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WalkerSim 2 (Beta)

ZehMatt

ZehMatt

Active member
This is a continuation of my previous mod (A19) WalkerSim - Enhanced roaming zombies - Mods - 7 Days to Die but written from scratch. If you ever felt like this game lacks wandering zombies then this mod will be what you are looking for.

What is this?

Instead of having zombies spawned at random this mod will simulate thousands of zombies on the map and when a player is close enough it will actually spawn them in-game, if the player is too far away the zombie will despawn and be put back into the simulation also remembering the state such as health and class. So if you clear some area then this area is actually clear until the zombies advance in the simulation to that area again.

This is a fast-forwarded illustration of how the simulation reacts to loud noises, the red circles illustrate the position and will fade out over time. WalkerSim will also load the roads which the zombies will prefer to navigate creating a more realistic behavior, even the undead probably prefer a path with least resistance. Most aspects of the simulation can be modified, see the xml file and its schema, proper documentation will follow at some point.

image.gif

This preview is from the Viewer which is not polished enough yet to release and acts more as a debug tool for me, however you can see the simulation in-game by using the console command walkersim show which looks like following:

image.png

I want to see it before I test it!

@Guppycur did stream some testing, 






Download

You can download the latest version from Releases · ZehMatt/7dtd-WalkerSim2 (github.com) 

Documentation

How to install and configure the mod can be found here https://7dtd-walkersim2.readthedocs.io/

Contact

Feel free to hop on the Discord Channel if you have any questions or issues, the channel is kindly hosted by @Guppycur

EAC NOTE

When using this mod on your computer, EAC should be turned off. When the mod is installed on a server then the clients do not require to turn it off.

LINUX NOTE

In case you see some exception when starting a dedicated server on Linux you may be missing some dependencies, run apt-get update && apt-get install -y apt-utils libgdiplus libc6-dev to resolve the issue, depending on your OS it might be a different package manager, just ensure libgdiplus and libc6-dev is installed.

Changelog

0.9.4

  • Fix: Zombie spawning now obeys tags of biome spawner.
  • Fix: Zombies killed are removed from the active list, reducing excessive logging and correctly respawning zombies.
  • Fix: Some agents were not updated depending on the population count.
  • Improve: Reduce memory footprint and better performance by limiting the spawn queue.
  • Improve: All players now have a chance to get zombie spawns, previously a single player could potentially exhaust the maximum allowed.
  • Improve: Detection of where 7 Days to Die is installed, this is now obtained from Steam data.

0.9.3 

  • Fix: Flock processors always navigating towards the center.

0.9.2

  • Fix: Support for version 1.2.
  • Change: WalkerSim.xml configuration changed, old configuration files will no longer work.
  • Change: Print a hint to the console when the local configuration does not match the one in the saved simulation.

0.9.1 

  • Change: Raise density limit to 4000 and max agents to 1000000.

0.9-beta.8

  • IMPORTANT: The configuration MaxAgents is now replaced by PopulationDensity to better support multiple world sizes with a single configuration. The new configuration specifies how many agents per square kilometer, so the total amount of agents will be square kilometers multiplied by density, for example having density set to 160 and playing on a 6k map will be 6 x 6 x 160 which will be 5760 agents in total.
  • A lot of fixes to the viewer. If you don't see any Worlds in the Viewer that means it failed to detect your 7 Days to Die Install, I will fix this in the next version.
  • A couple bug fixes in the mod.
  • Added new movement processors and re-organized them, existing configurations will probably no longer function correctly. 
  • Added walkersim stats console commands to print some information.

0.9-beta.7

  • The simulation is now persistent which means that if a game is continued from a save file the simulation will be also restored.
  • The viewer 'WalkerSim.exe' should be in a usable state now, you can now setup and preview the simulation and export the configuration.
  • Fixed an issue that wouldn't fast forward the newly created simulation when using TicksToAdvanceOnStartup
  • Fixed custom sounds not being registered in the simulation.
  • Changed how sound events decay, instead of decreasing the radius it has a duration and stays the same size.
  • EnemySpawnMode is now respected, when disabled no zombies will be spawned. 
  • Added walkersim timescale <value> console commands to modify the simulation speed.

0.9-beta.6

  • Fixed a performance issue.
  • Implemented more functionality in the viewer.

0.9-beta.5

  • Fixed exception when game is starting.

0.9-beta.4

  • Fixed zombies not spawning near players that previously died.
  • Respawning is now implemented, agents will respawn according the configuration of AgentRespawnPosition
  • Added walkersim pause and walkersim resume console commands to pause/resume the simulation.
  • Added detection to see if the client is the host and disables the mod accordingly, joining servers with the mod installed will no longer error.




 
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This is definitely a interesting take. 

I would assume any mods that affect zombie spawn rate should be removed if you have this mod installed. 

Does it affect wandering Hordes at all or just biome/spawns. 

 
MrSamuelAdams said:
This is definitely a interesting take. 

I would assume any mods that affect zombie spawn rate should be removed if you have this mod installed. 

Does it affect wandering Hordes at all or just biome/spawns. 
Click to expand...
Its both, wandering hordes and biome spawns are replaced.

uppedzulu said:
Max agents my apologies, I found out where I can actually see what it's set to, but I cannot change it, where do I need to go to edit the number? 
Click to expand...
Modify WalkerSim.xml and set MaxAgents to the number you like.

nismo1969 said:
Question, does RandomSeed need to be the world seed? Or is this something different entirely. Thanks
Click to expand...
No, it just influences the simulation.

 
ZehMatt said:
Its both, wandering hordes and biome spawns are replaced.

Modify WalkerSim.xml and set MaxAgents to the number you like.

No, it just influences the simulation.
Click to expand...
I figured it out, I didn't see the part in notepad (literally right in front of my face) that said "file" 😅😅 ever tried to ramp the number up to 1.5 million?? I did and let me tell you what!!! Like McDonald's, I'm loving it!!! I took almost 40 minutes to load every one of them @%$#s BUT it loaded up, and without any lag in my world, wandering hordes?? Why?? When I have almost 150,000 zombies per kilometer of map 😅🤣🤣 

 
uppedzulu said:
I figured it out, I didn't see the part in notepad (literally right in front of my face) that said "file" 😅😅 ever tried to ramp the number up to 1.5 million?? I did and let me tell you what!!! Like McDonald's, I'm loving it!!! I took almost 40 minutes to load every one of them @%$#s BUT it loaded up, and without any lag in my world, wandering hordes?? Why?? When I have almost 150,000 zombies per kilometer of map 😅🤣🤣 
Click to expand...


I honestly never tried such huge numbers but the entire thing was specifically designed not to cause any performance issues, but I'm a bit surprised, my max target was around 30k at most.

 
So just continuing the train of thought on types of spawns it may influence...
I assume things like POI/sleepers, blood moon hordes, alarm-type spawns are not affected.
What would add to this, mod-wise?
Would other mods that affect wandering hordes, roaming/biome spawn that use "append" coding add to yours, or would there still be a conflict?
Would others that increase the size of hordes and/or number of biome spawns/biome conflict or add-to yours?
I know there are some issues on word-use of things like "wandering" "roaming" etc for horde spawns, but this is strictly for static spawns, right?
Shouldn't affect any mechanics that spawn in pathing groups of mobs, right?
Just trying to get some clarity on what mods to pair with it and where to place it in load order with others.

Thanks ZehMatt!

 
LordSoth01 said:
So just continuing the train of thought on types of spawns it may influence...
I assume things like POI/sleepers, blood moon hordes, alarm-type spawns are not affected.
What would add to this, mod-wise?
Would other mods that affect wandering hordes, roaming/biome spawn that use "append" coding add to yours, or would there still be a conflict?
Would others that increase the size of hordes and/or number of biome spawns/biome conflict or add-to yours?
I know there are some issues on word-use of things like "wandering" "roaming" etc for horde spawns, but this is strictly for static spawns, right?
Shouldn't affect any mechanics that spawn in pathing groups of mobs, right?
Just trying to get some clarity on what mods to pair with it and where to place it in load order with others.

Thanks ZehMatt!
Click to expand...


It disables the wandering hordes and biome spawns however it will still use the biome data when it spawns them near a player unless the virtual zombie has already a class id assigned from a previous spawn. As for mod conflicts you have to just try it, I'm not sure what other mods hook the biome spawner and wandering horde spawner, that is the only thing my mod really touches, once they are spawned the mod has no say in how they function. Someone else has tried this mod with the NPC mod and that seems to be working fine, so I can't really say more than that, just try it and if something breaks I can look into it.

 
ZehMatt said:
I honestly never tried such huge numbers but the entire thing was specifically designed not to cause any performance issues, but I'm a bit surprised, my max target was around 30k at most.
Click to expand...
I'd really like to try and make a server with it but being the fact it took around 37ish minutes to even load into the world, I know that nobody else is gonna want to wait I've half an hour just to get in. So I actually thought of trying 30k myself because I attempted it incrementally, first I went 50k, then 150, then to 1.5mil, 50k still took a while to load though I suspect with more updates that may change, 150 also took a while but 1.5mil took a WHILE lol so I'm gonna test it at 30k to see what kind of result I get, if you try 1.5mil it may seem like it's not loading, just let it be and it'll load up in time, like I said for me it took around 37-40 minutes so be patient if you dare to try it lol 

 
uppedzulu said:
I'd really like to try and make a server with it but being the fact it took around 37ish minutes to even load into the world, I know that nobody else is gonna want to wait I've half an hour just to get in. So I actually thought of trying 30k myself because I attempted it incrementally, first I went 50k, then 150, then to 1.5mil, 50k still took a while to load though I suspect with more updates that may change, 150 also took a while but 1.5mil took a WHILE lol so I'm gonna test it at 30k to see what kind of result I get, if you try 1.5mil it may seem like it's not loading, just let it be and it'll load up in time, like I said for me it took around 37-40 minutes so be patient if you dare to try it lol 
Click to expand...


I will most likely cap the limit to something reasonable in the future, I think 30k should be the maximum limit. As for the slow startup, when it creates the initial simulation it will advance 1000 ticks directly so that may take a while if you do it with 1.5 million agents, I will remove this or at least make it optional. I think you should try out something smaller first like 15k, the simulation does not ignore the maximum zombies allowed to spawn and is in fact only using half of the size to still allow sleepers to spawn so cranking this up to really big numbers won't really make that much of a difference at the end.

 
ZehMatt said:
Its both, wandering hordes and biome spawns are replaced.

Modify WalkerSim.xml and set MaxAgents to the number you like.

No, it just influences the simulation.
Click to expand...
1. Interesting so would you say that it's more or less zombies than say khaines wandering horde mod or an increase Wilderness spawn or yours is just a different experience?   

Because currently I use Khaine's wandering horde mod and this one. 

https://www.nexusmods.com/7daystodie/mods/5176

and if I want to use yours I should remove Khaine's and Dan's zombies yes?

I saw above, as far as blood moon mods I have, they should be OK? I'll have to test it. I'm interested in this idea. 

2. When you kill all the zombies in the area, is there a timer for them to respawn or are they dead forever then? 

"advance in the simulation to that area again." 

How long does that usually take? What's the respawn timer for it. 

 
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MrSamuelAdams said:
1. Interesting so would you say that it's more or less zombies than say khaines wandering horde mod or an increase Wilderness spawn or yours is just a different experience?   

Because currently I use Khaine's wandering horde mod and this one. 

https://www.nexusmods.com/7daystodie/mods/5176

and if I want to use yours I should remove Khaine's and Dan's zombies yes?

I saw above, as far as blood moon mods I have, they should be OK? I'll have to test it. I'm interested in this idea. 

2. When you kill all the zombies in the area, is there a timer for them to respawn or are they dead forever then? 

"advance in the simulation to that area again." 

How long does that usually take? What's the respawn timer for it. 
Click to expand...


I never tried this mod so I can not really make a good comparison to how it works but from what I understand the both are not too far apart, that is something you have to try out and see how they are different when it comes down to gameplay. As for running both at the same time, I suspect it hooks the same functions as this mod so running both at the same time is probably not going to work and I would also not really recommend it when two things try to address more or less the same issue.

When zombies are killed they are sent back to the simulation and will spawn at the location specified in the configuration, that can be at the map border, random location, random poi or just entirely random position, this is currently however not implemented but I figured it will take a while to sweep 15k zombies off the map before anyone would even notice, quite a few things from the configuration have currently no effect but that is where its heading to.

 
Very interesting concept. A few questions if you don't mind:

  • Does this work in co-op? I never did bother with a dedicated server for just three people.
  • Would mods like remove vultures conflict with it. Remove snakes, etc.? I don't think they are actually removed per-se, just replaced with something else.
  • What about the popular ImprovedHordes. I'm guessing this will conflict and needs to be removed?
  • Do I need a new save and map?
 
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Does this mod remove pop-in zombies? You, know, the ones that aren't there until they suddenly pop-in ...magically appearing out of nowhere right in front of you (or behind you)? I hope I'm not the only one who experiences that phenomenon. I'm not talking about the closet ones or sleepers, but ones that  are just suddenly standing there all of the sudden like they been beamed down from a space ship, it's ridiculous. 

 
Very cool to see this being developed further. Is the animal spawning unaffected in this version? In A19 it did have some issues with no animals spawning if i remember correctly, especially hostile ones.

How does it handle horde night? I haven't tried so far. Massive shooting resulting in even more zombies?

 
Canes said:
Very interesting concept. A few questions if you don't mind:

  • Does this work in co-op? I never did bother with a dedicated server for just three people.
  • Would mods like remove vultures conflict with it. Remove snakes, etc.? I don't think they are actually removed per-se, just replaced with something else.
  • What about the popular ImprovedHordes. I'm guessing this will conflict and needs to be removed?
  • Do I need a new save and map?
Click to expand...
You should be able to play co-op with this mod, whoever hosts the game needs to have the mod installed and also EAC turned off. I don't think its compatible with ImprovedHordes. You can use this mod with any pre-existing save.

r3mot3control said:
Does this mod remove pop-in zombies? You, know, the ones that aren't there until they suddenly pop-in ...magically appearing out of nowhere right in front of you (or behind you)? I hope I'm not the only one who experiences that phenomenon. I'm not talking about the closet ones or sleepers, but ones that  are just suddenly standing there all of the sudden like they been beamed down from a space ship, it's ridiculous. 
Click to expand...
Yes this mod is made to change exactly this, random spawning is entirely removed and instead relies on the simulation data to mimic wandering zombies across the map.

Midnighter90 said:
Very cool to see this being developed further. Is the animal spawning unaffected in this version? In A19 it did have some issues with no animals spawning if i remember correctly, especially hostile ones.

How does it handle horde night? I haven't tried so far. Massive shooting resulting in even more zombies?
Click to expand...
That animal spawning is unaffected by this mod.

 
ZehMatt said:
You should be able to play co-op with this mod, whoever hosts the game needs to have the mod installed and also EAC turned off. I don't think its compatible with ImprovedHordes. You can use this mod with any pre-existing save.
Click to expand...


Thanks for the fast reply, but for co-op only the host needs to install this, not all clients? That doesn't sound right.

 
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