Other WarZ

[maldruzard]

WarZ - The Multiplayer Zombie Survival Map Based Off DayZ​

Brief Description: A multiplayer medieval zombie survival map in which you and three other players fight each other and the undead in order to survive for the longest, and ultimately escape the infected kingdom and win the game. Four players aren't necessary, but due to the size of the map, it is encouraged due to the chance of bumping into another player being remarkably slim if only played with one other. However, there are numerous ways to track down other survivor's, so the game can become pretty intense as you constantly wonder whether you are the hunter, or the hunted. <Inset incredibly bad cliche face>

Spoiler: Map Description and Features:

Description Of Map: WarZ is a multiplayer zombie survival game for up to four players. The map is based off of the hit Arma II mod 'DayZ' (thus WarZ - Warcraft/Z... duh), and most of the features implemented in the game are ideas influenced by the mod. You start the game by spawning at a random point in the map with a tent, from which you may create your Survivor. Once you have created the Survivor, the camera will lock to him and you will follow him for the rest of the game. The tent also then turns into a storage unit for any surplus supplies you come across during the game. From that point on, the main target of the game is to avoid the hordes of undead while scavenging items that spawn periodically around the map. Once you have satisfactory supplies and equipment, you can turn the tide of the fight. Hunt down other survivors as well as the undead, and set up a makeshift base around your tent to protect yourself and your supplies from the dead and the alive. When you become experienced enough, you may light an emergency flare, calling for aid, and you can leave the other survivors behind in order to reach Sanctuary and win the game.

Features:
- Very simple realism features: Hunger sets in after a certain point of game time, meaning you periodically lose small amounts of health. Eating food of any kind will stave off hunger for a set amount of time, but you have to keep on top of it to prevent all of your health slowly draining away. Food can spawn randomly around the map, or can be butchered from dead animals using the Butchering Knife and cooked using the Campfire. Another realism feature is 'Nature's Call'. This feature requires your Survivor to... heed nature's call every so often, or they will suffer a dramatic movement and attack speed debuff. However, relieving oneself comes at a price: you leave scents afterwards, which can be picked up by other survivors who can then track you by using the scents (pings the location of the creator of the scent on the minimap of the person that uses the scent). Permadeath (Sort of) means that when you die, you lose all of your items and your level is reset. This added punishment to dying (as well as a 20 second respawn timer) will cause players to be more cautious when taking on either zombies or other survivors, and increase the 'survival' element of the game.

Spoiler: Nature's Call Screenshot:

A Survivor standing next to their... work. The green on the 'work' is the scent, which is an item that can be picked up and used, though not by the person who created it.

Realistic skills for the Survivor, such as a 'Sprint' and net 'Ensnare' ability add more elements of skill into combat and escaping dangers without adding unrealistic magic or over the top triggered spells. The Ensnare ability requires players to type manually '-struggle' in order to help their Survivor escape the net, and the chance of escaping is not certain either, so an element of luck is also brought into play.

Skills use 'energy' (mana), and when a survivor's energy gets too low, he is cripplingly slowed for both movement and attack speed, meaning that players can't just spam abilities as much as possible, and must intelligently decide when to activate their emergency abilities whether it's for escape or pursuit.


-Randomized Weather With Effects On Gameplay: Periodically, there is a random chance of the weather changing on the map. Now you might say, so what? That's in every map ever, it takes like two minutes to trigger, if that! Well in this map, the weather also has effects on gameplay. Currently, when the weather is windy, scents on the map are 'blown away' (I.e: destroyed). When the weather is rainy, there is a periodic chance of survivors getting ill, which slows them down and causes periodic damage. These effects, though simple (alright, it still didn't didn't take hours to make, but shh!) help to make gameplay and combat more complex, meaning players have to judge whether fighting during a rainstorm is intelligent due to the constant damage debuff they could contract, or could make players decide to heed nature's call more urgently while the wind is blowing, due to the erasure of scents.

-Interesting Items and Effects: The items in this map range from being simple and necessary (weapons and armour) to more complex, fun, and interesting: Bear Traps you can place around the map that will stun and reveal other survivors to the placer, as well as giving them nasty cuts on the legs; a Butchering Knife that allows you to cut meat from the corpses of animals you have slain, which can later be consumed (at the risk of diarrhea if the meat is raw) or cooked with a text command when next to a campfire; temporary barricades that can be deployed to quickly block off enemies; and many more! There are others I shall go into more detail for, in other sections.

-Simple Crafting System: One of the aforementioned items I am going to go into more detail about is the 'Wood Axe'. Picking up this item enables the Survivor to harvest lumber from trees. Lumber can be traded at a merchant somewhere in the map for gold, which can then be spent on other items, such as the previously mentioned items in the last section, at the travelling salesman. However, there is another use for the lumber that involves a lot less walking: a crafting dialog accessed by the Axe item itself. When activated, a window appears for the player, with a list of the possible items that can be created via the Axe. When the name of the item is clicked, a new dialog opens with more options: 'Information', 'Create [Lumber Cost]', 'Back' and 'Close'. Information exits the dialog window and gives the player a game message describing the item. The 'create' option does as it says, and creates the chosen item at the feet of the survivor. Both 'back' and 'close' options are self-explanatory and thus I shall not speak of them further. Most items cost only a certain amount of lumber, though creating a campfire requires the survivor to have a 'Flare Gun' in their inventory with which to light the campfire. Creating this item then reduces the Flare Gun's charges by 1.

-Animal Husbandry: One item in the game, 'Taming Equipment', allows the survivor to use charges of the item to attempt to capture and tame wild animals that they find on their travels. Once tamed, animals can breed with one-another (obviously only animals of the same species) and then have a chance of producing offspring which can be killed and butchered for more food. Because of the constantly locked camera on the survivor, it becomes necessary to check back to one's base every so often to make sure the animals are safe and sound, though the zombies themselves hunger only for human flesh.

Simple DayZ-Like Multiboard: The multiboard in this game attempts to mimic the personal stats window from the DayZ mod: It shows the players Zombie Kills, Survivor Murders, Deaths (Not from DayZ, but thought it would be nice to brag about how much of a noob you are), and Blood (Health). The Zombie Kills and Survivor Murders are wiped upon death, as they are in DayZ, though it is possible I might change this in the future in order to make the board look less empty after you die.

Special Winner Cinematic: Does what it says on the tin - when a player manages to light the Emergency Flare and wins the game, the cinematic begins. I won't spoil it, though it's nothing too lengthy or impressive; wouldn't want to bore anyone replaying the map! Also, being as it's my first cinematic ever, don't expect too much of it ;D

Spoiler: Screenshots:

^A simple overview showing the features and parts of the map's terrain^

^A Survivor with a Leaf Suit standing in one of the main cities, apparently standing on the bones of a less fortunate fellow^

^A survivor surveying the ruins of an infection-stricken town. Smoky!^

^Never bring a zombie to a knife fight... a scuffle in the lumber yard.^

Please note that the camera angle for some of the screenshots was only like that for the shots themselves; the player can still control the angle of the camera just like in regular Warcraft!

Spoiler: Credits:

Spoiler: Models and Other Images:

- Red Baron - Custom Loading Screen
- Kitabatake - Armour + Plasma Pistol Model (Used for Flare Gun)
- hortaxman - Wall Model
- The Panda - Bandage Icon
- Mr.Goblin - Chicken! Icon
- dioris - Backpack model
- Sunchips - Armour, Mage Hate, Kitchen Knife and Fire Sword
- perfjert - Dark Iron Waraxe
- Kuhneghetz - Fall in love effect model
- olofmoleman - Fern
- Sellenisko - Bush Model
- ikillforeyou - Helmet
- Megrim (Modafoka) - Resident Evil Zombie UI
- Deolrin - Iron Claymore
- Mc ! - Food Model
- funkid2 - Log Pile
- Shadow_killer - Lumber Mill
- D.O.G. - meat model
- Royal Cloak - Unknown Modeller, if you know, please tell me! Unable to find the model in the hive again to write down the author's name
- Lord_T - Stone Maul Model
- Kuhneghetz - Poo Model (Don't ask)
- communist_orc - Wood Spikes and Wood Wall model
- epsilon - Zombie Dog Model
- SpectreD - Rotated Gate and Fence models
- RightField - Flames model
- Pyramidhe@d - Bear Trap model

Spoiler: Music:

- The Lovin' Spoonfulls - Do You Believe In Magic
- Rob Cantor - Shia LeBeouf

^I will not explain either of these!^

Spoiler: Trigger and General Help

- Rulerofiron99 (A metric ton of general triggering help, cheers!)
- Kala (CommandFunc/Strings Help)
- Spartipilo (Local Variables assistance)
- vypur85 from TheHelper (General Triggering Assistance)
- Solu9 from TheHelper (A lot of General Triggering Assistance)
- Death_Knight from TheHelper (General Triggering Assistance)
- KaerfNomekop from TheHelper (General Triggering Assistance)
- keychup from TheHelper (General Triggering Assistance)
- chukky-jr from TheHelper (General Triggering Assistance)
- Juggernaut from TheHelper (General Triggering Assistance)
- Imp Midna from TheHelper (General Triggering Assistance)

Spoiler: Known Issues:

- Balancing - Due to lack of friends to test with, I have been unable to test my map for balance between zombies and survivors, and between the survivors themselves. This could cause issues in multiplayer, and a lot of ingame QQ. Thus, testing for this map is a must, and I shall be releasing a test map ASAP!
- Some Timer Issues I am in the process of fixing, nothing serious.
- Player's tents can often spawn next to other players. Am going to work on changing my triggers so that once a tent has spawned somewhere, other tents cannot spawn in that region. Also need to change regions so that tents do not spawn in unreachable places. Temporary tent reset trigger in place until that time.
- Still in the process of fixing leaks in the oldest triggers, being as when I started this map, it was the first one I had ever made, ever. This means that I knew nothing about triggering (or terraining, as I'm sure you shall see) and thus some of the early triggers are leakier than the titanic. However, I believe I am now capable of spotting and fixing all the leaks in my map if I set aside a little bit of time for it.

If you managed to read all of that, congratulations, I know I wouldn't have managed all that reading about a map that I didn't know much about to begin with, but hey!

I am open to any and all feedback about what is written here and the map itself, and ideas or suggestions, and especially constructive criticism: I sure do love me some constructive criticism!

Cheers,

Maldruzard

 

[duderock101]

There's a game called WarZ, might want to think of a name-change