Zombie spawning might need some work

[willow512]

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.

 

 

[Luke159]

Zombies currently move to the beat of sound events on the world map -- a basic approximation of the meta-game that likely isn't meant to hone in on the player quite as precisely as it seems to.

The intention of the Diabolical Satanic Bastard of a AI Director is to force the player to get out of his shell regularly enough that the zombies remain a threat to their survival -- and yes, it can certainly be handled in a better fashion than current.

The game may be meant to be made around realism, but it's also supposed to be about surviving (and dying) in the zombie apocalypse -- it looses this if all you need to do is camp out for a few months without any need to leave your new-found hovel. Of course, this is partial hyperbole on my part, as I'm leaving out the necessity of locating and supplying such a place.

 

Well these sound events shouldn't be based on where the player is, they should be random as to where they happen (a gun shot goes off miles away from you and the zombies that heard it all head that way) a helicopter cycles over the police station (an example) but your no where near the police station. At the moment everything has been coded to kill the player, there is surviving and then trying to survive and as it is now its more like trying to survive. The player shouldn't be punished for setting up a base, he shouldn't be the focus of attention to bring the zombies to him. The player can do that on his/her own. Example of this is cooking, you cook something in the oven any zombies near (and they would need to be very close) would come to investigate the strange smell (but not every single zombie on the map). Might be 2 could be 8, but those who are close enough would pay you a visit.

 

 

And as Lemmy has said, this is not only a work in progress but also something that they're looking to tinker with soon. So complaints about how the system work are somewhat redundant for the time being.

 

 

Not complaints, these are what people want addressed. If the game was released right now then you would start to see complaints. People want the zombie game where they can do what they want and not feel punished for doing something they decided to do by having herds of zombies appear for no reason other than the player has been staying at the same house for a few days or a week. Zombies don't exists we all know this and because of that we can make them as intelligent or dumb as we want, we could make it so zombies walk on all fours. Just because there is no rule stating a zombie must behave like this doesn't mean we should change the principle way we see a zombie.

 

 

@ All those working on this game.

What we want is a game where zombie's behave the way we see in your normal zombie move, and this from what I can see is fine. Ok zombies can climb through windows in this game, this however I see as been acceptable to the fact. What I don't agree with is seeing a player setup a base and then been over run a day or 2 later. We just want to have zombies do and behave as we expect them to, we could go into sandbox and play the game the way we want, that's not a big deal But if survival mode has things in it that sandbox doesn't the its obvious that people will want to play that mode and then start to complain.

 

Perfect example to this is the Formula 1 2012 game by code masters, a lot of the people who want a true simulator won't touch any F1 game made by this company because their focus is on trying to make a game the fits all. Setups that are pre made so the player doesn't need to learn how to set the car up, the handling so the player can race around the track and not be punished to harshly for getting on the power a little to early or not punishing the player for running on the curbs all the time damaging their tyres. In stead the curbs are just an extension to the track and you are free to run over those curbs all the time with no increase in tyre degradation. So the sim like players play RFactor for a more true to life feel.

 

Another example is Rome total war, it was not perfect but it was balanced enough to be seen as good and because of how popular Rome TW was, the developers released Rome 2 TW and have now had many complaints because the units are not balanced enough. Many great games fall at the waste, this is because people are more willing to voice their opinions be it on a forum via a video on you tube, etc. Some people here might never have worked on a sandbox game before, but many could have worked on mods for games. These are the people that transform a poor game into a game that everyone wanted (again look at Rome 1 and 2 or many other games like Pirates Of The Caribbean aka Sea Dogs 2).

 

All i'm trying to say is I understand that as a developer its frustrating seeing people making demands or picking faults with things that have had many hours, weeks or months of work put into them. But in todays world this will happen and many people who are not happy will not only focus their attention on what annoys them but will start to look for other reasons to pick apart features within the game.

[Rathlord]

Well these sound events shouldn't be based on where the player is, they should be random as to where they happen (a gun shot goes off miles away from you and the zombies that heard it all head that way) a helicopter cycles over the police station (an example) but your no where near the police station. At the moment everything has been coded to kill the player, there is surviving and then trying to survive and as it is now its more like trying to survive. The player shouldn't be punished for setting up a base, he shouldn't be the focus of attention to bring the zombies to him. The player can do that on his/her own. Example of this is cooking, you cook something in the oven any zombies near (and they would need to be very close) would come to investigate the strange smell (but not every single zombie on the map). Might be 2 could be 8, but those who are close enough would pay you a visit.

 

You're still missing the point tremendously. Everything you mention is already planned for the game. Saying it over again doesn't help it come faster and doesn't change the fact that Lemmy already knows it should be that way. If you go back and read the meta-game blog posts you can see this. The only thing that repeatedly posting stuff like this does is put more pressure on Lemmy to re-do a system that's a placeholder which takes time away from actual development and makes it even longer until the real system can be put into place.

 

tl;dr the whole reason Lemmy is working on hordes next is because people are complaining about it- the placeholder- meaning we're going to see wasted dev time on working on something that's not even finished yet, and must be scrapped before the end. The fact that people are posting about a planned feature over and over shows a deep misunderstanding of the nature of an alpha game.

[Shivster]

Something in the way zombies spawn is different this happened in .15 and has gotten worse in every update since..In .10 I rarely seen hordes just pop on me for no reason. What i am saying it is not the placeholder system it has changed(i doubt it was intentional) in every build other then the last 3 i have played zombies behaved differently. For example in .10 i would stay at the farm have 4 meta events happen over a week and never see a horde spawn at the farm. Now even if its totally quite and all i do is stay in my room and not move in 1-2 days there is a horde outside. I am guessing something in the files got changed to fix the farming port bug that has changed the way zombies outside of players sight work. Also you are never able to drag zombies away from where they are. I shout run around grab the horde shouting the whole time get them 3 screens away go back and there is another horde in the same spot go back look at where i just dropped the last horde its still there.

 

The news Lemmy gave has put my fears to rest. I am sure he will find the issue and fix it. I just wanted to make what i think is happening clear because it seem to be different than what most people are saying. I liked the old placeholder system. Whats happening now is something completely different.

 

But i will be quite now and wait for a fix.

[kubsky]

I had a same feeling about spawning Z hordes. It's only some % true what you guys say. True Zombie spawn occur in the first week of the game. They spawn next to your base no metter what and where( if they'r not there already).

 

http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/2936/07o9.jpg thats my save house. 

 

http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/2756/b3aa.jpg shotgun action to draw them away. Success !

 

http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/4161/pnnk.jpg random event took the place just west of my save house.  Something is blocking them from leaving this part of the map. I was thinking there is a house or something but no, Z refuse to leave.

 

http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/6573/sg33.jpg next day morning. 

 

http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/226/ohw7.jpg next day morning.

 

http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/4975/2iyd.jpg

Things are getting scary here zombies please leave. Please ? 

So I decided to move just a little back south to my personal favorite safe house. And zombies are: Lets go south for no reasonable reason and pay a visit to new neighbor.

 

http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/589/52ph.jpg Shotgun showdown part 2! Not welcome Zombies.

 

http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/4594/z2sj.jpg same direction left them near the church. What happened here is I 'created' additional zombie horde. 

 

http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/5827/a32i.jpg result of my actions.

 

http://img547.imageshack.us/img547/1940/hrh7.jpg next day in the middle of the night. BAM! Oh, Hello! 

 

http://img547.imageshack.us/img547/9248/dtcx.jpg Bam! magnetic house! I also had a horde south west of this safe house that was already there. I decided to move north and guess what no spawning zombies hordes. its day 20 now Antonio is still alive and no mass Z around. 

 

My guess is that no mether where you choose to go in first week, game knows it already so it throws Z at you and makes you travel somewhere else. Maybe I was just lucky with my new location.

 

http://imageshack.us/a/img542/1904/r7v4.jpg

[Aricane]

@kubsky

 

well, starting to fire shotguns does attract those near by. The fact that they spawn in a rectangle seems to be a bug as discussed in this thread.

 

But you're near town and firing a shotgun - well that's just a little like sending an invite.

[EnigmaGrey]

@kubsky

 

well, starting to fire shotguns does attract those near by. The fact that they spawn in a rectangle seems to be a bug as discussed in this thread.

 

But you're near town and firing a shotgun - well that's just a little like sending an invite.

Yet surviving 20 days . . .

Clearly, we need more zombies, not less!

Lemmmmmmyyyyy!

[kubsky]

Yes, pretty long time but in most games I don't make even a week if I'm stubborn and camp the same location. I  assume that surviveing extra 10 days ++++ whould be possible up north. I had (for the first time) VERy strong possition to defend.

 

http://imageshack.us/a/img19/5364/knbq.jpg But I took all ammo I had (207 Shotgun Shells) got eaten with 150 shellfs left ( Now thats a loot xD

[SocialReform]

I'm very satisfied with my purchase for $7.99. Project Zomboid is an absolutely deep experience that envelopes you with every detail. I only have one gripe with my experience. Eventually the horde no longer feels natural in the late game. When I first played I was afraid to round the next corner. In the late game, rounding that corner becomes predictable and a great chore. The natural zombie placements are subtracted by an all knowing being that sucks way at your patience. I slowly become frustrated with the regenerating and very coordinated enemy which predicts my every move. slowly it starts to devour my computers understanding of reality. Reality in game? begins to feel like its fabricated. Why should I preserve my life on my next character if I know I the outcome. The replayability of this game is so vast, but this variable burdens this element. I am no developer, but I understand the great stress in creating a world. I love this game and am proud of the developers for creating an idea that doesn't feel regurgitated. Best of luck.

[SocialReform]

I guess I do need a break from this escape and to return to the prescribed reality that is called "life". I can not wait for the future and I hope the creators enjoy making their dreams come true. Sorry for the redundant observation.

[RoboMat]

Sorry for the redundant observation.

 

No harm done.

 

It is just a matter of time before the spawn rates / horde system will be changed - so check back regularly

[SocialReform]

I'm very excited to return to this world so, I will frequent this site for information. thanks for the effort gentleman.

... and ladies if this is the case...

[willow512]

Yes, pretty long time but in most games I don't make even a week if I'm stubborn and camp the same location. I  assume that surviveing extra 10 days ++++ whould be possible up north. I had (for the first time) VERy strong possition to defend.

 

http://imageshack.us/a/img19/5364/knbq.jpg But I took all ammo I had (207 Shotgun Shells) got eaten with 150 shellfs left ( Now thats a loot xD

It all depends on your play style. Current game I made the conscious choice to not make a safe house because they're pretty much impossible right now. I have a 24 day old character that's bored most of the time because I just keep strolling from place to place, wherever the zombies go, I go someplace else. They'll follow eventually but that doesn't matter because I have no safe house or anything that keeps me tied to one place. And with a stack of over 100 berries, various caches of chocolate bars and bags of potato chips stored around the city combined with a few rainbarrels I built randomly scattered across the city I could easily go on for months. 

 

In Zomboid's current state, surviving the zombie apocalypse is much easier without a safe house... Easier... But not as much fun... I'm curious to see what kind of fix lemmy comes up with.

 

People die because they make last stands. I think if you play to always avoid zombies and let them have whatever house or area they want to have you can survive the game almost indefinately. 

[RoboMat]

It all depends on your play style. Current game I made the conscious choice to not make a safe house because they're pretty much impossible right now. I have a 24 day old character that's bored most of the time because I just keep strolling from place to place, wherever the zombies go, I go someplace else. They'll follow eventually but that doesn't matter because I have no safe house or anything that keeps me tied to one place. And with a stack of over 100 berries, various caches of chocolate bars and bags of potato chips stored around the city combined with a few rainbarrels I built randomly scattered across the city I could easily go on for months. 

 

In Zomboid's current state, surviving the zombie apocalypse is much easier without a safe house... Easier... But not as much fun... I'm curious to see what kind of fix lemmy comes up with.

 

People die because they make last stands. I think if you play to always avoid zombies and let them have whatever house or area they want to have you can survive the game almost indefinately. 

 

Do you know why the farm in TWD was overrun by the end of Season 2? Because the directors knew that no one wants to see another season of "Harvest Moon with Zombies".

 

It is the same reason why TIS implemented the sadistic AI Director. At the moment it might not be the most exciting thing to play with, but it will get a lot more features in the future. For example a family of NPCs knocking on your door...

 

I kind of enjoy that I can't keep my safehouse for ages. THAT would be boring to me.

[Luke159]

In my new game (which i'm now at game day 8) i set it up (sandbox) to be few zombies, poor sight, hearing and smell, strength set to weak and other settings lowered for the zombies while i learn to play the game (found it boring playing without zombies). Anyway i started at this small house and quickly went out looting what i would needed and taking any sheets i could find for setting up a safe house to start storing all the goods at (my aim was for every 9 houses i looted the 10th would be a basic safe house). All the houses i wouldn't use as safe houses i would leave the doors open so i would no they are not the safe houses and that i had already looted them. Anyway game day 1 and as soon as i leave the house i find a small pack of zombies spread out a little, i start to kill them looting the houses around as i go. Finally after killing around 12 or so zombies and looting 9 houses i start to scout out the next house to be made into a safe house. No zombies which sounded perfect, so i start looting the houses around killing any zombies i see. After 2 game day's i have looted 9 houses and so its time to look for another suitable safe house, or so you would think. No though this safe house has a load of zombies around it and i start to focus on killing them and spending the night in a house that wasn't going to be used a safe house (in the hope that this draws zombies away from the safe house).

 

Sadly this doesn't work and after killing all the zombies around the house i turn to walk away and almost run into a zombie who appears out of no where right in front of me, but worse still just over the back of the house there is a horde of zombies (at least 60+ zombies) and a little just over the other side of the street another horde of zombies (20+). Now i had been avoiding sleeping in this area while i killed these zombies and yet they are all coming here, so i have now abandoned the idea of trying to kill the zombies and moved on to looking for the next house to be a safe house.

 

As for setting up an actual safe house with fencing and farming setup etc, i think this should be made so the player can do it if he/she wishes to. It should be up to the player how they want to go about playing the game, if they want to spend years moving around the map avoiding zombies then so be it, if they want to spend years farming and living in almost a peaceful place then again that's up to them. Going about setting up a fully functional safe house takes a lot of time resources and dedication as well as been extra careful not to attract to much attention. However i think for survival mode the ability to setup a fully functional safe house should be made hard but at the same time rewarding, for sandbox the player can choose his/her settings and so it doesn't really apply (or won't once sandbox is fixed).

 

I think to make survival harder the setting for items been rare should see planks and saws made harder to find, this will then mean the player can't just stock pile planks, nails and when ready begin getting the foundations of the safe house in place. Instead the player would need to find a saw before they can make planks from the logs they have cut (axes are already very hard to find). While your at it hammers could be made a little harder to find (not a lot harder, but a little harder). But once a player has setup a fully functional safe house he/she shouldn't be punished for doing so, of course the player shouldn't just be able to sit back and relax. They should have to work to keep the safe house safe, but they shouldn't be presented by hordes of zombies in less they attracted them (or when NPC make their return, the NPC's bring the unwanted attention). Survival mode should be exactly what it is (survival) but again it shouldn't punish a player for setting up a safe house (but it would depend on how the player went about setting it up). avoiding making to much noise at the safe house or close by is fine, if the player constantly makes noise day after day then they should expect unwanted attention from zombies investigating the sounds. If they player go's around killing any zombies every few days and then spends what ever time is remaining to build some fence panels etc and get them in place before taking a few days rest and maybe heading to a new location where they will chop down the tree's and saw them into planks to attract zombies to them and move them away from the safe house then this should be fine. As long as the player is careful when setting up a safe house the player should be rewarded, obviously no one can live for ever at the same house while zombies are around, but the player should be able to spend a quiet a lot of time at the safe house (the more careful they was the longer they can stay there). Sandbox excluded from this because the player can easily lower the zombies settings and make them either as slow and dumb or intelligent as they like, so if they set the zombies to few and dumb as possible then the player should be able to get a safe house up without been careful and stop there for a long time. We will see how the changes effect zombies as and when the updates are released, hopefully the fixes drastically improve things though.

[Rathlord]

To get back to what's already been said, these things are already being worked on and many parts of the current system are placeholders.

 

Hammers don't need to be more rare- we just got them back from being almost impossible to find. There is a hammer in every house in the U.S. Making them hard to find just breaks immersion pointlessly.

[willow512]

I kind of enjoy that I can't keep my safehouse for ages. THAT would be boring to me.

I agree!!! Of course...

 

But I really don't see why a game like zomboid can't cater to both play styles. It's not one or the other. Both can be true.The players choice of where to build should have a profound effect. If you like the risk and excitement of getting overrun you should hang out in the city. The sunstar motel would be prime real estate for a challenging fortress. The posibilities for that place are just tantalising, and I'm sure to give it a try one day! If you're a player who loves a calmer pace, to build and farm then perhaps an out of the way location like one of the farms is better for you? I happen to be a player who alternates between one or the other.

 

This is only common sense and it should be a conscious choice the player makes. If no matter where I settle the same thing is going to happen then THAT would be boring, every game would be the same and the my choices become irrelevant! That's just bad design.

 

But I think this discusion has just become academic. If you spawn a fresh game. The amount of zombies on the map is a little on the low side, but distribution is good, there are more zombies downtown than there are in the outskirts. The behavior is bugged right now. If the zombies in an area grow in size and then dissipate again in response to meta game events like Lemmy intended. I think everything would be perfect. And he told us he'd look into that. So all is well isn't it? Or rather, it will be.

[Swagger]

I think the threat of having your base over run or having to defend it (keep the perimeter clean) is a fun mechanic and makes for great game diversity.  Having your base over run every 14-30 days in every game you play is not.  But I have faith and think once the meta stuff is fully developed and everything else it will all be good.  The current system is an acceptable placeholder and enough to test the rest of the game features.

[Maderas]

Alright. So, having made more attempts than I care to recount in the past 4 days I feel fairly confident in stating that the "multiple safehouses around map" approach does not work in the Steam beta version. I had one set up in the bar to the south, another at the walled off house to the north, and a final one out at the farm, and by 2 and a half weeks in all three were surrounded by multiple hordes that would not leave no matter what I did.

 

At this point I think either the migration is buggy in the beta as well as the spawning, or the game is just spitting out infinite zombies that never leave their positions.

[EnigmaGrey]

Merged zombie spawn rates thread with this one.

[SocialReform]

Merged zombie spawn rates.

Explain?

---

I see

[olpaj]

I read some of the first 2 pages, but didn't really have the patience to go through all of it.
I have experienced some odd zombie spawnage too. My version is 2.9.9.16 Desura. I played in Sandbox mod, and would like to describe 3 events:

Game1: Sandbox, zombie quantity normal. After 8 days there was a horde outside my safehouse (the fenced house on the eastern outskirts of town). They came by overnight, and this seems pretty legit, I had a nice game here.

Game2: Ok, this one is where something really strange happened. Sandbox mode, set zombie quantity to low, time mode 2 hrs, and here's what happened:
The first day I went around the town looting stuff. Everything seemed fine, met less zombies than usual as intended, went to sleep, the next day I went to the Cabin with a well in the northern woods. After walking around the forest for a few hours I finally arrived at the cabin, no zombies whatsoever were following me into the forest (I came from the McCoy logging industries), haven't seen any in the woods, I haven't been shooting weapons or using taunts or anything, just plain walking to the cabin. So I begun unpacking my stuff in the cabin, when I turned around I got the panic sound, time was about 19:00, and the cabin was surrounded by fucking zombies coming out the forest from 3 sides (they weren't coming in only from north). Is this supposed to happen? If they migrated over night maybe that could make some sense, I dunno, they followed my smell or something, but it's like this horde has migrated during the day to my location through a dense forest after staying low all day.

Game3: Now this one is clearly an issue with Sandbox, I think this has been raised previously. Set the zombie's to none, day lenght 2 hours. For 2 days everything was fine. I saved and exited the game, restarted, and zombies started spawning on the map like my setting didn't matter at all. There were hordes on the main avenue of Muldraugh and smaller groups near the housing areas, just like in regular survival mode.

BTW I'm not angry because I died in these games, because I ran them in Sandbox to test and play around with different aspects of the game, I'm trying to point out things that work wrong in my sense. If this keeps happening to me, I might shoot a vid and post it for proof, if required.

[Rathlord]

Sandbox settings are known to be buggy so you needn't worry about making a video or anything.

 

As far as zombie spawning, what you missed a few pages in was Lemmy saying they're aware of how it's working and planning on working on it soon.

[Cl0nec0mmand0]

 

There seems like a a lot of different factors here:

 

• Initial Zombie Density: Which after the last 9.17 changes felt pretty decent to me, there were still some hordes but they were scattered and mostly towards the center of the city.  There does seem to be the possibility of the occasional mega-horde (100+), but it is an improvement over 9.15 where there could be a horde down every street and corner. But as noted, this is something which has been, and probably will be, tweaked repeatedly.  Lots of different opinions here, so until it works in Sandbox correctly - probably never going to appease everyone.
• Zombie Migration: Which I think everyone agrees is work in progress in every sense of the word.  The goal is to keep the game a zombie survival game even for those who flee to the farms, but it also currently seems to result in hordes getting larger and slowly being pointed at the player.  From the sounds of it, it will be difficult to tell what is "intended" until the devs put NPC's back in the game (my assumption being that will give the zoms multiple targets to be directed towards)
• Zombie Teleportation: Which seems clearly a bug.  I've not seen the teleporting horde, but I have seen them teleport into a barricaded house and I've seen others report that on recent builds as well.  I'm not sure how much migration properly involves teleportation, it's possible that is something like the Director AI is trying move zoms from cell to cell and is incorrectly detecting if that trick would be visible to the player.  So even as a bug, it might be at the mercy of the other two.

 

yah i had a hoard in my own house like literraly 10-20 zombs in my fortress i had a double wall and all the windows boarded up after a round of scavaging i went into my house to find it packed with zombies no fair D:

[Luke159]

Since the item's in game decide how many zombies are spanwed its fair to say that as your looting and filling a safe house this causes the game to spawn/teleport hordes of zombies to that location. Perhaps disabling the zombie loot spawn and see how this goes, I haven't looked into how to disable it, but i'm sure someone will come along and help out here (if its not hard coded). But this would explain the sudden zombies appearing from no where right outside your safehouse(s) for no apparent reason.

[nasKo]

This is how I understand it:

They are not bound to item distribution.

Zombies aren't really spawned per se. I think the only time zombies "spawn" into existence is when alarms or other meta-game-events occur. Even then they only spawn in the nearesr high-density area of the overlay map that determines the zombie population and density.

Once a chunk of the map is loaded, it checks how many zombies to load for that chunk.

Leaving this chunk leaves a virtual note with the number of zombies in that area.

When you get back into that chunk, it de-virtualises the zombie number and loads the saved ammount of zombies.

The bug is expected to be vortual zombies moving faster than they should, thus teleporting into your chunk.

Your try to help is appreciated but chances are that most things you can think of were already considered or are just wrong