Zombies

[axeman]

Yes, I said the Z word, what we've all been waiting for, including me :)

With Ryan's blessing we are officially supporting his excellent Zombies and Demons mod. This will be a plug in, if Zombies and Demons is installed (server and client) the Epoch additions will automatically kick in and provide a unique support.

This has been started in Experimental.

Currently it requires a few tweaks to the built in code to be able to merge the two mods, in short we are creating an 'Epoch Ryan's Zombie', amongst other surprises.

What this thread is for is as a place to request features for the zombies. How will our recently deceased think and react, what skills will they have etc. ? That said, the thread is open to all opinions and thoughts. What do you want to see ?

We have a raft of ideas and have been testing some unique ideas. We're currently basing the 'zombie brain' on the sapper code, in that he / she can think for itself, can smell the target and has some base emotions that drives its behaviour.

To cover some of the already built in behaviour we have :

• Attack: pretty self explanatory, it will attack when in range.
• Hide: if Attacked or shot near, fear will build up to a point where the few remaining brain cells sends our antagonist to a safe spot, for later..
• Stalk: if you've been snuck up on by a Sapper this is why. They can gauge your average direction and aim for your blind spot. My personal favourite.
• Loiter: Sappers wander a bit in the same area, am thinking this could translate to a static behaviour where the life challenged hibernate and wait for input.
• Groan : pretty random to be honest.
• Smell: using wind direction, there is some weighting done on how aware the antagonist is of its target.
• Fear: being aware of groups of armed players, being shot (or shot at) increases fear .
• Anger: just seeing the happy survivors going about their life angers our antagonist, shooting at them just upsets them more.

There is more emergent AI behaviour being worked on for a future release.

Ultimately, we want to honour Ryan's work and keep the existing behaviour and enhance / emulate it for Epoch, they are great Zombies after all.

Thoughts anyone ?

[TheStainlessSteelRat]

Is there the possibility of taming/recruiting/using sappers (and now zombies), much in the way The White Walkers use the dead In Game Of Thrones or maybe as a warding talisman like Mishonne in Walking Dead?

I think of this because of the trader mission where player lures sapper to trader to be caught, it would seem the next step to offer those captured souls to survivor clones as militia or guards!

Too late in the evening for me to be thinking i'll be back tomorrow if i think of more...

[Richie]

Ryan's zombies + Axemans skillz = awesome

[Grahame]

Great job Axeman and all the devs (and, of course to Ryan and Mr Sanchez). Will be monitoring this bur I'm still looking for a DayZ feel so I'm going to stay with COS and native spawns.

ne question though, you will have a mechanism to turn off the native Epoch Ryan's spawns in the same way I turn off sappers and cloakers? Please?

[waynewr]

Zombie loot would be good, dependent on type, like military Z's. 

[TheStainlessSteelRat]

Maybe Zombies could form together and move like the 2005 film Land of the Dead converging on settlements (Bases), pushing clones to seek defensive places to fight them off. This would require them to be able to deal damage to epoch base parts, as well as Arma buildings and vehicles. In that film it was shown that one zombie maintained some spark of former sentience, which directed this push to finish humanity, rather than just directionless rage and savagery, these would surely be interesting concepts to play with.

[axeman]

We've got the slow zed behaviour in experimental under testing, it still has some features to add. 

So far the senses are, hearing, sight and smell, all configurable. I am toying with a rudimentary memory, this is currently used by the sapper to note the targets last seen position, which he then moves to on an attempt to track you down.

Zombie will attack when close. One issue, he randomly wanders off, we have no idea why at the moment :)

WIP.

[KPABATOK]

What I hate the most in sappers is their movement, it is too twitchy so to speak and extremely hard to kill even at point blank almost, they move in all places, likes some kids having tantrums :D but since 3.8 patch I been dying to sappers like... 9 out of 10 deaths were due to sappers for me, so now they more of a danger.