Last Man Standing

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#1

Backstory:

Unless you’ve been living under a social media rock for the past 2 years, @TheInnovative was working on a game in 2014 called Last Man Standing. This game became the butt of many jokes because he kept saying he was working on it, but rarely showed any progress due to a loss of motivation. In November, he finally agreed to let me help him with it after months of volunteering. I started rewriting the entire game in the middle of November, and by Christmas weekend we had a minimum viable product that worked. On Christmas day he tweeted out that the game was actually going to be demo’d and released shortly.

On December 30th, we had our first open demo which went… pretty bad, to be generous. Within seconds of people joining the game, we discovered that there were many bugs which we had never anticipated because we did not think that they would happen nor did we even test the game in any way that would make these bugs occur. Due to these bugs, the game was almost entirely unplayable which was quite disappointing. We wrote down every issue that we noticed and I looked into the code and tried to get the game playable for the next demo, which TheInnovative said would be a week later which seemed crazy.

I fixed the bugs and the day for the second demo came. We tested the game again and found more, smaller bugs which we promptly fixed before opening the game up for a 1 hour demo session(which literally just ended). Turns out, the game works, but still has some issues, but it worked.

What we gathered from the demos:

We realized that there was some extreme imbalance between zombies and humans, some mechanics needed to be fine-tuned, and we were missing quite a bit that people wanted. We also gathered that people actually enjoyed this game even though it was broken. People would keep joining the servers in the first demo even though they knew the game was broken: they were really hoping for a working game, which was inspiring. During the second demo, people played for almost the entirety and some people even bought the game after we closed the free demo just to support us and to play it some more. We also had other developers reach out to us with suggestions and had many people show us pictures or vividly explain an issue, which was very helpful as we continue to work on the game.

What’s Next:

We’re planning some updates to the game, including some things that were grayed out in the demos as they either weren’t ready or they were features that would earn us revenue which we didn’t want to get from the demos. There are a lot of fixes to be done, a lot of improvements to be made, and a lot of small things that we have to fine-tune. Weapons are being rewritten very soon as they were the only part of the game I did not rewrite before the demos. New features are also being added to make the game a much more enjoyable experience, and we’re hopeful for a release by the end of January, but with how much work there is to be done, we’re flexible for February as well, so don’t expect a set release date just yet.

One strange issue that we encountered which we are unsure about is an extreme latency issue between clients and the Roblox server. It happened infrequently, but enough times to make us curious, that the server would seemingly freeze for a few seconds which would cause chat messages to be delayed by many seconds and would also result in issues with our code which didn’t seem possible. Is this latency issue possibly related to the troubles the Roblox servers faced earlier today due to the excess amount of online users? If you noticed this in games other than LMS, please let us know as we’d like an explanation to this phenomena.

If you’ve played the demo, feel free to message either @TheInnovative or myself and we will do our best to satisfy your suggestion or complaint or be thankful for any compliments. We are truly happy to have this game working and look forward to getting this game in the hands of many more players who may enjoy it. Cheers!

This thread will be updated occasionally with progress reports, updates, or to gather feedback in the near future. We hope this game becomes what TheInnovative envisioned years ago and we hope that it is a product enjoyed by many people.

9 Likes
#2

This game is like my child. Seeing @FearMeIAmLag bring it to life makes me so overjoyed. I couldn’t be more excited to finally release it early this year just the way I’ve always wanted it to be. Thank you to absolutely everyone for supporting it, making a meme out of it, and spreading the word about the game. Funny enough, getting this game popular and known was the easiest part of it all – exactly the opposite of what I expected in 2014.

4 Likes
#3

A: When is LMS getting released? B: When Half Life 3 does.

1 Like
#4

Can’t wait for a segment of the bugs to be removed, hopefully LMS doesn’t have a tough break.

1 Like
#5

From what I’ve played, it looks fun. Would definitely love to play with more players.
It looks like this game doesn’t have much variation beyond playing the standard gamemode. Are there any unlockables or achievements that the players can progress towards that would keep players playing the game?

#6

From what I could see there is a very nice GUI aesthetic. A suggestion from me would be a return to menu button on this screen though!

1382×723 571 KB

1 Like
#7

More game modes in the near future like Team Deathmatch and Capture The Flag

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#8

We plan to remake the wait screen into a lobby setup which you can leave and see other people in the lobby

1 Like
#9

Losing motivation for my project. What tips do you have to keep it afloat and convince myself it’s not wasted time and trash

#10

Build a cult following… or bring somebody new onto the team to give the project a kick and to bring fresh ideas.

1 Like
#11

I really suggest getting a quick working prototype together and holding a full test server to find bugs. More than likely you will get a tonne of positive feedback and improvements which is very motivating and it’s great to see people enjoying your game. I held one yesterday and can’t wait to start developing again.

2 Likes
#12

Been trying this, no one seems interested

#13

Something you have to know is that every project you make will end up seeming pointless or worse than whatever other idea you had at some point. There’s always gonna be a chance that your game will fail but you will never find out until you finish it.

Really, you just have to pick a project and cement yourself to it. What I do when I start feeling demotivated is I just sit down and think of the smallest possible things I could do today to work on my game, and do it. Then I do a few more things, and eventually you just kinda get into the grind. If I ever need a boost of motivation just to start working my game at all then I usually watch a good motivational video on youtube.

3 Likes
#14

Shia’s “Just Do It”?

1 Like
#15

Lol, pretty much. I’ll pm you some motivational videos.

Sorry to get off track! I have apparently been living under a rock because I haven’t heard of this game until now. Glad I heard about it though, it looks awesome! I bought access, but after waiting for like an hour no one came haha. I’ll try again at a busier hour.

#16

Finally got a chance to play it a bit with a few others. Was pretty fun, but still wish there were more with me to play with so that it was more balanced. Can I suggest making the zombie weaker in a 1v1?

Can players join in on a game that has already started btw? If not I think they should be able to. Or at the very least make class customization something you do in the lobby instead of in the main menu, so that players wont miss entire games just because they wanted to fuss with their class.

Also, although the game I’m sure will be fine just running off of players alone once it is advertised, I think it would really help with longevity to add some sort of zombie or player ai’s to make the games more fun with less people. Considering they are likely to be stupid ai you could give decreased rewards for killing them, and maybe buff their hp a bit. Just a thought :slight_smile:

#17

Really? I thought it was impossible to play as a zombie in a 1V1, since the map was way too big to find everyone by yourself.

I think this game in general was not meant to be played 1V1.

#18

Like many multiplayer games, it’s a much better experience when there is many players in the server. Every round begins with 1 zombie no matter what, so 1v1 is not the ideal game experience, but we allow it. Maybe we should require 3-4 players instead of 2?

#19

I would’ve suggested that instead, but considering how few players are playing at the moment I think you should still let 1v1s happen just so players can play imo, but you could probably change that once it starts gaining traffic.

1 Like
#20

Update: I know it’s been two weeks since our last demo, but I have some good news and some slightly less but not bad news news. I am still working on rewriting weapons, about 70% done with that process, and I am fixing bugs and implementing some suggestions and fixes that we got from the second demo. We plan on having a larger demo, potentially a few days in length, at the end of this month, maybe the first few days of February. If all goes according to plan (fingers crossed!) we will release the game in the first week or two of February. Following that, we will fix any bugs if any are encountered, and will begin progress on phase 2 of the game with many big updates in the spring (March - May). I know, we said we’d aim for late January, but we ran into unexpected issues and are only slightly behind schedule.

I also am working on getting a Discord server for LMS set up which will be open to the public within the next few days. The link to the Discord server will be posted here once we open it. An in-game feedback system will be implemented soon_tm so there will be no need to go to the Discord to notify us of an issue unless it is quite extensive and complex. Thank you all for your continued support, the last few weeks have been rough as issues have been tedious and I have lost patience at times in addition to my work for another game, but this will be here very soon.

1 Like