[CO-5] The Lost Osprey - Addon free zombie rescue mission!

[boriz 1]

The Lost Osprey

Description

An MV-22 'Osprey' which was carrying an important cargo and a few VIPs had an engine malfunction and had to urgently land somewhere in the zombie infested Chernarus. Your mission is to locate it and make sure that the cargo will be delivered to its original destination before the night falls. However the exact location of this aircraft is unknown and you'll have to figure out where it is, based on the clues which you'll find in the infected towns.

Mission name: [CO-5] The Lost Osprey v1

Mission type: 1 - 5 players [COOP]

Enemy type: Zombies

Difficulty: Very challenging. Makes you consider your every bullet and bandage you have. Playing with friends will make it significantly easier.

Respawn type: No respawns but you can switch to a different free character anytime you want, if he hasn't been killed before.

Friendly fire: off / on (reduced) / on

Game time: Approx. an hour

Supported games: Arma 2, Arma 2:Free, Arma 2:OA

Accessibility, high replay value, meaningful decisions

Accessibility means that technically everyone can play this mission. Even Arma 2: Free players, since no mods/addons are required.

High replay value is warranted by the randomization of the main elements of this mission which are:

-Ammunition/weapon placement

-Vehicle placement

-Zombie spawn positions

-Osprey location

-Player's spawn position

Making meaningful decisions is the main drive behind the challenging gameplay and that's why I've made sure to support this idea by making this mission non-linear. This forces players to decide on their own where to look for the aircraft, which in the end gives them a huge sense of satisfaction upon finding it. After all, you've found it thanks to your wits and skills!

Credits

Concept and realization: Boris Vacula

Original zombie scripts: Celery

Testers: breadfan, sunnz93, KillerBAHbKA^HS

Additional support: breadfan

Author's personal note

Working as a full time game developer while creating my own complex mission like this one has forced me to spend a lot of my limited free time on this project, but I believe the end result was worth it! I've enjoyed making this mission and I hope you, the ARMA community, will enjoy playing this with your friends, even though it is still a WIP. Any kind of honest feedback will be very much appreciated! Now go and kick some dead ass!

DOWNLOAD THE LATEST VERSION

ARMAHOLIC

Screenshots

The map

Not a safe place to be in

Under attack

APC

Hideout

Edited November 13, 2013 by Boriz
fixed missing 'the'

[boriz 1]

UPDATE

Due to several request I've decided to make a few changes. The first one is quite significant, so I would appreciate any kind of feedback regarding the current difficulty of the mission.

I am still planning to do more improvements. One of them is adding additional player slots. Hopefully I'll be able to make this change in the next update.

Changelog:

- Significantly decreased the amount of zombies in all towns to make the mission easier.

- Minor improvements and changes.

The latest version of the mission can be downloaded from here, or from the first post.

ARMAHOLIC

[teoleo 2]

in mp or sp mission folder?

[nettrucker 144]

It's coop therefore should be MP.

[tom3kb 15]

@up

You know that 99% of coop missions you can play in SP?

[nettrucker 144]

Yes I know Tom . . . but in any case even though someone might play these in SP shouldn't it be located anyways in the MP folder?

[tom3kb 15]

If you want to play only in SP just put them in:

..arma 2\missions or

..arma 2\missions\your_folder_name

if you want to play in mp, put them in mpmissions.

[teoleo 2]

if you add the save feature and in Sp the possibility of comand the friendly ai, is a great mission

[boriz 1]

if you add the save feature and in Sp the possibility of comand the friendly ai, is a great mission

Hi teoleo! Thanks for the feedback!

I might enable the save feature in the next update, at least in SP. Regarding AI, it needs a bit more work but I'll see what I can do.

[teoleo 2]

Hi teoleo! Thanks for the feedback!

I might enable the save feature in the next update, at least in SP. Regarding AI, it needs a bit more work but I'll see what I can do.

wow! ;O)

[boriz 1]

Anyone else would like to give some feedback? This was quite a large project, so I wonder if I should port something like this to Arma 3 or not.

[nettrucker 144]

Anyone else would like to give some feedback? This was quite a large project, so I wonder if I should port something like this to Arma 3 or not.

If you want more feedback you need to switch to ArmA 3 I believe. That's where the main part of the community is creating stuff for now. ArmA 2 is dying slowly off. There are some stragglers left like myself, but the bulk switched over to ArmA 3. I fully understand your frustration not to receive feedback, especially because I think that you put a lot of effort into this mission.

If you port this mission over to ArmA 3 I'm pretty much sure that you'll receive more feedback. Bear also in mind that not too many people here are into Zombie missions. The DayZ community maybe would appreciate it more. Ever thought opening a topic on their forum? Although DayZ is a multiplayer game I believe that people will be interested to try out your mission because they like Zombie stuff. I'm just saying and giving you some suggestions.

cheers and good luck.

[bassgojoe 10]

Neat mission. We ported this mission over to Take On Helicopters and scattered some choppers around. Using a hind to orbit a city clearing zombies as ground forces advanced was a pretty sweet addition! Feedback:

1) It'd be nice if respawning was allowed, even if it was simple and just dumped you at Balota or something. We were hosting locally so the host couldn't switch to a different slot without restarting the mission.

2) The zombies should do much more damage to full health players. They are already at a disadvantage since they can only do simple melee, having them also not do much damage makes them not that threatening.

[boriz 1]

If you want more feedback you need to switch to ArmA 3 I believe. That's where the main part of the community is creating stuff for now. ArmA 2 is dying slowly off. There are some stragglers left like myself, but the bulk switched over to ArmA 3. I fully understand your frustration not to receive feedback, especially because I think that you put a lot of effort into this mission.

If you port this mission over to ArmA 3 I'm pretty much sure that you'll receive more feedback. Bear also in mind that not too many people here are into Zombie missions. The DayZ community maybe would appreciate it more. Ever thought opening a topic on their forum? Although DayZ is a multiplayer game I believe that people will be interested to try out your mission because they like Zombie stuff. I'm just saying and giving you some suggestions.

cheers and good luck.

That's true because I am not watching news regarding Arma 2 too. I've also started working on a new Coop mission for Arma 3 with no zombies. This time it's something much more player friendly and so far I've been receiving a very positive critique!

Thanks for your suggestion! I'll show this mission to the DayZ Community and maybe it will bring more players to it.

Neat mission. We ported this mission over to Take On Helicopters and scattered some choppers around. Using a hind to orbit a city clearing zombies as ground forces advanced was a pretty sweet addition! Feedback:

1) It'd be nice if respawning was allowed, even if it was simple and just dumped you at Balota or something. We were hosting locally so the host couldn't switch to a different slot without restarting the mission.

2) The zombies should do much more damage to full health players. They are already at a disadvantage since they can only do simple melee, having them also not do much damage makes them not that threatening.

Hmm, I'll probably add an option to enable respawn. And your idea of porting this to ToH and fighting zombies with helicopters sounds awesome!

Regarding zombie attacks, this is a very difficult thing to tweak. Currently the first hit causes your aim to be bad. The next one makes it much worse and the 3th one incapacitates you. Another one will kill you.

How would you suggest to change this system?

[bassgojoe 10]

Currently the first hit causes your aim to be bad. The next one makes it much worse and the 3th one incapacitates you. Another one will kill you.

How would you suggest to change this system?

That sounds great. The behavior we saw was that a full health player could take dozens of hits from a zombie without much negative effect. Maybe the script was just broken?

[Valken 623]

@ bassgojoe - can you post your ToH version for others to try? I have ToH and would love to try it.

@ Boriz - would be awesome if you took the helicopter attack idea and port to Arma 3. You can use the standalone AIA mod to get A2 assets into the ARMA 3 engine.

[boriz 1]

That sounds great. The behavior we saw was that a full health player could take dozens of hits from a zombie without much negative effect. Maybe the script was just broken?

You've probably changed something because I've ran into this same problem when I've created 2 playable units of the same type (example: 2 machine gunners). This causes zombies to give damage to a different unit than they are attacking. I think it works somehow like this:

We have two (or more) players and each of them are "Machine gunner" type of a unit belonging to the same side.

One of them receives a hit from a random zombie. This damages all players (of the same type). When any of them receive another hit, all players should have a temporal red vision, indicating pain and damage, even tho their damage values aren't increased. This means that all players are immune to a zombie attack, although all of them were hurt from the first strike.

To fix this, each players must be a unique type of a unit.

@ bassgojoe - can you post your ToH version for others to try? I have ToH and would love to try it.

@ Boriz - would be awesome if you took the helicopter attack idea and port to Arma 3. You can use the standalone AIA mod to get A2 assets into the ARMA 3 engine.

You should be able to just unpack this mission, add a few helicopters/tanks or whatever you want, and then play it in Arma 2.

Edited April 8, 2014 by Boriz