Project Zomboid

Project Zomboid

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More Zombie Behavior
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1.089 MB
6 Mar, 2024 @ 11:06am
14 Jun @ 7:11am
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More Zombie Behavior

Description
More Zombie Behavior
This mod adds multiple behaviors for zombies with the intent to make the game more difficult. By default all behaviors are turned on, but each one of them can be turned off by means of a sandbox option.

New in v2
  1. Boids / Flocking behavior
  2. Random distribution of behaviors

Boids / Flocking

While moving, zombies take other nearby zombies into account and will display flocking behavior. Which aims to simulate zombie herds more "realistically" by having them spread out and walk in the same general direction. This should also prevent zombie conga lines from forming while a group is chasing you.

For more information on boids: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boids

This feature is still in active development.
There are flocking-adjecent behaviors which are not yet done, such as a wander behavior.
Performance can still be improved. There is a system in place to dynamically scale down the amount of flocking calculations. But it might not be enough for some setups.
And there is an issue where zombies can get stuck against a wall.
These things will be adressed in later updates.

Random distribution of behaviors
Every behavior (except boid behavior) can be given to a random amount of zombies. By setting the sandbox setting to the value "random", the percentage of zombies can be specified with another sandbox setting in a separate tab.

Behaviors
  1. Boids / Flocking
  2. Intercept during chase
  3. Speed up during chase
  4. Move during attack
  5. No bump
  6. No burn damage

This mod techically works in multiplayer, as it throws no errors. But extra jank may occur when zombies switch targets, such as moonwalking to the switched target.

Intercept during chase
Zombies will take the player's velocity into account when chasing and intercept them. Instead of walking to the player's current position which results in zombies lagging behind the player.
This behavior is togglable for the WalkTowards and Lunge state, because this is an extension of an earlier mod I made.

This behavior intends to make it more difficult to casually walk past zombies.

Speed up during chase
Zombies will slowly speed up, over 5 minutes by default, to 1.5 their base speed, but this is adjustable with a sandbox option. Knocking a zombie down will reset this speed boost.
The maximum speedboost should be faster than the default player walking speed.

This behavior intends to make it more difficult to fight zombies in the open over longer periods of time.

There is now also the option to slow down zombies instead, mostly intended to be used with sprinters.

Technical details:
Where possible this speed up is done by means of speeding up the animation. However the game does not immediately detect animation speed changing, only when a state changes. Therefore there is a backup implementation that just increases the velocity of the movement. So this can look a bit weird if it takes a long time for a state change to happen.

Move during attack
Zombies will move with about the same speed as a lunge during the attack animation. This also uses the speed up behavior if it's turned on.

This behavior intends to make it more difficult to casually walk past zombies

No bump
When you run into a zombie, it transitions into a state where it is stunned for a short duration. When this behavior is turned on, this only happens when the zombie is hit from behind. Instead the zombie is free to immediately attempt an attack, similair to earlier builds of Zomboid.

This behavior intends to make running through a horde of zombies more difficult

No burn damage
Zombies are immune to fire damage, but will eventually stop burning after a random amount of time.
This ensures that fire is only detrimental to the player and cannot be used to kill zombies.


Compatibilities
Mod
Compatibility
Bandits
42 only
Wandering Zombies
yes
Starving Zombies
assumed yes, did not test it myself
Definitive Zombies
yes
The Walking Dead shamblers
Reported to work
Melee Ragdoll
Possible desync with local splitscreen

Workshop ID: 3174295288
Mod ID: Morry-MoreZombieBehavior
Mod ID: Morry-MoreZombieBehavior-v2
Popular Discussions View All (1)
1
12 Mar, 2024 @ 4:23pm
Compatiblity + Enabling during game
TheMan
63 Comments
Morry  [author] 29 Jun @ 1:53am 
@Kaoeutsu I looked into it and I forgot that I never added the compatibility with bandits for B41. So it's only compatible in B42.

I added a table with earlier mentioned compatibilities from the comments section to the mod description. So there's a proper place to check compatibility
Morry  [author] 28 Jun @ 12:55am 
@Kaoeutsu Thank you for the report, I will try to reproduce the issue when I have time
Deathburger195 27 Jun @ 10:02pm 
I can confirm they work together! And the zombies slower actually mitigates the sliding to almost unnoticeable,
Deathburger195 25 Jun @ 10:54pm 
I want to use this with "The walking Dead shamblers" mod. Which makes the zombies slower and not lunge, do you know if there is a way they would clash? Or what order i should put them in?
Kaoeutsu 25 Jun @ 6:55pm 
NOT compatible with Bandits, at least not with Bandits V2 in B41 which was the version I tested. Bandits will move weirdly and not attack players and other zombies.
Morry  [author] 17 Jun @ 12:14pm 
@Ryan It's explicitly made compatible with bandits, I assume week one works the same.
Wandering zombies should be compatible
Starving zombies has the same author and probably works similarly, so I assume it is ok. But I haven't explicitly looked at the code

Incompatibilities will most likely occur with mods that also change animations of zombies
Ryan 17 Jun @ 7:41am 
@Morry any incompatibilities? is it fully compatible with starving zombies, wandering zombies & week one mod?
Morry  [author] 7 Jun @ 3:57am 
@SIMBAproduz
The sliding you describe happens because I cannot use the current movement system, because the game overrides my inputs in most zombie states. So instead I use an older method that moves zombies without taking rotation into account.

The "sliding" technically happens always whenever the mod changes any movement, but probably is most noticable when zombies are nearby. For now the best suggestion I have for you is to turn off both "Intercept" behaviors in the sandbox options. This should reduce the sliding significantly

I have requested a fix for overridden movement. But whether it gets fixed and when I don't know.
In the future, given that it isn't fixed already, I will look into making an optional java mod to fix it.
SIMBAproduz 7 Jun @ 1:30am 
The idea behind this mod is great, especially when it comes to the way the zombies spread out and no longer form those "drops". But unfortunately, what allows this also ends up breaking the experience for me. The way the zombies move by sliding when I'm close to them made it impossible for me to keep this mod active for very long. But I really appreciate the work you've done so far, really. If you'll allow me to make a suggestion, I don't know if it would be possible, but if the mod's effect only worked for zombies that were at least 5 to 10 tiles away from the player? Would that "solve" my issue? I wouldn't want to make the game as complicated as the idea here is. I would just like to have a slightly more organic and less predictable movement of the zombies, focusing on a more cinematic gameplay that isn't as overwhelming as you propose, with a sandbox option.
Morry  [author] 2 Jun @ 1:35pm 
@Illtor
I managed to reproduce the invisible zombies, but it doesn't seem to happen consistently. I'm not familiar how the split-screen works but it might be some kind of desync.

I moved all server files to the client for v2, as multiplayer doesn't exist in b42 atm anyway.
I'm not sure if this fixes the issue, but it's the only thing I can think of which might be the problem. Assuming this mod is is the cause of the issue