[A14d] Rimworld Zombie Apocalypse (v. 1.5 - July 26)

[sanya02]

Prompt and how to recover from the plague?

[TheSilencedScream]

Really enjoying this, but wish there was a way to cremate the corpses.

[Justin C]

Really enjoying this, but wish there was a way to cremate the corpses.

There is. It's in the vanilla game.

You'll need to research Cremation first.

[TheSilencedScream]

/doh, didn't make a bill for it.

[Lostsaint6689]

SO every zombie i come across have a blue name and my colonist will not attack them at all and i have to use my turrets to individually force target each zombie... which can be a huge pain in the arse. Is there a fix this? If so please let me know, if not... can that happen soon? i love the mod but its currently unplayable. Thanks

[millenium]

SO every zombie i come across have a blue name and my colonist will not attack them at all and i have to use my turrets to individually force target each zombie... which can be a huge pain in the arse. Is there a fix this? If so please let me know, if not... can that happen soon? i love the mod but its currently unplayable. Thanks

it looks like its something wrong with the faction definition not loading right. spawned zombies are still enemies but resurrected zombies arent. also issue with the images used for the zombies they seem to kill framerate. more so than they really should.

[Helbrecht]

I have not tried this yet. Before i do try, i had a question. When a raider or a colony man, or even a random tribal dies after being infected, either by a bite or by airborne virus; does their zombie form inherit their injuries/incapacitations (if a raider had his leg blown off, does his zombie form have a leg missing?)

[Tsilliev]

I have not tried this yet. Before i do try, i had a question. When a raider or a colony man, or even a random tribal dies after being infected, either by a bite or by airborne virus; does their zombie form inherit their injuries/incapacitations (if a raider had his leg blown off, does his zombie form have a leg missing?)

When they become zombie all of their injuries are healed.

[Lostsaint6689]

SO every zombie i come across have a blue name and my colonist will not attack them at all and i have to use my turrets to individually force target each zombie... which can be a huge pain in the arse. Is there a fix this? If so please let me know, if not... can that happen soon? i love the mod but its currently unplayable. Thanks

it looks like its something wrong with the faction definition not loading right. spawned zombies are still enemies but resurrected zombies arent. also issue with the images used for the zombies they seem to kill framerate. more so than they really should.

I don't suppose this bug will be fixed soon? I'd like to play and enjoy the mod.

[rexx1888]

heya

i really appreciate all the effort youve put into this mod, its pretty great. i do have one design point though, an i figure if i was in your position id want any feedback i could get. But before i give it, i just wanna say youve done a really great job so far

So, my only point on design is the basic behaviour of your zombies. Its good that they only melee, but they dont eat people. Though that may be a rimworld issue that you cant code, it signifies something more problematic. They dont seem to respond to stimuli from stuff around them. excluding when a colonist is near them. they dont kill wildlife, or wander off to chase it, or anything much like that. They still kill people, but they arent actually acting like zombies. An this leads to some behaviour that is just frustrating, because when a horde spawns, an its an actual horde, it immediately starts trekking across the map to your colonists base an killing your dudes. It ignores everything on the way except anything that shoots at it. So still no killing wildlife, or getting distracted, or even slowing down and splitting off from the group. Which in a randy game means you may only have 3 survivors when ten bloodthirsty murderers that are resistant to bullets and pretty frigging tough just roll on in an kill everyone. They dont even get distracted by eating those survivors. I bring this up because it means your zombies arent actually behaving in the way id assume youd want them to, as in like zombies.

So, itd be terrible to point out a problem if i didnt provide a solution. So, first id remove the horde event as it is, an instead just have zombies spawn into the map over time. as the game progresses maybe have bigger numbers spawn. But, have it just be a consistent stream, rather than a storyteller event. then put behavior in the actual zombies which makes them react to "noise". firstly, any moving objects near them can attract their attention, an they move in that direction. Have it as a chance detection, so things an people can keep moving an not necessarily keep updating the zombie path. Secondly, id track the "noise" of the colony. Track the current actions, and add a float together as cumulative noise. Different actions make more noise, higher number. Give the zombies the chance to hear this, but divide the float by something for distance(so the noise becomes negligible over great distance) equally, have a noise threshold on your zombies that represents natural noise, so any number under it just doesnt factor in. Finally, apply the distance part of the equation to every "noise" the zombie hears, so it doesnt just run off insanely whenever a mouse moves three squares away but it can still be distracted by things it passes.

finally, to fix the distraction thing during actual assaults, have the zombies hang out near corpses for a number of ticks. If you can design and implement a "butcher" action for them to do some of the time, thats also cool(i say some of the time so you still get mainly zombies turning from the dead, not gibs). Also also, probably make zombies prioritize raw meat over everything else if its in a certain distance.

Basically, your on the right track, but the zombies need to be more robustly designed in their behavior in order to be less fursterating an more fun

[Dragoon]

but they don't eat people. 
they don't kill wildlife, or wander off to chase it, or anything much like that.

There are types of zombies that only eat people and don't eat other animals.

As far as eating people goes (would be cool) but it's pointless I mean they start eating them and then the body is gone and no new zombie. It's not really useful (would be cool and realistic but in this game they can't eat SOME of it they would have to eat all of it or none of it).

Also I prefer the horde to them slowly spawning across the map.

[rexx1888]

the behaviour i just detailed would still get you a horde... the eating behaviour is because the zombies as they currently function are just melee brutes with nothing to differentiate them from any other melee brute. they dont stop attacking till everythings dead, they dont get distracted, they still move pretty quick. They are just another faction atm with some flavour text.

As to eating, thats why i said give the corpse a chance to either be butchered or just turn,a nd have the zombies just stand around doing a "thing".

an again, the eating random things and generally getting distracted is to differentiate them from other raids. Finally, if you just want a horde of stupid things to travel across the map an get slaughtered, why not piss off the local tribe? thats their behaviour down to a tee, except they have thrown weapons to make them a bit more challenging.

edit: to clarify. Horde behaviour is a bunch of zombies wander up to your base an besiege it. This behaviour makes that happen in the same way you would get a horde in the walking dead. One zombie hears a thing. It moves towards it. Other zombies, near that one, hear it move an move in the same way. As they get closer to the base, they all hear it more, an keep moving. As they move, other zombies hear them moving. The float of your horde gets bigger, so more zombies hear it. By the time they besiege your base, theres dozens of them. However, with this behaviour, the player has a number of ways to defeat it. They can distract the horde with noises in different places. Kill of the rando zombies on the map before they can build up to that point. They can just run away from it afore it arrives etc. Its not only a better way to do it, its more interesting. If you can find a less resource intensive way to achieve the same thing, thats awesome. This is still a good prototype design.

[Justin C]

A lot of the current behavior is because of limitations that I ran into when I was first working on the mod in May and just never got around to changing.

For example, it used to be impossible to force a pawn to melee attack an incapped pawn. Hence the no eating/finishing downed colonists off. Eventually I actually worked that into the mechanics of the mod by turning an incap without an infection into sort of a second chance for a colonist who was caught by zombies. I didn't want to remove it before  there was a cure, because the mod was already difficult enough. I think now it would be safe to make zombies attack incapped pawns.

Similarly, there were some really odd bugs I was getting when my zombies were attacking animals. Boomrats were breaking them. They would kill a couple of them, and then all of a sudden they would just stop attacking. Instead they would chase their targets and run right up to them, and then just stand right next to them until they died. Also it was just really annoying watching a whole hoard of zombies suicide themselves on boomrats and Muffalos. In the end I decided it wasn't worth the trouble fixing it, assuming I could fix it, and just disabled attacking animals.

Both of these are things I would like to put back into the game, as well as randomizing targets so they don't all just rush the closest thing.

I was considering having zombies randomly wander onto the map occasionally, but I figured that would be pretty unfair for players. Players will not like accidentally aggroing zombies that they didn't even realize were there and losing a colonist because of it.

As for removing the hoards/raids, in most zombie lore the zombies tend to travel together. The big, dangerous zombie hoards are one of the defining things about zombies. I'm definitely not going to change that. I would like to tone them down a bit at the end-game, but it's really difficult to get the balance right when I just don't have the time to spend 15 hours playing a game until day 300 like some players like to do. I might need some dedicated testers or something.

The sound idea is good, but off the top of my head I have no idea how I could even implement it, if it's even possible right now. I'll look into it in the future, but it definitely won't be making it into the Alpha 8 release of the mod.

[Dragoon]

exactly!

[Ender]

soooo i would be totally cool with testing... just sayin