Community:Gusmanak/Apocalypse Rising

Apocalypse Rising is an adventure survival game built by and scripted by. It was released on July 1, 2012. Based on the multiplayer open-world survival horror game modification for the 2009 military simulation ARMA 2 called DayZ, the game takes place on a large open map during a zombie apocalypse.

The map is one of the largest maps of any game on Roblox, having over forty thousand bricks on a standard server. The game has over 406,000 favorites and is the most-visited zombie-themed game of all time on Roblox, as well as the most-visited game under the Adventure category. Despite being released as version 1 on July 1, 2012, it was the 14th most visited game during 2012, accumulating a total of 4,844,229 place visits from its release until the end of the calendar year. As a result of the game's popularity, has won The Coolest Gift hat on December 7, 2012, which later unboxed into a Dual Illumina gear two weeks later on December 21, 2012.

A while after the release of V.5 the Dualpoint Interactive decided the game was complete and from then on offered only legacy support including bug fixes in order to create a new game utilising the Unity Engine, after Apocalypse Rising was voted Game of the Year 2013 the two developers decided that not to release an update in thanks would be a wrong decision and have committed to releasing numerous new features at some point in the future, the information was released at between 20:00 and 21:00 GMT on the September 21, 2013 with the following statement in Apocalypse Rising' game description. The update as a result of GOTY status is expected to be the last.

"ZolarKeth and I have decided that in lieu of you guys voting us in as developers of the year, we plan to update Apocalypse Rising with several new features that we feel players have been wanting for a long time. After we fix our current bugs, be sure to keep an eye out for this secret update in the next few weeks. Thank you all!"

After 5 years, a sequel is known as Apocalypse Rising 2 was released in Alpha status as an early access title.

Overview


In Apocalypse Rising, players need to survive in the large wasteland by consuming foods and drinks that are scattered in the area in order to prevent starvation and/or dehydration that can occur over time. Players may also attempt to fend off zombies that are present in scattered areas of settlement, such as small residences, towns, and even military areas, using weapons such as pistols, assault rifles, and melee weapons. However, it is possible for the player to be wounded by zombie(s) and/or other player(s), assuming that they are not a member of the same group the player is in. The health cannot be regained by itself, so it requires the player to rely on consumption of any edible food or a blood bag in order to regain lost health, though the increase in gained health is not immediate, but rather takes some time on its own to complete the alloted amount of healing, unless damage is received, which will cancel out the healing time. Besides zombies, players are also another possible enemy, if they own any weapon that can be used. Players can pose a risk that is similar to if not more than zombies, since it is possible for players to use ranged firearms that can damage zombies and players from a distance, which makes them more dangerous than zombies, who can only attack players by trying to run close to them and damage the player that the zombie is near to at melee range. However, as of April 4, 2013, a team GUI (Generated User Interface) had already been implemented into the game to give the ability of non-killable teammates and the ability to invite players into the team.

Although, the game is primarily owned and designed by, a team of players contributes to the overall design and function of the game. The most notable of these players are, the scripter of the game; , who creates the gun and attachment models; , the creator of the comic advertisements for the game; and , who designs the outfits used in the game. The Apocalypse Rising Advisory Board also critiques design choices and tests game updates before they go public.

Startup
When starting up a new game (if it is the first time that the player plays the game, has died sometime, or has the data reset in an update), the player can choose what his/her character would look like (such as the skin color of the player, hairstyle in a few different colors, outfit, the appearance of the player's body armor, and the color of the player's body armor) and finally the perk. 4 perks are available at the time, which are in the order that they appear from left to right, Cardio, Survivalist, Vitality, and Ninja. Cardio allows the player's hunger and thirst bars decrease slightly slower than a normal player would when sprinting. Survivalist allows the hunger and thirst bars to deplete five minutes slower. Vitality slowly regenerates health over a long period of time, and Ninja can allow the player to make no walking and jumping noise and can require the zombie to be closer to the player in order to attack. After the player creates his/her own character, the player starts off near the shore on the beach and wearing a backpack with a Makarov pistol that has 4 magazines that has the complete 8 bullets in each magazine, along with a can of beans and a can of Pepsi in the inventory.

Features
In many of the settlements that can be found in the area, foods (many of which are present in the form of canned foods, or in some occasions, Cheez-Its brand snacks and Meals, Ready to Eat (MRE) and many others), drinks (many of which are present in the form of common brand sodas, such as Coca-Cola, Mountain Dew Orange Crush and, rarest of all, Dr Pepper, although bottles of water are present in the environment), and possibly weapons (many of which are in the form of melee weapons, such as fire axes, primary firearms, such as the double-barreled shotgun, and secondary handguns, such as the Smith & Wesson Model 625 Revolver. Although, stronger weapons are only available in certain tougher territories throughout the area) and their corresponding ammunitions can be found and scavenged by using the interact tool. Other possible loots also includes painkillers, which can reduce incoming damage from many sources of damage for 45 seconds, and blood bags, which can completely fill up the health bar. Although, blood bags may only be exclusively found in small hospitals and clinics, which are indicated by a red cross. In addition, players can also scavenge various supplemental gears such as wristwatches, which shows the current time of the place in hours and minutes, maps, which provides the physical geographies of the area, compasses, which shows the direction the player is facing, GPS's, which shows the player's character's location on the map, and matchboxes, which can light up firewood for cooking meat.

The carrying capacity of the player is rather limited, so this can encourage players to attempt to search for packs that can allow the player to carry more items. The packs are in order of the added carrying capacity from least to greatest, Fanny Packs, which increases the inventory capacity by two inventory slots, hiking packs, which adds 4 additional inventory slots, survival packs, which increases the capacity by 6, and military packs, which adds a whopping 8 inventory slots to the inventory. Although, military packs are very exclusive and are only available in certain areas that are rather risky in terms of the possible amount of zombies.

Since version 3.3, the player also has the ability to sprint at the cost of his/her hunger and thirst going down much quicker than usual, so the player should know when to limit the use of the sprint feature, as the action can risk both the hunger and thirst bars to the point that the player would starve and/or dehydrate should the player recklessly sprint at the wrong times, such as when the hunger and/or thirst bar is low. Between Versions 3.3 and 4, sprinting was done by double tapping the w button, which was at first broken due to how some of the keyboards had problems with the action, but was later fixed in a minor update. As of now, sprinting can be done by pressing either the left shift button or double tapping the w button, which can be changed to fit the player's preference.

Players can move building materials (which can take up multiple space in the player's inventory) by using the grab (entrencher) tool, which can be looted in certain areas, and move any available building blocks. The building materials can help the player traverse to areas that are normally difficult to move to without the materials.

Since version 3.5.0, a Group feature is added, in which players can form a small alliance in the game. Every group will have a leader that can invite and/or kick group members and can transfer the role of leader towards other group members. Also, members of the group can see other members' names floating on top of their head to indicate a group member and cannot be hurt via friendly fire, which means that any damage that is dealt upon another group member by a group member will be nullified

Various journals and loose papers can be found scattered throughout the area, which the player can read to gain knowledge regarding the background of the zombie outbreak. The following slideshow shown above displays some of the papers and journals in the area.

Update 2.0.0
Version 2.0.0 was a significant update for Apocalypse Rising, brought in a relatively short time period after the game's initial release. The update added data persistence to the game and overhauled the way that player's items were saved in order to allow for changes to be made without affecting game data.

Update 3.0.0
Version 3.0.0 completely changed game-play as it added in a brand new map to the game. Although the original map of the "Kin" region had been used before, this update added an entirely new map that was over 150% larger than the original. The new map, dubbed the "Amend" region after its largest city, introduced persistence of a player's character appearance as well as their location to the game.

Update 4.0.0
Version 4.0.0 was released the day before Christmas on December 24, 2012. The update included vehicles, a dynamic inventory system that allowed items to take up multiple slots, the return of thirty percent of the original map, and more detailed buildings. Five vehicles were originally introduced, all of which are based on vehicles that can be found in the game DayZ. The vehicles include the civilian car, a military UAZ, a pickup truck, a military Ural truck, and a tractor. The vehicles require multiple car parts that can take up multiple spaces in the player's inventory, including the wheels, fuel tank, and the engine. After the vehicle is repaired, it still requires fuel to run, which can be acquired by using a jerry can. With vehicles, players can travel faster without having to sprint and risk their hunger and thirst bars, and they can also be used as weapons to ram players and/or zombies, effectively crushing and killing the targets. However, the car can be damaged and may require the hull to be repaired using scrap metal, along with any other car parts that are damaged using their respective parts.

The vehicle system introduced in update 4.0.0 was later completely redone in update 4.5.0, which added the ability to break vehicle windscreen glass, improved turning and collision reliability, increased maximum vehicle speed, and also added bicycles as a unique single-rider vehicle.

Update 5.0.0
Update 5.0.0 was announced by Gusmanak and ZolarKeth in a question and answer session held through Teamspeak. Confirmed features of the update include a brand new map that returns players to a re-imagined version of the original Kin map, the removal of military airfields, the inclusion of many new unique structures and locations throughout the map, and a city (Kin) sprawling nearly five times the area of the largest city in the current version (Amend). The hills for the map will also be redone using triangle terrain instead of the current ball-shaped hills. Dynamic lighting will also be added to the game, and power-stations that control the power of the cities and towns are located on the outskirts of each respective city.

The update has been promoted as the largest by far in the game's history, adding in countless new features such as the carrying of multiple weapons and utilities, enhanced zombie AI, brand new weapons and attachments, ammo combination, new vehicles, redone outfits, crouching, environmental sounds, fall damage, a stamina system, an enhanced and expanded list of player statistics and key binding options, new colored backpacks, a new melee system and weapons, and dozens of smaller changes and bug fixes. The update was released on May 27th, 2013 at 2:00 PM Pacific Time.

Gusmanak confirmed via a forum post that update 5.0 would be the final update to Apocalypse Rising however later rescinded this comment after the Virtual Bloxcon of 2013 in which the game was voted game of the year, the update as a result of this is expected to be the last and also expected to require no assistance from either of the two secondary developers, PKThunder and Skatebored. Also, two other versions of Apocalypse Rising are now available to play on Gusmanak's profile. One is the first version ever released; the other is a more complex version of the game known as Apocalypse Rising: Hardcore.

The standalone first version of the game comprises features that are present at the time that the game went out of the Beta phase, including items that were only available at the version and the use of the game engine that was used during the version.

The hardcore version of the game makes the game much harder in order to emulate more realism and difficulty into the game. In this version, the player's character is much more fragile, as zombies can easily kill the character in two hits, weapon damages are triple their normal value, requiring less successful hits to be made in order to kill the player, and any damage dealt with the head will instantly kill the player, increasing the potential of reducing the need to shoot too much if the damage lands on the head. In addition, all zombies that are at military sites wear helmets, making it more difficult to kill them in the head; the amount of loot normally found in the area is significantly reduced to 1/3 its normal rate; the server capacity is reduced from the normal 16 down to 12, equating to a 25% decrease in the maximum amount of players in a server; and nights are much darker than normal, making it harder to see well at night. Currently, Apocalypse Rising Hardcore is paid access for 25R.

Apocalypse Rising Universe Update
One of the most exciting updates, this enables players to choose the map they play on. Currently, Amend, Kin Reimagined and Kin Reborn are available to play. Kin reimagined has also been updated to have the same code as kin reborn.

Sequel
The sequel to Apocalypse Rising was introduced as the Apocalypse Rising "ReWrite" on July 1st, 2016. It was originally believed to be a remake of the same game, but as more features were introduced it became clear that it was anything but a regular update. A month after the initial announcement, on August 1st, 2016 the game was announced as Apocalypse Rising 2. It was said to feature major enhancements over the predecessor, but not much was known at this time. Alpha began after August 4th, 2017, with an access fee of R$ 1,000 that has currently been lowered to R$ 100.

Awards
In the ROBLOX Game Trailer Contest, a contest in which users competed to create the best video trailers, Apocalypse Rising was chosen for the top 5 best Roblox game video trailers, although in the result of the contest, Apocalypse Rising was chosen as a runner-up in second place, behind Catalog Heaven. Despite being second place to Catalog Heaven, Apocalypse Rising, Catalog Heaven and 3 other places whose game trailers have reached the top 5 best video trailers were awarded the Game Trailer Video Contest Winner hat, along with 20,000 Robux.

Apocalypse Rising was also awarded the Users’ Choice: Best Survival Game and Game of the Year awards at the ROBLOX BLOXcon 2013.

Feud with Deadzone
Apocalypse Rising has been compared with the famous zombie apocalypse game Deadzone by. Deadzone currently has over 5 million place visits. This rivalry was sparked synchronously with the release and rising popularity of Deadzone upon an emergency shutdown of Apocalypse Rising. The debate has been fueled by the fans of both games.

On April 1st, 2013, updated his game to appear as though it was Apocalypse Rising as an April Fools' Day joke. He copied the game screen pictures and video in order to make the fake seem legitimate. Although many players of both games had thought that he had copied the game in its entirety, it was actually just an altered version of Deadzone, in which he had inflated the spawn rates for water, beans, and Makarov pistols in order to criticize the difficulty of finding high-quality loot in Apocalypse Rising.

Sequel
A sequel called Apocalypse Rising 2 was released.

Trivia

 * ApocalypseRisingAd.jpgApocalypseRisingAd2.jpg Many players, on start up, will choose to be a bandit, and they will run around with automatic weapons, slaying and terrorizing all in their path. Some will even team up with other players and then when they would simply least expect it, attempt to murder them on the spot. (This is less possible as of the team GUI update, although the leader can still abuse the group system by betraying a group member by kicking them out and attempt to kill said victim afterwards.). On version 4.2.0, a change was added for the ability to become a hero, which awards the player a headband, by killing at least 3 bandits, though it can be lost by slaying an innocent player and prevents the ability to earn it again.
 * As of June 22, 2013, leading up to version 5.0.4, a total of 91 updates have been released, many of which are minor adjustments and fixes in the game. Version 4.0.0 was the 50th update and also a major one since it introduced the vehicle system into the game, modified the map to include some areas from before the overhaul of the map, increased the maximum player count up from 12 to 16, and made modifications to other features of the game, such as the sprinting key and the merging of various tools to the "interact" tool. The last major update, version 5, was the 87th total update and added the most amount of changes and additions to the game than any other major updates.
 * 2 advertisements were run throughout the Roblox advertising system, both of which are 4-framed vertical comics. The first one is about two survivors named Tom and Smiff making an agreement on items that they would receive and fighting zombies afterwards. After Tom finds a can of beans, Smiff betrays Tom by killing him, though how Tom was killed is unknown. The comic ends with Smiff eating the can of beans that Tom found. The second one is taking place in version 4.0.0 about a survivor wearing an orange body armor named Jason waiting for another dark-skinned survivor wearing a purple body armor named Ian to come inside the small purple house in order to steal his red car. The survivor, Jason was able to steal the other survivor's car and drives away only to encounter a cow in the middle of the road and crashes into a tree, with the comic ending with an unconscious (possibly dead) Jason near the crashed car being surrounded by 4 zombies that are approaching towards him. The zombie to the far right appears to be the original owner of the car.
 * The gear Tom's Beans was inspired by the beans in the game and the advertisement where Tom and Smiff fight zombies together and Tom finds beans and the viewer can see Smiff eating the beans alone in the darkness while sitting on the corpse of Tom on the last frame. It is also worth noting that Gusmanak owns the gear despite being the one who runs his advertisements for Apocalypse Rising, as seen in his inventory.
 * The game added hills in update 4.3.2, which allowed for more vertical gameplay and the inability to see across vast distances through the fog. The hills were redone in version 5.0.0 of the game.
 * Apocalypse Rising is currently the most played game under the Adventure genre.
 * According to Gusmanak, no more major updates will be released after version 5.
 * Whenever an update is performed, a hard restart is placed to completely rid the game of older servers, this also wipes all data for players, a highly criticised action.
 * Apocalypse Rising has its own subreddit.
 * The Apocalypse Rising subreddit drew the abbreviated logo for Apocalypse Rising and the logo for Dualpoint Interactive on /r/place/.
 * In September 2012, Roblox used a modified version of Apocalypse Rising v3.3.2 to gather data that would help network engineers improve Roblox's play quality. In the modified version, the map is 30-40% larger than the Apocalypse Rising map, cars are more likely to spawn, and zombies spawn more often in Amend.
 * Roblox ran an advertisement for this version of the game.