Lurker zombies only spawn inside houses, shops, and other indoor/underground areas. If the spawning system is capable of it, they should prefer corners and rooms without windows.
Lurkers do not respond to sound - at all. They are effectively Deaf. Lurkers only respond to sight. Lurkers move faster than regular zombies once they spot the player, and their speed is not affected by rough terrain. They do not bite but instead have long sharp claws that they cut the player with. In melee combat they are moderately quicker and more dangerous than regular zombies but have similar health.
Lurkers were the inhabitants of whatever building they are lurking in, and are dressed accordingly. Lurkers could be found in housecoats in houses, or riot gear in police stations.
Lurkers avoid sunlight and will not exit a building into sunlight during the day. At night, however, they will chase the player doggedly.
So the main idea here is to have a kind of zombie which remains inside buildings. While other zombies will rush out and smash windows at the first sign of trouble, lurkers will skulk around inside, waiting for the player to enter before attacking. This helps keep indoor areas mysterious and dangerous, and prevents whole areas from clearing out after one gunshot or a cleverly thrown firecracker. After a big fight in the street you shouldn’t feel totally confident about stepping into that nearby house. It should still feel risky. The purpose of the Lurker is to add to the risk of exploration and looting.
They don’t respond to sound because that is the easiest way to get them to stay still until they spot the player. Their purpose is to ambush the player, not hunt them from across the house.
This is also why they move faster and ignore terrain. At normal zombie speeds the player would just have to walk in the other direction to escape. Because the houses are small and the lurker can’t leave them to chase the player, they need to be fast enough to be a threat within that small area. I suppose instead of ignoring terrain it could just a avoid obstacles like spiders do. But my personal vision was that of a more agile creature that attacks with shocking speed from the shadows.
Also I haven’t played Last of Us so I dunno what the clicker is.
That is kind of the opposite of deaf. That is hearing so well you can navigate with it.
Lurkers aren’t blind, and they might not even be deaf, but they don’t respond to sounds. At least not until they’ve been activated by spotting the player inside their domain.
Anyway the specifics aren’t that important. The main thing is not all zombies should be in a rush to run out into the streets when they hear a gunshot.
I like the idea of having zombies stick around inside buildings.
This would be incredibly awesome. Under the current system by the time you’ve finished doing battle in the street the nearby buildings are all empty, their former inhabitants now lying dead in the gutter. There’s very little fear in going inside an unknown structure, and that doesn’t seem right at all.
I like the concept. While the in-game explanation is that they’re territorial and/or light vulnerable, in-game the easiest thing might be to make them deaf.
We have a “sundeath” flag, we could augment that to have monsters with it not enter sunlight. In that case, it might hear the fight outside, but not leave their shelter until nightfall. The problem with this is that they’d be stumbling around in the house without leaving it, and potentially reveal themselves.
Might do both actually, otherwise smashing a window to enter the house would bring them too.
Ehh, I’d rather the zombie didn’t move around (and thus didn’t make noise). The idea is for the thing to ambush the player when they get close enough to be spotted. If the zombie is moving around it’s not too hard to plan your entrance and then it’s basically the same thing you do in every other situation where there’s a zombie you know about inside a building. You lure it to a window and kill it. Done. Not really adding anything to the experience at that point.