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Possibility for a "placeholder" zombie script that makes horde head towards player bases?


Kuikka

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Since this thread (Will I Be Attacked http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/12617-will-i-be-attacked/?hl=%20horde) which addressed my main concern - lack of zombies and threat they create - is slightly old I created this topic with a more focused question in my mind.

How difficult it would be to create a script that would spawn random sized groups (say, from random stragglers to...30?) that aim towards player controlled buildings? Idea would be... the longer you stay, the more likely it is that bigger group finds the place.

 

The problem is that it's exciting to survive the very first days, but then it very quickly gets... a bit boring as you have a safe house and no one attacks it. I haven't bothered barricading for god knows how many game versions because I dont need to and it's just sad. While waiting for npcs to mess up the system (in a good way) I would love to see random events which could be recognized by approaching moaning (kinda like first alarm which gives time to prepare). Like in Don't Starve and wolves which attack players "seasonally".

 

There is this game mode where player defend against waves of zombies. I liked the idea of placing challenges-mode in the sandbox world, but I still haven't seen any information if it's still single player -only.

EDIT: and of course, this should have been created to the "suggestions" section, just followed the previous thread and posted to same section.

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Very simple to hellishly complex, depending on what you want to do.

The simplest method is just to create an invisible sound over the player and spawn zombies at the edge of the loaded area. This is more or less how Last Stand works. Take a look at the Lua code for it.

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Well i must agree that lack of zombie attacks at our base is the main thing that is "killing the game" for me.

Iplay from build 23 and all new builds looks the same for me. First im so excited from all new things. We start to getting all basic things to set up safehouse. loot runs, clearing the area, setting up farm and then start barricading the place. But then after few hours (real time) we have all the items we need, the safehouse turns into stronghold and it gets boring.

 

Its hard to lose the game. Constant zed attacks imo would add a lot of replayability. If there would be frequent zeds attacks that force us to defend the place or leave it, after that we have like 2-3 days to repair all stuff, get more items and prepare for another bigger attack, that would be great.

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This has been my top priority wish since I started playing as well. 

 

I believe we are now waiting for a final decission to be made, as any mechanic that feels "scripted" may take the fun out for many people... this is indeed a tricky subject.

 

No matter how the problem is solved in the end, I believe attacks on the player base are a must have, as otherwise there is barely any need to build the bases in the first place. 

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There's also a whole ton of people that'd be offended if zombies were spawned.

Fun.

 

I know, been in some of those discussions before. And that's basically what I was trying to say with "any mechanic that feels "scripted" may take the fun out for many people".

 

Nobody said it was going to be easy :)

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There's also a whole ton of people that'd be offended if zombies were spawned.

Fun.

But most people don't know what's good for them or how games work. I'm pretty sure the same people that'd be against spawning zombies would also be complaining they don't see enough zombies ;o

What I'd love would be a game-mechanic that spawns zombies coming for you if you stay in one place/area for too long (like 3 days maybe?). And the bigger your group is the more zombies would spawn/be attracted by the noise generated by your group/community of survivors.

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What I'd love would be a game-mechanic that spawns zombies coming for you if you stay in one place/area for too long (like 3 days maybe?). And the bigger your group is the more zombies would spawn/be attracted by the noise generated by your group/community of survivors.

 

 

While I see the virtue in this, I think I would dislike the predictability of it. I think it would feel like a video game. I haven't really taken a lot of time to reflect on this, so I'm not confident in my own opinions, but I think I would prefer a steady stream of wandering zombies in no more than twos or threes, but then very sporadic and unpredictable herds of tens of zombies that force the player to either turtle up and hope for the best or run for it and start over somewhere outside the path of destruction. When I say "unpredictable" there I mean you may or may not see one of those events in an in-game year. The possibility of such an apocalyptic event would absolutely influence how you play the game, but the certainty of it would render a lot of the current gameplay moot and pointless, so I think I'd like it to be more akin to a hurricane than a thunderstorm. You know one might come at any time, and probably will if you wait long enough, but there are a hundred other matters that are a lot more pressing.

 

Like I said, though, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it. That's just my gut reaction.

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The frequency, or even chance of occurrence, could be influenced by a number of different factors.

Perhaps the amount of noise you make over time could slowly draw in zeke. If you stay quiet, they start to "forget" about you unless you're consistently banging and crashing around your home.

Maybe they're drawn by the smell of their own rotting corpses; keep your yard relatively clean, or the stench draws more and more in.

Of course, the longer you survive in the apocalypse, the more dangerous it gets. Simply being alive for an extended period increases the chances (but doesn't guarantee) of an outright horde attacking.

Just a few ideas.

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-snep-

 

That's pretty much what I had in mind as well. A lonely player would regularly attract a very little amount of zeds ("twos or threes") in his perimeter, which is something he would have to deal with to prevent their accumulation, the real danger. And the bigger the group, the faster the pace of migration toward your safehouse.

With some rare and unexpected bigger groups that would force the player(s) to change their habits and deal with the situation differently. And some extremely rare huge hordes.

I think it could follow some kind of timeline, just like the world changes after a couple of months with waters & electricy shutdown, the amount of zombies drawn toward your safehouse could increase as time passes.

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IMHO, I would take a road similar to what Evilwuun is suggesting above. 

 

Some kind of invisible "meter" that gets affected by the player actions. If you are playing stealthy, you shouldn't face an attacking horde unless real bad luck. However if you are building a fort, chopping trees, hammering planks... then you should expect to draw in some unwanted attention. More values should get in place, amount of food stored at the base, the player cooking food, smoking, yelling, running... etc

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Nice to see all these ideas concerning this issue :)

If I recall it right, the zombie spawn mechanic takes player buildings into account (meaning, if there are player constructed items in the area game wont respawn zombies). That kind of approach would serve the "lures random amount of zombies to this area" as well, as obviously constructing a base would lure zombies.

But if the "dining bell" is currently done by placing an invisible/silent noice trigger on player, could it be triggered on/off when condition x or y is met...

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I think it could follow some kind of timeline, just like the world changes after a couple of months with waters & electricy shutdown, the amount of zombies drawn toward your safehouse could increase as time passes.

 

 

Some kind of invisible "meter" that gets affected by the player actions.

 

If I understand what you guys are saying, then I think I'm disinclined to agree, because that would make zombie activity monotonous and inevitable. I think I would prefer it be unpredictable. If it obeys simple rules, then it's just another video-game mechanic, and to me, inherently kind of uninteresting. But again, I haven't pondered this for long nights, so I'm not sure.

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@Jeffereyharrell

I actually agree with you; any system that guarantees an attack by zeke would be way too predictable, in the same way that being able to prevent an attack through careful action would be.

I propose a system wherein neither approach CAUSES zeke to behave in a specific way, but rather influences the chances. A group of twelve people sawing, hammering, and shouting to each other might not draw any attention, but it would certainly increase the likelihood.

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Well it doesnt have to be 0/1 for zombie attack. It can have some randomness build in. Like they will come every 4-7 days +/- noise you make. It doesnt have to be like "ok its monday, time for horde attack"

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I'd like to see chance of an event, rather than just a chance of zombies spawning.

 

When NPCs come in I'd like to see some retreating survivor or a barking dog coming your way with a horde chasing them. Or some kind of raider attack with a chance to spawn another zombie event if there's a shoot-out. Stuff like that.

 

I would want this to have a chance to happen near the player no matter where they are in single player. Not sure what mechanics would need to be considered in MP for these "events" to happen.

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Like they will come every 4-7 days +/- noise you make.

 

I would find that too monotonous, personally. Too video-gamey. Too much like those old arcade consoles that had wave after wave of indistinguishable enemies scrolling down the screen for you to shoot.

 

I'd been aware of PZ for a while, but the thing that made me finally pony up and buy it was the change that was rolled out in 30.12, I think it was, that added flocking behavior. Before that, from what I saw in Youtube videos and such, zombies had been more or less Gaussian-distributed, but when they started flocking, they really got interesting to me, personally.

 

On a larger scale, rather than seeing wave after wave of zombies scrolling down the screen to be shot at monotonously, I'd much rather see more of what the developers I think call the "meta-game." Right now there are (seemingly) random gunshots, screams and other sounds that give the zombies a little nudge this way or that to keep them from being too stagnant. I think the game could use more of these kinds of external stimuli, maybe evolving in proportion to time since the apocalypse. Maybe in the first days after there will be screams, gunshots and helicopter sounds like we have now, but a month in those will taper off and we'll hear things like distant explosions of transformers, and a month after that maybe roofs of buildings will cave in occasionally or something. These could all help keep the world alive, keep Zack moving around, and fundamentally keep the player unsafe.

 

If you combine the existing flocking behavior with added meta-game stimuli, then we get CLOSE to what you're looking for already: There will be "mini-hoards" of zombies in the world, probably numbering in the teens or so, and the meta-game will keep them moving around. This will inevitably bring them into contact with your character in some horrible way, testing both his defenses and his resolve.

 

At that point, I think it'd be really neat if the player had a few more meta-game-like options of his own. We can smash windows and then run for it, and that sometimes distracts Zack a little bit if you do it just right. But I'd like to see more of that kind of thing. Loot some fireworks and use them to draw zombies away from your safe house. Find a battery-powered cassette player and make a distraction with it. Set a house fire and attract a LOT of attention that way. (Actually now that I think of it that might be possible in the game now. I should try it.)

 

Anyway, sorry. I'm rambling.

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The problem is that this "meta-game" called npcs isn't exactly the near future stuff. That's why I'm interested to know if there could be a placeholder mechanic for those who would like to see some zombie movement towards their bases. And I'm not forcing the idea on anyone, for some it's the 1 % of action 99 % waiting that is their cup of tea, but I have played zomboid so long that I miss barricading and building a base. But I need a reason for that, not just because I can.

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-snip-

Someone with better technical knowledge would probably explain that better, but what we actually have from the meta-game now (gun shots, screams etc...) can only attract zombies that already exist in the world : zombies in the loaded/streamed part of the world. Everything outside of the streamed world is none existant in the game, and therefore can't be attracted/moved by noises.

When you move, the streamed world "moves" around you and stuffs/characters/zombies spawn as they enter that streamed area.

It's hard to understand how the meta-game works, I don't fully get it either. But I know that right now, zombie migration outside of the streamed world is a no go. So there's a need for some game-mechanics to pretend there is an actual migration-like system that threatens the players once they're settled. Games are only made with "gamey-mechanics", but they need to be done in such a way that feels natural and entertaining, inside the boundaries of what's technically possible. To have a constant flow of migrating zombies you'd need the entire map and all its content to be loaded at all times, that's just not an option for most computers (if for any at all?).

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The problem is that this "meta-game" called npcs aren't exactly the near future stuff. That's why I'm interested to know if there could be a placeholder mechanic for those who would like to see some zombie movement towards their bases. And I'm not forcing the idea on anyone, for some it's the 1 % of action 99 % waiting that is their cup of tea, but I have played zomboid so long that I miss barricading and building a base. But I need a reason for that, not just because I can.

 

That all makes perfect sense to me. When you put it that way, I can't help but see your point.

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I'd like zombies to "evolve" over time, like the events where the water and power go out.

After maybe 1 month, zombies will start seeking the player out. Maybe start off with them roaming towards the base, and by maybe month 2, have them actively sniff the player out wherever he is.

 

If not that, make cooking attract them like a mother f*cker. Same with loud things like hammering.

 

Really don't like the idea of them "spawning in" though. It should feel like the world is crashing down on you, not like the world is breaking the boundaries of physical existence.

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Yep, but like deprad explained without spawning it would be difficult to implement. There are no zombies wandering from the edges of map, the game seems to load zeds into the area you are in. How would it work without spawning new ones I wonder.

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7 days to die does something similiar. The longer you stay in one location, the bigger is the chance of zombie horde spawning a coming after you. It could work like that in project zomboid. Like people said, you coud have invisible meter that will with passing time and actions you do (cooking, building, running). When it fills completely, game will choose the closest group of zombies and send them your way. Or just do it the "lazy" way. Spawn random amount of zombies and sent them after the player.

 

I really miss the zombie hordes we had back in 0.14c. In newer versions, there is little point in baricading your home, because once you kill all the zombies close to you, there is a big chance you wont see another one for a very long time.

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