Running out of ammo in the start is intentional to force the player into a tense situation that requires use of your knife and grenades.

The zombies phase through the starter barricade, and you run out of ammo before opening the first door as there's no wall weapons

Also, since the time between start of swing and point of contact is different, you need to start your swing before you actually intend to land the hit, especially to prevent zombies from hitting you or blocking the knife headshot with an upward arm swing

Crawlers though yeah, you either need to start your swing while looking away, then quickly look back, so that it doesn't do the annoying stupid lunge (this is the same as it is in actual cod, you an even kill friendly NPCs doing this lmao)

Or just save your bullets for executing crawlers. That's what I do.

Knife hits follow the actual model. You need to aim up and to the left a bit, so that the animation of the knife is actually connecting with the zombie's head. It can be difficult but it is a skill and it is consistent when you learn it.

Ah, okay. Wasn't aware of that with the F1. Honestly would help if there was something to indicate that within the gamemode or map itself.

I disagree with the "Serves as a tutorial" bit. The Knife hit Reg feels like complete and utter ass. I've had swings point blank not register, i've had crawlers casually dodge 7 swings in a row, i've had zombies randomly decide a headshot was a arm hit and not die. It feels like pure luck to actually survive past the second round, not 'player skill'.

Yes, lobby system is disabled, you have to hit F1 and ready up manually like in the old days, both for classic feel and because lobby system cuts off the gameover music. The map is very hard and you will die a lot so I don't think you want to sit through that whole thing.

The map design is not totally conventional, either. The objective was for difficulty and horror, not to match classic cod maps (though I was inspired by WaW). That is why there is 1 small area in the beginning with a 2500 point door and no wall buys. You are forced to use your knife and grenades to their full potential or you will simply be overrun and killed. In a way, it could be seen as a tutorial for how to be efficient in a zombies map, and you can carry the skills learned from not dying here into any other map as well.

I'm also noticing an issue where if you die, it doesn't go back to the lobby and you're forced to restart the game session as a whole as it sits forever in a spectator camera of your body.

Giving a bunch of these older configs a shot after I was very disappointed by the official one.

I feel the first area would benefit from some cheap 500$ wall buy. It is very easy to run out of ammo due to how expensive the first door is, and the zombie spawns can get surprisingly overwelming, especially as the Knife only 1 shots on headshot.

Additionally, the Knife not having a swing sound feels very odd.

HARDCORE TO THE (O)MEGA