My first zombie map.

You and up to three of your companions were riding in a Battlecruiser when... something... shot you down. The ship crashed in a sealed-off area of the now-burning city. You're dead -- that much is certain. But you're not the kind of person who's willing to go down without a fight.

Luckily for you, there's some artillery and SCVs that got left behind, so grab a vehicle and take down as many of those Zerg freaks as you can!

Each player has a Vehicle Controller (Infested Terran) and a Jump Controller (Lurker) at the bottom of the map, along with a Survivor (Civilian) in the playing field. There are also many vehicles scattered throughout the playing field. To enter a vehicle, a player need only bring their Survivor to it, and then burrow their Vehicle Controller. If the Survivor is near multiple vehicles, a message on the Leaderboard will tell the player what vehicle they'll end up entering.

Should a player find themselves surrounded by zombies and unable to move, they can burrow their Jump Controller to "jump" over them.

SCVs are scattered around the area. There are short breaks between the Zerg hordes; you can use these to arrange your vehicles as needed and repair any damaged players. The Zerg are intelligent enough to tell what vehicles are being piloted -- they don't waste time on the unoccupied ones, so you can switch to them if your current ride gets too beaten up, or if a change in tactics is needed. Note, though, that if you're in a vehicle when it blows up, you're dead -- you're out of the game.

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More images
ImageShack album, draft 1
ImageShack album, draft 2

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Features:

• X-Zerg: Zerg variants (modified heroes) that are twice as tough as their normal counterparts.
  
• Flexible vehicle entry and exit. If you're near a cluster of vehicles, a second (smaller) location is used to detect which one you're closest to -- making it easier to enter the vehicle you actually want to enter.
  
• Kills to Cash -- useful for repairing your vehicles with SCVs [may need tweaking?]
  
• The Zerg horde adapts to you and your friends' positions and vehicles. [in progress]
  

To be implemented:

• Armory Defense: Players have the option to accept or veto this mission. When a majority has accepted, one player will take control of an Armory and start purchasing upgrades. The others have to fend off waves of X-Zerg. The mission ends when a majority of players choose to end the mission, or when the Armory is destroyed, or when all upgrades have been purchased.
  
• Zerg Arenas: Small, heavily-infected areas where players can battle large amounts of Zerg for extra points.
  

To be tested:

• Everything in multiplayer.
  

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Any suggestions? Right now, the zombie horde is a little lacking, since I haven't quite worked out the adaptation (I still need to experiment and balance the vehicles, and I need to trigger the Zerg to strategically react to the vehicles currently being used by the players) or the quantity. This actually started as a vehicle experiment, which is why I've been focusing on that game mechanic.

Attachments:

Post has been edited 5 time(s), last time on Jan 1 2010, 11:56 pm by DavidJCobb. Reason: Updating with new information.

To fix this problem, have it so that player 5 has siege mode disabled and move all of their units to a place that they'll be unable to move to (for example, a block of unwalkable null).

Notes: This will cause all of player 5's units to stay in place, and will not be provoked to attack back if attacked. As an alternative to this solution, you can give the units to player 5 and then to neutral (player 12) and they won't fight back upon being damaged. If you're doing this way, make sure that it's given to player 5 first, as giving units to player 12 makes them retain their alliance. Using this method will also become a hindrance to cleaning up units when players leave. Choose yer poison .

Update: Alpha v4

The Zerg spawn system (and the breaks) have been improved. I also tried out the method you (lil-inferno) mentioned in the Zombies thread (with the hive system); not working yet, but that's probably because I tried to trigger it myself. (And because of the added complexity -- I tried to set it up to support multiple hives with minimal locations, and to allow the Zerg to run through a Nydus before heading after the players, so that I didn't have to detect if a player tried to take them out in advance.)

The biggest change was in the triggering. I modified things so that the vehicle system uses the same triggers for P1-P4, without having to copy them. The number of locations is reduced a bit, and the number of trigs is dramatically lowered. (I'm not sure whether or not this would lag, though.)

Now I just need to do everything in the above list, plus find a way to prevent this:


Alpha4 attached.

Attachments:

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 20 2009, 6:32 am by DavidJCobb. Reason: More information.

The hive system is really meant for roaming zombies, not for full scale attacks on a certain location. As for the problem with clusterfucks of units, I would suggest limiting the number of each.

Update: Alpha 5

• All spawns have been triggered, though some are still mysteriously non-functional...
  
• Hive system removed. (Relevant buildings left in for decoration.)
  
• Zerg quantities are limited by unit type. The current limits total up to 122, though of course the limits can be exceeded somewhat. (They are checked at the beginning of the trigger cycle and tracked with death counters thereafter, rather than being checked in every single spawn trigger; this has the advantage that I need only change one trigger to change a limit.)
  
• Eye candy added in the form of broken floor tiles. (Terrain-only floor trap doodads.)
  
• Terrain has been altered, as Zerg units were often getting stuck or building up in certain areas.
  

Note that the spawn limits have been set with regards to multiple players. (Though I still haven't tested that, as I don't have a Battle.net account or anything.) This means two things for those who play the map solo: you will be surrounded by so many units that paths get blocked; and you will get quickly destroyed by the Zerg. ~122 max means that in a 4P match, each player would have to handle around 30 Zergs, though of course this would differ based on who's using what vehicle.

In general, I've been trying to rig up the spawn system so I can adjust it quickly... Each spawn trigger's comment identifies the spawn location, the DC timer, the player units being responded to (or "Base" for generic spawns), the elapsed time (when used), and the Zerg being spawned. (I have a habit of commenting virtually every trigger I create.)

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Update: Alpha 6

• Spawn limits improved; the amount of the Zerg on the map is limited based on the number of people currently playing. Generally, each player will have to deal with about 31 Zerg (assuming an equal division among all participants).
  
• Detection and response for players quitting/leaving/lagging out. [untested]
  
• Spawn system improved and some triggers removed. (The Junk Yard Dog AI commands were removed -- all Zerg units are set to Suicide AI the moment they appear on the playing field.)
  
• Messages added to notify players of an ally's defeat. (Don't know if SC already does this.)
  
• Additional terrain modifications made to reduce bottlenecks and dead-ends.
  
• Weak elevation detection has been added; as I test my spawning system, I should be able to tweak spawns based on how many players are on high ground (Floor) as opposed to low ground (Substructure). (If, for example, the majority are on high ground, then more Zerglings will be spawned, as they can fit through staircases quite well -- Hydralisks have a tendency to block stairways.)
  
• Some spawn points still don't appear to function despite the fact that they've been fully triggered. I need to look into this.
  

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Keep up the good work, looks hella fun!

Update: Draft 2 Alpha 4
Got stuck on detecting when players leave, so I started from scratch. The new map's larger, and has two "bonus areas" that are supposed to unlock when a score limit is reached. It also has a jump feature using a second controller (Lurker).

Upgrades

• Larger map with bonus areas
  
• Improved detection of quitting players (untested) and players who were never in the game
  
• Jump feature as described by lil-inferno
  

Regressions

• Spawns need to be redone (spawn locations, spawn systems)
  
• Defeat conditions need to be redone
  
• Unit modifications (HP, attack power, balancing) need to be redone
  

Things to be completed:

• Zerg Arenas: areas where players fight more X-Zerg, but earn more cash. (I may just scrap this.)
  
• Armory: Optional mission where players are required to protect an Armory from extra Zerg; they can use the structure to upgrade their vehicles.
  

Attachments:

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 22 2009, 5:33 pm by DavidJCobb. Reason: List of regressions, todos.

Update: Draft 2 Alpha 14 [attached]


It took me a while to figure out spawns. The map is fairly large, so I needed a system where only the nearest spawn points would activate. I tried Observers, cloaked Protoss buildings, and finally settled on burrowed Zerg as markers for spawn points. The check is performed on the lowest player number (P1, then P2, then...). (This has the flaw that if P2-P4 ditch P1, all the zombies will go after P1.)

Completed:

• Spawn system fixed and more-or-less finished.
  
• Some balancing done. (Zerg units weakened, spawns and bonus areas tweaked)
  
• Defeat triggers added.
  

Todo:

• Test in multiplayer.
  
• Add spawn triggers for X-Zerg.
  
• Either trigger or remove the Zerg Arena idea.
  
• Trigger or scrap the Armory Defense idea.
  
• Vulture may need a bit of balance tweaking?
  

Attachments:

Update: Alpha15 attached
Changes:

• Tweaked the spawns some. Now, it's not just a ton of Zerglings -- Hydralisks and X-Zerglings will attack as well.
  
• Added a break system, with text warnings so players know when to start and stop repairing.
  
• Removed the P5 inactivity trigger, as that made it impossible to repair empty vehicles. Now, if someone gets killed by P5, they'll just see a message telling them that unoccupied vehicles use AI when attacked. (In the "story".)
  
• Added a vehicle or two to some empty spots.
  
• Fixed a bug where after unlocking a bonus area, players had permanent vision of the doors to that bonus area. (I forgot to delete the Map Revealers.)
  
• Added a kills-to-cash system, where players gain a mineral for each point. Current exchange rates: 1 ore and .5 gas for each point.
  

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I got a friend IRL who plans on testing it at a LAN party. Also, I see I've gotten some hits -- thanks for downloading, and if you have any feedback, please feel free to post.

Just posting to let you all know that I'm still waiting for this to be tested. (If anyone wants to test this on their own and let me know if it works in multiplayer, I'd really appreciate that. Otherwise, I'll hopefully have results in a few days.) I just want to ensure that the basic systems work; after this, it's just balancing and enhancing the spawning AI -- both of which are easy to trigger.

On a side note, the map has... (assuming that SCMD2 Trigedit's "buggy" tree at least managed to list the triggers right)

• 57 triggers shared amongst P1-P4
  
• 2 triggers for P5.
  
• 93 triggers for P6.
  
• 1 trigger for P7.
  
• 14 triggers for P8.
  
• 22 triggers for Force 1.
  
• 2 triggers for Force 4.
  
• 191 triggers total.
  

So... 191 triggers and 56 locations for: a 4P vehicle system (5 vehicles and 2 locations); conditional Zerg spawn loops with breaks coded in; player quit/kick detection; and a few other minor features.

Not bad IMO.

Why is it called a zombie map when it's a Zerh map?

Because I wasn't fully aware of the definition of the genre as it applies to StarCraft*, and now I'm too lazy to change the relevant name and strings.



* SC Zombies = Infinite horde of Zerg + dead players turn into Zerg, yes? It's the latter that this map lacks. I was thinking "Left 4 Dead" (where dead players just respawn in closets or stay dead) when (for SC Zombies) I should've been thinking "Halo 3 Infection"... I think?