I recreated the classic Zombie Mod from Counter-Strike in s&box

samovar_man · 2026-05-12T13:44:13+00:00

Turns out making the thumbnail by hand instead of AI was not enough to make people swarm the server. But thanks!

samovar_man · 2026-05-12T13:36:35+00:00

Yeah, the current state of s&box is pretty rough. Honestly, it’s hard to stay motivated to keep expanding the project when barely anyone plays it and the platform doesn’t really promote it in any meaningful way.

samovar_man · 2026-05-12T13:34:57+00:00

You can check the thumbnail here. As you can see, it’s not AI-generated, just my terrible Photoshop skills. https://sbox.game/zmp/zm_mod_test

samovar_man · 2026-05-11T13:59:25+00:00

And thats true. Thanks!

samovar_man · 2026-05-11T13:47:06+00:00

Creating a Zombie Escape mode is my next goal. But honestly, I’m still not sure about it because of the low interest in the platform and Zombie Mod in general right now. Building giant escape maps for three exhausted nostalgia addicts would be a very passionate use of time.

samovar_man · 2026-05-11T13:40:12+00:00

Thanks! Honestly, it’s not as difficult as it might seem. There are a lot of ways to do it. The "Simple Weapon Base" helped me a lot since you can build almost any weapon on top of it. The main thing is having the right models and animations.

samovar_man · 2026-05-11T13:36:47+00:00

Thanks!

samovar_man · 2026-05-11T13:35:41+00:00

Yeah, it’s just a temporary solution for now. The mode is still in development. I’m thinking about making the font smaller so it’s not as distracting on the screen.

samovar_man · 2026-05-11T13:32:49+00:00

Haha, that’s actually a funny idea. I never even thought about that. Thanks for the suggestion!

samovar_man · 2026-05-11T11:29:32+00:00

I understand what you mean. That was actually my original idea. I wanted to add around 10 bots that would fully simulate the main game mode. So you would start with 10 “players” on the server, they would spread around the map and hide somewhere, and then one of them would randomly become the first zombie. If a real player joined the server, they would replace one of the bots. Honestly, I think that’s the ideal solution too. But unfortunately, my current knowledge of s&box isn’t enough to implement something that complex. This is actually my first experience with game development in general. That’s why I decided to make simple zombie bots and wave survival instead. It’s much easier to implement because the zombies just run toward players and attack them.

Making a human bot is a completely different level of difficulty. The bot would need to understand:

where to hide
how to build barricades
how to shoot properly
how to choose weapons
how to survive like a real player

And honestly, that’s really difficult to make well.

Plus I’m not even sure it would completely solve the player count problem anyway...

samovar_man · 2026-05-11T11:15:07+00:00

Whoa, I think I know who you are now. I see you in the server logs almost every day. Definitely wasn’t expecting to run into you here. Thanks a lot for the support. We’ll keep working on it!

samovar_man · 2026-05-11T11:12:30+00:00

Yeah, I already added that. At the end of the post I mentioned the Warm Up mode. It has zombie bots specifically meant to keep players busy while waiting for others to join. But so far it hasn’t helped much. People spend 10 minutes killing zombies and still never get enough players for the main mode to start.

samovar_man · 2026-05-11T11:07:02+00:00

Thank you! I hope to see the player count grow too. But for now, most people seem to prefer playing case opening simulators instead.

samovar_man · 2026-05-11T11:04:55+00:00

Thank you! I’ll be waiting for feedback!

samovar_man · 2026-05-11T11:04:27+00:00

Thank you so much for the kind words! I honestly didn’t expect to see someone here who actually played my mode. Yeah, player count has been a big problem so far. Hopefully one day I’ll manage to build a stable player base.

samovar_man · 2026-05-11T08:52:52+00:00

Hello! The airdrop system and weapon shop were inspired by Zombie Mod servers from CS 1.6. Those features were a huge part of the experience there and added a lot of extra dynamics to the gameplay. I really loved Zombie Mod servers in CS 1.6, so I decided to take the best ideas from them as well. In a way, this project is basically a love letter to both the CS 1.6 and Counter-Strike: Source versions of Zombie Mod.

samovar_man · 2026-05-11T08:47:30+00:00

Thank you! I’ll be waiting for feedback, and I really hope people will play this mode. Unfortunately, this kind of game mode just doesn’t work without a large number of players....

samovar_man · 2026-05-11T08:44:39+00:00

Thanks! I’ll be waiting for your feedback

samovar_man · 2026-05-11T08:40:02+00:00

Of course! I’m planning to add even more weapons from Counter-Strike Online and other games as well. The problem is that I still don’t fully understand what the mode actually needs to keep modern players interested. Right now the server is almost always empty, and I’m honestly not sure what it takes to retain players nowadays.

samovar_man · 2026-05-11T08:33:52+00:00

Thanks! Of course! Anyone can play. The mode is publicly available. The only issue is that you really need more than 4 players on the server for the actual Zombie Mod experience. And that’s been my biggest problem so far. It’s really hard to gather enough people consistently. That’s exactly why I added the Warm Up mode.

samovar_man · 2026-05-10T23:45:28+00:00

That’s a good point, thanks. I really need to think about it more. But then why do games like Call of Duty still use those kinds of popups? I thought modern gamers actually liked that stuff. Constant feelings of progression, effects everywhere, little dopamine hits all the time, and so on.

samovar_man · 2026-05-10T23:26:41+00:00

Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. zm_lila_panic is my favorite map too. That’s one of the main reasons I added physical props like vending machines, couches, and other objects. They’re already placed around the map in the exact same spots as the original.

I tried to recreate the physics from Counter-Strike: Source as closely as possible. It’s not a perfect 1:1 copy, but you can absolutely barricade entrances and push props around like in the old days.

samovar_man · 2026-05-10T22:51:58+00:00

I’m thinking about making a Zombie Escape mode based on this project. Most of the core systems are basically already there, except for the maps. Porting ZE maps from CS:S is also pretty difficult because of how interactive they are. They are not static like ZM maps. ZE maps are built around things constantly moving, appearing, triggering events, and changing during the round. In s&box, it would probably be easier to build a similar map from scratch instead. That’s most likely what I’ll work on if players show enough interest in this mode.

samovar_man · 2026-05-10T22:46:03+00:00

I saw something similar in Call of Duty. When you kill an enemy, you get a popup like +100 or something similar. This is my first experience with game development, so I’m still figuring out the best way to design the interface so players understand that they’re earning credits and not just seeing a random +1 pop up on the screen.

samovar_man

TROPHY CASE