mvms_earthquake - A coop/singleplayer survival map with dynamic difficulty, similar to Call of Duty zombies.

Install Instructions:

There is a readme file in the zip file that gives instructions on how to install, uninstall, and play the map; but here are some highlights:

This map requires:

A folder in the custom directory of TF2. Which should be removed if you want to play regular TF2 again.

The commands “sv_allow_point_servercommand always” and “sv_cheats 1”

A custom tf_English.txt file. (included in the custom folder) Which should also be removed if you want to play regular TF2 again. (this allows me to use upgrades, entities, and menus in ways that aren’t conventional in TF2. And sorry to all you non English speakers out there it will look the same for you).



Feedback:

Please leave me feedback here on TF2maps.net

I especially need to know if the difficult it where it should be (is it too hard or easy?), and if anything is to difficult to understand.

Please? I want to make it better




Gamemode Description:

What does mvms stand for? Why “Mann Vs Machine Survival” of course! (it’s the best I could come up with )

Mann vs Machine Survival is a wave-based survival gamemode: every wave a certain number of melee bots are spawned, which the players must kill to advance to the next wave. After which they gain money to buy weapons, upgrade those weapons, and open doors to explore the map. On game start each player has their their primary and secondary weapons removed, and must dual out the first few waves using only their melees. But after a few waves they can buy the shotgun and/or their class’ primary weapons (once they are found in the map).

There is no real ‘victory’ in this mode, although there are only 100 rounds that can be fought through. So you could potentially fight through all 100 and win, but it will take a while. The main goal of this gamemode is to shoot robots.




Map Description:

This map is based in an underground hydro-electric powerplant, with lots of medium sized hallways, rooms, and one enormous room. But the detailing is mostly unfinished, just in case something needs to be majorly revamped.



FAQ:

Q: Why are my weapons rapidly swapping and my screen flashing when I spawn?

A: For 2 reasons, 1st to refresh the weapons so certain upgrades are applied correctly, and 2nd because of how weapons are removed.

Since the only way to remove weapons from the player is to kill the weapon entities directly, this causes issues if the player is still trying to hold them (specifically going into the T-pose). The rapid weapon swap is so that players will always be holding a weapon, even if they don’t have a primary or secondary. The reason that your screen flashes is because when the weapons change you are teleported into a different section of the map to refresh your upgrades and give back the weapons you have unlocked. This is done specifically because of how the damage upgrade is applied in TF2, if you have it applied to a weapon (EX: the rocket launcher in normal MVM) the damage upgrade can be applied and removed from that weapon without any issues. But what I have set up is that the damage upgrade applies to all weapons (so even though your primary is still your strongest choice your melee and secondary won’t become worthless after you have bought the damage upgrades).



Q: How do I get my weapons back?!

A: The shotgun can be purchased in the spawnroom by using Uber canteens in the marked area. The other class’ weapons can be likewise purchased around the map.



Q: Why can’t the engineer build anything?

A: The engineer needs to unlock his weapons just like every other class before he can build anything.



Q: Ok, I unlocked his weapons, now why can’t I build dispensers and teleporters?

A: Balance.

Engineer is easily one of the most powerful classes in this type of gamemode. The teleporter could allow you to easily move across the entire map preventing the bots from ever getting close to you. And the dispenser allows for turtling, by preventing the dispenser it forces players to go around the map for ammo, instead of just staying in one spot.



Q: How do I open doors?

A: Each door has a counter which can be decreased by using Uber canteens in the marked area around that door. Once the counter reaches 0 the door will open.



Q: Why can’t the medic revive or use his shield?

A: Balance.

The shield completely blocks bots and messes up their pathfinding; and if you have a few medics in a corner, you can hold off the bots infinitely without ever having to worry about getting hurt.

The removal of reviving is up in the air, I currently have it removed because I feel like the game may already be to easy. But if someone says that it should be returned, I could be persuaded.



Q: Why is weapon X not allowed?

A: Some weapons (base jumper, widowmaker, etc.) are removed because they would make the game too easy and you would be stupid not to use them.

Other weapons (Bison, eyelander, etc.) are removed because they don’t work properly with the HHH bots, upgrades, or some other part of the map. (laser weapons can’t have their damage upgraded. Why is this Valve?)

Lastly botkillers aren’t allowed because when there are removed the dangling bit isn’t removed and stays in front of your face for the rest of the game.



Q: What do you mean this map has “dynamic Difficulty”?

A: The number of bots that spawn is directly proportional to the number of people playing the map. So theoretically the difficulty should be similar for 1 or 6 people, because each person will have to deal with the same number of robots no matter how many other people are playing.



Q: Wait, so does that mean that this map is singleplayer too?

A: Yes! That was one of my main goals when developing this map.



Maybe not FAQ but general mapping questions



Q: Why didn’t you just pack everything into the BSP? You are a horrible person.

A: Ouch! Well first off, I tried to pack as much as I could into the BSP (custom textures, models, and the nav file to name a few). But some things can’t be loaded via BSP (and can’t be packed by Compile Pal). For instance, I wanted to have a custom upgrade window (so there could be more upgrades overall), but the only way to do that is to edit the HUD via the custom folder; and that can’t be loaded from the BSP. There are also other custom files (the sentry idle sound was changed, the HHH’s sounds were all removed because of engine limitations, and the replacement of the English localization files) as far as I know, non of these can be loaded via the BSP.

(If I am wrong about any of this please tell me I would love to have more in the BSP)



Q: What are the demo/soldier bots? Are they regular TF2 bots?

A: The bots are remodeled and reanimated, Horseless Headless Horsemen. Because of how TF2 handles standard bots you can only have about 21 of them at any one time (on blue in MVM). But there is no such limit on how many HHH you can have running around at once (the only limit you will probably run into is when your FPS drop to 5 because of how many are running around). When I tried doing this gamemode with standard bots I never felt like there were enough to feel like I was truly fighting a horde, and they often wouldn’t act how I wanted and would end up roaming the map instead of chasing the player.



Q: Will you release the VMF? I want to see how you did X.

A: Yes! I plan to release the VMF along with a prefab pack so people can make their own MVMS maps (I need to work on that prefix…)



Q: But how did you do X!?

A: Once the map is fully released and I release the VMF I will make a more official list of how I did all the weird things I needed to do to get this map working (and believe me there are quite a few bizarre things).

Although you could probably just decompile the map and mess around under the hood if you are really determined, I’m not going to stop you. (just please don’t reupload my map )



Background:

(for those people who want to read my mind)

When viewing different shooter games I have seen that almost every single one has had a zombie survival mode; and since I never got into any shooters besides TF2 I always wondered… how would our 9 favorite mercenaries fair in the same situation? Well there has always been zombie fortress and other multiplayer mods, but it isn’t the same. You need a good internet connection (which I haven’t always been graced to have) and usually you must play as the zombies at some point (which isn’t as fun in my opinion). I wanted a purely coop/singleplayer zombie survival experience (like Call of Duty), but to my dismay… there wasn’t one anywhere to be seen. So I made one myself! 400 hours after booting up hammer for the first time I am proud to release the first ever TF2 zombie survival map; and the best part is that it requires no server plugins of any type, just the map file and custom folder.