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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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Like Enigma said - what I think you seeing is the herding behavior of the AI, not spontaneous zombie creation. It is, I suspect, similar to why hordes appear in the woods. They don't really walk there, they just move from cell to grid to square until they hit critical mass. It is the same thing happening "behind you" but on a smaller scale and shorter distance.

I would suspect as they smooth the herding out, the difference will be the same basic effect with less artificial looking results.

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Well I had no idea if it was a bug or intended behaviour, I was just reporting what I saw :D  Proof was asked for earlier so I was providing screenshots to describe what I saw and I can get consistent results this way and they (appear) to be migrating/spawning without any sounds from the game to move them.  As I said earlier in the thread if someone came out and said this is how its work at the minute I would have been happy :D .  Anyway since you are saying its intended I will stay quiet from now on  

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OK, so I decided to keep fighting the Sadistic AI out in the wilds a while longer and did finally see something which more precisely fits the OP.  I'm really sorry I didn't get a video of this, it would have been able to describe it better.  I'll try after the next horde.  But here's a pic:

 

post-737-0-83042700-1379040499_thumb.jpg

 

 

Sorry the pic probably doesn't even remotely do it justice.  OK, so I'm in the exact same place.  I've just managed to wipe out that third horde.  My kill count at this point is 1,042 - and I don't think that's the old kill count error at work.  I've cleared out the entire area.  I ran away from the shack (from about the point in the pic) to the west, ran back and forth a bit and then returned.

 

To a completely brand new horde as pictured.  I had been out to the east of the shack a moment ago, and didn't see any stragglers left.  These guys all came from nowhere, seemingly.  

 

So I still stick to the fact that this is just the AI behaving in a very artificial, but somewhat intended way - but yeah, I could see where it might seem like hordes appear out of thin air.

 

Update: OK, now there are too many corpses on the ground to consider this save a valid test anymore.  But I am about to test that whole "zombie population equals Mulbraugh population" theory.

 

Update 2: After about 4500 corpses, I'm thinking the census in Kentucky needs better funding.  I can't really test this save anymore, the game is effectively a crawl now.

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I think each cell is pre-rated with a certain zombie level.    If you get the farm very early it can be quiet for a bit but if you go late game,  the next day it will be packed.   At least that's what Ive seen.

 

Some places can remain quiet for longer periods with the right meta-events.   The farm isnt one of them.

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I'm going to be streaming the game and see what I can muster up, besides there being tins of zombies everywhere, which is normal until they fix the low density option, I did notice some odd spawning of a few zombies. I was at the normal wooden fenced in house and had the front barricaded. Zombies found my back entrance I had and kept banging at my door, I went out to clear them and noticed some zombies coming at me from inside my base, from near the house even though there was no way for them to get there without me noticing, ill check my stream to see if I got the video but it isn't exactly evidence of anything horde sized. Will update if I see anything odd later.

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I'm surprised by everyone speaking of intended behavior. If you walk away and then back like regularx does there shouldn't be a packed horde. Maybe it's an artefact of the current system but it's also game breaking behavior and that can't be as intended. An unintended negative side effect counts as a bug where I work!  :P

 

Thanks everyone though, you're putting mighty amounts of experimentation and testing into the subject. I could not have wished for a better reaction to my original post. I wanted to draw attention to the way the zombies spawn at your doorstep seemingly out of nowhere. That certainly worked. No matter what the outcome, it will be a thoroughly researched topic ;) And I'm sure things will get all the better for it! I hope one of you gentlemods will tip the devs so they know about the topic and can peruse it at their leasure.

 

I'm going to stop playing for a bit. I want to take the next step and do the mid game base building/farming but zomboid is just not quite there yet. I realize this is an alpha game, bugs are to be expected and will be fixed eventually. I fully accept that, so I'll be following the development with eagle eyes! The first chance I get I'll be right there in the front with you other survivors! I love this game, it really kicks ass. It's the best game out there at the moment. Devs are truly doing a stellar job (Keep spanking that code guys!). And the community is awesome to boot. So a big thumbs up to all of you!  :wub:

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I guess apart from discussion what is bug and not, and waiting for NPCs to change things the two basic questions are

  • Can the player effectively create a safehouse, utilize farming and carpentry options? Right now I think that's a big no. The only way I find to survive the game long enough to harvest planted crops are to always keep moving and never settle down.
  • Should the player be able to settle down somewhere remote and live in peace for 14 years - I actually think so, but it should be just as hard surviving out there as near the city. I think depression, loneliness should be a recurring problem, and loot run should be a necessity fetching things like medicin, bandages and stuff for entertainment.

I personally love baricadding windows, because it's cool and I feel more secure, but I'm pretty sure it's just like ringing the dinner bell - zombies seem to hear it from within a larger radius that I dare to think of

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I absolutely agree with Aricane.

For me it's one of the main fun factors of the game to be able to build your own base and to harvest crops to survive.

But under the actual conditions it's not possible. You should have at least a few days if not weeks of peace, if you run to the places far away from the city. For the logic requires that those hords of City-Zombies take their time to

1. Find a reason to overrun your place.

2. They need time to walk the distance.

 

I also mentioned the spawning of hordes in exact squares, after only one night at McCoy's. It simply destroys the fun if you just stockpiled a lot of cool stuff and started to barricade and farm, and you can throw your plans away for those amount of Zombies appearing near your place.

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Hello there

 

I just bought Project Zomboid a few days ago and first things first. I absolutely love the potential this game have and even the gameplay it offers just by a alpha version! So big props to the devs.

 

I have been lurking the forums the last couple of days and especially this thread, because I have been experiencing the same, I'm still not sure about the whole horde spawning next to me, but I have seen some hordes seemingly come from nowhere pretty much every playthrou. Not only that but at the current state, even though I make safehouses way to the south/east of town, hordes just seem to home pigeon on my safehouses only after a couple of nights sleep, making it pretty much impossible for me to stay in one location more than a few days time. It happens even pretty early in the game almost from the start of a new survival playthrough.

 

My understanding of it so far seems that there is a pretty sadistic AI director, but it seems a taaaad too much, at least for my liking.

 

I just wanted to let u guys know my experience and seems like other people are suffering a bit from it too, so hopefully it can get recognized.

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Right so:

 

1) Zombie spawning is the next thing we're looking at. 

 

2) This is how the system works. There is a zombie density map over the entire map, high to low zombie population. The first time you load a chunk of the map (10x10) it works out the density of that square and populates it with that many zombies. this can be anywhere from about  10 to about 1/100 (there's only a zombie on every 100 of them) to 0.

 

When you leave the area and the chunk unloads, it creates a virtual zombie object with that # of zombies. Any zombies within a distance will all aggregate into the same virtual zombie, but this distance is quite small.

 

When you reapproach, it turns virtual zombies back into real zombies (of that #)

 

The 'tileyness' is because we are placing zombies within the context of a single chunk, so a high density will eventually fill out that 10x10 chunk.

 

The only time a zombie is ever 'spawned' is when a meta event (inc alarms) occur. All zombies in the vicinity (streamed in area) are lured to the sound, but also a horde is created as a virtual zombie at the nearest high density zombie grid square, if in range, such as the west of town, and slowly moves toward the source of the sound. If at any point the player comes across the virtual zombie (aka the chunk streams into memory, it will turn into X zombies all walking toward their target)

 

This is how it works, though I've disabled the meta horde stuff for now since it's the only possible cause of the issues people are experiencing, and I think it's more a case of virtual zombies moving too fast or something.

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Thank you for your input  lemmy, that sort of describes what I'm seeing. However, I'm seeing numbers of zombies aggregate together in those square tiles where the day before there were none in the entire screen around that tile and certainly not that many in the few screens around that area. So quite naively I ask if your aggregation might in reality pull zombies from a much larger block than you expect? Or perhaps there's a virtualize/unvirtualize bug that somehow amplifies the zombie count?

 

I ask because I see the number of zombies in the area, (certainly in the screen), increase from a handfull to over a hundred. Migration could potentially explain that. But It happened for me on three consecutive plays when I did not make much noise myself and I was attentive to audible events, like the choppers and gunshots.

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There is a zombie density map over the entire map, high to low zombie population. The first time you load a chunk of the map (10x10) it works out the density of that square and populates it with that many zombies. this can be anywhere from about  10 to about 1/100 (there's only a zombie on every 100 of them) to 0.

 

Hello, Lemmy. I have some questions:

 

1. What happens when I wipe out all the zombies in the 10x10 chunk or lure them all out?

 

Also, I have some suggestions:

 

1. Instead of merging zombies in a "virtual zombie" why don't just store their coordinates in a file? Here is a sketch of my idea:

 

ZOBmhEM.png

 

2. When spawning zombies, please, check if the particular location is accessible for them, so zombies would not get spawned in the area which was cleared and fenced off by a player.

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Basically your suggestion just uses more resources than the current implementation, which makes everything slower.

It's pretty much exactly what I figured, then. Thanks for the insight Lemmy.

 

It's not just uses more resources, it should prevent large square hordes from clogging all the space around the player (I just deleted my last save because there were 8 square hordes blocking all the passages around my warehouse. so tha save became unplayable). I don't think that storing 1000 pair of coordinates requires that much resources. Come on, my handheld GPS with a very slow CPU and very limited amount of RAM stores thousands POIs with coordinates and additional info, and it performs search (regarding my location) and shows everything on the map!

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The slowdown would come when loading chunks as the game would have to populate each zombie one at a time in an exact location.

People already struggle with chunks loading fast enough, I highly doubt the game could keep up with 100x the normal zombie processes when loading a chunk.

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From what I have seen I think the previous post was correct in that the zombie horde group up when I reload into a cell. I have seen hordes like pictured, but I have also noticed very few stragglers in what I think is the cell after the square shaped horde appeared. My 2 cents.

 

Same thing here. Cleared the whole road just to have it blocked by a huge square horde when I turned back and walked some small distance.

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