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                         Zombie:Reloaded Release Notes
                                Version 3.1.0

                          Written by Richard Helgeby

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Release Notes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Zombie:Reloaded is now mature enough to be called stable and we bump the version
to 3.1. The patches since the beta 2 release have fixed several issues and
improved a few things.

There's no official CS: GO support yet, as it's not our primary focus.


Richard Helgeby &
Greyscale

2013.01.12


MAJOR NEWS IN THIS RELEASE
----------------------------

IMMUNITY MODES

Immunity modes is an old idea that has been around since ZR 3.0 beta 1. It was
never given priority, until now.

These modes change the way attacks are received either as zombie or human. It's
now possible to do the following:

  * Slow infection. Zombies can hurt humans so they'll loose HP. Either humans
    are stabbed to death, or they can be infected if go below a HP threshold. If
    some maps have medkits (or implement them) humans will get multiple chances
    of getting away from zombies.
  
  * Delayed infection. Instead of instantly turning a zombie, the infection is
    delayed a few seconds (customizable). It's also possible to enable that
    subsequent zombie attacks will reduce the delay by a certain amount of
    seconds and speedup the infection. A possible feature that can be
    implemented later is a cure for infection so that humans can cure themself
    before the time is up.
  
  * Instant kill. Zombies will instantly kill humans when attacking instead of
    infecting.
  
  * Block damage. Zombies can't take damage from humans, but are still
    vulnerable to knock back. With this mode, humans can only win by surviving
    the entire round.
  
  * Deploy a shield. This is a temporary immunity mode similar to TF2's
    übercharge and activated by the "zshield" command (in chat or console).
    Humans will be immune to infection and zombies will not receive knock back
    (they still receive damage). The shield only last for a few seconds and need
    a cooldown before it can be used again. Both values can be customized.
    Currently there are no visual effects when the shield is deployed, but this
    makes it possible for humans to use themself as a decoy.
  
  * Be completely immune. Humans can't be infected and zombies don't receive
    damage or knock back. There's no use for this mode itself and it will break
    the game, but it's there if someone want to be creative with addon plugins.
    It's practically the same as a permanent spawn protection, only that it
    works on zombie classes too.

It's of course possible to make various classes with different modes, so you're
not bound to use only one of them.

These modes can drastically improve the gameplay and make it more fun to play.


INFECTION MODES

It's now possible to get better control of how many humans that are infected
when the round has started. It has three modes:

  * Dynamic (default). This is the old one that scales number of zombies
    according to a ratio and number of players on the server.
  
  * Absolute. Infect an absolute number of humans. This mode also has an option
    to invert the infection so that everyone but a small group of humans are
    infected (like a survivor game mode).
  
  * Range. Infects a random number of players between a minimum and maximum
    range.


GAME MODE CONFIGS

With the introduction of immunity modes and infection modes it's possible to
make a few game modes. These are not real game modes, but various configurations
of Zombie:Reloaded.

A few example configs are provided (based on the Zombie Plague plugin):

  * Nemesis. Only one zombie is spawned, but it's very powerful and do instant
    kills (64K HP, speed, jump boost, and very low knock back). Humans must
    survive the round or kill it. Teamwork is essential in this mode.
  
  * Survivor. Everyone is infected but a small group of humans.
  
  * Swarm. 50% is infected. Humans fight to the death - humans are stabbed to
    death instead of infected. This requires a post map config to modify the
    immunity mode on all humans.

When the map is changed or reloaded the default configuration is restored. You
need to use map configs to enable these modes. It might work to enable some of
them after the map is loaded, but some modes require the class config to be
reloaded and reapplied on all players (zr_config_reload and zr_class_reload
commands).


INSTALLATION
--------------

Install the following requirements:

* Metamod:Source 1.8.6+
  http://sourcemm.net/
  
* SourceMod 1.4.0+
  http://sourcemod.net/
  
* SDK Hooks extension 2.0+
  http://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?t=106748

The version numbers listed above are minimum requirements. You should always get
the latest stable version.

See their documentation on how to install the requirements. Though, SDK Hooks is
easily installed by just extracting the contents into the "cstrike" folder on
the dedicated server and all files should go in the correct folders.

Note: Verify that both Metamod:Source and SourceMod is running before
      continuing. Type these commands in the server console: "meta version" and
      "sm version". If both give version information it's working. If not, go
      through their installation instructions again and verify that everything
      is in the correct place.

When the requirements are installed the Zombie:Reloaded release package can be
extracted into the "cstrike" folder and all files should go in the correct
place.

Start the dedicated server and verify that Zombie:Reloaded is running by typing
this command in the server console: "zr_version".

Check the SourceMod error logs if it's not working. Zombie:Reloaded will
validate and log errors if something is wrong. Look for messages from
zombiereloaded.smx.

See the manual in docs/zr_manual.htm for details about configuration settings.
It's recommended to look through it to get to know details about the features
and how to configure them. Make sure you check it before reporting problems.


SOURCE CODE
-------------

The source code is bundled in every release and patch. It's located in
addons/sourcemod/scripting/ and prepared to compile once the SDK Hooks include
file is installed.

Source code repositories with build scripts are available on our side at Google
Code:

  * http://code.google.com/p/zombiereloaded/wiki/Source?tm=4

The repositories are bundled with all requirements except Mercurial itself and
should compile out of box.

Snapshot builds will be available at:

  * http://code.google.com/p/zombiereloaded/downloads/list
  * http://www.helgeby.net/zrdev/release/auto/zr-3.1

Note that helgeby.net has limited bandwith and if we want a few people to try a
certain snapshot we'll upload it on our site at Google Code for faster
downloads.

Also note that we don't support snapshot builds. Only official releases and
patches are supported.


ADDON PLUGINS
---------------

A few people from the Allied Modders community have developed some addon plugins
as a supplement to Zombie:Reloaded. A list of them are available here:

  * http://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?t=159596


LIST OF CHANGES
-----------------

These are the changes since the beta 2 release:

  * Many bug fixes and minor changes (50+).
  * Added a cvar to allow zombies to pick up weapons at the end of the round.
  * Added scream and moan commands for zombies, with spam protection.
  * Added cvar to enable suicide intercept before the first zombie.
  * Added cvar for minimum dx level on overlays.
  * Added validation error messages for individual attributes when loading
    classes. Easier than reading bits from a number.
  * Added external plugin API for ZR with basic infection, respawn and class
    tools.
  * Added improved random number generator from SMLIB. (Better random zombie
    selection, etc.)
  * Added infection countdown.
  * Added cvar for disabling team balancing on round end (when using a custom
    team balancing plugin).
  * Added knock back boost workaround for CS: GO.
  * Added immunity modes.
  * Added infection modes.
  * Changed class limit to 64 classes.
  * Changed Zombie:Reloaded to use the SDK Hooks extension instead of our old ZR
    Tools extension.
