Monthly Archive for September, 2005

Notes on Zombie Horde

Zombie Horde is a modification for Counter-Strike: Source which seeks to recreate the chaotic struggle of a group of humans attempting to defend themselves from a mindless onslaught of the undead. Or perhaps not so mindless, since not only are the humans in this scenario player-controlled, but so too are the zombies.

Just a few simple rule changes from normal Counter-Strike - the zombies get only a knife and regenerating health, up to four times that of the human players, and of course, immunity to headshots - and the use of Half-Life 2’s zombie models and a brand new game is born. A very fun one at that - it’s impressive how those small modifications generate the desperate and tense situations that are best summed up by these screenshots (1).

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What is a Manhack?

“Station 8, do you copy? Station 8, are you there? We have confirmed reports of manhacks. Repeat: they’re filling the underground with manhacks.”

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Digital Actors

As a level designer with a strong interest in single player experiences with strong narrative threads, I’ve recently been giving some thought to characters in the context of games.

Valve’s PR for the Source engine frequently refers to its character animation capabilities as “the ability to create expressive digital actors” [1] [2], but to what extent is it true to call a digital character an ‘actor’?

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