Overmap Wall That Stops Horde

[_k1]

I suggest that one can build a chunk of rock wall that takes up a whole map tile which zombie horde can neither spawn on nor pass through. Of course, this majestic construction will take 24x24x24=13824rocks, and 6x24x24=3456hours. It becomes faster when you have NPC helpers.

[Llamageddon]

I think it’d be better if player activities could change overmap tiles, which might reduce or kill zombie passability. That said, the specific logic behind this is probably not very obvious.

[kevin.granade]

A specific construction that does this sidesteps the problems with trying to auto-detect blocking, which in our environment seems to be an intractible grap-traversal problem.

[Llamageddon]

I think it wouldn’t be quite unachievable, tbh. To bastardify the problem, pathfind in 8 directions, and voila.

That said, I’d much rather have player actions influence stuff: Like transforming a tile into a “survivor hideout”, “burned building”, “plantation”, etc.

[StopSignal]

What about having tiles remember how much time you are around X place without doing sound and so not spawn things on it as long as you have been there for a long time? If you do much sound, however, the “safeness” goes away, slowly. And brings hordes, of course.

[RedPine]

It wouldn’t have to be a “wall” as big as an overmap tile. It could also be a giant turret tower, or a mortar emplacement, barbwire field, extra large minefield, or some similar structure that “denies” a large area but doesn’t physically cover every single square with a solid wall.

Speaking of which, why don’t we have Mountains? That feels like a relatively easy overmap terrain type to implement. They wouldn’t even need to have Z levels above them, just have some giant solid walls that you could avoid, or optionally tunnel or cave through. Wouldn’t even need Z levels above them to look good.

Alternatively, you could build a “Settlement Beacon” or something like that which guarantees that zombies (and @#$@#$ NPCs) can’t spawn in any adjacent map tiles. It would have the same effect: make sure @s and Zs can’t spawn inside supposedly locked bases, but could still approach those areas on foot after spawning 2 tiles away (at the edge of the reality bubble).

Lastly, how hard would it be to make a “secondary reality bubble” centered on a player base instead of the player?

[StopSignal]

It would ruin my immersion like a huge atomic missile on my face though. I mean, I’m always an advocate for gamey stuff around here, but a “beacon” or “building” thing with that special property would be quite immersion breaking.
It would be cool when we have better NPCs and all the managing to have them look for hordes for you, that would be great.

[Llamageddon]

What if the game was to model moving “groups”(I use quotation marks since it could be single units) of zeds/NPCs/animals, etc. including outside of reality bubble, so rather than sudden random spawns, you’d be able to see them coming in advance, or even have NPC lookouts with radios stationed.

It wouldn’t solve the impassability, but it would improve on the current situation a bit. They could also spawn only in areas you have not visited for a while, and not near you, so hypothetically you could clear an area out, or lead them away.

[_k1]

2D mountain sounds fun. Add some elephants and we could almost have Boatmurdered.

[kevin.granade]

Overhauling the system to track monsters on the overmap is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time now, it’s quite involved though.

[Llamageddon]

By the way, somewhat relevant, what do you think about implementing overworld LoS, so you can see much less into forests or cities than in open terrain? I think it’d let us hide much more content in forests/swamps, and encourage exploration.

[kevin.granade]

That should be happening already, if it’s not something broke.