Modlet Improved Hordes [A21.2]

[EpicSpire]

2 hours ago, FilUnderscore said:

Yes that is a core feature of the mod. On day 1 unless you go into a harder biome which raises your game stage, you can only expect to see some small and medium sized hordes with basic zombie types depending on whether you enter a city or you’re in the wilderness.

 

Great Thank you

[FilUnderscore]

3 hours ago, Agame said:

Just started using this as I have been looking for mods to spice up the threats in game, as vanilla world feels EXTREMELY empty when you are roaming around.

 

Anyway I am at day 7 and I have yet to see any hordes, I typed in the 'show horde' command but I have no idea what the info there means. I am running KHA20-DangerousCities mod which is clearly working, maybe it is incompatible with this mod? Are the hordes supposed to spawn in near the player or could they be on the other side of the map and I am just not seeing them?

The hordes are roaming throughout the world and may not be passing by your location very often, if you head to towns you may be able to catch them more frequently. Still working on getting the spawning numbers right.

3 hours ago, MrSamuelAdams said:

Also updated to the latest version, unfortunately. getting like 3-4 wandering hordes a day which is super rough and still a bunch are just running right by us even with feral sense on ALL. 

Are you generating any heat or just relying on them to see you? If the latter, this functionality isn't present just yet while I look for a good way to implement it, but they should be reacting to any heatmap activity happening nearby.

 

5 hours ago, MrSamuelAdams said:

with the latest version i'm getting some strange hitching every second or so... only last like a millisecond, but annoying nonetheless. 

Is this still happening as you're playing or only initially, and it wasn't present last update?

[MrGrim]

Some friends and I have been using this mod on a private server for a few days now, and overall we're having a great time with it. The world feels much more alive and dangerous now. It's especially great when out and about in the world. Cities are dangerous, the wilderness feels properly infested, and it's a great time. The one issue everyone on the server is having, however, is the hordes are _relentless_ when working at your base. Each person ends up spending 90% of their time at base fighting them off. It's become a losing war of attrition as nobody is able to mine resources and repair fast enough to keep up.

 

I'd appreciate some suggestions on how to tune settings to maintain that sense of danger when exploring and looting while allowing players at their bases some relief. If it matters, a lot of player bases are in converted POI locations.

 

One thing that might come into play is that we have feral sense on during the day. We do this because vanilla zombies are so passive that to get any action at all you need it on. We've become so accustomed to it that it almost feels like cheating to turn it off, but perhaps with this mod we should?

[MrSamuelAdams]

No heat generated. 

Just was happening... 

We only have one camp fire. 

But was happening in the town and at our base. 

 

 

Also the stuttering wasn't happening with the other update. 

Just the latest one. 

[Agame]

I have finally spotted a few hordes while roaming around and as someone else was saying they seem to ignore me which is strange, riding around them and even through the group they keep marching somewhere and do not attack.

[FilUnderscore]

10 hours ago, MrSamuelAdams said:

No heat generated. 

Just was happening... 

We only have one camp fire. 

But was happening in the town and at our base. 

 

 

Also the stuttering wasn't happening with the other update. 

Just the latest one. 

Thanks for the update, I'll be releasing a new one in a short while that switches from a task-based system to one that uses 3 dedicated threads. I'm hoping it will be a lot more consistent performance-wise.

1 hour ago, Agame said:

I have finally spotted a few hordes while roaming around and as someone else was saying they seem to ignore me which is strange, riding around them and even through the group they keep marching somewhere and do not attack.

Looking into this. They should get your attention if you make some sound, but I need to get their sight working properly.

  

10 hours ago, MrGrim said:

Some friends and I have been using this mod on a private server for a few days now, and overall we're having a great time with it. The world feels much more alive and dangerous now. It's especially great when out and about in the world. Cities are dangerous, the wilderness feels properly infested, and it's a great time. The one issue everyone on the server is having, however, is the hordes are _relentless_ when working at your base. Each person ends up spending 90% of their time at base fighting them off. It's become a losing war of attrition as nobody is able to mine resources and repair fast enough to keep up.

 

I'd appreciate some suggestions on how to tune settings to maintain that sense of danger when exploring and looting while allowing players at their bases some relief. If it matters, a lot of player bases are in converted POI locations.

 

One thing that might come into play is that we have feral sense on during the day. We do this because vanilla zombies are so passive that to get any action at all you need it on. We've become so accustomed to it that it almost feels like cheating to turn it off, but perhaps with this mod we should?

Are your POI locations near towns? That could be part of the issue.

 

Are you finding these hordes coming from a common direction, perhaps from another town somewhere in the distance? Still looking at the option of slightly randomizing their pathing so they don't go directly from point A to point B. AI could be much more improved however recently I had been fixing bugs, so I hope to get back to it soon.

 

You could in the meantime increase the zone repopulation days setting to a higher number which will prevent hordes from respawning in towns just a bit longer.

 

Just to confirm, you're also using the latest version?

Edited June 29, 2023 by FilUnderscore (see edit history)

[FilUnderscore]

IMPROVED HORDES 2.0.0-alpha.7 for A21 EXP b323 released.

 

This is an experimental release of Improved Hordes. If you encounter any bugs/performance issues regarding the mod, report them in the Issues section of the repository with the experimental label.

 

Download: https://github.com/FilUnderscore/ImprovedHordes/releases/download/2.0.0-alpha.7/ImprovedHordes-Experimental.zip

Changelog

Added

• Horde Biome Decay
  • When hordes cross over from their initial biome, they will start to decay until eventually ending up at a density of 0. If they return to their initial biome, the decay stops.
  • This will prevent, for example, lots of harder biome hordes (i.e. wasteland) overrunning easier biomes (i.e. pine forest).
• improvedhordes flush command that will flush (reset) all hordes in the world and their respective populators.
• Rough implementation of hordes detecting players nearby on sight.
  • Expect this to be ironed out in future updates. You may encounter a few minor issues like hordes being able to detect you through walls when nearby.
• Some changes to player grouping for a future update to limit multiple nearby spawned horde entity counts.

Changed

• Multithreading system changes
  • Moved from a task-based approach to a traditional thread approach. Each core system runs on its own thread assigned with a prefix of IHThreaded-.
  • This means that the horde threading settings are no longer relevant and thus have been removed.
  • This is an attempt to fix micro-stuttering that is present during gameplay.
• Zone horde density tweaks to ensure that a zone cannot spawn hordes greater than the biome it is in allows.
• Wilderness horde sparsity was previously affected by biome difficulty. This is no longer the case for animal and screamer hordes, but for standard wandering hordes still applies.

Known issues

• Horde respawning of same type/number of entities inconsistent.
• Entities sometimes frozen in place when sleeping, or the game AI lags behind if there are too many entities spawned.

Edited June 29, 2023 by FilUnderscore (see edit history)

[Cypherdiaz]

On 6/28/2023 at 4:31 AM, Agame said:

Just started using this as I have been looking for mods to spice up the threats in game, as vanilla world feels EXTREMELY empty when you are roaming around.

 

Anyway I am at day 7 and I have yet to see any hordes, I typed in the 'show horde' command but I have no idea what the info there means. I am running KHA20-DangerousCities mod which is clearly working, maybe it is incompatible with this mod? Are the hordes supposed to spawn in near the player or could they be on the other side of the map and I am just not seeing them?

Also running dangerous cities.

Would love to know if there's a mod incompatibility issue here before loading up thr newest version of improved hordes.

 

(To me, the dangerous cities is a simplistic approach to the issue so I wouldn't mind loosing it in favor of improved hordes)

[FilUnderscore]

23 minutes ago, Cypherdiaz said:

Also running dangerous cities.

Would love to know if there's a mod incompatibility issue here before loading up thr newest version of improved hordes.

 

(To me, the dangerous cities is a simplistic approach to the issue so I wouldn't mind loosing it in favor of improved hordes)

Shouldn't be any incompatibility, the mod uses a custom spawning system and just tells the game "put a zombie here". You may find cities more overwhelming with dangerous cities on top of Improved Hordes in terms of zombie count, since my understanding is that the mod boosts the game's town spawns by altering the vanilla spawn system.

 

Compared to the A20 version, Improved Hordes no longer alters wandering hordes and instead adds in a new roaming horde system that simulates hordes not nearby and spawns them in when you're close. This approach allows you to encounter wandering hordes much more frequently if you're moving around the map, otherwise you'll have to wait for a horde to stumble upon you (unless you get a vanilla wandering horde which is just spawned in at random intervals). I hope to expand this system in the future to introduce more custom hordes into the world that can maybe do more than just wander around.

 

I am looking at ways to increase the chance of having hordes come at you through some kind of heat system where hordes can identify paths that have not been visited as frequently, so as to not overwhelm players by having hordes feel like they're locking onto you for no reason. Another way this can also be achieved is by slightly randomizing each horde's pathfinding so that they may run into you by chance more frequently.

 

During my tests I have found that as the horde simulation progresses, there are some patches throughout the map that naturally never get hordes unless by random chance or player intervention, while other spots on the map get lots of hordes. I'm looking to minimize this.

Edited June 29, 2023 by FilUnderscore (see edit history)

[FilUnderscore]

MPROVED HORDES 2.0.0-alpha.8 for A21 EXP b323 released.

 

This is an experimental release of Improved Hordes. If you encounter any bugs/performance issues regarding the mod, report them in the Issues section of the repository with the experimental label.

 

Download: https://github.com/FilUnderscore/ImprovedHordes/releases/download/2.0.0-alpha.8/ImprovedHordes-Experimental.zip

Changelog

Added

• Setting to enable additional AI player sensing. This will default to being off.
  • Set ai_player_sensing to true to enable.

Fixed

• Hordes being able to sense you through walls when ai_player_sensing option is enabled.
• Multiple instances of threads present when opening other games in the same session.

Known issues

• Horde respawning of same type/number of entities inconsistent.
• Entities sometimes frozen in place when sleeping, or the game AI lags behind if there are too many entities spawned.

Edited June 29, 2023 by FilUnderscore (see edit history)

[fnfear]

I feel like silencers don't seem to work with your mod? Whenever I shoot with silenced weapons I get endless hordes coming just as much as I would if I shoot without silencers.

[Agame]

8 hours ago, Cypherdiaz said:

Also running dangerous cities.

Would love to know if there's a mod incompatibility issue here before loading up thr newest version of improved hordes.

 

(To me, the dangerous cities is a simplistic approach to the issue so I wouldn't mind loosing it in favor of improved hordes)

 

An update, I finally started seeing hordes around day 20, not sure why it took so long, I like the dangerous cities concept but I agree that hordes are actually a much better solution. It feels way more 'real' and dynamic to have empty blocks with a few stragglers and then see one zombie come around a corner and not know if twenty more are behind him. I have disabled dangerous cities for now and will see if the horde rate keeps up then it will not be necessary as I have enough zombies to fight. 

Btw will this mod keep supporting A20? I dont really want to upgrade my game now and loose all progress.

[SylenThunder]

11 minutes ago, Agame said:

Btw will this mod keep supporting A20? I dont really want to upgrade my game now and loose all progress.

The a20 version should work as long as you have it. 

[khromosone]

Interesting, went from having no dramas to the hordes being ful of rads and not even being able to start a quest lol.

[Picklefart]

Loving the way this is running now. I did make a twerk on amount of zombies that spawn per horde and its just what we were looking for. We had a horde show up today of around 60 zombies and it is glorious. Haven't had an issue with large amount of screamers appear again. No stuttering at all.

 

Most my large hordes appear at night.

[FilUnderscore]

10 hours ago, fnfear said:

I feel like silencers don't seem to work with your mod? Whenever I shoot with silenced weapons I get endless hordes coming just as much as I would if I shoot without silencers.

Might be heatmap related, I’ll have to check how the game is handling silenced weapons regarding that and see if I can make any changes.

 

4 hours ago, Agame said:

 

An update, I finally started seeing hordes around day 20, not sure why it took so long, I like the dangerous cities concept but I agree that hordes are actually a much better solution. It feels way more 'real' and dynamic to have empty blocks with a few stragglers and then see one zombie come around a corner and not know if twenty more are behind him. I have disabled dangerous cities for now and will see if the horde rate keeps up then it will not be necessary as I have enough zombies to fight. 

Btw will this mod keep supporting A20? I dont really want to upgrade my game now and loose all progress.

A20 version will always remain available under the previous releases GitHub link as well as on Nexus Mods.

 

3 hours ago, khromosone said:

Interesting, went from having no dramas to the hordes being ful of rads and not even being able to start a quest lol.

Gamestage scaling 😉

 

3 hours ago, Picklefart said:

Loving the way this is running now. I did make a twerk on amount of zombies that spawn per horde and its just what we were looking for. We had a horde show up today of around 60 zombies and it is glorious. Haven't had an issue with large amount of screamers appear again. No stuttering at all.

 

Most my large hordes appear at night.

Good to hear, mod’s getting there. Few more things to patch up and should be good for a near stable release.
 

 

[Agame]

Thanks, does it work in A21 b324? I thought I would try out A21 but the mod is giving me an error.

[FilUnderscore]

3 minutes ago, Agame said:

Thanks, does it work in A21 b324? I thought I would try out A21 but the mod is giving me an error.

Yep, you'll need to download the A21 version if you were previously running A20.

 

Let me know if you're still getting an error and post a log of it. You can find the log by opening the console then clicking "Open Logs Folder" in the top right of the window.

[Agame]

Ok I checked the log and it looks like its loading ok, but the commands "improvedhordes wandering show" and "spawn" do not work (says no such subcommand).

 

 

[FilUnderscore]

17 minutes ago, Agame said:

Ok I checked the log and it looks like its loading ok, but the commands "improvedhordes wandering show" and "spawn" do not work (says no such subcommand).

 

 

The mod has changed vastly in functionality in the new A21 version.

 

Instead of spawning in wandering hordes and preventing the game from doing so, it now instead introduces actual hordes in the world that are simulated until you get nearby. In essence, hordes no longer rely on a spawn timer but are instead respawned in the world every 7 days (by default).

 

The benefit this provides is that you will now encounter more hordes out in the world depending on how frequently you travel and where you go. Adventuring in the wasteland? Going to be filled to the brim with hordes wandering between towns. This means that you'll get to encounter hordes more frequently than in the vanilla game, but not of blood moon difficulty.

 

If you type "help improvedhordes" you'll see new commands such as "improvedhordes stats" which tells you how many different types of hordes are currently roaming in the world, as well as the option to reset all hordes and their spawns with "improvedhordes flush".

 

Screamers also work differently in this version and instead of spawning when your heat reaches 100%, they roam around towns and cities now where they can attract nearby hordes on sight. They can still target your base nearby as they have greater heat sensitivity than normal hordes.

 

I still feel like there could be more uses for screamers that I may plan for future updates (perhaps reintroducing them back into spawning by heatmap, but I don't want to fill the world with too many screamers as they can also join wandering hordes and walk around the map).

Edited June 30, 2023 by FilUnderscore (see edit history)

[Agame]

Ok very cool, when it says WanderingEnemyHorde: 212 is that the number of hordes on the map? Or the amount of entities in the hordes? And what is the total density number? 

 

Anyway love the mod, keep up the good work, vanilla game is so static and lifeless (pun intended).

[FilUnderscore]

5 minutes ago, Agame said:

Ok very cool, when it says WanderingEnemyHorde: 212 is that the number of hordes on the map? Or the amount of entities in the hordes? And what is the total density number? 

 

Anyway love the mod, keep up the good work, vanilla game is so static and lifeless (pun intended).

Yes that says that there is 212 hordes of that type, entity numbers are calculated when you get close to the horde triggering the spawns (based on gamestage and density).

 

Horde density is just a multiplier that is applied to the gamestage calculated entity numbers, and I use the total density number to limit the horde spawns if all other checks when spawning hordes fail.

 

It might seem like a large number but it really isn't when you consider how large the maps are, and more than half of the hordes will be in the wasteland. Some of these hordes will also die out periodically as they cross into other biomes each spawn cycle, as to prevent the world from getting too crowded in the mid/late game.

[Venturai]

21 hours ago, Picklefart said:

I did make a twerk on amount of zombies that spawn per horde and its just what we were looking for.

 

Did you do that by just increasing the max_entities_spawned_by_player, or did you also play around with the numbers inside the hordes.xml? Have you changed anything in your serverconfig.xml file also? Basically, tell me exactly what you did so I can do it, too.

 

We always go into wandering hordes thinking about xp, and that's all wrong. There's just no fear. I don't think I've ever had a significant enough crowd just wander on through where you're thinking this could actually be a problem.

[Picklefart]

1 hour ago, Venturai said:

 

Did you do that by just increasing the max_entities_spawned_by_player, or did you also play around with the numbers inside the hordes.xml? Have you changed anything in your serverconfig.xml file also? Basically, tell me exactly what you did so I can do it, too.

 

We always go into wandering hordes thinking about xp, and that's all wrong. There's just no fear. I don't think I've ever had a significant enough crowd just wander on through where you're thinking this could actually be a problem.

 

Fair Warning just traveled to wasteland an it got way to out of hand, it was playable but endless rad zombies. Im currently reworking it cause i need to figure out the bio multiplier for GS.

 

 

Setting.xml

 

<max_horde_density>4.0</max_horde_density>   Changed density from 2.0 ----> 4.0

 

<max_entities_spawned_per_player>-1</max_entities_spawned_per_player>  Changed from 16 ----> -1

 

Hordes.xml

 

<groups> <!-- Define possible groups for wandering hordes-->
            <group name="Zombies">
                <gs min="0" increaseEvery="0"> <!-- 3 zombies @ GS 0, 20 zombies @ GS 55 (1/3 of 165), 10 zombies @ GS 110 (2/3 of 165), 0 zombies @ GS 165+ -->
                    <entity time="day" biomes="wasteland" group="ZombiesWasteland" minCount="3" maxCount="8"/>
                    <entity time="night" biomes="wasteland" group="ZombiesWastelandNight" minCount="3" maxCount="8"/>
            
                    <entity time="day" biomes="pine_forest,snow,desert,burnt_forest" group="ZombiesAll" minCount="20" maxCount="30"/>
                    <entity time="night" biomes="pine_forest,snow,desert,burnt_forest" group="ZombiesNight" minCount="20" maxCount="30"/>
                </gs>
                
                <gs min="70" increaseEvery="0">
                    <entity time="day" biomes="wasteland" group="IHZombiesAllFeralWasteland" minCount="1" maxCount="10"/>
                    <entity time="night" biomes="wasteland" group="ZombiesWastelandNight" minCount="1" maxCount="10"/>
                
                    <entity time="day" biomes="pine_forest,snow,desert,burnt_forest" group="IHZombiesAllFeral" minCount="20" maxCount="30"/>
                    <entity time="night" biomes="pine_forest,snow,desert,burnt_forest" group="IHZombiesAllFeralNight" minCount="20" maxCount="30"/>
                </gs>
                
                <!-- Radiated Zombies -->
                <gs min="180" increaseEvery="0">
                    <entity time="day" biomes="wasteland" group="IHZombiesAllRadiatedWasteland" minCount="1" maxCount="20"/>
                    <entity time="night" biomes="wasteland" group="IHZombiesAllRadiatedWastelandNight" minCount="1" maxCount="20"/>
                
                    <entity time="day" biomes="pine_forest,snow,desert,burnt_forest" group="IHZombiesAllRadiated" minCount="1" maxCount="20"/>
                    <entity time="night" biomes="pine_forest,snow,desert,burnt_forest" group="IHZombiesAllRadiatedNight" minCount="1" maxCount="20"/>
                </gs>
            </group>

 

The Red is what I changed which is the min and max count. Though this leads to an insane # of zombies in the wasteland. 

The Blue is what I am going to experiment with to try and control the amount.

 

Full Disclaimer..... I have no idea what I am doing. I'm just changing what sounds right to change in my mind. have fun. Fair Warning this causes slight stuttering in the Wasteland and lag in my system. Other biomes didn't have stuttering.

Edited July 1, 2023 by Picklefart (see edit history)

[JavierAlex]

Is there any way to disable the mod and enable it when entering missions because when I'm doing a Tier 5 or 4 mission, multiple hordes always arrive while I'm inside the building. I always play on the default Insane difficulty, and the mod is very well made, but I have this issue with it. Is there any configuration to reduce the number of hordes that appear? In one mission, I had approximately 3 hordes appear.

 

Edited July 1, 2023 by JavierAlex (see edit history)