ZOMBIES!, A MINI-MOD Training Project for UT-2004!

For any one Who has not Played "ZOMBIES!!!" By Twilight Creations Inc. it a fun table top 2-6 player game where you randomy build a map as you play and using cards and plastic figures, runn anround kill zombies, back stab other players gather hearts and ammo and get killed by hoards of zombies.

This game actully would trasnlate well to a first person Shooter if a few concepts where rearranged in the prossess.

Please not that while Building Content for the Actual STUD mod i realized that a few of my planned features would be showcased well with in in a mini mod geared to be me some much needed practice fefore show time.

This I build a plan of attack the night before and finished up a few thing before I dived right in and started to code.

WARNING: This part is very Wordy and I'll do my very best to keep typos and misspelling to a min. but as it going to be long and a bit Technical, you may need to read this in a few chunks at a time. I'll try and keep it as laymens as possable.

I first started the night before getting a wild hair up my ass and putting down on paper what I intended to do, seeing as I had most of the elements for contect eigther that I built my self or stuff i picked up off the net that i have yett o creat my own versions of. I then went to sleep and rested up, not thinking much about it.

The very next morning when i woke up fresh and ready for a full day of coding, i called in to work to verify they really didn't need me for the day, and confirmed that i should jsut enjoy my day off and sleep in. But no I was on a mission.

So i set to work completing and arranging a few Key Elements still needed to be inmported into the game and a few extra props to help me further learn my intended craft. and i was off.

I first took the time to look into a few eisting features of the retail version of the game knowing i was adding to it's feature with feature they never really intended for it, and knowing full well i may very well fail in my attempt. as this was the first time I was making totally new Code from scratch since my lessions I've read in how to programe unisng Unreal Script.

I then started exspanding on base code where Funtioned already existed, adding to Code i had downloaded with Bloue Moon Rising so that i could use their Zombies in the way i intended making them act they way they where animated but work slightly diffrently for my new custom game type and then tested this, when i was pleased with this, the real battle bugun.

I started out defining the a new player start and Game type that was never defined in the original Game UT-2004. The code for this would tell the game where to find all the rest of the code what code pacages i needed and defined a few properties of what this new Game type needed and didn't need from the preloaded deffinitions. that was the easy part of the big battle. i then had to come up with a new way to make a single level be completly diffrnet every time you loaded up the map.

Using the idea i gotten from playing ZOMBIES!!! with my Buddy and Erin (my GF) the night before, i realized that alot of the content i had already made could be arranged in perfectly squared sections of orad and side walks. and that if i told the Map where the enter of each of the Square Tiles would fall i could have that, build fromt the center out in such a way as there would really be no way as to not cover the entire area of the map. with one tile each area.

I call this the Tile genirater a "TILE GERIRATION PAWN" I know real original and i did put alot of thought into it.

This object is placeable into the map it self and must beplace so that when the Mesh is Loaded into the game it does not fal short or over lap. well they could, but it would look jsut plain ugly and all the title are to sale oft eh haracter so no need to worry muh about size and shape. Exspanding off that code I could then tell the game how to think the random build through and what add subtyles of connads to the one placeable object i just defined.

On top of that i gave ever tile a developer choise of teh base number of zombies each tile Generator would spawn and told and how to choose what zombie whould be spawned since there was only 6 diffrent zombies with 8 skins each i told it to pick a number ber tween 1-6 for teh body type and 1-8 for teh skin to be applied to the body. no big deal really. alot eiser tehn i had exspected.

There are a few features i can fore this one objet to do.

The first is to be Area Edge meaning it will not allow a road to be build into the world space actual wall where the Sky(Fake background) was shown.

The second Area exit: this would make sure that one one the roads would lead out and butt up to the Fake Background but plae a trigger that would turn the player around 90 degrees and tell then that they an't leave town while there was possable survivors around.

the third is the town square (Or Town ROOT location). this mesh does not show up in the randon generation list. Has to be present in the map some where to allow the town to be built around it. Ually the center of the World space area. but so long as it not on the ende it don't care where it is.

Fourth is the Roundon Tile Fillers Features. This will anilize the Titles surrounding it if more then one and pick at randon from the Random Tile listing to continue a round but also make sure that the next title witll not lead it to closing it self off. once plaeced the title generator then refranced the Userdefined Number of zombies for that tile according to the Tile discription in the code and then mulipied it to player inputed difficulty level making more zombie according to player defined data possable for thos what really want a kick in the pants.

With this done I worked on making sure that if a tile was placed into an edge that was not road on a surrounding Tile to choose the best tile to make sure it didn't end up glitching. this actully needed a few rewites but i came up with a code base for that that wored exactly what i intended it to do afer only 8 trys.

Now that was left was to build the map and see just how badly it lagged with all the titles on teh map and all the zombies at once.

When it actully worked the first time, it too 15 second on my Girlfirnds machine to load up (1.4ghs 512 ram shitty video card) which is under recomended system specs for Unreal Torunament 2004. this was actully a good thing. The Game forced a game Clock to cound down the round before the next loading but this was the first test to see what the laoding would be like with all this detail at once. it only ladded when it really got all sorts of chaotic and crouded.

So back to the tweeking stage.

I added in distance Fog to help the game run better by forcing the Spooky Fog effect and also to hide all the detail at once and thus making it so it didnt have to draw every thign at once. jsut what the player can see in the genrral area. the max cut off was still enough so that the palyer could see the sky and when close enough out into the Fake Back drop that was foggy as well to match.

This improved the Proformance by alot and the second time i loaded it up the Town out and Center where still the same but all teh roads where indeed randomized and like i had planned for none of tehm ead into places i had no intention into connecting to. so far so good.

Butt this was still no playable game type for one or even many Palyer over the internet, jsut yet.

My next goal was to make a custom Player Start that allowed me to kill out the default player equipment and add some of my own. Like the Melle hands i was so pround of and a really rudimenty almost plastic looking shotgun model i had just finished animating and coding into the game. oh and the really quick and dirt glock model i made as well. i also set it up so that the player while not a team could not nor had any benifit of killign each other. thus they cant hurt each other but they can lead zombies to they buddies and then make the zombie enticed by the other player and hope they die to get their shot gun ammo.

I also had to kill out the default Game Countdown clock. the clock is easy as it a part oft eh Level Properties rather tehn the Player Start properties.

All the rest had to be done by making a totally new exspansion of teh player start PAWN...

getting it set up for muliple players and arranged so that single player can instant action with a few BOTS to play with that wouldn't just try and kill the player. i tried it again, the unteenth time to be exat-ish...

I hit my first major hurtle of the project. I had broken the code in the last compile and corrupted the original Player Start code and thus glitch the game. I saved what i had done and waht i needed to keep and deleted and reinstalled and laoded all my own custom conten bak up and it worked...

Great. no what? Well, i took a brake... thats what...

I then took pen to paper and wrote dwon sage two.

right now the Mini Mod is perfectly capable of being an Endlessly diffrent map every time you load it, but it still lack building or obsticles for teh player to over come plus there is a initialization delay from the time the player start teh map to the moment they can spawn into the game.

after a few exsperiments i found out two ways of hiding the fact it loading up the map. the first is making a small NEWS room area in teh game and making a in level cinemati play the moment the map load onto screen to play this news Report, with an actor taking controle from the player while th rest of the map loads, this way, disguaing the fact some pretty wild stuffs going on. then when don't with the News Cast to set up the mood of the map. Spawn the player at Town Square. along witht eh other players. this actully worked really well.

The other method i tried was stealing a BINK Video from LAND of teh Dead: Road to Fiddlers green" which is based on the Unreal Engine and having it play while the mape loaded up. This worked even better then the first. so i've desided that i need to some how Videio/audio capture a Cinematic i make in Unreal and save it a BINK file format and then have that play before my map allows the player to spawn. maybe even give tehn a way to choose their survivors Appearance jsut after the vide jsut before they spawn into game.

That way by the time they Levels fully built and arranged the've had the mood set and have their character picked out and are ready to rock and roll.

The Nex time I sit down and continue this project, I will do part of all oft eh follwoing if I cna figure it out:

1. Make zombie spawn accoridng to what tile is if ti special. More doctors found in Hospitil Tile, more Cops in policestation tiles and so on and so forth. (This will be part of the Code i make for the Actuall STUD MOD)

2. Make the Game anlylize the final tile plaeced and arrange a building dummy configuration acording to that tile and maybe even a SPECIAL Title preset pattern. So that the town no longer looks flat and void any more.

3. Make zombies AI a bit more feirce when they spot you and make them hoose targets a bit more logically then jsut the first person they see and re check for new target every 10 secodns. ake tehm think just a bit more but not too much mind you.(This will be part of the Code i make for the Actuall STUD MOD)

4. Make a system to scatter Debris all over the map weather static or based on physics depending on the Level Of detail setting you set inside of the game options. the higher the more thinks can be ckicked around oand tumble all over the place. at Mid level this debris will be effetef by a breeze generator, to blow it around the area if it'slight enough.

5. Make some sort of a way to allow the player to keep going into another part of town when they hit the edge or ome near to the edge. (This will be part of the Code i make for the Actuall STUD MOD)

6. make some sort of a way to refrance a sclaeed down level of teh entire level with out having to have that level loaded up. Making the Bafke backdrop look like the ciy goes on for miles and miles with out having to build a highly detailed backdrop. but rather loading up a much slimmer detailed level as the back drop not part of teh level but still scene by player. while very difficult this can be done.(This will be part of the Code i make for the Actuall STUD MOD)

thats about ti. the entire levels world spae is quite large for this mini mod, about 10 minute of real time just to run from one flat edge to the other in a strait line. what the STUD mode needs is much smaller only about 3-5 minute of running time from load to load and with a fixe dlocation of componets of the town/city.

this prooves that it can be done, Just how far I can push it on a below Spec System is the question.

After all my intended audance need to run this MOD on computer vastly varieds from system to system.

This is an awesome game! I got it for my birthday and I love it. It is an amazing game, and now that I think about it, it could make an interesting computer game.

Absolutly it could... i jsut using it as a basis for a Mini Mod to demostrate what Content i have when i finished the system, somehting to work out the kinks of my code with and to gain practial Exsperiance Modding with, and to also show off all the time spend learning how to do this shit. when i get it to the point of Arranign building based on the Street tiles. I'll post it publicly for all to play so long as they have a retail copy of unreal Tournament 2004...

Please note the zombies in this Mini-Mod are not my own, i am using content from another UT-2004 mod that may or may not be a dead mod called Blue moon rising... these are just proxy animated meshes that I'm using till i can Make, animate and code up my own tistand zombies... one featuer I'm working on is a random Zombie Gen script so that i can make Endless zombies based on Body parts and Textures so that the redundancy of limited Harddrive space vs, Character detail doesn't get too mind numbing...

The good thing about doing a 1-4 map Mini-Mod is that I can Develop the Code base and skills needed for the full blow STUD mod project and give people a glimps of whats instore for them with out giving the story away to them via A couple select levels Demos version before they are ready to put up for download.

Yeah the City/town the player find them selves in durring the STUD MOD is not going to be randomized like this mini mode But zombie Randmization based on Area profiles will be. While i wont be making a multiplayer version of STUD till after the release of the Single player version, this Mini mod will tell me jsut ho much detail i can crame into the levels that will make up the game and running on a below spec machine will tell me just hoe far i cna push the envolope with the engine i've chosen...

Unreal it seems can crame more detail in to wide spaces far more effecitly then Half-life's Source engine could and I love the source engine. but with the tools and mod pack I've found that give 100% full permission to use their sorce code fro other project so long as i give props where props are due, I've over come much of the cons that lead me to originally belive that Half-life 2's source engine was where the MOD needed to be. now that I've found these tools and base mods i can work on the same esperiance with a Engine i know vastly more about and get the content kicked out far quicker then I could on Source.

Ark learned how to do alot of things with the Sorce SDK that made no sence to me plus the fact that Props where all sorts of unforgiving. in Source So props where made jsut for Physics, otehrs just for prop and the other. in source no prop could readly be resized or made to fit and you had very limited tools to make content with.

With unreal almost any tool you an make content with is excepted. props are just plain props or could be physis props or even equipmet props or what have you. the multiplayer engine desing ensured tha alot of detail could be displayed and present in jsut one map and do so so effeciently that massive levels ould be made. entire movies can be made with jsut a few levels made into Studio Set and a video/audion capture tool you played in engine.

With enough small sets an entire level could contain enough scenery to make an entire feature length Cinematic so long as you had a computer that rant the detail of the content developers decided. mine can run really detaile dence levels hence why I'm testing everything onto my Girl Firnds El-Crappo System to make sure i have a good idea of just how much further to go and how to optimize it better.

For instance Distance fog gives the moody effect in the level but also serves to optmize the level by making an area that the runtime levle doesn't have to draw if it hidden by the fog. it also make for damn, spooky out door enviroments. once indoors the inside can be optimized further by Zoning the area out so that what cant be seen wont be drawn.

Out side if it wasn't so random or if i can figure out away to use the Collision models as Ocluding Volumes as well as low detailed invisable collision models, then i cna futher speed up the game as the player will constanly be sourounded by building and trees and what not. making the game only draw so much after a pont. based on their viewable surrounding.

with that said i'll try and ditch teh technical mumbo jumbo as i'm sure you eye are starting to want to spread apart int heir sockets by now...

Well, I WANT to play zombies, I just don't have it yet, or anybody to play with really...

Also, I just realized that my UT2004 hates me, and refuses to play any new mod content that I install other than the ones that come with the GOTY edition.

Me very sad

Do you have the latest Patch?... if not then you might be in for a bit of trouble. also try and delete any of the INI's in the UT2004 System Folder as this may be the case. the new INI will be written with updated data based on the defaults of the current build of the game.. if that don't fix it there is a Techsupport forum that can by googling it..

Do you have the latest Patch?... if not then you might be in for a bit of trouble. also try and delete any of the INI's in the UT2004 System Folder as this may be the case. the new INI will be written with updated data based on the defaults of the current build of the game.. if that don't fix it there is a Techsupport forum that can by googling it..

YAY! *goe sand finds his UT2004 disc*

Look this is srait up the fact. the random Map Tile Scripting i did was inspired by ZOMBIES!!! but not based on it. Yeah this mod will be Titled ZOMBIES111.UT2 Well Actully it will be a Single Package that exicutable contianing all it Code, Meshes and Sound effect plus Textures, animations, Music and yeah... everything in one single file. so when it's played, it all good to go. that way i can make an install shell and distibute with a link on my web side cuase i hate Fileshack...