How do Screamers Work?

[XCOUNTRY]

I added screamers to the zombiesAll group in entitygroups.xml to add additional situations where screamers could appear besides just the heatmap=100 scenario. I like the threat of a cascading screamer summon event that can overwhelm the player if they don't target the scouts immediately. However, these screamers and ones I manually spawn in don't summon additional zombies when they scream.

 

During my testing I noticed that functional screamers only appeared if they were spawned in through the heatmap reaching 100%, and even then they wouldn't always spawn when the heatmap reached100%. I found that adding screamers to the scouthordegroupGSXXXX lists seemed to bring in more screamers when a screamer summoned a scout horde. These screamers appeared to be capable of summoning additional zombies as well until the max alive was hit (I think this is what happened, I removed the original screamer before the new ones that were summoned arrived and saw me which triggered more zombies and screamers to be spawned that also summoned more zombies It did hit a point when nothing else spawned in more zombies. There seems to be a lot of redundant stuff and I'm not sure how the spawning.xml, gamestages.xml, and entitygroups.xml tie into each other)

 

I discovered that you could replace the entity= "zombieScreamer" with any zombie entity in the entity group="ZombieScouts". (i.e. ZombieBoe), and their "alert" would trigger a scout spawn. I initially thought the screamer summon effect was only tied to zombies that were spawned from the entity group ZombieScouts. However, when I added this group to the Desert biome section in the spawning.xml, their screams didn't summon more zombies. I've tried adding the heat_map_strength = "100" to all the different sounds she makes to try and force the game to spawn another scout that does summon others, but this doesn't add anything to the heat map.

 

How do I add Screamers into game that function like the screamers that are summoned by the heatmap reaching 100%, without having the heatmap reach 100%.

 

If that is not possible, is there a way to force the heat map to reach 100% when one of these screamers makes the alert sound?

[xyth]

Any zombie added to this group is a screamer.

 

<entitygroup name="ZombieScouts">

<entity name="zombieScreamer"/>

</entitygroup>

 

also add this sound to those new zombies: <property name="SoundAlert" value="Enemies/Scout_Zombie/zombiefemalescoutalert"/>

 

 

[XCOUNTRY]

Yes, sorry I wasn't very clear in what I was asking. What I meant was how do I get the game to pull from <entitygroup name="ZombieScouts"> in situations other than when the heatmap reaches 100%? Is it hardcoded? Everything I've tried just results in screamer zombies that behave like normal zombies and doesn't call in scouthordes.

 

Forgive me If I'm super off on this, I'm new :-)

 

The only area in the spawning.xml that I see where I can insert <entitygroup name ="ZombieScouts"> is in this example:

 

<entityspawner name="Zombie_Football_Stadium_Med_Territorial">

 

<day value="*">

<property name="ResetToday" value="false" />

 

<property name="EntityGroupName" value="ZombieScouts" />

<property name="Time" value="Any" />

 

<property name="DelayBetweenSpawns" value="0" />

<!-- in seconds -->

<property name="TotalAlive" value="12" />

 

<property name="TotalPerWave" value="12" />

<property name="DaysToRespawnIfPlayerLeft" value="5" /> <!-- in game days -->

 

<property name="AttackPlayerAtOnce" value="false" />

 

<property name="Territorial" value="false" />

<property name="TerritorialRange" value="100" />

</day>

</entityspawner>

 

But when I visit the Football stadium I get the normal Zeds, in ratios seen below (this is from the entitygroups.xml):

 

<entitygroup name="ZombieFootballStadiumGroup">

<entity name="zombieFootballPlayer" prob="10"/>

<entity name="zombieCheerleader" prob="10"/>

<entity name="zombieBoe" prob="0.01"/>

<entity name="zombieJoe" prob="0.01"/>

<entity name="zombieSteve" prob="0.01"/>

<entity name="zombieYo" prob="0.01"/>

<entity name="zombieNurse" prob="0.01"/>

<entity name="zombieFatHawaiian" prob="0.01"/>

 

Is the spawning.xml even used? Only the Biome stuff seems to change anything I edit.