Yomies 2, porting the infamous Yomies to ArmA2

[anc 0]

Really nice how to zombie attacks all the soldiers.

I have another request, i don't know if it is possible but what about infected animals? Is it possible to do?

Best regards

[5133p39 14]

Yes, it is possible to have infected animals - it is the same as with the zombies, the same or slightly altered scripts/FSMs can control them.

I was already thinking to add rabid dogs, but the other animals like cow or goat ...you did not meant those animals, right?.

[Soldat-Hans 0]

Great news, to hear, that the Arma 1 Zombies will be portet! Was a great Addon!

[anc 0]

Chickens would be interesting too, hehehe

Kudos!!

Best regards

[Eggnogg13 0]

Mod looks awesome, specially with the conformation of MP.

Ya know if u ever need a Beta tester......... lol, but seriously this looks really nice.

[madrussian 347]

Good to see the Yomies back in ArmA2! :)

Here's my contribution:

Back in OFP, Trapper's zombies from Zombie Outbreak Simulation (ZOS) had an extremely immersive feature. When his zombies took a swing at the player, the victim player would automatically swing back in defense of the incoming blows! (Technically, as the zombie strikes, an animation was invoked on the player in the direction of the zombie, and the resulting "melee effect" was actually quite convincing!)

This "zombie/player melee" system thus locks the player in place momentarily upon attack, and accomplishes two very important things:

1. It gives the player instant feedback that they are indeed under attack from a zombie and taking damage (which unfortunately is not always apparent to a satisfactory level in OFP/ArmA zombie mods, imo).

2. It gives the zombies an improved ability to "gang up on" the player. Fighting against one zombie is dangerous enough (although often survivable), but the real deadly impact is that while you're engaged in melee with that one zombie, the others are busy catching up and surrounding you for the kill!

Couple additional points on Trapper's zombies:

3. If you were engaged in melee against one zombie, you would take damage at a reduced rate (as you're defending yourself to a certain degree), and also deal damage to that zombie in turn. However, while in melee with that zombie, additional swarming zombies would deal out damage at the full rate (as your flanks are exposed to attack).

4. As the player underwent ongoing zombie strikes, the melee animation was invoked on the player only at a carefully chosen rate, so he at least has the opportunity to try and escape. (It may actually have been once per zombie strike... not sure, but I know it was possible to break free. At the same time, it was dangerous as hell to start trading blows with more than one zombie, as you'd keep mixing it up with them while trying to break free and run away.)

Although I'm obviously a huge proponent of the "melee" system for Yomies, I'd advise making it optional, as we all have different tastes.

In summary, Trapper's "melee system" achieved great strides in eliminating the whole "running circles around the zombies" phenomenon (which I'm sure most of us are all too familiar with), and indeed melee helped make ZOS an absolutely terrifying experience!

In any event... good luck with the latest Yomies!!!

Edited January 15, 2010 by MadRussian

[Dragonia 0]

MadRussian's proposed melee system sounds interesting but as he said I would also like things like that to be optional. Not only because some people wouldn't like it but because all things that complicated eat that precious CPU and thus limits the number of zombies to be used.

[5133p39 14]

Good to see the Yomies back in ArmA2! :)

Here's my contribution:

Back in OFP, Trapper's zombies from Zombie Outbreak Simulation (ZOS) had an extremely immersive feature. When his zombies took a swing at the player, the victim player would automatically swing back in defense of the incoming blows! (Technically, as the zombie strikes, an animation was invoked on the player in the direction of the zombie, and the resulting "melee effect" was actually quite convincing!)

This "zombie/player melee" system thus locks the player in place momentarily upon attack, and accomplishes two very important things:

1. It gives the player instant feedback that they are indeed under attack from a zombie and taking damage (which unfortunately is not always apparent to a satisfactory level in OFP/ArmA zombie mods, imo).

2. It gives the zombies an improved ability to "gang up on" the player. Fighting against one zombie is dangerous enough (although often survivable), but the real deadly impact is that while you're engaged in melee with that one zombie, the others are busy catching up and surrounding you for the kill!

Couple additional points on Trapper's zombies:

3. If you were engaged in melee against one zombie, you would take damage at a reduced rate (as you're defending yourself to a certain degree), and also deal damage to that zombie in turn. However, while in melee with that zombie, additional swarming zombies would deal out damage at the full rate (as your flanks are exposed to attack).

4. As the player underwent ongoing zombie strikes, the melee animation was invoked on the player only at a carefully chosen rate, so he at least has the opportunity to try and escape. (It may actually have been once per zombie strike... not sure, but I know it was possible to break free. At the same time, it was dangerous as hell to start trading blows with more than one zombie, as you'd keep mixing it up with them while trying to break free and run away.)

Although I'm obviously a huge proponent of the "melee" system for Yomies, I'd advise making it optional, as we all have different tastes.

In summary, Trapper's "melee system" achieved great strides in eliminating the whole "running circles around the zombies" phenomenon (which I'm sure most of us are all too familiar with), and indeed melee helped make ZOS an absolutely terrifying experience!

In any event... good luck with the latest Yomies!!!

zombie<->player melee / player swinging back.

Sorry, can't do.

I do not want to script the melee or damage dealing, i think it is better to let the native hardcoded routines to take care about it.

Point #1: not valid with yomies, because when yomie hits someone, he actualy really hits someone - there is no SetDamage involved, so the AI will know who is hurting them and so will know the player.

Point #2: may be valid, it could be nice to have some feature like this, but i dont like to script it that way - i was thinking maybe i could just force the victim to fall down (randomly after successfully hit by yomie, not allways), that should achieve the same effect.

[biggerdave 56]

If you're looking to stop the running around, why not some kind of alternate attack that stops the player getting away, Killing Floor has basic enemies (don't want to call them zombies because they aren't!) with a grappling attack, you could probably simulate something similar with the "attachto" command (if a soldier is attached to another character, he won't be able to turn, move away or reload, which is a pretty good simulation of someone grabbing you). We were planning something similar for Farmland back in the OFP days that involved using an invisible vehicle in lack of an attachto command (effectively locking the player in a cargo position while the zombie "driver" attacked them). I don't know too much about the attachto command so it might not be possible to have the player looking in the right direction...

Also, another thing we looked at in farmland you might want to consider was "sleeping" zombies. I'm not too good with FSMs so I don't know if this is possible, but the basic idea was that if zombies couldn't find a target they would go fall over and go to sleep (making themselves look like a plain old corpse), only awakening if they detect the player.

Anyways, looking great so far! Best of luck to your mod! :D

[madrussian 347]

zombie<->player melee / player swinging back.

Sorry, can't do.

I do not want to script the melee or damage dealing, i think it is better to let the native hardcoded routines to take care about it.

I agree that for Yomies release, keeping the scripting minimal does have many advantages.

Point #1: not valid with yomies, because when yomie hits someone, he actualy really hits someone - there is no SetDamage involved, so the AI will know who is hurting them and so will know the player.

I don't think though that ArmA in general does a very good job of letting you know you got hit, at least as far as melee-wise goes. IIRC, you get only audio/visual feedback and in the case of zombies, that's kind of inadequate... but to each his own. :)

Point #2: may be valid, it could be nice to have some feature like this, but i dont like to script it that way - i was thinking maybe i could just force the victim to fall down (randomly after successfully hit by yomie, not allways), that should achieve the same effect.

Getting randomly knocked down by a zombie sounds terrifying! I hope you get an opportunity to add this! (Please do make knockdowns optional though.) Hey, and maybe zombies can get knocked down as well?!?

As far as melee goes, one effect of using the native damage system is that it will be pretty easy for anyone who wants to script in melee over top of Yomies release. The procedure looks something like this:

1. Add hit eventhandler to the non-zombie players/npcs as desired.

2. When hit, one argument passed in by the eventhandler is the unit dealing the damage.

3. Check whether the damage-doer is a zombie.

4. If so, face the player toward the zombie, and play a rifle swing animation.

5. Deal retaliatory damage back to the zombie via setDammage.

The only challenge is potentially calculating the shielding effect the attacked unit gets by defending himself.

Anyhow, I can't wait to get those vicious Yomies back in action again. Thanks again for all your hard work leading up towards release!

[5133p39 14]

I am starting to get frustrated by the AI pathfinding.

Look at the video, especially the time 0:13 - then it gets really "interesting".

It doesn't happen all the time, but still pretty often to spoil the game.

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[nicolasroger 11]

wow nice path finding! lmao

[5133p39 14]

I have very bad news.

I did some more testing, and the pathfinding in ArmA2 is really screwed.

If you just walk to any spot between some buildings (and i don't mean some tight space, but like the one on the video in previous post), AI is unable to get to you in a straight path, they allways start running around, sometimes even hundreds meters away, until they find a way to get to you.

If i don't find some way to make AI behave normaly, i will probably have to abandon this project :-(

There is no point in making zombies if you can "outsmart" them SO EASILY.

[raserisk 12]

You could always

1) There is soppose to be a release of Charon's mod this weekend, look at the pathfinding via that.

2) Consult Charon for help.

I hope for the best. (:

[5133p39 14]

You could always

1) There is soppose to be a release of Charon's mod this weekend, look at the pathfinding via that.

2) Consult Charon for help.

I hope for the best. (:

I have already sent a PM to Charon, i hope he's got some positive answer.

[raserisk 12]

Better hope he responds quick because apparently he's not gonna be active for a few weeks :P

[Eggnogg13 0]

I hope you can get it to work, since this really looks like the only option for multiplayer zeds in Arma 2.

I wish you the best of luck on finding a pathfinding solution:)

[5133p39 14]

Charon already answered my question.

He was also strugling with this issue and found some way around it, but unfortunately that method wouldn't work for my zombies (from what i understand, it depends on scripting the movement and playing animations).

But i am not giving up yet.

[biggerdave 56]

Hi, I think you've got a different problem to Charon, who I assume is using a modified version of the CZM scripts for his core (I can't confirm this, but it the most likely), where the pathfinding problem is that zombies stop to recalculate their route whenever a new domove command is issued. (IIRC, the nature of the script means the enemy position is recalculated much more often when the zombie's closer to the player)

I've done a lot of testing with this (using a modified version of Ryan_D's zombies), and, bizarrely, I think this may be caused by the start location. I found pathfinding in urban areas is much better for zombies who start off in open ground then chase targets to urban areas, than those who start in urban areas (who have a tendency to get confused and sit around doing nothing, or run around the closest building they can find, or just plain run off for no reason).

I can only assume this is something to do with roadway LODs. I've yet to have any success getting zombies to move properly inside buildings or even over bridges.

Another thing I've noticed is that it also depends on the target in question, for some reason zombies almost always have better pathfinding against AI targets than player targets, even if you perfectly imitate the AI...

[bezzzy 10]

Hey man have you had any luck in making this? Or has it proven not possible?

[5133p39 14]

Hey man have you had any luck in making this? Or has it proven not possible?

Unfortunately, it is impossible.

It would be possible to do it like Charon did in his Undead Mod, but then it would be extremely hard to make it MP compatible, and even then it wouldn't work without few glitches here and there and i don't think it would be very playable.

If the AI pathfinding would be fixed in any future patch (which i do hope, but i am not holding my breath), then i will get back to it.

Right now, it will be much wiser to move to work on other projects instead.

[WMike20052 0]

Have you emailed BIS and asked them about the pathfinding?

[5133p39 14]

Have you emailed BIS and asked them about the pathfinding?

Are you joking? :-)

I am sure BIS have got their hands full, even without me bothering them with an issue they most probably don't even give a F about => no, i have not sent any email to BIS.

Sorry about that, but i really feel it would be useless.

[raserisk 12]

Charon's mod in recent weeks has had good progress with Multiplayer. What is the point of Yomies then? I think it would be cool if you could help supply Charon with helpful things, like if you can texture/skin new zombie models, that would be super cool. Etc

[5133p39 14]

Charon's mod in recent weeks has had good progress with Multiplayer. What is the point of Yomies then? I think it would be cool if you could help supply Charon with helpful things, like if you can texture/skin new zombie models, that would be super cool. Etc

The point of Yomies was in the fact they were supposed to work differently than Charons zombies.

I am lazy to describe it again, just read the first post, and check the old ArmA Yomies (the web is located on shitty hosting in Czech republic, so you can have some problems to load the pages - just try again until it loads, sorry, can't do anything about it right now).

What i am trying to say is, Charons mod is different than what i wanted to do (i am not saying its bad - no way, its great, but i wanted something different).

As for helping Charon - we exchanged few PMs so he know about me and about Yomies, and if he would need any help from me, i am sure he would contacted me already.

I do not do texturing nor modeling (at least not on high enough level), i only do scripts.

Anyway - i already stated somewhere, regarding Yomies, anyone can use my work if they want, the only condition i have is that they won't name their work as "Yomies" (and only because it would be confusing to the community to have two different addons/mods and both called "yomies").

So, if Charon sees something in my Yomies that he could use in his mod, he is completely free to use it.

...sorry i will edit this post later, i dont have the time to finish the post now