Comments - ZombieSwarm

It will be released when I think it's gotten to the stage where it's actually fun to play. At the moment, the game is simply just running around in a little mini-map, shooting zombies that spawn infinitely. It will probably be some time before I actually get around to making an actual game around the assets that I've created, particularly considering that I've decided to take on the difficult task of making the game comical/funny.

In essence, the game isn't going to be anything sophisticated, fancy or impressive, but is simply the result of my attempting to educate myself about how to use the source engine.

Come to think on it, her elbows look like they get a little thin when she bends them like that. I'll need to remedy that. :)

I have a few ideas concerning game difficulty, but in my experience, the ASW engine can handle far higher numbers of NPCs than other source engine variants pre-2009. This means that I should be able to get away with throwing huge numbers of enemies at the players without a noticeable drop in game performance, if I should ever feel the need.

However, my priority as far as gameplay is concerned is to make the game as fun as possible, not as difficult as possible. The game is a light-hearted comedy about the tropes, cliches and failings of modern zombie lore, zombie franchises etc. I don't intend on making the game extremely difficult, but I hope to throw in a few things that should make it pleasantly challenging.

The character models shown here are actually older models from an earlier artistic vision for Zombie Swarm. I fully intend to replace them with four American housewife archetypes, it's just that I haven't quite gotten around to doing much more than concept-level work on the revised designs.

On these older models, only the female "marine" model has new backpack variants, all based on a simple rucksack. The male "marine" model simply uses the Alien Swarm backpacks. Given the fact that these models are going to be entirely replaced, I haven't seen any reason to take the ASW backpacks out just yet. All of the backpacks will get removed when I'm putting the new character models in. :)

Until an AI programmer is found, the current expected release date is impossible to determine.

Have you seen the size of Jessica Rabbit's boobs? Holy lower back strain, Batman!

I think I'd like some kind of instruction manual or something... Does such a thing exist? I've been tinkering around with the game and haven't a clue how to even get started. I just end up in this... endless black expanse with these spiky balls around one big ball, which makes a throbbing noise. I've tried clicking around, but nothing seems to happen. In short, I'd like anyone to point me towards some sort of instructional documentation, because I don't even know if this is normal or not. XD

Thanking you all for your patience, and hoping that this mod turns out as excellent as I'm hoping it will be,
-Lev.

Working on zombie animations today. So far, I've done a mere three out of about forty required animations, but I'm proud of the handful I've managed to complete thus far.

Of course, this model stands in silent testament to how far I've come as a modeller since I started work on this project.

My first model, which was based on me, (namely because then I wouldn't offend anyone if it came out looking hideous, and I didn't have to harrass anyone else for reference images...) was much simpler, and had a mere fraction of the polygon count of this model.

Christina has four thousand polygons, whilst the original Kenny model had barely fifteen hundred. The odds are that the Kenny model will not see use in this project anymore, but may be re-modelled so that it meets with my new standard of workmanship.

The unfinished version, although fun to **** around with for ten to fifteen minutes, wasn't really much of a game at all. Imagine being unarmed, in a room, with a HL2 zombie. That was basically the gameplay at it's current stage of development.

All of the "interesting" parts of the game could only be activated through console commands, and that's hardly what you'd call fun gaming. XD

The donations were handled entirely by Justin Ross without any consultation to the team.

As for the reasons for our postponing, it mostly boiled down to a massive, gaping hole in our skillset. We had plenty of dedicated artists willing to work on the project to completion, but without a sufficient programming staff, there was only so much we could ever do.

Eliot was our only programmer, and the man worked like a trojan to make as much content as he possibly could, but the workload was too much for us to expect any one man to bear. As time went on, the enthusiasm of the team began to wane in light of the fact that we didn't really have much of a playable game, and it was looking less and less likely that we would be able to recruit anyone to fill the gaping hole in our team.

As a result, we have postponed the project. I fully intend to return to the project someday to finish what we started, but unless we get someone capable of filling the void that caused things to fall apart this time around, I wouldn't be optimistic about the second run meeting with much more success.

If at some point in the future, the rest of the team decides never to return to Faceless, I will happily release the SVN version that I have to individuals like yourself, but it's hardly a playable game at this stage... It's mostly disjointed fragments of gameplay mechanics that can only be activated through console commands. The individual art assets might be fun to play around with in the likes of Gmod, but that would be about the total extent of their usefulness.

Many of us on the team are determined to come back some day, when our heads have had a chance to cool and we've gained a little more experience in the field.

Personally, it was through this project that I cut my teeth making my first content for the source engine. I learned a lot from the people who are on the team, and it has been a tremendous learning experience that I have greatly enjoyed. The other core developers were exceptionally patient and encouraging with me, and I feel that my confidence as a 3D artist has come on in leaps and bounds since the day that I signed on with this team.

We have since gone in our own directions to work on our own projects, but I am optimistic that at some point in the future, we return to this project to finish it off as we have put so much work, blood, sweat, and tears into it already to just abandon it.

He was also the one who thought that a project as ambitious as this could be completed within a month, in spite of what the rest of the team was telling him...

He hid from us, too, blocking us from getting in touch with him on Steam, Skype, and other means. He would conveniently "not see" forum threads where we tried to catch his attention, and would basically hide under a rock when anything important needed to be done, such as the refunds that we tried to organise for those who had invested in the indiegogo campaign. We couldn't contact him at all. It was like trying to get a horse to drink.

All of the drama and unprofessionalism that we are credited with having can be traced directly back to him. I could literally go on for days about the drama that he caused. However, in the spirit of not looking like a bunch of childish: "He did it!" types, we decided to keep our internal disputes as quiet as possible, but given the fact that Justin was still running around spouting his mouth off, it wasn't exactly easy to hold our tongues.

I can vouch that Justin Ross had virtually nothing to do with the development of the game. The man would be out of his depth in a puddle, and yet would try to do everything in his power to convince anyone who would listen that he was actually a big player in the development of the game.

He publically made grandeous claims that were totally at odds with the direction of the project, but since he hadn't attended any of the staff meetings, and hadn't actually kept an eye on the team's skype feed, it was hardly surprising that he hadn't a clue about what was going on during development.

He would wait like a vulture over Adam's Youtube channel to steal the content for his own channel at a moment's notice, determined to give the illusion that he was still in the loop when in fact he couldn't be further from it.

And then there was the whole indiegogo debacle... The mess that he made of that was legendary, and none of the team were consulted before he went off running crazy **** like that.

That's a valid point, but by a smiliar logic, we can say that scary aesthetic sounds aren't worth pursuing because players can just turn off their speakers.

During development of something like this, you kinda have to take it on faith that people will play the game in the spirit it is intended, instead of trying to cheat themselves out of the fun and scares that they should be having.

On the other hand, there are people who have been modding games for decades who haven't had half the coverage we're getting, and they resent us bitterly for it because we're getting attention that they believe rightfully belongs to them. Even the most artistic and loving of corporations knows that when you go to make a new game, or movie, or TV series, you find out what the people want/like and you give it to them. That is what we are doing with this game.

2) Of course our mod isn't original. Very few successful mods out there ARE original. In fact, there are more than 200 mods in various stages of completion based on the Half-Life universe on moddb alone. Heck, Black Mesa, one of the best mods that the internet has ever seen, was just a verbatim recreation of Half Life 1 in the source engine, and yet nobody seems to be pointing the finger at them and saying that their mod sucks because it's unoriginal.

This mod is being made by a very dedicated hard core of about eight artists, very few of which have much experience with creating or working on a mod. We aren't experts, we aren't masters, and we aren't sitting on a podium touting our greatness and superiority over everyone else. In fact, I can't really see what we're meant to have done which deserves such hatred, other than being popular when other mods are not.

Short version: Don't like our mod? Don't play it. But really, talk about judging a book by it's cover or a movie by it's trailer.

Short short version: Haters gunna hate.

1) The reason that this mod is so popular is because it is giving the people what they want. Slenderman is an intensely popular character at the moment and people are hungry for games, videos, stories and other media that feature him. We are simply giving the people what they want and working the hardest that we can to ensure that this game will be the best Slenderman experience that the internet has to offer.

It is surprising how many people adopt the hipster attitude of "I liked Slenderman before he was popular. Now I don't BECAUSE he's popular." It's really just a sad attempt by a select few who are desperate to set themselves out from the group. Just like hipster teenagers who decide to become vegans (and then change their mind a week later).

In fact, perhaps this is part of why so many other modders have such a chip on their shoulder against us. We're a small group of inexperienced, first-time modders who have been thrown into the limelight by the popularity of our project. When we started, we didn't really know what we were doing, but thanks to a very steep learning curve, we've been getting better and better with every passing day.

Nicely spotted. I almost missed that one.

Fighting the embodiment of fear incarnate with dutch courage... An interesting suggestion.

This guy gets it. ^_^

And, for the record, it was recently replaced with a gorgeous new flashlight which looks (as I believe I may have said elsewhere in this sentence,) gorgeous.

Wait a second... Too skinny?
Hmm. That's an interesting logic.
Maybe superman is too super for you?

As one of the 3D artists for the mod, I'd like to point out that the current flashlight model is just a placeholder until our own flashlight model can be finished up.

The current stand-in was borrowed from a Gmod addon, but is shown here purely to demonstrate that our flashlight coding, and HUD are progressing well. (As I currently understand it.)

One moth, three butterflies, two beetles, and a spider.

It is certainly true that there is safety in numbers. When you are with a friend, you feel immediately more secure and safe. This is a facet of human psychology that has existed since the feral ages, when humans were little more than pack animals. An individual away from the tribe was easy pickings for any hungry predator, so being alone in a scary situation is hard-wired into our psychology as being a frightening state of affairs.

However, that isn't to say that Faceless won't be a frightening experience. I predict that you would find your friends to be something of an emotional crutch, and when that crutch is kicked out from under you by a passing Slenderman, and you suddenly find yourself alone, the situation will start to become far more frightening than it would have been if your friends had never been there in the first place. I suppose it's a bit like a baby without a lollipop - he's contented until you give him the lollipop and then take it away.

As far as I'm aware, the game will likely need HL2 to run.

With regards to Easter Eggs, I know of at least one.

One other additional feature we plan on including is that Slenderman will actually do some walking around, rather than just the "red light / green light" standing still and teleporting when you aren't looking.

Admittedly, the "weeping angels" method of moving is creepy, but there's something far more viscerally scary about something that moves in a manner that's almost human, but not quite. When animating Slenderman, I've tried to put his movements squarely in the uncanny valley.

There are also talks about how to make the flashlight/doll carrying more teamwork oriented, but I don't think that we're supposed to be talking about that just yet. ;P

During my work with the Slender: Source (Now renamed 'faceless') mod, I have learned a thousand times more about working with the source engine than I ever could have learned on my own.

The team have been very supportive and friendly in my coming to grasp with the new skills that I am beginning to acquire, and I've been working as hard as I can to ensure that the content that I produce is of high a quality as possible.

When I am done with Faceless, the odds are that I will stick around with this development group for a while in order to learn more about working with Source. That is, of course, if they need or want my help with future projects.

In future, though, I fully intend to return to, and finish, Zombie Swarm.

*bane voice* When the name and the source spray match, you have my permission to sleep. */bane voice.*