Zombie Observations

[Publik 404]

I was going to run around today and collect a zombie train to see what a horde looks like. Short answer, you can't. Or more, they're too stupid for it to matter. I did notice a few things though once I had about 9 of them in a pack:

 

1. Zombies very quickly stop sprinting and revert to a slower jog, whereas players can run indefinitely.

2. Zombies can hit other zombies, and will do that frequently in large packs. What's probably happening is that they're doing their lunge/jump attack to hit the player they're chasing, but are too far out to connect, which makes them hit whatever zombies is in front of them.

3. Zombies don't bleed continuously, although they will bleed for a second when hit.

4. Zombies are using a follow behaviour, not a pursuit behaviour.

5. Zombies do not have any sort of flocking behaviour, specifically avoidance. They will stack up with other zombies when packed together.

 

Basically, the zombies are fucking stupid. They're not doing anything other than setting their navigation target to the player's position, and playing an attack when they're close enough. There was a game jam in November or December I participated in. The AI we used for our enemies was basically the same; IE 48hr quality AI. You can solve each of these in the following ways:

 

1. Zombies use the same health system as players, but always have enough food and water to be healthy. This includes the same stamina system, meaning a zombie can always keep up with the player.

2. The lunge attack should take into account player velocity and the direction the player is moving relative to the zombie.

3. See 1, zombies can bleed if hit and can die that way.

4. Change to a pursuit behaviour, where the zombie tries to go to where it thinks the player will be in the next N seconds.

5. Apply some sort of avoidance behaviour so they don't try and stand where other zombies are, or account for other zombies when they navigate.

[csharp 47]

They are way more stupid than they were in the mod. The new path finding is just retarded and i don't see why rocket hyped it so much. If you have 10 zombies following you, you can just run in circles and hit them with melee; they will never catch you. 

 

Also lets say you run in field, straight line until you turn 90° to your left. Zombie doesn't cut the turn, they will run to the point where you were, and then they continue to your new direction. At this point they should make completely new AI or remove them completely.

[Publik 404]

They are way more stupid than they were in the mod. The new path finding is just retarded and i don't see why rocket hyped it so much. If you have 10 zombies following you, you can just run in circles and hit them with melee; they will never catch you. 

 

Also lets say you run in field, straight line until you turn 90° to your left. Zombie doesn't cut the turn, they will run to the point where you were, and then they continue to your new direction. At this point they should make completely new AI or remove them completely.

Yeah, you can tell when the agents update their paths. They could probably ditch pathfinding altogether when the zombies are close to the player, and once line of sight is broken they can queue for a repath.

 

My guess with the pathfinding is that whatever they're using isn't baked yet since they're still working on the map. I'm not really sure what Arma uses for pathfinding, but if it's a navmesh or some sort of A* grid they'd probably need to bake the entire map before it works. It'd be wonderful if they could start sending the updated navigation with each patch instead of just leaving it for later.

[bad_mojo (DayZ) 1204]

Rocket considered releasing the alpha without zombies. So, I think it's safe to say that these current zombies are very placeholder. The models look good, but they're not working as intended. Luckily DayZ isn't strictly a zombie game.