Wolves and bears for example have: Fleeing > Ignoring > Tracking > Hostile marked if you hit x to look at them.
Zombies/spiders/many other things don’t have these tags and instead always read Hostile even if they can’t see/smell you yet.
For zombies I assume it would be:
Fleeing - NA
Ignoring - Hasn’t noticed you yet because of max sight range.
Tracking - It smells or hears you and is moving to investigate.
Hostile - It sees you.
It’s not an important addition (as many people wouldn’t care to look at each zombie) but I found it odd that some creature had changing tags and others were static.
On that note would it be possible to have a little indicator that appears if we’re being tracked (T) or spotted (S)? It would probably help if we’re going to have stealth at some point. Maybe use it to fill the space in the middle of the enemy radar?
One of the reasons the whole “sneak around and pick off static-spawn zeds” tactic doesn’t work too well for me is that (barring nighttime or some similar vision-radius reduction) I can’t really tell when they can/can’t see me. Giving “you’ve been seen” or “that zed sees you, and you can tell because it’s looking at you and pursuing” feedback would be helpful.
While I’m not opposed to this, there’s some value in not knowing whether a zombie is moving toward you or just wandering in a direction that happens to be your direction.
With a wolf you can kinda see them sniffing, their ears are perked, they’re looking around. They’re alert.
With a zombie, staggering toward you can look a lot like purely random staggering. Some zombie media portrays zombies as acting ‘alert’ and some less so. Usually as they get closer they start to snarl and whatnot, but it tends to become obvious in the game when they’re making a bee-line toward you anyway.
Anyway, I kinda like that I occasionally second-guess myself when I’m getting close to zombies, either fleeing prematurely or wasting precious moments I could be using to flee, because it’s hard to read their intentions.
Not quite, because zombies start making noise when they spot you. You won’t hear them in the dark unless they’re aggroed on you, so thematically, zombies seem to moan and start shambling after you which would be your cue that you’ve been spotted. Interestingly enough, you can’t tell if they’re aggroed on you during the daytime because the little yellow question marks aren’t appearing when you can see them, and you have to assume if they’re continually walking after you.
Something good in the Cataclysm Metal Gear mod was that it started playing a sound when you had aggroed something, so there was no question that you’d been seen.
Huh–I hadn’t known that zeds only made noise when they aggroed. I’ve had a few times when the noisy git outside the base turned out to be a Deer, so presumed that everything made noise regardless of its hostility level.
Yep, test it for yourself. Sneak into a zombie burg in the dead of night and try to smash a wall with your hands to get a ‘thump’ or to be safer, throw something.
Deer make a ton of noise, I guess their hooves clatter loudly on everything as they scramble away from you, but it makes them easy to tell apart from a zombie. I think spiders only make noise when they are aggroed as well. Maybe Deer are constantly in the ‘fleeing’ state which makes them make sounds?