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Ravenous Horde

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Ravenous Horde

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Kill hordes of zombies as a hunter, and kill hunters when you're a zombie! In this round based multiplayer post-apocalyptic FPS you start as a hunter, and turn into a zombie when you die. Level up and unlock perks, new weapons and customization options!

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Most popular community and official content for the past week. (?)

Tropicana Map & Game Updates

Mar 13

Fellow Hunters,

It's been almost 3 months since the last update and today I'd like to take you through what I've been working on! Let's start off on a new map called Tropicana.

Tropicana

Around the end of January I started working on the first actual map that is designed around the ruleset that I came up with. The current screenshots which you can see on the store are partly of the Factory map, which was designed as a map to show off graphics and gameplay in the fastest way possible, so don't think of how and why things are placed but just have it look like it could be a map.

The ruleset (or design rules) I came up with are based on looking at various other shooters out there that have good maps (and also bad ones, it's good to know what to not do!). Some of the rules I came up with are as follows:
- Every map needs a unique aesthetic, look and feel. (The unique aesthetic could be a crashed plane or a big submarine in the center of the map)
- Every map needs a variety of sightlines. (ranging from short to long, to support all types of guns that you like to use)
- Every map needs to be at least 50% outdoors. (Meaning a view of the sky, this will be needed in the future)
- Every map needs to support at least 1 alternate weather condition.

Tropicana fits the unique aesthetic as an overgrown sub-tropical swimming pool, the dense foliage in various places combined with open center pool allows for various ranges of sight.

Here are some screenshots of Tropicana!

The start of Tropicana. A rough block-out.

About a quarter into development of Tropicana, starting to grasp what it should look like

Tropicana finished! Showing off sunset & midnight fog variants.

Weather Conditions

For the replayability of the game I looked at how to add/influence this from a map perspective. I have played plenty of FPS games in the past and often the maps became "stale" as these maps are played in the same weather. So you'd always play that one map in night time, or broad daylight for example. Now the big studios usually have quite a few maps at the launch of the game, and pump out more after that to keep it fresh by having a large rotation of maps. It takes me about a month to make 1 map, and was thinking on how I could get "more" out of said map for a little bit of extra effort. The solution to me was doing different "versions" of the map with various weather conditions. Playing a map in broad daylight is very different from a foggy midnight variant.

I wrote down various ideas of what could work and what not. Snow for example doesn't work well as models would need to be updated, so I'll leave snow-covered maps for later. Some of the ideas that do work on a lot of maps are rain / thunder and fog.

For Tropicana there's the following:
- Sunset weather condition
- Midnight fog
- Midnight thunderstorm (slight epilepsy warning)

For Factory:
- Midday clear sky
- Midnight fog (midnight fog makes the game go spooky real fast)
- Rainy cloudy midday

Other Improvements

Now this is a long long list if I name everything, I've done 2 internal playtests so far and I am now at a point where it feels like a stable game, we've had connection issues, input breaking, players spawning in the ground and various UI not showing the correct values as an example. All of these are solved!

Last time I mentioned a list of things to do for the first playtest. (With the first playtest I mean a public one, not just with friends.)
All but one item made it in! I didn't get the time for a 3rd map unfortunately.

Since the last time:
- Vastly improved movement.
- Hunters can now throw grenades.
- You can now make a loadout, picking from 9 weapons in total.
- You can now adjust various settings regarding video quality / audio.
- You can rebind keys!
- You can now score points and level up!
- The UI has been updated.
- Zombie and Hunter sounds have been added and all sounds are networked, so keep quiet when near the enemy!

Audio settings

Key rebinding

Improved UI

What's next

Here's the roadmap! Currently wrapping up Phase 1 this week and then on to Phase 2.
Before I'd do a public playtest I'd like to add some more things, these are noted down under Phase 2.

If you came this far reading all of it, thank you for your support!

If you are interested in more in-depth info regarding the game or just want to hang out feel free to join the discord: https://discord.gg/jbx92tbMSG

And if you want to join in on the future playtest, don't forget to wishlist and sign up!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2179490/Ravenous_Horde/

Ravenous Horde

Is there a release date set for Ravenous Horde?

Title. Thanks

Syagrius

Apr 8 @ 8:05pm

General Discussions

Ravenous Horde Update

Dec 25, 2023

Fellow Hunters,

Today I'd like to talk a bit about what I have been working on 2023. And what's to come in 2024!

2023

As some might know, the development fully started this year after Marble World (my other game) got released last year and was successful enough to let me work on the next game. I initially started with a purchased single player template. Because making a FPS (regardless of multiplayer) is a huge task, there are so many systems that need to be made and these systems are not that unique or difficult, just taking up a lot of time. So having that bypassed was a good choice.

I converted the template into multiplayer, adding 3rd person models for other clients to see and having all of your actions be verified on the server. Also set up a 'zombified' model with different animations for when you are a zombie. And to top it off added the 4 skills to the zombie character you can play: scratching, throwing body parts, puking and even explode yourself to deal some area of effect damage to nearby hunters.

Next to this, there's also a lot of things that need to be present in a FPS that you wouldn't initially think of, like a scoreboard, names above heads, and important behind the scenes features like lag compensation! But also gameplay features like the first zombie(s) and the last hunter. (The player at the end of the round with the highest score will return as a hunter one time for some chaotic gameplay.)

(Note: this is all placeholder, the UI will be themed to the game accordingly)

Now I don't like hackers in a multiplayer game, and playing against a hacker can be infuriating. So one of the main goals is to make sure to keep hackers out. I know no game is hack proof, looking at the big studios like Dice / Activision you probably know that no matter the budget or the experience you have, hackers will be there.

In Ravenous Horde, all your actions are 'server authorative', meaning the server will check everything you do to make sure you are not differentiating from the normal values. Like movement for example, if you managed to walk twice as fast by hacking the game, the server will rubberband you back to where you are supposed to be on the server side!

Another counteract to hackers is to have admins on a server that can kick or ban players that are exploiting the game, and in Ravenous Horde you can set up your own server! And set players to be admins to keep hackers in line, creating your own safe community server :)

(bonus picture of me adding in the double barrelled shotgun, but it bugged out the shotgun and not the shells)

Playtest - 2024

The goal is to do a playtest around the end of Q1 2024. There are some things that must be present in the game before this can happen, so I'll try my best to get it all ready. In this first test I'll gather info on how the match went, on both the client and server side so I can make performance and balance optimizations where needed.

Some things that are left to do for the first playtest:
- Add the ability to throw grenades as a hunter
- Add 2 more maps for a total of 3
- Add the ability to make loadouts
- Add a settings menu
- Add a basic scoring system
- Update the UI to be themed
- Balance the values of HP / gun & zombie damage
And I probably will face some other minor things that need to be done.

After the first playtest, the work begins on more content. here's a list of things that are going to be added after the first playtest has taken place (in no particular order):
- Levelling system using XP to unlock rewards
- Add more maps (perhaps 10 at launch? Perhaps I'll dedicate a whole post to maps as each map has variants of itself in different weather conditions)
- Killstreaks / death streaks
- The perk system (50+ perks!)
- Updated gore system
- More weapons and weapon attachments
- Reward tracks (this is the monetization model I'll be using as the game itself is free)

The goal is to have more frequent playtests in the future with each introducing a new feature and balancing to test out as I complete the game more and more towards a release.

For now, thank you for reading. Enjoy the holidays and take care! :)

If you are interested in more in-depth info regarding the game or just want to hang out feel free to join the discord: https://discord.gg/jbx92tbMSG

And if you want to join in on the future playtest, don't forget to wishlist and sign up!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2179490/Ravenous_Horde/

Ravenous Horde

Can't wait to recreate the old Zombie X days!

Can't wait to recreate the old Zombie X days! Thanks for all the hard work DoomPriest! Hope to play and test everything ASAP!

Joshua

Oct 18, 2023 @ 2:33pm

General Discussions

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