Hack 91. Fight Your Way Through Much Squalor

The Hive is an excellent adaptation of the Waterworks map.

The Hive is another mod by MrMurder. After Undeadlong, he wanted to do another large map that would be a complement of the ruined city. He decided to shape Waterworks into the home of the zombie infestation.

He began by adding refined versions of some of the best weapons from Undeadlong (see Figure 12-3). The tweaks include strength balancing and visual changes.

Figure 12-3. The altered Sniper Rifle boasts a powerful punch

The ideas for the level's skins came from HuMpY and Swese of Re-Animators INC. These skins gave the whole level the rotten, infected, and downright contagious look with tendrils of filth crisscrossing the level and covering the floor. Swese skinned the stalagmites and stalactites to look like egg sacks after being inspired by the Alien movies.

The fog texture was injected into an effect meta since the sky in Waterworks wasn't big enough to take Lockout's sky. MrMurder then swapped it into the scenario tag using the Meta Scanner.

The biggest challenge here was the sheer size of the level and its general unpopularity on KAI (http://www.xlink.co.uk). Another hurdle was the relatively small number of different skins available to work with. These factors made the level a challenge to mod.

By leaving in the vehicles (except the Banshee) MrMurder managed to keep the level playable and balanced with the weapons (see Figure 12-4). When playing by the Dawn of the Dead rules, it may start off seeming to be a large level. However, when you're the last human survivor alive, and the map is swarming with undead, it seems to shrink very quickly.

Figure 12-4. The modded Hive Spectre

My favorite feature of this mod is the Screamer grenades. When they explode, they let out the sound of an angry Elite's scream.

Download the Hive mod from http://files.halomods.com/viewtopic.php?t=26342.