NPC code applied in a different manner

[EkarusRyndren]

So I got an idea on how to make “roaming hordes” sorta work using a frankly ugly combination of two systems, the NPC system and the Fungal Bloom system. First up, have the game create a “Horde Master Zombie” Something boss-level, the idea I had in mind was a Zombie in Heavy (unpowered) power armor and above average health. Said zombie will act as a mobile “fungal spire” which will spawn regular zombies around it. Said Zombie will progress from wherever it spawns to the nearest city center (probably a building in it, NPC code) carrying the ‘horde’ with it, and leaving behind a handful of loose zombies that spawned around it (fungal bloom spread) wherever it wandered. Once it reaches a city (it’s targeted building) it will linger there for a period of time (half a season?) then move onto a new city, dumping off a large horde in the city in the process. (Which will “repopulate” formerly cleared cities.)

“Ekarus this is a suggestion” Sort of. I want to implement this myself, but beyond looking at the NPC code I don’t really know what to do, I could use some pointers on where to start, and what to do… But if you guys think I’m horribly in over my head I’d understand.

[Nopkar]

seems to me like an If>Then statement bracket would work for the zombie spawns based on an RNG of the horde ‘Size’

Wait X turns, roll. If 5> then no spawn. If >5, spawn 1.

If ‘Horde Size’ = 20, numbers to roll for more increase etc etc.

not sure if that makes sense but from a Dabbling coder’s perspective that would make the most sense?

[Zireael]

I LOVE the suggestion but I can’t code in C (I can only do a bit of Lua)

[i2amroy]

This… “might” work (and that’s a big might). As is the fungal bloom works on two completely different fronts one spawns spores when you can see it and the other uses some of the older dynamic spawning type code (which is weird and strange in a lot of places) to store the areas affected by it. The first one would allow you to have a zombie that spawned more zombies, but it wouldn’t do anything at all if you weren’t near it. The second would allow you to have a roving horde of zombies but you would be unable to tie any static monsters to it. In truth the two systems don’t really mesh at all right now, and any sort of combination you wanted to do with them would probably end up being horribly complicated and probably not work very well.

My personal advice is to avoid the NPC code completely. Look at the part of the code that determines fungal spawn areas and see if you can figure out how to get one to move, then see if you can get it to spawn a roving dynamically spawned horde. (That said this would be using the dynamic spawn system, which in my opinion is not a good thing.)