Over-Run feature

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While dozens of zombie mods are registered every month, very few of them ever see the light of day before fading back into obscurity. The team behind Over-Run hopes to change that trend with a fast paced, zombie thrill ride later this summer.

I recently had a virtual sit-down with Andrew "PartyBoy" Hart, team leader behind the conception of Over-Run, to ask him how his fledgling mod is coming along for fruitation later this summer.

Tell me a bit about yourself and the team.

Well, I am a humble Irishman that doesn?t drink. I live in a little town with very few people that even know what mods are. A friend and I thought up the idea for Over-Run and decided to do it. This being my first mod to lead, it didn't get a very good response. But I kept working on it and now we've made some progress. Some of our people now are love them or hate them kind of guys, but they are all really talented at what they do.

What's your mod all about?

Over-Run is a Half-Life 2 zombie mod. We know the trend of zombie mods is getting old and all, but deep down, everyone loves the thrill of blowing chunks of the undead away. We started work on the mod about 11 months ago, when a friend and I were discussing it and decided to post online about it. Everyone laughed, since it was just another zombie mod, but we kept working on it. The first model we had was a square cube with a spike on top of it. We called it a knife, even though it was only about 23 polygons. Since then, we?ve come very far. I gathered a lot of knowledge on Half-Life 2 and its engine and now we have a bigger team. We are working our butts off to make this thing fun.

The mod itself revolves around survivors of a zombie invasion. While playing, people will discover the reason for the invasion on the maps as they go. With a lot of weapons to choose from and even more zombies after you, players will have to work together to live and complete their objectives.

So the levels will build on one another dynamically, with weapons, items, and storylines carrying over?

Yes, we hope to do this with Objective mode. Think of it as sort of an online single player, or Co-Op mode. We want to display what is happening at the start of a level, explain why the survivors are there, what they have to do, etc. The maps will be exactly the same as the default ones, but with a few additions to suit the story. They will have objectives for players to complete and move on to the next level.

What is the planned story for Over-Run?

To be honest, we haven't thought about the story at all. We only began planning it this month. Since the game is multiplayer, the story won?t really be in-depth, since you can't do as much with a multiplayer storyline as you can with a single player one. But we assure you, we will at least make a half-assed attempt to get a good story. I grew up watching zombies films, so I know how to do it well.

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What kind of levels can we expect to see?

There will be a lot to choose from. At the moment, we have around 11 maps being created. Some of the locations will be rather generic for zombie fans: a subway, a manor, a farmhouse, a bridge. But we are also doing different stuff, like a hotel on a lake, and a map on a tropical island.

The reasons behind each level will be explained in the objective mod, but we have a large selection of maps planned. They may not be the best looking, but it's the game play that counts.

What kind of progress have you made so far?

We are doing pretty well for ourselves. We really only began work on the mod six months ago, but we have come a long ways. We are about to start animating players, coding in the HUD, and we?ll even have something playable by August. That is, if we can get the players animated.

What are some of the special features you are implementing?

Like I stated before, we have a full gibbing system in the works. You can take off the head, arms, legs, of other players and just split them in half along the torso.

We also have vehicles, though not all of them are cars. One of them is a shopping trolley, where one person sits on the inside while others maneuver it, and there is a cycling bike.

Then there is the zombie grabbing system, which players will have to cope with to stay alive.

The flashlight will have to be held, like in Doom 3, though we may let you hold a one-handed weapon at the same time.

And finally, the zombies will be slow moving, none of that fast moving crap. They might be able to climb, but we won?t have them jumping. It would look dumb if the zombies jumped, if you get my drift.

Will the gibbable people influence game play at all? For instance, if you are a zombie and your arm gets blown off, will you now only be able to do certain attacks?

At the moment, we only have it coded for zombies to gib when they die. Our team is talking about how it might work while the zombies are alive, but we haven?t done that yet. We mainly only want gibs to make it funny.

It's cool to blow up a zombie with a rocket launcher. We all loved Postal 2, you know it, and I know it. We loved chopping people up, using anything we can. That's what I want to happen in Over-Run, to be able to chop up zombies and have fun doing it.

One of your features involves a console \ arcade game-esque moment where, if a zombie grabs you, you'll have to hit a rapid button combo to escape. Can other players shoot the zombie in the middle of this and stop him or is this sequence unchangeable?

We haven't really thought about that. If it is possible to code it, we will certainly do it. Otherwise, we obviously can't.

Is the mod solely going to be multiplayer, or will you include a single player component at some point, too?

After we get a fully working multiplayer version out, we want to do a single player side story. Until then, every official map we create will have its own story to it. There will be a new mode, called Objective Mode, which will consist of doing things like escaping an area, defending, collecting supplies, or stopping the zombies. The story will be displayed at the start like in Counter-Strike: Source.

Will different characters have different abilities, stats, skills, or are they just different models for people to play with? You mention them having their own stories...

Each character will have different stats. We are coding in a feature that, depending on how many players are in a given server, will alter how many people can join into each class. For example, we don?t want a load of cops roaming around. So if there are 10 players in the server, you'll only get one or two cops.

It hasn?t been decided yet how many people can play each character class. But, stat-wise, we plan to make each character really different. The police officer, for example, will start with a pistol, a baton, and will have improved accuracy over the other characters. However, they won't be as fast as other people. The class you play will determine how you approach the game.

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Tell us more about the walkie-talkie idea it mentions on your mod page.

Good question. Basically, what happens in the game is, you use a little walkie-talkie rather than just normally using the microphone. When you hold down the left click, it will bring up the different voice commands for you to say. All of these have been recorded already by Baza here on Mod DB. Or, if you?d prefer to just talk normally, you can just hold down the left click button and use your mic.

If you don't like that or don?t want to hear people on voice, though, just don't equip a walkie-talkie!

You also mention a car radio on your mod page that will play in levels if you leave it turned on. Will the car radio be reflecting the zombie invasion, or will it just be classic radio?

The Radio Show will be hosted by Mod Database's own Super Rad, who will be explaining the situation as it occurs. There will be interviews going on with military officials, explaining what is happening and why dead people are walking around. The show will also feature tips on what to do if you encounter the zombies at all. It will have advertisements as well, so it really captures the feel of a radio station during a zombie outbreak.

It will also be a radio show with songs we are making, but we are also going to let people use their own MP3's, so you can listen to your favorite tunes while blasting the zombies back to oblivion. We might even put a call out for people to create their own adverts to be used in the game, if the quality is good enough. Just register on our forums and ask us what we think of your samples!

Why the Half-Life 2 engine?

I like the Half-Life 2 engine because it has a good community around it. Source is a good engine that looks great and runs at a solid rate. Valve has provided a lot of optimization options for modders. My coder, General1337 hates it, since it has all these limits you can't get around without the actual tool kit used by Valve, but I still think it's the best one because of its graphics and community.

Are you creating all new zombie models for the game, or are you setting things within the Half-Life universe and using those preexisting models?

We are making our own models. Each player model you see will have a zombie counterpart. So when a player dies, the player will respawn as the zombie version of that player. Also, each player will have its own unique gibs. If you want to blow your friend's head off, go ahead. When he turns into a zombie, if you want to cut him in half, work away. It should all be good fun.

What weapons can players expect to find? Are you going for a realistic approach, where all the weapons will be practical, or are you going with a fun and loose dynamic?

There are about 60 weapons planned. Many of these are melee, explosive, or flammable in nature. Those aside, we have about 20 guns. The melee weapons will be the most common, all located in natural places where you would expect to find them. You won't find guns and ammo everywhere you walk. A lot of the weapons are improvised, too, like a flamethrower made out of a lighter and deodorant. It's homemade! Plus, we've got chainsaws, pipe bombs, rocket launchers; everything from M16's to snooker cues!

Do you have a release date set?

We want to have this out and playable by the end of the summer. I would expect it to be done around August or September. I know it is a while, but you have to wait to get these sexy features.

What do you think of some of the other up and coming zombie mods out there and what do you feel separates your mod from the rest?

Oh dude, I love zombie mods, I really do. I can?t wait to play No More Room In Hell and D.E.A.D. The way I see it is, and I am not trying to be vain, but ours and these two are the best three zombie mods out there right now. These are the games making the most progress. We really listen to our community, so we hope to cater to the fans more than some developers do!

Last but not least, about how many zombies per map are you going for? Are you planning to just throw in a few scattered groups of them, like Road to Fiddler's Green, or massive crowds of them, like Dead Rising?

I definitely don't want to do it the Road to Fiddler's Green way.

The way I want to make it work is to have some certain areas in maps that the player cannot go, but the zombies will come from. This will be like a hill, a cliff, or the sea. We are going to try to optimize it so we can cope with as many zombies as possible on screen, but it really depends on what the Source engine can handle. Hopefully, we can get it to work well with a lot of them, which would be much more fun.