COOP 2 Island Escape v1.1 - Fight the zombie hordes on Mana Island in scenic Fiji!

Map: Mana Island, Fiji (by Prowler.wolf)

Players: 1-5

Story:

After narrowly escaping Lingor, Tanny and Dixon were recruited by a group of wealthy elite (mostly politicians, financiers, and celebrities) to provide security at their island retreat in Fiji. The elites thought their secluded hideout would be the ideal destination to ride out the zombie apocalypse, but they were wrong. The island was overrun shortly after they arrived, and the elites took to sea to escape, stranding Tanny and Dixon on the beach.

Tanny is an accomplished fixed-wing pilot, and there is an old plane at the airstrip on the west end of the island. Get there and escape.

Description:

This is a cooperative zombie mission akin to Chernarus Apocalypse by Celery. The players must work together to survive with the odds heavily stacked against them.

Features:

Addon-free but convincing zombies

Player characters have unique equipment

Custom healing script with shareable bandages

Zombies may drop bandages and magazines

Pistols are accurate

Selectable friendly fire damage rate

JIP players start close to the group

Character gear, bandages and damage are saved in case a player disconnects

Spectator mode after death

You can continue the game after dying by picking a new character slot

Credits:

Mission: Colosseum (Ian)

Scripts: Celery

Mana Island (Fiji): Prowler.wolf

Apocalypse series concept: Zipper5 and Celery

Noises and screams: Thief II: The Metal Age and freesound.org

Requirements:

ArmA2: Combined Operations (or equivalent)

BAF (recommended, but will work without)

PMC (recommended, but will work without)

Mana Island (Fiji)

Community Base Addons

Installation:

Put the pbo file into your ArmA 2\MPMissions folder.

THIS IS A BETA RELEASE. Please report any problems you encounter!

Changelog:

v1.4 Changelog

- Fixed some vehicles having their default weapon/magazine cargo load

- Change from globalChat to globalRadio for notifications

- Fixed hordes not appearing after you take the keys to the plane

DOWNLOAD:

Download v1.4

Download v1.3 (Armaholic mirror) (buggy release!)

v1.2 is here:

Download v1.2

v1.2

- Added more zombie hordes, but toned their numbers down

- Added briefing hints, etc.

- Dead pilot (who has the keys) will now most likely spawn somewhere on the control tower nearby

- Added a few more weapons (v1.1 was insanely difficult with lack of ammo)

v1.1

- Moved back to older revision zombie scripts due to inexplicable MP lag

- Dead pilot will spawn in four different locations

- Taking the keys to the An-2 will send a huge horde to attack the player

- Three AI helicopters will now fly over for atmosphere's sake

Thanks Colosseum, another very cool mission, i tried it last night (v1.1) and we failed to finish it because of ammo lacking ( but i admit we are not very skilled :) ), i'm happy to see you added some more weapons in the 1.2 version, i hope to try it this weekend

Hey, glad you liked it. I will be releasing v1.2 tonight which will contain a few bug fixes and balancing tweaks. I had a few friends play through it and they gave me some useful feedback. I'll post it here whenever it's done.

Hey mate.

So me and a buddy completed the mission in 28 mins without seeing a single zombie.

Granted we were stealthing it up, but I thought we'd see at least one?

We were pooing the entire time though even without seeing anything.

Any ideas?

That's really odd... I've played through it several times with different people and always encounter zombies no matter what I did. I'm using Celery's scripts so I'm not an expert on how it's executed, but there's a chance that something just didn't fire correctly at mission start.

No amount of stealth that I've (personally) ever been able to pull off has ever led to no zombies. There might have just been a problem with v1.2.

At any rate, v1.3 is here and should hopefully have functioning zombies. Grub, let me know if it works for you. If there are any more problems I'd definitely like to hear about them!

v1.3 Changelog

- Added three more player slots for the rest of Sword Team (all start unarmed)

- Added a dead PMC pilot somewhere with NVGs and an M110/NV Scope. See if you can find him.

- Added a few more weapons scattered around the map (mostly on the north side)

- Zombie horde location and numbers tweaks

- Added more flares

- Added two backpacks that can carry flare guns (ALICE and CZ backpacks)

- Put ammo in some of the rifles by the dead PMC convoy

- Reduced the zombies in the starting area to be more humane (new players got killed before getting 2 min into the game)

- Briefing/hints update

- Fixed the two notifications at the plane not showing a global message (move from titleText to globalRadio)

Download v1.3

Nice mission even if ...

LOL, where is that? I could have sworn I had clearMagazineCargo and clearWeaponCargo scripts in all the vehicles!

Here are a few hotfixes for the mission as v1.4:

v1.4

- Fixed some vehicles having their default weapon/magazine cargo load

- Change from globalChat to globalRadio for notifications

- Fixed hordes not appearing after you take the keys to the plane

Sorry to keep releasing so many versions but I just keep finding problems that need to be fixed. As always I appreciate any and all feedback and suggestions!

Download v1.4

I have tried versions 1.2 and 1.3. In both versions I didn't see a single zombie, exactly the same thing that Grub has already reported. No Idea if it makes a difference but I hosted the mission in a LAN environment.

That's so weird. I've run the game in the editor, from a LAN server, and an Internet server and have never had that problem. I've played it both singleplayer and COOP 2 and there's always zombies.

I have v1.59 of ArmA2 Combined Operations. I haven't yet updated to 1.60 so I don't know if that causes the problem. Other than that I really don't know what to tell you guys. The island versioning is the same as the one in the Armaholic link provided.

If you guys could get back to me on whether or not v1.4 works I'd greatly appreciate it. Just telling me I have a problem with the mission and then disappearing really doesn't help me that much.

Thanks for the quick reply, Colosseum.

Meanwhile I tried your version 1.4. In LAN mode no zombies appeared, same as before. Then I copied the mission from "mpmissions" to "missions" and played it in SP-mode. I noticed two changes:

- When the mission started I was prompted to confirm terrain details (This did not happen when I played it in LAN mode.)

- Suddenly there were zombies (even more than I could handle on my own :)).

I still don't know what I am doing wrong but the mission definetely works as it should.

That is SO weird! I've tried it again and again on my own PC with all the settings I can think of, and it always works.

Single player missions will prompt the player to set their desired terrain detail (a feature present in all of Celery's zombie missions). This appears in SP because it's a parameter set by the mission host in MP games.

Since all my zombie missions use a modified form of Celery's code, I spend most of my bug-hunting time trying to make sure that I follow his mission set-up to the letter. Today I noticed that what looks like a critical piece of script was not present in any of my previous missions. I've added it, and I hope it eliminates the errors.

v1.5

- Fixed a critical piece of script not present in players' init lines

v1.5 Download

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. Let me know if 1.5 fixes everything. It's the only solution I know of at this time.

I am very sorry to report that 1.5 didn't do the trick. But I still think something's wrong at my end. I'll ask a friend to host the mission and see what happens.

I really don't think it's a problem on your end -- I have a feeling my implementation of Celery's zombie scripts is flawed somewhere, but I genuinely cannot figure out what the problem might be.

Let me know if a friend hosting solves the issue, and thanks for your patience.

---------- Post added at 08:59 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:02 PM ----------

I tried to make a playthrough video but Fraps lagged out on me several times. Probably a good thing since I'm normally a pretty good player but knowing I'm being recorded made my performance atrocious. Maybe another time!

I have tried versions 1.2 and 1.3. In both versions I didn't see a single zombie, exactly the same thing that Grub has already reported. No Idea if it makes a difference but I hosted the mission in a LAN environment.

Use @CBA !!!

It seems that it was indeed CBA that was missing. There were now zombies in the mission I LAN hosted, after I added @CBA. I think this should be noted as a necessary addon for the mission. I just had time to test the mission for a few minutes now, but I look forward to playing it more later, it seems like great fun. Thanks for sharing it!

Ah, that explains it! Thanks for pointing that out. I hadn't noticed that it was a requirement. I've updated the OP with the new information.

And thanks guys, I am a newbie mission maker so I appreciate all the help with getting this to work!

Thanks for the information. Now it works as it should!

Let me know how the mission goes. Even as the maker, I can't always beat it!

Hi Colosseum, I have a question. When hosting this mission (LAN), I don't get the usual opportunity to enable or disable AI control of empty slots. It would be nice to have this extra help from the AI, especially when playing the mission alone.

I think that the units have to be marked "playable" in the mission for this to work. Have you done that? Or does anyone know what needs to be done to make it possible for the AI to fill up empty slots in a MP mission?

If the mission could be updated, it would also be playable as a single player mission.

Celery specifically designed his zombies to work only with human players. They are not designed to be used with AI units at all. I've tried a few test missions with AI subs, and they don't always treat zombies as enemies, leading to weird behavior etc. Sometimes I've even had AI teammates open fire on ME after I've killed a few zombies.

The mission is solo-able (albeit rather difficultly), but it can be done.

I am working on an SP mission similar to this one using zombies that should be ready for release fairly soon.

Just started making some missions in the editor. Was just wondering how you got celery's zombies in your own mission? :)

Maybe a stupid question but I have hardly no experience with this stuff.

I just de-pbo'd Celery's missions using the Eliteness PBO extraction tool and reverse engineered the scripts. Most of his stuff is well-commented so it's not too difficult to figure it out.

PM me if you'd like a detailed description of what to do. I'm not sure I feel totally within my rights to discuss how someone else's scripts work. Let's keep this thread focused on the mission. ;)

I just de-pbo'd Celery's missions using the Eliteness PBO extraction tool and reverse engineered the scripts. Most of his stuff is well-commented so it's not too difficult to figure it out.

PM me if you'd like a detailed description of what to do. I'm not sure I feel totally within my rights to discuss how someone else's scripts work. Let's keep this thread focused on the mission. ;)

Might want have a chat with the big C before you go to much further, just out of respect, he and zipper worked pretty hard on all that.

Celery specifically designed his zombies to work only with human players.

Ok, I understand.