known as OMAC Industries, founded by Dylan Collins, a successful Irish games and technology entrepreneur. He had previously sold Demonware, to Activision, and secured a license to develop a game base on the Zork series. Dave Barton was Lead Designer for Legends of Zork, and Kulpreet was CTO, and Lead Developer on NationStates 2.

WoTLD was originally conceived by Dave Barton in 2007. Development began in mid-2009 with the help of Kulpreet Singh.^[7] Open beta was originally planned for December 2010,^[7] and featured a game engine that incorporated Google Maps. It went into Closed Beta in late 2010, and Open Beta in 2012. However, the developers encountered a severe problem as the Google Maps API, which the game was built around, could not handle large numbers of concurrent players. This meant that the game, which was built around moving through the game’s landscape, reacting in real time to noise and other players, did not scale well. Development of all the gameplay elements continued, and the game continued to receive updates until May 2013 when it was announced to be shutting down the following month, allowing the developers to bring the game forward on the new OpenStreetMap system. In June 2014, servers closed, allowing the developers to refocus all efforts to rerelease the game as World of the Living Dead: Resurrection.

In early 2013 the developers chose OpenStreetMap as a replacement. The first phase of Closed Beta Testing began on 10 October 2013 with over 300 testers, which ended in late November 2013 after initial bug fixes were rapidly deployed, and rebalancing of all metrics tweaked regularly. This shut down in November 2013, allowing the developers some time to address many issues, and re-boot the game to run a full cycle of the game, based on achieving a Faction-based end-game goal of researching a solution to the Zombocolypse.

The second round of Closed Beta Testing began on 1 December 2013, and ended on 21 February 2014, with the removal of the beta key requirement, a rebalancing of the cooldowns to allow regular solo sessions throughout the day, and updates to allow single players to win the game. The developer have promised a Championship Trophy, which will be webcast, and the winner(s) will have their name engraved on the trophy as Round 1 Winners.

See also[edit]

• List of multiplayer browser games

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• Official website

Last of the Living Dead

Doni a-scaro, oro Ia non,

Donî scara loso doî oro.

Doni anara do sě-re sar,

Donî răre sano ameno.

Noviu rěssara, noviu vivisa

Noviu vi rěssuro!

And we all pray for the last of the living dead,

Pray for the sun you will lose!

Pray for the last of the living dead,

Noviu rěse sarado!

Donî veroso, iuriăda,

Donî seni sinîara da!

Donă recăssia, donî viru,

Donî sanctus, donă sarado.

Donî risara, donî vi-risa,

Noviu vi nasaro!

And we all pray for the last of living dead,

Pray for the sun you will lose!

Pray for the last of the living dead,

Noviu rěse sărado!

Dorî sare, dori răra, living dead, pray for living dead!

Dori more, soîo cala, living dead, pray for living dead!

Dorî sare, dori răra!

And we all pray for the last of living dead,

Pray for the sun you will lose!

Pray for the last of the living dead,

Noviu rěse sarado!

Последний из живых мертвецов

Doni a-scaro, oro Ia non,

Donî scara loso doî oro.

Doni anara do sě-re sar,

Donî răre sano ameno.

Noviu rěssara, noviu vivisa

Noviu vi rěssuro!

И мы все молимся за последнего из живых мертвецов,

Молимся за сына, которого ты потерял!

Молимся за последнего из живых мертвецов,

Noviu rěse sarado!

Donî veroso, iuriăda,

Donî seni sinîara da!

Donă recăssia, donî viru,

Donî sanctus, donă sarado.

Donî risara, donî vi-risa,

Noviu vi nasaro!

И мы все молимся за последнего из живых мертвецов,

Молимся за сына, которого ты потерял!

Молимся за последнего из живых мертвецов,

Noviu rěse sărado!

Dorî sare, dori răra, living dead, pray for living dead!

Dori more, soîo cala, living dead, pray for living dead!

Dorî sare, dori răra!

И мы все молимся за последнего из живых мертвецов,

Молимся за сына, которого ты потерял!

Молимся за последнего из живых мертвецов,

Noviu rěse sarado!

Believe it or not, I began looking up the history of the word «zombie» this past Friday. I was still compiling research yesterday when I saw the tragic news that the great George A. Romero had passed away. RIP Mr. Romero.

Zombie is most likely of West African origin, and was originally used as the name of a god or spirit associated with rural Haitian folklore and Vodou† (or Voodoo)—specifically a serpent spirit sometimes known as Li Grande Zombi (the great spirit/god) or Damballah, though different sources dispute which god/spirit was known as «Li Grande Zombi» and which was most associated with serpents.

Another early Louisiana Creole sense of the word, «phantom» or «ghost,» may have instead arisen from the Spanish sombra, meaning «shade, ghost.» This theory is supported by an account of the shamanist practices of the indigenous Caribbean Taíno people, written by a monk who traveled with Christopher Columbus.

However, the African origin seems more likely, not only because the Vodou religion itself is of African origin, but also because the earliest recorded occurrence of the English word, then spelled «zombi,» was in the 1819 History of Brazil by the poet Robert Southey. Southey wrote about the Afro-Brazilian anti-slavery rebel leader and king of a runaway slave settlement, Zumbi dos Palmares, whose name came from the Kikongo word zumbi («fetish») or the Kimbundu nzambi («soul,» but also «god» or «divine spirit» in Kikongo), and who was rumored to be immortal for a time. It seems that Zumbi and these West African words most heavily influenced the word’s rise in the Caribbean.

The English «zombie» first referred to a reanimated corpse in 1871. The earliest forms of today’s zombie mythos gained popularity at the same time as Vodou, but zombies are not typically part of true Vodou religious practices and are more accurately associated with the non-Vodou rural Haitian folklore.

According to this folklore, zombies are the dead who have been reanimated via necromancy, usually by a Vodou sorcerer or witch called a bokor (characterised by serving the loa, or spirits, «with both hands,» or practicing both good and evil). The zombie has no will of its own and becomes a slave to the bokor. These practices can also involve incorporeal zombies—temporary parts of human souls—that can be captured, stored and used by a bokor for sorcery. Supposedly these two types of zombies reflect the dualism of Vodou, the flesh and the spirit comprising the two halves of the human soul.

The concept and the word grew popular in the US during the occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934. It’s debatable when the first fictional description of contemporary zombies appeared; there are undead characters across many religious myths and classic literature, from Shelley to Poe, but most of these aren’t quite the mindless undead we see today. A notable zombie tale is the 1922 «Herbert West–Reanimator,» a short story by HP Lovecraft, which you can read here. It does not contain the word «zombie,» but does describe the «grisly masses of flesh that had been dead, but that [Dr. Herbert] West waked to a blind, brainless, nauseous animation.»

The 1929 novel The Magic Island by William Seabrook, which you can read in its illustrated entirety here, does contain the word «zombie» and is credited with popularizing fictional Haitian zombies in America. The 1932 Bela Lugosi film White Zombie included undead Haitian Vodou slaves, still retaining connections between Vodou and zombies. Zombies would then appear in 1950s comic series such as Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror, evolving into the less culturally specific zombies we see today.

Lugosi’s film and these comics would greatly influence Mr. Romero’s films, including both the 1964 The Last Man on Earth (based on the 1954 novel I Am Legend, which was technically about vampire-esque monsters) and of course the iconic 1968 Night of the Living Dead. The Living Dead movie script itself does not refer to the undead as «zombies,» but uses the word «ghoul»†† instead. In fact, it was press coverage using the word «zombie» that cemented the association between the film and Romero’s undead. Romero used the word «ghoul» in the original script, and only began using «zombie» in later interviews, fully adopting it in his 1978 Dawn of the Dead script (read an early draft here).

You’ll probably note that The Walking Dead TV series also avoids using the word «zombie,» with the logic being that zombie fiction is nonexistent in that universe. However, the word does appear in the comics (Walking Dead #7 shows the word «zombie» on this page); supposedly creator Robert Kirkman meant to exclude it in the comics too, but kept writing it unintentionally and eventually just started leaving it. (I’m having trouble finding a source on that last fact though.)

WayTooFuckingLong;DR: The origins of «zombie» are debatable and varied, but most likely come from West African origins and evolved into a word referring to reanimated corpses thanks to Haitian folklore and, to a lesser extent, Vodou religious practices. It may have come from the name of a serpent spirit sometimes known as Li Grande Zombi, originally from the Kikongo word zumbi («fetish») or the Kimbundu nzambi («soul,» but also «god» or «divine spirit» in Kikongo). The word «zombie» was thus primarily associated with Haitian and Creole culture until it evolved to refer to the contemporary flesh-eating undead in comics, literature and films starting in the 1910s and 20s (following the US occupation of Haiti), their popularity rising notably with George A. Romero’s iconic films.

† The word «Voodoo»—referring to a witchcraft-centric religion practiced primarily in Haitian and Creole cultures, also spelled Vodou or in a variety of other ways—was first used in English in 1850. The original Louisiana French voudou, it comes from West African languages, such as Ewe and Fon, in which vodu meant «spirit, demon, deity.» It could also be from Vandoo, which is supposedly the name of an African deity, related to vodun, «fetish connected with snake worship in Dahomey,» supposedly from vo «to be afraid,» or vo «harmful.»

†† The word «ghoul,» from 1786, is from the Arabic ghul, referring to an evil spirit that robs graves and feeds on corpses, from ghala «he seized.» It came to English when William Beckford’s Gothic novel Vathek, about a caliph who attempts to attain supernatural powers, was translated to English from the original French.