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Devouring ghouls and stuff


Troblin

Cannibal ghouls  

23 members have voted

  1. 1. Would you like to see this as a mod or a sandbox setting a couple of years later?

    • Yes, would be cool.
    • No, the idea is wrong to the core.
    • Spamming too many idiotic polls is distracting and not funny - don't do that.


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This is in general discussion, because it can't be a suggestion, and that is because boss zombies are a confirmed NO. Yet the idea came and want ppl with time to discuss it.

 

Briefly: Left over zombie corpses smell a long range to other zombies who, when not chasing players, devour those corpses. A zombie that scores 5 turns into a badass psycho... I mean ghoul with bonuses to everything and no drop whatsoever.

 

Now comes a detailed spec on presumed source of player pleasure - feel free to skip it.

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So, when a zombie is not chasing a player, it can chase a smell of corpses, which has a 20 tile range. Upon reaching the corpse it initiates feeding, which lasts 1000 time or till distracted. Upon finishing the first meal, zombie gets minor graphic updates - bloodstains all over like from the shower and an internal corpses eaten flag switching from 0 to 1. Now this zomie moves 10% faster, smells copses 22 tiles away, eats next corpse within 800 time and can interrupt feeding of anyone whos corpses eaten flag is below 1, i.e. 0. Eventually he's CE=4, mv+40%, smell range 28 devour time 200 and interrupts any feeding of CE 3 and less - eats his last treat. Then animation - Z falls on knees, hump grows up, tearing existing top clothes, while limbs shrink and disappear while hump grows bigger and turns into a wobbling cocoon. 4k time passes, during which this cocoon can be demolished with just a couple of blows. Then there's a graphic eruption - the ghoul comes out.

 

Appearance: Like a ghoul from witcher 1, only not as tall. Same height as a human, but visibly more heavy and broad in bone.

 

Muvement - unless in rush mode, has the speed of a walking, not sneaking human, suffers only half penalty to speed from walking through slowing obstacles like trees.

 

Combat Attack: Melee attack (swinging arms) with less chance to inflict scratches than Zs but more damage and random knocking of the player - not back but also randomly to the 90degree side. Possible fractures.

 

Combat Defence: Hp of only 2.5-3 zombies, but.. Every time a player would knock out a zombie, the ghoul rolls 10 and on anything but 10 gets knocked back instead of down. Melee critical hits don't instakill, only do 2x normal damage and make it backstep while screeching.

 

Combat Covert side: Has senses one level better than average Z in current world setup. Except for sight, which can't exceed normal during the day and good during night. Upon detecting player, being wounded and just every once in a while in combat emits howls that work just as a 9mm shot noise.

 

Non combat behavior: Wanders randomly during the night. As sun approaches, searches for nearest location either under the roof or among trees (with roof being a priority, if available), which is also being covered from player's view, i.e. 2-3 trees close below the location or any other objects blocking view down and 30 degrees left/right. Upon detecting a player initiates approach behavior.

 

Approach behavior: Goal is to get to an unobstructed line of rush 12 tiles or less to the player and to initiate rush behavior. During the night it will vigorously walk from any distance till in line for rush. During the day it will only walk the approach distance slowly if the player is within same set of shadows as the ghoul, i.e. house or forest, otherwise stay dormant or even try to avoid direct line of sight. When it is either within the rush line or suffers damage - it initiates rush behavior.

 

Rush: Attack begins with move and attack speed greatly amplified, supported by loud screaming. Ghoul has 20 points to expend. 1 goes per tile walked, 3 per single attack on player or obstacle and 5 per being knocked back. Rush interrupts when points are expended, a creature is knocked down or killed, switch to combat behavior.

 

General combat is all about hitting hard, being hard to knock down or kill and screaming a lot. Losing sight of targets or 40% of the time when going below 33% hp there's a chance to initiate fleing behavior.

 

Fleeing behavior - attemt to move away from last known player location +- 30 degrees direction, 30-50 tiles range, then try to find daytime cover regardless of time and initiate 4000 countdown. If uninterrupted - heal completely and randomly either seek cover or return to random point within 20 tiles of previous encounter and seek cover there.

 

Locomotion and portal interaction - noob in windows, master of doors. I.e. can't enter or bash windows, ignores them, but can open doors and masterfully bash any door barricades. Also can climb walls up to 2 high, provided there's anything but windows to climb to. Whatever other full size destructible obstacles get implemented - 3x demolition capability of a simple Z.

 

Death and loot - no loot, only a corpse worth 2 corpse eaten points to any devourer.

 

*******************************************************************************

Okay, The What has been described above, now The Why. Of the many ideas that jumped over my randomly creative brain, this one was written here because imho it might have a useful touch on many ingame processes.

1) Automated cleanup of corpses (hopefully rains will deal with blood eventually)

2) Evident motivation to be mindful of leftover corpses and maybe try to either burn or interrupt feeding before hatching.

3) Side effect of this mechanism would be zombies stalking any locations where corpses haven't been cleaned and even trying to bash into such places without player stealth failures. Another motivation to clean corpses

4) Cheering up the later game routine as this critter can be a fun jump scare during the day and a real WTF hello surprise almost anywhere during the night.

5) Tuning late game difficulty in places where players are active and even smart ambushes - as daytime sneak up routine might lead a ghoul to follow you in woods from someplace and then drop pursuit cuz you crossed some gap and thus left common shadow. Then this sensitive guy would just stand around waiting in a path that you are likely to use again.

6) Another motivation to have firearms, since most melee fun is about knockback and finish, and do it all silently, and this fluffy is hard to knockback, and turns your stealth kill attempt into an opera after you hit something tender of his with something untender of yours.

7) It, of course imho, would give the game more immersive feel of ongoing undead evolution happening anytime the living screw up and allow it to happen.

8) Gives a general danger and boss feeling without actually implementing anything fairy-talish like different tools, limbs etc. Just tougher, faster, stronger, yet needing tricky conditions to appear.

 

That was Troblin's spark of creativity, chears to anyone reading for being a determined SoB, feel free to comment, but remember, it's deep theory and mod/sandbox feature idea even at its theoretic maximum.

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oh my

That's a fantastic concept! Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure this is a little bit antithetical to Zomboid's lore, and would need a ton of work out of TIS for this. I could totally see this in a creepier game like Darkwood or NEO Scavenger, though, or a gnarly mod.

Nicely considered and explained post though! B)

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While I agree there needs to be some reason to clear out dead zombies,  I dont agree that they should attract other zombies.  Traditionally zombies dont feast on other zombies.   If that were the case they'd eat each other, since they are technically dead already.

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. it's either here or mod suggestions.

 

 

Roger, Mr Grey. This mess is part of thinking process about ongoing challenge and lategame with ratinal explanation to the challenge - not just 'more zombies keep coming, cuz they are zombies and there's always more in Utah'

 

And my own ideas, if sticking to the zombie lore, are painfully few:

Aside from already devised degradation of supplies to weather, wear and tear, aided by activity of other 'fellow' survivors, which has already been implemented, all I could think of is general cooling of the area, withering of smell background, leading functionally to increase of zombie smelling capabilities above their starting visual capabilities as time progresses - just because the background smells become less and less distracting.

Honestly, if the developers don't want a late game gamer to die because he became bored, I don't want my character to die just because every untouched house only had 3 nails, 1 pen and smell of a frying pan to uphold proper scavenging difficulty.

But not wanting is not enough - trying to invoke creativity fro proper ideas... and instead of anything useful it gives pretty ideas like this :-/

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I love zombie lore. I grew up on Romero stuff. So I should be against this.

 

But I'm not. I kinda like the part about it toughening up the late game and zombies breaking into houses to get to corpses. Anything to make the world more alive.

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