The crawler

A zombie with its lower body missing, powered by its own insatiable hunger it slowly crawls towards you. The zombie crawler is a staple of the zombie genre that for some reason or another is still missing from the game.

Gameplay wise they would be a pushover, they would be weak, slow, and can only attack your legs. Perhaps zombie corpses that are damaged but not pulped can come back as crawlers.

Would also leave a blood trail.

Yea, somebody do this :smiley:

A classic by my own opinion, I fully support your idea. It also made me think about the crawling Hulk, walking on their strong arms, the missing lower body grants them more agility but they can only bite, and they are far less resistant that normal hulks.

For those of you who never played S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (shame on you!) this is the pseudo giant, and it fully represent my idea of Crawling hulk (even if they don’t actually crawl).

+1111111111

Maybe we can even [del]steal from[/del] homage DF and use the cute little trailing ~

[quote=“duke455, post:4, topic:3840”]A classic by my own opinion, I fully support your idea. It also made me think about the crawling Hulk, walking on their strong arms, the missing lower body grants them more agility but they can only bite, and they are far less resistant that normal hulks.

For those of you who never played S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (shame on you!) this is the pseudo giant, and it fully represent my idea of Crawling hulk (even if they don’t actually crawl).[/quote]

What in the name of all things good is a Pseudo Giant doing in Zaton?

If we’re considering critters from within the Zone, may I suggest one of my favorites?

[spoiler=The snork!]

Soooo creepy looking.[/spoiler]

[quote=“Rivet, post:8, topic:3840”]If we’re considering critters from within the Zone, may I suggest one of my favorites?

[spoiler=The snork!]

Soooo creepy looking.[/spoiler][/quote]

“Creepy looking” I will forever remember the mission in clearsky where you get mugged by the bandits with the flashbang and having to fight off three of those damned things with a fucking starting-level pistol and one clip at night on expert difficulty.

But yeah. just what Catacylsm needs, pack-hunting, nocturnal, fast, hard to hit, creepy looking, scary sounding snorks.

I’m gonna go cry in a corner from flashbacks to the Red Forest and hiding behind a mining cart while Snorks and a Pseudo Giant were trying to kill me and only one shell left.

Would adding something along the lines of these guys be acceptable?


They were honestly creepy as hell during my (relatively short) run of that add-on.

The ghost people have a very specific backstory that details why they’re permanently stuck inside those weird suits.

I’m not really sure how they’d fit into C:DDA since there’s no caustic rust cloud or Sierra Madre casino.

In our terms, I’d say those are just crazy NPCs.

[quote=“Rivet, post:11, topic:3840”]The ghost people have a very specific backstory that details why they’re permanently stuck inside those weird suits.

I’m not really sure how they’d fit into C:DDA since there’s no caustic rust cloud or Sierra Madre casino.

In our terms, I’d say those are just crazy NPCs.[/quote]

And now I have to see about playing a game where I wander about in a hazmat suit with a knife spear.

[quote=“Rivet, post:11, topic:3840”]The ghost people have a very specific backstory that details why they’re permanently stuck inside those weird suits.

I’m not really sure how they’d fit into C:DDA since there’s no caustic rust cloud or Sierra Madre casino.

In our terms, I’d say those are just crazy NPCs.[/quote]

We could put in “hazmat zombies” around waste dumps to get at this idea, possibly with more of a backstory later.

[quote=“Taraq, post:13, topic:3840”]We could put in “hazmat zombies” around waste dumps to get at this idea, possibly with more of a backstory later.[/quote]I had that exact idea in my mind. Also just now thought of putting them inside the concrete structure of waste sarcophagi, if they still exist.

+1 to the idea, a zombie apocalypse isn’t complete until it has these crawlers

How feasible would it be to make them invisible to the player if they were behind certain things like counters and such, only being visible when the line of sight permited? Maybe that would make for some surprise encounters which seems interesting.

Oh, and make them unable to go over said counters and etc.

This dovetails into the proposed stealth system that’s been talked about. Once that’s in place, I expect that things like small monsters hiding behind furniture will follow naturally.

Nice idea!! … +3! These would be good to spawn around any kind of destruction or wreckage, and it’d be cool if we could get the torso dismemberment action going on where a full-fledged zombie could be chopped or blown into crawler form during gameplay :smiley:

I think the crawler is a good idea, albeit in my opinion strictly a hack around the idea of basic body parts for monsters in addition to NPCs (more Fallout series vats, or X-com style ‘basic limbs’ than DF’s “modeled down to the layers of skin, hair, bone density, and fingernails.”)

But that may be because I want to see bits reanimating and trying out solo careers on occasion as the blob tries to bootstrap its way into making the best of it’s situation, pasting itself back together or filling in the blanks wholesale with mutations. Since even the player is technically infected it would be hilarious to be attacked by your own severed arm on occasion (terrifying again when it stalks you, inevitably growing into a mutation-riddled doppelganger. Yet it still doesn’t feel… whole.)

Hazmat zombies I could see being a type along the lines of the Police, Military, Child, or Shocker zombies (being based on some equipment or profession before they died, rather than subsequent changes.) Medical+Fema Reponse teams, CBRN Squads, Survivalists, Research Teams, and Govt ViPs might all be people who could be ‘turned’ while in a suit.

Not much suggestion as to how Hazmat zombies would fight differently though except that they probably have really cruddy hearing/scent, but resilience vs cutting or chemical weapons (gas grenades.)

I think, this game in need for zombie dissection (DF-like limb system)