How far have you gone this playthrough?

[BFT2020]

My current playthrough is a chill playthrough - horde nights off. I am right now in the transition between desert and snow biomes, but will probably restart with horde nights on soon. I been trying different settings than I normally use to see how they affect general gameplay.

 

[WarMongerian]

Day 57, 0653 hrs.
Level 101, 4306 kills.
QP 63/100.

I'm back. Still have work to do, but the game is on.

More later tonight.

 

[WarMongerian]

So, as I go back and watch my Horde Night unfold, this here was probably the best photo opportunity of the night:

Just an hour into Horde Night, and already I goofed, and set off a Demolisher. Shame on me, and one less red loot bag, darnit.:

and...

My first red loot bag since my operation.



Both kinds of trouble:

Working it...

Second red loot bag.

Double trouble.

Eat my spear, little zombie bird.

I came up with some ideas.

The Nerd Helm + Treasure finding mod + Grandpa's learning elixir = 3 levels in one Horde Night.

Also, I can surround any patch of road or player built concrete, and have land claim blocks all around, and can see zombies backlit from all directions, unlike this Horde Night.

 

[bobrpggamer]

The Nerd Helm + Treasure finding mod + Grandpa's learning elixir = 3 levels in one Horde Night.

Don't forget Eye Candy before opening those red and blue bags. Also make sure you take enough learning elixirs for the whole horde night. I found that 3 can be stacked, so that should do it. I do not know the exact amount that they help but any help is better than none, and they do not cost too much either.

Looks like you survived anyway and getting closer to your goals. Bummer is that experience becomes harder to get the further you go in levels. so it still takes some time.

 

[WarMongerian]

Day 58, 0736.
Level 104, Kills 4794.
QP 63/100.

So, I did Horde Night Every Night, starting today.

More after I watch my videos, later.

 

[WarMongerian]

Going back over the video's from last night, nothing really stands out as worthy/interesting. I did notice that I was having to deal with many (to many) leapers. Leapers don't give me any loot, they may take many times as long as any other zombie to kill, because of all their leaping, and I'm not really a fan of "un-zombie-like" movement.

To that end, I'm looking to replace them with a better class of zombie. What do I need to edit, to remove ;eapers (spider) zombies from my game, and what should I replace them with?

I'm currently thinking Demo's, but am open to experimentation with bears and Dire wolves, as well.

What do you folks think?

 

[bobrpggamer]

To that end, I'm looking to replace them with a better class of zombie. What do I need to edit, to remove ;eapers (spider) zombies from my game, and what should I replace them with?

Spiders are annoying but they add a little more difficulty to the horde. I do not even know how to change what zombies appear, but I am in 1.4 and not 2.x right now. As far as Dire Wolves they seem to take twice as long to kill than most other zombies in 1.4. I do not think that undead bears come around too often and I just finished bloodmoon 33 and onto bloodmoon 34 and I have never seen an undead bear on any version on any bloodmoon.

With ranged weapons the spiders are easy to kill because they just crawl toward you from a distance before they leap. I usually use my steel flaming axe on them outside of bloodmoons. I just run up on them as fast as I can and take a swing and down they go.

It's kind of a bummer you do not use ranged weapons. You do not need to get a headshot every time you shoot, just a couple body shots will take a lot of them down. If you play "Romero's slow zombies" it does not take much effort to aim either. If you can aim your shovel then you can aim a gun at slow zombies.

 

[WarMongerian]

If you play "Romero's slow zombies" it does not take much effort to aim either. If you can aim your shovel then you can aim a gun at slow zombies.

I'm the guy that can miss, at point blank range, with a spear, quite often, even though I play v2.4 against "The walking Dead", so the spider zombies contribute nothing to my game experience. They don't provide any loot, they take longer to kill than any other zombie, and completely ruin the immersion of fighting hordes of zombies. YMMV.

 

[theFlu]

To that end, I'm looking to replace them with a better class of zombie. What do I need to edit, to remove ;eapers (spider) zombies from my game, and what should I replace them with?

Couple angles, you could just remove them from spawn lists, and something else from the list would be spawned in their place instead. That might be entitygroups.xml, seems to have about a thousand lines of "spider*" to remove.

Or you could edit the entity itself to be / behave different; this would replace them one-to-one with something. From entityclasses.xml, 1972 forward (<entity_class name="zombieSpider" extends="zombieTemplateMale">) .. Dunno how easy that would be, you might just break things.. but if it works, it'd change them Everywhere at once, and you could define what they become.

I have not tried editing either, though, so take care, keep backups and .. ask someone more competent

 

[WarMongerian]

Couple angles, you could just remove them from spawn lists, and something else from the list would be spawned in their place instead. That might be entitygroups.xml, seems to have about a thousand lines of "spider*" to remove.

Or you could edit the entity itself to be / behave different; this would replace them one-to-one with something. From entityclasses.xml, 1972 forward (<entity_class name="zombieSpider" extends="zombieTemplateMale">) .. Dunno how easy that would be, you might just break things.. but if it works, it'd change them Everywhere at once, and you could define what they become.

I have not tried editing either, though, so take care, keep backups and .. ask someone more competent

Heh heh heh.
I hear ya. I was under the impression I could just put other zombies into the files, and they would take the place of the spiders, but I have not looked at this at all.

May not work, but I will hold off on their replacement/substitution until someone can tell me what I need to do to make it happen. it's not urgent, they pose no threat, but are just annoying. The last two nights, I got plenty of spiders, but only a very few demo's.

 

[theFlu]

I hear ya. I was under the impression I could just put other zombies into the files, and they would take the place of the spiders, but I have not looked at this at all.

Found myself giving it a go.. so, I basically deleted everything within <entity_class name="zombieSpider" extends="zombieTemplateMale"> in entityclasses.xml, and filled that extends="" with zombieBusinessMan, like so:

<!-- *** ZOMBIE_SPIDER -->
<entity_class name="zombieSpider" extends="zombieBusinessMan">

</entity_class>

Went into a test game and spawned a spidey, from F6 .. it spawned a businessman! Hitboxes, animations and combat seemed to work fine, no guarantees of anything else.

Since I didn't touch the specs for ferals and highers, spawning them in caused weird monstrosities.. technically just doing the same extends from the related businessman versions should do the trick.

Swapping it to a biker didn't work, I suspect the order in which they are defined in the xml is significant; if you want to extend from something, it'll have to be defined before you use it. Would be technically simple to swap the order in the file; but I'm not even sure if that's the issue. So if you want demos instead, you might have to fiddle a bit more.

 

[bobrpggamer]

Swapping it to a biker didn't work, I suspect the order in which they are defined in the xml is significant; if you want to extend from something, it'll have to be defined before you use it. Would be technically simple to swap the order in the file; but I'm not even sure if that's the issue. So if you want demos instead, you might have to fiddle a bit more.

Can he use notepad++ and use replace from the search menu and replace anything "spider" to whatever?

 

[theFlu]

Can he use notepad++ and use replace from the search menu and replace anything "spider" to whatever?

In entitygroups.xml, perhaps; but I don't know if that contains everything the game spawns. As in, are all POI defined spawns from there? It would probably break some things, like challenge tracking (if there's one for spiders). I just didn't want to go through those ~1000 lines for a simple test, you'll have to think about each a little. You prolly can't just replace everything cleanly, there's prolly a "spider" in a group name or something similar.

In entityclasses you can't, that's the place that defines what a spider is .. depending on how it deals with duplicate definitions, it might end up spawning BusinessMan - named spiders. And throw a fit when trying to summon a spider.

If you edit the entityclass like I did, the game still Thinks it's spawning spiders, so things like challenge tracking and "unique POI spiders" will still work for sure. If you swap it with a bear, you'll have bears in vents, which sounds all sorts of glitchy, but that's about it.

 

[bobrpggamer]

In entitygroups.xml, perhaps; but I don't know if that contains everything the game spawns. As in, are all POI defined spawns from there? It would probably break some things, like challenge tracking (if there's one for spiders). I just didn't want to go through those ~1000 lines for a simple test, you'll have to think about each a little. You prolly can't just replace everything cleanly, there's prolly a "spider" in a group name or something similar.

In entityclasses you can't, that's the place that defines what a spider is .. depending on how it deals with duplicate definitions, it might end up spawning BusinessMan - named spiders. And throw a fit when trying to summon a spider.

If you edit the entityclass like I did, the game still Thinks it's spawning spiders, so things like challenge tracking and "unique POI spiders" will still work for sure. If you swap it with a bear, you'll have bears in vents, which sounds all sorts of glitchy, but that's about it.

Yeah, I am not the best at modifying XMls so really could not say and you have way more knowledge than I do. I believe the spider to rather minor through, before they jump they crawl for a while towards you and you would just need most rifles or SMG or even the 9mm handgun (except pipe ranged weapon) to take one down from afar Not only that but they make some kind weird sound when they see you.

Do you think that slow zombies would be all that hard for WarMongerian to aim a ranged weapon? He said that he has missed with a shovel, but that would be close combat and he will have to act quickly before being attacked. Where as with a gun of any kind could give him way more time to miss a couple of times but hit them eventually after firing off say 3-5 bullets or shells when they are further away. This would keep them from close combat where a zombie is close enough to start attacking..

I would love to see a guy early in the game the use a pipe weapons on a Dire Wold, they are so hard to take out it would be interesting if they could even survive that.

 

[theFlu]

I believe the spider to rather minor through, before they jump they crawl for a while towards you and you just need most rifles or SMG or even the 9mm handgun (except pipe ranged weapon) to take one down from afar.

Yeh, they'd be rather trivial to deal with without the leap; which one might disable from that entityclasses entry. It lists AI tasks, I suppose taking the line with "Leap" out would disable it. (And the following separator character "|").

Do you thing that slow zombies would be all that hard for WarMongerian to aim a ranged weapon?

IMO, guns are basically the same as melee when it comes to aiming in close quarters; I can't see a practical reason why it wouldn't be just as easy. I've made the point previously, but I ain't telling someone he's playing a game wrong Melee has a bit of delay from click to aim, that might make it more forgiving in a sense, etc.