enZombies - More Zombie Variations

[arramus]

We've all seen that UMA type entities based on the archetypal system have some interesting physics and ragdolls. We can also see there is a correlation for damage where actions which cause more damage increase the ragdolls effect.

 

Just to clarify that in a specific demonstrations, here are 3 scenarios with the following setup.

 

1. All enZombies have seen their HP reduced to only 10% of normal. This is to support a low damage weapon.

 

2. 3 identical weapons are being tested. The T3 Sniper, however:

- One is low powered and 10% damage of default
- One is default.
- One is high powered and 1000% damage of default

 

3. In addition to base weapon damage, the ammo type will have the greatest impact. In this test, 7.62mm ammo has been used as follows:
- One is low powered and 10% damage of default
- One is default.
- One is high powered and 1000% damage of default

 

Here are images to demonstrate how this effected the weapon specifications and the result.

 

The enZombies level 6 low powered sniper at 9.4 Ranged Damage.

 

The default level 6 low powered sniper at 95 Ranged Damage.

 

The enZombies level 6 high powered sniper at 956.5 Ranged Damage.

 

And the associated ammo which is where the real power comes from.

 

The enZombies low powered 7.62 at 4.7 Ranged Damage.

 

The default 7.62 at 47 Ranged Damage.

 

The enZombies high powered 7.62 at 470 Ranged Damage.

 

And the enZombie candidates.

 

Abobo (enZombies enBiker1) with health reduced to only 10% to allow the low powered sniper to be effective. Their health values were 30, 28, and 31 from left to right due to a random feature.

 

The lower powered enZombies sniper rifle completed the task with gentle ragdoll effect and the entity dropped cleanly.

 

The default sniper rifle completed the task with what we are accustomed to and the ragdoll effect was more noticeable than a default entity.

 

The high powered enZombies sniper rifle completed the task with an exacerbated ragdoll effect and the entity dropped somewhere about 100 blocks or so in the distance. I am pointing in the direction he landed.

 

Just to demonstrate that again from another angle.

 

As weapons receive mods, increase in level, and receive stronger ammo, the ragdoll will receive its force. If your server has up-modded ammo/weapons then expect similar effects to the high powered sniper/ammo.

 

My earlier visit to a server which delights in such mods. This is the pipe rifle and showed about 200 Ranged Damage.

 

One potential way to reduce the ragdoll is to decrease ammo damage and entity HP proportionally so it could potentially be as balanced as usual but with a reduction in ragdoll. This would require quite a lot of resetting of values though. It may be possible to buff the damage so that the value is the same but the effect is reduced but that would require a modder with deeper knowledge of the xml capabilities.

[ErrorNull]

@mr.devolver @arramus excellent ideas and analysis. addressing the UMA ragdoll behavior by modding the weapons/ammo seem hopeful. you've shown there's a big connection between weapon/ammo strength and the resulting ragdoll effect. now the crux of it is whether or not there exists xml code that allow weapon/ammo to dynamically adjust attack strength based on what entity it strikes. i won't mind doing the actual tedious work of modifying all weapons/ammo if a fix like this is possible. maybe someone who's more familiar with weapon modding knows the limitations or feasibility of this idea.

Edited January 2, 2022 by ErrorNull (see edit history)

[ErrorNull]

15 hours ago, dujinyuan said:

hey...eh... I'm going to search the room and this come into my sight...I don’t know what's wrong man...i can't move~~~Please take a look at it....

 

hi @dujinyuan the NullReferenceException (NRE) errors were issues I noticed from alpha19, and it seems that any UMA type zombie, when spawned as a sleeper.... there are a few POIs that will trigger these NRE errors, nomatter which specific UMA zombie it is. i believe this is the issue you're seeing. when you see that error, you just press ESC and you can move and continue play as normal. the businessmanboss zombie only spawns out in the wilderness when doing the challenge quest.

[dujinyuan]

10 hours ago, ErrorNull said:

 

你好 @都锦园NullReferenceException (NRE) 错误是我从 alpha19 中注意到的问题，似乎任何 UMA 类型的僵尸，当作为睡眠者产生时......有一些 POI 会触发这些 NRE 错误，无论它是哪个特定的 UMA 僵尸. 我相信这是你看到的问题。当您看到该错误时，您只需按 ESC 即可移动并继续正常播放。商人老板僵尸只在进行挑战任务时在荒野中产生。

OK..thanks man...so it's about the sleep...Eh...I think i have one mod that can let them wake.....hum.....

[arramus]

I had that odd entity issue today whereby an entity is invisible but they are happily attacking the player.

 

It began with an NRE which I thought was related to the previous post, but it only flashed up once. I took a screenshot at that occasion.

 

 

That's when the invisible entity attacks began and they were vicious.

 

One tell-tale sign though was the spitting.

 

I was really chewing on the Health Packs here to learn more about what was going on.

 

Here the door is being broken down by the invisible entity (or possibly two).

 

And more of the spitting.

 

Something about entity52912 and 52913.

 

I don't recall an enZombie that spits acid and it could well be a Vanilla issue if remove and append settings are all looking good.

 

I gave up on this quest soon after as completion was dependent on that ghost.

[ErrorNull]

hmm.. that's interesting. as we had discovered in the early days of my mod, these POI NREs tend to be caused by a specific combination of sleeper UMA zombie + certain vehicle prefab when exploring a random POI. maybe this time (while doing actual trader quests) some other prefab or object is triggering it as well. i wonder if this error is also consistently repeatable? though it would be a pain to try to repeat the same trader quests for testing.... failing a quest doesn't cause the trader to give you the same quest again...

 

enZombies don't include any acid spitting zombies, but on the Snufkin side, there is the Mantis. Did the invisible entity exhibit normal zombie sound effects? if it has the 'hulk' sound effects, then it might actually be a vanilla zombie cop or the new mutated zombie.

 

do you happen to have the name of that POI? given that, i can pull the corresponding prefab xml and see what sleeper volumes/groups are tied to that and start to zone in on which UMA zombie could be the culprit.

[arramus]

The name of the POI is house_old_victorian_03.

 

The issue came at about 85% complete and was in an upper area the Mantis really shouldn't be able to get to with the closed doors and external scripted path routing. Attacks were not causing the visual disturbance buff typically associated with the Mantis, either. These entities were fast all the time and it seemed to fit with the new Mutated zombies. The only audio was the sound of impact strikes from melee which also matched the Mutated zombies for speed. Certainly not ruling out the Cop though as they can be fast when they want to be. I was at GS136 at the time.

[ErrorNull]

Update on Ragdoll Issue:

 

i'm able to make a tool/weapon mod that reduces the EntityDamage when only attacking UMA zombies. so now the ragdoll effect for all UMA zombies is greatly reduced. the next challenge is that reducing the EntityDamage obviously makes the UMA zombies drastically harder to kill LOL. knee jerk reaction is to lower the HP of all UMA zombies, but looking to see if there's a different way..

[arramus]

39 minutes ago, ErrorNull said:

Update on Ragdoll Issue:

 

i'm able to make a tool/weapon mod that reduces the EntityDamage when only attacking UMA zombies. so now the ragdoll effect for all UMA zombies is greatly reduced. the next challenge is that reducing the EntityDamage obviously makes the UMA zombies drastically harder to kill LOL. knee jerk reaction is to lower the HP of all UMA zombies, but looking to see if there's a different way..

Interesting. One additional option is a 100% chance secondary buff damage effect from that tool/weapon/mod to a new buff specific to UMA zombies. Something that gives a secondary -HP per shot in addition to the EntityDamage.

[magejosh]

9 hours ago, arramus said:

Interesting. One additional option is a 100% chance secondary buff damage effect from that tool/weapon/mod to a new buff specific to UMA zombies. Something that gives a secondary -HP per shot in addition to the EntityDamage.

something like this?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KYuuKi-BU4SU5Gb7IIxlXh_ML_845oTQ/view?usp=sharing

 

Only issue there is like the one you outlined where you would need to reduce the HP of UMA zombies as well or it would take way too long to kill them. The biggest issue here is the debuff to damage needs to be on the player before the player deals damage to the UMA zombie. That's why i thought to put the trigger on the entityclass of the player and make it a short duration buff that can just keep being added every time the player attacks a UMA zombie. Would need testing though to balance.

 

Unless you added one requirement to the buff so that the passive effect wouldn't work unless their health was at 10% or less maybe? That would mean some will still get missed by particularly powerful weapons and ragdoll but most should trigger correctly. 

something like:

<requirement name="StatComparePercCurrentToMax" target="other" stat="health" operation="LTE" value=".1"/>

 

there we go, fixed it. Should work for these purposes. I'll test it on my end when i wake up tomorrow.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bJQgd4ZBZO7CkA3br5vRduaHr7O7wZVC/view?usp=sharing

Edited January 5, 2022 by magejosh
Updated Information (see edit history)

[AndrewT]

I assume robeloto said no but since his mod and the snufkins mod both have the archon and scarecrow that would cause many bugs

[ErrorNull]

21 hours ago, arramus said:

The name of the POI is house_old_victorian_03.

 

The issue came at about 85% complete and was in an upper area the Mantis really shouldn't be able to get to with the closed doors and external scripted path routing. Attacks were not causing the visual disturbance buff typically associated with the Mantis, either. These entities were fast all the time and it seemed to fit with the new Mutated zombies. The only audio was the sound of impact strikes from melee which also matched the Mutated zombies for speed. Certainly not ruling out the Cop though as they can be fast when they want to be. I was at GS136 at the time.

it looks like the XML file house_old_victorian_03.xml refers to three sleeper categories that are defined in gamestages.xml:

 

S_-Group_Generic_Zombie

S_-_Group_Zom_Badass

S_Zom_Burnt

 

each of these categories eventually drill down and refer to the following zombie groups within entitygroups.xml:

 

S_-Group_Generic_Zombie --> sleeperHordeStageGS

S_-_Group_Zom_Badass --> badassHordeStageGS

S_Zom_Burnt --> zombieBurntGroupGS

 

all three groups contain references to enZombies, but only the first two groups sleeperHordeStageGS and badassHordeStageGS contain zombieMutated. the group badassHordeStageGS is the one that spawns up in the attic that matches your play description and screenshot, so i'm paying very close attention to that zombie group.

 

the enZombies mod defines the following entities (including their feral and radiated variants) for badassHordeStageGS during player gamestage of 100 and higher. also i need to correct myself in that my current version of the Snufkin Addon does not spawn zombies in the sleeper groups. so it's not possible for the Mantis zombie to spawn.

Spoiler

[enZombies]
enPunkFemale1
enPunkFemale2
enPunkFemale3
enPunkFemale4
enPunkMale1
enPunkMale2
enPunkMale3
enPunkMale4
enDesertMiner1
enDesertMiner2
enDesertCowboy3
enSpider196
enBiker1
enBiker2
enFarmerFemale2
enLumberjack1
enLumberjack2
enSoldierFemale1
enSoldierFemale2
enSoldierMale1
enSoldierMale2
enStealthMale1
enSwatMale1
enSwatMale2
enSwatMale3
enFootballMale1
enFootballMale2

 

[vanilla zombies]
zombieMutated
zombieSpider
zombieSkateboarder
zombieBiker
zombieFemaleFat
zombieFatHawaiian
zombieLumberjack
zombieFatCop
zombieSoldier
zombieWightFeral
zombieDemolition

 

i currently suspect an enZombie in the above group, in combination with perhaps a bug or quirk with how that POI was designed (since this doesn't occur with all POIs) is causing the NRE. which in turn creates a cascade effect that spawns a subsequent vanilla zombie (like zombieMutated) without it's entity texture... thus a player would be unable to aim/defeat it and fail the zombie clear quest goal. i wonder if UMA zombies that have buff attachments could be triggering this? hmmm.....

 

i loaded up a new 10k pregen map with cheats and went into DM mode, and upped my gamestage to 135. i did not visit any trader and just teleported directed to that POI house_old_victorian_03. i explored the entire POI, including the attic, and didn't get an NRE error. but, i also checked the console logs and none of the sleeper groups had spawned in the zombieMutated entity. i did get a zombieFatCop couple times. i visited two other house_old_victorian_03 POIs on that map, fought my way up to the attic, again saw that badassHordeStageGS is activated, but among a few vanilla zombies, didn't get a zombieMutated to spawn. two things i would still like to do when i get the chance:

 

1) keep revisiting this POI in hopes to see a zombieMutated spawn up in the attic, and perhaps then an NRE will occur (still unsure that zombieMutated is the real trigger) and i'll get an invisible zombieMutated or invisible other zombie

 

2) try to visit this POI during a trader quest to see if this NRE-invis-entity behavior more commonly happens during trader quests

 

this issue is very intermittent so it's hard quickly troubleshoot, but i know it's happening. who knows, this NRE-invis-entity issue could just be random and not tied to a specific POI. only way to rule out complete randomness is to see if we can consistently get the NRE-invis-entity on this specific POI during a trader quest or when a mutated zombie show up(?)

 

definitely let me know of you encounter this issue with other POIs and/or during other trader quests. it will be very helpful to know.

 

Edited January 5, 2022 by ErrorNull (see edit history)

[ErrorNull]

thanks @magejosh and @arramus  in regards to our continuing ideas to counteract the floaty ragdoll for UMA zombies, i will try out these ideas (and have other suggestions received from the discord channel) and will post up any progress. meanwhile, if you discover something more beforehand, i would love to hear it.

 

4 hours ago, AndrewT said:

I assume robeloto said no but since his mod and the snufkins mod both have the archon and scarecrow that would cause many bugs

actually @Robeloto did give me the green light for me to add all his cool zombies to enZombies mod. 😎 i'm currently reworking the Snufkin Zombies Addon so i can use that as a template for the upcoming "Robeloto Zombies Addon" - as well as for another existing zombie mods out there. you'll see the robeloto zombie addon release on the next update.

Edited January 5, 2022 by ErrorNull (see edit history)

[magejosh]

I did test it while using a t10 sacred weapons aio mod pack machete that was doing about 1000 damage. Seems to work fairly well. I still knocked a 2200hp uma zombie back 4 blocks on third and final hit, but that's way less than i was getting before. I'll toy with the numbers and see if i can get it down to two blocks knockback. 

[mr.devolver]

4 minutes ago, magejosh said:

I did test it while using a t10 sacred weapons aio mod pack machete that was doing about 1000 damage. Seems to work fairly well. I still knocked a 2200hp uma zombie back 4 blocks on third and final hit, but that's way less than i was getting before. I'll toy with the numbers and see if i can get it down to two blocks knockback. 

Just find the sweet spot value and cap the damage to that value, I guess.

[ErrorNull]

1 hour ago, magejosh said:

I did test it while using a t10 sacred weapons aio mod pack machete that was doing about 1000 damage. Seems to work fairly well. I still knocked a 2200hp uma zombie back 4 blocks on third and final hit, but that's way less than i was getting before. I'll toy with the numbers and see if i can get it down to two blocks knockback. 

once you're happy with the functionality, if you would plz share that mod and i'd love to try it too and then post it on the main page. 👍

[Surf]

Would anyone happen to know if this mod works with Improved Hordes?

If not I'm happy to test and report back 👍 🙂

[arramus]

2 minutes ago, Surf said:

Would anyone happen to know if this mod works with Improved Hordes?

If not I'm happy to test and report back 👍 🙂

I can confirm it is working with Improved Hordes most effectively. You may notice spot micro freezes more periodically as the non default zombies make their 5th-9th spawn (appears to be variable depending on your set-up) but this is on a case by case basis as some are noticing it more than others while some not at all.

[Surf]

8 minutes ago, arramus said:

I can confirm it is working with Improved Hordes most effectively. You may notice spot micro freezes more periodically as the non default zombies make their 5th-9th spawn (appears to be variable depending on your set-up) but this is on a case by case basis as some are noticing it more than others while some not at all.

Thank you for the super-fast response!

[magejosh]

1 hour ago, ErrorNull said:

once you're happy with the functionality, if you would plz share that mod and i'd love to try it too and then post it on the main page. 👍

Most definitely! I love your work and will support it however i can assist.

28 minutes ago, arramus said:

I can confirm it is working with Improved Hordes most effectively. You may notice spot micro freezes more periodically as the non default zombies make their 5th-9th spawn (appears to be variable depending on your set-up) but this is on a case by case basis as some are noticing it more than others while some not at all.

Most excellent news, i'd been holding back testing that one out of concern for how many other mods i'd need to write compatibility mods for.

2 hours ago, mr.devolver said:

Just find the sweet spot value and cap the damage to that value, I guess.

Yeah the issue i see being a potential problem is there is a narrow window currently for you to get the zombie to reach LTE 10% max health at which point the ragdollDamageDebuff triggers and reduces your damage to only 10% of normal. I kept the duration to a quarter second at a time to prevent it from locking down your damage potential when being swarmed by multiple zombie types. I put in a requirement for it to only dmg cap on attacking umazombie tagged zombies and it appears to be working but i'm about to run a horde test on npcs and turret guards so i can see their behavior and fps, so i'll multitask and use same weapon to hit more high hp umazombies, and i'll try a couple whose health is lower than the max damage from one hit of the weapon and see how that effects things. 

6 minutes ago, magejosh said:

Most definitely! I love your work and will support it however i can assist.

Most excellent news, i'd been holding back testing that one out of concern for how many other mods i'd need to write compatibility mods for.

Yeah the issue i see being a potential problem is there is a narrow window currently for you to get the zombie to reach LTE 10% max health at which point the ragdollDamageDebuff triggers and reduces your damage to only 10% of normal. I kept the duration to a quarter second at a time to prevent it from locking down your damage potential when being swarmed by multiple zombie types. I put in a requirement for it to only dmg cap on attacking umazombie tagged zombies and it appears to be working but i'm about to run a horde test on npcs and turret guards so i can see their behavior and fps, so i'll multitask and use same weapon to hit more high hp umazombies, and i'll try a couple whose health is lower than the max damage from one hit of the weapon and see how that effects things. 

 

actually

I can bracket that effect and requirements out to space along their health % and that should narrow that gap properly. I'll take a look at that and get back to you.

[mr.devolver]

8 minutes ago, magejosh said:

Yeah the issue i see being a potential problem is there is a narrow window currently for you to get the zombie to reach LTE 10% max health at which point the ragdollDamageDebuff triggers and reduces your damage to only 10% of normal. I kept the duration to a quarter second at a time to prevent it from locking down your damage potential when being swarmed by multiple zombie types. I put in a requirement for it to only dmg cap on attacking umazombie tagged zombies and it appears to be working but i'm about to run a horde test on npcs and turret guards so i can see their behavior and fps, so i'll multitask and use same weapon to hit more high hp umazombies, and i'll try a couple whose health is lower than the max damage from one hit of the weapon and see how that effects things.

When I'm swarmed with zombies, I switch to something faster than just a steel axe, I think most people do unless they have death wish in which case they wouldn't have long time to enjoy the hilarious flying zombies anyway.

[AndrewT]

23 hours ago, ErrorNull said:

thanks @magejosh and @arramus  in regards to our continuing ideas to counteract the floaty ragdoll for UMA zombies, i will try out these ideas (and have other suggestions received from the discord channel) and will post up any progress. meanwhile, if you discover something more beforehand, i would love to hear it.

 

actually @Robeloto did give me the green light for me to add all his cool zombies to enZombies mod. 😎 i'm currently reworking the Snufkin Zombies Addon so i can use that as a template for the upcoming "Robeloto Zombies Addon" - as well as for another existing zombie mods out there. you'll see the robeloto zombie addon release on the next update.

oh nice and if u didn't notice the new giant mutated zombie he recently added was actually influenced by a zombie I told him i created for my friends planned zombie TV show called the titan zombie. in a nutshell the titan zombie I created for my firends show robeloto liked it due to the attack on titan references and used my zombie idea as influence for what became his mutated giant zombie.

[getkloaked]

hi @ErrorNull i experienced the invisible / invincible zombie spawn in a T5 appartment building POI. it wasn't spitting acid like @arramus reported above. had the same NRE consle pop up, which i disregarded til my buddy and i started getting beat on by something we couldnt see or kill. i didn't have any snuffkin z's installed as i find them corny as hell. i only had enzombies mod installed, with nudity. i love this mod, and want to use it but if im failing T5 clear quests and getting killed by ghosts i cant hit, its a deal breaker. hope it's fixed soon. keep up the good work. i encountered this once before back in a18/19 and it had to do with the server and client side game versions not being identical but im not sure if that's what's going on here. i dont think it is, but can't rule it out.

Edited January 12, 2022 by getkloaked (see edit history)

[ErrorNull]

@getkloaked thanks for letting me know you're getting the same NRE issue too. question: when another trader quest to that same POI is available again in the game, does the same error happen consistently again? and do you remember what gamestage range your party was during the quest?

 

this is a challenging one to troubleshoot as it seems intermittent. what seems consistent so far is that the NRE invis zombie occurs only during trader quests. unless some player out there can confirm if they also received this NRE-invis zombie inside a POI that was not quest-activated.. or out in the wilderness? another thing i believe is that the invis zombie is not always the same type of zombie.. and may be a random selection.

 

hopefully this is due to a specific UMA zombie (or zombie configuration) that might be causing this, and not due to just any UMA zombie. coming from this standpoint, i can tshoot by eliminating the suspected UMA zombies from spawn (and continue to remove more) until the error no longer occurs. my first suspect would be any UMA zombie that has a prefab attachment (wielding torches, tools, bags, or other non-apparel decoration). in the next day or two, i'll have a test version of enZombies mod for you to download and try.

Edited January 13, 2022 by ErrorNull (see edit history)

[arramus]

On 12/4/2021 at 2:36 AM, chikuwa said:

Thank you for making wonderful zombies. Thank you for your work. I have been attacked by invisible zombies many times. Are there any invisible zombies in this mod? Or is it a bug?

@ErrorNull This was the only mention of it from recent previous posts but it wasn't clear if it was inside a quest POI or outside. It was certainly a quest on the time I experience it and it's only been the once so far. I did try another quest with the Mutant spitter and it appeared just fine.