World Design

Authoritative project content

Purpose & player value

The world must make travel a survival decision. Dense, fully explorable settlements provide scavenging stories and local navigation; roads, wilderness, bridges, and regional loot differences give vehicles and long-distance expeditions a purpose. The map is designed to create recognizable home territories, risky progression routes, and recurring PvE/PvP pressure without relying on disconnected levels.

Setting — [CONFIRMED]

Modern fictional post-apocalyptic peninsula. Society has collapsed after the Lambeer outbreak. The world is grounded, recognizable, decayed, and geographically fictional rather than a direct copy of a real region. Contemporary towns, suburbs, highways, farms, military infrastructure, industrial facilities, and coastal tourism coexist across distinct environmental regions.

The peninsula meets the outside world at one landward isthmus. A military wall seals that isthmus and forms the diegetic land boundary. Ocean surrounds the remaining sides.

Scope

• One persistent open-world map per server, supporting the confirmed target of approximately 40–60 concurrent players.
• One peninsula mainland, one endgame island, one large central city, two medium cities, and four small starter towns.
• Multiple connected environment types: coast, forest, farmland, wetland, hills, industrial land, and urban land.
• A complete road hierarchy, selected river crossings, two independently routed highway bridges to the island, and abandoned rail infrastructure.
• Enterable underground spaces: Central City subway areas, sewer/service routes, military/research bunkers, and underground parking.
• Every authored building is enterable. The tallest buildings are limited to ten accessible above-ground floors.
• Concept-level placement and quantity planning for mandatory civic, retail, military, transport, research, and survival POIs.

Out of scope for this concept pass

• A final illustrated map, surveyed coordinates, World Partition grid settings, or production-ready landscape dimensions.
• Final underground-network routes and connectivity. Depth caps by POI family are decided under TBD-WORLD-007.
• Final city and region names; readable role-based working names are used.
• Dynamic location events such as convoys, helicopter crashes, supply drops, fires, or migrating event objectives.
• Player-operable trains. Rail lines, stations, and abandoned rolling stock are exploration and loot spaces only.
• Structural building destruction. Only doors and windows are destructible under the current world rule.
• Exact loot tables, zombie counts, boss assignments, and per-volume no-build buffer meters. Laboratory key rules are decided under TBD-WORLD-006; exclusion categories and shapes under TBD-WORLD-003.

Terminology

Project Zomboid reference target

[CONFIRMED] Project Zomboid is the map-design reference for a continuous road-connected region, varied settlement sizes, high building density, fully enterable structures, location-specific loot, environmental storytelling, and exploration without loading transitions.

Lambeer-specific translation: the same principles must work for a photoreal third-person PvPvE game with drivable vehicles, persistent raidable bases, vertical buildings up to ten above-ground floors, fixed boss POIs, and approximately 40–60 players. The presentation, exact layout, assets, combat space, and progression remain original to Lambeer. Conventions Lambeer must not copy are recorded under TBD-WORLD-005.

World scale & concept allocation

At the 100 km² baseline, the island occupies 20 km², or 20% of the total planning footprint. The mainland-side envelope, including the peninsula, river, and internal water, occupies the remaining 80 km².

The allocation totals 100 km² and demonstrates that the requested concept can fit without enlarging the map at this stage. It does not prove travel time, density, or streaming performance. Increasing the map is justified only if blockout tests cannot preserve city identity, road travel, wilderness separation, and server performance at the baseline.

Macro topology

1. Landward isthmus and military wall: the controlled outer edge of the peninsula. Isthmus Town provides one of the four selectable starter locations.
2. Mainland outer region: West Regional City occupies one side of the progression axis and contains a regional airport. Nearby starter towns feed multiple road approaches rather than one mandatory route.
3. Central region: Central City is the only large city and the map's geographic, transport, military, commercial, and narrative center.
4. Island-facing coast: highways separate into two independent bridge approaches. River and wetland terrain prevent a single straight corridor from becoming the only useful route.
5. Endgame island: Island Resort City, a second regional airport, resort district, port, prison, community areas, and an island military zone share the 20 km² island envelope.

[RECOMMENDATION] Use an approximate west-to-east reading order during blockout—West Regional City → Central City → island bridges → Island Resort City—while the four starter towns occupy separated coastal, river, and isthmus approaches. Cardinal orientation remains a working convention until a map diagram is approved.

Settlement plan

[PLANNING ESTIMATE] The complete concept contains approximately 1,050–1,530 enterable building addresses. An address is an instance, not a unique art kit. Final counts require blockout validation under TBD-WORLD-001.

The land-use categories above are mutually exclusive for calculation: roads and POIs inside settlement footprints are included in those footprints, while the separate transport and strategic-site allocations cover only inter-settlement or standalone land.

• Every settlement transitions through suburbs, roadside development, or low-density lots before reaching wilderness. Central City must have the strongest and widest suburban ring.
• No building may exist as an inaccessible exterior-only façade. Small sheds, utility huts, garages, and damaged structures still require a traversable interior appropriate to their form.
• Buildings may use modular layouts and repeated kits, but repeated districts must vary routes, furnishing, damage, loot context, and environmental storytelling.
• The maximum above-ground building height is ten accessible floors. Underground levels do not count against that cap; they use the separate per-family limits in TBD-WORLD-007. Every authored floor, including underground floors, must be accessible. Vertical routes and emergency escape alternatives are required during detailed design.

Roads, bridges, rail & island access

• Primary highway spine: connects the isthmus, the mainland medium city, Central City, and the island-facing coast.
• Central distribution: a bypass/ring and multiple urban arterials prevent all cross-map traffic from using one downtown street.
• Rural network: secondary roads connect all four starter towns, farms, forests, utilities, and alternate city approaches. Off-road paths provide local shortcuts without replacing the highway network.
• Rivers: at least one major river crosses the peninsula. Bridges exist at selected authored crossings; the final count and placement follow blockout.
• Island bridges: exactly two highway bridges connect the island from different mainland approaches and land in different island districts. Building is prohibited on both bridges.
• Alternative island access: players may normally reach the island by bridge, boat, or swimming. These methods do not require a special world unlock, although ordinary survival and PvP risk still apply.
• Rail: abandoned railway lines, stations, yards, and rolling stock are enterable exploration/loot spaces. Trains are not player-operable.

[CONFIRMED — owner decision 2026-09-15] There are no authored foot or vehicle travel-time targets between starter towns, cities, opposite map edges, or island entrances. The owner will tune travel feel later. P13 blockout does not wait on numeric time goals.

Environment regions

Concept POI program

Each mall includes a supermarket, weapon-oriented retail space, clothing shops, food court/restaurants, cinema, multilevel parking, loading/service corridors, multiple public entrances, and back-of-house routes. All included spaces are enterable.

Lamla Research Institute

• [CONFIRMED] Lamla is the corporation that owns the sole research institute in Central City.
• The institute contains the only special laboratory of its kind. Lamla's work caused the Lambeer pathogen, which produced zombies and other mutated life.
• The special laboratory is locked and requires a key. [CONFIRMED — owner decision 2026-09-15] See TBD-WORLD-006: the key is a findable inventory item, consumed on use, not unique, and multiple copies may exist.
• The institute must support public/corporate, research, service, security, and restricted-laboratory layers so the locked lab is a destination rather than a single locked door at the entrance.

In-game arms companies

[CONFIRMED] Lamla Arms is a subsidiary of Lamla and manufactures weapons. Metro is a competing company and a rival of Lamla Arms.

For the L1810 pistol and its compatible accessories, see the L1810 content and markings reference. Product inscriptions are canonical there.

Revision — 2026-09-08: added the company relationships supplied by the project owner.

Progression, population & loot distribution

1. Start: a new player selects any of the four small towns, then spawns within an authored town-specific perimeter. Starter towns are not safe zones.
2. Local survival: low-to-mid tier necessities come from homes, clinics, local stores, farms, roadside stops, and nearby resource regions.
3. Regional escalation: West Regional City introduces denser urban scavenging and the first regional airport.
4. Central escalation: Central City provides the highest mainland density, major military content, multiple malls, and the Lamla narrative path.
5. Endgame concentration: the island combines the tourist city, prison, military zone, airport, port, and fixed high-risk POIs.

[RECOMMENDATION] Zombie density starts from a land-use population profile—urban core, suburb, small town, rural, and wilderness—then uses the confirmed global server multiplier and local region rate defined by Zombie Design. This preserves believable pre-outbreak population patterns while allowing gameplay and performance tuning.

Loot remains container-based and server-authoritative. Location type determines loot family; threat, access complexity, and regional tier determine relative value. Exact tables remain canonical in the runtime data source defined by Inventory & Items, not in this map document.

Building, access & destruction rules

• Player bases may be built in urban and rural areas when placement rules pass.
• Building is prohibited on both island bridges and inside authored exclusion volumes around critical POIs.
• [CONFIRMED — owner decision 2026-09-15] No-build uses authored volumes that follow each POI footprint plus its primary entrance, parking, and approach roads. Giant circular radii that consume whole districts are not used. Exact buffer meters are authored per volume during blockout; they are not a numeric catalog.
  • Hard no-build: island bridges; airport runways and terminals; military compounds; the prison; the power plant; the Lamla campus; fixed boss arenas; primary highway carriageways and bridge decks.
  • Spawn perimeter only: the authored Fresh Spawn selection perimeter of each starter town. Starter towns are not safe zones. Ordinary town lots, shops, and outskirts remain buildable.
  • Buildable: ordinary houses, shops, rural land, forest, farmland, and suburb lots that are not inside a hard volume or spawn perimeter.
  • P13 test set: one spawn perimeter, one small civic POI, and one road-segment volume inside the kit proof town.
• Doors and windows may be broken. Structural walls, floors, roofs, and load-bearing building geometry are not destructible under the current map rule.
• Locked progression doors, including the Lamla laboratory, must not be bypassable through ordinary door/window destruction; their security rules belong to the detailed POI specification.

Day/night & weather

• Dynamic day/night remains atmospheric and does not change zombie behavior, loot, or temperature decay in v1.
• Rain applies wetness to exposed pawns according to Wetness & Rain. Every enterable interior must provide correct shelter semantics.
• Fog, snow, and additional weather types remain visual-only until separately designed.

Production & technical constraints

• The world is authored as one World Partition persistent map. Streaming strategy, Data Layers, HLODs, navigation, AI relevancy, and interior visibility must be proven before content multiplication.
• [RISK] Approximately 1,050–1,530 fully enterable addresses plus up to ten accessible above-ground floors creates a major environment-art, lighting, navigation, loot, AI, persistence, and QA burden. Modular kits and repeatable room grammars are mandatory production dependencies, but cannot create inaccessible façades.
• [RISK] Photoreal environments, Lumen/Nanite, MetaHuman players, dense interiors, AI populations, and 40–60 concurrent players require early streaming and server-budget tests.
• No Unreal map asset, Data Layer, POI asset, or runtime implementation is claimed to exist by this concept document. Verified implementation evidence remains unavailable for this pass.

Concept acceptance criteria

• WORLD-C01 — The concept contains exactly one large city, two medium cities, four selectable small starter towns, and one island.
• WORLD-C02 — Central City lies between the mainland medium city and the island progression route and includes suburbs, Lamla, a large military zone, and multiple malls.
• WORLD-C03 — The island occupies 20% of the current planning baseline and contains the resort city, regional airport, port, prison, community areas, and military zone.
• WORLD-C04 — Two independently routed highway bridges connect different mainland approaches to different island landing areas; bridge construction is prohibited.
• WORLD-C05 — Every authored building and every authored floor is enterable; no building exceeds ten accessible above-ground floors. Underground floors follow TBD-WORLD-007.
• WORLD-C06 — All seven environment types are represented and connected through a readable road/terrain hierarchy.
• WORLD-C07 — Each medium city contains one regional airport; trains remain static exploration content.
• WORLD-C08 — Lamla owns the sole Central City research institute, and its special laboratory is key-gated and identified as the outbreak-origin location.
• WORLD-C09 — Structural building geometry is non-destructible; ordinary doors and windows may be broken without bypassing special progression locks.
• WORLD-C10 — A measured blockout report resolves or revises the 100 km² baseline before landscape production is locked.
• WORLD-C11 — Subway, sewer/service, bunker, and underground-parking spaces are represented as enterable concept layers without implying a player-operable rail system.
• WORLD-C12 — P13 uses the fictional Kit Proof Town brief in proof-area, not a named final settlement and not the complete seven-settlement map.

Open decisions

• TBD-WORLD-001 — Retain or revise the 100 km² total after blockout measures settlement density, travel time, wilderness separation, and streaming/server cost. Owner confirmed 2026-09-15 that the baseline stays unlocked and that P13 proceeds at kit-town scale.

Resolved decisions

• TBD-WORLD-002 Resolved — [CONFIRMED — owner decision 2026-09-13] Prove the core loop in a limited area first, then expand to the complete seven-settlement/island world. The final world concept is unchanged. See P13 streaming/proof area, P20 core-loop acceptance and P24–P26 full-world production.
• TBD-WORLD-003 Resolved — [CONFIRMED — owner decision 2026-09-15] Authored-volume no-build policy: hard POI/road/bridge volumes, spawn-perimeter-only protection for starter towns, ordinary lots remain buildable. Exact buffer meters are authored per volume. Canonical detail is in Building, access & destruction rules.
• TBD-WORLD-004 Resolved — [CONFIRMED — owner decision 2026-09-15] No authored travel-time targets. The owner will tune travel feel later. Canonical statement: Roads, bridges, rail & island access.
• TBD-WORLD-005 Resolved — [CONFIRMED — owner decision 2026-09-15] Lambeer keeps Project Zomboid’s connected-region, settlement-scale, fully enterable, location-loot, environmental-storytelling, and no-loading-transition principles. It must not copy: Knox Country names or layouts (Muldraugh, Riverside, West Point, Louisville, and related towns); tile-scale rooms that do not support third-person combat; starter towns that feel safe; predominantly 1–2 storey height as the map identity; forage/search-mode loot in place of container loot; helicopter events as map pacing; or Kentucky-Americana POI branding. Lambeer’s presentation remains a photoreal original peninsula.
• TBD-WORLD-006 Resolved — [CONFIRMED — owner decision 2026-09-15] The Lamla laboratory key is a findable inventory item. It is consumed on successful use. It is not unique; multiple copies may exist. There is no unique-holder recovery flow. Unused copies follow ordinary item persistence and death-bag rules. Exact container/POI loot assignment stays in the runtime loot source. Ordinary door/window destruction still cannot bypass the laboratory lock.
• TBD-WORLD-007 Resolved — [CONFIRMED — owner decision 2026-09-15] The ten-floor cap counts accessible above-ground floors only. Underground levels do not consume that cap and use these family limits: houses/shops max 1 basement; malls/hospitals/civic buildings max 2 (parking and service); military and Lamla bunkers max 3; Central City subway is enterable stations plus authored tunnel connectors, not a second open world; small sheds have no underground. P13 proves vertical streaming with a 3–4 storey building plus one basement, not a ten-floor tower.