Some of us already know that you download Infection from Living Dead, you'll find that the variant can be modified to enable Teams. The Teams available in Infection are, as you might expect, Humans and Zombies. Players can decide what they will start the Round as in the Lobby. When this was initially discovered, people wondered whether this functionality would conflict with the Initial Zombie Count option in the gametype. I decided to run some tests over Xbox Live with two friends. I found that the gametype is generally unstable and is unfit for public use. The details of my "study" can be found below: General gametype quirks In the Lobby and on the scoreboard, colors are swapped. Humans are Blue and Zombies are Red. This is purely cosmetic; the teams will still use the right spawns (Blue Humans spawning at Red Team areas), so long as other glitches do not interfere. Team colors are used and do appear in-game. Humans are blue, Zombies are red. Observed phenomena Constant Death Bug An affected player will die and respawn constantly -- at speeds that not even an Instant Respawn hack (from Halo 3) could achieve. They literally drop dead as they fade in, while the respawn glow is still on them. Generally, they will die with a mix of Human and Zombie traits (such as Human team color and a Zombie weapon), though it can also happen with "pure" Zombies. Should this occur at the start of a round, the affected player will see an Initial Loadout Camera's view. A sound effect (generally "New Zombie") will loop, and the message "You are a zombie" will constantly appear and disappear on-screen. Eventually, the screen fades to black and remains that way until the bug stops. If the affected player uses the D-Pad to watch another player, they can avoid the fade-to-black. Hybrid Zombies In some cases, the game will spawn a Zombie player with Human traits. Such players can still infect Humans. If all Humans die and only one Hybrid Zombie is in-game, that Hybrid Zombie will become the Last Man Standing. (I do not know what would happen if multiple Hybrid Zombies are in-game.) Because Hybrid Zombies cannot be (re-)infected by another Zombie (attempts count as betrayals), the only way to end the round is to have the Last Man Standing commit suicide (assuming that Suicides Become Zombies is on) or to wait for the time to expire (assuming rounds have time limits). In some (or all?) cases, killing a Hybrid Zombie causes them to respawn as a normal Zombie. Test details Test: 1/1/1 Zombies 0 chosen Zombie 1 Initial Zombie 1 Player The player spawns normally, as a human. The round does not end until they die. Test: 0/1/1 Zombies 1 chosen Zombie 1 Initial Zombie 1 Player The player spawns as a Hybrid Zombie, and is Last Man Standing. The round does not end until they die. Test: 1/2/3 Zombies 1 chosen Zombie 2 Initial Zombies 3 Players The "extra" Human is affected by the Constant Death Bug. In this test, the affected player retained his team color (Blue/Human) but had the Zombies' weapon (Energy Sword). Test: 2/1/3 Zombies 2 chosen Zombies 1 Initial Zombie 3 Players This situation can glitch in two ways. Sometimes, the two teams will be switched (spawns, team colors, traits) and the Zombie will die and respawn constantly. Other times, the "extra" Zombies will spawn as Hybrid Zombies. When the lone Human was killed in this test, they died and respawned as a Zombie (with a mix of both teams' traits) constantly. Test: 2/2/3 Zombies 2 chosen Zombies 2 Initial Zombies 3 Players In the only test I ran for this scenario, one of the two starting Zombies was affected by the Constant Death Bug. When I (the lone Human) killed the other, he, too, was affected. I think I did a full game with these settings and team assignments, but I do not recall the results right now. Conclusion If the number of people who chose to be Zombies does not match the gametype's Initial Zombie Count, the game will not override the players' selections. However, the gametype itself will behave in a noticeably unstable manner. Notably, even when the number of chosen Zombies in the Lobby matches with the gametype's Initial Zombie Count, the gametype is unstable. Team selections affect players' positions on the scoreboard, and they determine who is enemies with who. However, they do not affect Infection-specific aspects of gameplay. The game uses Initial Zombie Count to determine what players should receive which traits, which players have to be infected for the round to end, and (by extension) which players are eligible for Last Man Standing status. When team selections do not match with the Initial Zombie Count, glitches are guaranteed to occur. However, even when they match, spawn glitches still happen when players are infected (as their Infection status does not match their current team, which doesn't appear to change automatically upon infection). If such players change to the Zombie team manually, they will usually spawn normally. Pictures 2/1/3 Zombies. This is the last Human, constantly spawning and dying after having been infected. Take note of his team color -- though he was infected, he is still on the Human team (since teams do not change automatically upon infection). 2/1/3 Zombies. A Hybrid Zombie became Last Man Standing after the lone Human was infected. 2/1/3 Zombies. A Human, a Hybrid Zombie, and a normal Zombie. 1/2/3 Zombies. An extra Human, dying and respawning constantly with full Zombie traits. 1/2/3 Zombies. A Human watches as his teammate constantly dies and respawns. Note that this was taken at around the same time as the previous picture -- the deaths and spawns are so fast that corpses are scattered all over the map! 1/2/3 Zombies. If a player is affected by the Constant Death Bug, this is what they will see until their screen fades to black or until they snap the camera to another player. Note the overlapping "You are a zombie" messages.
tl; biribiwsfi (Too long; but I read it because it was so ****ing interesting.) Seriously though, that was awesome. I knew that there was something weird about bungies infection gametype, though I never expect those results. It makes me wonder what bungie was trying to do. Were they about to make a "winner, Loser, Random" system? Alpha Zombies? Or was Bungie truly just throwing together gametypes at the end of Reaches production... It makes me wonder. I don't know if this gametype is stable enough to be used for anything, though using your "research" I think something interesting could be created. . This makes me curious whether there are other gametypes with the same type of interesting quirks as this one. It would be worth it to check. Good work! and I don't mean that in a middle-school teacher patronizationy way; you actually did a really good job with this
I didn't even know about the MM variant having the option for teams! Is it only red and blue? Thanks for testing all those things though, I'll keep them in mind when I download Infection and play around the with the settings myself. Edit: I think this just shows that things like Team Race are indeed possible, we just need to wait for Bungie to slip a variants in to MM!
Yes, it's just Red and Blue -- or rather, Zombies and Humans. I think they may have edited their Matchmaking Infection gametype using some kind of development tool. It'd explain why the "Teams" setting became accessible. If they should make the same mistake with other gametypes (such as Team Race or FFA Stockpile), they should function much more stably simply because they don't have a "fake" team system hacked into an FFA core. (Team Juggernaut, on the other hand, would probably break similarly to Team Infection.) Glad y'all like my work. It is kind of disappointing, though -- if Team Infection worked, it could've led to some interesting things.