Zombie behavior

[aeinola 25]

Picture yourself in a zombie apocalypse. Forget about DayZ for a while and really picture yourself running from hungry flesh eating zombies. Imagine that for some reason one of the zombies catches you. What do you think it would do? If i give you options to choose from what would it be:

 

1. The zombie would start punching me

2. The zombie would jump attack me (and then starts punching me)

3. The zombie would grab me and try to bite me

4. [something else?]

 

What about crawling zombies? If you walk/run too close from a crawling zombie what would it do?

 

1. The zombie would start punching me

2. The zombie would grab my ankle (probably trip me) and try to bite me

3. [something else?]

 

One more thing. If you are running through a zombie horde and pass few of them too close would you get hit and keep running the same pace or maybe the zombies grab you and you slow down a bit or even stop you completely and you have to fight them off?

 

My biggest concern about standalone is the zombie behavior. It is RIDICULOUS at the moment. Im not talking about animations, timing, clitching, pathfinding or anything like that. Im talking about what the zombies should do to you when they catch up on you. I tried to contact Dean Hall for a numerous times and never got answered about these things. So i decided to start a conversation just about zombie behavior, nothing else. What do you, the players, think about this? In my opinion it would make zombies a lot more dangerous if they grab you, slow you down and basically trap you when two or more zombies hold you down and starts biting your face off while all the rest is approaching as well. Whit this kind of behavior you dont need to make them faster or stronger to make them more dangerous. It would be really hard to just run by a zombie if it can slow you down or even make you stop completely.

 

I dont understand where are these punching zombies coming from? Is this Dean Halls vision of zombies? This ruins the illusion of a zombie apocalypse for me. Even now i think about zombies brake through my door, runs to my chair while im writing this and they stand behind me and starts punching me? Seriously?

 

If you agree with me or have any idea that would make the zombies in DayZ better please share your thoughts here, and maybe standalone developers will read this and wont ruin this beautiful game.

[rossums 2190]

The problem at the moment are just limitations of the Arma engine - it wasn't made for zombies.

SO far in the Standalone the zombies have a full set of proper animations as well as an attack that knocks you down so they can attack you properly.

Edited August 21, 2013 by Rossums

[dgeesio 1034]

first off unknown subject as fictional so

 

zombies wouldnt punch why would a animal punch probably would maul at you in some uncoordinated way due to its function/body/brain state.

 

crawling zombie would probably be slower and wounded ? why is it not walking if not damaged hurt ? probably claw try to grab aimless in hope of getting you.

 

 

as with any game limitations on imagination and time and money always stop most projects from making what we all dream of then we need to realize what is possible and the restraints of what can be done. regadless of engine.

[Statik (DayZ) 2695]

This is not possible with the ArmA 2 Engine. They're completely re-doing zombies in the SA.

[DemonGroover 8836]

I imagine an Infected to behave like a ravenous, rabid psychopath.

 

I suppose they would grab you and drag you to the ground, punching, scratching and biting.  If they indeed do eat people then they wouldnt really be standing there punching you.

[Cap'n (DayZ) 1827]

Let me educate you. First, zombie behavior is limited by the ArmA engine. Second, they aren't undead per se. The zombie virus is very similar to that of 28 Days Later, and while I'm not sure if you watched, the zeds are living people inflicted with a virus that causes them to go mad. Dean was literally using the movie as a reference in the animations dev blog, and the zombie idle animation is very similar to a scene in 28 Days Later. Anyways, these zombies punch you because they are trying to kill you out of pure rage, not in hunger. And we're immune to the virus, btw.

[aeinola 25]

Let me educate you. First, zombie behavior is limited by the ArmA engine. Second, they aren't undead per se. The zombie virus is very similar to that of 28 Days Later, and while I'm not sure if you watched, the zeds are living people inflicted with a virus that causes them to go mad. Dean was literally using the movie as a reference in the animations dev blog, and the zombie idle animation is very similar to a scene in 28 Days Later. Anyways, these zombies punch you because they are trying to kill you out of pure rage, not in hunger. And we're immune to the virus, btw.

Really? Educate me? Please dude...

I know ArmA engine limitations, im talking about standalone. And if they are totally re-building the engine they could work on this issue. Right? It has been time since i watched the 28 days later so i have to see it again. I thought they where "hungry zombies", only faster/raging ones. So if this is true what you say about the zombies, Dean wants them to be raging beasts, not flesh eating zombies then so be it. Im REALLY disappointed, i just have to live with it. Damn you Danny Boyle!!!

[bibbish 49]

The Zoms in 28 days later have the Rage virus and want to punch you and tear your eyes out. They do bite. I believe they eventually starve, not sure if they benefit much from eating you and can't remember if they even try to. 

Edited August 22, 2013 by bibbish

[dgeesio 1034]

zombies wouldnt not punch you !

 

sorry infected or whatever term suits the limitations of the mod ;)

 

also if its a virus the virus would want to get to a new host like in 24 days and the infected or zombies dont want to eat people they do as a virus does and just want to infect spread.

 

so spewing of blood on victims and not biting and just holding. also it would be scratching and clawing at people remember hords or groups of lots of zombies punching is often coordinated.

[aeinola 25]

zombies wouldnt not punch you !

 

sorry infected or whatever term suits the limitations of the mod ;)

I think its exactly like that. You cant do it (or its too hard to implement) and the explanation is "not zombies, just infected people". I do believe Dean Hall is a fan of the infected in 28 days later. I also think if it was easy enough to implement what i have suggested it would have been done already in some form.

[mercules 1290]

Really? Educate me? Please dude...

I know ArmA engine limitations, im talking about standalone. And if they are totally re-building the engine they could work on this issue. Right? It has been time since i watched the 28 days later so i have to see it again. I thought they where "hungry zombies", only faster/raging ones. So if this is true what you say about the zombies, Dean wants them to be raging beasts, not flesh eating zombies then so be it. Im REALLY disappointed, i just have to live with it. Damn you Danny Boyle!!!

 

Night of the Living Dead zombies would be even less of a threat than current DayZ zombies. Sure, we would have to headshot them but they would move so slowly we could easily do so. 

I like the choice of 28 Days Later or Quarantine style zombies where the zombies are not really dead but infected. They are faster and more of a danger and they do tend to strike and smash more than bite. I like that they run at us when alerted and I kill them as quietly as I can from a distance to avoid them running at me because they are NotLD speed when just wandering around and easy to take out, even in large groups. It's when that group is alerted and running at you, that you decide you had better switch to full auto or run like crazy and those moments can get wild. 

[fluxley 2228]

 

 

also if its a virus the virus would want to get to a new host like in 24 days and the infected or zombies dont want to eat people they do as a virus does and just want to infect spread.

 

 

The common cold is a virus, you don't see people involuntarily chasing people to sneeze on them. 

[dgeesio 1034]

The common cold is a virus, you don't see people involuntarily chasing people to sneeze on them. 

talk about splitting hairs !

 

zombies infected ?

 

its all wordmanship to try to not and say we cant do this or that . people dont want to hear we cant do zombies so its called infected that simple.

[aeinola 25]

Night of the Living Dead zombies would be even less of a threat than current DayZ zombies. Sure, we would have to headshot them but they would move so slowly we could easily do so. 

I like the choice of 28 Days Later or Quarantine style zombies where the zombies are not really dead but infected. They are faster and more of a danger and they do tend to strike and smash more than bite. I like that they run at us when alerted and I kill them as quietly as I can from a distance to avoid them running at me because they are NotLD speed when just wandering around and easy to take out, even in large groups. It's when that group is alerted and running at you, that you decide you had better switch to full auto or run like crazy and those moments can get wild. 

Just to be clear, im not saying the zombies should be Romero-slow. The running zombies are fine, works for the game better. Im just saying they should do something else than just stand beside you and punch you like Sugar Ray Leonard... dont you think?

EDIT: Add the grabbing and biting to the arsenal, running raging zombies who grabs you, bite you, punch you would be nice. I think the jump attack was not a good idea, and again im not saying they should not jump attack, it should be randomly rare.

Edited August 22, 2013 by aeinola

[mercules 1290]

Just to be clear, im not saying the zombies should be Romero-slow. The running zombies are fine, works for the game better. Im just saying they should do something else than just stand beside you and punch you like Sugar Ray Leonard... dont you think?

EDIT: Add the grabbing and biting to the arsenal, running raging zombies who grabs you, bite you, punch you would be nice. I think the jump attack was not a good idea, and again im not saying they should not jump attack, it should be randomly rare.

 

I don't know about that. Here is a video showing a Baboon and a Chimpanzee. We are more closely related to the chimps which are apes and notice how the baboon tries to bite but the chimp swings. While apes do grapple and bite our general nature is to strike and swing our arms. The "infected" tend to react in very primitive ways.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERwZwaOUyjs 

So, yes the swinging and striking should remain the main attacks for infected. Notice though, that they have added knock-down attacks to their arsenal and once you are knocked down then the biting and gouging. This seems to fit with limited behaviour. 

The main reason old school zombies grab on and bite is because of the image of flesh eating and hungry undead. Cannibalism is shocking and so monstrous zombies such as Romero style ones were depicted as craving flesh. With that primary focus on shoving something into your mouth to bite it off and swallow of course you get grappling and biting as your primary attacks. The "zombies" in DayZ are based off "Rage" zombies which do not seek to feed but instead lash out at anything and everything around them except other infected(Yeah I don't get that last part either). If they bite it is to rip someone open and for the most part they smash, hit, tackle, beat, pound, crush... you get the picture.

[dgeesio 1034]

thing is people are trying to base zombie or " infected " movement on fiction !

 

haha how can you make realistic on fictional films ? you cant.

 

 

as said infected is used because it suits the engine better and just a buzz word to help .

[aeinola 25]

as said infected is used because it suits the engine better and just a buzz word to help .

This is so true. LOL. :D

 

Thanks for your posts Mercules. I knew all that but needed someone to say it so i can accept these "ridiculous" zombies. ;)

[mercules 1290]

thing is people are trying to base zombie or " infected " movement on fiction !

 

haha how can you make realistic on fictional films ? you cant.

 

 

as said infected is used because it suits the engine better and just a buzz word to help .

 

Ha ha... Yes you can. Given certain exceptions you expect everything else to be realistic. It would RUIN Dawn of the Dead if the people built a lightsaber out of junk they found in the mall and started to slice their way through the zombies Jedi style. It's okay if you don't get it, but a lot of us do get the idea of a "concept book/film/game". What it is is that it assumes that all other normal realistic laws apply EXCEPT for certain concepts, like, "what would happen if an infection swept through a country and left most of the people in a zombie like state?" Which is exactly what DayZ is.

What this means is that in DayZ we expect that if someone falls off a building they will be hurt, likely die, and if nothing else probably break something. In DayZ that happens. We expect to be using realistic weapons and not plasma rifles, grav guns, acid sprayers, 

At the same time there are going to be unrealistic things that we have to suspend for the sake of it being a game. Things like Morphine fixing the state of something like your leg being broken. Sure we should be splinting it and hobbling around for a while, but it would make the game a lost less viable. Stand Alone though... might actually have limping and such in it. 

In the end we TRY and come up with a reasonable facsimile of this concept world which from descriptions is very much modern day, realistic, except a virus has infected people and turned them into what they are. We are immune and trying to just survive. That means where they are not limited by game mechanics they try to make things realistic and in that "setting". 

[dgeesio 1034]

Ha ha... Yes you can. Given certain exceptions you expect everything else to be realistic. It would RUIN Dawn of the Dead if the people built a lightsaber out of junk they found in the mall and started to slice their way through the zombies Jedi style. It's okay if you don't get it, but a lot of us do get the idea of a "concept book/film/game". What it is is that it assumes that all other normal realistic laws apply EXCEPT for certain concepts, like, "what would happen if an infection swept through a country and left most of the people in a zombie like state?" Which is exactly what DayZ is.

What this means is that in DayZ we expect that if someone falls off a building they will be hurt, likely die, and if nothing else probably break something. In DayZ that happens. We expect to be using realistic weapons and not plasma rifles, grav guns, acid sprayers, 

At the same time there are going to be unrealistic things that we have to suspend for the sake of it being a game. Things like Morphine fixing the state of something like your leg being broken. Sure we should be splinting it and hobbling around for a while, but it would make the game a lost less viable. Stand Alone though... might actually have limping and such in it. 

In the end we TRY and come up with a reasonable facsimile of this concept world which from descriptions is very much modern day, realistic, except a virus has infected people and turned them into what they are. We are immune and trying to just survive. That means where they are not limited by game mechanics they try to make things realistic and in that "setting". 

 

 

so cause i dont agree with your op or others i dont get it ?

 

how weak minded. i get the concept i get what people are saying but when you trying to argue dayz is realistic it isnt. its a game. buzz words are used to link the idea of what the creator wants  YOU ! to think is going off becuase they cant do it themselves in the game or mod or whatever. thats why the word or suggestion helps and works.

 

blah blah infected not relistic it cant happen and there has never been a zombie outbreak also all the facts are fictions to back up any zombie or " infected " outbreak similar to zombies.

[mercules 1290]

so cause i dont agree with your op or others i dont get it ?

 

how weak minded. i get the concept i get what people are saying but when you trying to argue dayz is realistic it isnt. its a game. buzz words are used to link the idea of what the creator wants  YOU ! to think is going off becuase they cant do it themselves in the game or mod or whatever. thats why the word or suggestion helps and works.

 

blah blah infected not relistic it cant happen and there has never been a zombie outbreak also all the facts are fictions to back up any zombie or " infected " outbreak similar to zombies.

 

It's not because you don't agree with me that I am saying you don't get it. It is because the words you are using and the ideas you are presenting lead me to the conclusion that you really don't get it. 

Tolkien creates a world of fiction for his books. If someone makes a movie based off his books, which they have, and then has Aragorn's sword able to cut through anything they have just broke the reality of Tolkien's world where Aragorn's sword, while special, is not monomolecular and able to cut through other swords. 

Yes, Zombies are fictional but we can theorize what they could be like and how they might act and react. We can think of ways to bring about "zombies" in this case a virus that causes the person infected to become violent and mindless. There is a virus in real life that does this, it is called Rabies. We can look at rabies infected animal and people and determine how a mutated version of it might cause humans to react. Specifically they become agitated, delirious, refuse to drink or eat,can attack for no apparent reason, and otherwise become mindless. If the virus was engineered to attack more specific parts, to bind with certain proteins common in certain areas of the brain it could create the symptoms we see in DayZ "zombies" where they wander around in a stupor and attack uninfected for no reason, where movement and loud sounds aggravate them. 

Because we as human beings have this ability to reason and develop theories based off evidence and fact we can say that something in a game is a reasonable model for what could or would occure in real life if one little assumption was made. In this case the assumption is that a virus either mutated or engineered causes symptoms X, Y, and Z among those infected, that 2% of the population is immune, and that this world of DayZ is what it would be like to be one of the 2%. From that we can say that cars should not fly, my character should not be able to leap to the top of buildings, and even that Infected that have Symptoms X, Y, and Z should usually do A, B, and C when certain things happen. 

While Rabies patients can often talk and everything else they do get the spastic motions and verbal outbursts the infected in DayZ have. Watch this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZeKR1-0QE0

[aeinola 25]

Mercules, you have explained well the zombie behavior in DayZ. Can you explain why these raging infected people punch and attack you like they had rabies but when you fall down they calm down and starts eating you? If they dont need/want to eat you why they do it when you are knocked down? Im a little confused here...

Edited August 23, 2013 by aeinola

[mercules 1290]

Mercules, you have explained well the zombie behavior in DayZ. Can you explain why these raging infected people punch and attack you like they had rabies but when you fall down they calm down and starts eating you? If they dont need/want to eat you why they do it when you are knocked down? Im a little confused here...

 

So am I. It has been stated the virus in DayZ is similar to the "Rage" virus in "28 Days Later" and "28 Weeks Later". It has been hypothesized that the Rage virus has aspects of Rabies in it but it is supposedly built off the Ebola virus. Hemorrhagic Fever has some symptoms in common with Rabies, specifically headaches, agitation, confusion, seizures, and such. If those symptoms were increased you could end up with reactions very similar to Rabies. Since the infected in "28 Days Later" tend to not eat or drink and will eventually die from that if not from their other symptoms it would stand to reason that those symptoms come from making the Ebola more like Rabies where people gain an aversion to drinking and vomit when they try to eat. 

Now animals infected with Rabies do have a tendency to bite and infect others but for them it is their primary defense. It may be that whomever created the virus found a way to make it a bit more like Toxoplasma which is a protozoan that can only breed in cats but infects rodents. It passes form the cat's feces to rodents and in rodents it travels to the brain and inhibits their fear reactions. Those rodents are then more likely to wander out into areas where cats can find and eat them and thus infect another cat and continue the cycle.

Both Rabies and Ebola cause a form of Encephalitis as does Toxoplasmosis. So we now have all the puzzle pieces to create something that turns humans into something resembling a "Rage" zombie or a "zombie" from Quarantine. 

I may have to go back on something I said earlier. A bit more looking/reading and it seems that people with Rabies may have an urge to bite despite not having the urge to eat. So gnawing on an "Uninfected" might be a very valid option. I still think they will go with their most primitive urge of striking but the biting seems reasonable although eating a person does not. 

So I am confused as to why the DayZ team put that "tear off a chunk of flesh and eat it" animation in. I think in the new animations it is different from some of the motion capture I had seen

Edited August 23, 2013 by Mercules

[aeinola 25]

So I am confused as to why the DayZ team put that "tear off a chunk of flesh and eat it" animation in. I think in the new animations it is different from some of the motion capture I had seen

Well, i think Dean likes the 28 Days Later infected and wants to imitate them, i also think he wants them to be zombies (eating human flesh) but it was impossible to make them act like that because of ArmA2 engine. And the only thing they could add is the eating animation while player is knocked out to the ground and added that. And now they make up these stories about the infected to fit in their limitations. There is no other explanation why they added the eating animation in to the game. If Dean had decided to go with raging infected instead of flesh eating zombies he would have not include that eating animation. All this nonsence about zombies are not zombies, they are infected people started after DayZ become popular. If this is the case, Dean wanted them be 28 Days Later raging infected AND flesh eating zombies at the same time im REALLY mad if he wont do it in the standalone. He had the chance (and still have) with the new engine.

[Bludy 324]

i like how they hit you now..like crazy butterflies

[SebWoofer 0]

i like how they hit you now..like crazy butterflies

 

This is by far the best comment in this whole post.

Why are you people debating which zombie types were used as a model for their behavior in DayZ.

Can't we all agree they're waaaaaay too twitchy?

I would like them to stop zigzagging and jumping up and down whenever they attack... It's impossible to shoot something that's basically teleporting itself around you! I'm fine with whatever type of zombie Dean Hall wishes to have in DayZ, as long as it has a reasonable behavior that doesn't compromise the playability of the game.

 

EDIT: I joined this forum specifically because I had this in mind for a while. I hope this makes sense to the developers, if they even read this.

Edited August 28, 2013 by SebWoofer