Sickness in Multiplayer

[Ledron]

Sorry if this has been asked, I used the search function and found people answering for single player. 

 

How does one cure sickness in a multiplayer server? I host a local game for my girlfriend and a few friends, and one of them got sick, but with no way to sleep, it seems she is unable to fight being sick? She's trying to stay "Slight fed"  or "Fed" as a buff, took painkillers once in the morning, once at night, vitamins, (Even though they seem useless in multiplayer), but she just continued to detoriate, eventually killing her. Is there a way to help this?

[Seiko Yamada]

Was it zombification or food/rain fever?

[Ledron]

Zombification for her, though I've gotten sick from being in the rain for too long (That walk from Muldragh to West Point!) and I couldn't shake that off, either. 

 

(Only found out hers was zombification at the very end, oops!)

Edited March 31, 2014 by Ledron

[Seiko Yamada]

Well, eating a lot should do the trick for the normal sickness i guess.

 

I managed to delay zombification for a long time in MP, longer than it would take to shrug off normal fever.

Also try keeping the buff higher than slightly fed, the more fed You are, the stronger the healing buff is (i think lol, correct me if im wrong). So being very well fed should counteract healing debuff from sickness.

[JohannesMP]

TL;DR:There is no way currently within the game (in either single or multiplayer) to 'cure' zombification, without actually going in and editing the save file.

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In multiplayer all character attributes, including zombification are stored locally in the map_p.bin file inside the folder corresponding to your server save file. The server does not actually store your character data.

I originally discussed this topic here: http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/6102-help-editing-map-pbin-on-multiplayer/?p=81349 and did eventually manage to reverse engineer the file format to 'cure' a character.

Zombification is stored in two parts of that file:

• Whichever body-part (of the total 17 stored in the file) was damaged will have an 'infected' byte set to true. This is distinctly different from the value that is set to true for when it's a 'fake' infection (which is also stored on a body part) or just being plain sick from the rain. With real zombification you will always have had a scratch first.
• A general 'time since zombification' value, which must be reset to zero to prevent zombification. This determines the severity of your symptoms, and how difficult it is to remain alive (like how quickly pain increases after you try to use painkillers)

As it is currently implemented, if the zombification timer is not 0, your character will get worse over time and will eventually die, regardless of how much you eat or take painkillers, or other medicines. The further along the timer is, the harder it becomes, and even sleeping (in single player) will not help.

Once both of those values are reset your character will heal normally. However the file is just a binary dump of values that cannot be simply opened and edited in a text editor like notepad. Unless you are comfortable with using a hex editor it is very difficult to figure out and edit.

I'm not going to post exact instructions because I feel it goes against the spirit of the game, and simply makes it less fun. If you don't play the game smart enough and get zombified, that should be part of your experience, and incentive to play smarter with the next character. However if you were zombified due to a bug, like the game crashing or similar, then PM me and I might be willing to help.