Zombie evolution

[infectedmochi]

Yeah, but I’m talking about static spawn and dormant zombies here. Zombies that “wake up” upon hearing noise or triggered by phenomenon, not just spawning zombies from thin air.

[Inadequate]

Yes, but once the player gets strong enough, priority one would be to kill any zombie that appears, hostile or not, to save time. So they wouldn’t be much of a credible late-game threat. The alternative would be to keep them invisible to the player and spawn them in with loud noises, which is basically identical to dynamic mode spawning.

I just think spicing up static mode shouldn’t be a matter of turning it into dynamic mode.

[infectedmochi]

I don’t know about the loud noise spawns monster thing, I think there are plans to merge some aspects of dynamic spawn into static?
The noise waking up zombies is mainly to add a risk to disturbing dormant zombies when the player is still weak, all dormant zombies will eventually wake up regardless, except maybe some kind of permanent “frozen zombies” in ice lab.

[Inadequate]

Are you talking about wandering non-hostile zombies, or are you talking about human corpses that turn into zombies when you try to butcher them?

[kevin.granade]

I can’t ephasize this enough, I have no plans of spawning zombies out of thin air. This was my biggest problem with dynamic spawn.

Having the zombies “evolve” semi-randomly is exactly what I was planning. Each monster type can have a decay rate and a list of different things it can evolve into (with different probabilities of different outcomes). It’ll establish a heirarchy of different ways monsters can develop. The same system would handle animal populations, so an animal might “evolve” into a copy of itself AND a young version of itself to represent population growth, then the young version will age into the mature form. Might just skip the young version and have animals split instead of bothering with aging.

As for butchering/pulping every zombie you come acoss, you can certainly do that if you want, but is it reasonable? If you’re going to clean out an area to try and live in it makes total sense, but if you’re just trying to get to a gun shop to loot it, are you going to butcher every zombie you come across, or just the ones you have to? Your call.

All the dormant zombies would still have a large impact when entering new areas, giving a lot of differentiation between quiet and loud exploration. You can make noise, but if you do you’ll need to keep moving.

[Fetasajt]

For me zombies were always like this:

-Fighting one or two is no problem
-Fighting a small group is tricky. You have to think where you fight them, you have to use the enviroment or a small weapon a pistol or a pipebomb maybe.
-But fighting a big horde is where the fun comes in. Where no matter how skilled you are in c.q.b. you don’t have a chance no matter how much you’ve cut down. Once you chop ones head of another two step into it’s place. Where you can’t reaload your magnum quickly enough or you run out of arrows. You have to use high grade weaponary military grade weapons, explosives, armored vehicles. Clearing out the town carefully so you don’t ger overwhelmed.

What I’m trying to say is this: I’d much preffer if zombies would stay the same forever but make it so that they are much harder to fight in big hordes. So first you have to go to small towns whit maybe 7-10 buildings in it to get better gear so you can fight bigger hordes. or you can try to sneak into cities but if you alert the horde you are basically fucked. you are probably thinking now that this looks like you are doing linear mission, like “Congratulation you’ve completed the farm now you can advance to the town” but it’s really not like that. Beacause you have so much freedom of how you want to handle the situation. For example you do night raids into the city with an empty backpack and a silent weapon if you have to take out a zombie if it noticed you (this would require the stealth system to be implemented of course) or you could go all guns blazing with your armored semmitruck raming through the hordes stoping only for short times near high value loot like a gun shop or a hospital. This way the good old zombies would be still intresting in the late game. But they wouldn’t become super zombies. In my opinion zombies should be the “lowest grade enemy” for more difficulty we always have the nether creatures and such nonesense. Tell me what you think.

[kevin.granade]

That’s a good point, my proposal isn’t to make most zombies evolve into epic boss battles, just a bit faster, tougher, and stronger as time goes on.

When you start and have a improvised weapon of some kind and no skill, single zombies are pretty easy, especially since you can kite them pretty easily, pairs and larger groups require steadily more work as the numbers increase.

Later on you have a decent weapon and have built up some skills, most zombies will still take a wack or three to take down, whereas if they hadn’t evolved, they’d be one-hits. (unevolved weak zombies will still be mixed in, they’ll go down very easily) Also they prevent a bit more challenge in that while they still move slower than you, if you’re a bit encumbered it might tip in the other direction.

Far down the road, you’ve got really good armor and weaponry and can dispatch ordinary zombies with ease, or even outright ignore some of them if you’re dealing with something more important, but more and more of them are specialized tougher or faster variants, or have special attacks, so you’ll have to deal with the ones that are actually a threat first.

[Fetasajt]

So first there will be ordinary zombies (normal, child, police, soldier and dog) than some would evolve into shockers and such? Also some of the normal ones would get a bit tougher? I like that if it’s the way I think it is…

[Brian_Lefler]

+1 for Dormant zombies. Make 'em grey, so you’d see nearby zombies flare into color as you attract attention.

I always find it the most tense when I have a pack of zombies tailing me and I’m looking for a good place to fight them, so if sleeper zombies created more of that, I’d be thrilled. Possibly the wake-up chance would be small for walking past, but high if they see or hear fighting nearby. So walking through a horde would often attract a handful of zombies but you couldn’t just smack them when they woke up without snowballing. Instead, you’d want to find an empty house or alleyway to lure them into, attracting a bigger and bigger trail of zombies the longer you waited.

How does a persistent world and difficulty-over-time interact, though? If you make a new survivor and the world now taken over by superzombies, you’re going to have a bad time. I guess difficulty-over-time is more important.

[kevin.granade]

How does a persistent world and difficulty-over-time interact, though? If you make a new survivor and the world now taken over by superzombies, you’re going to have a bad time. I guess difficulty-over-time is more important.

That’s a good point, we need to address the new character time warp somehow when we have map content changing like that. Um… I don’t have an answer, and I agree increasing difficulty is the more important concept overall. Possibly this would have an override of some kind in order to allow for the “massively single-player” shared world thing. I can think of a system where each zombie has its progression path predetermined from the start, so we could actually roll their state forward and back as you load them into games at different dates, but… yipes that would complicate the hell out of things… but allow time travel. Will require some heavy-duty thinking.

[GlyphGryph]

KevinGranade - We might also consider spawning new characters in different maps (perhaps adjacent to a map discovered by a previous character). This is an elegant solution to both the problem at hand, and some other problems people have complained about.

When a new map is discovered, it’s ‘time’ difficulty could be based on the time relative to the character discovering it, neatly resolving the issue. A map would only update it’s critters and time processed stuff if the character entering it was older than the last character to enter it, meaning that a map would be ‘frozen’ at a certain difficulty until a sufficiently long lived character decided to go there.

It also fixes the issue of players constantly spawning in the same place, and it means to retrieve their previous stuff they will have to enter an area that is more difficult depending on how far along that previous character was.

Long lived characters would only ever roll an individual map “forward”, essentially, but when creating a new character the immediate area and any newly discovered areas would be based on their current status.

[kevin.granade]

Not a bad solution, possibly with a threshold for how “old” an overmap needs to be before it’s played out, you can play quite a few characters if they only last a week or so, but if you have a really long-lived character you could run into crawl’s ghost problem where the dungeon is crowded with OP enemies of your own creation. Might also have some mechanic to prefer spawning players away from the areas where long-lived players were previously, though that might require excessive bookkeeping.

[GlyphGryph]

Even if the character is short lived, it might be worth creating a new map for them. Even now people “start scum” equivalent simply by creating a bunch of characters with different professions and relying on the game to keep spawning them in the same spot.

The main argument against this sort of approach would be that our underlying code for handling the overmaps is kind of really bad, since (I believe?) they all get loaded and saved whether you ever actually enter them or not, which is why the game crashes for larger maps, instead of just having your local map active.

[kevin.granade]

/technical
It’s not the overmaps that are the problem, but the total number of submaps, overmaps are relatively lightweight and only loaded on demand, but it would also tend to increase the numbers of submaps generated, which would increase emmory load, meaning I really need to make them load on-demand

[Binky]

Back to classic mode - to reiterate, I don’t think anyone would mind zombies becoming faster/stronger versions as long as they don’t get supernatural powers. This would actually be pretty awesome, as the zombies could start off romero and end up 28 days later! As a short cut, could these possibly be added in as late spawning stuff in classic?

[Slax]

Ooze Zombie - Thick, crusty slime covers this zombie. The ooze seems to be moving more than the actual zombie!

Ooze Blob - This abomination seems to be a mass of goo and limbs. The smell is awful!

Natural evolution! The goo’s come out, and it wants more. MORE! MORE!

[wad67]

What about some kind of ultra rare/hyper intelligent “stalker” zombie, It would track the player around and set traps, but never come into conflict with the player, unless the player is severely weakened.

It could also have some kind of distinct lair, full of stuff like corpses and various photo albums, the stalkers would be intelligent enough to steal and horde.

So basically once we get advanced AI, and working NPC’s I can see this being easier to implement.

[John_Candlebury]

I approve of any type of zombie evolution to make the endgame harder as long as it doesn’t implies turning zombies in normal uninfluenced areas into anything resembling a nether creature.

Now zombies in other places turning into nether creatures is fine, i just dont want to stop fighting zombies inside the majority of cities.

[Logrin]

I’ve been skimming this over and I think I have a way to directly tie in areas the player has cleared with the dormant zombies and Macro-Immune response suggestions as well as work a lore-friendly framework for escalating late game difficulty that will not displace vanilla zeds.

As it stands there is allot of zombie pulp out there, vehicle collisions, (S)mashed bodies, butchery–it all adds up. But what if those zombies weren’t so much destroyed as deconstructed?

I suggest that zombies USE zombie pulp to progress into tiered versions of their current ‘class’ in a process I’ll outline further.

The player loots a town, pulps the undead and moves on–this triggers a Macro-Immune response from the Meta-Goo Intelligence so that they migrate towards the sight of the trauma, two things now happen.

1: the traveling player encounters roving pods (herds? murders?) of zeds as they continue to travel
2: A certain percentage of off-map zombies convert available zombie pulp into a meat moss cocoon and become dormant. These sleepers would then be peppered throughout areas where players killed allot of zombies, with active zeds sprinkled in for good measure.

A dormant zombie can be activated by either loud noises, damage or extreme player proximity, but the longer they gestate the more likely they are to hatch as something at the extreme end of a sliding scale of ugly. If left to hatch via the passage of time these rebirthed zombies would then act as any other, populating and migrating as the game dictates.

These new Zeds would come in three flavors, amounting mostly to quality modifiers.

Aborted - These are premature reborn, caused by players interrupting the gestation of newly dormant zombies. Marginally more challenging then standard zeds but a great deal more disgusting.
Fledgling - These would reborn hatched from cocoons that have sat for some time, but managed to be agitated into opening early by external sources ((I.E. the player)). Not to be taken lightly even by an experienced player.
Reborn - Cocoons that have gone through the entirety of their life cycle churn out these foul wretches, intended to be a serious challenge for the late game cyber-mutant.

The following is a quick, preliminary progress path for this suggested form of zombie evolution. At the moment its little more than a bunch of names I think sound cool ((and the inclusion of GlyphGryphs suggested skinwalker.)) I can expand it with descriptions and concept art if you guys actually like it.

Zombie > Aborted Reborn > Fledgling Reborn > Reborn
Zombie Cop > Aborted Sentry > Fledgling Sentry > Reborn Sentry
Shrieker Zombie > Yowling Abortion > Yowling Fledgling > Yowling Reborn
Spitter Zombie > Slavering Abortion > Slavering Fledgling > Slavering Reborn
Shocker Zombie > Aborted Thunderer > Fledgling Thunderer > Reborn Thunderer
Smoker Zombie > Aborted Murker > Fledgling Murker > Reborn Murker
Swimmer Zombie > Amphibious Abortion > Amphibious Fledgling > Amphibious Reborn
Zombie Dog > Aborted Prowler > Fledgling Prowler > Reborn Prowler
Zombie Brute > Savage Abortion > Savage Fledgling > Savage Reborn
Zombie Hulk > Aborted Titan > Fledgling Titan > Reborn Titan
Boomer > Aborted Ground Shaker > Fledgling Ground Shaker > Ground Shaker
Skeleton > Aborted Skinwalker > Fledgling Skinwalker > Skinwalker
Zombie Necromancer > Aborted Tyrant > Fledgling Tyrant > Reborn Tyrant
Zombie Scientist > Aborted Adept > Fledgling Adept > Reborn Adept
Zombie Soldier > Aborted Warmonger > Fledgling Warmonger > Reborn Warmonger
Grabber Zombie > Aborted Throttler > Fledgling Throttler > Reborn Throttler
Master Zombie > Aborted Taskmaster > Fledgling Taskmaster > Reborn Taskmaster
Scarred Zombie > Calloused Abortion > Calloused Fledgling > Calloused Reborn
Child Zombie > Aborted Sprog > Fledgling Sprog > Reborn Sprog
ZomBear > ReBear or Reborn Bruin

In Summary

This suggestion:
*Ensures the player encounters a steady stream of regular zeds via migration
*Seeds new specials in based on how much zombie pulp is available and how long the player neglects dormant zombies.
*Draws from the EXISTING zed pool for a world
*Adds late game challenge without the need for gamey “Because Protagonist” mechanisms.
*Allows players to take actions in game as to avoid or interrupt the spawning of reborn.

*EDIT

I’ve decided to throw in a quick mugshot I doodled of a run of the mill reborn zombie.

They’re basically regular zombies that develop a pseudo-exoskeleton by pushing splintered shards of bone through their sinewy exterior. Lacking a proper skeleton they move about with clumsy twitch athleticism as ooze heavy hemolymph surges though their otherwise hollow interiors like a puppeteer. I’d love if there was a way for them to be really fast but ‘skid’ when changing directions just so there’d be that moment where a survivor barely turns into an alley and gets to hear ten or so pursuing reborn slam into the adjacent wall as they chase him.