Extinction: Outbreak

[Jaijaibinx]

1. Game Overview
2. Game Features
3. Online Features
4. Screenshots
5. Progress
6. Recruitment

Introduction To Extinction

Extinction, was a series of wc3 maps developed just before the release of Starcraft II. The maps were successful, in that the balanced gameplay and interesting storylines attracted a large number of players making it a popular map for the short lifespan it had.

The Warcraft III editor could only give the game so many features, however now with the release of Starcraft II the old team has decided to rebuild and refine the once great "idea"that was Extinction!

Extinction: Outbreak

Outbreak was the first chapter of the Extinction story. It takes place in a highly populated city's downtown reigon. The city has been caught completely by the surprise of a physical contagious infection that has swept through the rural areas surrounding the city.

This infection causes organic lifeforms to deteriorate in health within minutes causing the brain to shut down and primative instincts to activate. However in some cases the infection can influence more advanced behaviours to overpower the simple instinct to eat and touch.

Because of these alterations to organic lifeforms, humans can potentially be turned into mindless eating monsters or in special cases, these mosters will find a dangerous weapon and use it! It has also been discovered that these mutated creatures become vastly more aggressive in the dark, almost as though the daylight distracts them.

In this chapter, you play as a marine sent to evacuate as many civilians as you can to a secure location. You must also attempt to protect key strategical points for as long as possible to give surviving civilians a better chace of survival.

To enhance gameplay, there are pleanty of quests in random yet logical orders, so you can be sure your not likely to play the same game twice. As this area houses many key figures in research against the infection, the military has constant marines being sent to attempt to clear the streets, some of which may follow you in your mission.

To achieve victory, you must have saved up to 800 civilians and evacuated all of them by dropship before the safe zones of the map are overrun!

The main feature of the extinction maps are the dynamic links between the game and an online site. Playing through the game, you will discover the need for experience to unlock better items, classes, abilities and other features. Some cost a lot more than is feasable to get in a few games online.

So what we've done is built an online site. During your first game, you will be given the details required to register on our site. Just by registering you recieve an experience bonus! There are also many ways to recieve further bonus experience online. Getting other players to reference you as the person who intorduced them to the map, Advertising the game, Competeing in tournements.

Oh Did Someone Say Tournements

You bet we did. An important part in joining the online Extinction community is the taking part in tournements (Although you must first have reached a certain exp to participate). Tournements will reward you with exclusive content ingame. Name Prefixes, Custom Classes, Rare Items and pleanty of other cool features. Of course the best part of the tournements will be the gigantic exp winning bonus!

So Theres Quite a Lot Going on

Theres pleanty to do whether you're in starcraft II or just browsing the site. Either way the experience will be one not to be missed out on. Send me a PM or VM to join the beta testers listings.
Contents

Basic Features

Basic features are the one's we've put loads of effort into, and you'll see the results almost as soon as you enter the game. They are also some of the features that will be expected in most Extinction maps we release.

• Stunning environments.
• 5 vs 5 Gameplay.
• Saved experience.
• Up to 6 unit csses per side [currently].
• Day/ night cycles.
• Random events.
• Highly developed quests.
• 2 Advanced computer controlled payers.

Advanced Features

Advanced features are the ones you might not realise are there unless you look hard, but then you'll just go WOW! Or at least thats the effect we're hoping to get from you guys.

• Marine squad patroling system.
• Intelligent Infected Units travel in groups rather than individually.
• Dropships will arrive in clever locations.
• Players are able to attract both civilians and marines to them.
• Almost perfect pathing.
• Item spawning and purchasing.
• Highly developed classes.
• Minimal lag for such a detailed map.

Contents

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Sorry, but we are not quite ready to release details on the online features just yet, but we'll keep you posted!

Contents

Editor Screenshots







Contents

Where We Are

As you can see, we have completed terrain. Most game systems are now running as intended and all that really needs to be worked on is Experience, Quests and Classes with the occasional bit of balance work.

Contents

What you can do for us

There is so much you can do for us! We need this to get out there, we don't just want a map on battle net, we want a community to follow its progress and suggest improvements. This game could be epic, but to do that we need you to help!

So what I would ask is that you would partisipate in any of the following ways:

• Post an idea for something you think might fit.
• Design some custom icons for the classes (once details released).
• Come up with ideas for classes.
• Check out the terrain and look for bad bits.
• Send me a message to add yourself to the testing list.
• Keep yourself posted on the progress of this map.
• Help us get it to page #1 (when released).
• Just let us know what you think. (constructive critisism only please).
• Think you can help with triggering? Send me a message.

Contents

 

[Jaijaibinx]

Just wanted the first post

 

[Dr Super Good]

How can you get registering to feedback bonuses into SC2? In WC3 you could use an offical ghostone bot to manage all that stuff but in SC2 I do not think there is any way to send out packets to other servers let alone receive them. Inorder to prevent hacking you need to encrypt the bank files which also means you can not use a bank file exchange system until you crack the bank files (in which case people can cheat anyway).

Providing unique non graphic rewards to specific people is generally not a good idea to get a map popular.

 

[Tleno]

Erm, you terrains are pretty nice, but I would seriously recommend you to change those streetights from working ones to disabled ones, and probably remove some of lightning and other FPS-intensive doodads. This will allow you to make your game less laggy, since having lots of working streetlights is a computer rape - only the strongest models will be able to hold it without a major Frames Per Second drop...

 

[Jaijaibinx]

How can you get registering to feedback bonuses into SC2? In WC3 you could use an offical ghostone bot to manage all that stuff but in SC2 I do not think there is any way to send out packets to other servers let alone receive them. Inorder to prevent hacking you need to encrypt the bank files which also means you can not use a bank file exchange system until you crack the bank files (in which case people can cheat anyway).

Providing unique non graphic rewards to specific people is generally not a good idea to get a map popular.

It may not, but i'm hoping it will encourage a community similar to that of the swat game in wc3. I have no intention of making items or classes that will break the games balance if unlocked, rather they will simply be for people who want to get a better looking character or have a different role to everyday default ones. I've worked the online system out and tested it, so no problems with it. It uses generated codes ingame and a similar algorythm outside of the game to turn the code into useful information. Its also very difficult to cheat, in fact i would say impossible, unless you crack the bank files, which im hoping only the very few are trying, as it will use 2 banks to validate each others values, so alteration of one will cause both banks to be ignored. Likewise both banks are encrypted to add additional security. More security will be added when and if i feel it is neccisary.

Erm, you terrains are pretty nice, but I would seriously recommend you to change those streetights from working ones to disabled ones, and probably remove some of lightning and other FPS-intensive doodads. This will allow you to make your game less laggy, since having lots of working streetlights is a computer rape - only the strongest models will be able to hold it without a major Frames Per Second drop...

Thanks for the advice, i have rather a lot of tree doodads, but i don't really want to remove anything from the map as it will just deteriorate the look. Is there anything in particular that will reduce the lag other than the lights? (which ill remove anyway). I havent actually set any lighting yet, any suggestions as to what would look good/ not lag?

 

[Dr Super Good]

It uses generated codes ingame and a similar algorythm outside of the game to turn the code into useful information.

And your map now has a major security hole. People can export the galaxy script for the code system and generate what ever they want that your server is meant to. Lets not forget how you can not get player name so any string based codes are player independant.

Its also very difficult to cheat, in fact i would say impossible, unless you crack the bank files, which im hoping only the very few are trying, as it will use 2 banks to validate each others values, so alteration of one will cause both banks to be ignored. Likewise both banks are encrypted to add additional security. More security will be added when and if i feel it is neccisary

.
The underlined parts do not effect bank security at all. Changing 1 or 2 banks means nothing to people who plan to generate stuff using your own galaxy script. Encrypting the banks only prevent players from manually modifying the bank files (makes the job slightly harder), people still will just export your galaxy script and use that. Just do not fool yourself into thinking your system is secure as currently the only security you have which stops people changing banks at will is the built in hash signature which I hope you have turned on (this is because the algorthim is unknown and is dependant on who uploads the map and your account).

Erm, you terrains are pretty nice, but I would seriously recommend you to change those streetights from working ones to disabled ones, and probably remove some of lightning and other FPS-intensive doodads. This will allow you to make your game less laggy, since having lots of working streetlights is a computer rape - only the strongest models will be able to hold it without a major Frames Per Second drop...

I say he should benchmark if that is true. Units like the mother ship generate 3 such light emmiters and I have seen maps perfectly playable with more than just 2-3 onscreen at once.

It may not, but i'm hoping it will encourage a community similar to that of the swat game in wc3. I have no intention of making items or classes that will break the games balance if unlocked, rather they will simply be for people who want to get a better looking character or have a different role to everyday default ones.

The whole purpose of SWAT was that everyone had access to everything. There was no super secret classes that only X person could use. Yes there were unlocks, but everyone could unlock them in the same way. Giving unique people classes with unique roles defeats this as it means somone is doing something ingame that you can never replicate.

 

[Jaijaibinx]

how will people use my own galaxy script? by protecting the map doesn't make all the code i use invisible to everyone?

and i thought you could get the name of a player?

like i said, there are no super secret classes...
its just a few bonus classes any player can unlock them if they have enough experience, i may have phrased it wrong, when i said different roles, they just will have a different set of abilities allowing the game to be played in a (very slightly) different way.

my aim is just to have players able to feel like they're getting something from playing the game more. the unlocks will in that way be very similar to mineralz, where the bonus is not game changing but just enhances the experience of the player with said bonus.

thanks for all the feedback though

 

[Dr Super Good]

how will people use my own galaxy script? by protecting the map doesn't make all the code i use invisible to everyone?

Inorder for people to play your map, they both need to download and access the galaxy script so the game can compile it to byte code. Even if it were to be pre compiled (if a patch allowed that feature) people could reverse engineere that file.

and i thought you could get the name of a player?

As text, yes. As a string, no. Text does allow concatination I think but you can not actually do much with text other than display it. The difference between strings and text is that strings are syncrinious (same on all clients) while text is local (can be different depending on language of client).

 

[Jaijaibinx]

So essentially using the map protection blizzard provides will do absolutely nothing to protect galaxy code? That seems a little silly. are you certain of this?

Thanks for the advice, but I already have the player names part working just fine, I'm increasingly concerned about the whole protection thing though. Is there no way to insure that an algorythm I used in the map could stay secure?

 

[Dr Super Good]

So essentially using the map protection blizzard provides will do absolutely nothing to protect galaxy code? That seems a little silly. are you certain of this?

Yes, it just can be tricky to find the map. Sadly there is no real true way to protect 100%, thus all you can really do is make it so that cheaters just waste their time (get nothing worth while return).

 

[Statharas]

Damn mate, you gave me the solution to TKI's online features!

 

[Turminator8]

Damn mate, you gave me the solution to TKI's online features!

I think I know what you're thinking of and it's not gonna work out like you think it is..

 

[Statharas]

I think I know what you're thinking of and it's not gonna work out like you think it is..

Doubt you do, i will go on msn in a couple of minutes :3