Icarus Studios News

The Icarus Base Editor is a database management tool that allows content information to be entered into a virtual world without any need of programming skills. (Which is good, because I have none. I’m a writer and editor for virtual worlds here at Icarus Studios.) However, even a novice like me was able to use a number of different templates (all of which have a similar and easily understood design) that comprise the Icarus Base Editor to create zombies for a game property of ours entitled Fallen Earth. (I should state that the Base Editor can also create items, NPCs [non-player characters], system events, and complex dialog trees—all with a minimum of effort. But talking about making zombies is much more fun for me.)

It’s like this: in the post-apocalyptic world of Fallen Earth, many survivors are living in various camps in the desert. One of the camps is near a town called Terance, which just happens to be populated by the living dead, who amble around at a leisurely pace and perhaps list a little to the side, but whose determination is not to be discounted when they yearn for the taste of a player character’s flesh. My task for the day was to create a few more zombies (whom I called Moe, Larry, and Curly—but only in my head, because I didn’t want the other, nameless zombies to feel unloved) and put them farther from the town and closer to the human encampment. I had to render the zombie models by making copies (or clones) in the Base Editor, then place the clones (which were given specific ID numbers in the database) in the world and map the coordinates of their walking (or, in their case, listing) paths. In order to do so, I first had to check out the virtual area in which I was working, ensuring no other game designer could overwrite the data I was entering. Then, it was a simple matter of searching through the filters on the Base Editor and picking the right zombie attributes. Now, I’m not a technical or programming sort of person (sometimes, I still do battle with my VCR clock), but the entire assignment took a relatively short period of time and was pretty easy, because all I had to do was enter the data and select the predetermined sets of rules by which the NPC groups were controlled.

My job was made even easier by the fact that zombies don’t talk. But if they did talk, it would’ve been a cinch to input their words, because all computer character dialog strings are loaded and saved in a centralized location. Thanks to the simple dialog interface, rich and complex conversations—or, in a hypothetical discourse among zombies, pathetic and simplistic moaning of the word “Braaaaains”—are possible. However, Moe, Larry, and Curly were more silent types, so, instead of worrying about what chilling threats they might utter to unsuspecting camp inhabitants, I just had to program their aggression level. Because Terance is an entry-level area requiring little combat experience, the zombies only became aggressive if an avatar walked within really close range of their path (and even then, a little old lady armed with an umbrella probably could fend them off.) After I made sure to place the zombie generator in the World Editor, I saved my entry, and the new content was uploaded. Later on, I was able to double-check my work by going back into the Base Editor’s history window to see what changes were made over the course of time (both by myself and others who worked on the project). Thanks to the Icarus Base Editor, I was able to animate the undead in the virtual world and maintain the data for my creations in a logical, organized fashion.

-Kara Stambach, Virtual Worlds Team