Instead of taking a break I decided to work on a new map. Which is kind of like taking a break because I really enjoy working on maps (for the first 20 hours, and then it becomes a bit of a chore.)

Isolation

If you were an original Morbus player you might remember the map Isolation. This was either the 2nd or 3rd map I made for Morbus and I really enjoyed the general layout of it.

The map was based on the idea of creating 3 parallel passages that run along the entire map, and then connecting them at a peak on one end, and then having other passage ways across to connect them.

By having 3 paths to traverse the map a player can more easily avoid other players. As a human this is helpful if you’re paranoid and untrusting, or as an alien this is helpful to avoid detection. That’s kind of why the map was called “Isolation;” If I want to isolate myself I can choose a path to avoid other players.

Each path has it’s own strengths and weaknesses;

The center path allows you to be on average closest to all need locations. It takes takes you through the central room which is wide and open, mostly preventing ambushes. Since you’re in the center it allows you to potentially see the side paths giving you the most information as well.

However you’re also in the center, and therefore the most detectable, and you’re forced to walk through the north center hallway which has lots of divets in the side allowing an alien or brood to hide and ambush you.

The side pathways are more secluded and take you through 2 pillar rooms. These rooms offer great hiding places for aliens and are generally dark. The final approach to the north tip of the map is a tight hallway with no hiding places which prevents ambushes.

Since the side passageways are on the edges of the map, alien senses often allow players to slip through them without being detected.

Issues with the map

The map had two large open backrooms which were supposed to be “cargo bays” that had equipment for humans, as well as entrances to the “vents”.

These rooms were kind of useless. Nothing motivates humans to enter these rooms and for humans entering the vents, it was very dangerous, because that’s where swarm aliens spawned.

There was also a basement with light switches, each switch would shut off lights in a section of the map. But getting out of the basement usually meant going into the vents which was dangerous, or back tracking which sucks.

Human players rarely left the main floor because doing so was dangerous and generally a confusing mess.

There was also a random light switch in the vents that allowed you to turn the lights off in the center room. Was this explained, did anyone figure this out, did anyone use this? The answer to all of these is no. You couldn’t even see the result of the pressing the light switch!

Also there was a light switch in the north tip of the map. This switch didn’t turn the lights on/off, instead it turned of all the lights for maybe 10 seconds, then turned them all back on; Like a reset switch.

TL;DR; confusing light switches suck, confusing vents suck, and a basement which feels more like a dead end sucks.

Despite all this…

The map was actually pretty fun to play on though. I had a lot of fun making it the first time and remember that I had lost steam when it came to the vents and basement. They were hacked together because I wanted to be done, not because I had a master plan. That’s probably why they’re the things I like the least about the map.

Our new version

Okay let’s go over the biggest changes first

Only “two” floors

No longer is there a basement and vents, there’s just an “upper floor” of the map. Giving us essentially just two floors; main and upper.

The main floor remains mostly untouched. The useless backrooms have been removed though.

The upper floor

This floor is supposed to be an alternative traversal route through the map. It’s the “guts of the ship” (I imagine this map is a space ship or something) you see exposed structural beams.

Following the 3-path theme of this map there is 3 paths through this space (you could technically say 5 though since it’s mirrored)

Lower Path; This is the “floor” level of the upper floor. You will almost always enter at this level. This is the most dangerous place to be as a human since aliens can attack you from above, and there are a lot of hiding places above you.

You can take a ramp from the lower to side paths at the A locations on the map.

Side Path; This path is elevated above the lower path and provides a mostly clear view of the lower path. You can cross over to the Center Path at B locations on the map.

Center Path; This path is also elevated, and is more protected than the side path. It has a few windows to look down upon the lower path or over to the side path, but is much more protected.

Jumping Brood Upgrade

This was designed with the brood jump upgrade in mind. A brood alien with the jump upgrade is easily able to jump from one passage way to another. The upper floor becomes a jungle gym for them. I’m really excited to see some cool ambushes happen in this area.

Multiple Entrances/Exits

There are 5 human friendly entrances to the upper floor. 2 at the north end of the map, 2 on east/west, and one at the bottom.

A caveat on the east/west entrances is that there is no ramp way to the side/center paths so entering there forces the player to traverse the lower path.

There are many more additional drop down points as well. These are one way for most players, except for brood aliens with jump upgrades who can jump up these with a well timed jump.

Swarm Spawn

Swarm aliens spawn above the upper floor and then drop in at the north end. They are forced to drop into the lower path, decently far from a ramp to the side/center paths.

More

There are more little changes and tweaks, i’m sure you’ll discover them when you play 🙂

Possible future changes

I may shift around one or two of the need locations into the upper floor to encourage movement to the upper floor. Potentially the food could move to the upper floor but stay in it’s central location of the map. I think would have to add path to get to the upper floor from central room to make this work properly.

Demo Video

I’m still polishing some parts of the map but here’s a little video showing some of it.

Last night was the first playtest for this version of Morbus and so I thought it would be good talk about the results.

Video courtesy of Chad Diver

Players

There were roughly 27 different players across the 2 hours we played. We peaked at like 15 players at one point which was pretty exciting.

No major bugs

There were no existential, game breaking, fun ruining, bugs. The worst thing that happened was one round (near the end) every player was a brood alien, but all the other brood aliens appeared as humans to them. It was really strange, I have no idea what happened or how to reproduce it. We’ll just call it the Trouble in Brood Town bug.

Morbus Moments

I saw a couple of “Morbus” moments happen. What I mean my “Morbus” moments are moments of gameplay that I think are really cool, fun, and unique to Morbus.

One of these moments was when I was a swarm alien. It was late in a round, maybe 25% humans remaining and the lights were out. A handful other swarm aliens and I saw two humans in the showers. The humans knew we were outside so they were hunkering down waiting for us to attack.

About 5 of us swarm aiens gathered and then rushed them all at once. I was the first to be killed, and the humans had some pretty strong guns so I don’t think any of them were killed, but I immediately knew it was probably a really fun encounter for the humans to fend off a wave of swarm aliens like that.

Guns

I thought the guns were actually decent. Bigger guns like the M4 and the shotgun were much more rare. Finding one felt like a treat. There were many rounds where all I had at first was a pistol and I had to hunt around for an SMG or Rifle.

Ammo was also somewhat scarce. I never ran out of ammo but I was always aware that my ammo was somewhat low and I needed to be somewhat deliberate about whether I shoot or not.

Mid Session Swarm Alien buff

About 30 minutes into the playtest it became very apparent that swarm aliens were too weak. I think the biggest offender was that they moved too slow.

I was able to buff their movement speed immediately since I had the server running in the editor and it made them actually fun to play. My experience playing the game wasn’t amazing since I was in the editor, but being able to make a quick change like this was very nice.

Lots of great data

Seeing people play the game gave me a lot of data points on how people are interacting with what’s there. Things are still early and rough but I think I saw a lot of positive signs.

Annoying little bugs

There were a couple annoying little bugs that I don’t know how to solve.

One of which is weird black lines that almost look like shadows being casted from a player’s model to what I imagine is the origin of the map. It seems related to the highlight component so I’m wondering if it’s an engine issue and not me (that component is built into the engine.)

Some bad attitudes

There were some people who joined to play who said some very negative things about the game. They called it bad, poor quality, that is sucked, etc. Maybe they were joking, maybe they were being serious. I don’t know how they found out about the playtest, or if they even knew it was a playtest, much less the very first playtest of a game. It was somewhat discouraging hearing such criticism.

Long story short it kind of sucks hearing that. It’s vulnerable having people play something you’ve made, especially when they’re the first players.

I think i’ll put together a more hand picked set of playtesters in the future. Early on the game should be played by people who’re going to give constructive criticism.

Glowstick Hell

I somehow forgot to make glowsticks despawn after awhile, and they also stuck around between rounds. This made it so eventually the map would just fill up with glowsticks. I pretty quickly started to get performance hits when playing and I started to manually delete all the glowsticks from the scene in the editor between rounds.

This was quickly patched.

Bugs bugs bugs

There were lots of little bugs that popped up. Some easy to solve, some not so much. The most frustrating type of bug is the ones that make no sense. For instance sometimes players will lose the ability to see their HP. No idea why this happens, but I added some safety rails and a system that will hopefully notice when this happens and print debug information in console.

If you watched the video above you’ll notice that HP bar bug, and also that no nametags show up.

Next playtest

I’m going to go back to cooking for a week or so. I’d like to get some basic brood alien upgrades in, perhaps even some new guns. Swarm alien upgrades could also be good, or perhaps a basic starter ability for them.

The next playtest might be on the weekend of 6/20 so stay tuned for that!

It’s been a long time since I worked on Morbus and I’m excited to say that I’ve started to work on Morbus again.

I have a lot planned for Morbus and I’ll be adding blog posts on this website as development continues.

The first steps for Morbus is to build it inside of S&Box.

I’ve been working in S&Box for the past 8ish months and I think it’s a great place to build games, you can read about my experience working on a game in it here.

Inside of S&Box, Morbus will be free for people to play, it will be a great place to build the game, test new ideas, and rekindle the community that played Morbus back in it’s prime on Garry’s Mod.

Once Morbus matures more, and if it proves to be as fun as it was in Garry’s Mod, it will be further expanded and released as a stand alone title.

I imagine this is going to take a long time and I’m committing towards working on Morbus essentially full time.

Want to help?

Right now it’s just me (Remscar) working on Morbus. I want the game to be bigger and better than it ever was on Garry’s Mod and I really believe Morbus has the potential. If you’d like to work together and make this a reality, reach out to me!