A question about 0.6

[100Rads]

Is it just me or are the amounts of zombies a lot larger? When I usually play (always static spawn), I start with raiding the cul-de-sac houses on the end of streets. Now in every world I made (I made 17 different worlds) there are hordes of zombies everywhere, which makes looting only possible at night, and beggining is now ridiculously difficult. I wanted to ask if this was a feature or some kind of bug or something else?

[kevin.granade]

I’m not totally sure about numbers, but we recently changed how spawn densities are mapped so it conforms to where the buildings are instead of being centered on the “center” of the town. Spawn density is a number that represents both how likely a group of zombies is to spawn at a location, and if it does how big it is, so a 1 doesn’t mean “spawn one zombie”, but more like “1/10 chance of spawning a few zombies”. 0 however, does mean “no zombies”. That’s the plan at least, it’s still in progress

So if you have a town like this (crappy town yes, but I’m only using easy to type stuff):
The ‘!’ is the “town center”.

....+..FFFF
....|......
....|..V...
...>|<>|<..
...>|.>|...
....!<.|<..
...>|.>|...
....|__|...
....|......

The old density would be something like:

00000000000
00011100000
00112110000
01123211000
01234321000
01123211000
00112110000
00011100000
00000000000

You can see the circle, and that some of the houses have a density of 0, so no zombies there.

And the new density would be more like:

00000000000
00000011100
00112233110
00223344210
00224444220
00223333110
00112222110
00111111000
00000000000

It’s more blobby and conforms to the actual shape of the town instead of an idealized circle.

Please don’t focus on the fact that the numbers are higher, and more spread out, the point is that the old method drew circles around a basically arbitrary point, and the new one tallies up what structures are nearby and uses that to determine gow big groups of zombies will be. Previously there would be “suburbs” jutting out from the town that you could count on to be totally empty, the balance point we’re looking for (and still working on) is have groups of houses jutting out like that be quite sparsely populated, but not known “safe” zones.

Just a reminder, this is not the actual output of the system, it’s a simplified version in that a house contributes 1 to its own square and to each adjacent square (think minesweeper mines). The real system has a variable number for different structures (houses are low, hospitals high, stores in the middle) and is spread out over more tiles, so the single suburb justting out would get even more diluted.

[Ferodaktyl]

i’ve also noticed a larger zombie presence in the suburbs, and i totally agree and enjoy this. The game is too easy as it is, esp after the first few days. I wouldn’t mind a buff to special zeds, i mean when you see a hulk, first thought should be :" How fast can i run?" :).
Also enjoyed the “Chicken walker”, even if i was the chicken

[100Rads]

It made the game much heavier, and much more fun
Its much nicer than the older distribution, though. Could I know if there are some plans for making wildlife fight zombies? It would be kinda cool if you could lure a bear into the middle of a town and watch then watch it smash apart a minor horde.

[i2amroy]

Its much nicer than the older distribution, though. Could I know if there are some plans for making wildlife fight zombies? It would be kinda cool if you could lure a bear into the middle of a town and watch then watch it smash apart a minor horde.

It’s sort-of currently in the game, but at the moment it’s more like “target the player, if zombie gets in the road then attack it”. Hopefully at some point it will be able to be upgraded to “target zombies as well as players if they give reason to attack them”.

[KA101]

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:2, topic:1606”]I’m not totally sure about numbers, but we recently changed how spawn densities are mapped so it conforms to where the buildings are instead of being centered on the “center” of the town. Spawn density is a number that represents both how likely a group of zombies is to spawn at a location, and if it does how big it is, so a 1 doesn’t mean “spawn one zombie”, but more like “1/10 chance of spawning a few zombies”. 0 however, does mean “no zombies”. That’s the plan at least, it’s still in progress

Please don’t focus on the fact that the numbers are higher, and more spread out, the point is that the old method drew circles around a basically arbitrary point, and the new one tallies up what structures are nearby and uses that to determine gow big groups of zombies will be. Previously there would be “suburbs” jutting out from the town that you could count on to be totally empty, the balance point we’re looking for (and still working on) is have groups of houses jutting out like that be quite sparsely populated, but not known “safe” zones.

Just a reminder, this is not the actual output of the system, it’s a simplified version in that a house contributes 1 to its own square and to each adjacent square (think minesweeper mines). The real system has a variable number for different structures (houses are low, hospitals high, stores in the middle) and is spread out over more tiles, so the single suburb justting out would get even more diluted.[/quote]

Hey, Kevin–that “there are safe spots to scrounge around the edges of town” was a justification for making Static the default back in the Static Spawn is Terrible thread. No moving the goalposts.

[Weyrling]

Hey, Kevin–that “there are safe spots to scrounge around the edges of town” was a justification for making Static the default back in the Static Spawn is Terrible thread. No moving the goalposts.

Safe is relative, you could always get ambushed by a bear in the outskirts after all. It’s also far safer to kill a dozen normal zombies that are spread out than fight off a horde of angry special zombies.

The absolutely barren outskirts made it trivially easy to obtain a large amount of food, drinks, clothes, tools, weapons, and other supplies, usually a decent vehicle as well. All this without even seeing a single zombie?

[KA101]

OK, that could be Dynamic talking then. I see one zed and I know there could be (a lot) more where that came from. Unless I’ve got my 02Feb combat-monster, time to escape or find a good spot to engage.

[kevin.granade]

I never said the ouskirts should be EMPTY, they should be sparse and I acknowledge that they need some work to make them the “right amount of sparse”, but “suburbs sufficiently far from the center of towns are always empty” was never intended.

The suburbs still should be the most sparsely populated parts of the towns, if they aren’t then that’s a bug. Frankly no one has had time to go tweak the numbers involved, partially because people keep arguing with me about it even though it’s not finished