A way to know # of Z in town

[i2amroy]

Personally I’m against the idea. It’s just too powerful of information and there isn’t any real way you could obtain it in real life (even those “population X” signs outside of many places are never really updated, nor do they account for visitors, travelers, or (especially) refugees/those fleeing the cataclysm.

[HunterAlpha1]

And not to mention that the zombies themselves would tend to migrate, following the scent of prey, like in The Walking Dead. Personally I think the reason the Walkers are constantly wandering in herds is because when humans settle down in any sizeable numbers they generate a lot of odor which the breeze carries to the Walkers which they follow, then when they loose the scent they just keep moving in the direction they were going when they lost it.

EDIT: I do know though that the herd that hit them at the farm was set in motion by the helicopter seen in the first season.

[detahramet]

I said approxamite for a reason.
Then could very realistically tens of thousands in population variance.
Its not reliable info, but it still gives you a general idea of what your going into before you get swamped by a thousand brutes in thongs of remarkably elastic death.

[kevin.granade]

[quote=“detahramet, post:7, topic:5250”]I said approxamite for a reason.
Then could very realistically tens of thousands in population variance.
Its not reliable info, but it still gives you a general idea of what your going into before you get swamped by a thousand brutes in thongs of remarkably elastic death.[/quote]
THIS, I could have sworn I made an issue to do this at some point…
Anyway, it would be VERY approximate, basically taking the number of domiciles and multiplying by family size, then fuzzing a bit. This is only indirectly related to how many zombies we actually spawn, so it would give you a general idea of city size without being at all precise.

[Zireael]

Anyway, it would be VERY approximate, basically taking the number of domiciles and multiplying by family size, then fuzzing a bit. This is only indirectly related to how many zombies we actually spawn, so it would give you a general idea of city size without being at all precise.

This is a great idea!

[Fenix]

Also, it would be useless, because you could not count them easily unless you were with pen and paper at the side.

I don’t need exact number of Zs, so I don’t need to count killed Zs.
I just need to estimate, is it 2000 of Z, or 1000, or 500.

It would be a bit imersion breaking, too.

Why? All towns have a list with the ~number of the population.

And not to mention that the zombies themselves would tend to migrate

Why almost all of you didn’t read what I wrote?
I DON’T NEED exact number.
I need ~number, the approximate number of Z’s. I don’t need they migration map or anything like that.
I have two small town near each other. I hacked police console here, I hacked police console there, found out number, put 2+2 in the mind, and voila.

[Soyweiser]

Isn;t there a value like this in dynamic spawn mode? Might be worthwhile to show that value in the debug menu. So we can at least debug it.

[Zireael]

Isn;t there a value like this in dynamic spawn mode? Might be worthwhile to show that value in the debug menu. So we can at least debug it.

Dunno, and I think the OP meant static spawn anyway.

[Sanarr]

Maybe some way of implementing it would be usage of binoculars and similar items. Like when your char is sitting on some tree near N-town looking on the streets via scope and getting a message like: “Streets are swarming with undead. There are hundreds of them// Only a handful of undead wander empty streets // etc.”

[Zireael]

Maybe some way of implementing it would be usage of binoculars and similar items. Like when your char is sitting on some tree near N-town looking on the streets via scope and getting a message like: “Streets are swarming with undead. There are hundreds of them// Only a handful of undead wander empty streets // etc.”

This is a good idea.

[Binky]

I think it would be useful in determining how big a city is, especially if we had a better overmap vision/uncovering model and different types of cities, towns, villages and so on. Currently cities are kinda homogeneous, but it’d be really useful if you could see from the road that you had a village with roughly 100 people in it or 2000.

My suggestion would be to cut down on the overmap vision cone (and shorten binoculars a bit) but perhaps give other sources of information. Maps/Satnavs could give you broader information on cities, and signs could also give you information on towns (plus smaller signs uncovering random buildings in towns).

[FunsizeNinja123]

Maybe a GPS or a GPS app on a PDA?

[HunterAlpha1]

Satellites should still be operational, accessible via radio towers. Maybe even allow us to contact the International Space Station and talk with the astronauts.

[Fniff]

Maybe in the pre-Cataclysm time, civilians could have been tagged with electronic implants? Wouldn’t be unreasonable in a dystopic society, and you could see the amount of active tags in a town by going to the police station.

[HunterAlpha1]

[quote=“Fniff, post:18, topic:5250”]Maybe in the pre-Cataclysm time, civilians could have been tagged with electronic implants? Wouldn’t be unreasonable in a dystopic society, and you could see the amount of active tags in a town by going to the police station.[/quote]That would’ve resulted in a Civil War. I can tell you sure as fucking hell I’d kill anyone who tried to tag me so they could track me everywhere.

[Fniff]

Who’s saying the civilians were aware of it? Maybe there could be a few documents making mention of installing tracking devices in popular clothing brands or similar to have that nice element of paranoia.

[Binky]

Or mobile phones/minor electronic implants/wearable tech. It might not be everyone that has them, but you can track all the mobile phones in an area, and everyone has one of those these days.

I don’t think it’s technically unreasonable, but I can’t seen an immediate point too it as it is.

[HunterAlpha1]

True, the feds can track just about everyone these days via their cellphones. Of course you can take the battery out and they can’t track you. Clothing, food, invisible spray, etc. can also be used. So yeah I guess it wouldn’t be a problem to implement some way to show all or at least most of the zed in a town via a PDA app which accesses the satellite network.

[kevin.granade]

neat ideas, I particularly like the idea of using the binoculars for scouting beyond the area you can see directly.
gps and such is a bit out there, it takes a LOT of hardware to keep something like that going, even if it is made to be disaster resistant.
the only way I could see enabling something like that would be in a military bunker, that would be a pretty cool mid/end game thing to be able to do, maybe find the largest concentration of Zs to decide the target zone for a nuke.

[Binky]

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:23, topic:5250”]neat ideas, I particularly like the idea of using the binoculars for scouting beyond the area you can see directly.
gps and such is a bit out there, it takes a LOT of hardware to keep something like that going, even if it is made to be disaster resistant.
the only way I could see enabling something like that would be in a military bunker, that would be a pretty cool mid/end game thing to be able to do, maybe find the largest concentration of Zs to decide the target zone for a nuke.[/quote]

With the way integrated cities are going I don’t think it’s too out there. Imagine things like foursquare (or generally geotagging) but then if they were extremely common - like facebook, not everyones on it, but most people are (giving you a general number). Again, I think it’d need more stuff like the military bunker to justify it, but it could lead to interesting possibilities.