graliv 1 Posted October 22, 2014 Hi just wanted to think in text, regarding DayZ Zombie (infected) behavior, this is not a suggestion, just observation and potential improvements Dormant Zombies are always awake and do not sleep, standing in one place for extended periods of time would not be natural behavior, there could be many natural triggers in an environment, mouse,cat,bird etc assuming that prime motivation for attack is food, which biologically would be an essential requirement, some instinct must dictate that other undead are not good food, otherwise zombies would attack each other to extinction. Therefore, a zombie would patrol, in coding terms this would require mapping of immediate environment and setting way points around obstacles even to the extent of passing into open doors, at any point a zombie may stop for an indeterminate length of time and then move on, and could even become permanently static. This would improve realism and also create a less certain environment for the player as sight lines and hearing distance would change. Triggering Zombies will trigger on movement or sound relating to potential food sources, so non stealthy movement in eye line or on hearing footfall, in the later case in theory zombies could trigger zombies and then return to dormant on recognition of non viable food source (another zombie) or if unable to acquire target by sight (IE player hides/stops moving) if no sight is gained zombie listens actively for a period of time before going dormant and returning to start point. On a positive identification of viable prey, the chase is on! Hunting Zombies emit a hunting call that triggers any other zombie that hears it. Hunting Simply put its a straight line of sight chase. Limited predictive behavior is inherent to the nature of the reanimated, on loss of sight, (building/ bushes) the zombie will continue in a straight line for 30 seconds, unless it also can hear breathing/footfalls, at which point it stops and attempts to reacquire, via hearing/sight, and will back track to point of last contact looking and listening. In theory on total loss of prey randomly 3 minutes the zombie could slowly return to starting point, which would add another element to play as other players could encounter returning zombies, which would make zombie behavior less static. I won't bore you with anything else, as stated just working through some thoughts these were better in my head. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DemonGroover 8836 Posted October 22, 2014 Nice. The only thing to consider is the zombies are not reanimated corpses but psychotic infected humans. They could climb ladders in the mod for instance. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
graliv 1 Posted October 22, 2014 (edited) @DemonGroover, yep good point. I love the potential for an AR (Artificial Reality) environment, that could be created in DayZ. I'm an ancient RPGer (pencil and paper et al) and can see possibilities of in a few years (keeping in mind whats going on at Twitch.tv) where we could actually have environments to explore or to watch others explore, that will create a "believable" experience. Just imagine: A fully interactive AR environment, with photographic quality experiences, where a community can participate in a "Zombie" outbreak, alien invasion or natural disaster. Create a persona, build relationships with your neighbors, then something happens, you don't know what its going to be just an event in real time. So you sign up (pay ya bucks) and commit to two hours an evening for 6 weeks. It could be commented on, watched by thousands, big brother style. Its going to happen and DayZ may be part of the start of the genre (or maybe Sims was, whatever). An exciting decade ahead in gaming..... Edited October 22, 2014 by graliv Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
