fort zombie released - only 7.95

A couple of things I need to try out when I get home tonight:

- Pause the game as soon as the mission loads, scroll in and do the 360 to load all world objects (from Mecron).

-If you find you are in a bad spot and decide to do a reload, pause the game before bringing up the menu to load your game (avoids a possible crash).

-Don't save your game mid-mission. Loading such a save and continuing the game from there can break a lot of triggers that will probably make the last stand quite difficult.

These are all from a tips & tricks thread from the game's forum:
http://www.kerberos-productions.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=30

So I got to play another game of this last night.   Didn't get as much time in as I wanted to, but it was already late by the time I got home.

1) The 360 thing (when you start a mission, pause the game, zoom all the way in and then rotate around 360 degrees) works great.  Since doing that at the outset of every mission I don't have any framerate issues.  Note that I have not turned any of the settings down at all - just simply making sure all the objects get loaded before moving does it.

2) Injuries in this game suck.  One of the first survivors I'll be looking for will be a doctor.

3) The rules used in zombieland apply here.  Specifically the rules that helped me where Cardio, Double tap (or rather I found out the hard way why this is important), beware of bathrooms.

4) I read something interesting from the devs yesterday, basically that they have laid off trying to correct zombie behavoir.  If they find a 'bug' where zombies are doing something crazy like, they'll leave it in there with the line of thought that zombies should every now and then do something stupid, that they shouldn't always be mindless killing machines.  For instance this was in reference to something that happened to other players where a pair of zombies started dancing (they basically want to path through each other and instead just keep circling each other over and over).  Well after playing for a while, I did notice a few cases where zombies were being 'stupid', like guys not being able to go around a wall, or where they'll lose sight of me if I duck behind a wall.  It wasn't as bad when I really thought about it, and how zombies might just be stupid enough to do those things.

I've got a narrative to write and screenshots to go with it sitting at home.  If I get motivated enough, maybe I'll put it all together and post it or start another one.

Good point, really. Zombies aren't smart killers. That'd be werewolves, or vampires or ....

Single zombies should be easy to handle. Similar with small groups that are spread out (if only to make it possible to evade).

Zombies should be a mindless force of nature, becoming dangerous in large numbers, or where you can't see them, or when you're backed into a corner.

The brutality and inhumanity of war stood in great contrast to what I had heard and read about as a youth.
- Reinhold Spengler, war volunteer 1st Bavarian Infanterie Regmnt., 1916

I got it running with no crashes (have to install XNA framework from Microsoft).  First off, I'm a sucker for anything to do with Zombies (love Left4Dead), so I was really looking forward to this.

That said, this game runs like a dog!  I'm able to run games with much better graphics (like Left4Dead) with no trouble, but this thing runs choppy.  The graphics are lower quality than Operation Flashpoint (the 1st one from 2001!).  I had to lower the view distance to get a decent framerate.  I think it is an engine optimzing problem.

Graphics aside, the controls are horrible and hazardous to your health!  It's too bad it doesn't have a 1st person view mode or a way to lock the view behind the character.  Maybe I'm just not coordinated enough, but combat is usually a frenzy of moving and shooting in the air for me.  I hope I'll fare better in the real zombie apocalypse. 

This game had a great concept, one I've been looking for for years, but a very poor execution.  I hope a patch is in the works to fix the flaws in this game.

Lets put it this way, Mscano - because of all the raving here, I bought Dragon Age. I also bought FZ on day one.

My system literally CHUGS in FZ - slideshow - even if I set it down to 1220x800. I played just a few minutes of Dragon Age, which looks beautiful, and on medium levels of detail and texture I get pretty darn smooth gameplay (so far) at 1440x900 (even more smooth if I turn off this frame detail option thing).

Yeah, I'm pretty disappointed. I also think it is fair to say that the Northstar engine used needs to be optimized.

SoM

Son_of_Montfort

Pick up some Latin, Gus, and you can get a free ride on the crazy train if you keep hanging with Son_of_Montfort.
-- LongBlade

son_of_montfort

Yeah, I'm pretty disappointed. I also think it is fair to say that the Northstar engine used needs to be optimized.
SoM

Could that optimization be done in a patch for this game or would it be too extensive a change for a patch?

Try the 360 thing.  Do this at the very begining of every game and every mission:

1) Pause the game (p key).
2) Use the mouse wheel to Zoom all the way in as far as you can (its a nearly 1st person view, you should be able to see all the way to the horizon). 
3) Rotate your view around 360 degrees. 

It'll chug like heck while its doing that, but eventually it'll finish and the rotation will be smooth as butter.  Once that is done you can zoom back out, unpause and resume your gameplay.

It works everytime for me, and no more slowdowns at all. 


The reason this works is that there is no LOD settings for the environment.  Meaning that all the models on the entire map are potentially visible no matter where you are on the map.  It dynamically loads the models that are in sight.  Normally in that game you use the overhead, 3rd person offset view, so you only see a small portion of town at a time.  Well, when you come across a new building it chunks to load the building model/textures into memory. 

By switching to a nearly first person view and doing a 360 degree sweep you are forcing every model in the whole map to be seen.  That forces them all into memory, which results in the chunking during this process.  However once its all loaded, you won't get any chunking when you actually are walking around.