Theme, Teams & Colors

We changed the team names and colors and got rid of the silly team flags. No longer is it Red vs Blue, but it has become Purple Bandits vs Orange Sandbaggers. Why the change? Well, we wanted team colors to stand out against the rest of the world easier. Naturally, there are lots of red and blue elements everywhere in the environment and on your HUD. So to help distinguish between everything, we made the team colors completely unique.

But our changes are not limited to team colors. We’ve done a lot of color tweaking in these final step with various color matching techniques. We tried to bring everything together by ensuring we had a consistent pallet throughout the game.

Battle Rules

We implemented something dubbed Battle Rules. Its a way to plug new rules into the game. Think of it like a hook system… sorta. Previously, when a player went through a ring, we called the function GM:RingPassed( ring, pl ) or something like that. Instead of hard coding how that event is handled, we now do rules.Call( “RingPassed”, ring, pl ). The Battle Rules system checks whatever rules have been loaded (they could change randomly each hole if we wanted) and lets it do all the work.

There’s events called everywhere, even in some areas we don’t even currently handle. But down the road if we/someone else wanted to make a new set of rules for the game, they could manage that event. Its pretty sweet.

Statistics

After we got the Battle Rules working, it was really easy to pump in the stats system. All we did was feed every event from the Battle Rules into the stats. If there is a stat handler for the event, it manages the information passed. Pretty cut and dry but it allows us to track everything the teams/players are doing and give some cool bonuses based off the collected data.

HUD

We totally reworked the HUD in this version. In the first revision of Zinger we used monotone colors on the HUD… mainly white. It looked good but it just seemed “unfinished”. We went back and reevaluated the theme and began using some earth tones and it really looked good (not to mention the fact we completely redesigned almost every HUD element).

Then we started to look at how the HUD was arranged and it made us wonder… why don’t we just allow people to arrange it how they like? So we did…

Help

We did manage to work in a fully functional help system. Its 3D->2D based, which means you see the tips in 3D but when you read them they show up in a 2D panel. Some tips will purely be 2D, but we tried adding 3D hints all around the game to help new players understand what’s going on.

More information to come…

We’re changing how the inventory is in Zinger!. Its going to be more Worms-esk, which means you can have more than 4 items and you’ll never have to destroy anything. If you pick up an item you already have, it will stack.

Also, you’re going to start with items now. Just some of the basic ones though. You’ll still have to find all the good stuff in crates, but at least you’ll have weapons to use at the beginning of the match.

Oh and by the way, Chad modeled and scripted this sign for mappers to use. The text and text color is totally customizable by the mapper. They can pick three lines of text and each line can have its own color:

P.S. No, that’s not a typo. THERE HAS BEEN AN EARTHQUACK!

Playability

Playability is simple… make the game easy and fun to play. Zinger! is already fun and easy to play FOR US. But when you add in total noobs you get a clusterfuck of “WTF IS GOING ON?!”. Understandable. We’d been playing Zinger!, or at least the concept of it, for a really long time and through many iterations. We need to remember there are people who’ve never played it before now playing it. Especially when it gets distributed on Steam (omg omg omg omg).

Along those same lines… we’re going to rethink or simplify some of the stuff we were doing before, or even remove it completely. Like the spectator mode and course randomizing. A perfect example of a bad choice is when we limited what you could spectate just to force you to watch what was going on in the current hole. It made spectator mode so obtrusive and restricted it felt like you were looking at the game through a tube. Fuck it, free roam!

Some of the other issues will require more drastic changes. There are certain elements that feel pointless and even a waste of time. We have plans to change that. Like what’s the point in shooting a guy into the water or out of the map if he just respawns right back where is was? We’re going to try to work in a damage system sorta like Super Smash Brothers. You can’t be damaged to death, but the more you get hurt the more it accumulates and affects you. (which means we’ll have to add healing related items into the game)

The other thing we’re worried about is a theme. The only reason we care about that is because of the lack of “flow” in the game. Sometimes Zinger! feels like its fractured a bit. Like you’re playing several mini games at the same time. Is it team deathmatch? Is it golf? Is it an adventure game? What is it? So to bring it all together and to help it make more sense we’re going to add a general theme to the game. That’s where the most dramatic changes will be. You’ll see the content getting tweaked and changed to help match. Don’t worry, we’re keeping the same artistic style… we just need to update the assets to match. Our goal is to have a bunch of reusable assets for mappers to use to keep a consistent feel. It sounds like a lot of work, and it might be, but it will be worth it. Chad and I are both super excited about it.

Replayability

The replayability is going to come after all that. First we make a fun and simple and easy to understand game… then we focus on keeping players interested in it over time. Stuff like unlockables and micro-achievements (no not the Steam achievements, just ones you earn in a hole or on a course).

We tried randomizing the course and rings and shit like that, but the problem is it leads to more problems than its worth… and really it doesn’t make the game feel any more fresh or new. In retrospect, does rearranging a couple of rings make anyone go “OH MAN! THIS IS GONNA BE FUN!” all over again? Nope. Fuck it.

We needed more interesting ideas: things like changing a simple mechanic on a hole. What if we randomly selected one hole to add huge amounts of recoil to every item? Or everyone has unlimited Bazookas but no crates dropped? Or everyone was invisible to the other team? Of course those are just random ideas off the top of my head, we’ll see where we go with that.

Reply here and let us know what you think.

P.S. If you wanna peek in on what we’re doing, you can always check our Twitter feed for SVN updates.

What now? What does this mean? Where do we go from here?

Well, we’re looking forward to some feedback from Garry and Craig. We also have some touch ups we’d like to do. Once we’ve polished up the gamemode we send it to Garry and it will be included in Garry’s Mod!

We also get to add achievements to the gamemode and even push updates out once a month. Which is totally amazing. The prize money is totally great and all, but that comes and goes. The fact we’ve got a small piece of work in a retail game is definitely the most rewarding part.

Everyone keeps asking me what we’re doing with the money. Well, the majority is getting split up between Chad and I, and some will go to our sound guy and level designer. They both contributed great work so we’re looking forward to  showing them our appreciation.

Once again, I know this is literally last weeks news but I’ve been busy with a lot of shit lately… like moving… which I have yet to blog about. I’ll do that tomorrow, ok?

I need to start writing more about what I’m working on. People are always asking me and I never know where to begin. Here’s the thing: I’m always working on something. What it is can be totally different each day. Although right now I’m pretty focused on Zinger!. We’re closing in on the deadline for the Fretta Contest and we’re really excited about it. Not much is left, actually we’re just finishing up a few odds and ends.

I’m going to be writing a few articles related to Lua soon so you can look forward to seeing those. Actually I’ve already started… I just need some spare time to finish the first one (work has kept me so busy lately!). Technically I shouldn’t even be writing this now, I should be writing those… GOTTA GO!

Work! Work! Work! We’ve been busy on the newest installment of Zinger! designed to be a contest entry for the Fretta Contest.

For those of you who played the original, there has been some changes to the gameplay. We haven’t discussed much of the gameplay in the contest thread, so let me go over what we changed and why:

Teams

 In the original Zinger! it was 1 vs. all. This was fine and we had great fun with it, but most of the time people teamed or paired up and beat the crap out of other people. Which again was just fine, but it normally pissed said people off because they didn’t have a chance in hell of winning. The other problem was as much as everyone wanted to mutilate others with their weapon arsenal, they had to focus on getting to the cup first or they end up losing anyways. So now, with teams, you can work together by helping one guy get to the cup while you collect items to protect him.

Asynchronous Turns

Many of you are probably thinking “wtf does that mean?”. Basically it means everyone has a turn at the same time, you’re not waiting on each other. Once you hit your ball, the game waits for you to stop moving then its your turn again. You don’t have to wait in a queue for your entire team to go before its your turn again. Why did we do this? Simple answer: Speed. In the previous Zinger! you spent a lot of time waiting for your turn to come around, which led to a lot of down time. We wanted to remedy that. This accomplished two things: a) less waiting around doing nothing, and b) increased the speed of the game dramatically.

Rings

We wanted to give the mappers the ability to create a less linear hole. Instead of just starting at point A and trying to get to point B, we added in a feature to move the players around in all different directions. Basically there are a set amount of rings the mapper places on each hole; your team needs to go through each ring before you can finish the hole and sink the cup. This added in another element to the teamplay environment: working together to activate the rings as fast as possible while making progress toward the cup.

Randomizing

No longer do you have hole 1, hole 2, hole 3, and progress through in the same order each time you play a map. Now, all the holes are randomized and played in a different order. We’re also considering randomizing the rings, as in, let the mapper place 8 of them but only spawn 4 random ones.

Tee Off

The mapper also has the ability to create more than just 1 tee per hole; actually we’d prefer they make 2+ tees. 2 of the tees would be picked at random and assigned to each team. Once the hole starts, teams tee off player by player. Once the last player has teed off, the tee is removed.

This should shed some light on what we have planned. Remember, this is all preliminary and we reserve the right to change anything/everything before the official release.

Everyone loved how it turned out and asked me to add more of a “game” to it; which I eventually did. There are several puzzle-quests the players are put through (yes its multiplayer), but I didn’t spend any time in the video demonstrating them. Maybe I’ll show them in another video (if anyone is interested)

P.S. Click here and watch it in HD

On another random note: A few days ago the most wonderful thing occurred. I played Garry’s Mod WITH my son. As most of you know Aidan loves the game. Maybe its because there’s no objective he can fail at, or maybe its because he can spawn as many Mossmans as he likes and shoot them in their face… I’m not entirely sure. But he loves the game!

About a week or so ago I custom built a laptop for my wife. I even threw in a nVidia card, the 9800 series or whatever… not exactly sure right now. Well anyways, it runs games great, even the Source Engine games. I figured… instead of Aidan taking over my computer and playing games he could play games on her laptop. So I created him a Steam account, gifted him my extra Half Life 2, then bought him Garry’s Mod. As if my son having his own Steam account wasn’t cool enough… this meant we could play games together!

It was awesome! I put him in a Ventrilo room with the transmit set to voice sensitivity and we played through a couple HL2 single player maps together. He was able to comprehend that it was his dad with him in game, he would ask me to follow him and watch him as he shot Combine and random citizens. Everything was going great until he decided to shoot me. I asked him to stop so he killed me with the crowbar. Being the tough guy I am, I respawned and took him out with an alt fire of the shotgun. BAD FUCKING IDEA!

Maybe he’s smart enough to figure out 3D games and coordination with keyboard+mouse controls, but the trauma of having his dad shoot him was too much. He broke down in tears, screaming and crying. Ask Chad he was there… it was pretty sad. Oh well, live and learn I guess.

And by learn I mean he learned not to fuck with his dad.

Edit:

By the way Aidan is 3, and Chad’s comment below was a true moment:

Aidan, put down the car and come over here… AIDAN PUT IT DOWN

I remember back when it was a Garry’s Mod server that became a favorite to many people, around the same time PGM was around. And then everyone requested more and more game servers, and I complied. And then the community got bigger, and problems arose, and more bullshit happened and kept happening. So I tried to bandage the community by reinventing it into a bigger community that encompassed all sorts of games… well you know the story.

The saddest part is that The Arcadium got lost in all the commotion… until now. Yes The Arcadium is coming back. When? Soon.

After nearly two years with my current server host I decided to switch to a new host. This time its going to be a provider on the east coast. WHRY?!? …you ask. Well, mainly because the provider is a really good one (from what I’ve been reading) and they only have data centers over there. Most of the people that play seem to be east coast as well. I did a few traceroutes and ping tests and I get a pretty good ping to there location anyways, so it shouldn’t be that big of a deal for me and the other west coasters.

So once the new server is ready I’ll get The Arcadium server up again and let everyone know!

This was recorded earlier today. I added a film grain and some background music and a silly HUD.

Anyways enjoy

For those of you who don’t remember the classic video of him playing Garry’s Mod:

Edit:

Some threads and stuff:

• http://forums.facepunchstudios.com/showthread.php?t=652890
• http://digg.com/pc_games/Left_4_Aidan
• http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/7hb3u/left_4_aidan_left_4_dead_reenactment/
• http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=762324