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Pathing needs to be toned down


GigaCorp

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One of my biggest problems with the current build is the insane zombie pathing.  It use to be zombies were completely stupid and would lose you if you simply turned a corner and they would keep running at the wall.  I understand why they wanted to improve it, but the current pathing basically has every zombie with an exact floorplan of all the buildings in his head and it's totally immersion breaking.

 

I like to play on the Drayton map which has tall buildings, some of the larger buildings are basically two buildings merged together, each with a ground-level staircase and linked by roof access.  I've destroyed one of the two staircases and had zombies who couldn't reach me directly anymore path all the way to other staircase, up 4 stories to the roof (bashing doors all the way) and back down 3 stories to reach me, it's utterly ridiculous.

 

Zombies have no reasoning ability, as such they can only go directly to what they can see/hear.  They have zero capacity to say to themselves "hey I can't get to this guy up in that second story, lets take the long way around and see if we can flank him by going up the other staircase to the roof".  They should go after you if they see you, but if they lose sight of you they should path to where you last were but then have no idea where to go from there, you know like reality.

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There's been no changes to the way zombies pathfind. The only alterations are to zombie numbers, herding, the reintroduction of migration and some spawning.

This is straight up not true.  When I starting playing this game a few builds ago, if zombies was chasing you then you could run behind a house and the zombies would just keep running into the walls and get stuck, now they turn the corner and keep following.  Also, up until a few builds ago zombies would never use stairs and you could easily escape just running up a few flights of stairs and they would all get stuck at the bottom.  Not saying it changed very recently but pathing was changed from what it use to be and it's made zombies way too smart.  I would guess this change is probably the main source of all the complaints about difficultly in recent builds, since it use to be a helluva lot easier to lose zombies because their pathing was so bad.

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I'm not sure it's accurate to say 'its straight up not true', since EnigmaGrey is in a strong position to know what has and has not been done, and there is absolutely no benefit to him to lie about something such as this.  It might be more accurate to say 'something is possibly affecting pathing in an unanticipated way', which would make both EnigmaGrey's declaration that they have not changed pathing AND your declaration that somehow pathing has changed potentially true at the same time. 

 

Being careful about how you say something can go a long way towards not having your concerns simply dismissed as a rant :)

 

Aside from that, however, as a previous poster mentioned whatever changes may have occurred, you can still change zombie behavior with the range of choices provided for server settings that would result in zombies as dumb (or as smart) as you want them to be.  Given that option, there is very little room for complaint since the choice is entirely up to the players.

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Dodging around or through buildings or the obstacles that break line of sight (but do remember zombies can hear just fine) still work the way it's always have. Zombies have been effective stairclimbers for the past four years - there's a reason the most common tactic to deal with them is the total removal of stairs.

Did you perhaps try one of the challenge modes? If so you may want to delete the Zomboid folder.

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I don't mind when zombies use simple pathfinding to follow me around a corner and stuff like that.

 

 

 

 

What I really hate is when they show advanced pathfinding like this.

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Zombies should not be this intelligent.

Yeah, I'm fine with zombies being able to surprise people when they don't expect it, personally.

 

Some of my fondest (earliest) memories of the game are zombies climbing two or three flights of stairs to get me, all because I forgot to shut a door was standing in front of a window.

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There's been no changes to the way zombies pathfind. The only alterations are to zombie numbers, herding, the reintroduction of migration and some spawning.

This is straight up not true.  

 

 

This is straight up true. The pathing code has been close to functionally identical since about 0.1.5d - I wrote that code so I should know. Don't much like the implication here that we or the moderators are lying on this issue. Anything you are noticing different about the pathing is either illusionary, or was an issue that was there before but you never noticed. Repeat: The pathfinding code is pretty much identically the same as when there were bald 2D zombies walking about the alpha map, beyond stuff like optimization and multithreading..

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I've been playing since Build 30 and I never saw them doing good pathfinding. Because I killed them all before they've had the chance, seriously, you could clear an area and never see a zombie again. Since Build 32, their migration now makes sure that you will see zombies constantly, sometimes when you really DON'T want to fight, and now they can finally demonstrate what they've always been able to do.

I've played 0.1.5 for lulz and zombies were even more dangerous there.

Also, lately I've been screwing around spawning zombies and checking out their behaviour, they're not THAT smart. They won't find you if you're out of sight and quiet but if you're running around your safehouse, they'll hear you. They do not actively hunt the player, if they're after you or your doors/windows, you did something to make it so.

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I also think the pathfinding of the zeds stayed the same. You can run through a forest and they will high likely lose you and walk a bit further. What I did notice however is the fact that when multiple zombies are engaging you, that one or two try to "flank" you. Like coming up to your sides and grabbing you.

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the current pathing basically has every zombie with an exact floorplan of all the buildings in his head and it's totally immersion breaking.

 

It would be very resource intensive (both dev time but more importantly CPU time and RAM footprint) for all 100+ zombies you might have in play to each have their personal map of the world constantly cataloged and updated. You basically need to have 100s of maps saved to RAM/disk and have the CPU spend time each cycle to update where each zombie is looking and what it sees.

 

Tell me one other game that has this feature. I am aware of none. Every game I've ever played has had the AI pathfinding had full awareness of the level geometry.

 

Just turn off pathfinding altogether if you don't want it. Amazingly the devs gave you that option, because they're awesome and give us tons of options to play how we want. There is literally nothing to complain about, aside perhaps from some bug on your end.

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I did think that zombies were a bit too smart at first until I understood the hearing mechanic better. Try this: turn a corner, and immediately start sneaking. Even if the Zombie was close behind you chances are he'll lose track of you right then and there, wander a bit in the last direction he thought he saw you, and then go back to mindless shambling. It's going to be even easier when the stealth mechanics are added (I'm optimistic it will be released along with the new animations, we already saw videos of some of the new stealth anims :D ).

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What about having a moodle or something for how noisy your character is being? This way we have a visual representation to how likely zombies are going to hear you. This would allow us to see which activities are the loudest, if there are any differences. This would also let us know how effective 'lightfooted' and 'sneaking' are. Right now I put points into them, but I honestly can't hear any difference while playing. It does seem to work though.

 

Or maybe we could have a sound level bar like you have for your mic volume in Steam.

 

Its not immersion breaking to me to have a system for that. IRL I can differentiate how loud sounds are, but in this game they all seem to be about the same decibel level, even though I don't think they are perceived that way by zombies.

 

What's the loudest; chopping trees, hammering barricades, sawing a log, sprinting, breaking down a door with an axe, breaking a glass window, 'Q' yelling, building a wall or crate, etc. It would be nice to see the differences and plan accordingly.

 

Would also be cool if running into furniture, trash barrels, crates, dropping items on the ground, rummaging in cabinets, etc would make some noise.

 

This would help identify that maybe the zombies lost sight of me, but they are following the loud noises that I am making.

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To me it is. We're able to judge sounds ourselves from experimentation in both reality and in the game. :/

I don't notice much of a difference in game. Yes, I can observe the difference in reaction of the zombies to the noises I am making and correlate their response to different sound levels, thereby learning which is the loudest indirectly. But, to me listening to the sounds in the game, I can't tell much of a difference between chopping a tree, pouring water into a bottle, and breaking down a door on a decibel level.

I have no clue how loud a 'Q' yell is since it plays no sound in game. The only way I can tell is by comparing the zombies reaction to it to their reactions to other sounds.

You don't think this could use some tweaking at some point?

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To me it is. We're able to judge sounds ourselves from experimentation in both reality and in the game. :/

I don't notice much of a difference in game. Yes, I can observe the difference in reaction of the zombies to the noises I am making and correlate their response to different sound levels, thereby learning which is the loudest indirectly. But, to me listening to the sounds in the game, I can't tell much of a difference between chopping a tree, pouring water into a bottle, and breaking down a door on a decibel level.

I have no clue how loud a 'Q' yell is since it plays no sound in game. The only way I can tell is by comparing the zombies reaction to it to their reactions to other sounds.

You don't think this could use some tweaking at some point?

 

I'm sure there could be a way to make sounds in game be as loud to the player as it is to the zombies. measuring decibels is pretty straightforward, surely it can be taught to a game engine. Turning on the sink should certainly come out softer than an axe swing at a tree through my headphones.

 

They could have the decibel value of certain action correlate directly to how far off it will attract zombies. Something like (just throwing numbers here of course, I'm not exactly a sound engineer) anything bellow 50db can't be heard/is ignored, anything between 50 and 100 is heard 1 tile away per decibel above 50 and 100+ pulls in all the zombies in every loaded tile like house alarms and gunshots currently do.

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