meganoth

Yes, but you are now moving the goal posts. This is why it is so important to define the circumstances of the zombie plague. Only then can others assess if they agree or disagree. But to continue: With adding the flu you added a new highly superior ability to the virus. In reality viruses are rather simple, they don't even count as a lifeform if I'm not mistaken. Making people into zombies is already a tall order for a virus, assuming it also can hide as a flu is a miracle on top of a miracle. Adding enough miracle-like-abilities to a virus is nine tenth of the way to make it invincible. Unless you postulate some glaring weakness into it as well the world is simply done for, social fatigue or not.

Exactly. I would really really like to see the report on fox news where a self-proclaimed "scientist" explains that all the humans eating other humans in the videos are just having a harmless form of rabies 😉

A problem with shadows-off and gamma settings is that not surprisingly bright surfaces in daylight are too bright. I might turn down contrast, but I'm playing on a TV screen and for everything else contrast is fine. Oh, I have an idea for early game light source: There could be glow-sticks you can throw into rooms, cheap enough to work in early game, expensive enough you don't throw them everywhere

One question I just discussed with a friend is that light now makes such a big difference, seemingly much more than noise. That is fine concerning lights in the room, but if Uncle Al is right that helmet lights **automatically** make you fail those checks there is a problem for stealthers in practice: What do you do if your monitor is showing pitch black in many rooms? I play with shadows completely off because on my PC shadows produce huge FPS spikes. So rooms have usually more ambient light than default and I still need helmet lights in many rooms. I played with shadows on and there the light level is even worse. Whether you see anything depends not only on the game though, but also on your monitor, the light level in the room you are playing in shining on that monitor, your eyesight. External factors so to speak. The only in-game remedy to this is are the night-vision-googles, a late-game boost. What can I do before that though? Maybe there needs to be some tier 1 NVG that don't work well or a dimmed down head lamp that does not illuminate much but also does give you a chance to stealth. In practice I seem to remember I used headlamps and have still had sleeping zombies in rooms. Uncle Al, maybe you are wrong about the auto-fail of headlamps?

And handcuffed to a bed that zombie would still be a manageable danger. Call the terminator with the spear. Yes, this is simplifying what would be extreme measures in a harsh and dangerous world. But as long as humanity can keep the zombies at low numbers. Sure they will try to gain more wealth and power. Who said anything against that. But what does that have to do with the topic? Covid made a few companies and rich people massively richer. And poor countries got the short straw. But concerning Covid, essentially it worked, the whole world put up new rules, ran around with masks and slowly got vaccinated. With the wealthy doing their own thing. What YOU are forgetting is that when civilization brakes down the rich may have the best chances to survive, sure, but they can't fly to Acapulco for a vacation anymore, go to the best doctor to get their face lifted or buy the newest yacht. They are as interested in an intact civilization as you are.

A fixed M60 might be too powerful for an automatic system and is not fundamentaly different to the auto-SMG, just more damage. Lockpicks working on doors would involve lots of redesign of the dungeonstyle POIs. Too much for such a small feature,

The more you kill who? Zombies killing humans become zombies in all zombie apokalypes. and humans killing zombies can't generate zombies or they would be indestructible. So you must mean humans killing humans. That is a very "traditional" approach as it is similar to death rising from the graves but with a virus. But knowledge of that fact would be a big deterrent to wars or murders as self-preservation kicks in. At least most murders would involve destroying the brain as all but the insane murderers are still interested in society working. That leaves largely death by accident/sickness/age. The counter-strategy to these problems are again segmentation, production of lots of handcuffs and zombie-safe doors and rooms for patients and old people. Accidents are not predictable so there would still be the need for everyone to always be prepared for small outbreaks and carry a weapon (melee as not everyone can be given firearms and fire arms are too dangerous to generate accidents aka friendly fire). People with dangerous jobs would be given remote heart rate monitors and eventually (if modern electronics production survives) everyone would carry one.

All successfull zombie apocalypses work wonders as a cure to practically all other diseases, maybe with the exception of nail fungus 😉 Oh, and I have to wonder at what time the virus mutated? It sounds like it mutated a while after being used to vaccinate a lot of the population, but then it is inexplainable why a high percentage of the virus **distributed** aka isolated over the human population all mutated the same to result in zombies. Mutation is by definition a random change in the DNA of the virus, really really random. The required change must be enough base changes away to not occur immediately (in a host every single base change occurs multiple times a day) as the vaccination would be stopped immediately after the first cases of zombieness. But it must still lead to the same result in a sizable percentage of the population. Just consider Covid as an example, a new mutation family like Omikron always starts from a single place and fights itself to the top by infection. It doesn't happen (to my knowledge) that the same mutation just happens everywhere in the world at the same time.

Sounds like an interesting concept to pile surprise on surprise. Another book someone just told me about explained the zombie virus as alien-made to first infect 1/3rd of the population in a first phase, then switch to an activated state. With this construct he explained how the zombies could get to be in masses right from the start.

In what way is it an interesting take?

You try again to prove stuff by just listing a few examples. But I can list controversial stuff that is NOT horror: Nudity in games or movies, women as lead figures in action movies before the 90ties(?), nazi symbols in german movies. And I can list horror that is NOT controversial: Many ghost stories. And by that I'm showing that controversial is neither required nor indication of horror. Though if we just talk about indications often found in horror, then you are correct. But it isn't a neccessary ingredient at all. (I'm sure I could do the same with edgy, but this word has so many meanings that we first would have to define it)

By chance I saw a report yesterday on TV about ways to be successful on youtube, and one trick mentioned was to add mistakes, in this case mispronounced words, to generate discussion. Really. 🥴 Imagine all the deep philosophical discussion generated by saying "fooltime job" and searching for glue!! 😉

I agree with most of what you said, though saying "long incubation" period and then saying "go bad in a hurry" does not gel. Essentially the more we stay in traditional zombie lore the less likely the spread is. Most zombie movies have a very short incubation interval (you get bitten, you turn in seconds to overnight. Definitely most zombie movies (except maybe the atypical "The girl with all the talents") have no virus transmission over air, unless you get bitten you don't turn. Transmission over air is fundamentally different and easier for transmission than getting bitten by a raving lunatic. Whatever you say clinic personel is not THAT dumb that they won't notice people going mad, biting other people and those other people getting mad after some time. Practically one or two of such events might be misinterpreted but not 20 and not the following generations of infected, at which time the zombie population would be still very very far from masses of zombies running through the streets. And then the news would immediately travel around the world, mass panic included, but everyone would know and the zombies and infected combined would still be a few 100 (with any incubation period that would allow world wide distribution at the same time). And that is my central point: In most conditions that conform to zombie lore as seen in movies everyone in the world will know everything important about zombies before the zombies reach a significant percentage of the population. Either because they turn so fast that they stay localized to few cities or because their incubation time is too long and they need weeks and months to get to apocalyptic numbers. As you say a long incubation makes it possible for the disease to distribute and maybe even get confused with rabies at the first few incidents, but it also means that increasing zombie population takes longer and gives humanity weeks or even months to notice and react and most importantly slow down the infection rate before it reaches the steep part of the hyperbolic curve. Lunatic people that bite other people are very conspicuous and not even 1 in 100 clinic personel will confuse zombieness with rabies when the zombie is eating the brains of his victim on the hospital floor. You talk about mutation, but look at Covid. It mutates to get around the auto-imun system, but it still makes you cough, it doesn't suddenly transfer itself to the liver or makes your stomach hurt. Covid has a mass of symptoms but they essentially stayed the same over all mutations. The incubation period as well did not change fundamentally. You could invent a new zombie virus that makes new zombies not act differently or just compel them to recite Shakespeare, but how would it transmit itself then from those normal acting people that don't bite?

Covid is highly contagious over the air and almost impossible to contain. But it also was not out to eradicate civilization, just a danger to overwhelm healthcare systems. Whether you agree with the measures taken or not, we came through with our economy and society largely intact. The response was appropriate to the danger presented. one could say. Initial response was slow but so was the spread, it took months for the disease to really take off and it was easily confusable with any number of other diseases like flu. I would imagine a zombie outbreak would have much more in common with a terrorist attack than Covid, if you look at the speed of response and the attention given to it. A zombie desease that would transmit over the air AND make people mindless biters as well would be almost impossible to stop and (again depending on other circumstances) only survivable after much of the population went away and the rest is segregated into small units, if at all. One necessary condition would be that there is a way to avoid contagion over air (gas mask, filter masks, only fresh air...). But that wasn't what you asked and would make make boring movies anyway.

I think I only assume that the military will try out many dump and some working strategies and as long as communication still works in the rest of the world the working strategies will survive together with the people enacting the working strategies. The military can be as dump as you want it to be as long as you accept that they have the ability to learn. The more time people have to prepare the better their response to anything will be and there are practical solutions to many of the dangers of a zombie apocalypse. And the fact is that the spread of the decease depends on many factors. A nerdy guy throwing a pathogen on a whole city for example would definitely doom that city for sure, but the interesting question is how much time the rest of the world, especially on other continents, have after that to devise counter measures. The incubation period of many days means the desease will be transmitted to other countries and continents by travellers but in those other cities and continents the zombie polulation starts at a very small number! While the news about the origin city and neighboring cities makes the rounds and people hear a lot about what works and what not. An incubation period of zero on the other hand would doom that city immediately, but would almost surely prevent the disease to spread fast or go abroad as zombies don't fly planes or drive vehicles. I guarantee you that a few days after such an outbreak people will not present easy targets for zombies anymore. They will be barricaded in their houses, walk around with two leather jackets and football helmets on, a weapon in hand. And I seriously doubt that many of the movie conditions allow for zombies to be more numerous than humans after a few days. Then the question becomes two-fold: Do the zombies run around single or group up? In the first case they can be picked off even by civilians, in the latter case air strikes of such groups become possible and effective (or simply driving through that mass with a tank for an hour). Sure, it will be a bloody and difficult "war", but a realistic spread of the disease is not fast enough to immediately create the situation of a few survivors against millions of zombies.

Again, unless you define exactly the circumstances of the outbreak I can't say whether and in what way your scenario is likely to happen or not. For example whether the outbreak happens in a specific place from a virus or worldwide because the dead rise makes a huge difference in how the zombification spreads and how the world would react to it and I don't want to list different objections for all the different cases. An incubation period of days with a virus means the disease would spread around worldwide but on the other hand would slow down the turnover of cities to weeks and months. What exactly happens in the mean time depends on many details.

From the description it seems the change is just power attack instead of throw and a little more damage. Maybe a crit damage bonus for headshots or just a general increase of the base damage. In that case the spear would be in effect a club where more range is traded for less stopping power. That is surely a good change because the throw just did not work out well, but also a bit sad that the spear is not different enough, does not allow new tactics. One idea I just had was that the spear (power?) attack could have had a swipe, a sideways push for a zombie. That would be useful standing in doors, as the zombie would have to get in front of the door again, or in horde nights where you could push zombies from small ledges. But that feature would have needed lots more animations work.

I'll cal you Ironeater Matt from now on

You are again lightly stepping over the phase were a single or a few zombies turn into millions. Even in a crowded city that takes time. Time to prepare in many many ways, and not everyone in power is an idiot and people learn from mistakes done by others. And in the time it takes for the zombies to take over the city people would find out from the first failed attempts that sending in troops does not stop it. Once this information gets around the next step will be isolation, segmentation and/or establishing safe zones. But to get into detail we would need to know which type of zombie you are speaking about. Is the cause a virus or simply every death? Incubation time? Running or shambling? Iron-eating? .... For any mass of zombies that can't breach concrete for example there are lots of buildings that can be fortified so they can't get in in any number. Put some soldiers with flame throwers and enough gasoline in such a building and let them make noise and they will be able to draw and mass kill the zombies we know from many movies. Not wait for the large masses of people to be generated. What happened between the time this mass was generated but did not flee the city while the military was creating useless checkpoints? There is something wrong with the timing here. A checkpoint only makes sense if the military put a wall around a city, that takes months. Why would the people in the city stay there for months?

Do you know what "irony" means?

Ok, Brutus means spears. 7 is the number of books, so it is about the Spear Hunter book series, and book 5 increases the attack speed by 10%. Seems to be a nerf of that book. Good change, spears were OP 😁

But what most people also fail to realize is that the first days of a zombie apocalypse are either not shown in movies or shown as occuring all over the word at the same time with not a second to prepare. But in most conditions (slow zombies, zombies without ability to breach metal barriers, outbreak at a single place in the world) the spread of the zombie apocalypse would probably be too slow for the zombies to reach immediately the masses that make them invincible. And that gives humans the time to prepare. In movies often the army is easily overrun by zombies. Unprotected soldiers are sent into fully infected cities to stand in the open street and shoot at a mass of zombies coming at them. What idiot would do this infighting when the city is already totally converted? How much bullets and tank fuel does a typical army camp have? I don't know but I bet it would be enough to kill millions of zombies if they stay functional and organized and operate from a defensible position. I am not saying you can't construct conditions that make the zombie apocalypse possible, but almost all zombie movies show conditions and results that just don't fit.

Both doesn't sound right. I'm playing with 3 others and I am usually crouched. Our bases for the first bloodmoons are almost always roofs with no access for zombies. All zombies banging on walls should therefore be in destruction mode (100% chance), all zombies running up should be targeting one of us randomly (supposedly still giving me a 3/4th chance). Later horde bases often have access ways so I should get 3/4th chance again). But I'm observing only occaisonally a stealth hit. Though I'm a horrible observer, especially with some text that is shown for a short time outside my center vision. A possible explanation that fits the observations: Maybe zombies can "see" multiple persons at the same time and their sensing for persons who are not their direct target is not unlimited but some finite but very high value similar to feral sense.

7D2D: A lot of corpses? After I killed them, yes. Check Strange Voices? Trader Rekt. Check Controversial Stuff? Perk system. Check Dark? At Night. Check Depressing? Trader Jen seems only interested in my money. Check Weak and lonely? Good description of a stealth player. Check Meet a person and he dies? Check check and check for hundreds of them. 😉 Nobody says that 7D2D is or has as much horror as the Forest. But come on, if you ever have played the Forest as often as you have 7D2D you won't find any strange places anymore or won't know what to expect. 7D2D is a department store of genres, it has something of everything and nothing at max.

as "Superheroes" you have for example: Iron Man, Dr. Strange, Batman. Compare these heroes with Wonder Woman. Then compare Wonder Woman and Emma Woodhouse. as "Mammal" you have for example: dog, cow, horse. Compare those mammals with a whale. Then compare the whale with a shark. 😉 So what?