Zombie Outbreak RPG (Build 42)
Rank 1,338 out of 16,402 in StarCraft
This map is part of the Zombie Outbreak RPG project.
A newer version of this map, Zombie Outbreak RPG 1.55 Full, is available.
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- Top 10 Aug. 29, 2009
- Top 100 Aug. 29, 2009
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What a difference in pacing when you aren't stuck on the same mission for twenty minutes because a yellow unit wandered off, or even just the duration of the garrison missions.
I'm confident enough in the gameplay now to add the second half of the mission set and finally an overall objective (certain missions will disable invincibility of your target for a short period, hah).
Currently its difficult enough to complete a set of the second stage missions. I expect the third and fourth stages, once added, to be a nightmare.
Okay, so we THOUGHT we found a glaring exploit. Because the minerals used for upgrades are based on kills points, anything you kill garners points, especially hero types. The Wraith used for exiting the viewlocked shop is the Hero type Wraith, and gives roughly 70-80 minerals a kill. Two players can sit in the shop trading kills of the wraiths without even getting kicked out of the shop.
However, deaths of the wraiths DO count towards the infestation level, and though we were Hero class, 12/25 attack, 10/20 armor, the MASSIVE level hospital rush immediately after wiped us out faster than we could figure out what happened.
So though its an illegitimate resource method, it also has an incredible drawback; especially true now that an infestation increase when already at max level now spawns extra Ultralisks.
Since it hit #1 I was curious and played it with some friends. I'm not an expert, but it seems pretty consistent with other maps of the genre. I do have some general comments:
1. For professionalism you really should add text formatting (color/centering of triggered messages and, optionally, unit names).
2. When you die, you lose your stored medkits (bug or intentional?).
I'm not too big on spiffyness. I think a lot of text coloring and terrain blending and sprite usage is just a sham to cover up bad gameplay in the maps you would describe as 'professional'.
tl;dr: I have better things to work on than prettiness.
Killing all of your medkits is a legacy trigger from when they used to all freely roam the map. Medics needed a cleanup whenever all the attack-capable units were dead. When I changed the medics to one-at-a-time and auto-following I didn't realize I could easily remove the medic-dumping, since it will only bring out a medic if you have a unit in the main gameplay area.
>> I think a lot of text coloring and terrain blending and sprite usage is just a sham to cover up bad gameplay in the maps you would describe as ‘professional’.
Complete nonsense. There is zero correlation between "prettiness" and "bad gameplay". If you want examples, find me on USEast sometime and I can show you.
This is coming from an experienced mapper who values gameplay more than any other single factor, but has a solid understanding of people and their motivations - why they play, what they're looking for, and what will happen when you cut corners on certain non-gameplay portions of the game.
But whatever, it's your map, you know your target audience. Do what you want ;)
Nah I'm a few specific maps I've encountered that were all shined up and pretty with all the colors and bells and whistles, if you were to base 'Professional' on that, but were just shat unbalanced 'Move unit to beacon for mass-attack' BS for gameplay.
Didn't make any insinuation that being pretty meant BAD gameplay, words in my mouth man, but you did pretty much say my mapping skills were 'unprofessional' because the map isn't pretty enough.
I guess a run through the string editor could splash some color on things fairly easily (instead of editing every text trigger), but most of that is just pointless in comparison to finishing up the mission structure or making sure one overpowered unit can't bum-rush the whole objective.
Just meant it exactly the way I said it: "I have better things to work on than prettiness.
>> you did pretty much say my mapping skills were ‘unprofessional’ because the map isn't pretty enough.
Not at all. Why would you assume the worst possible meaning of what I wrote?
>> ...most of that is just pointless...
A better term is "secondary". For an original creation, my typical mapping development life cycle is:
1. Brainstorm a fun, interesting gameplay concept. (In my latest, Auction D, the key idea was "free-market valuation of defense units", instead of the typical "$100 for a marine" kind of thing)
2. Make sure that it is reasonable to implement it in SC. (I was working on a vertical shooter a week ago and abandoned it because of SC's extreme limitations regarding unit orders and subroutines)
3. Implement the gameplay. To quote the indispensable Orc Peon, "Work, work."
(continued)
(continued from last post)
4. Make the User Interface look decent, for two reasons:
- to make it as easy as possible for the player to focus on the core gameplay
- if the game has a tough learning curve, the player needs to know that the game is worth learning, some kind of indication that you actually designed great gameplay. even a bit of UI effort helps them stay engaged instead of leaving too soon to appreciate the game.
Overall I like the polish on this map. I started playing with "version 1.0" on battlenet and found the 1.50 Lite version 06/2010.
150L has "unit lag" (too many units for old machines). Is there a way to release a 1.5L-OC (Old Computer) version that has significantly less number of units to prevent old computers from lagging? The units may be scaled up in strength to compensate for fewer units.
Also possible: tips on how to do this with an editor if the authors don't want to do it.
127.0.0.xxx
I know about the lag issue and its actually because of building handling. Its from 'giving' units between players at too fast a rate (in this case, about 24 times per second XD).
I made the upgrade buildings blink to brown every cycle to prevent upgrading without a unit actually at the pad (if you own an SCV or CC its so you can build things that have requirements).
I've sought alternatives such as disabled unit sprits (which apparently SCMDraft can't do) and I'm likely just going to dial back the blink rate since the difference between 0 and 1 on upgrade build time is great enough to still prevent upgrading even by relinquishing the buildings just once per second.
The new music is done too, and I'm just waiting for a version of TinyMap2 that doesn't break my player 1 fog data.
Hey, Ranzear. Looks like the map is pretty solid.
I appreciate all your hard work. The map looks pretty intense, and although I havent played it since the last time I showed you the original map, I've been moving on to bigger things (The Army, for example), but again, I appreciate what you did to my map which I thought was dead, and completely transform it into a godly machine, lol.
99.155.52.xxx
It's been a few months and the last few versions (lag fix and non-compressed) were so nearly lost to a dead motherboard. I shopped hard for a replacement that would read my RAID array so I could recover so much creative work including this map.
1.52, barring some game-breaking glitch (most others I just consider 'flavorful'), should be the final version. The lag should be fixed, the guns should be blazing, and the odds should be slim. Lite and Full versions available, as ever with Lite recommended for B-net due to lag mucking the music. Enjoy.
Forgot to mention, because I thought I had already released with it, but 1.52 contains completely new music created by myself. There are some minor sync issues with one track, so I may give it one more tweak in the future, but for now it is completely playable with the new and very impressive soundtrack. I have a preview mp3 I can post elsewhere and I'll post a link to it here, as it is a fine enhancement to the mood of the gameplay especially in the deeper sections.
what kinda game is it?
It's a multiplayer single-unit adventure with resource and enemy scaling based on the number of players, RPG elements, hireables, a relatively intelligent computer ally, randomly generated missions, a rather variable but smooth difficulty curve, and a contextual dynamic music system.
Or in fewer words, it's a mishmash of every awesome idea I ever had to put in a Starcraft map.
There. It is officially and irrevocably done except for getting the full version with the music files thrown in up.
I know I'm done because I hit the Locations limit, and the map is way too off the deep end to start recycling now.
So I tweaked and wrenched and played it for hours just to polish up the last little naggances and bugs. Blew through a few versions finding new issues, both gamebreakers and things only I would notice, and fixing them.
I'm proud to have filled a map with features, many of them unique (at least in combination) to the best of my knowledge. It's been quite a journey putting this together, and I think I taught myself a lot about game design in the process. If there's any version to play at least once, it's 1.55 -- it's fun even to me, whom has played it mindlessly since the beginning. I know the author is always the worst critic but I know how much has changed and how much grief I've scrubbed from this project.
Across all versions this project has over 9000 downloads. Just ~520 more and I'll hit a glorious 10k. Maybe I'll start mapping for SC2, maybe I'll start coding my own games. Who knows. Look for my name and you'll know it's the same.
10,000 Downloads!
To celebrate, despite losing all of my sound work and having to rip the files from an older version, I've uploaded the Full version for 1.55 with complete music. I made one small trigger tweak to change a track combination that had sync issues, but this definitely shouldn't affect gameplay between the lite and full versions (it also results in a little less 'noise' and rapid track changing around the hospital).
awesome game!
a unique feature of this map: you can use it to make shit crazy good defense maps :D
i had the same problem, couldnt really play
Read the description. You have to play this map in Multiplayer, in LAN mode for solo or on Battle.net. Trying to play in Single-player causes the cursor to center when the view is moved.