So, in another thread I mentioned a (new to me) mod for Armed Assault, the CZM (Crappy Zombie Mod). I’m here to tell you, it’s anything but.
(note that in this version, I think the “infected” event has been taken out, as it was causing tons and tons of lag while scripts run. I don’t think this is a big loss as in most traditional zombie movies, people only become zombies/reanimate after they die . . . so that doesn’t really affect the gameplay . . . as all NPCs still reanimate after they die).
After playing around with it a bit and figuring out how things work, I created and played my first mission tonight. It took about 2 minutes to set up and a half hour or so to play. It was bare, bare bones: A town off the coast had been completely overrun by about 150 zombies and a small team went in to take care of them (5 men including me as a sniper and an M113 APC).
It was HELLA fun. We rolled in and started laying waste to the zombies but of course, we started to run out of ammo. I told everyone to get into the APC we had brought along and was firing hundreds of .50 cal rounds into the crowds of undead. Then things started deteriorating. They surrounded the APC when, after we had knocked over some walls and trees trying to get out of there, we smashed into a house and had trouble backing out. They started clibing up over the sides and dragged the gunner out of his mount. (This I really couldn’t believe, it was really cool . . . they don’t have the animation for this but they do have the animation for the zombies crawling up on things and he popped out of the turret and did the dying animation and fell to the ground).
We finally got free and backed up. In the headlights I could see the zombies eating him and then, right before we left, he stood back up and started staggering toward us!
Finally the fuel gauge started to run out and I decided to park the APC overlooking the town up on a hill. The lights of the APC were shining down on the village, illuminating the horse coming toward us. I wasn’t sure how many we killed so far but I estimated about 75. That left around 75 to kill, which doesn’t seem like too much but when you start counting rounds and realize not every shot counts, it was a little dismaying.
I told the squad to get in line formation around me. They startedd opening up down the hill as I took solo shots with my sniper rifle. I tried to get as many headshots as possible … but sniping’s hard! Especially in a realistic milsim game like Arma.
The zombies started coming up the hill at us. It became worse and worse at it was now night and the beams from the APC were the only light around . . . outside that it was vauge shapes and movement. My troops started calling out “Ammo out!” and I head and saw them switching to their sidearms. Finally EVERYONE was out of ammo and the zombies kept coming.
I’ll admit it. I paniced and went to teh back of the APC to reload. That’s when I heard calls out that my men were going down. I finished rearming and raed back to the front of the APC. There were dozens of zombies there, some feasting. I started shooting wildly. Soon enough, my own men were coming towards me. One of them got a bit too close as I hesitated in shooting him and he swiped me. The front of my outfit stained with blood.
I gunned down as many as I could but they were coming in from all sides, albeit slowly. The problem was I was in an open hilltop now, with all sides exposed, and only the beams of the headlights showing me what was in front of me.
I got into the APC and drove down hill to the village. Finally it ran out of gas in the middle of the street. I reloaded and listened to the moans drifting through the night air. A zombie popped into view and I shot it in the head. Then another, and another, and another. I calmly dispatched them and tried to position myself so I wasn’t exposed, back against a low wall.
Suddenly I was attack from behind and fell to the ground.
As the “Mission Failed” screen came up, the camera zoomed to an above view where I got to see my attacker eatingg my guts. In a final insult, I reanimated and started staggering around! Oh the humanity!
I highly recommend this mod. Next time I’m going to add some civilians and resupply crates to get to, and maybe eventually add some waypoints, objectives and such.
The ultimate mission, and this is totally doable in Arma (though I personally don’t know how exactly), is to start off in an area with tons of zombies and have to fight your way out then survive in the country. Populate it with several civilian cars, military vehicles, supply dumps, etc. In the supply dumps you could, for instance, have hundred of undead military walking around (they have undead models for every model in the game). In the town have civilians. Have zombies EVERYWHERE, even some in the countryside, so you never know if it’s safe.
The beauty of this is that in the editor, you can give any object: vehicles, ammo crates, zombies, other military, whatever a percentage chance to spawn in the mission as well as radius of where it spawns. So, for instance, you could give a dirtbike with a 1/2 tank of gas a 50% chance to be within 200m of the gas station in town. This would truly randomize your experience, as you’d never know what you’d get or where it’d be.
Finally we have a real zombie survival game!
