Zombie migration/spawn system discussion

[Headshotkill]

While NPCs usually take the spotlight for most important upcoming feature there's another system which massively impacts the game. Zombie spawning/migration.

Have you ever wondered what happens to zombies just off screen or far away on the map, what is the true impact of a meta sound event like gunshots in the distance, maybe you have respawn on or off but in both cases you're affected.

This video does a good job explaning most things: 

 

It's the reason why entering a town like West point always gives the exact same experience even after almost a decade of playing. Lots of zombies evenly spread around. What if you enter the town and it's deserted, maybe it's even more crowded than usuall, maybe a massive compact horde has formed that roams around.

I've tried to remedy this IMO monotonous system by installing a bunch of event mods, expanded helicopter events being the best so far but it's still just a bandaid on a gaping wound that really hurts this game's replayability.

I don't just want to bash the game needlessly, some of these systems and choices were made for very good reasons, limited performance is the main reason I imagine why TIS hasn't added a true horde system yet, it would simply melt your computer, next build we will see performace massively improved which should make hordes of 1000+ zombies on screen possible without lag.

 

So what would I do to make the world feel more alive? The goal is to let the player truly feel like zombies are roaming around in the world even if you can't see it, always have that lingering feeling of dread a large horde may be on it's way to bulldoze through your quiet neighbourhoud.

 

First, as you saw in the video there's this 'magical' square around the player where zombies transition from the metaverse into the real world, unfortunately during this process their pathing command is lost. This means as demonstrated in the video a sound event like a gunshot creates a wall of zombies on the OPPOSITE side of the event relative to the player. The fix, if possible, is to let zombies keep their path command and continue their journey through the loaded area around the player towards the origin of the sound. I'm 99,99% sure TIS is completely aware of this problem and would've fixed this already if it was possible so there's likely something codewise beyond my limited understanding that is holding them back.

 

Secondly, migration and hordes. Currently the only way zombies migrate is small rally groups moving around randomly at 9PM, which IMO is okay and does the job, if it weren't for the same 'magical' square around the player blocking them again. Personally I'm not a fan of inevitable preplanned redistribution every day even if zombies have no real incentive to migrate around, sound events and eventually NPCs should suffice to migrate zombies around locally. Ideally we shouldn't have any sound events aside from helicopter or very distant things like military bombs or thunder. Everything that happens nearby in the world shoud be 'grounded' in a true event, hear a scream in the distance? It's a true simulated NPC dying, nothing is created out of thin air.

 

However that's what I'd like to call 'micro migration', next I'd like to also discuss 'macro migration', this is where hordes come into play.

There's several approaches to hordes, some people in the past asked for an 'attractor zombie' like a screamer which attracts zombies nearby to follow it and create a horde, I personally am not a fan of this because I'm opposed to any type of special zombie. 

For me a horde would be an invisible entity which moves across the map and makes zombies follow it with the main purpose of long distance multi cell migration. It would do this by a process I call 'swelling' and 'shrinking'. 

Each cell has a desired population of zombies (for example urban cells have higher desired pop than forest), for various reasons be it migration or zombies being killed, a cell may detect a shortage or overflow of zombies. A horde entity can only be created in cells which have a large overflow of zombies, the invisible entity then picks a random point far away on the map and start to move that way. It'll usually target an urban area like riverside or rosewood, and it'll prefer to move using roads but can sometimes path through a forest/farmland if it's a shorter path. 

Along the way every cell it moves through which has an overflow of zombies, it will gather surpluss zombies and 'swell', each cell it moves through which has a shortage of zombies it'll start shedding zombies until the cell's desired pop is reached or the horde passes to the next cell, this is 'shrinking'. If a horde entity loses almost all of it's zombies it dissapates, if a horde reaches it's waypoint  and still has enough zombies it'll pick a new random waypoint and migrate. There can only be 1 horde inside a cell, if two hordes meet in the same cell they combine and 1 of the 2 old waypoints is picked at random.

 

This leads me to my final point which is zombie spawning overhaul, currently if spawning is enabled new zombies will spawn just outside the 'magical' square around the player until the cell's desired zombie pop is reached. I'm heavily opposed to this system, HOWEVER I always play with spawning enabled, I believe without spawning it's too easy to create safe areas and the game gets boring.

In my opinion the ideal system would make use of the horde system I mentioned before. At the map edge large zombie hordes would spawn in progessively larger waves as the apocalyps worsens reaching a peak at some point and then calming down again to a stable maintenance inflow. For example at a random point on the map edge a horde of 500 zombies spawns with a randomly chosen waypoint, like Muldraugh, on it's way there all previously mentioned horde mechanics like 'swelling' and 'shrinking' are at play which means if the hordes shrinks too much it may never reach Muldraugh itself.

The waypoint should always be chosen at random, I don't want it to specifically target a cell that has a shortage of zombies cause that would feel gamey and I still want to reward players that clear out an area. It should be possible for a town cleared of zombies to stay clear for months if it's lucky and no hordes target it or pass through.

 

 

So yeah that's my take on the zombie migration/spawn system overhaul, I'm not sure if this is considered a suggestion or a discussion. I chose to post it as a discussion because I'm not really asking for new features, just an overhaul of something that's already ingame. Also it would be cool if a horde entity emits an eerie zombie moaning sound which gets louder as the horde grows and can be heared from far way. Players can hear a large horde incoming almost a day in advance and prepare themselfs like the soundeffect in the mod 'calm before the storm'.

[Corona2172]

I'm kind of surprised no one responded to this yet. I, for one, could not agree more. Admittedly, I have no idea what the current limitations to something like this are. I remember that, back in the day, there was said to be some sort of sadistic AI director that would take zeds that spawned on the map edges and move them around, plus meta events around the player. Dunno exactly how it works now. But, I do remember that they intend to let NPCs drive a lot of the action in the future. Gun battles, screams, etc, calling in more and more zombies. Of course, this would likely have the same effect as if the player themselves did all that. That doesn't really affect the more meta-centric migration stuff. But yes, agreed, roaming zombie hoards are something that would bring significant life to the game, especially once the player starts feeling too comfy in their cleared out fortress town.

[BoogieMan]

An option for wandering hordes would be awesome.

 

I usually settle in town areas because I don't have as much fun when I feel very secure so I like the added danger. But even then eventually you end up clearing the area out if you don't die. Having the potential for a horde would be a very good addition.

[Headshotkill]

On 8/22/2023 at 1:09 AM, Corona2172 said:

I'm kind of surprised no one responded to this yet. I, for one, could not agree more. Admittedly, I have no idea what the current limitations to something like this are. I remember that, back in the day, there was said to be some sort of sadistic AI director that would take zeds that spawned on the map edges and move them around, plus meta events around the player. Dunno exactly how it works now. But, I do remember that they intend to let NPCs drive a lot of the action in the future. Gun battles, screams, etc, calling in more and more zombies. Of course, this would likely have the same effect as if the player themselves did all that. That doesn't really affect the more meta-centric migration stuff. But yes, agreed, roaming zombie hoards are something that would bring significant life to the game, especially once the player starts feeling too comfy in their cleared out fortress town.

I guess it took so long for someone to reply cause the forums are deserted these days, I expect once B42 drops it'll get more lively in here.

During the development from alpha through the RC builds and eventually the IWBUMs versions we know today, many features were lost, the lighting system is one of those that'll return in the next build. I instantly recognised the same style and ambience it gave from the old RC builds (which felt a lot more atmospheric IMO).

Zombie hordes too are an old legacy feature which got dropped once the scope of the game increased, likely for performance reasons. The old zombies were all identical bald alien looking clones with 2-4 frames for moving around so it was waaay cheaper to render 100s of them on the screen at once.

 

The thing I crave most in this game is that feeling of knowing the world is alive around you, even if you just hole up in your safe house near riverside with a bunch of food. You know zombie hordes are moving around in Louisville, NPCs are struggling to survive in West point, some NPC military squads are hopelessly trying to re-establish control over a small part of the exclusion zone. It's like your computer screen becomes a window into a parallel dimension that lives on it's own.

[nPhlames]

4 hours ago, Headshotkill said:

The thing I crave most in this game is that feeling of knowing the world is alive around you, even if you just hole up in your safe house near riverside with a bunch of food. You know zombie hordes are moving around in Louisville, NPCs are struggling to survive in West point, some NPC military squads are hopelessly trying to re-establish control over a small part of the exclusion zone. It's like your computer screen becomes a window into a parallel dimension that lives on it's own.

 

The game kinda already does this in radio/tv broadcasts where the station's slowly go radio silent one-by-one. But too much prolonged NPNC activity would give a different vibe than the lost hope the devs are currently going for.

[Headshotkill]

8 hours ago, nPhlames said:

 

The game kinda already does this in radio/tv broadcasts where the station's slowly go radio silent one-by-one. But too much prolonged NPNC activity would give a different vibe than the lost hope the devs are currently going for.

I know the radio is supposed to invoke that feeling but the magic quickly fades away once you realise only 3 broadcasts are directly connected to the world. Those being the air activity broadcast for the helicopter, weather reports and the powergrid failing broadcast. Everything else is just an audiobook disconnected from the actual world. If the TV tells me there’s a press conference in the Louisville EVAC zone, I know that’s not actually happening, if I were to go there it’s all zombies.

 

What I’m talking about is meta stuff that truly impacts the world. Survivor radio’s of real groups telling me a massive horde just broke out of Louisville and is heading south west destroying everything. Then a week later that horde shows up at my base in Muldraugh. It is knowing that horde actually formed in Louisville and travelled all the way to Muldraugh, wondering if these survivor groups from the radio actually survived or not.  Being able to come across the destroyed survivor camp near Louisville that aired the broadcast. While this happens there’s different stuff going on in Riverside and Rosewood that you don’t even know of, but you know stuff is happening there because it’s all simulated in the metaverse and if you later visit those places you can discover the traces of these events.

[puppers]

More meta events would be cool

 

[Spookykid]

On 8/23/2023 at 1:44 PM, Headshotkill said:

The thing I crave most in this game is that feeling of knowing the world is alive around you, even if you just hole up in your safe house near riverside with a bunch of food. You know zombie hordes are moving around in Louisville, NPCs are struggling to survive in West point, some NPC military squads are hopelessly trying to re-establish control over a small part of the exclusion zone. It's like your computer screen becomes a window into a parallel dimension that lives on it's own.

 Imagine how awesome AI will get in the next 10 years, I for one think eventually AI can make you a perfect game, you just type in the genre and check a bunch of boxes.

 

 

[ElectroGrid]

This is a really well made post, great job. Your post made me think of this mod in particular I have not used it myself but it could be something you might be interested in? If you haven't seen it already that is.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2983905789&searchtext=wandering

 

I am relatively new to zomboid but I have noticed that the zombies don't move around a lot but using the expanded helicopter events they tend to move about more. I too also dream for a day where we can have TWD style hordes of zombies moving from town to town.