Zombie Colony has 100 followers! news

This is a huge milestone! This is the first large mod I've ever worked on, and to have one hundred people following it, in less than three months, is just awesome. Also, with the art done up for the mod today, the whole project is starting to come together. It's beginning to live and breathe on its own, and I have to say, I like the direction it's going in.

Edit: It's also reached 10,000 total visitors! Not as big of a milestone, but still, it's quite an achievement.

The Director

It sounds like the L4D director, because in part, it is. The difference being I wrote it from the ground up. Currently the Director just handles wave logic, freeing up the map maker (all the mapper has to do is fire "AssumeDirectorControl" on startup from the entity they want controlled, and the Director will take control of the entity from the code itself. No more long lists of inputs and outputs, no more logic relays and timers. Although, if the mapper wishes to use those entities, they all still work, and the Director has a huge list of inputs in Hammer, allowing mappers to take as much or as little control of the Director as they wish.

Eventually the Director can control nearly every aspect of the game, allowing for some very interesting possibilities. The Director will eventually control weapon spawns, scavengeable resource spawns, and more. The Director may even eventually have control over map-based things such as weather, which could show its inner feelings (imagine a storm brewing to show frustration, and an all out torrential downpour to signal that it's pissed off).

Features to Come

I don't want to say too much here, but in the days to come, I'll be trying to add in a few more defenses. Inspired by the Ravenholm level in Half Life 2, I've decided to see if I can add in some of the more iconic methods of killing zombies (see: spinning engine blade and fire traps). It would require a bit more complex building code, but it shouldn't be too hard. The hardest part is probably going to be the physics of the spinning blade, as the fire is just env_fire entities. These traps will also be great uses for the fuel resource. They help save bullets for when you truly need them.

I've also been working on a small background map.

It's nothing really special, but I like the layout of it. You can still see the dev textures in places too. Before it's time to release, I'll have someone a bit more artistic in Hammer than me run over it with more detail.

Probably the biggest news since the last news update, but most of you probably already know,

Zombie Colony is officially playable.

You can collect resources, construct basic buildings and basic defenses, and produce weapons with which to kill zombies. The game's central concept may be officially set up, but it's by no means finished. The game still needs more buildings and more weapons, not to mention the huge task of tweaking all the tiny values in the code so that the game is balanced nicely. I also need to add in an interface for the resources that players can actually use. Up until now I've just been putting all that information out to the server console, which isn't visible when the mod is run via Steam.

As per usual, I'll end the article with a video. This is the video I put up a while ago announcing the game being playable, so I think it's appropriate.