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Deadzone  | |
| Created in: | Roblox |
| Release date: | January 1st 2013 |
| Developer: | DeadzoneZackZak (Nelson Sexton) |
| Type of game: | Post-apocalyptic survival game |
| Popularity: | >5 million visits |
| Status: | Closed down |
- This article is about the former game. For the gameplay feature in Unturned 3, see Deadzone Node.
Deadzone is the spiritual predecessor of Unturned created by Nelson Sexton in 2012. It was created on the Roblox engine, scripted in the Lua programming language.
Deadzone was incredibly popular, with up to 1000 people playing the game at a time. The game took place in Alaska (according to Nelson) and involved players gathering loot, avoiding zombies, and deciding if they want to be a villain or a hero.
History[]
What the game looks like
Deadzone started out as a small project by Nelson on Roblox, under the username of "Zackzak". The game was supposed to be a recreation of Payday: The Heist. At the time, there was a small map and a building that the Player could rob, but the community requested more features. Nelson also had started playing WarZ (now known as Infestation: Survivor Stories) and moved his game into that direction.
He created an alternate account, named "DeadzoneZackzak" to publish the game under. When he released the game, calling it "Deadzone", the map was mostly flat, and there were no hills. The Character wasn't customizable and there were few items. As time went by, he added many things; hills, plenty more guns, loads of new items, new cities and towns, broken legs, toxicity, etc. The game became insanely popular.
After about 6 months, Nelson started to lay back on the updates. Rather than 1 update per day, he slowed down to about 1 or 2 per week. Players were still enjoying the game very much. He decided he wanted to give the players more, by creating a sequel to Deadzone, titled "Deadzone II". Deadzone II was to be much more optimized, clean, and everything would be much smoother and better looking. Nelson would stream development of Deadzone II on Twitch every few weeks, adding things that the viewers requested. The closed beta version was released, requiring a key given specifically to you by Nelson himself.
The End of Deadzone[]
Deadzone copies in Roblox.
The original Deadzone was exploited by fla https://www.roblox.com/users/364727/profile. He managed to get all game files from Deadzone and released it publicly for anyone to take and re-release as a new Roblox game. Deadzone copies started popping up all over the game page on Roblox and Nelson was furious due to this.
He contacted Roblox, and Roblox deleted all of the copied games and banned all of the players responsible. But no matter what they did, there was always one more copy open for anyone to take. He dropped development on Deadzone II and lost all hope in Roblox. After a long wait, he updated the original Deadzone once more, placing a link to his blog in the description box. He said he was going to start developing a new game, outside of Roblox, called Unturned.
Unturned 1[]
Nelson created a blog (http://sdgdevelopment.blogspot.ca/), to record his development on Unturned, and various other projects. A new blog post would be released almost everyday, and there weren't many followers; only about 60 people would view each post. Approximately 3 months later, Unturned 1 was released. The game didn't have many players online, and not many servers were being hosted.
He started work on a new game, "Unturned 2", stating that creating a new game all together would be better than updating Unturned 1. As usual, he would post something new everyday, and would take everything the players said into consideration. The blog started to gain popularity, 50-200 people would comment on every post. The game was released, in early alpha. Not too many people played and he wrote that he was going to attempt to Greenlight Unturned 2 on Steam. After about a month or two, and much anticipation, the game was finally Greenlit, and was renamed back to "Unturned". Since then, the game has been a huge success.
Gameplay[]
Deadzone was much, much different than the average Roblox game. All of the content was made by Nelson, and all of the controls and animations were scripted in, overriding Roblox's. The game contained gun attachments, character customization, hundreds of items, and the ability to aim-down sights.
When first joining the game, the Player would be presented with a tutorial showing the basics of survival and the controls. The Player is spawned into the Safezone, and is given a Flashlight, a small backpack, a Ruger .22 pistol, and one .22 Magazine.
The Safezone.
The Player spawns in the "Safezone", An area in which no damage can be taken (hence the name "Safezone"). It is an area where players can freely trade items, access the in-game bank, shop, etc. In the bottom left corner of the Player's screen, there is a button that reads "Go to Deadzone". When they click it, their character is teleported into the game, either where they last left the game, or at a spawn point if they had just died or if it's their first time playing. If they are in the Deadzone, the button in the bottom left reads "Go to Safezone" instead, and upon clicking it, the Player's controls will be disabled and they cannot move until ten seconds have passed, to prevent combat logging.
Map[]
The Deadzone is populated with zombies in every town and city. The map is set in Alaska and there are many hills. There are five main military loot spots: The evacuation center, the airplane crash, the airfield, and police/fire stations.
Morality System[]
Deadzone features a "Morality System". The concept is, if the Player kills a certain reputation title, the reputation increases/decreases. Different reputation levels have different titles, which are used to judge whether or not a player will most likely kill them.
Reputation titles:
- Hero (500 rep)
- Sheriff (300 rep)
- Deputy (150 rep)
- Ranger (75 rep)
- Civilian (0 rep)
- Outlaw (-1 rep)
- Bandit (-50 rep)
- Villain (-100 rep)
- Mobster (-500 rep)
Video[]
Trivia[]
- The Steam page for Unturned states that Deadzone was an Unturned Prototype.
- Nelson was once falsely banned from Roblox, for having a copy of Deadzone.