Comments - KojaK

Things have been extremely busy! XD We still need a little time to prepare, but things are moving quickly.

Make sure you have Half Life 2, Episode 2, and Deathmatch all installed. If it still is giving you problems, verify the game cache of each. That should cause anything corrupted or missing to re-download.

It really isn't a mod after you involve money, is it? At that point it's a game.

I've revised my stance; the kickstarter will fund a stand-alone release for Zombie Colony, and I've changed the article to reflect that.

Honestly? It came down to fear. I was afraid that if I moved away from making a mod, and turned towards developing a full game out of it like it truly deserves, nobody would support it. The problem is that the initial goal I was going to shoot for is now not enough, and I'll have to do quite a bit of re-working of the campaign's plan.

I've also come to realize I shouldn't be scared of developing something independent of a major title... there's an entire community devoted specifically to that now. XD

You raise a very good point. Realistically though, I don't have the resources to do this project the justice it deserves. I can only do so much as a programmer. I've done this for the love of the game for the last year and a half, and it's just become steadily more apparent that this is something worth pursuing.

I've revised the news article to reflect my new stance.

I spent a long time thinking about how to reply to this. I don't want to sit here and write a novel, so I'll sum up my thoughts as best I can.

The assets from EP2 save a lot of time and work. But there are still tons of assets left to create, ie. buildings, enviornments, zombies, humans, weapons, sounds, voices, music, etc. I've found or created what I can by myself by the best of my ability, but there's still too much left that's essential to the game.

Making it a stand-alone title is not off the table. The problem there is it increases how much I would need to raise by quite a bit more, if only to pay for the license of whatever engine I end up using. It also means I would need EVEN more assets to replace all that I had been leaning on from Valve.

I have done a LOT of thinking and talking about potentially making this into a stand-alone title on another engine. The current direction is still for the project to be a mod requiring Half Life 2: Deathmatch. Depending on how things go, it may not require EP2, as I hope to have enough custom content. If things go well enough, I may have something to bring to valve for them to consider giving me a license to Source.

Nope. I'm just quite busy, and working to get the mod on Desura.

I've thought about it. I'd like to have the project be a bit more polished before I do that. I'm working on getting it onto Desura though.

Moddb.com

Nope, not gonna stop.

I'm not sure what you mean by the beacon not working, does it just do nothing for you, or do the rebels not follow your commands?

Half Life 2: Deathmatch, and Half Life 2: Episode 2

No specific levels are necessary. What errors are you getting?

Anymore? O_o the mod was released three days ago!

I forgot to remove the fgd file in the latest release, so congrats, everyone has all the code!

Simply open up hammer for the 2009 version of Half Life 2: Episode 2, and under the options menu, mount the additional zombie colony .fgd file, which gives you access to all the new entities required by the mod. I'll post a tutorial on how to do this sometime soon.

Install and run Half Life 2: Episode 2

The config files are not the problem. Have you tried to run HL2:DM and Episode 2 before running Zombie Colony? Certain necessary files aren't extracted until the games are run.

If I wrote the config files incorrectly it wouldn't work on anyone's machine.

At the very top, I made sure to write "*Note: Zombie Colony requires Half Life 2: Deathmatch and the content from Half Life 2: Episode 2."

Where were you looking? I want to make it as clear as possible, so if you missed it that means other people could be as well.

Mods don't require a .exe, they're just two client and server .dll's. The folder "zombcol" that comes packed should be the one you have in your sourcemods folder. Once you restart steam, you should see it in your games list.

Try launching Half Life 2: Deathmatch. You can close it when you get to the main menu, and then try launching Zombie Colony again.

Dawn of the Final Day:
24 Hours Remain

December 21st, 2012

The mod is very much still in active development.

Yes, but different in a few key ways. Obviously HL2 doesn't support huge MMO style maps and servers. However, scavenging, zombies, keeping quiet; all that's in there.

Also, what's in this mod that's not in DayZ or WarZ is base construction, commanding survivors, and being able to actually reclaim parts of the map and make them safe.

In the future, yes. The end goal is to have a complete conversion of HL2.

Yeah, you're going to need Deathmatch, but luckily it's only 4.99

You have to find your weapons for this map at least. Being able to manufacture ammo is something I'm working on right now, but a skill-based system isn't a bad idea at all.

Thanks! I'm surprised that the map turned out as well as it did honestly... I'm not very good with Hammer XD

As far as turning munitions into ammo, that's actually something I'm working on at the moment. I hadn't actually thought of turning ammo into munitions though, that's not a bad idea at all.

I *think* I know what you mean. Once I get the base-building mechanic set up you'll be able to set up forward outposts by simply taking a few survivors and building some barricades out in the map somewhere.

Increasing the rate that players gather resources is actually quite a brilliant idea. Thanks mate. Also just in case you weren't aware, I do have plans to add buildings to the mod; that's why the summary of the mod includes "build your base".