This is too ♥♥♥♥ing awesome

[Hollowprime]

The youtube algorithms popped this on my feed:

 

 

I know it's a lot to ask and the game currently needs some balance fixes.

 

But just imagine it for a second. A19, Introducing the horde update. Because size matters.

• Now up to one thousand twenty four (unpaid) zombie actors . If your machine can handle it we have placed a slider that allows your game to feel more like a zombie apocalypse and less like a run in the park.
  
• Zombie hordes are roaming the lands! The more zombies you add the more you'll encounter in the wastes. Just beware of the big roads and the cities.
  

 

That's it. That's all it would take to make the next patch huge in every sense of the word .

The devs could also add variety like horror movies where random zombie hordes block the roads. Where cities are the most infected places on earth.

 

Just imagine what kind of mega structures players will have to create to avoid being overrun by hordes of zombies .

[Viktoriusiii]

sorry wont ever work. Its voxel... it has major backdraws when it comes to pathing... this will never happen. If we can get 20 on screen at once that will probably be the limit.

[Scyris]

The fact the world is fully desctrutable and the AI knows this and exploits this means the calculations are much more complex, the AI has to calculate if it'd be faster to bust thru to get to you or go around the long way, this also can be updated in real time like if you were to block off the path it was using, it'd then caculate a new one. Now if the ground and buildings weren't destrictable it'd be much easier to get more on at once since there would usually be only 1 way in.

[Hollowprime]

sorry wont ever work. Its voxel... it has major backdraws when it comes to pathing... this will never happen. If we can get 20 on screen at once that will probably be the limit.

 

I know, but I've played a little bit of "they are billions". Iirc the max size in that game is twenty thousand and they have ok animations (but work on a 2D space).

I think the devs mentioned they would have to pay for a better zombie AI actor implementation or they'd have to make one themselves since the one provided by default by Unity was so limiting.

Given where the game is now I don't think it's impossible to improve the max number of zombies dramatically .

[Morloc]

It's a nice dream, and I share the premise, but I've heard the word "impossible" bandied around enough with regards to more zombies and the current engine. Perhaps....a few years down the road, it'll be time for a new engine, and maybe there'll be hope

 

 

-Morloc

[Jugginator]

I've always wanted to make a tiny, minimalistic world/mod just for those sorts of purposes, intense near constant hordes with tons and tons of zombies in it. Kinda like a "how long can you go?" thing. Perhaps minimizing the world/etc down would grant enough memory and cpu space to add more.

[HungryZombie]

I have played mods that spawn massive amounts of zombies and at least on my computer in single player the game works fine. It's not a matter that it can't be done I think, but they don't want to have to make it run well on a networked game with 8 players.

[Scyris]

I have played mods that spawn massive amounts of zombies and at least on my computer in single player the game works fine. It's not a matter that it can't be done I think, but they don't want to have to make it run well on a networked game with 8 players.

 

This is most likely what it is, be to hard to get it to work in multiplayer.

[Laz Man]

Is the max alive ceiling variable hard coded or can it be modified higher? Be cool to see someone in SP with a beefy rig run an insanely high max alive horde night.

[Ghostlight]

That said, there used to a LOT more zombies in earlier alphas. I remember being afraid of entering cities because there would be like dozens wandering the streets, and Dogs everywhere. This was probably a14, maybe a15. Those were the days.

[Scyris]

That said, there used to a LOT more zombies in earlier alphas. I remember being afraid of entering cities because there would be like dozens wandering the streets, and Dogs everywhere. This was probably a14, maybe a15. Those were the days.

 

Back in those days cities had infinite spawning zombies, you killed a pack another would spawn, you were basically looting the city while running from a horde of never ending zombies. Back when the main city was the one in the center of the map. It was also always in the wasteland biome so dogs and cops were everywhere even early game back in that alpha, and yeah I think it was a15, as the hub city went away in a16.

[Whorhay]

I remember wandering hordes maxed out around 250 zombies and you could see a large portion of them on screen at one time. The game can definitely handle many zombies at once. The restrictions on numbers came in when they started implementing UMA zombies because they were far more resource intensive to have on screen. When the UMA zombies went away they never brought back the massive hordes.

[theFlu]

I've never seen those massive hordes myself, started just a little late for them, but I'm going to assume their AI was pretty much:

"turn towards player"

"walk / run"

"if colliding on something, hit it"

 

..

 

Damnit, I might prefer that. (mostly kidding, but ... )

[Ghostlight]

It was very fun. And back then zombie kills didn't deliver the bulk of your exp, it was LBD so slowly improved weapon skills (which maxed at 100 points for each weapon category).

[Whorhay]

I've never seen those massive hordes myself, started just a little late for them, but I'm going to assume their AI was pretty much:

"turn towards player"

"walk / run"

"if colliding on something, hit it"

 

..

 

Damnit, I might prefer that. (mostly kidding, but ... )

 

The thing is they don't need each AI to have some massive branching algorithm.

1. Plot the path for the closest zombie, and start that zombie moving. Assign this path as a working route.

2. Take the next closest zombie. If it is arbitrarily close to the first zombie, or one of the way points for the existing route then simply have it follow that same route from its current position. If it falls outside of the arbitrary limits then start calculating it's own route until that path either ends at the player or intersects with an existing route.

3 and every step afterwards. Repeat step 2 with the next closest zombie.

 

Don't throw out the already calculated routes, so that when a new zombie spawns it can pick from the existing routes the one that suites it best and start following it. At any one time you would probably need at most 8 such routes. Having each zombie individually calculating a path every time is just silly.