Mob of the Dead BO3 Custom

Overview

Mob of the Dead is a Black Ops III remaster of the Black Ops II Zombies map, made by copforthat (Sean) and released for free on the Steam Workshop on November 29, 2024. Its Workshop page presents it as the escape from Alcatraz Prison, with Chazz Palminteri, Joe Pantoliano, Michael Madsen and Ray Liotta, “one of zombies most iconic experiences”, and thanks everyone who tested the beta. It also warns that its screenshots may be outdated.

copforthat tells the story in the video “How I Remastered Mob of the Dead”. The map began in August 2023 as lighting practice, next to another project: first the spawn room, then the cell block and the cafeteria, and by the end of that month the whole prison block. After a break, the whole map was blocked out with simple shapes so that doors and windows could be scripted early, and the gondola was the first feature, because it made play tests faster. Another modder, who was making a version of the map at the same time and had already ported the Blundergat and was working on the Hell’s Retriever, then joined the project. The public beta went live on June 17, 2024, and the map came out after about a year and a half of work.

Workshop credits: copforthat (project lead), tupivere_ (scripting, weapon ports, artwork), dobby (scripting, weapon ports), Xela (weapon ports), Hybs (mapping, Pack-a-Punch camos) and Rayjiun (effects), with robit for the muzzle flashes, GCP for the Brutus script, and Booris and Kingslayer Kyle for assets and zombies taken from Blood of the Dead. What changes from Black Ops II, according to the creator, the change notes and the guides of the remaster:

Enemies

Afterlife

The ghost form of the original is, in copforthat’s words, the backbone of the map. Each player can become a ghost, either on going down or at the Afterlife boxes on the walls, and zap panels to power perk machines, open gates, lower the Warden’s Key and start the gondola. A meter runs down meanwhile: the player must get back to the body, or be revived, before it runs out. The system was ported by dobby, and the release version increased the Afterlife jump height.

Perks

Every machine stays dark until a ghost zaps the panel next to it. Kunjora warns that the remaster has a four-perk limit. No source gives the price of the perks. Stamin-Up, new to this version, opens only to the Magmagat.

Speed Cola

In the warden’s office, next to the fireplace of the Magmagat quest.

Electric Cherry, Juggernog

Upstairs in the cell block for the first, near the bottom of the gondola for the second.

Deadshot Daiquiri, Double Tap Root Beer

In the infirmary for the first, on the way down from the warden’s office into the Citadel tunnels for the second, according to the Steam guide.

Stamin-Up

Behind a boarded door of the infirmary that only the Magmagat can burn.

Afterlife, the perk machines and the hidden Stamin-Up

Wonder weapons

The Blundergat, with its model and animations ported from Black Ops 4, comes out of the Box or for free after hitting five skulls with the Hell’s Retriever. The Acid Gat Kit turns it into the Acidgat, as in Black Ops II, and the remaster adds the Magmagat: the weapon is tempered in the fireplace of the warden’s office, carried hot down to the power room and forged there.

The Magmagat

Kunjora’s advice: shoot it at the floor and let the zombies run into the flames.

The free Blundergat, the Acidgat and the Magmagat step by step

Trivia

• The map was meant to come out on December 5, 2024. About an hour after copforthat announced that date, Treyarch announced Citadelle des Morts for the same day, so the remaster was released a week early so as not to be overshadowed.
• A few weeks after the release, copforthat noticed that a Black Ops II themed loading screen among the Prestige 6 rewards of Black Ops 6 looked strikingly like a picture of this remaster. In April 2025 copforthat said Treyarch had not mentioned it.
• copforthat recalls an earlier attempt to remaster the map, by Shifty Gamer, made a few years after the mod tools came out, as one of the projects that inspired the Call of the Dead remaster.
• Between the two parts of the project, copforthat scripted for Hybs’s survival map of the bridge a system in which the plane of Mob of the Dead drops a random perk every few rounds.
• The plane teleports in the middle of its flight, hidden by the fog. The hardest part of the Cerberus heads, copforthat says, was lining up the animation so that each zombie lands in the mouth of the dog.
• Treyarch went back to Alcatraz at the launch of Black Ops 4 with Blood of the Dead, which, copforthat says, shared only its location with the original map: one reason the community still wanted the original experience remastered.