Map variation

[Flaringo]

We all know where most zombie shooting goes on; tight corridors, small rooms and streets. It's brilliant fun, but it can get old after a while. What needs to be done, is making a number of varied maps. You have your "experiment gone wrong" research labs here, your old shacks and mansions there, and some of London's streets over there, but what you need to introduce -- officially -- is the big, open "sandbox" type maps.

I remember I and some friends played this big, open desert-ish map. To our surprise, we all spawned at different locations, nobody knew where, and nobody had a clue where their friends were located.

First challenge: Regrouping.

I spawned by an old, broken caravan. After some walking I saw something that looked like a saloon in the distance, and luckily I found one of my friends sitting there. We went in, welded the doors shut, grabbed a couple of guns we found inside the saloon and got ready to fend off the zombie horde. We held off the first wave of zombies, and decided to make our way to our buddies. There was shooting in the distance, so we knew which direction we should go. After some intense zombie killing, we had finally regrouped.

Second challenge: Getting supplies.

After heading back to the saloon, we had to find ammunition, weapons and armor. We did several "scouting missions" before we found an old barn, which luckily was the home of who we call "the blue lady" (person you buy stuff off). Now we roughly knew what we were doing, so we stocked up on ammo and weapons to get ready for some hot zombie killing.

Third challenge: Winning.

Now we had to find a tactic. We stayed near the barn, and we had 2 "exits" (open space between some hills leading in to the area around the barn) to cover. This worked fine for a good number of rounds until one side got too swarmed, so we slowly pulled back until we had wiped out the zombie. This worked until the second of third round of the horrible giant mace hand crazy zombies, where I completely screwed up with the rocket launcher and we just got swarmed.

This was just a fantastic experience, unlike anything we had ever experienced before in KF. I really hope you decide to have some maps that aren't based around the classic zombie scenarios.

 

[Chicken]

Whilst i enjoy playing KF-desert it is way too easy to win if you have at least two people who know what they are doing. I suppose if everyone in the game was unfamiliar with the map like in your case it would be great fun but big maps just allow for constant running then turning then shooting then running then turning shooting e.t.c.

A few out of the box ideas would be great though.

 

[Raj]

Whilst i enjoy playing KF-desert it is way too easy to win if you have at least two people who know what they are doing. I suppose if everyone in the game was unfamiliar with the map like in your case it would be great fun but big maps just allow for constant running then turning then shooting then running then turning shooting e.t.c.

A few out of the box ideas would be great though.

We have Boxwithout hope. That's enough :-D

 

[Innociv]

I *HATE* that desert map, but I like the spirit of your post. And I was thinking of making a similar thread, but I didn't want to make lots of threads. ^^
And yes Chicken is right. Desert is way to easy. Distance is your most powerful weapon in KF2.5

More map variety with objectives is good. Especially if the objectives can be random, but sequential, in like a tree, so they still sort of follow a story instead of complete randomness where you get something you'd expect at the end at the beginning..

Having objectives where you need to retrieve something, then deliver it, and fight through zombies in the middle of a wave would be cool. Then next it tasks you to defend a spot from being destroyed, or two spots at the same time requiring you to split up. Or one could require you to blow something up, or get to a switch/hack to open up a door.

There could be some sort of really simple puzzles, but they don't happen EVERY time.

And it's more than just "survive against zombies in this snazzy setting!". Yeah it's cool to have a hospitol, a mall, a church, a lab.. But when you're always doing the same thing it's a bit boring. It's just different sets of the best defendable areas.


I love how the KFdevs/TWI have gone with having the trader move around, so you can't just simply camp near it for easy access to buying, holding the best nearby spot. I think what I stated above is sort of an expansion on those ideals..

 

[Flaringo]

I do realize that big maps are way too easy as the zombies are incredibly slow. One way to fix this could be having some sort of penalty when you stay outside. Maybe it's cold and you'll move slower, your weapons might jam because of the cold etc. (if that makes any sense). Just something to keep people looking for a place to stay inside instead of running outside kiting the zombies.

 

[Fedorov]

I do realize that big maps are way too easy as the zombies are incredibly slow. One way to fix this could be having some sort of penalty when you stay outside. Maybe it's cold and you'll move slower, your weapons might jam because of the cold etc. (if that makes any sense). Just something to keep people looking for a place to stay inside instead of running outside kiting the zombies.

I have a better Idea... just add MOAR! zombies =P

 

[Chicken]

I have a better Idea... just add MOAR! zombies =P

That will just make people have to spend more time running and shooting.

 

[[TW]Wilsonam]

But you forget... this is a TRIPWIRE game you are talking about... have faith

 

[Innociv]

The simple and maybe best solution is to simply not spawn zombies at the spawns a mile away, like a bunch of people have already said.

Then say if desert was made for retail, and everyone was at the bar, then the zombies would only be spawning at that spot really close to the right, and maybe the two spots kinda close to the left. But even then, desert would be too easy.

But it would allow for making better large maps.

I hope though, that if dynamic/procedural/random spawning is added then mappers can add "don't spawn here" volumes so you could make a mall map for example where you're defending the mall like that one movie, where zombies shouldn't be just appearing inside since that defeats the point.