Slaughter City - Alpha testing

Nothing is final here. This map only contains Acts 1 to 3, after that it just ends.

So please, play the map and if you have any feedback or bugs to report, do it here. I would very much appreciate it. :)

Oh yeah, totally playing this now. I've been in a zombie slaying mood for awhile now.

EDIT:
Okay, well, my clan and I played a round of it and I attached the replay.

• The game could use some more perpetual means of explaining what to do next, like in a quest log.
• The boss abomination died in a really lame way. He spawned in our first area, and a turret was left behind by one of our allies who killed the boss. We never even got to see him. Some tank, couldn't even beat turrets! :p
• The "level 7 spawn timer' bugged and showed up twice, one of which never disappeared.
• The map well, was kind of boring. As cool as the terrain was in our little miniature city, it wasn't a real challenge and wasn't exactly that much fun either. You kind of just massed damage upgrades, stood there, and wailed on zombies. No moving, nothin'. It'd be great if there were some stuff to actually get your blood pumping.
• We couldn't figure out what to do after the abomination zombie because none of us were really paying any attention to the in-game messages. We tried shooting down some of the barricades, but after awhile we just assumed that the game was over.

Those are my initial comments. Cheers and stuff.

Just tried it solo with shotgun and railer. At the first look this map dident really stood out, except from the blood fx. But i liked it as a solo map.

• The shotguns multi hit don't have the same range as hes normal range, witch is quite lame.
• Everyone has the same upgrades nearly, the railer had some ability called bleed.
• You could select the upgrade center when you were moving to area 2 and see it on the mini map(by not using escape).
• Also i noticed the walls dident do any damage, so is the AI smart enough to target me if i box myself in? Cause in most maps the enemy just tries to attack me and let the walls live.
• Needs information about bosses, what they do and stuff. Got killed cause i dident know chapter 2 bosses exploded, which killed me.
• Also the items were quite boring. 3 towers, 2 barricades and 3 med kits come an, demand more items. You should make a repair tool that fully heals the walls, comes in a 3x package (or at least heals some hp to the walls).
• Also make item stackable
• Sprint upgrades don't seem to work? level 2 : 60% faster, level 3 60% faster
• The bosses on chapter 2 suicide at the merchant.. wtf?
• Does the health reg boost even work?
• Last boss(?) is broken, he dident come after me and the camera was stuck, so i am guessing theres more 2 do but i couldn't since the camera was stuck.
• Acid spitting things on chapter 3 pwns every other boss and enemy.
• Sprint is useless since you can outrun your enemy without it.
• Shoutgun seems way to op, he 1 hits the zombies with lvl 6 upgrade until chapter 2 level 6-7? then he just need 1 more upgrade and he 1 hits them until chapter 3 where he 2 hits them.

Ok so i retried the map and i beat, at least what i think. Heres second replay.

some guy was able to get to heroes ( he hitted the unit button very fast)
level 7 did not start :/

Also, after testing it again in solo, I realized that my first game super bugged out. We only made it to L9 where the first boss was and then were teleported to the second area. It was all sorts of messed up, we couldn't even get to the third act in our multiplayer game. In the single player test I did after that game, I managed to beat everything as a firebat with maxed damage and grenade launcher. It appears to all work fine in single player. Zombie crab didn't shoot lasers, by the way, it made me sad.

I attached my most recent replay.

I also encountered this bug. Hopefully we can get a hotfix.

Shotgun can hit enemies behind him, but I assume that's because you used Barrage, right?

-Shotgun used Barrage yes. I'm not going for anything fancy here, like physics engines, so this'll do.
-The crab shoots lasers alright. You just have to get closer.
-Weird bugs in terms of moving from level to level... I don't know what's going on.
-Level 7 not starting... I have no idea what the heck happened.
-Boring map... eh. Balancing it for more players is a problem, yes. I'm thinking of just scrapping the whole wave concept and making it more open, but this requires coding I just don't have the patience for.... yet. I'll see.
-Acid spitting is always overpowered for some reason. I'll mess with it to see if I can balance it.
-Sprint's description might have been rushed. I'll see. Besides, it really IS useless. I'll just switch it for something that revives people, I think.
-Tank dying from a turret? That's a first.
-You can select the upgrade center without ESC, but I really don't care about that, honestly. It's not really a problem.
-Health reg boost is supposed to work. :/


Thanks for all the comments, I really appreciate it. But... just remember this was all done in 1.23. I haven't switched to 1.24 yet, so I don't know which part of these bugs are from the new patch. I'll try and watch the replays.

Thanks again.

If your map loads in 1.24, then none of these bugs are from 1.24. Your map is entirely GUI, so you are likely totally unaffected by it. All of my comments are also directly out of the replays, so you can see them if you'd like. I think the tank bugged out totally and was just tanking the turrets without fighting back.

And I don't want to say it's boring, it just needs more spice. The wave concept makes it more of an arcade game, but you should hack off some of the time between waves. The downtime is really an adrenaline killer. You should also start wave timers AS SOON as the wave before it starts. That way if you suck and are slow, the waves stack on each other. This would be a great way to make it more hectic, as a zombie map should be.

Watched the replays. I'm confused.

How the HELL did purple get two heroes? I think that's what crapped out the whole game, but I really can't be sure. Why the entire team was teleported to Stage 2 after a few waves is damn weird, too. What Dusk played in single player is basically what the map is supposed to be like.

I noticed I said west when I should have said east. /doh

As for the timer idea, I don't think I'll change it. The problem is I'd need to add some unit groups for managing zombies and all.

PS: Also I laughed a bit when you realized the rain was all just an illusion. :P

I think the hero thing has to do with clicking really fast early on when selecting heroes. I'll try to experiment with it and see if I can reproduce it.
Hrm, no I don't think so. You'd just start the next timer as soon as the one before it expires, wouldn't require any group handling. I think it could be done in 5 minutes or so, even with your GUI code.

EDIT:
Yeap, just tested it. If you click really fast, you can get up to 3 heroes. You'll need to create a boolean for each player that gets set true when they select a hero, then disable their hero selection if it's true. I attached a 2-second replay showing the bug, if you're interested.

Or I could just put a small timer on restocking.

What I mean is, right now the timer starts when Player 12 has no more units alive at all. This lets me know clearly when the wave is over. What I could do is just remove the whole timer thing, and start spawning things at a specific time, or periodically for certain units like the regular zombies. Instead of having a "Wave X in..." timer, there'd simply be a "Time left before next stage". Basically it's just "Survive X minutes" until it ends with the boss of the stage breaking through the barriers to access the next stage.

I've got a bit of a problem here though. "Survive until rescue" is a lot less arcade than simple waves, but I still can't justify the "Stage 2 is here!" thing.

Ok, I'm rambling. If I make spawning periodical I could make the entire map much more open, add more objectives, etc...

Fun.

Also, you could just run the timers off of each other is my point. You wouldn't even need to catch how many units there are at a given time! You'd only ever have to start the first timer and the rest would handle itself.

I think the spawn timers running on eachother would still keep the arcade feel, because if you were quick there'd still be a downtime. However, it'd also add a little spice to harder levels to make them more hectic. I think it'd be a good compromise, personally, but that's ultimately up to you.

You could definitely make it more open, though, if that's your plan.

well, every thing worked fine for me (I'm not the greatest tester) apart from some buildings pathing, you could walk inside the "no-go zone".

I found it abit monotone after a while, just played single player to act 3 (fire level?) I eventually died, but it was to much slow paced for my liking.
... but as you said, you are only 50% complete and I hope you imrpove on this, so I can enjoy all the blood and the actuall playing ;)

btw the "ghoul" rush certainly suprized me, I liked it, and also the insible units, but the boss-guy was really boring...
... Maybe you could make a speciall scene for him, some thing more unique for the boss level.

examples of events for him:
- he can walk right trough barricades (instantly crushing them).
- he can devour your character (stun and eat) - depending on how many players you are... if you are solo maybe this wouldnt be such a good idea.
- knock you back with one blow (%chanse, stunning you or some thing.... or just being a visual effect of his attacks)
- give him the ability to charge, cus really watching him just walk slowly and bleed to death wasn't that amusing ;(

*edit: more events exacly like when the fence broke down and zombies attacked you while aproaching stage 2.

Well, i rate the game a 7/10.
New custom effects and doodads were great. The Game was to slow paced though. Of course it's still in Alpha.
I played this solo, then multi-player with my bro.
During solo, I picked the flamethrower, which of course was pretty easy to use. Just build a nice barricade around the merchant. It was quite easy and fun. When i got the the 2nd stage i died from the exploding death of the blobs. :P

Multi-player though, it was very easy. I was the sniper and my bro was the flamethrower. We barely tried to live. We got to stage 3, killed the boss but the game stopped and didn't allow us to continue. :P

Overall nice effects/terrain, but the gameplay is slow, it needs to be faster. Also making it harder would be nice. :P
And i assume you will be adding more items, and classes?

Heh all this stuff was already said by most other users but yeah.
Few glitches, like some zombies will hide, and not come out. (Unless they are meant to do that :P)
Of course, after the 3rd boss, we didn't advance to the next stage.
Not really a glitch but the zombies tend to run away if your behind a barricade, making it much easier. And the barricades are cheap enough to always have them, so zombies cant really get in, unless your going solo sniper :P