Ashtown: the first area is 100% done!

[Izual]

After weeks of work and hundreds of hours spent in making the map, we are proud to present the first area that will be playable in Surface Dwellers. It is a small farmer town, in Texas, named Ashtown.

Ashtown entrance, at the upper-left corner.

The town is split in two by a highway. Before the Great War, it was barely a city, and its inhabitants were only living from animal husbandry, or from the wages of those who worked in the U.S. Federal Prison that is inside the town. After the war, breeding and raising brahmins allowed a small community to settle in the location. A few pre-war building can still be seen: part of the prison, the sheriff office, a general store and a motel. We don't know if they used the prison as an actual jail or if they decided to live behind its safe walls, but Ashtown seemed to be a quite peaceful community. It had a church, where you could hear the slaughterhouse business that was happening right behind it. It had a lot of houses, and a town hall, and fields, and a car mart - but that was before the zombies arrival.

Entrance of Ashtown's Federal Prison.

We think you'll have great time exploring the town, hunting zombies and possibly being afraid to enter some of the buildings without a few friends on your side. Ashtown offers a lot of possibilities. The cornfields won't be safe unless you have someone covering your back, but if you do prefer sniping, you can still hang around the highway and spot zombies from a - hopefully - safe range.
It is unknown how much time did the community resist to the zombie invasion. Some of the houses were abandoned immediately, some others were destroyed; parts of the inhabitants tried to run away and died in the fields or in the surrounding desert. The survivors tried to resist and sheltered in a few buildings where they obviously lived for a couple of days - before the zombies found a breach and killed them all.

The town hall was one of the few buildings that Ashtown inhabitants tried to defend.

The map is rather big. In fact, it is bigger than any other Fallout map you've ever seen. As it will be almost the only place where you will play, it needed to be huge and feature a lot of different areas and buildings. However, the size of the map won't be a problem even for the weakest computers: firehand, a FOnline player, reported that it would require around 512MB of ram to run it, and that amount of players in map was only causing lags if a lot of them were visible on screen. As the areas will have a maximum amount of players in them at a time (probably a few dozens), there should be absolutely no lag problems - provided we rent some good server and you have at least 512MB ram

Ashtown features new sceneries, made by Continuum and TRaider.
Now that this map is done (It can still be improved, but a beta-test will be needed for that), I can focus on other things like dialogs and weapon balance. Onwards!

A fuzzy view of Ashtown - we just want to give you a small overview of the map! This picture does not show the whole town.

[TankForYou]

Awesome news. I really cant wait for it!

[Ganado]

Nice map, excited to see an example. Two questions about this:

If everything is on the same map, how will zombies respawn? Will it be like normal, where after you kill the NPC, they just stay there dead until XY amount of time, and then respawn in the same place? Or will it be more random, if that is possible, to give more unpredictability?

And, not sure if the engine would allow this, but all of your maps are in the night-time, but I'm assuming there will be day-night shift, but is it possible, for example, for zombies to be more powerful at night than day?

[Izual]

Thanks for comments

If everything is on the same map, how will zombies respawn? Will it be like normal, where after you kill the NPC, they just stay there dead until XY amount of time, and then respawn in the same place? Or will it be more random, if that is possible, to give more unpredictability?

A dead zombie will remain dead; however new ones will spawn randomly all over the map.

And, not sure if the engine would allow this, but all of your maps are in the night-time, but I'm assuming there will be day-night shift, but is it possible, for example, for zombies to be more powerful at night than day?

The map time will be set to 3:00, so there won't be any day-nigh shift. This is to improve the horror side of the game. Maps really look scarier at night!

[Harald]

(Yay, my first post on this forum!)

Lookin' good! Love that highway! Can't wait for this beast to get released!

[Izual]

Hah, welcome Harald! Glad you liked this

[Warder]

I am eager to see this running! Hope there will be more news soon.

Ashtown is place i would like to visit... and return alive. Judging on what I've learned from above, it is going to be a rough ride.

Also I got small suggestion concerning Town Hall, and some other fortified buildings. I understand, that area is complete, and it is unlikely going to be changed, but still:

The survivors tried to resist and sheltered in a few buildings where they obviously lived for a couple of days - before the zombies found a breach and killed them all.

Does that mean that zombies ate all remains of defenders, or there should be corpses, bones, blood stains and such? I am not gore-admirer, but i think it could serve to following purposes:
- as sign that there is likely to be some items,
- as a grim warning, that you are going to be next, if you stay here for too long!

P.S. Sorry for possible English fails.

[Izual]

Welcome

Does that mean that zombies ate all remains of defenders, or there should be corpses, bones, blood stains and such?

It would of course be useful regarding the "survival-horror" ambiance. However, we don't know when was Ashtown attacked by zombies. It might have been weeks ago. The player himself will most likely spend several real-life days in the location, which means we can't put blood everywhere as it wouldn't last that long. But there are several dead brahmin corpses and blood outside the player's path - in brahmin pens, for example. But that doesn't mean there won't be dead corpses rotting in some places There is/was a tough work of making Ashtown dirty, unsafe... In other words, horrific

I understand, that area is complete, and it is unlikely going to be changed

Not at all! I'm still modifying the map sometimes. In CBT/OBT, players will report problems and I'll fix them. But it can also be strategy problems: one building that needs more doors, a building missing in an empty place, this kind of things.

[Shangalar]

This map is fuckin' awesome. Nothing else to say except that I'm really impatient.

[Amarok]

Thx Shangalar.
Happy to see you there

[Nexxos]

Interesting choice for a first town. Personally I would've liked to see something much smaller and "preview-ish".

About the map, it looks absolutely gorgeus, not much more to say.

[Kroktil]

As others, I wish I could play it as soon as possible. Seems to be great job! Continue Pals!

[Madurk]

It is the third time when I come here and I see that you enormously advanced in your work. I wish you to end this great "French project". I can't wait that we meet inside to kill zombies.

[Izual]

Hey thank you fellow frog-eaters, coming from you it means a lot (I mean, come on. Madurk even didn't insult us.)

[LagMaster]

it has underground levels? like basements?

[Izual]

No. Everything has to be on the same map.

[Ganado]

Hmm, I think added narrow pathways like the sewer in Necropolis would be a good touch, but one huge map is fine for now. But the dark, damp sewers would add a factor of horror.

[Shangalar]

I agree. Some cellars, some secret passages could become great places for fights. You can imagine that after some days of playing, a hole appears in the most used secret passage, and then it becomes unusable if the zombies are not wiped out first.

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