f13.net forums - Zombie Panic out on the 28th!

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April 27, 2024, 11:23:08 PM

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Fo' Realz!

Probably my most anticipated mod. If you don't want to click the link, here's zee relevant info.

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About Zombie Panic:

The basic idea of the Zombie Panic is to create solid game play that is based on a classic zombie outbreak scenario, the living dead are coming for the last remaining humans, and these survivors must fight them off and live through the day.

The game works like this:

Everyone joins a server, in the beginning you can either choose to join the human team or you can volunteer to be the first zombie. If no one volunteers the game will pick one human randomly and the game begins. The starter zombie's goal is to, of course kill the humans while the human goal is to stay alive as long as possible, complete objectives, or even wipe out all the zombies. The catch is that when a human is slayed he will simply join the ranks of the undead, now ready to finish off his old living teammates.
The humans can't tell by the player list who's alive and who's not, eventually there will only be one survivor still standing if all goes wrong, facing all the zombies which use to be allies, with his back to a wall. The zombies only have a certain number of reinforcements (lives), when a zombie is killed they lose 1 life from the counter. However, when a human is killed they gain 1 life. If the zombies only have 1 respawn left the humans can win the round by killing off the remaining undead left on the map.

This is the main concept of how the game works but of course, but with additional game modes there is a bit more variety to it.

Human Advantages:

Speed - A zombie can only run at about 80% of the top speed of a human player. Though, the more weaponry and ammo a human picks up, the more it will slow him down tremendously, making him an easy target for the undead. If carrying nothing a human can easily outrun a zombie. Watch out so you don't get cornered...

Weapons - The humans will have a wide selection of different weapons to use for defending themselves, like firearms, explosives and melee weapons. It is essential for humans to locate weapons and ammo around the map in order to survive, since you only spawn with a random melee weapon and handgun scavenging is a must. Remember that your inventory is limited and hogging weapons will slow you down, so sharing with your teammates is a must which also promotes teamwork.

Numbers - At the beginning of the round, there is only one zombie and everyone else is a Survivor. This means that they can easily watch each others backs and provide cover fire. However, once their ammo starts to run dry and they begin to squabble amongst themselves for the few precious clips of ammo available...

Communication - Instead of typing messages to each other (occupying busy hands), which can be really dangerous when the zombies are lurking in the shadows, the humans will have the ability to communicate by voice commands. There will be a menu with several commands that can help the humans to organize a defense, trade ammunition and request help.

Zombie abilities and advantages:

Regeneration - Zombies will over time regenerate hit points making it more difficult for survivors to make dead the undead.

Carrier - The first Zombie of the round will differ a lot from the other undead, he will look different, sound different and have abilities that the average zombie can only dream of. He is the Carrier! More info on this will come later.

Persistence - Zombies may seem to die often, but they won't give up. They just keep re-spawning over and over until your pistol runs out of bullets, your back is to the wall, and there is no escape.

Numbers - Later on in the game, as the undead ranks swell with the freshly dead, the last few humans will find their superior weaponry small compensation for the hordes of zombies that close in.

Zombie Vision - With the zombies not being able to use a flashlight, we have given them the ability to use Zombie Vision. Z-vision works in a way that it brightens up any possible light source in a room to make it more viewable. More importantly, humans that keep active will slowly begin to glow red making it easier for a zombie to track their prey. To prevent games of hide and seek a survivor over a period of time of sitting still will also start to glow red by fear of the unknown.

We want the mod to feel creepy and give you a sense of desperation, and yet not take itself so seriously that you can't laugh at the way you got slayed. Overall fun and playability is the priority, where is realism and horror while important are just a bonus when possible. We want a mod that you can easily play with any number of people, even with small numbers or uneven numbers. Plus, there's a certain sense of satisfaction in tearing apart the heartless survivors who failed to protect you while you were alive, limb from limb.

Nice. I'm looking forward to hearing the sound this game produces.

This is different to the other Zombie source mod that was being bandied around a few months ago with interview videos and such?

Assuming this is free, I'll be right on it on release. Yay for no Aussie servers!

Zombie Survival was a quick fix version for there not being a real Zombie Panic. Survival was a fast and dirty conversion from Garry's Mod rather than being a HL2 total mod.

Too bad we won't have our own server .... awesome, for real

Heh. Looks like fun.

YES. OH GOD, YES.

I was a huge fan of the original version. This sounds like a nice refinement. Especially after playing the abortion that was Zombie Survival.

I don't know how the hell they managed to screw this launch up so bad. It's not even out yet. Of course, by their logic they still have 30 minutes until it's officially the 29th in PST time.

They wanted to prove they were cool kids like Valve. awesome, for real

Have a mirror, our mirror: http://itfish.net/

Whatever happened to Left4Dead again? I know for sure it's still under development since Yahtzee got to play a newer build of it when he went to Valve's HQ, but I haven't heard a peep.

Quote from: Yegolev on December 29, 2007, 11:50:36 AM

Quote from: schild on December 28, 2007, 11:33:51 PM

Have a mirror, our mirror: http://itfish.net/

No workee.

I thought so too, but it is up and down. I think the download limit is either capped at connections or the server is refusing connections every now and then. I kept trying and finally got it to download.

Capped at 100 connections.

Feel free to pound on my server:

http://pandadesigns.com/games/ZPS_beta_v1.0.exe

Quote from: Fabricated on December 29, 2007, 11:44:20 AM

Whatever happened to Left4Dead again? I know for sure it's still under development since Yahtzee got to play a newer build of it when he went to Valve's HQ, but I haven't heard a peep.

Probably because the first gameplay footage didn't live up to all the previews that came out. It was pretty much a spray fest where you run up and heal people after they get "bit". It looks awful. Hopefully they make some changes to it, but it looked like the core of the game was based around the idea of hoping you make it to the end.

That's the one I was talkin' 'bout.

Willis.

Quote from: NiX on December 29, 2007, 03:05:34 PM

Quote from: Fabricated on December 29, 2007, 11:44:20 AM

Whatever happened to Left4Dead again? I know for sure it's still under development since Yahtzee got to play a newer build of it when he went to Valve's HQ, but I haven't heard a peep.

Most of the impressions I've seen/heard is that it's really awesome but nearly impossible to win as the survivors...one recent preview I recall said that with the devs playing, even they didn't make it to the end half the time.

It sounds like a love at first sight, but I'll hate it an hour in things. The frustration will mount and people will stop playing. I just don't get why the repercussions are so minor. At least from what I read it was a run up and hammer the button to bring them back and hope they don't get mauled again.

So is this game out? People playing?

I'm a sucker for zombies. awesome, for real

Holy shit this looks awesome. Zombie premise is my favorite world- I dream of zombies, I watch everything about zombies, I read about zombies, I had sex with a zombie.

And with my new HL2 gift I can play this mod. Someone get an F13 server up, STAT.

All the good servers are full. Lots of people with mics. YOU MUST PLAY THIS.

Quote from: NiX on December 29, 2007, 06:01:20 PM

All the good servers are full. Lots of people with mics. YOU MUST PLAY THIS.

Lots of people moaning into their mics. Which was funny the first tim... no wait, IT WASN'T FUNNY AT ALL. Just annoying, but this is still worth checking out at the very least if you like zombies. It has potential, or at least as much potential as a deathmatch can have.

You hate fun, don't you? Ohhhhh, I see.

Quote from: NiX on December 29, 2007, 11:05:15 PM

You hate fun, don't you? Ohhhhh, I see.

Oh, I like fun. After all, I participated in the world record breaking zombie walk in Pittsburgh this Halloween. BRAINS. In any case, I was being a smartass. The game is certainly a must play, as you said. The moaning was a bit tedious on one particular server. Moving to another solved that.

Hm. Not only does their shitty installer NOT autoscan for your steam install, but even when you browse it to your actual steam install, it unpacks all it's shit into C:\Program Files\steam\steamapps\sourcemods\ZPS anyway.

Dragging the unpacked stuff across to my steam folder now. It better fucking work.

Quote from: Azazel on December 30, 2007, 01:53:50 AM

It will, just make sure you put it in the right place and restart steam.

It did. I found the game (on the two servers I played on, anyway) to be thoughoughly meh.

So far it's been really fun, especially hiding out as the last survivor - it reminds me of going and hiding in some impossible to see spot as the last skulk in Natural selection. The biggest problems so far are:

1)Each of the maps seem to have a room that is impossible for the zombies to get into if there are more than 2 or 3 survivors guarding it. That may change as people get more experience, but so far 3 survivors+Kitchen+breadracks=autowin.

2)The automatic weapons are way too powerful. Like one guy can kill the whole team of zombies following him powerful. Nothing is more annoying than being kited. Now I know how those Kerrans felt all those years ago.

Quote from: angry.bob on December 31, 2007, 04:59:23 PM

It's actually not too bad if the first zombie knows what he is doing. I've basically taken to running straight for the places where people are likely to hole-up (the aformentioned kitchen, lowest level train carriage, etc...) and ambushing as many people heading towards those locations, as i can. Works out quite nicely.

I've only played a couple of rounds so far, but it seems like the limited ammo supplies make it tough for the survivors to hole up in one spot. Especially since the zombies regenerate (suck up a few bullets, pull back to someplace where they won't follow you, heal up, repeat).

The algorithm for humans winning a round that I've seen is:

1) Run around get automatic weapon ammo as a group
2) Sit on roof/in corner
3) Don't shoot until zombies are close

If the survivors are dumb and fire off their bullets at distant zombies you can bleed them dry, but they wised up pretty quickly on the last server I played on.

Luckily that gives the zombies a good amount of time to eat you while you're running around picking up ammo. If you just bolt directly for the most defensible spots, you won't have enough ammo to take out all the zombies that come for you. At least on the maps I've played so far; I expect it won't be long before people start making maps where the survivors spawn in a bunker loaded with automatic weapons and lots of bullets.

I don't think I've seen a survivor victory yet, though. In the last round I played, the zombies ran out of respawns, but ended up finishing off the last survivor with something like 4 zombies left standing. Good times.

It's true; if the zombies break up the easter egg hunt then they will win every time. There are two factors that seem to lead to a survivor win. The first is if the humans stick together. Those pistols suck individually, but 10 pistols hurt a lot. The second is how many zombies there are at the start of the game. Being the only zombie against 12-16 survivors sucks hard. They can almost win using just their pistols at that point. If you have 3 zombies to start then the zombies have a chance.

All that said, I've only seen the survivors win 4 or 5 times out of a fair number of games. The recipe in my last post is impossible to pull off if the humans don't stay glued to each other, and with internet asshats, it almost never happens.