One thing I find strange is the fact that zombies seems to have a destruction field around them that explode cars and other vehicles into pieces on contact. If a zombie sees you they become indestructible juggernauts that claw their way though cars and APC’s like they where made of paper. They rip though the bodywork, the upholstery and even the fuel tank under the floor like it was nothing. Strangely enough given the fact that they can claw their way though a car in moments that power is gone when fighting your survivor.
I wonder is it possible to make zombies not explode cars on contact and make them instead go around or over without deconstructing the car into pieces?
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A central point about zombies is that they don’t have any ability to plan and don’t know how to walk around a vehicle, so they try to walk through it as long as they see a target they are aggressive against. They don’t smash cars as long as they can walk through it, but does try to smash their way through when blocked. Since they don’t have any working brain they have to smash their way through closed doors, as they don’t know how to open them.
It a also be noted that regular zombies take quite some time to smash their way through a vehicle part.
I think that Desty might mean that it should be quite a hard task to smash car to pieces with bare hands. Its made of metal, after all. So creature with almost human body hardness and strength might not be able to rip off the engine and so on.
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The frames should 100% be more resilient to “decaying monster clumsily claws at it” sort of damage - I’d be ok with bigger creatures doing it though.
But that seems to be a problem even with how zombies interact with buildings: a group of 8 zombies clawing at a wall can just tear it down and bring down an entire roof with them and that seems quite unrealistic.
If the walls are made of wood, then sure, I can see that happen, sort of. But concrete/brick walls? Not a chance.
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Yes, I can work with zombies breaking the windows and climbing though a car, but a normal zombie should not realistically be able to damage the bodywork and internals of the car. Hulks and other big creatures is another issue. It may be a limitation with the engine but I feel the zombies should realistically climb over a car and not though it. In RL you can see over most cars and if a zombie sees the player on the other side of a car they would move around or over rather then spend time smashing the car.
Its partially a limitation of the damage model, and partially the fact that the zombies are functionally immortal, have no real self preservation or restraint, and are incredibly single minded. They’re not actively trying to hunt, or be efficient, its just trying to kill, and its in no rush. The zombie spends time smashing the car because car in the way - Wandering around the car to get to you never occurs to it, and the blob cares far to little about individual zeds to step in and help it think. Extreme tunnel vision basically.
Vehicles probably shouldn’t be getting ripped to scrap, but someone with no sense of self preservation could easily total your bodywork, ruin intakes, bend tubing, rip wiring harnesses, etc - Normal humans already do this, although generally under the influence of copious amounts of stimulants. Crackhead strength is real and its terrifying, and its a good analog to that zombie lack of restraint and self preservation. The damage model doesn’t really have a distinction between “This is an engine but its so far gone it might as well be a hunk of scrap metal” and “A hunk of scrap metal” so things tend to explode into scrap. Not really sure what a better solution would look like, since a lot of things are so intertwined - We don’t distinguish between engine block and the assorted external belts, chains and intakes. Granularization would work but could suck to interact with.
Game design is less of a driving concern here, but there is merit on that front to it as well - A vehicle shouldn’t be able to mindlessly ignore even the mundane zombie hordes just because you boarded up/welded over the glass with something a bit more metallic.
If you tried to walk straight across the car you’d probably slide off the hood to the side or something. I understand smashing through the side windows to get across, but front and back of the cars are smooth and round enough to make you just slide past instead of make you stuck and keep smashing it to bits as zombies do. Walls kind of already do this, zombies slide along walls until they reach a point closes to you. I mean transparent walls that zombies can see you through but cant smash, e.g. reinforced glass ones or metal bars.
its not only the frames that gets to much damage in my opinion, even the steel platings of the car seems to get damage by zombies…
Kinda conversely, why aren’t cars more destructive to zombies? Car side windows are hard to smash. Front windshields are even more resilient. It takes a lot of concentrated force to break one; it’s even kinda hard with a hammer. Smashing stuff that hard with bare hands hurts a lot. A fist is going to break well before the window.
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