Friday, July 3, 2015

Outbreak Survival: [Zombie Fest updates]

For a quite a while the game remained on the front page during July and early August of 2012. However the servers started to lose players, which prompted the need for another update. As a result another string of updates were created, dubbed Outbreak Survival [Zombie Fest] which had a total of three major patches (called part 1, part 2 and part 3). And eventually a final patch released much later called [Zombie Fest Reborn]



However despite all of this the game didn't ever hold enough players to reach anywhere near the front page again. Which it was then decided to start working on a version 2.0 update for the game, which would be a complete overhaul adding many new features, items, classes and polish.

Leading up to the update, demolition signs were seen next to the yellow Storage Room and near the trees by the road, along with dynamite and a wrecking ball crane, which gave hints to the eventual destruction and removal of the building.

Each part of the updates will be listed briefly below:

Outbreak Survival: [Zombie Fest Part 1]:

6 New weapon sets were announced, those included the Agent, Zombies, Heavy, Sniper, Noob Warrior and Ninja sets. These sets could be shown in the new gallery pictures. Due to the old saving system being unreliable and re-saving your items every time you leave the game (resulting in a whole inventory of duplicate items). 

Items were to be then saved with badges, since badges get saved to the players profile they will never lose the bought items unless they delete the badge. A new shop was created that was more organised, had multiple pages and held short descriptions of the item's stats. The first items to be created in badge form were the basic and support tools.

The map had a a few major and minor changes to it. The first being that the yellow Storage Room was removed and replaced with a tall office building, this building contained many floors and rooms. The first floor had the same layout as the Storage Room, however instead of having ladders there were now stairs leading to the top floor, the ground floor was also wider.

One of the games many new galler icons, this one shows the office building with plenty of Breaker Zombies surrounding the entrance.










The Noob, Lightning and Bloat Zombies were added to the game. 

The Noob Zombie was a fast, weak and annoying version of the regular Zombie, the way its joints were welded allowed its joints to sway from left to right as it moved. It was mostly used for scouting or distraction purposes.








The Lightning Zombie was originally planned to have lightning themed abilities, although I didn't have the scripting capabilities at the time to alter the game code to support Zombie tools. 









The Bloat Zombie was a more powerful slow version of the Kami Zombie, when it died it's explosion would knock off most of a survivors health.










Outbreak Survival: [Zombie Fest Part 2]:


Due to many glitches that could be performed with the Ghostwalker sword, it was subsequently removed from the game, the assault, heavy and elite items were also added in badge form along with the Weapon Set / VIP T-Shirts. The Agent, Noob Warrior and Zombie sets were released for sale.
















The Shield, Bullet, Noob brute and Breaker Zombies were added to the game. 


The Shield Zombie was a special Zombie that had high hit points and a silver shield attached to it although it was very slow. At this stage in the games life, the shield didn't actually block any attacks (most players though it did and purposefully walked sideways in an attempt to block bullets). It was just there for aesthetic purposes.







The Bullet Zombie was a faster version of the Fast Zombie, although it's health was significantly lower. This class allowed players to jump straight into the action shortly after being killed. This class could be hard to hit due to it being able to dodge attacks. Players with slow internet connections also had trouble dealing with this class







Back in 2012, Roblox had a few exploiter issues which a few players also decided to use on Outbreak Survival. To combat these players, a class was setup that could potentially 1 hit KO exploiters. That class was the Breaker Zombie, with a moderate sized health pool and extremely slow speed, this class could completely destroy anyone it touched.

This class opened up new strategies that players had to overcome, it was no longer viable to stay in cramped locations unless you had the fire power to deal with the Breaker Zombie. This made camping less popular and roaming more prevalent. Although Breaker traps were often used where two players would try to sandwich in a survivor, by coming at them from multiple sides. Usually resulting in players being killed by the Breaker Zombie.


Like the Noob Zombie, the Noob Brute was added for it's silliness. It wasn't a viable class, but it had similar stats to the Brute Zombie although like the Noob Zombie it's damage was very low. It shared the same wonky walking animations as well.










Outbreak Survival: [Zombie Fest Part 3]:

The new Lake Zone was added onto the map, which increased the size of the map drastically. The Lake Zone included a new lake house, a large lake in the centre of the zone and a bridge which takes you over a segment of the lake. A community made model was also added next to the lake house, which had two floors and an invisible truss part that took you to the roof. (Gravity Zombies could however easily jump up there). The Heavy set was also put on pre order.



A video of the lake zone being built can be seen here:


The rest of the weapon sets aside from the Heavy set were added to the game.












A new class called the Gravity Zombie was added to the game.

The first iteration of the Gravity Zombie was perhaps the most terrifying. It had a reasonable amount of health, was unlocked in the mid-game, was fast (slightly slower than the Fast Zombie) and could jump incredibly high. It also dealt a good amount of damage.

Combining these things made the class a nightmare to deal with, let alone having to face multiple of them. The class being a crawling type didn't help much either.

One of the first changes that happened to this class was to reduce it's speed to be slower than a survivor and reduce its damage to a more reasonable level. This left the class in a better state, although it wasn't used nearly as much anymore. With a few experienced players even finding it underpowered.

Outbreak Survival: [Zombie Fest Reborn]:

This update occurred late September, many weeks after the initial reborn updates. This update included a new Zone within the Lake Zone. This new Zone was called the Caves, a new cave entrance was placed behind the lake house, and a large building made up of multiple floors and contained a vast array of secretes lied within. 

These secrets took players to many parts of the Caves and one secret teleported you into the lake so you could escape. The /load feature was finally removed, so players had to completely change over their old items and use the new badge saving system.

The Heavy Weapon set was released a week after the update.









Overall each of these updates didn't bring more than a couple of servers full of people back to the game. Which gave the need to start planning and building a 2.0 version, which would have more up to date features that Roblox had to offer as well as being a more stable and fun game to play as a whole. With all these new Zones and the fact that the old game engine wasn't that efficient many players found themselves unable to play the game without suffering from lag.