Recently, while looking for ways to make a current project of mine feel more alive - I thought that it would be interesting to have zombie "AI" roaming around on the outskirts of my map. As such, I quickly thought of how this could be achieved and it's very simple. The "Zombies" were dealing with here are ideally inaccessible for the player. They won't chase players, they won't harm players and won't interact with them in any way - which is why they are pretty much limited to "skybox elements". That being said, there are still plenty of environments that could take advantage of something like this. If you are working with an interior map, you could have the zombies roaming outside and visible via a window. Or if you are working with rooftops - they could be roaming on the streets below. There are plenty of uses for this this simple trick. I've prepared a video explaining and showing how it's done, feel free to watch it here: Set Up: In order for this to work, the terrain that the zombies will be roaming on needs to be perfectly flat, or have little variation in it (to keep things simple). The reason for this is because the zombies will walk around a circle, and they won't change their elevation - so if there are any obstacles or changes in elevation they will pass through it. Obviously if you are more adapt with scripting, I'm sure you could work it in so they walk up or down hills, but thats optional. The zombies themselves are made out of Hazard Suits, and thats it. I set mine to a lime green colour to show off the classic style zombie, but again - customize them how you want. The magic happens with 2 simple scripts, one to push the zombie forward and the other to steer it. Keeping things simple, I just had mine walk in circles. Here's how it's set up. Script 1 Script 2 Following those two script set ups, the zombies will slowly walk in a circle. To make your hordes bigger, simply duplicate zombies and slightly adjust them by both rotating them and their scripted settings. If you want the zombies to move quicker, turn the time down - if you want them to move slower - increase the time. Again, this is a very simple set up for them, if you know more about scripting you can certainly make it more complex by adding additional movements and scripts. Be warned about zombies roaming through cliffs or map barricades, by watching them for a few moments you can see their paths, and adjust accordingly but its worth mentioning. If you want to download the demo map I prepared you can find it in my bookmarks. My gamertag is Mr Pokephile and the map is called "Zombie AI Demo" Hopefully this simple trick can help forgers make their infection maps feel more immersive!
This is perfect for my Kino der Toten map, good stuff ~~~~~~~~~ --- Double Post Merged, Apr 1, 2016 --- I was actually playing around with this a couple of days ago trying to make the targets in CoD:BO Firing Range, but the coding got too immense and I just cut them out.
I kinda like them coming out of the ground. Even better if you use the land chunks that have their textures merge with the map move around like something's tunneling around underground. Someone make a Tremors map!