Mod zombies vs SA zombies

[zombieland78 42]

Ok, must choose words carefully on this. The basic gist is that there are fundamental differences between the mod zombies and the SA zombies.

 

Let us rule out bugs as a differentiating factor and focus on style and application. Because whenever I bring up the issue of the old vs the new, everyone raves about how bad the old zombies were but only in the context of bugs etc.

 

That being said I was never hit through a floor once from a mod zombie. And even today the new ones can hit through walls and at large distances. But that's not the focus here.

 

The focus here is on animations, textures, speed and behaviour. I personally believe that the mod zombies trump the SA zombies on each of those fronts. Here's why:

 

Animations

I played some mod yesterday. I ended up backed into the far end of a military barracks (the long ones with the little corridor). Zombies come lumbering in with that trademark sway. Very creepy and unsettling. It conveys that the human is very sick, unlike the almost camp and pointless gate of the SA zombies. They literally walk like an old person going to the shops rather than someone possessed by a sick and violent virus.

 

Speed

Fast out in the open, slow indoors. Big debate here. Forget about the usual debate and let's focus on game mechanics. Combine good animation with numbers and behaviour and having a larger number of slow zombies indoors, while you try to take care of them, aiming, missing, they're getting closer, your gunfire is drawing more and more. Very tense, very good game mechanics. And let's talk about behaviour while on that note...

 

Behaviour

So in my example above in the barracks, it combined all of these points in one great experience, including behaviour - it was VERY clear that with every gunshot, there was a scream, followed by another zombie or two. Awesome. Just think about how that shapes gameplay. It's quite immediate. I think they even spawn in for gun-fire. You have a situation that is quite common, where your back is against the wall, the zombies are coming forward, ignoring any shots that don't make the head, and shit gets tense!

But behaviour shouldn't just stop here. Why don't zombies bang on/damage doors/barricades (once decent door barricading is in)? Why don't they grab you? why do they sort of gently swipe at you in between doing the little old lady shuffle? Not remotely scary or intimidating. Often it's just annoying. 

 

Textures/appearance

Finally, let's talk about textures (and to some degree models). Here's your typical zombie face from the mod. Really grim and inhuman. I really find them to be quite disturbing and along with the great sounds, I often find myself trying to get away from them because of just feeling uncomfortable around them, which is a very necessary aspect to a zombie.

 

 

and another...

 

 

New zombies

 

Here's a typical SA zombie:

 

 

And here's another:

 

 

 

You can see that there's no focus on fear or intimidation here. They're just designed to look a bit unwell, even slightly sad. In fact, I'd say the above one just looks like a normal dude with a skin condition. Great quality model/textures though, in this there is no debate. 

 

Here's an example of a zombie design for Rust:

 

 

Not sure if this is in the game (as the image above is from an old article) but it also goes in the right direction of looking unpleasant and scary etc. although I think that the zombies that made it into rust are likely very poor in quality.

 

So in conclusion. I know we'll never see such attention given to the SA zombies but just hope we can do something in a mod of SA. Hell, I'd even be happy to reinstate the old zombies models/animations in a future SA mod!

 

 

 

[star-lord252 83]

Zombies arent zombies there more of just rabid humans but way more intence. And if you like the zombies from the mod so much just play the mod there working on zombies intensly just so they can add them and they won't be clunky like in the old days and run threw stuff. Besides the zombies in my opinion need more sounds.

[Baker. 1484]

they won't be clunky like in the old days and run threw stuff. 

Knock wood they accomplish this as they are markedly more clunky then they were in the mod, the SA zombies run through far more map objects than any mod zombie

 

Zombies arent zombies

And here I though the Z stood for zombies. 

http://www.zombiecommand.com/zombies/viral-zombie-survival-series/

[zombieland78 42]

Since SA, I've always thought the dev team regretted the day they added that 'Z'. Because it's pretty obvious they don't want zombies in the game. It's so so funny that pretty much all dayz players don't like zombies and are in it for the guns. I've seen this countless times. 

[Whyherro123 2283]

Nah, the mod zombies look like total ass.

 

No disease makes the eyes of a human being change color like that. Change to bloodshoot, due to leaking eye capillaries, maybe, but not fucking glowing yellow.

 

Oh, and I like how the police-zombie has necrotic flesh, yet his uniform jacket is fucking spotless, neatly pressed with tie and all. Hell, his cap stayed on his head, for the length of time it took for his skin to necroticize like that. Ridiculous.

 

At least the Standalone "infected" (pro-tip, they aren't zombies) look like people that, you know, actually got sick. Stains on the clothes, rumpled appearance, men haven't shaved in a couple of days/ women haven't combed their hair. Hell, the image you link to above, and the "old man" zombie, makes the most sense of all of them. What, exactly, are you going to be wearing if you are at home, sick? Not much.

 

-Animations: The mod zombies had good animations? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 

-Speed: "shambling" zombies are only a threat because the protagonists of the movies they are in are idiots. I find zombies shuffling slllllooooowwwwwllllyyyy in your direction to be rather funny.

 

-Behavior: The "zombies" in Day Z are actually anything but. They are still living people, with all the strengths and weaknesses that implies. A living person can be killed with a shot basically anywhere on the body, headshots are not necessary. Conversely, human beings are capable of taking amazing amount of punishment, as well as feats of strength. Go piss off a methed-up tweaker, take a beating at their hands, and see how you feel afterwards. How many reports are there on the news about tweakers charging cops, hopped up on PCP, and not.going down, even with multiple shots to center mass? Sure, they die, eventually, as they bleed out, but until they die, they have plenty of enough time to beat your ass to the pavement.

 

Finally, smack your hand against a door. Do it for a couple of minutes. Hurts, doesn't it? That is most likely why the "infected" don't do things like that. They are animalistic, not stupid. As for why they don't "grab you", probably because 1) the engine can't handle it and 2) there isn't a grappling system in the game, hell, there is barely a melee system. 

 

Finally, grab a friend, have them lift their arms above their head, and let them drop them onto your shoulders. Hurts, doesn't it? Now have them do that with the minimum amount of force. Or, let them slap you around the head, shoulders, forehead and temples a bit. (Don't actually let them do that). Now, imagine if 1) they weren't your friend and 2) they were attacking you in an animalistic fury, such a fury where they have diminished pain senses, and where their body is full of adrenaline. You would be dead.

[sneakydudes 278]

The mod is different then the standalone. As they are redoing a completely new system because of limits. I understand your looking for differences in both.

 

I haven't played the dayz mod but i am going to assume its scripted in by dean originally and uses animations and skins. Very close to what we are doing in Exile and Epoch right now.

 

SA in defense is re creating a totally new rag doll system, and there will be many things different, and changes down the road.

 

You have to review the Dayz Mod and review what they are doing in Dayz SA before trying to compare them against each other. The mod is completed a while ago, and being worked on as they go. The SA is not completed yet and is a totally new system.

 

I also believe since its being done from scratch they don't want to duplicate it like the dayz mod. Most of which the limits of the existing arma 2. I could be completely wrong here on some of the facts since i haven't really looked at the code for dayz mod.

 

another reason to have more

https://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/229971-found-this-article-on-collision-preventing/

 

Helps address those issues, which i know will be fixed down the road.

Edited November 6, 2015 by TheSneakyDude

[star-lord252 83]

Knock wood they accomplish this as they are markedly more clunky then they were in the mod, the SA zombies run through far more map objects than any mod zombie

And here I though the Z stood for zombies.

http://www.zombiecommand.com/zombies/viral-zombie-survival-series/

lol I say there zombies and people say there not zombies and I say there not zombies and they are zombies ugh this is more annoying than this day I had on exp with this clan that shot everyone but I wrecked two and couldn't beat the third guy(it was a squad of three people in each coastal city) apparently that new gas mask is op. Mod zombies I kinda never understood they felt like zombies but at the same time didn't they like stopped in place and stood turned for a second then just kept running but that my opinion. Edited November 6, 2015 by DaNic2553

[blackberrygoo 1416]

Meh. Stop being so damn nostalgic for the dayz mod ... It's dead and gone and will remain dead , stop looking in the past and know when beta hits all these crappy zombie issues will go away .

[gannon46 788]

Only thing i like about the mod zeds compared to the SA ones are the numbers and the amount of damage they would do like infect and bleeding. You have to keep in mind the zeds now aren't done i think when they are finished they will be better and this conversation will be come rather humorous. 

[IMT 3190]

First of all, what is the logic and realism behind zombies just keep spawning and spawning. It isn't even fun to be honest. I have been sitting in a building shooting and shooting zombies in the mod until I didn't had any ammo. There were more than 30 of them on the floor and they still kept coming. They kept coming and coming in a small town with 6 houses. Where is the logic in this?

Second, spawning zombies where players are is not a good way. You look with your binoculars and see zombies "hey, there is a player down there".

Third, what the hell, why would they even slow down when you are inside of an house? It doesn't even make any sense. It's like "oh there is an house here, I better should slow down".

Fourth, killing them is a pain in the ass. Shooting them attracts more and more and they just will keep coming. Melee is hard because it takes a lot of pain to get your hatchet or what ever out. And the most annoying of all is that you can't melee with your fists. Without any weapon you're basically doomed and can only run away.

As people already explained above, the things what everyone calls zombies are actually infected. They are infected with a disease which makes them like blood thirsty zombies. But, they don't have any supernatural powers, like normal people they can be killed on every part of their body and can even be crippled if you shoot them in the legs.

In the mod I didn't want to go anywhere near loot because there would be zombies anyway. In the standalone I go to places but always watch my ass. This is an huge difference, the zombies in the mod don't actually add something, they only annoy you.

Keep in mind that the infected in the standalone are far from finished. As developement progresses (specially in beta) they will change.

[OnionOfShame 138]

And here I though the Z stood for zombies.

http://www.zombiecommand.com/zombies/viral-zombie-survival-series/

The Z actually doesn't stand for zombie. It stands for zero, making the name of the game Day Zero (i.e. the first day of your survival).

[igor-vk 909]

SA zombies/infected are terrible at the moment! And they dont improve at all over time. Early in alpha we had jumping zombies, we had hoping zombies. Now all zombies look like copy/paste of one zombie. If you spent some time fighting them they all want to stand in same exact point compared to you and sometimes they have syncronised movement. They all have same atack animation at exact same moment. They also sometimes run in same position. There are no new zombie models in game since old farmer zombie (I didnt see him since .52 or something like that)...

Im very disapointed, almost no impruvements since introduction of navmesh. 

Why zombies dont break trough doors? Maybe not imidiatly, maybe after 5-6 minutes. Or 10 minutes if you locked the door. Why they cant climb ladders yet?

I had high hopes when devs anounced they will bring "Z" back in DayZ. 

[Whyherro123 2283]

SA zombies/infected are terrible at the moment! And they dont improve at all over time. Early in alpha we had jumping zombies, we had hoping zombies. Now all zombies look like copy/paste of one zombie. If you spent some time fighting them they all want to stand in same exact point compared to you and sometimes they have syncronised movement. They all have same atack animation at exact same moment. They also sometimes run in same position. There are no new zombie models in game since old farmer zombie (I didnt see him since .52 or something like that)...

Im very disapointed, almost no impruvements since introduction of navmesh. 

Why zombies dont break trough doors? Maybe not imidiatly, maybe after 5-6 minutes. Or 10 minutes if you locked the door. Why they cant climb ladders yet?

I had high hopes when devs anounced they will bring "Z" back in DayZ. 

 

Fuck me....

 

GO break through a door using only your fists. Go ahead, I'll wait.  See how long it takes, and see what kind of shape your hands are in afterwards.

 

Or, wait until you have a fever, a really good one, 104+ degrees, the fevers where you aren't sure if you are awake or dreaming, and try to climb a ladder. Me, I can barely walk when I get that sick, much less sprint and beat someone to death.

 

Oh, and they aren't "zombies"

[igor-vk 909]

 

"GO break through a door using only your fists. Go ahead, I'll wait.  See how long it takes, and see what kind of shape your hands are in afterwards." - maybe first two or three give up but third or fourth eventualy break doors. Or they break trough simply with mass of all of them pressed against doors.

 

"the fevers where you aren't sure if you are awake or dreaming, and try to climb a ladder." - I think even retarted monkeys can climb ladders, why wouldnt blood thirsty rabied humans?

 

"Oh, and they aren't "zombies" " - oh, 97% of players call them zombies

[IMT 3190]

"GO break through a door using only your fists. Go ahead, I'll wait.  See how long it takes, and see what kind of shape your hands are in afterwards." - maybe first two or three give up but third or fourth eventualy break doors. Or they break trough simply with mass of all of them pressed against doors.

 

"the fevers where you aren't sure if you are awake or dreaming, and try to climb a ladder." - I think even retarted monkeys can climb ladders, why wouldnt blood thirsty rabied humans?

 

"Oh, and they aren't "zombies" " - oh, 97% of players call them zombies

I don't know where you exactly live but trust me, the doors here in The Netherlands can not be broken with your fists without breaking your hands. :lol:

And yes, everyone calls them zombies, even the developers but they aren't actually. I used the word infected for a long time now but since 0.59 I switched back again. It's weird calling them infected while everyone just says zombies. :P

Edited November 6, 2015 by IMT

[igor-vk 909]

I don't know where you exactly live but trust me, the doors here in The Netherlands can not be broken with your fists without breaking your hands. :lol:

 

I never ment breaking trough with fists. Did you ever saw people charging at doors with shoulders? There are plenty of old or thin or just crappy doors all over Chernarus. Especialy on old houses, wooden houses, pistol houses, shacks... Best and almost unbreakable doors would be on industrials shacks and workshops. 

 

Edit: they are not DEAD DECOMPOSING zombies, but they sure lost most of their brain functions and sanity.

Edited November 6, 2015 by igor-vk

[IMT 3190]

I never ment breaking trough with fists. Did you ever saw people charging at doors with shoulders? There are plenty of old or thin or just crappy doors all over Chernarus. Especialy on old houses, wooden houses, pistol houses, shacks... Best and almost unbreakable doors would be on industrials shacks and workshops. 

 

Edit: they are not DEAD DECOMPOSING zombies, but they sure lost most of their brain functions and sanity.

I agree but we need to also think about the fun factor. Being unable to loot anything in the game because all the infected can follow me everywhere I go just takes out the fun. You should be able to lock them out somehow or lock them up somehow so that you can loot around a bit.

Unless they make improvised weapons more important I would say that you can keep zombies out of the houses by closing doors. Which is hard if you're getting chased, trust me, it takes training.

[igor-vk 909]

I agree but we need to also think about the fun factor. Being unable to loot anything in the game because all the infected can follow me everywhere I go just takes out the fun. You should be able to lock them out somehow or lock them up somehow so that you can loot around a bit.

 

You run in house nad close doors, quickly look for loot and/or bandage wounds, reload weapon...that takes 2-3 minutes. Lets make doors last five minutes... Enough time to catch breath and escate on back exit.

Why not there be situations when you have to stop looting and run out of town because you aggroed zombies? 

[Deathlove 2280]

I agree but we need to also think about the fun factor. Being unable to loot anything in the game because all the infected can follow me everywhere I go just takes out the fun. You should be able to lock them out somehow or lock them up somehow so that you can loot around a bit.

Unless they make improvised weapons more important I would say that you can keep zombies out of the houses by closing doors. Which is hard if you're getting chased, trust me, it takes training.

Well to be honest I think Dayz needs the Blood Suckers for that bit of intelligent variety ppl want without making the infected in general to smart. The Blood Suckers have there own mutation going on allowing them to be much much smarter. They have an inbuilt predator stealth tech as well due to the nature of there mutation.

 

 

[pilgrim* 3513]

Since SA, I've always thought the dev team regretted the day they added that 'Z'. Because it's pretty obvious they don't want zombies in the game. It's so so funny that pretty much all dayz players don't like zombies and are in it for the guns. I've seen this countless times. 

 

  This is because ATM there are very few zombies and mega-heaps of guns

  IMO

 

I agree with OP zombieland78's breakdown 100% on zombie gameplay in the Mod.

Also, he does not mention stealthing around zombies, which was another important element in the zombie-gameplay mix

Some players find them too easy, too badly animated and predictable, with bad tracking,  But all-in-all they are a very good constant part of the vanilla game. They contribute GREATLY to DayZ Mod.

 

I disagree that zombies will never be good in DayZ SA: Experiments and tests are going on. BI have specialist zombie high-grade freak-nerd expert techno folk ON it. I can "sense" them.

 

A mix of good AI for SOME zombies, plus low-level (Mod-type) zombie actions for OTHER zombies, could make an exciting mix with enough unpredictability AND enough zombies to be always important in the SA game.

= without overloading the limited and small-scale server-side instances the game runs on =

 

Obviously 40-60 (even 100?)  players occupying a single instance on 1 whole dedicated physical server, would mean a huge processing 'space' free for ALL kinds of real time zombie activity.

But this is not how the game is set up. So the problem is to fit in zombie activity inside what a present-day SA instance can do (ie - several games running at once, all sharing space/time/processing power on 1 physical server). 'Plenty of guns' littered around do NOT take up much processor time, but each zombie takes up much much more.

 

xx

Edited November 6, 2015 by pilgrim

[IMT 3190]

You run in house nad close doors, quickly look for loot and/or bandage wounds, reload weapon...that takes 2-3 minutes. Lets make doors last five minutes... Enough time to catch breath and escate on back exit.

Why not there be situations when you have to stop looting and run out of town because you aggroed zombies?

That gives a fair chance yeah.

Well to be honest I think Dayz needs the Blood Suckers for that bit of intelligent variety ppl want without making the infected in general to smart. The Blood Suckers have there own mutation going on allowing them to be much much smarter. They have an inbuilt predator stealth tech as well due to the nature of there mutation.

 

 

No, most certainly not. This would be game breaking for me if they add this to the vanilla game. Let modders do these things. There is no thing which can turn humans in these super creatures. They shouldn't be even in the games or movies unless they didn't come from an human.

[Deathlove 2280]

That gives a fair chance yeah.

No, most certainly not. This would be game breaking for me if they add this to the vanilla game. Let modders do these things. There is no thing which can turn humans in these super creatures. They shouldn't be even in the games or movies unless they didn't come from an human.

To be fair that same kind of thinking could be used for zombies and infected in general. Than you would have nothing but a clone of Rust or any other zombieless survival game.

 

And if you weren't paying attention they can be killed they have to uncloak in order to perform killing attacks. However to make it easier on ppl they could have a much much more detailed outline in stealth mode to make them more trackable. You probably could also light up flares and glow sticks to uncloak there positions as well.

 

Im pretty sure if the Dayz developers didn't like the ideas of these in the mod they probably would have pulled the plug on it a long time ago. Thats only a hunch though really.

[Deathlove 2280]

  

 

 

Once the AI is tweaked enough im hopping the stealth system makes a big come back. Its one of the big things that made encounters with large groups of infected so intense in general.

[zombieland78 42]

in-dev or no, improve eventually or no, the SA zombies will NEVER be scary. In fact, vanilla DayZ will NEVER be scary. It's a game designed, partially or maybe primarily to market guns for gun manufacturers (I have some proof/evidence of this, not just pulling it out of my ass - the DayZ dev team have to liaise with the arms manufacturers as part of their job description. Although maybe this is just because they don't want their guns badly represented, but I've never heard of that being a thing before in games ).

 

hence why I'm going to hold out for a mod.

Edited November 6, 2015 by zombieland78

[Deathlove 2280]

It's a game designed, partially or maybe primarily to market guns for gun manufacturers (I have some proof/evidence of this, not just pulling it out of my ass - the DayZ dev team have to liaise with the arms manufacturers as part of their job description. 

 

If thats the case where the FUCK is my Sigsauer 556 or XI at?! 8(

 

LOL