Project Zomboid Zombie Swarm / NPC Group Behaviour Dev Demo

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2011/12/the-npc-dance-of-death-ai-be...

Hi everyone, time for another development update -- and this time with something alittle more exciting to show.

This is a little demo of the NPC behaviour we're inputting, on display using a debug rendition of the entire suburbs map. It shows the new zombie horde system -pumped up to 11 on the zomboid-ometer for demo purposes. It also now shows how zombies (in red) are now completely persistent across the entire map, instead of being virtualised when they got out of range. This will be more taxing on the CPU, butmeans the cell you inhabit will be completely alive with no trickery, and also that fulltile barricades will be able to cordon off safe areas based outdoors.

On top of this zombies will only ever spawn on the edges of the map, while theflocking and wandering behaviours have been altered to provide much moreinteresting zombie migration and hunting. They'll now never ever start thumping ata door unless they seen or heard a noise from directly inside, for example. This willkeep door genocide to a minimum, even though with NPCs about those deadheads will often have a perfectly legitimate reason to give those doors a hard time.

NPCs in this video (the white dots) are attempting to survive by grouping together -if their personality suits it. They are also establishing a safehouse, going on looting missions to other houses, eating, bandaging and fighting/fleeing zombies where appropriate. It's difficult to tell what they're doing a lot of the time from blobs, butthey are a certainly a lot more intelligent now. If you see any odd behaviour then thisis likely either a bug, or a particularly mental NPC (they have stats).

At the moment their fleeing takes no consideration to where their friends are, so whenthere are a shit-ton of zombies surrounding them, they soon get split up. This coupledwith the fact that NPCs try to avoid bringing zombies back to their safehouse doesmean that things go a bit mental when the zombie count is high -- they can be a little reckless. Then again it does make for more interesting video than a bunch of NPCs hid in a safehouse unseen by zombies for the whole time! Additional work needsadding to their tiny NPC minds too, since they can occasionally forget seeing a hordein a particular place and go back there to forage. Which is somewhat silly.

Oh, and as ever the music is by the awesome Zach Beever. We thought we'd add a couple of the new tracks as a taster of what's to come!

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• project
• zomboid

[splatterkkk]

0:37 damn I think that survivor ( the stationary one) eats zombies for breakfast!

[93Gamerz]

its also a bit sad to watch, there is no escape for the little white dots ;-)

the map is to small to escape, the zombies spawn, it must be hell.

but good work! can't wait to buy it some day over steam, i played the very old demo a long time ago.

[DarkSpartan776]

ive never seen more than one survivor in a house lol

[stiivais4]

@YourLittleMartian should have sent him to the lower right of the map @ 1:30

[xXE4GLEyEXx]

at day 10 all places were swarmed by zombies :S and my character had a fever .... and a heroic death :D I LOVE PZ

[KrazxyAl]

I love how right around 1:00 down the bottom right there is a guy that is just like 'Screw this, you guys are on your own!' and then legs it.

[navadvipa27]

In the centeral park...there are almhowst no zombies the NPC's coud hawe leaved 5 NPC's to guard the entrances and build some safehouses ahhh only if they coud build,when i play the game i woud put the defences around the gates and recruit survivors and soon make safe walls around the whole town and leave the edges (spawners)open and they will spawn but never GET IN!

[HTGaming97]

It's really nice, but i think it could be nicer that when they are escaping ( Right big building at 0:17 ) they could be following each other.

[3lmo3ater]

So cool

[madrauk3495]

a zombie apocolypse could never have happened in the middle ages cause everybody had swords T.T advancement, aye humanity?

[IxodesPersulcatus]

See you at the bitter end...

[LucanJacups]

Haha holy shit there's one survivor that kills like half the zombie population of the area all by himself in this video. I wonder what weapon he had.