Zombie Apocalypse

[MdREV]

Hey guys... I'm a newb here and thought I'd share my first real mod which was really just something to let me cut my teeth a little. Still some stuff outstanding, notably new art for the Zombies.

Here is a link to the ModBuddy solution http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=16939

Following is the extract from the module description online...

This mod replaces the Barbarian Civilization with Zombies.

- Zombies do not spawn ranged or naval units. Paratroopers, Spearman and Pikeman are also unavailable.
- Zombies move only 1 tile per turn
- Zombies heal for the damage they do in combat, creating another unit in an adjacent tile if that would heal them above full health.
- Zombies are highly resistant to ranged attacks

To do:
- New art for all zombie units and encampments. Likely a handful of zombie models shared for all units.
- New traits for German and Ottoman empires, as Germany can currently recruit Zombies and no naval units are available for Ottomans to convert.
- Anything else the community may suggest...

Any comments or suggestions welcome... I'm hoping to be an active member of the community here.

17/04/2011 - V2 Release Notes:
- Replaced calls to Map.GetPlotXY to Map.GetPlot which gives the result I was expecting from the former...
- Before spawning new Zombie units, Zombies who generate excess health on attack will heal nearby Zombie units before spawning. This prevents many units with 1 or 2 health being spawned during mass combat.
29/04/2011 - V3 Release Notes:
- Resolved issue with Zombies not healing in any way, introduced by contamination of the V2 release. SORRY!
01/05/2011 - V4 Release Notes:
- Implicit global variable clash between functions, re-scoped all function variables properly as local. Zombies will now properly heal and spawn units in adjacent plots.
- UNIT_CLASS_GALLEY override corrected to UNIT_CLASS_TRIREME, galley is a unit type, not class. This should stop Zombie Triremes from spawning from coastal nests.
23/05/2011 - V5 Release Notes:
- Zombies "heal" at the end of each turn, rather than after each combat. I found this to be a good balance between healing after each combat and the proposal of healing at the beginning of the Zombie turn.
- Zombie Ships should no longer make an appearance.
- Zombie AI has been re-tuned to make them far more agressive, including attacking cities. Zombies are also more likely to "recon" (ie. shamble aimlessly) rather than gather at nests. This has resulted in many multi-directional zombie invasions in my testing.
25/05/2011 - V6 Release Notes:
- Changed damage caching table to use IDs rather than directly store table objects in an attempt to fix occassional crash issues that have been reported.

 

[MindXX]

AWESOME! This would be great for Sci Fi mods i.e. Mutant Zombies!!

 

[supergamer01]

What about zombies converting units into more zombies? Along with weather or not they gain health by razing improvements since they are going to replace barbarians.

But I love the idea of a zombie mod! Keep up the good work on it.

 

[MdREV]

What about zombies converting units into more zombies? Along with weather or not they gain health by razing improvements since they are going to replace barbarians.

But I love the idea of a zombie mod! Keep up the good work on it.

I thought about converting units, but settled on just healing and creating new units with any excess health. Having said that I've played through early game a few times now and have not often seen new units spawned. The Zombies have certainly been more annoying than Barbarians, and have been giving City States and other Civ's a hard time with their resistance to ranged (mainly because the silly buggers rarely clean out a camp without a CS mission). Still lots to tweak here, and unit conversion is a likely possibility.

Still trying to get my head around the tools and workarounds to get art into the game, so that side of things is still a ways off I fear.

 

[MdREV]

Version 2 released as per main post. Minor bugfix and tuning.

Feedback Request:
My personal thoughts are that Zombies don't multiply enough, despite the self healing and ranged resistance. I've been thinking about allowing them to heal up to their full damage taken in addition to damage done, both as a 1-n random chance. This means that most of the time they will heal for roughly what they do now, but could on occasionally heal massively, spawning another unit. It also means they could heal from taking bombard or ranged damage despite not causing any casualties, in addition to the resistance.

Any thoughts about this would be appreciated.

Art Request:
I'm working on unit art for the zombies, and will release what I have when it is done, but I'm far enough along to know it's going to suffer massively from programmer art syndrome. If anyone could point me at some art that could be converted, or anyone wants to produce some, I'd be more than happy to collaborate.

 

[Deamonpies]

When I downloaded and played the mod the zombies were not healing,

Got the latest patch, no other mods running.

Could it have been because I chose the raging zombies option?

 

[OrsonM]

Man I sent you a PM about assiting you in the art department ages ago...

 

[MdREV]

When I downloaded and played the mod the zombies were not healing,

Got the latest patch, no other mods running.

Could it have been because I chose the raging zombies option?

I'll look into it tonight when I get home. They were healing just fine for me under both released versions, but don't heal if the unit is destroyed in the combat. I'll download it instead of installing from ModBuddy in case there is some kind of issue with that.

OrsonM: Sorry, didn't see the little Private Messages thing in the corner and hadn't checked that email account for a while. I've got back to you.

 

[MdREV]

Somehow I must have managed to unpack an interim version of the mod when transferring between laptop and PC, and it has runtime errors. Embarrassing but should be fixed in the next couple of hours.

 

[MdREV]

I've just uploaded V3, which fixes the issue with Zombies not healing. Zombies still don't heal adjacent units or spawn new units due to a runtime error that needs more tracing.

I'll get to it tomorrow night. Thanks for the feedback, I can't believe I uploaded a broken mod and it has gone unnoticed for over a week.

 

[Deamonpies]

Thank you for taking the time to check it,

Will play with the new version again.

 

[MdREV]

Thank you for taking the time to check it,

Will play with the new version again.

No problem, thank you for taking the time to let me know of the problem.

 

[Deamonpies]

The healing works now and makes the zombies a lot tougher,

However zombie navel units were still being spawned, which I believe wasn't ment to occur.

 

[MdREV]

The healing works now and makes the zombies a lot tougher,

However zombie navel units were still being spawned, which I believe wasn't ment to occur.

Yep I noticed that too, as Triremes rathen than Galley's too. Something isn't working with how I disabled the unit classes that already had overrides. I may need to delete the row and then add a new one, rather than updating the existing override.

I'll get to it soon, but won't release another patch until I have something more than bug fixes.

 

[MdREV]

Despite my previous comment, I've release V4 because I'm satisfied that everything now works as promised... I can't rule out seafaring Zombies, but I didn't notice any in playtesting and I camped a Coastal Zombie Nest for several spawns after sailing was researched.

Bugs Found / Fixed:
- Implicit global variable clash between functions, re-scoped all function variables properly as local
- UNIT_CLASS_GALLEY override corrected to UNIT_CLASS_TRIREME, galley is a unit type, not class
- Zombies could spawn on water tiles after combat, this has been fixed

With everything working, I'm now satisfied with how tough Zombie units are when attacking them without sufficient force, so much so that I may reduce the combat strength of all Zombie units by 1 to make up for how fast they multiply. Zombie units spawned as a result of combat can attack in that same turn if it is the Zombie turn, and for now I'm happy with this.

 

[Deamonpies]

Alright then,

I'll go see how the new version works and see if I get swamped.

Now i'm getting galleys spawning, so it seems like both will have to be disabled?

The actual zombies are much harder, and taking the camps requires much more planning.

I'm not sure if you can change it but when you attack the zombie it still says that you attacked a brute.

Also could this be used with other mods such as a balance mod? or would they clash?

 

[MdREV]

The mod is compatible with all the other big modpacks I've used, because it plays with the Barbarians which they don't tend to change at all. Even if they do make some changes, I think if you load the Zombie mod last you are likely to simply "enhance" the other mods. You can even use the mod on a saved game, but existing barbarian units won't have the zombie promotion and obviously any disabled units that were already on the map will continue to run around until killed.

As far as that pesky boat goes, I'll keep working on it. Going over the files it looks like I need to disable both the Trireme and the Galley, I'm not sure what stops Barbs from creating Triremes in the vanilla game in favor of Galleys because they are different unit classes.

 

[markusbeutel]

The mod is compatible with all the other big modpacks I've used, because it plays with the Barbarians which they don't tend to change at all. Even if they do make some changes, I think if you load the Zombie mod last you are likely to simply "enhance" the other mods. You can even use the mod on a saved game, but existing barbarian units won't have the zombie promotion and obviously any disabled units that were already on the map will continue to run around until killed.

As far as that pesky boat goes, I'll keep working on it. Going over the files it looks like I need to disable both the Trireme and the Galley, I'm not sure what stops Barbs from creating Triremes in the vanilla game in favor of Galleys because they are different unit classes.

You could alter this file in the Defines folder:
<Row Name="BARBARIAN_NAVAL_UNIT_START_TURN_SPAWN">
<Value>30</Value>
</Row>

Then the Barbs wouldn't build ships in the first place - if that's what you're going for.

 

[MdREV]

Cheers for that, I didn't look past the Civ unit class overrides for alternate solutions.

 

[Mentos]

The best way to prevent Barbarians from spawning certain units is to use these Civilization_UnitClassOverrides settings. You only need to add the galley, trireme, frigate, etc. too which miss in the CIV5Civilizations.xml, e.g.:

	<Civilization_UnitClassOverrides>
		<Row>
			<CivilizationType>CIVILIZATION_BARBARIAN</CivilizationType>
			<UnitClassType>UNITCLASS_GALLEY</UnitClassType>
			<UnitType/>
		</Row>
	</Civilization_UnitClassOverrides>

It's also important to know that all Barbarian units may not have any building or resource requirement.
That's why you will never see those UNIT_BARBARIAN_SWORDSMAN dudes in vanilla because they got Iron like other Swordsman units as requirement.
Just give those Brute-Warrior guys Iron as requirement too then the camps in Ancient Era will be empty until Archers can be build. However, can't say if a camp on Iron resource may allow the usage of the Barbarian Swordsman.