PREFACE Before I begin, let me first pay my respects to the legendary Panzer_Kavalier, who made this great map. Every LAN, it became almost a TFE ritual to play this map, and after one session in 2020, RustyPlastic said to me, "You know, it's really annoying how my guys keep accidentally walking into the hospital." ~1500 modifications later and here we are.
The Grave Digger's telegraphed attack.
DESIGN METHODOLOGY Great care was taken to pay respect to the original map, both in terms of its gruelling difficulty and in terms of its old school aesthetic. I strove to add new features, rather than modifying or deleting existing elements. The end result should feel, I hope, like a map from Panzer, but made in the modern era.
In creating new missions and bosses, I took inspiration from two primary sources: (1) the Resident Evil franchise and (2) Panzer himself. Though I could not speak to him directly, I spoke to those who knew him (Excalibur) and looked over the renamed units that he never implemented, and built upon these ideas.
You can acquire powerful team-wide upgrades at the Research Lab.
SO WHAT'S NEW?
New Missions - rescue the survivors of a downed Cargo Plane, defuse a bomb planted by the UBCS, reclaim lost checkpoints, and investigate the disturbance at the clocktower...
New Bosses - defend against new threats, such as the Grave Digger, a swarm of Infected Crows, and more...
The Research Lab - completing side objectives rewards gas, a unique shared resource which can be spent on powerful upgrades which benefits all players.
Quality of Life Changes - each player now has their own armoury. No more kicking each other out! Green Herbs now heal everyone in a radius, not just a single unit. Many more changes detailed in full in the patch notes below.
Single Player Support and Dynamic Difficulty Scaling - the game now adjusts the difficulty based on the number of players and their ability. That being said, if players fail too many missions or suffer too many casualties they will eventually be overwhelmed.
Players work to contain the outbreak before the zombies become too powerful.
PATCH NOTES:
Fixed spelling and grammar and coloured text to draw attention to the gameplay elements within flavour text.
Removed the centre view that activates when leaving the weapon locker and Bob's Guns rooftop.
Added quest rewards:
Acquiring the Barracks and Flamethrowers awards 100 resources each.
Successfully escorting the two Squad Cars from the northern and eastern districts to the RPD awards 150 resources each.
Acquiring the Welders [SCV] and Medics awards 200 resources each.
Acquiring Factory, M4A1s and M-21s awards 300 resources each.
Acquiring the AWMs awards 5000 resources.
Hospital Quest: moved the Hospital slightly to reduce occurrences of teal accidently walking inside of it. The three medics that are rescued from the Hospital are given to the player who rescued them, rather than disappearing. The hospital entrance has been modified so that when the quest is complete players can now walk out the front door instead of having to leave via the back entrance.
Moved the Emergency Generator to outside the back of the RPD, near Checkpoint Delta, to increase the likelihood of its destruction and the triggering of the power station quest, though diligent players can protect it if they so choose. Its previous placement inside the RPD meant that it was either never destroyed or, if it was destroyed, the situation in the RPD was already so dire that Game Over was imminent anyway.
Reduced Nemesis Canister health so it's feasible to kill more than one.
Modified the stats of AWMs to be superior to M-21s to reflect the difficulty in obtaining them (having to save the garbage truck, open the sewers and kill the roach queen). AWMs do not use supply but have a 3 unit limit per squad to emphasise their rarity and power while avoiding making the M-21s redundant.
The SCV can no longer pick up the police armory marker.
M-21s and M4A1s (rewards from the Communications Network and Bob's Guns quests) now cost supply, preventing players from overcoming the supply cap.
If players have successfully completed the M-21 and M4A1 quests, building Marines or Ghosts or equipping Marines and Ghosts in the locker room will spawn M-21s and M4A1s instead of Shotguns and MP-5s.
You cannot purchase Firebats or Medics until you have visited Bob's Guns / saved the nurses in the Hospital.
New sound effects for the armory and locker room.
Players can now use the armory simultaneously without having to wait their turn. Additionally, the armory itself has been condensed into one easy-to-use building.
Improved Locker Room code so units don't get exchanged if they're already standing on the beacon.
Player 1 will no longer get Defeat for attempting to play in single-player.
Singleplayer detection now awards the player five additional Ghosts at game start to replace the missing players. That being said, the game is balanced around a full house and it's probably not possible to finish it singleplayer. I just wanted to give people the option to play and explore the map alone if they wanted.
Disabled Defeat trigger when a player loses all their units. Now after they have lost their units they can still continue observing the surviving players or the surviving players can revive them for 200 resources.
All research previously located in the Armory has been moved to a new building called the U.C. Research Centre, located southwest of the RPD. It uses new flavour text for the research, new research options, and the price has been balanced to actually be a meaningful decision for the player. Each research now takes 30 seconds to complete, forcing the player to hold that position while researching. Zombies will attack that location when the players are present, but cannot be used to farm for minerals. When a player reaches 1 gas they will receive a prompt to visit the location. All research costs gas, an exclusive resource that is only awarded for completing side objectives.
Nemesis boss now has an ability where he fires rockets periodically.
Nemesis Canisters no longer spawn additional Nemesises, Nemesii? Instead, the Nemesis has more health, attack speed and fires his rockets more frequently for each Canister not destroyed. Each Canister also spawns a Hunter Elite (hero Ultralisk).
Added sound cues for unique zombie spawns; audio taken from the original games.
Sewer Gate now has a visible, interactable hinge that tells the player to use the Welder [SCV].
Ambience from Resident Evil 3 has been added.
Losing the Emergency Generator now has the additional effects of losing shared vision with Player 7 (white), reducing the vision radius of all your units, and lowering the in-game brightness. If the Tactical Light upgrade has been purchased your vision radius will be 4 instead of 1.
"Victory" epilogue added from the original game and end credits music.
Fixed AI glitch where white units would occasionally stand still and not return fire.
New research options. Laser Sights - increased attack range for Marines and Ghosts. Speedloader - increased Ghost attack speed. Specialised Propellant - increased Firebat base damage and aesthetic change to blue flames. Tactical Lights - increased vision radius when power goes out. Medic energy upgrade also decreases the heal ability's energy cost from 5 to 1. Riot Gear - additional HP for Marines and Firebats.
Added triggers to stop the Roaches getting clogged up in the sewers, kind of.
Changed White Reinforcements to be a set amount, not dictated by number of players.
Swapped Comm Centre M-21 mission and Warehouse RPD vehicle mission times. M-21 mission comes immediately after the M4A1 mission - when the Crimson Heads start spawning. Warehouse mission now has 3 minute duration instead of 5 minutes.
A common complaint was the original map outstayed its welcome and went for too long. I have addressed this by adding a host of new missions and bosses to occupy players for the entire duration of the game. In addition, I have added scaling mechanics to the zombies, so players will never feel like they are effortlessly clearing the waves.
New Mission - Crashed Cargo Plane - escort the survivors back to the RPD to unlock Explosive Rounds (splash damage for Terran Ghosts). Mission failure results in Zombies gaining armour.
New Mission - UBCS Bomb - defuse the Umbrella Corp biobomb inside the College to unlock Plasma Rounds (increased base damage for Terran Marines). Mission failure results in Zombies gaining damage.
New Mission - Reclaim Checkpoints - If you acquire RPD Vehicles you can use them to reclaim checkpoints, which grants a -25 mineral reduction on recruitment cost per checkpoint.
New Mission - Clear Spider Nests - Spider Nests will spawn across the districts, spawning Spiders until they are destroyed. Killing them all rewards 10% increased base health. An earlier mission in the game revolves around protecting the districts from Zombie attack. Spider Nests will spawn where houses once were, so the more houses you save, the less Spider Nests you will have to deal with later.
New Mission - Evacuate Comm Centre - Near the end of the game, escort them back to the RPD, rewards +5 base armour.
New Mission - Investigate the Clocktower - Triggers the G-Adult boss battle, awards 3000 minerals.
Added order triggers in sewers for automated walking.
Removed Centre View for Civilians in the top left corner. Now it only centre views if (a) it's your first civilian (for new players) and (b) if you already have at least one civilian sitting there (for players who have forgotten to equip their civilian). Other troublesome Centre Views elsewhere have been removed or re-triggered to occur only once for the first time.
Added player scaling to the kill-to-cash system in the hopes of balancing out difficulty depending on if you're playing with a full house or solo. Player scaling also affects spawn amounts. The game has not been balance tested across all different player amounts so your experience may vary.
Added late game difficulty scaling in an attempt to prevent late game snowballing of upgrades.
New Boss: Grave Digger. The Lurker was given this name by Panzer, but was never implemented. This early game boss terrorises checkpoints and can drag RPD officers to their deaths. Defeating it rewards a Yellow Herb (+10% max HP).
New Boss: Infected Crow Swarm. Another named unit by Panzer that was never implemented. This boss attacks the Garbage Truck and can tear apart RPD officers in a whirlwind of beaks and claws. Defeating it rewards a Yellow Herb (+10% max HP).
New Boss: Whale Mech Bio Organic Weapon - a floating Command Centre based off the Whale Mech or Battleship Mech from the Bio Hazard manga, which is a mutant LAPD SWAT officer that swims in the Raccoon City river. It can spawn T-Abyss Outbreaks which increase Zombie damage per minute and also spawns Hunter Gammas (Archons). Defeating it rewards a Blue Herb (all infantry gain health regeneration [like Zerg units]).
New Boss: G-Adult - this Reaver can consume you to heal itself and also births G-Larva, which can turn your men into G-Zombies (Infested Terrans). If you fail to kill it for the rest of the game there is a 1/12 chance that any unit dying will spawn a G-Zombie. Defeating it rewards 3000 minerals.
SPECIAL THANKS:
Panzer_Kavalier for creating this great map.
Cloud[TFE], Blaze[TFE], RustyPlastic, Jabbers[TFE], PicklePete, for testing.
Excalibur for allowing me to use his Crashed Helicopter mission idea from his version of Raccoon City, and for teaching me about some of Panzer's unrealised plans for the map such as the Spider Nest mission.
Ultraviolet for testing and contributing great ideas and solutions to game design challenges I faced.
SEN community and Korean members who have joined recently for teaching me EUDs (I still have a lot to learn XD).
Power scaling ensures a relentless experience.
WHAT'S NEXT: I fully intend to return to this map next year to continue to tweak balance, fix bugs and add a couple more things I ran out of time to add this year. After that, I will continue to work on my 1v1 PVP map Duel, a demo of which you can try here.
Epic. Glad you've released another great project! Quality over quantity with you.
Quite the chonky filesize so I'm definitely going to have to just get a couple friends and take advantage of the difficulty scaling, but man I want to experience this with a full house, as the old map always required.
Quite the chonky filesize so I'm definitely going to have to just get a couple friends and take advantage of the difficulty scaling, but man I want to experience this with a full house, as the old map always required.
Filesize is no longer the issue it used to be, people should pre-download it before joining the lobby and it only takes a few seconds, the filesize is no reason to avoid playing publicly.
Beat this map with a 6 people party. It was an amazing map, and the difficulty was brutal but also well designed - each playthrough gave the team a good experience and feedback, and we were able to go much further each time.
These are some of my opinions:
Great map, overall! Even though the map is about "stop these endless zombie waves for one hour", there were many various events that made the play not boring. It was a little bit difficult to read the descriptions in the middle of everything, though.
The birds were very very impressive. Great idea and implementation!
The EUD armory was really convenient.
For some missions, failures are just too costly. I can understand this snowball design, but still, it's frustrating to realize much later in the game that we can't just keep up with the difficulty increase anymore. For example, imagine losing the garbage truck - then there are no sniper rifles, which makes killing elite zombies or spider nests much much more difficult.
I like the zombies getting progressively stronger, but I think they're getting a bit too strong, especially compared to us. Later in the game armor upgrade can't keep up with Hunter Killers (forgot the name) and Crimson Heads, and weapon upgrade becomes too costly with diminishing returns. We eventually settled down to building a wall of empty bunkers and medics to exploit SC AIs, because fighting fair was not really an option anymore.
Collision and pathfinding are miserable - had too many occasions where APCs and trucks get stuck or take a wrong path because other white units were in the middle of their way. Also, the locker room is cramped like hell, and having 6 players replacing their ghosts with hero ghosts is a total nightmare.
The idea of bomb-defusing was remarkable. Please just inform the player that each step can be actually clicked - Until the last attempt where we beat the game we were trying to find 'isolate the fuse' in the buttons and clicked 'isolate the detonator' instead.
Find Me On Discord (Brood War UMS Community & Staredit Network)
Thanks for the feedback.
It's funny what you say about the snipers because the game I played before release we never even did the sewer mission and didn't have to bunker wall either. I think balance is gonna be different for everyone because there's so many different permutations that can play out. I do agree failing some missions are more crippling than others.
Like if you lose Garbage truck as you said, but losing Hospital (Medics) is pretty bad for marines, and if you lose warehouse you also lose access to the checkpoint mission which gets you recruitment reduction, and of course all the gas you miss out on from failing missions.
The most important thing that will determine your success is minimising casualties. The less casualties you have, the more minerals you can spend on upgrades instead. A strat we also prefer is one or two people are marines down at the chokepoint, prioritising armour. The rest are ghosts on the walls, prioritising damage. Marine groups can stim to rush and complete missions quickly. Zombie damage is meaningless if they don't actually get into melee range to hit you, that is another important thing. They could have 1000 damage and it wouldn't matter if they don't get to attack.
I will make bomb defusal guide more clear for sure. Can't do much about SCBW pathfinding but I did put those tanks on constant order so they will never get permanently stuck only temporarily stuck.
I will continue to tweak balance and also with player scaling, the bosses don't scale at the moment, so I think it's still too hard with missing players. I might work on difficulty setting at game start for people who want to play eaz mode also.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Korean version is now out. Thanks to Fenton for translating and Armo for helping with some technical issues.
Just got to try this map after being a long time player of Raccoon City and I love it! Great work mate, would love to learn EUDs as well as you implemented them here
Resident Evil & Roleplay maps fan. Former Clan UBCS, RCDF, USS and USFU member. WC3's NOTD: Aftermath Community Veteran. Biohazard 3: Nemesis (remake) & NOTD: Outbreak creator. BNet: F1RE#11214 Discord: FirePrometheus#4754 Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/FirePrometheus/
Glad to see this released, lots of good changes here 
I think balance is gonna be different for everyone because there's so many different permutations that can play out. I do agree failing some missions are more crippling than others.
