(A spin-off of http://staredit.net/topic/18760/)

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Zombie Diplo
A fast paced Diplomacy-style map, but with zombies as the theme. The main fun comes from the feeling of going exponential with your zombie macro. I have a Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) game design philosophy, so the game should be easy to learn.

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COLLABORATION
I'm ALWAYS looking for partners to help. If the idea sounds fun to you, just let me know. I'll also be offering PayPal transfers based on individual work completion. Something like $50 to do part of a tutorial.
It's also all open source (after release), so just ask for the uncompressed version if you'd like to make your own fork.
Special thanks to those who've helped so far: Ultraviolet, Sayoka

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SPECIFICATIONS

• Players
  1-7 Players. 1 Computer
  
• Map Tileset
  Badlands
  
• Map Size
  256x256
  

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FEATURES

• Tutorial – Audio + Visual guide on how to play the map. Can only be skipped by all players off screen.
  
• Free For All – Much like any diplo map, you're surrounded hostile NPCS, that prevent you from just taking over the whole map. Eventually zombie players will bleed into each other's territory, and then the real fight will begin.
  
• Beautiful city terrain – Brand new blends that truly capture an urban vibe. (by Sayoka)
  
• K.I.S.S. – Keeping things as simple as possible will allow for a short learning curve. Units stats are very close to default, resource diversity eliminated, fewer available research/unit/building options.
  
• Phases – The game starts zombies off with a single unit, that rapidly spreads during the first minute, then slows down. Different phases of the game has different feels of gameplay.
  
• Open Source - Anyone who wants their open unprotected copy to fork is welcome to it.
  

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Zombie Player

• Drones – Drones can only Nydus, which are replaced by creep colonies, which in turn spawn more drones. But they must be spread out, or the drone is refunded (more creep spread = more macro). Very exponential feel.
  
• Creep Colonies – But the humans could just destroy this easily. Zombies must sometimes morph these colonies into sunkens(defense) and spores(offense). Nothing special about sunkens, but spores are immediately replaced with spires, that spawn zombies (zealots/lings). Morphing this to a greater spire switches it back into a drone, but also spawns 1 infested terran (kills cloaked units).
  
• Catastrophes – Every 10 terran civilian kills grants a Catastrophe Point. A bonus unit/event to help end the game. Like ultralisk, zombie movement speed increase, zombie unit doubling, etc.
  
• Clutter Control - If a spire would spawn a unit with 20 other zombies already at the location, it kills itself along with the units, and spawns an ultralisk (stong, but not as strong as 20 zombies).
  

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Humans

• NPC. Serves only as a buffer.
  
• Buildable tiles are the only real resource in this map, so clearing them is required for growth.
  

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NOTES

• This is gonna need a lot of work balancing.
  
• Map is mostly a stepping stone to making the more ambitious "Europa Zombies AI" map.
  

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PROGRESS

• IDEAS (80%)
  
• TERRAIN (100%)
  
• UNIT PLACEMENT (8%)
  
• TRIGGERS (2%)
  

UPDATES

• 4/30/2025
  Made post
  

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Made with the Map Production template.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on May 1 2025, 12:06 am by ClansAreForGays.

Not sure if I should name it Diplo or Battle Royale...

I'm glad you took my suggestion and spoke to Sie. They have been and continue to be in my opinion one of the greatest terrainers SC has ever had.

I'd be interested to gather up the boys and give this a shot when you have it ready.

Great to see someone building active projects!

Out of curiosity how are you writing the triggers and map logic? I have been working on a pretty ambitious map lately (no EUDs either!) as well, and I find this to be hardest/most time consuming part (the 2nd hardest is making great terrain and blends of course that are functional!).

To do my own project, I made a Python library to let me write triggers directly into maps without having to open the editor. Would you be interested trying this out for your map? Of course I understand if you don't use programming languages, it could be daunting. I'd be happy to help you out here if interested. The library is here: https://github.com/sethmachine/richchk

My other suggestion is not to worry too much about a perfect balanced game. StarCraft custom maps aren't meant to be pro E-sport games, I play them for the experience / story telling aspect.

To be clear, I'd be happy to code something off you based on your initial 2% triggers done and show how you could use this for developing your map.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 3 2025, 1:06 am by sethmachine.

That looks pretty impressive, but yeah I'm pretty old school and partial to the classic trigger editor in SCMDraft2. (minus the glaring white screen)
But I'll take any help I can get!