Variety of zombie looks

[CheSco9]

(my english is bad, sorry in advance) I had a stray thought today about you adding variety to zombies without working hard rendering new individual ones. There is a term in Half Life Alyx (Half life 2, ep 1, ep 2) called "bodygroups". From my understanding it's a plethora of segmented parts for models (face, hair, clothes, armor, etc.) that are combined together randomly to create one-of-a-kind model of NPC. What if it can be implemented in a simple form in 7DTD? Like, for example, dyed colors of zombie clothes, hair, the "fresh" or "extra rotten/beat up" look. I understand that you, The Fun Pimps, have a lot of work to do, but please, at least hear me out. Thank you.

Edited March 30, 2021 by CheSco9 (see edit history)

[Matt115]

On 3/30/2021 at 9:32 PM, CheSco9 said:

(my english is bad, sorry in advance) I had a stray thought today about you adding variety to zombies without working hard rendering new individual ones. There is a term in Half Life Alyx (Half life 2, ep 1, ep 2) called "bodygroups". From my understanding it's a plethora of segmented parts for models (face, hair, clothes, armor, etc.) that are combined together randomly to create one-of-a-kind model of NPC. What if it can be implemented in a simple form in 7DTD? Like, for example, dyed colors of zombie clothes, hair, the "fresh" or "extra rotten/beat up" look. I understand that you, The Fun Pimps, have a lot of work to do, but please, at least hear me out. Thank you.

I posted about that in Developer diary and i support this idea but it wasn't working that in hl2 , it was in l4d1. In l4d2 before the last upadte "colours " was  connected with light (complicated}. It can be done but it will be time consuming. No one want to see a fat hawaii with arllene head right? + i postuled to added more variouse like studnets in high school , riot police , bandits , wild (for example  16 yo barefoot fiber clothes girl with wounds) zombie . But it just need time 

[Crater Creator]

I want to upvote this post a hundred times. 

 

Procedural variation is already used to great effect to generate the worlds.  An artist can spend a long time crafting the perfect looking nurse zombie or lumberjack zombie or what have you, but no matter how good one looks by itself, it's not going to look good when every nurse is an exact clone of every other nurse.

 

Every player, new and old, gets a whole passel of zombies every horde night.  Plus, they only see a limited subset of zombie types at any given gamestage.  So it's practically unavoidable that the game will spawn more than one zombie of the same type.  And when there's only one model per type, there's no diversity.  All cops are fat, all nurses are female, all businessmen have pale complexions, etc.  It's not a good look, even in the literal  sense.  And since, obviously, an artist's job is to give you a good look, it means much of their work goes to waste.

 

 

This is the way. 

[CheSco9]

2 hours ago, Crater Creator said:

I want to upvote this post a hundred times. 

 

Procedural variation is already used to great effect to generate the worlds.  An artist can spend a long time crafting the perfect looking nurse zombie or lumberjack zombie or what have you, but no matter how good one looks by itself, it's not going to look good when every nurse is an exact clone of every other nurse.

 

Every player, new and old, gets a whole passel of zombies every horde night.  Plus, they only see a limited subset of zombie types at any given gamestage.  So it's practically unavoidable that the game will spawn more than one zombie of the same type.  And when there's only one model per type, there's no diversity.  All cops are fat, all nurses are female, all businessmen have pale complexions, etc.  It's not a good look, even in the literal  sense.  And since, obviously, an artist's job is to give you a good look, it means much of their work goes to waste.

 

 

This is the way. 

Yeah, you are absolutely right. You know, what is so sad about all of this? It will happen either never, or after a long time. Why? Because all this work went into making a new Joel model. It baffled me. Also the fact, that an armor update gets cancelled to A21 is also upsetting. It does not make any sense. So, Joel model, right? All polished. Player model, player armor and clothing? Still the same, like, straight from A15 or something. And, from my logic, if the Fun Pimps make a new player stuff, they can also use it as stepping stone for bandit and survivor NPCs. Good in theory, isn't it? Too bad. Not gonna happen. 

Edited April 1, 2021 by CheSco9 (see edit history)

[meganoth]

32 minutes ago, CheSco9 said:

Yeah, you are absolutely right. You know, what is so sad about all of this? It will happen either never, or after a long time. Why? Because all this work went into making a new Joel model. It baffled me. Also the fact, that an armor update gets cancelled to A21 is also upsetting. It does not make any sense. So, Joel model, right? All polished. Player model, player armor and clothing? Still the same, like, straight from A15 or something. And, from my logic, if the Fun Pimps make a new player stuff, they can also use it as stepping stone for bandit and survivor NPCs. Good in theory, isn't it? Too bad. Not gonna happen. 

You don't know why they postoned armor. It could be the programmers not having time to add code for it, it could be the UI guy having some other important sutff to do, it could even be that they got a late idea for a new feature with armors that they don't have time for.

 

They also have different priorities than players do and players among them as well. I'm waiting for legendary weapons since plans for them were announced in A17. Why should they implement your armors before my legendary weapons?

 

 

[Crater Creator]

57 minutes ago, CheSco9 said:

Yeah, you are absolutely right. You know, what is so sad about all of this? It will happen either never, or after a long time. Why? Because all this work went into making a new Joel model. It baffled me. Also the fact, that an armor update gets cancelled to A21 is also upsetting. It does not make any sense. So, Joel model, right? All polished. Player model, player armor and clothing? Still the same, like, straight from A15 or something. And, from my logic, if the Fun Pimps make a new player stuff, they can also use it as stepping stone for bandit and survivor NPCs. Good in theory, isn't it? Too bad. Not gonna happen. 

 

To be fair, from the perspective of making the game look better it does make sense to work on non-player characters first, since you don't see the player character(s) except in the character screen and in multiplayer.  Meanwhile, you might see Joel every day if your base is next to him.

 

If they want to put lots of time into specific, named characters like Joel, I can see the logic in that.  The problem to me is that they treat the zombies as specific, named characters.  Literally!  They have names like Steve and Darlene.  In a way, Left 4 Dead has better looking common infected - not when you examine a screenshot, but while you're playing it - because the developers handled them as nonspecific background characters that you'd see a ton of at once.

 

If you look at them side by side, of course 7DtD wins - the Left 4 Dead character was made over ten years ago.  But to this day (I still play Left 4 Dead 2), I never think, "Oh, here comes another female_casual_02, this art has gotten so repetitive and stale."  Because of the individual variation, I just see that it's a zombie: one nondescript, random individual out of a crowd which, as far as I can tell, I've never recognized before.  And that's how I think zombies - at least the non-special or 'hero' ones - should be.

Edited April 1, 2021 by Crater Creator (see edit history)

[Matt115]

6 hours ago, Crater Creator said:

 

To be fair, from the perspective of making the game look better it does make sense to work on non-player characters first, since you don't see the player character(s) except in the character screen and in multiplayer.  Meanwhile, you might see Joel every day if your base is next to him.

 

If they want to put lots of time into specific, named characters like Joel, I can see the logic in that.  The problem to me is that they treat the zombies as specific, named characters.  Literally!  They have names like Steve and Darlene.  In a way, Left 4 Dead has better looking common infected - not when you examine a screenshot, but while you're playing it - because the developers handled them as nonspecific background characters that you'd see a ton of at once.

 

If you look at them side by side, of course 7DtD wins - the Left 4 Dead character was made over ten years ago.  But to this day (I still play Left 4 Dead 2), I never think, "Oh, here comes another female_casual_02, this art has gotten so repetitive and stale."  Because of the individual variation, I just see that it's a zombie: one nondescript, random individual out of a crowd which, as far as I can tell, I've never recognized before.  And that's how I think zombies - at least the non-special or 'hero' ones - should be.

And what is better - dead bodys ( execeptions of dead survivor in green tshirt , cut in half or sitting , dead pilot , girl in pijama and pink socks - most this model is in l4d1 or transfered to l4d2  ) have random heads like ceda dead doctors or paratroop on swamp or are totaly random like body piles or random dead zombies. A lot of " bases" like pilot, national guard, coop, bussines guy, shirtless guy etc just with another head and wounds , mud or dirty can create feeling they are not these same. Any one know which tools TFP using to create characters models? ( i asking because i' dont want to just complain about small number of model but i want to help)

6 hours ago, meganoth said:

You don't know why they postoned armor. It could be the programmers not having time to add code for it, it could be the UI guy having some other important sutff to do, it could even be that they got a late idea for a new feature with armors that they don't have time for.

 

They also have different priorities than players do and players among them as well. I'm waiting for legendary weapons since plans for them were announced in A17. Why should they implement your armors before my legendary weapons?

 

 

i remind something - there is one unique  tool/weapon - taza'a stone axe . So it is implement but it is just artifcal impelemntation - i think add this same looking weapons but with name and better stats can't be a big problem  (ofc it can create a new bugs and it need  time but it can be easier to create just add pistol with this same model and better stats in for example in specifc office POI that create new model  ) 

Edited April 1, 2021 by Matt115
I forget to write something important (see edit history)