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[v41] DAY OF THE LEAD

This mod introduces a red crosshair that lays over the iso cursor, and shrinks when standing still, to indicate your aim stabilizing, shamelessly stolen from inspired by Deus Ex. Standing still for long enough will guarantee a successful hit. If you wait further, a third crosshair marker will appear, improving your critical chance.
Without any aiming skill whatsoever, it will take a long time to get a good shot off, but as you improve the delays get shorter and shorter, allowing you to take on larger amounts of zombies.

A video demonstration



I've been somewhat unsatisfied with the state of guns. Compared to melee weapons, they come with quite significant drawbacks. Ammo for them is generally limited, and when you decide to expend it, you have to anticipate attracting every zombie around you. Neither actually bother me, it feels very appropriate for the kind of game that PZ is, and I could put up with it, if guns actually felt like they were worth their trouble.

The dice rolling style of shooting mechanics make the process of killing zombies extremely cumbersome, unreliable and slow for the first few levels. Many shots will miss, many more will not do amazing damage, all while your ammo is steadily drained all the same. At some point you feel more like playing a slot machine than shooting a gun. Even worse, you only gain XP if you actually manage to hit and kill zombies, the many misses along the way do not net such progress.

All these overlapping factors made me never want to bother with guns much at all, and that's a huge shame. There are mods out there already to just increase accuracy and damage of guns overall, but to me that doesn't feel like a real solution to my gripes.
The primary aim of this mod is to fundamentally mitigate the RNG and make guns more viable to use in the early game, while still underlining that guns are something that take practice and skill to use well.


To get some more feedback about when a shot is going to connect, you should consider enabling Aim Outlines for ranged weapons in your options. When the outline appears around a zombie, you will know that it is within range and can be aimed at, otherwise you should save your shot.

I would also suggest disabling offline UI rendering. It will render the UI in better resolution and smoother, which is especially important for the UI cursor that the mod adds. With offline rendering, it might lag behind your iso cursor, which can look ugly and jarring.

This mod also changes how XP is rewarded. Instead of only rewarding successful hits on a zombie, any shot that has been aimed at a zombie will net a reward. The rate of XP has also generally been increased.

The range of gun shot noises has been severly nerfed exclusively in multiplayer for some reason, this mod allows restoring it back to what it is in SP.

Both of these changes are modular and can be disabled if so desired.

I'm happy to hear how well or badly the mod affects your game. I haven't given the mod a proper long term test myself yet, so I'm fairly certain the balance is going to be subject to change at one point or another.

Workshop ID: 2811445439
Mod ID: DayOfTheLead_AimXPTweak
Mod ID: DayOfTheLead_Main
Mod ID: DayOfTheLead_MPNoiseFix