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Zombie spawning might need some work


willow512

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But i'm still very maddened by how zombies are currently working. I played in sandbox mode with low zombie density. After 3 days, there are about 500+ zombies within an ingame 1/4 mile radius of my base and nearby storage house. This lead to my death because this new zombie walking seems a little broken atm. Seems like they just walk at your position instead of randomly and the very few map sounds don't really lead them away anymore. I mean I miss the big group of a hoard all grouped together not really moving since no food was to be found, where you could at least use strategy and sound to lead them out of your way. Currently these 500+ zombies are spread out and there is just no possible way to kill them all, lead them away from my base, or anything else. Very maddening. I appreciate all the work you do but can you explain why I have 500+ zombies in such a cluster fook in a low zombie density setting? Would very much like to know if this is a bug in settings, AI, pathfinding, etc. 

I kinda agree with this, it seems that wherever you are zombies just begin to eventually spawn. I could be wrong but the meta game events seem spread around the player, which causes any meta game event to draw zombies into your area. 

 

If you go to the western farm, and stay there minding your own business, farming crops and building walls, then the odds of a large horde arriving should be minimal. It could have course happen. But it should be rare. Right now it seems that wherever you settle, a big horde will arrive on your doorstep in a few days.

 

The spawning is also a little off. I even had a zombie spawn inside my fence once, I was gardning with my back turned to a blind fence that surrounded a very small and uncluttered area, then suddenly a zombie appeared behind me. Even Ezio Auditore could not have repeated that feat. Great way to keep me on my toes. But not as realistic as I'd hope. If a zombie is inside my walls, I expect the barrier to be broken.

Ok so I posted this to the forum, went to bed in the northern farm, not a zombie in sight. The next morning I wake up, save, reload, brush my teeth, look out over my new porch and shat my pants.

 

I don't understand why they're there or have any idea on how to get rid of them. I've heard no gunshots or other meta game events, and even if I had, I'd figure I'd be out of earshot. Maybe 2 or three would show up but that would be it. The area was deserted, I walked around to be sure.

 

I arrived at the farm two days before the screenshot. I wanted to build a fortress here and go for a long term self sufficiency game staying away from the town and just laying low, trying to finally get some seeds to grow. The day before I chopped some wood and broke the door to the hen house because there was one of those deadheads hiding in there. I also planted some seeds and watered them.

 

I'm posting this in bugs, to hopefully raise this functionality to bug status, because I very much doubt that just planting 100 zombies in formation in the players backyard is intended. I'm sure there are better ways of doing it. If it were the first time I'd see this I'd consider it a fluke, but it isn't, this happens a lot (See quoted post). And to be honest, it ruined this game for me. I could roll with the punches and go someplace else. But I keep doing that, the game before this one the same thing happened, I wanted to try my hands at base building. But I'm pretty sure that if I go someplace else and start building in just a few days I'll find a horde parked outside in a similar fashion.

 

 

visitors.jpg

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I haven't seen them spawn directly behind my back, once was when I went to sleep, the other two times I had been on a looting run. But from the block formations it's clear that they've been placed by a spawning/streaming mechanism and not by the natural zombie migration behavior.

 

This is perfectly possible/plausible/likely. That's not what drNov is saying, though.

 

And to be clear, I'm not calling him a liar and I don't appreciate being painting as some mean bully who is just telling him off and brushing aside his concerns; I'm not. The development team needs hard evidence to be able to find where the problem starts and to be able to fix things and as of recently he's the only person who is reporting instant zombies spawning directly in front of him (at least, the only person I've seen so far).

 

I'm playing multiple versions right now because I'm not always necessarily on the public test build, but I have not seen the problem that he reports. As I already said before, I can see how the streaming may be placing zombies together when you re-stream to a location you've been to before. That's not the same situation he's reporting, though, and they shouldn't be lumped together.

 

And finally, I'd just like to point out that I'm not staff with TIS- I'm just a volunteer moderator. I don't control what gets fixed or even what gets looked at. I'm solely in this thread to find the facts as best as possible and help ease people's worries through my own experience with the game and a small amount of inside knowledge.

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and I don't appreciate him painting me as some mean bully who is just telling him off

 

...reporting instant zombies spawning directly in front of him (at least, the only person I've seen so far).

 

1. I am not painting anyone as a bully.

2. Not in front of me, but rather behind me. When I turn back and walk a couple of seconds -- a fresh square formation of zombies is awaiting.

 

What kind of evidence would you accept?

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When things go out of the screen (basically, the size of the zoomed out screen) they stop 'existing' in the game and are 'streamed,' which means they become variables controlled by the computer rather than actual entities being simulated by the game. This is why the things Willow has been saying makes sense- as you move back to places, the computer unstreams them, meaning it makes them back into actual entities. If it's putting them back grouped up rather than spread out like they should be, that's where some of the bugs could lie. But that's only possible if the space they're occupying goes off of the edge of the screen for some period of time.

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Yes, it seems like there was streaming, but I am convinced those zombies did not exist in that area when I was observing it. I left the area and returned in seconds -- there was a lot more zombies than before:

 

7lGkxKo.jpg

 

When I went to the parking space, the small group near the warehouse doors was the only zombie group there. The large square formation appeared when I came back ftom the parking space after killing 3 zombies.

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It's possible they were on the other side of the building perhaps? The streaming may load in large areas at a time (not entirely sure) so perhaps they were pulled in from a ways off. This could explain what people are seeing and seems plausible with how it works- would have to check with Lemmy, really, to be sure.

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Okay I hope this helps.  You can see the zombies are in the field.  I just ran through the field (where the zombies are now) and it was empty.  I stopped, turned around and they were stood there.  My path took me through were they are stood.  No zombies were chasing me and no sounds or anything happened.

 

*edit - I just observed the zombies and they are trying to disperse from the pack, 1 or two at a time moving out of the group a little bit at a time

 

ahAc5ay.jpg?1

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I moved backward a bit so I could see the full group.  I think its plausible that it happened when that area was off screen.  Sorry in my excitement to post some evidence I wasn't paying the attention that I should have :D

 

 

edit -  More testing of moving so I am out of shot of the pack then back into view, the pack edges closer (or so it seems) and reforms into a squarish group, then a few try to break off.  Then I move so I cant see them and the same happens again

 

edit 2

 

A picture to show how the pack move closer to me when I did the above

 

19qNZEO.jpg?1

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Please note that I know the square root of bugger all about this aspect of the game BUT:

I wonder if those zombie formation spawns are more obvious and square-clustered because Chris has increased the visibility of the direction you're looking in? And he hasn't tweaked the zed meta game to suit yet?

The player's sight distance (and zoom etc) is deffo something he's been working on.

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Let me clarify something though, the problem for me isn't so much that these zombies are spawning behind our backs. It's that they're spawning in the blocks the way they do at all. If we walk off screen and then back and still find them in front of our safehouse in the blocks we've seen in those screenshots then that's still a problem. So if we find that these spawns happen offscreen that should not close the issue. What you say is logical Rath, that somehow all the zombies in the area are streamed into a tiny dense square pack.. It's what I've been reporting seeing. And it seems to me that THAT is the bug. 

 

on the streaming hypothesis. We should study if ALL zombies are clustered in the squares. If some remain clearly outside the squares then clearly not all the zombies are clustered and it's not a streaming bug. Maybe it's a migration bug? Zombies coming in from other squares are spawned in the pack, the already present zombies stay where they are? Maybe making any kind of noise even minor fighting will trigger migrations and thus spawn those huge clusters.

 

It's conjecture but it would fit my observations. 

 

Hmm another bit of conjecture... What if the spawn code is designed to place the zombies randomly across the whole metagame block but measures the locations in tiles yet spawns them in x-y coordinates? The pathfinding was adjusted for npcs only a few iterations ago. If zombies coords are meant to be tiles but result in x-y units then they'd all end up inside a packed square cluster instead of spread across the tile.

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OK, so I did some testing with this using the Alien Orphan profession from Xmod.  Basically I'm completely invulnerable and never get tired or hungry.  It's great for running around the map and means I can just hit fast forward whenever I want.

 

There is something to the OP, I think, although I wouldn't characterize it in some of the same ways and I'm not sure it qualifies as a bug while the AI is still being tweaked.

 

 

I started about here: 

 

http://pzmap.crash-override.net/#0.40624482541430995,0.4727800407131391,21.003622161554848

 

For the first couple of days I wandered north.  I noticed only small groups of zoms here and there.  No hordes.

 

I swung by the Sunstar, waited the night, didn't notice anything odd and then hoofed it to about here:

 

http://pzmap.crash-override.net/#0.47923857862554364,0.42256753767941185,42.007244323109695

 

I waited a couple of nights, a couple of AI events occured (helicopter, etc).  I wandered around and found a horde to the north of me, IIRC, here:

 

http://pzmap.crash-override.net/#0.4856213829668578,0.41141869290813005,84.01448864621939

 

So I ran towards the northerly warehouse.  In between, found another horde.  Ran past, got into the warehouse, waited a few nights.  Left warehouse, horde was waiting outside.  Not too surprising.

 

So far, I would call this pretty normal gameplay tbh.   I head out to the Logging Area in the West, scout out safe areas and wait them out a couple nights.  Roaming around I can't find any zombies.  So at this point I'm at about 20 days and I'm here:

 

http://pzmap.crash-override.net/#0.40051952076723224,0.38962246023019337,20.258123226808305

 

Now here's where it gets interesting. I decide to just go completely remote and run here:

 

http://pzmap.crash-override.net/#0.18548578506258623,0.39002958703917223,13.56880895999999

 

I'm far away from the city and I'm surrounded by trees.  I hit fast forward and several days go by.  Then the first horde hits me - and it's a huge one.  I finish it off, hit fast forward and about seven days later ... the second horde hits me, and it's equally huge.  It's actually large enough that even being invulnerable it is hard to reload and shoot.  I finish them off to find the third huge horde heading my way.  It's not one month and 3 days into the game and my time out in the boondocks started about day 21 (I think).  So in 10 - 15 days three very large hordes have made their way from the city and managed to find me.

 

I never once say a horde "teleport" in front of me, though.  However, I do think the Sadistic AI is finding groups by cell to send towards the player, possibly with each "herding" event.  So if you are in the city and there is a bunch of zombies in close proximity, it's possibly that they're being moved to a nearby cell and where you thought there were 3 now there are 30.  Likewise, if you are far away from the city then it is possible groups of zombies are being slowly brought together and headed your direction.

 

I think some of this is expected behavior.  I don't think the game design here is to go live on a farm for four months.  Eventually the zombie horde will find you.  I also don't think you should assume that because there wasn't a horde when you left your safehouse that there won't be one when you get back.

 

Is the AI being a bit zealous?  Possibly, probably, kinda seems like it when I'm out alone in the woods not making a sound and every zombie in the greater Kentucky area decides to come take a bite out of me in about a week.  But I think the intent is there, it is just (as has been said repeatedly) going to take a lot of tweaking and updating.

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Well the whole zombies finding you bit is a balance issue so that isn't too much of a concern for me and not what I am reporting.  What I have a problem is when I run across an open field with no zombies, no sounds etc, turn around and suddenly see a massive spawn of them, then move out of sight of them, move back and the spawn has reformed and edged closer.  That is the potential bug I am reporting :D

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