(The actual long post that I lost)

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Europa Zombies A.I.
A fast paced WW2-style map, but with zombies as the theme. The main fun comes from the feeling of going exponential with your zombie macro. I have a Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) game design philosophy, so the game should be easy to learn.
I refreshed the page and lost everything I spent hours writing, so this is going to be quick and ugly.

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HIRING
I'm looking for partners to help. I'll be offering PayPal transfers based on individual work completion. Something like $50 to do part of a tutorial.

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SPECIFICATIONS

• Players
  1-7. It can be PvP or PvE. The map rebalances around how many players are present
  
• Map Tileset
  Jungle
  
• Map Size
  256x256
  

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FEATURES

• Day/Night Cycle – Similar to SC2's “They'll be coming again soon” zombie level. Zombies will attack and expand during the night. At daybreak, their [men] are set to 1 HP and must retreat. This gives humans a chance to play offensively and rebuild.
  
• Auto balance – Start with any number of players. The map will buff the side at a disadvantage, and give a leaver's neutral units to the remaining players.
  
• Tutorial – Audio + Visual guide on how to play the map. Can only be skipped by all players off screen.
  
• K.I.S.S. – Keeping things as simple as possible will allow for a short learning curve. Units stats are very close to default, resource diversity eliminated, fewer available research/unit/building options.
  
• Phases – The game starts zombies off with a single unit, that rapidly spreads during the first minute, then slows down. Different phases of the game has different feels of gameplay.
  
• Open Source - Anyone who wants their open unprotected copy to fork is welcome to it.
  

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Zombie (Horde Player)

• Drones – Drones can only make creep colonies, which in turn spawn more drones. But they must be spread out to make the most drones (more creep spread = more macro). Very exponential feel.
  
• Creep Colonies – But the humans could just destroy this easily. Zombies must sometimes morph these colonies into sunkens(defense) and spores(offense). Nothing special about sunkens, but spores are immediately replaced with spires, that spawn zombies (zealots/lings). Morphing this to a greater spire switches it back into a creep colony, but also spawns 1 infested terran (kills cloaked units).
  
• Just bringing enough zombies to the edges of the map is another win-con. (humans are trying to contain you)
  
• Every 50 terran civilian kills grants a Catastrophe Point. A bonus unit/event to help end the game. Like ultralisk, zombie movement speed increase, zombie unit doubling, etc.
  
• 
  

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Zombie (Viral Player)

• Thematically, spawns small airbourne infections throughout map. Does not mass a horde, but is annoying harassment.
  
• Starts with a queen, that can spawn broodling once per cycle. At the start of night, the broodlings are replaced with hatcheries.
  
• Larva are replaced with autospawned zombies.
  
• Morphing into a lair replaces back to a hatchery, but with a mutalisk as well, with 0 attack. Morphing into a guardian replaces with a new hatchery.
  
• 
  

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Humans

• No specialty "Hero" units for different countries. Discourages variety.
  
• Try to contain and repair walls at night, while building production facilities and exterminating weak day-zombies.
  
• Resources are minerals, and terran civillians wandering randomly around the map.
  
• Lifting a building detonates itself and all surrounding [men]. Nearby building will also detonate potentially setting off a chain reaction.
  
• 
  

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NOTES

• This is gonna need a lot of work balancing.
  
• I should probably have a matching "hope" bonus point system to match the zombies catastrophe one.
  
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  

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PROGRESS

• IDEAS (80%)
  
• TERRAIN (100%)
  
• UNIT PLACEMENT (8%)
  
• TRIGGERS (10%)
  

UPDATES

• 10/23/24
  Made post
  

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Made with the Map Production template.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Dec 1 2024, 4:57 pm by ClansAreForGays.

This looks cool. I may be able to offer some assistance in regards to you wanting to hire some help. My schedule is pretty full at the moment, but I may have more availability soon. Let's stay in touch if you're interested.

Are you planning to use EUDs at all? Disadvantage would be that you can't use extended unit limits with EUDs, but the advantages of EUDs are pretty big in terms of customizing the map. I do all my projects with EUDs these days, it's become much more straightforward with the modern EUD editors.

I'm not planning on EUDs at all, but not the typical reason of it being hard. Keeps with KISS, I want everything to be intuitive to the player. Almost every EUD map I've played is too confusing to understand because I no longer have my reference base.
But beggars can't be choosers, and I won't turn it down if that's what you need.

I'm in the middle of applying for a pretty life-changing job or I'd drop everything and start working with you. Just give me a few days and we'll connect. There's more to this that doesn't translate well in text. Thanks for taking the time UV.

They definitely aren't necessary, and for a project like this, I'd even say that you might get more value out of not using them since it will allow you to double the unit limit which is obviously nice for a zombie horde map with lots of units. But I will say that imho, if an EUD map isn't intuitive to the player, then the mapper hasn't done their job quite right. I made a quick example to show you how you might be able to use them to make things more intuitive with custom buttons:


Default creep colony buttons


Could become something like this

So you can see in the example, the intended purpose of morphing a creep colony into a spore colony would become a lot more clear by changing the button text. EUD changes don't always have to be these huge things that make SC feel like a foreign environment. I often use the stuff to give context clues within the unit command card. I do like your KISS philosophy, I think it's pretty vital in today's SC environment to follow something like that since players are very set in their ways. For the most part, if they don't understand how to play a game within a few minutes, the chances of them sticking around are slim.


Sure thing, and truly no rush. Life is coming at me fast right now, too. To be honest, I couldn't drop everything this moment either. I'm ultraviolet1337 on Discord if you want to connect on there whenever is convenient.