charon productions

Not necessarily, as i said earlier it is advisable to use : in your mission init.sqf or editor. I wanted to leave that open and not code it into the module, but thinking about it now, when i add the option of the civs picking up weapons, maybe also toggled by a global variable like CHN_UNDEAD_ARMEDCIVS, then it needs to be set by the module to make sure they dont engage soldiers. Except if you for some reason make a mission where there is on top of the zombies a conflict between soldiers and civlians.

Well to the defense of BI, i have to say that it`s not their problem if someone wants the models to do something they are not supposed to do. If setvelocity command would work on a continous basis, everything would be good or the existence of a engagement-AI-independent simple move command that just moves a soldier with a constant speed while the collsion detection is still on and at least prevents the soldier not to pass through objects. Armed zombies would also be fun, i remember "City of the walking dead" :D But the civilians to arm themselves if needed would make this pretty realistic. Just hard to realize the fact that some would deny to do it. Maybe just a randomizer.

Good idea! So there will be unarmed, wimpy ones (like you see em in the movies) and tough ones with guns ;) I am thinking anyway to let civilians attempt to pick up weapons that have been dropped by killed soldiers if the script load will still allow that that is hehe. But only some of them, since naturally there will be also some that are so frightened that they are petrified with horror.

I am a music industry pro myself, thanks for the offer. You probably can`t make it out from the videos, there is tons of custom sounds in this. Couldn`t really be more. @Icebreakr: But roadsigns is a good idea, for example for military installations (that make the vius or so). Too bad, the arma2 engine does not support subterranean buildings (like the Hive). To have something like that would be awesome. I have made an urban objects pack for arma1 that i never released due to insufficient time to complete it, which would give map makers enough objects to make maps with big US-type cities. (Skyscapers, residential buildings,Bus stops, newspaper box, Traffic lights, Streeetsigns and so on) That could be fun to play with zombies.

Impossible unfortunately. i have experimented a lot with this, it is simply not possible to assign outside paths outside of /cadubbing .

SafeZones have been a bit hard to implement, but now they work. If a zombie steps inside the trigger area, his movement is halted, if his current target is inside the trigger. That means all humans inside the trigger are safe. When an alternative target appears from the outside and becomes the nearest target then they wil hunt that outside target. A couple of them are stuck at the fence if that happens, but that might be fixable. Most important it was to create a reliable safe-zone for missions which can be any house or big camp area (just dependent on the trigger placement)

No release date can be set. It is a huge mod. Alpha is currently going on and going well in terms of that the scripts are successfully infecting the whole island. Typically after the whole thing runs reliably, the beta phase starts. It was originally planned to have the multiplayer compatibility assured before the beta, but due to lack of testing environment there will be no multiplayer functionality for the beta phase which is likely to start by the end of the week.

All good points, i think this offers more than endless spawn, of course it could be done with a simple script by any mission maker anyway. It`s no big deal. But like in all infection movie scenarios the objective is containment. It will become problematic though if 20 MP guys are looking for thousands of undead, that will bring the engine to its knees. Then intelligent spawning would be required by the smart mission maker. I have added a reammobox-type suitcase that contains 6 antidote syringes, so mission makers have a way to integrate those into their missions. Technically the syringes are of the weapon-type (item) and therefore can be contained in a reammobox.

This shows the fast paced action of fighting the fast infected undead. High risk of civilians shot or friendly fire with those <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es_qv8NkS9M&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es_qv8NkS9M&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

There would be a way, if custom MLOD models would be used. But since there is no way around using ODOL models, there is no way to change the spot that the AI is targetting. The dogs do have lower hitpoints, you need just 3 torso shots to kill them. The head selection is for some reason disfunctional in the damage routine.

I usually set civilian setFriend [west , 1]; in a mission and leave that up to the mission designer. That way armed civilian policemen don`t engage west/east soldiers, which they will regret anyway when they get their hind ends hunted by the hounds hehe This setfriend thing is the only thing absolutely necessary to be set by the mission maker. Not sure if this is a known bug, but it makes a huge difference concerning the intensity of AI engagement if you set west setFriend [resistance , 0]; or if you choose independent friendly to nobody in the editor, which works much better. Not sure why this happens ?!

It should work fine on ANY island now. I`ll do the other dog too. He is an extreme challenge indeed hehe.

I wasn`t refering to you guys, but there is always people who don`t understand what a beta version is. Well i can create additional animations too in Maya or maybe remotely possible to convert MoCap stuff, the problematic part is to bring that over to Arma2. The skeleton is different than in Arma1 , so rtmScript will not be able to get the rigging correctly into the rtm file. If i find some time, i`ll see if i can modify rtmScript to match the new skeleton.

I guess it is difficult to find the right speed for everyone. Maybe i can add a fast hound and a slow(but slightly faster than humans) one. Is anyone here an expert in multi-player scripting??? There is a couple of issues that are still uncertain to work out in MP. I had the crazy idea to come up with the option for players to actually play as zombies, but i am not sure if it would be a waste of time to implement it, because maybe most people who play this are trigger-happy and would not wanna simply infect other players hehe. A single player beta test version is certainly pretty near. It just needs a couple of more things to prevent complaints of missing textures etc. People are too easily too critical with things that don`t work perfectly

Well alpha alpha alpha is all i can say man. A couple of hours work to tweak textures,animations,scripts and sounds. The thing is that the animation set of the in-game dog is useless the way it is and won`t move the dog at all (That`s why the dog also doesn`t show up in the campaign, or at least not until as far as i played it until i got tired of waiting 10 minutes for a simple unit buy window to appear hehe). So it has to be tweaked heavily, but i think i can tweak the transformation matrix down a bit, so it won`t run that fast. However any dog can outrun a human, so i think it should still be faster than human units.

Okay the hound is now shredding any human to pieces :D He runs damn fast. A very hard opponent if one is shaky with the aiming hehe. Many new sounds added to make this mod maximally atmospheric like people screaming when attacked and custom hit sounds for the undead. <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tbgcy9zuaOc&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tbgcy9zuaOc&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

Yes, i consider making this a global variable dependent action though. For the slow zombies it is more difficult to kill any, because the civilians run faster hehe. And we are still not in the realms of being able to put 1000 zombies on the map without freezing the machine. Only lots of slow zombies make them effective. Mission makers have to intelligently handle respawns for them to be threatening or limit frieindly forces abilities to fight them. For the infected you don`t need that many, speed is their advantage. An additional idea is to have the mission maker define safe zones for each location into a global array, where the civilians will try to flee to for survivor pick-up missions.

The rockers are really faster lol. Well they are not carrying heavy weapons and body armor hehe. Don`t know about you, but it gives me the chills By the way: The dog is easily attributable to the infected faction and is able to hunt and infect humans So i just need to make a texture for it and he is done ;)

Zombie virus antidote production must be much increased (maybe Glaxokline should make it, thats what they are good at :D ) with these fast infected, you gonna need lots of it hehe. It is a complete new experience, you really need to run a lot to escape a bunch of them, except you have superman trigger reflexes. In my tests i have been overrun by dozens of them. And with running i mean as fast as you can, not just walking backwards while shooting them. This dog thing keeps haunting my mind, gotta try something with it.

Would be cool, i have however not successfully been able to move a dog ingame. But maybe that can be tweaked. It`s on the todo list (after hundreds of other things hehe). Will post a video of fast moving infected later, still tweaking the animations.

Ah okay , misunderstood you there. Well, in some cases they do crawl when they reach critical damage. Bringing them to a crawl prematurely would make it too easy. One shot in the leg and you nearly immobilize a zombie would be odd. If it would be more legshots to bring them down,they would have to be counted, which necessitates an additional variable, which in turn increases lag. Besides the damage system can impossibly be a complex script, it needs to be executed right in the Eventhandler or the effect would be seen 3 seconds later thanks to Arma2`s new script spoil routine.

The engine does not support dismemberment of the skeleton unfortunately. I mean there is nothing that could not be done "somehow" like replacing the model with an exact duplicate except the leg and then setvelocity away a leg-model, so it "looks like" the leg has been shot off. I must stay away from fancy stuff here. The weak spot is the collision and that takes away most of the calculation resources. A working domove command and the world would look differently ;) @GiorgyGR: Yeah that was the idea. Luckily this attack of the zombies on camp are a rarity, because odd side-effects can occur here. It is really really hard to get this done right, this whole mod is actually about doing the impossible with this engine.

Hmm, well the (fast) infected units basically run you over at 70% of the time. However if there is too many units on the map the scripts slow down, which does not alter the framerate that much, but their movement is affected. But it is still better than everything that i experimented with before. I can make a preview of that. This is the securing of safe-zones, so that no zombies break through. Very hard job, the engine doesn`t even manage to do that properly. It needs lots of calculations. They do infect humans that stand too close to the gate though. <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4xMSR1Gn-0&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4xMSR1Gn-0&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

Okay, i had the chance to test the human tracking scripts now on Icebreakr`s excellent island addon Panthera to see if this works with custom islands too. With further refinements it now works quite well: Still trying to figure out a way to realize the safezone. Ideally it is a rectangular trigger that the mission maker slams onto his to protect camps/houses. Then the whole thing would become a location if it isn`t already in a location. I have made a test with a camp on green mountain on Chernarus and the zombies do open the gates. This is lame and there must be a way to suppress the gate open animation of the map placed object. EDIT: I have found a way, but it`s nearly impossible to make that generic, the mission maker must take steps to identify the gate object for the script if he wants them to be locked. However if for some reason a player opens the gate the zombies must have the chance to pour in inside and eat away. Interesting scenarios can be if a human enters the safezone but is infected ;)

Hehe i guess this is more a cinematic idea, because there is countless war movies where some dude jumps onto the tank, opens miraculously the hatch and dumps a nade inside (Even Saving Private Ryan).