Zombie

Zombies

Zombies are the game's biggest threat, the once human citizens of Muldraugh roam Knox County in the thousands. They have an insatiable hunger for human flesh and will not hesitate to kill.

Zombie Mechanics

Spawning

In the beginning of the game, Zombies heavily populate the west side of Muldraugh and thin out from there throughout the town. Wilderness is more or less considered a "safe zone" from zombies. However, the player will find much less in terms of supplies.

This is to simulate where most citizens would have died/would have been at the time of turning.

Pathfinding

Zombies have a default sight range of 20 tiles ahead of them. If a target is visible in that 20 tile area ahead of the zombie, the zombie will navigate towards the target. When a target is behind a zombie, that sight range is greatly reduced. However, there is a random chance that a zombie may track a target that they cannot see by "smelling" the target. Once the target is within a few tiles from the zombie, the zombie will stop pathfinding and will "lunge" at the target. If a zombie hears a sound that's in range of them (and is the relative loudest sound they hear from their position) they will head to a random point within 50% of the range of the sound.

Zombies will prioritize their pathfinding needs. The sight of human flesh will always be first priority- both the flesh of the player or a NPC.

Movement and Horde Behavior

Horde Movement

The zombies in the game are traditional and shamble, but newly-turned zombies move faster. Zombies are attracted to noise, bright light (particularly from a flashlight or fire), and the sight of humans.

Zombies prioritize sight first, then noise, and will shamble around according to prioritization.

At times, helicopters flying overhead, or gunshots fired in the distance will attract and move hordes of zombies. This is zombies reacting to the metagame, so that there is always a dynamic feel and threat.

Although dangerous, it will be possible to use zombies to your favor when dealing with NPCs such as setting up traps for them, or using them as a distraction.

Combat and Damage

Zombies fight by coming up close to the player and then extends its arms. Damages from zombies can result in three ways: bites, scratches, and "punches". Bites are the rarest, but have a 96% chance to infect you, so you obviously want to be careful so you can avoid getting a festering bite. Scratches are quite frequent, but they only have 25% chance to infect you, but they are still very dangerous even so. "Punches" are just wounds that do not break through skin, and having the thick skinned perk can help you turn the more dangerous bites and scratches into less dangerous "punches". Punches do not have a chance of infection, and when you hover over the status bar of the body part, it will only say "slight damage", without anything underneath. Unlike bites and scratches, "punches" do not require bandaging or first aid of any kind, just some time to heal and some minor pain that can be dealt with by utilizing pain killers.

Zombies are also able to deal "door damage". Although they deal relatively little damage (individually 0.02 or so damage every 2 seconds), they can deal a good amount of damage if left alone for a long time or if in larger groups. Zombies banging on doors will attract other zombies, and it will convince them to bang on doors/windows or just mill around until something happens (if there are already too many zombies banging). Luckily, there is a small chance NPCs and players can dissuade the zombies by staying absolutely silent for a good amount of time, but that can be pretty hard when one needs to walk around the structure.

As of 0.2.0R RC1, there are combat animations that were previously absent in any version older that alpha 0.2.0q.

Infection

Humans (the player and the NPCs) who get too close to zombies may be bitten, scratched, or otherwise injured. Bites have a 96% change of infection, and scratches have 25%, but both are very dangerous. When a character is infected sick moodle appears to verify it, and the moodle's intensity will slowly increase, until the character has a full blown fever. However, the sick moodle can also happen because the character ate raw or rotten foods or out of the blue. When this happens, there will be no zombification, and the moodle will usually go away by itself with rest and by being well fed, and won't be of much harm to the character except decreased abilities for a small amount of time.