Remove radius spawns, impliment 'zone spawns'

[Xianyu 820]

This is a suggestion designed to reduce the impact of 'meta' gaming. Gaining knowledge on your opponents through use of knowledge that you don't gain from the game, per se.

I'm talking about zombie spawning.

What do you look for when you want to know if a player is nearby? Zombies. You don't look for the people themselves, because where there are players, there are zombies. Where there are no players, there are no zombies.

I suggest doing away with this completely to give the game a real sense of immersion. And an ability to stealth through a town without being seen.

You get within 200 metres or so of something, and it spawns zombies. This sucks balls. Anyone who sees those zombies knows that a player is nearby. Especially so for those who know what they're doing.

What I'm suggestion, is zone spawns.

Say you run near Kamenka. There would be an invisible 'zone' around Kamenka restricted mainly to line-of-sight, and anyone in this zone spawns zombies. So, when you look at Kamenka, there are zombies there. Because you're within the 'line of site zone'. That way, you'd never know if a player was in Kamenka. Why? Because whenever you can see Kamenka, there's zombies there.

Major cities could be split into 2-3 zones. Like, say, Cherno east, Cherno west, and Cherno north. Any players in these zones would cause zombies to spawn ALL OVER those zones. So anyone looking at Cherno from any distance would ALWAYS see zombies in Cherno. This goes for all installations.

The zones themselves would exist within about a 500 metre radius, I assume. And any further out from the zone that has line of sight. Like, say, the hill overlooking the power station at Elektro.

Of course, in the big, open cities, like Berezino, this could cause lag with zombies, but two people at different points in Berezino can put themselves in places to spawn zombies across the board.

Zone spawns would add an insane amount of immersion, for the following reasons:

Zombies wouldn't despawn as fast. they would 'wander' naturally into the wooded area's surrounding the cities.

You'll never know if a player is in the area by looking for zombies. You'll only be able to look for bodies or the players themselves to seek players.

Sniper rifles will become actual anti-zombie weapons, because zombies will spawn OUTSIDE of their effective sound range. The M107 will never be fired at zombies comfortably. Why? Because zombies spawn within 200 metres. They hear an M107 at 450.

The world will come alive. Zombies won't just appear out of thin air when you enter a new region. They'll be there, waiting for you. A veritable HORDE of them.

The actual number of zombies will increase, and the choice of weaponry will have a larger impact on your game. This is two-fold. There will be more zombies to kill, and because more zombies are spawned at once, if you fire that dinner bell, you're going to attract a LOT MORE zombies than you would now.

Planning a route through the zombies would become more important, as would teamwork/communication. zombies won't just be a fringe threat. They'll be EVERYWHERE. Their locations will also be more 'organic', because they wouldn't have spawned in as you got close and be congregated at the loot points they spawned at. They'd be literally everywhere, because they would wander from point to point long before you got close.

Zone spawns would allow 'zone pacification'. Say, a team of people in Cherno starts eliminating zombies. They might reduce the zombie count in Cherno by a significant amount, and because the zombies are spawned by ZONE, they wouldn't respawn immediately, thereby making cherno 'safer' for the time being.

Course, this would take a fuckload of coding. But it'd remove the biggest single element of cheap 'meta' gaming. I see people complaining about ghosting and server hopping (And I've done it myself) but I've not seen a single bitch thread about the single most broken mechanic in the game. Think about it. You probably don't even realise just how dependant you are on the game-breaking zombie cues. Imagine if you had to literally check every corner when wandering through Cherno because you never knew if someone was there?

Removal of it will make this game a thousand times more immersive and scary, both because of zombies and because you will have no 'zombie cue' to tell you when a survivor is nearby, and especially, when a survivor is far away.

This suggestion if borderline for Arma 2 DayZ, but more for the standalone. Not sure if the servers would have a bitch fit with zone spawning.

[Steiyn 6]

The engine couldn't handle it and the servers are costing hundreds of dollars a month to run, what you are suggesting could cost thousands to run a 40 player server, nice in theory but not in practice im afraid.

[tsandrey 379]

I think that Zombies spawning in large distances would cause lagg.

[Mister Motivational 24]

Seems like a great idea, you're probably right it's geared more toward standalone but certainly an idea worth supporting.

[wombraider 20]

Although I am interested in how this could work out I am curious how this is any different than the 200m zone every player creates. All it would do is tether more zombies to the players(Goodbye FPS). Either way you know when players are near.

[Xianyu 820]

Although I am interested in how this could work out I am curious how this is any different than the 200m zone every player creates. All it would do is tether more zombies to the players(Goodbye FPS). Either way you know when players are near.

No you won't. The zones I'm talking about are literally LINE OF SIGHT. Which means, if you're in a position to LOOK AT AN AREA, then you've already spawned the zombies there. If you're in a position to see a deer stand from 700 metres away, you just spawned zombies there. That way, no matter what you looked at, you see zombies.

Now, how will you tell where other players are if you always see zombies when you look at buildings?

[Steiyn 6]

No you won't. The zones I'm talking about are literally LINE OF SIGHT. Which means, if you're in a position to LOOK AT AN AREA, then you've already spawned the zombies there. If you're in a position to see a deer stand from 700 metres away, you just spawned zombies there. That way, no matter what you looked at, you see zombies.

Now, how will you tell where other players are if you always see zombies when you look at buildings?

What you are saying is awesome, but its nearly impossible to do.

[Xianyu 820]

What you are saying is awesome, but its nearly impossible to do.

Not impossible. Just time consuming. Right now, the zombies are tethered to proximity. Zone spawns would be the exact same thing, really. Except each object that spawns zombies would have to have its own seperate 'zone'. You'd simply program the zone to a set 500 metres for each object, and then go through each object, one by one, and manually extend the zones out to line-of-sight.

Time consuming as FUCK, but not impossible.

Edited August 9, 2012 by Xianyu

[CLewis 31]

I like it. Don't know if it's doable.

[jefe4life 42]

Meh/....

Edited August 9, 2012 by jefe4life

[grezvany13 56]

Right now the spawn system of DayZ is based on 2 things:

1) area of where zombies are allowed to spawn

2) area which triggers the zombies to spawn

The first area, spawn locations, are fixed and placed around buildings and "hot spots" like deer stands. This area has a radius (like 20m) and the number of zombies to spawn (like 3 per area).

The second area, the trigger, is connected to the spawn area, is roughly 300m and the center is the same as the spawn area.

Now, when a player walks into a trigger area it will make the zombies spawn. On high density locations, like large cities, you're walking through multiple trigger areas and therfor spawn multiple zombies at the same time.

In this topic I saw 2 different suggestions, which I'll explain by the above method:

1) creating a larger trigger area connected to a large spawn area. (zone spawning)

This might be a good idea, however will most likely cause a lag spike every time someone hits a trigger area, since it will spawn a lot of zombies at the same time.

2) creating a trigger based on Line-of-Sight.

This is simply not possible with the current engine. The triggers are simple true/false switches which checks if a player is around. And even when the devs manage to create LOF-triggers, it will cause lag spikes when someone on high ground is turning 360 degrees and therfor spawning everything he/she might be able to see.

The best solution to prevent zombie scouting is by increasing the size of the trigger areas, or manually resize them for each locations (in cities very small, in open fields very large, etc).

[Xianyu 820]

Right now the spawn system of DayZ is based on 2 things:

1) area of where zombies are allowed to spawn

2) area which triggers the zombies to spawn

The first area, spawn locations, are fixed and placed around buildings and "hot spots" like deer stands. This area has a radius (like 20m) and the number of zombies to spawn (like 3 per area).

The second area, the trigger, is connected to the spawn area, is roughly 300m and the center is the same as the spawn area.

Now, when a player walks into a trigger area it will make the zombies spawn. On high density locations, like large cities, you're walking through multiple trigger areas and therfor spawn multiple zombies at the same time.

In this topic I saw 2 different suggestions, which I'll explain by the above method:

1) creating a larger trigger area connected to a large spawn area. (zone spawning)

This might be a good idea, however will most likely cause a lag spike every time someone hits a trigger area, since it will spawn a lot of zombies at the same time.

2) creating a trigger based on Line-of-Sight.

This is simply not possible with the current engine. The triggers are simple true/false switches which checks if a player is around. And even when the devs manage to create LOF-triggers, it will cause lag spikes when someone on high ground is turning 360 degrees and therfor spawning everything he/she might be able to see.

The best solution to prevent zombie scouting is by increasing the size of the trigger areas, or manually resize them for each locations (in cities very small, in open fields very large, etc).

That's why I said it would be time consuming. Each 'zone' would have to be extended to the line of sight for that spawn location, manually. A 'line of sight' zombie spawning system would be hard to code and would likely cause massive problems.

I'm just talking about spawn zones that are extended manually out to line of sight. So if you can see it, it's got zombies.

[Addep 1]

This can be done if the engine supports Ray-Tracing, then it would be easy.