Picking up where the Omega project left off and brought to you primarily by Catastrophe and myself, Zeta puts together high quality and well-balanced gameplay. You can forget all about these old glitches, exploits, and hidden ACS to benefit certain players over others. Zeta is bringing out what's best in AOW2, with a selection of maps and classes prioritizing quality over quantity.
We're all used to playing AOW 2.1, what's new?
Among the large list of additions, gameplay adjustments and bug fixes, here are some of the most notable:
- Proper balance! Chainsaw doesn't ruin the game anymore, Chrono Bow is actually a strong weapon now, Shotgunner is finally being put on par with Gunman, Orca costs a bit more, and many, many other changes;
- New classes and mechs being worked on to spice up gameplay in creative ways while keeping it fun both to play as and against;
- All Mechs look big and imposing again, instead of being shrunk down, and Wolverine is now fully team-colored;
- Weapon skins now have crouch sprites, so you don't randomly appear inhumanly small anymore;
- Mech explosions and C4 fire can no longer damage your own buildings (no more trolling your obelisk and repair pad);
- No more Base Crasher if your buildings are already at low health, nor Base Miracle if they are already at full health, and neither ever occur during or approaching Sudden Death mode;
- Lots of other minor changes to make the game flow much better overall, check out the WIP changelog to tune in.
Cool, what about the maps?
Zeta currently has 13 maps, 12 of which you should already be familiar with as they come from Omega. We plan to include some of the better maps that are played on AOW 2.1 so as to provide the highest quality map pack available. Some of the Omega maps have had small changes to improve their gameplay, and annoyances such as slopes that are hard to climb for larger mechs have also been fixed.
Do you want to make a map for Zeta? By all means, go for it. We appreciate contributions and really look forward to seeing new maps being made as more variety is always good with certain standards set. Our current map list is as follows, with Zeta exclusive maps underlined:
01 - Red Zone
02 - Barrens
03 - Oasis
04 - Glacier
05 - Valley
06 - Floating City
07 - Canyon
08 - Renegade 2030
09 - Infected
10 - Renegade 2032
11 - Waste Plant
12 - Missile Site
13 - Strange World (by Catastrophe)
14 - Mining Site
15 - Disk Defrag
16 - Happy Fragging
17 - Mining Camp 2
18 - Surface Tension Reloaded
19 - AOW Zone
20 - Immortal Kombat
70 - Space Camp
71 - Unending Pain
72 - Hell's March
73 - All Out War
74 - Defunct Comission
There are new maps in progress and this is not a final maplist. The maps numbered 70+ are in need of heavy changes and are therefore kept separate as they may or may not remain in Zeta.
So when is this coming out?
With most major issues having already been taken care of, there are only some minor gameplay changes and testing needed; other than that, our current priority is fixing whatever bugs there may be left on our current maps and adapt others so we can have a larger selection available. A couple of new maps are already being worked on by contributors and if you would like to make one yourself, we will be happy to add it to the pack.
A large scale project such as this needs a good deal of testing and constant bug fixing, but it won't be long before our first official public version is released and fully playable. You can check out the github repository to see how things are going, and we encourage you to join the #zeta channel on the Zandronum IRC to stay tuned.
Can I still play the current unofficial Zeta though?
Yes, as explained by Catastrophe in a later post:
Catastrophe wrote:Oh I forgot to mention, Zeta is only for Zandronum 3.0, which is thankfully much easier to set-up now (automatic downloading on server browsers). If you desperately wanna try it out, all you have to do is download as zip, extract that stuff to a folder, and run zeta-to-pk3 which will generate the pk3 for you. Once done, just load it up with Zandro 3.0 to play.
Spoiler: silly screenshots (Open)
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