PC zombies used to turn into 'dirt' blocks when they died (question inside)

[FailFailWin]

is there a reason that was taken out?

was it performance intensive?

did it encourage weird gameplay like really tall walls?

or just boring and time consuming to dig it all away after?

What alpha had it in? (out of curiosity)

 

[Doombringer101]

is there a reason that was taken out?
was it performance intensive?

did it encourage weird gameplay like really tall walls?

or just boring and time consuming to dig it all away after?

What alpha had it in? (out of curiosity)

I believe performance was the reason for the removal.

The gameplay was great in my opinion, the blocks could provide ramps for zombies etc. and blocked LOS in pillbox type defences.

By memory it was A12 they were removed, perhaps A13.

 

[Vedui]

I thought it was very cool The first time you get swarmed up and over your walls because thre's now a path up for zombies to walk, and you didn't quite anticipate it. Awesome feeling as you died

Cleaning up was a bit of a pain though. And didn't it cause heat to increase, so not cleaning would bring more screamers?

it's been a while

 

[Kubikus]

I loved that feature very much. The issue was that every block had a timer, so when the timer ran out, the block would destroy itself. Just like the gore blocks we have now have such a timer. So back then, the corpses that still looked like zombies had a timer that told them when to turn in the gore blocks we have today. These had a timer that told them when to turn into the terrain-ish blocks and they had a timer that told them when to disappear.

The (eventual) timer is actually unnecessary. In "my mod" I change todays gore blocks to this:

<block id="701" name="GoreBlock1Prefab">
<property name="Class" value="Loot"/>
<property name="CreativeMode" value="Player"/>
<property name="Material" value="organic"/>
<property name="MaxDamage" value="10"/>
<property name="Shape" value="ModelEntity"/>
<property name="Model" value="Entities/Gore/gore_block1_Prefab"/>
<property name="ImposterDontBlock" value="true"/>
<property name="Collide" value="melee,bullet,arrow,rocket"/>
<property name="Place" value="TowardsPlacerInverted"/>
<property name="IsTerrainDecoration" value="true"/>
<property name="FallDamage" value="false"/>
<property name="LootList" value="1"/>  <!-- dummy loot list, will be overridden by the zombie that died -->
<drop event="Harvest" name="rottingFlesh" count="1" prob=".6" tool_category="Butcher"/>
<drop event="Harvest" name="rottingFlesh" count="2" prob=".6"/>
<drop event="Harvest" name="animalFat" count="2" prob=".33" tool_category="Butcher"/>
<drop event="Destroy" count="0"/>
<drop event="Harvest" name="femur" count="1,2" prob="0.4" tool_category="Butcher"/>
</block>

It works fine, but there is no timer anymore. I did not even do that for performance, but because I did not want the loot to disappear ever. As a dev, I would look into having zombie-looking corpses go straight to the terrainish-gore-block and either make that gore block lootable or have it drop loot upon destruction by the player. No timer. Of course, the loot would have to be zombie-specific. No idea if it's possible, but - why not?