Question about Zombie behaviour, need help with the research!

[djkling 5]

Hello all,

I've been trying to catelogue the zombie behaviour since I think it will help people understand them in the mod.

What I'm trying to find out is... do they have specific patters during their walking and searching periods. We all seem to have the aggro figured out, but what about pre-aggro?

I figure some people could call it exploit, but in a real survival situation there would be science minded people who realize if there WERE a virus or other pathogen affecting the central nervous system it would have a finite number of commands it could access. There would be patterns of behaviour.

I have not had the ability to get a pair of binos and a lot of time online to watch, so I'm asking others for their input.

So, when they are searching... do they walk a certain distance? Do they walk only in one direction or is there a search pattern? How often are they exploring their surroundings? What patterns do they exhibit, or do they seem random? Are there differences between the walk/crouch/crawl zeds?

Even the zeds can be overcome with knowledge

[Macenzie 79]

From what I have observerved. They pretty much wander in a random direction from their spawn point, changing direction at random. They also have a tendancy to gravitate towards players, but not all the time.

[djkling 5]

Can we confirm this? Is there some underlying mechanic that gravitates them to players? Is there a truly RANDOM behaviour or just an underlying pattern?

[Shanks (DayZ) 0]

they do seem to gravitate towards players, I've played with a few people who have all said the same thing too

I haven't seen much of a pattern either, it does seem completely random

[Necromunger 7]

Yes I've seen it in a list of updates.

- Zombies will slowly gravitate towards a nearby player

I have noticed recently that zombies have less of a need to stay where they spawned.

Iv seen dear stand military zombies just continue to walk In one direction for ages.

Which can lead to some unfortunate surprises when traveling.

[janivorickard@gmail.com 0]

It seems like they walk around randomly from where they spawn but i've never seen them venture too far, i've never encountered zombies in forests at all, even the ones who spawn at deer stands seem to walk out in the field rather than go into the woods.

They investigate sounds, so they might wander towards a player without being in a high alert mode, don't know how much noise is needed to get them to investigate though but a shot seems to send them sprinting straight away.

[Survivor-Kyle 148]

They are attracted to sound, light, and motion. That's why cans and smoke grenades work. Pop a flare at night and throw it onto the edge of a town. All the zombies will slowly gravitate in that direction.

[djkling 5]

Right but does everyone agree they should not gravitate to players without reason?

As for random... its pretty hard to have truly random behaviour, should be some underlying pattern in there... maybe not predictable, but at least something that they "normally" do

[chickychickson 0]

since i like wandering in the north and i am always pretty much on my own. i noticed the following patterns:

- Zs seem to spawn per player in a certain area. wich makes more Zs in the south and high respawn rate in larger towns.

- i see no more than 8-10 Zs when i have the feeling i am all alone.

- they spawn randomly near buildings in my area and they have the tendency to move slowly towards the buildings in the direction i am coming from / the latest player is or was that made them spawn. which make them look like walking randomly around.

- you can easy slip around them by slowly walking in crouch position. if you have to pass them in less than 15-20m go prone.

- sometimes they change directions randomly, sometimes i feel like i was to close, they heard my steps and turn around in the direction of the sound.

- when there are more than 10 Zs in a certain area, i am on high alert to make contact to another survivor. until now i managed to avoid them in the north.

thats stuff that is predictable for me.

[RpTheHotrod 1]

You can develop random by having chances. Walk in a direction. Every few moments check against a chance to change direction. If the chance passes, then random a number (many methods to do this in programming). Apply directions or angles to different ranges of numbers.

Example:

To make it easy to understand, I'll pick 1 minute for change direction checks and have all numbers "rolled" to be 1-100.

Zombie spawns and begins walking. After a minute, random 100. 1-40 = change direction. 41 - 100 = continue walking. The first minute 71 is hit so he continues. The second minute 23 is hit, so a change of direction is required. Roll 100. Every few numbers (such as 1-12 or something along those lines) is either a forced direction (N, NE, E, etc...) or an direction angle change. (30 degree, 45 degrees, 145 degrees, etc...)

With this, no need to have to manually path zombies. Additionally, as a failsafe, you could add an invisible ring around a zombie spawn where a zombie is forced to turn around once reaching the edge of it. This would keep it the zombies in their "area".

[djkling 5]

I think zombies are confined to a town. As for random, nothing is TRULY random, even random number generators use a formula (usually something involving clock time, etc). But I think the zeds probably have some pattern of behaviour, some people have already made notes of it :)