Hello all,
I´ve been working on a detailed yet most possibly simplified way of playing a party of survivors struggling against a horde of zombies. However, In order to simplify gameplay you´ll need some preparation.

*NOTE - I apologyze for any misspelling. English is not my native language*

CHALLENGE ENTERTAINMENT GOAL:
- Realism, i.e, avoid relying only on your imagination;
- Simple rules, i.e, avoid having to remember too complicated/detailed stuff.
- Fun, i.e, sufficient challenges with the sufficient level of difficulty and variety.

CHALLENGE OBJECTIVE:
The objective is bring your sims back to normal life. Keep them alive and improve their lives. At the same time, the town should be freed from zombies and repopulated with humans.

You will need some mods and cheats for this challenge. As follows:
- Motherlode cheat (to create house and buy objects), before game starts
- Family funds cheat - to set funds to 0,0 when you start playing.
- Dexter the bear mod (too kill zombies) - a killing / escape system will be explained later.
- Retuner Mod (to manage object interactions);
- Vector Mod (to spread the disease). Adjust the mod to no vaccines or cure.
- Delete school, police and firestation.
- You will need one dice.

EXPANSIONS NEEDED:
-Supernatural
-Seasons is recommended.

1. STEP ONE: Creating your sims - a Group of random people seeks refugee in a house and lives there while zombies infect citizens and roam the streets. I am using my real friends for entertainment purposes.
- 4 adult or young adult sims - 2 male / 2 female;
- 2 children - 1 male / 1 female;
- 2 elder sims - 1 male / 1 female.
All must be unrelated.
Pets are optional.

OBJECTS ALLOWED:
You start your game with:
- Fences (to protect your house / yard). Lock it to anyone except or family.
- 2 single beds (the cheapest ones).
- 6 sleeping bags
When occupied, the house had only 2 beds. You could get more as game progresses, if you are able to do it without being killed.

- 1 Fridge (the cheapest one)
Empty the fridge. Note that it is not electric powered. There is no electricity. It only serves as storage for the food / products you are able to gather around. Disable the fridge by using RETUNER MOD. Install the mod, click on city hall, choose Nraas, Retuner, Settings, General, Per Object, Fridge, Fridge Have and set everything to FALSE.
You can do this to other objects that you might want to restrict or adapt interactions with.

- 1 Firepit
Used to cook fruits and vegetables, meat, fish, whatever you find.
I advise you keep food products in your sims' inventory and let them use the pit when hungry, or you can instruct them to do so.
- Candles - There is no electricity.
- 3 Bicycles - There are no cars. Disable cars in RETUNER MOD.
- 1 radio (the cheapest one) - it works on batteries. Those will have to be switched every week. If not, no radio. Note: Besides serving as moral booster to the group, the radio is good to work on the athletic skill (explained later) and to try luring roaming zombies (I heard they dance around it, but I still haven´t tested it).
- One inventors' workbench.
- Alchemy set
- 1 sink
- 1 bathtub (no shower)
- 1 toilet
- Also, this potty bucket. Download here: http://www.den.simlogical.com/denfo...hp?topic=1773.0
- Every decoration you find adequate to set the mood.
- 2 seeds (beware your gardening level, so perhaps choose simple seeds)

BASIC NECESSITIES AND WAYS TO MEET THEM:

EAT:
Yours sims can:
- Grow veggies / fruits - this takes time so you must start with other alternatives.
- Raid neighbours houses. Assume houses are abandoned or if occupied, well, you need to eat to survive.
- Fish (no pond in the lot please);
- Search trashcan (not yours, keep it real)

Harvesting
Start with 2 seeds. You cannot search for seeds. It´s not worth the risk.
When you´ve levelled you gardening skill enough you can grow eggs, meat and cheese. This is the only time you can go to the supermarket to get 1egg/1meat/1cheese to plant. Supermaket information is below. You can only have 1 of these at a time.

Raiding neighbours houses and community lots
You can only have quick meals here. You can eat only canned soup and cereals with no milk. All the rest is spoiled. I could not find a way to take there products from neighbour or community lots with you.

Raid supermarket
You cannot raid the supermarket because there are only perishable goods there. It is all spoiled. If you want to go there to get some other stuff (not food) you can but you can only take 1 item with you. Stuff is hard to find. So one item is pretty good.
Also, after you finished "shopping" a risk factor must be applied. So you have to wait one hour outside to see if any zombies appear. This serves as simulation for the time you spent looking for stuff in the post apocalyptic clutter. If zombies appear, the escape/fight system will be used (explained later on).
NOTE: Everytime you need to replace batteries, you must go to the supermarket and play as explained above. Also, if you have other objects that you stole and need batteries for (for type of objects use your common sense) you must travel to the supermarket. 1 voyage = 1 set of batteries.

Fishing:
You may fish all you want. Just beware of the risks. Everytime you are outside, you are risking loosing one of your sims.


Search trashcans:
You may search all you want. Just beware of the risks.

WATER:
Just as food, water is very hard to get these days. There is no working water supply network, so taking a bath became a luxury. The same goes for washing dishes and cleaning the toilet.
Therefore, you cannot use your bathtube, toilet and sink unless one or some of your sims travel to the nearest river to carry water home. This must be done every week (choose a day, perhaps Sunday or whatever, to do it). As usual, traveling means risk, so for every sim in the household an hour of hanging around near the river should be applied. If zombies attack, use the escape/fighting system. Also, you can choose the number of sims you send to perform this task. Manage it wisely. If you send 2 sims to the river, they should wait 4 hours 8sims/2sims = 4hours. If you send all eight sims, one hour will suffice.
If you have your sims set to full free will, please lock the bathroom door while water is not available. The potty bucket downloaded should be placed outside, hidden in the bushes. If you dont want to download the potty bucket, just use a regular toilet. Also, please fence this area, because the peeing sim will send all others outside the house fencing and you dont want that. Hide all with bushes. You cant clean it when water is not available. It is a simulation for doing your business it an filthy bucket. You can flush it and repair it if you want.

OBTAINING OTHER OBJECTS:
Every night you can steal 3 objects from other lots. Note that only adults or young adults can perform this. The objects you steal are random so you might get a new bed or a stupid pink flamingo.

DEALING WITH ZOMBIES:
Escape / fight system.
1.All sims should have Dexter the Bear in their personal inventory.
2.Upon "Zombie attack" event, you should PAUSE the game and role 2 dices to check if you are able to escape it. Your ability to escape will depend on your athletic skill level, as follows. As said before, you need the radio (with batteries) to raise you athletic skill.
Level 1 ---> escape fails with any number under 11.
Level 2 ----> escape fails with any number under 10
Level 3 -----> escape fails with any number under 9
Level 4------> escape fails with any number under 8
Level 5 ------> escape fails with any number under 7
Level 6-------> escape fails with any number under 6
Level 7 ------->escape fails with any number under 5
Level 8 ------> escape fails with any number under 4
Level 9 ------->escape fails with any number under 3
Level 10 ------->escape fails with any number under 2

If you fail to escape or choose to fight instead, the following will apply in terms of your sim's horrible death. Also, Athletic skill level counts.
Roll 2 dices again.
Level 1-----> sim dies with any number under 10.
Level 2------>sim dies with any number under 9
Level 3------> sim dies with any number under 8
Level 4 ----> sim dies with any number under 7
Level 5---->sim dies with any number under 6
Level 6----> sim dies with any number under 5
Level 7----->sim dies with any number under 4
Level 8----->sim dies with any number under 3
Level 9-10--->sim dies with any number under 2.
Power in numbers: In case you role a dice and you are unlucky, so your sim would die, IF he his accompanied by other household companions, add one point per companion to your number. For example, you are level 5 athletic skill and got a 4. If you have 2 sims with you that means you can add 2 points to that 4, equals 6, so you barely survive. You can now use Dexter the bear to kill the smelly thing. Bear in mind that children do not count for this and 2 elder count just as 1 sim.

INVENTING:
Using the inventors working bench, 1 or more of your sims can create useful (or not so useful) stuff. The inventing skill is pretty good as it will allow you to install a water system from the river to your house and other cool stuff to your life quality.
At level 6 of inventing skill --- be able to have running water in household.
At level 8 of inventing skill --- electricity
At level 10 of inventing skill --- build new objects. Rule of thumb for the object you can have is 2 hours on the bench for every 100 simoleons this object costs in buy mode. For example, 1000sim bed will have you work 20 hours on the bench.

OTHER ASPECTS OF THE CHALLENGE:
- Sims die, so new sims should be born. Use MASTERCONTROL MOD to allow more than 8 sims in the household, in case one of the old sims is still around when a baby is born.

RESTORING POPULATION:
While trying to survive, your sims also have the responsability to repopulate the world with non rotting individuals. This leads to the ZOMBIE HUNTING.
Build a basement or a separate building in your lot. Build several cells with a bed, toilet and a chair. You must find ways to lock a zombie in each cell. Never let them out and feed them. Your sims must gather the food to keep the zombies alive.
In the meantime, work on a cure potion (alchemy set). When you get rid of all zombies outside, cure your captive zombies with the potion and release them to repopulate the new world.
I haven´t tested this part yet. Perhaps use the radio to lure them inside the cell. You must have at least 2 zombie couples.

That's it. If you red all this way, I thank you for you interest and hope you try it. Please let me know your thoughts and suggestions to improve the experience

This seems really neat, I'll give it a shot.

it seems interesting...

I both love and am afraid of the detail - I love it because it's so well thought out and exciting! I'm afraid of it because I have a terrible memory and I'm afraid I might forget quite a lot of the details of the rules along the way. I am too excited not to try it, though! Love it, love it. =D

I am excited with your excitement I´m so glad you like it!

I´ve been playing it for a while, and I found some aspects of it that should be changed. The thing is, if you dont start well, we are pretty much %&$%&! Food is a major issue, and the disease spreads too quickly outside, so when your sims' athletic skill is still low you cannot leave the house without being attacked by 2 or 3 zombies after 30seconds. You can never escape zombies at beginning of the game because of low skill.

Therefore, I removed the dice requirements you need to escape. The zombies are already too much of a difficulty. They do not let you stay in one place enough time to gather food for EIGHT people. Everyone is starving, except for 1 or 2 sims you manage to feed. Big groups are difficult to manage. So I guess this challenge is pretty realistic in terms of difficulty.

I would like to cast your fears away and make this challenge more user friendly.

So here is some stuff removed, that I found out that do not work so well, and also some tips to start with the right note.

Let your sims eat at will from the fridge for the first week. This time is needed to achieve the minimum requirements for basic sustainability. Be quick starting gardening / fishing as much you can and exercising. Also, the disease is still not completely spread, so there are less zombies around and you can go fishing for longer times.
Start your game during spring (if you have seasons). During winter, you cannot grow plants (they become dormant) and lakes freeze. You should accumulate food for winter.

Regarding the RETUNER mod, you dont need it. Just put a indoor fence around the fridge and lock it. It just serves as storage.

You can shower, flush toilet and wash dishes during winter and autunm. It rains a lot.

Your first problem is food.
FOOD GATHERING becomes much more easy once you have a well set garden and a at least level 3 fishing. You can send kids fishing alone. I know it is not very realistic but children are immune to zombie attacks.

After you have this problem moderately controled, start developing your athletic skill (no longer needed to escape - only to kill zombies), inventor skill and / or alchemy.

You need a big big garden so you can start trapping zombies in your cells. Use plants to lure them. Beware of locking and unlocking doors. I lost some sims because I forgot to lock a trapped zombie. I think Vector mod works in a way that after a while, a zombie will die or survive the infection, and when surviving they become human again. If a trapped zombie becomes human, dont let him go.

Your aim in this challenge is to solve the following problems, in order, if you want to succed:

FOOD - WATER - (INVENTING / ALCHEMY / TRAPPING ZOMBIES) - KILLING ALL OTHER ZOMBIES - RELEASING CURED ZOMBIES TO THE "WILD"

You can have babies in the meantime :lovestruc

Here are some pics of my challenge:

Okay, I'm sold. I really wanna try this challenge. Provided my computer doesn't die (it's been acting odd ever since I restored it), I'd like to record the gameplay and put it up on youtube, if that's alright with you. I'll need some time to get everything together and write down the rules, as well as give it a test run to see if I can actually do it. I will definitely keep the warning about stocking food in mind! Gotta think of it as though it were a real survival situation, and you'll always need food, water, and shelter to get by. Oh man, I'm SO excited to do this now!!!!

One question - can the other skills help sims slip by zombies? Say, I want a skinny, nerdy sim that can't fight go out and get food and he encounters a zombie. Can he use a skill like handiness as a form of cleverness to survive (I know this is stretching it, but just imagine him gathering supplies and using the environment to escape/fight a zombie instead of strength, like making zombie traps or something, or using the logic skill to outsmart the zombie)? What if an ex-actress sim encounters a zombie - could she use her charisma to "act" like a zombie to slip by (like in Shaun of the Dead)? What if a musician sim uses his sweet guitar skills to distract zombies with music and make them dance? I know he probably wouldn't be able to stop playing, lest he wish to be eaten, but he could at least stall them until help arrived. Could an inventor "make" weapons for sims at a higher skill level, so they wouldn't have to rely solely on the athletic skill? Is there any way to use any of this but still keep it on the "realistic" side? Sorry for all the questions. There's a reason I call myself annoyinggirlfriend. :D

*Edit: Oh, and the pics are awesome! I love how you made everything look and feel so desolate with the boxes and the overturned shopping cart!

Thanks again for your great feedback, annoyinggirlfriend.

I find your questions very valid and interesting. I admit I thought about including other skills as useful, but I thought that that could complicate the game and, also, I was a bit lazy.

I´ve been thinking on a way to include the other skills though, because the way you explained how this could happen seems very cool. I am thinking on a way to incorporate the other skills while I test how this could happen in order to add more variety and choice to the gameplay, allowing also different strategies and rewarding your smart playing.

I will post an update asap!

And please, if you have any other thoughts/suggestions, do post!

Oh, and I would absolutely love an youtube vid of your game. I will do the same.

Here are the other skills added and their usefulness to your sims' survival.

I have not tested this all yet, but most of it seems not prone to problems. Of course, I am open to suggestions.
I hope this is not too complicated and dont scare people away

My advice is to build a strategy based on the tools you have (skills) before you start playing, and not play entirely as it goes or you will probably get confused and fail. Please also check which skills you have available according to your expansion packs. F.ex., advanced tech is from Future and Street Art from University. I actually do not have those EP, so I have to choose other skills to help me out.

Note: It seems Honey can be added as a source of food.

I will probably write a more organized guide of all this. Part of the information on the first post was changed (escape/fighting system).

There is a chance I should only post the challenge after all is working neatly but I guess I too excited to wait. Also, I get to have very valuable ideas from others.

Any doubts interpreting the table, please let me know.

What is the newest version of the fight/flight system?

Newest version according to the tables attached. It includes other skills, therefore, other possibilities.

Athletic, Handiness combined with Logic, Creativity combined with logic allows you to flight or fight. Fail or sucess according to the dice rolls (see table attached)

Charisma and Guitar do not allow you to Fight and are mostly used to stay on the same place without being bothered by zombies. Number of hours you can do this is also according to your skill level (see table).

Difference between Charisma and Guitar is that High Charisma allows you to keep performing an activity (ex. fishing or looking for scrap) even when zombies are around (you cancel their attacks for a certain number of hours). While with Guitar skill you can only serve as support to other companions who are performing such activities. I.e, you keep playing to distract the zombies for as number of hours as your guitar skill level (ex. guitar level 2 = 2 hours).

Regarding escaping, you either roll dice for your athletic / Handiness combined with Logic/ Creativity combined with logic skills or you use charisma (as long as you have level 1 charisma you can always escape). But escaping is not very useful, because the dificulty lies on being able to do stuff outside.

Soon I will be posting a more comprehensive vid or document. I´ve been playing the game with these new rules and working quite well.

Okay, last set of questions, I swear! I sent this as a message, but it must not have gone through, so I'll ask here:

Does the lot have to be a specific size, or will any size lot do?

Do you pretend that all other sims outside the lot are zombies, or do you actually set the lunar phase to always be on the full moon setting to make actual zombies, or do you use a mod that makes everyone but your household zombies?

How do you set the game to start at Spring?

How do you start with seeds (how do you give the sims the seeds)?

How do you lure zombies into the cells in the basement?

How do you grow eggs/meat/cheese? I've never done that before.

How do you know when all zombies are cured/the challenge is done?

And lastly, I would love to see how the challenge is played by you - that would be so helpful! I've been studying the rules all morning and I think I've got a good survivor team ready to start surviving! Also, I'm sorry if my questions are kind of noobish, but there are certain things I've never done in the sims before.

I just answered your PM. But I´m posting the replies here also.

The lot doesnt need to be a specific size. But I started a new game with a Custom content lot, which is much more realistic and fun.
These are the links for some post apocalyptic lots:
http://www.thesimsresource.com/down...ndry/id/954440/
http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=453554
http://www.modthesims.info/browse.p...&showAll=1&gs=2

To create a zombie infection, you must download VECTOR MOD. This mod starts the infection on 2 random sims from the town (I think 2 sims is the default number), and the disease starts spreading to all other townies very fast. These 2 random sims start attacking other sims (zombie attack). Every infected sim will become permanent zombies and are ALWAYS zombies, ignoring the lunar fase stuff.
You need to set this mod in order to work according to your needs. So you need to click in Town Hall, select nraas and select "Vector". There are several settings you can adjust. Meaning, you must click on "Activate", than choose "Zombie Rage". After that, click "General", choose "Inoculation Base Classification" (it´s the first one on the list) and set it to zero. Also, on the same list, do not allow non active sims to buy inoculation (set it to false). After that, go to "Diseases", click on zombie rage and choose "low lethality". Finally click in "Outbreaks" and choose "Initiate outbreak".
You now have a zombie rage outbrake in your town

I´m not sure how to set the game to spring from the start. But I know you can go to game options, and mess around with that.

Regarding zombie luring:
As far as I noticed, zombies appear more near your house during full moon. They will wander around there trying to attack you from the other side of the fence. The way you lure them into the cells is up to your imagination and is part of the challenge. But here are a few tips:
- Build some zombie containment facilities with an easy entrance. Do not build a basement with an entrance that makes zombies walk inside your house. What I did was build some cells with an opening to the outdoors. When a zombie gets in, you just build a wall covering that opening. Cells must have doors facing indoors, but MUST be locked.
- Lure the zombies either by planting some plants inside the cells. They like to eat/destroy the plants. Or by using one of your sims with charisma skill to lure the zombie in. The zombie will try to attack him and move inside the cell where your sim is. After he is in, move your sim out and lock the zombie.

Regarding growing meat/eggs/cheese you need to perform gardening opportunities to unlock this. This is the only occasion that you are allowed to accept opportunities. Once you reached a certain gardening level and succed in the opportunities that are offered to you, you can go to the supermarket and buy 1 cheese, 1 meat and 1 egg to plant. I am not sure if these items automatically appear in your inventory after completing an opportunity though. Planting eggs/meat and cheese is not necessary to win the challenge, of course. Your sims can eat other stuff. But it would add variety.

How do you know when all zombies are cured/the challenge is done?
Well, you need to travel the city and visit all houses to look for zombies. If you cannot find anyone you probably killed them all (except the ones you kept captive in your cells). After you´ve done that, there is a final step:
Type testingcheatsenabled true
Click on the mailbox and choose make everyone my friend.
See in your relationship tab which sims appear. If only your household mates and the captive zombies appear, the rest is all dead. If there are still a few, you must hunt them.

NOTE:
Unload this in order to play with guns instead of dexter the bear: http://modthesims.info/d/402950

I am working on the vid as we speak. It will be posted soon.

If you have any more questions, or still some doubts regarding my answers here, do not hesitate to ask

Thanks so much for your speedy replies and for working with me on this. I can't wait to see the video!

Well, I have everything all set up. The only problem is, the zombie virus hasn't really spread anywhere yet. I took my angler sim out fishing for the day and he didn't encounter a single zombie! I must be doing something wrong. I will go read up more on how to use Vector. I did get everything else together and working, though. I didn't know how to give them seeds, but I did find out how to put plants in the yard, so I gave them a lettuce plant and a potato plant to care for. Also, I figured it'd be more realistic to start with only two or three sims, then keep adding one or two each day until you have eight, so I started out with just three - an insane angler, a green thumb sim, and a kleptomaniac athlete. I did as you said and focused on food first, and I must say, that's a really good idea!

Like I said, I will do more reading up on Vector. Also, perhaps I did not give the disease enough time to spread? I only played for one day. I'll see what happens after three days of play.

Hey :D
I'm glad you started already.

Are you sure you set everything ok in vector? If you did, like you said, perhaps u have to wait a bit longer.
If you did everything correctly and want more action, set your number of "patient zero" to 5 or 6. Then, on the same window, choose false on allowing active/household sims. 5 or 6 zombies will spread the disease faster. In my game, i also added a bunch of sims to the map, so there would be more zombies around/more people to infect.
Let me know how that works! And thanks a lot for your feedback :D

I cant see your pictures well on my cellphone, but I curious.

What I'm doing is I'm playing a normal family until the virus spreads more and then I'll put in the survivors.

That's so smart, I love it! I just built an abandoned shack for sims to "discover", but I love the family idea. Man, that's brilliant. I wish I had thought of that!

Man, your house is awesome! I love it! I absolutely love the basement! Very well done :D

keep us posted posted of your progress. Also, zombie infection spreasing wise. I hope it works, mine works almost 2 well. I am always getting those warnings on the top right side of the screen saying sim "whateverhisname" is now infected".

Here are some pics of my "home". I downloaded a pre made lot and included some stuff.

The family I'm playing right now until the virus progresses, is the teen mom I used for the Runaway Challege. The teen mother grew up and now is an adult and her daughter is now a child.

This is so cool! I'm installing Sims 3 and the expansions onto my laptop right now so I can try this out. If you don't mind, could I possibly retype the rules and stuff in a more understandable way?

Also, would you mind explaining how to disable cars. I can't seem to do it for the life of me.

Hey alex, happy you liked it

Is there a specific part of the rules you dont understand?
I know the information is kind of dispersed but it may take a while to put it all together.

But basically:
You create a family. A suggestion was made as for the kind of family but you can choose other types, as other simmers did.

When you start playing, you must have only the objects described in posts above.

You cant cook because there is no electricity. Face the frigde to the wall.
You can only bathe, clean stuff and flush during autunm and winter or whenever it rains. You can bathe however by taking your sims to a river or sea. Swim for an hour and then using testingcheatsenabled true to remove the stinky moodlet (you just click on the moodlet).
You can always leave the house to look for food, scrap, seeds, etc, but you must have some kind of way to defend yourself. This means you should raise the necessary skills to either fight/flight/mingle with or distract the zombies (see attached tables on this thread to know how it works). I can clarify all information regarding that, if you have any specific questions.
You start with 2 or 3 seeds regarding gardening.
You cannot go to the supermarket to get food but you can go there to get other stuff.
You can eat the food in your fridge on the first week, but you cannot cook it. Use the firepit.
You cannot replace items that cannot be fixed unless your inventor is levei 10. See the table for inventing information.

Your sims should not have traits that helps them raising skill levels, but that is not compulsory. It just makes the game harder.
I advise the clepto trait, so you can steal stuff from other lots.

To gather food / eat you can do everything except to prepare meals and buy stuff in the sipermarked. You cant access your fridge for quick meals either. But you can access neighbours and community lots and eat cereals or canned soup. You must delete the firestation, the school and police.

I would advise you to read all the posts and ask any specific questions. I will gladly reply.

I figured out how to start at spring! Use the testingcheatsenabled true cheat, then shift+click on the ground on your lot. A pie menu for Seasons should come up. Also, just a quick update, I did get Vector to work - turns out, there were too many supernaturals in Moonlight Falls and not enough humans for the disease to spread, so I evicted all the supers and replaced them with humans. Then I set the patient zeros to 5 and there you go, a full-on outbreak! I'm so excited, I'm going to play test it more later when I get home ^-^