Coughing causes death?

[AerialK7]

[font=georgia]So, I was messing around with the martial arts, giving myself stupid skills, and suddenly…I died…FROM COUGHING?! I guess I deserved it xD[/font]

[pingpong]

Coughing should only damage you in smoke I think, maybe you got cut going through the rubble? Or maybe you smoked too much and got lung cancer

[AerialK7]

[font=georgia]It may have been the ‘Bite to the head’ I received from a zombie who tasted my fists of fury and got turned into paste[/font]

[kenoxite]

Asphyxia: “These circumstances can include but are not limited to: the constriction or obstruction of airways, such as from asthma, laryngospasm, or simple blockage from the presence of foreign materials; from being in environments where oxygen is not readily accessible: such as underwater, in a low oxygen atmosphere, or in a vacuum; environments where sufficiently oxygenated air is present, but cannot be adequately breathed because of air contamination such as excessive smoke. Asphyxia can cause coma or death.”

Although it should only happen if you’re in a closed room for it to be realistic. Right now you can die due to the aftereffects of breathing smoke, minutes after that and while being outdoors.

[iceball3]

[quote=“kenoxite, post:4, topic:1002”]Although it should only happen if you’re in a closed room for it to be realistic. Right now you can die due to the aftereffects of breathing smoke, minutes after that and while being outdoors.[/quote]That might be because people seem to not realize that having your health in red means you are dying. You might be able to barely hold on a bit longer if you get some rest and some first aid immediately, but if you’ve spent a deal of time choking yourself on smoke, you can expect yourself to belatedly drop dead from internal injuries as your simply cannot hold on anymore beyond that point.

It is a bit issuematic that after enough time for pain to fade, your torso health has no penalty on your condition so it may not seem like you are dying, causing a Critical Existence Failure scenario. But having low health on torso generally grades how much you are dying at the moment.

[kenoxite]

OK, I take that as an abstraction, then.

If we were going for the real thing then smoke inhalation should also have a chance of lowering your max INT to simulate brain damage if asphyxiated for several minutes. Now, let’s imagine all the real effects of smoke were implemented, for the sake of it. Here’s an extract from that link:

“Inhaling carbon monoxide decreases the body’s oxygen supply. This can cause headaches, reduce alertness, and aggravate a heart condition known as angina. Fine particles are able to travel deeply into the respiratory tract, reaching the lungs. Inhaling fine particles can cause a variety of health effects, including respiratory irritation and shortness of breath, and can worsen medical conditions such as asthma and heart disease. During increased physical exertion, cardiovascular effects can be worsened by exposure to carbon monoxide and particulate matter. Once exposure stops, symptoms from inhaling carbon monoxide or fine particles generally diminish, but may last for a couple of days.”

In game terms that would mean:

• Pain (headaches)
• -PER (reduced alertness)
• -movement points/speed (shortness of breath)
• even more severe penalties for characters with asthmatic trait

Duration: 1-48 hours

Some of those (-speed) are already implemented (see smoke field and smoke disease), while others are added to simulate lower combat abilities in that state, I guess (-STR -DEX). Apart from the coughing, that is, which creates a lot of noise

If only half of this was implemented, smoker zombies would suddenly go up there with hulks.

[AerialK7]

[font=georgia]Yeah, smokers would be really avoided, I think (in my personal opinion) that it could be flammable gas and if you had a fire weapon you could easily dispatch them, if not you should run or risk all the stat decreases[/font]

[Nopkar]

if no other zombies are nearby (hard to tell I know but it can be done) gas masks are your friends…if you’re pressed for time, a dust mask or preferably a filter mask.

I’ve used a dustmask/bandanna combo and came out with no coughing at all.

[Soron]

Yeah, the thing about smoke inhalation in-game is that it causes torso damage every time you cough. Combine that with a nearly dead (red!) torso, and it’s entirely plausible that you’d die from the smoke. Next time you’re in such a state, I recommend emergency bandages or first aid to the torso.

As for buffing smoke: it WOULD be nice if smokers were more deadly and less annoying (right now I consider them a nuisance, but not anything to actually worry about). However, before that, I’d really want to see more ways to deal with them. In particular, I’d want it to be possible to throw/shoot things at them, rather than it completely failing (as it currently does).

[The_Darkling_Wolf]

I like them, they provide a legitimate reason to use an AoE weapon, toss a grenade or molotov into the smoke cloud and you’re very likely to hit them. It’s nice to have enemies that resist the ‘Stand fifty feet away throwing stones’ approach. Or the ‘stand behind a window and beat everything to death with impunity’ approach.

[AerialK7]

Hey Darkling, would it be very hard to add a secondary attack to the smokers that they shoot out a cloud of smoke, which, when your standing in a window could be a bit more dangerous

[kenoxite]

IMO smokers are annoying and deadly enough as of now. If you’re not well protected you’re forced to fight outside (and potentially be swarmed) to prevent dying from the aftereffects of smoke inhalation. I think they do their job quite well.

While my previous post was a bit of a what if, there’s one thing I’d like to be implemented: more severe penalties for those with the asthmatic trait. Maybe something as simple as increasing the chance of an asthma attack when under the effects of diseases acquired by the mouth. If I’m not wrong, right now that trait seems to be totally isolated from any world effect, the only characteristic of which is the random asthma attack.

[Flare]

All you need is a filter mask really, and those are craftable from all the garbage you leave around.

Once you clear the area around a smoker of zombies, all you need to do is stand in the smoke with a filter mask on and wait until the smoker shows up next to you. I can get off two bow shots with the default longbow without any retaliation. I wouldn’t know if they would attack me after I took two shots, as those two shots at point blank range has always been lethal, and I’ve never waited around long enough to find out how many shots I could make before the smoker actually attacks me.

Also, on the smoke. It seems that not only do my arrows stop at the perimetre of the smoke ball, but when I throw molotovs from outside of the smoke it too seems to stop dead where the smoke starts even though I aimed into the centre of the smoke. Likewise for flamethrowers.

[AerialK7]

[font=georgia]The smoke is a entity of its own meaning if you throw a molotov itll stop it for the greater good[/font]

[Flare]

[font=comic sans ms]I do not understand what you are saying. Can you clarify?[/font]

[AerialK7]

[font=georgia]Its a joke xP I was just saying that the smoke was its own life form so it could protect the smoker.[/font]

[Nopkar]

Smoke currently acts as a semi-solid entity, meaning it stops projectiles.

[AerialK7]

I WAS RIGHT.

[The_Darkling_Wolf]

No it doesn’t, it’s a field. Stuff can pass through it.

[Grackle]

There’s something weird about smoke that stops you from shooting through it. (f) targets the smoker, but then if you hit (f) again you can’t fire. But then I have shot other zombies in the cloud and it worked, so I don’t know what’s going on.

I think smoke shouldn’t cause HP damage. Because healing your lungs with gin-soaked bandages is kinda silly. Can diseases/effects have graduated steps of severity? It would be cool if it went coughing->pass-out->death, and just sidestepped HP altogether.