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Need guidance on zed tweaks


ZedBullfrog

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I'm mainly looking for guidance to which XMLs I need to edit.

 

I would like to make the following tweaks to make zeds behave more like the classic movie genre:

 

1. Walk only

2. Head shots only. Other shots do no damage but can cripple. (This sounds overly complex but I would be willing to lose the ability to cripple if head shot only worked)

3. No special abilities like cop puke or super fast football player/feral.

4. No wasps.

5. Headshots include all melee weapons and tools.

 

It would be cool if leg damage rendered zeds crippled. I'm assuming I have to choose between leg damage and head damage or none so this may be impossible to do.

 

Any input by the modding community for this newb modder would be greatly appreciated!!

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1. Walk only

A. Change NightWanderSpeed and NightApproachSpeed in entityclasses.xml

2. Head shots only. Other shots do no damage but can cripple. (This sounds overly complex but I would be willing to lose the ability to cripple if head shot only worked)

A. Not possible with xml only mod. I've not seen any dll mods yet.

3. No special abilities like cop puke or super fast football player/feral.

A. Change the HandItem on the cop and the speed of the football player in entityclasses.xml.

4. No wasps.

A. Remove them from all the spawn groups in entitygroups.xml

5. Headshots include all melee weapons and tools.

A. See A. #2.

 

I hope this helps.

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A tweak to make it seem like only head shots work is to raise all of the zombies health by a ton. Add a 0 to the end of each number. Then go through each weapon and item and raise damagebonushead for each one. This way when you attack the main body it will do very very little damage.

 

Hmmm! Never thought of it that way. It would take a lot of balancing from guns to melee, but should work. Great idea!

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Just to add my own two cents you /can/ make headshots super lethal and make body shots do jack all.

 

<property name="DamageBonus.head" value="10 />

<property name="DamageBonus.body" value="0.6" />

 

In this example headshots will do 10x their base damage. Body shows will only do 60% of their base damage. You can lower or increase these values to what you want. So if you wanted to make zombies almost immune to body damage you could set the body value to 0.1 - they'd only take 10% of the weapon damage if the shot lands on their body.

 

This would be a lot easier than making balance changes to health and damage.

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It probably will since those things are not only caused by damage. Limbs dismemberment is caused I think by the dismemberment chance and even if it only deals 1 damage it can dismember a limb if it rolls that chance.

 

Passive defenses like spikes deal damage differently, if you want them to not kill zeds probably should remove their damage and damage buffs entirely or change them to only slow them. Not entirely sure but there are probably options here to change how spikes work.

 

Giving zombies a load more HP and making headshots deal a load more damage should also nerf spikes a lot but they would still kill zombies at some point.

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Passive defenses wont be changed by this, if you're referring to spikes and such.

 

It also will have no effect on limb damage.

 

Far as I know zombies dont actually take damage when you hit their limbs. Though they might have changed that in A15.

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Passive defenses wont be changed by this, if you're referring to spikes and such.

 

It also will have no effect on limb damage.

 

Far as I know zombies dont actually take damage when you hit their limbs. Though they might have changed that in A15.

 

Sounds perfect! I'll do the necessary tweaks and report back with results.

 

You're probably right about the zombie damage taken when limbs are hit.

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I made all of the changes suggested above, except for DamageBonus.body because I cannot find any such tag in items.xml.

 

Am I looking in the wrong file or does that value no longer exist?

 

You are in the right area.

ex: <property name="DamageBonus.body" value="200" /> works.

using the example above I can bash a zombie in the head with a crappy club a few times before delivering the final blow. The same club and using the example above I can 1 shot zombies hitting the body.

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You are in the right area.

ex: <property name="DamageBonus.body" value="200" /> works.

using the example above I can bash a zombie in the head with a crappy club a few times before delivering the final blow. The same club and using the example above I can 1 shot zombies hitting the body.

 

I did a text search for DamageBonus.body and got no results. I'll try again in case I mistyped...

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

An unwanted side effect of increasing the head damage of all items seems to be that inflicting enough damage to a zombie causes it to disappear and not change into a gore block.

 

I think I need to tune it down a bit...

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*Side effect* hehe, that's one way of of removing a resource drain :p

Anyhow.. I tried it out a few times and it works just fine. The reason I tried it out was, I was actually hoping it was referencing the hit mask locations in the buff.xml but it doesn't work for the arms or legs :(

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*Side effect* hehe, that's one way of of removing a resource drain :p

Anyhow.. I tried it out a few times and it works just fine. The reason I tried it out was, I was actually hoping it was referencing the hit mask locations in the buff.xml but it doesn't work for the arms or legs :(

 

It works for you? Are you getting a lootable gore block after you kill a zed?

 

It's kind of immersion breaking when a zombie evaporates into thin air when you shoot them with a shotgun.

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It works for you? Are you getting a lootable gore block after you kill a zed?

 

It's kind of immersion breaking when a zombie evaporates into thin air when you shoot them with a shotgun.

 

Haven't tested it with a shotgun but it is probably the "Magazine_item_ray_counts" that is causing your issue. I Know it works for pistols, ak47, MP5 and Magnum (Haven't tried it with the bow or blunder either). If you give it a bonus then each ray that hits the target gets that bonus as well.

 

Might be whats causing the vapor issue.

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I just to clarify that the DamageBonus.body is not present in the vanilla code. You wont find it by searching for it. But it definitely works. I use it in my Valmod Horde Edition and CHS mod.

 

That solves the mystery. I just need to add the code for body damage. I'll also look over the "ray_counts" and see what needs to be done there.

 

Thanks a ton guys!!

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All recommended changes have been made and it happens that I had a horde night! Day 70 to be exact.

 

I didn't realize how much body damage had a factor before my changes! If you miss a headshot the zeds keep coming until you don't! This is exactly the gameplay I was looking for!

 

So far I don't miss cop vomit or fast moving football players and ferals.

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In some cases below (like 'ApproachSpeed') you may need to change the same value several times across zombies. I used the find function and evaluated each one at a time to make sure the change made sense.

 

To make the Football Player and Feral zeds walk at the same speed as all others, I found these values in entityclasses.xml and made them all the same. The only zombie I left at a faster speed was Zombie Dogs:

 

<property name="NightWanderSpeed" value="0.08" />

<property name="NightApproachSpeed" value="0.2" />

 

In the same file, I changed the following value for the Zombie Cop. This is the normal zombie attack and removes his ability to spit acid:

 

<property name="HandItem" value="handZombie" />

 

Same file again, I decided to remove the zombie ability to climb ladders:

 

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

 

If you want to remove the Spider Zombie ability to climb walls, change this value for that type from 'true' to 'false':

 

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

 

Now, onto items.xml. This is where I made the change to all weapons (or items I wanted to be useful as weapons like the Fireaxe) so they do very little damage to the body of the zeds but more head damage.

 

Search for the following text and make adjustments for each item:

 

<property name="DamageBonus.head" value="10" />

 

I used 10 as a maximum for more powerful weapons like Sniper Rifle and Spiked Club and chose something less than 10 based on how powerful I wanted the item to be. For instance, the Torch is a 2.

 

After editing the 'DamageBonus.head' I added the following line beneath it:

 

<property name="DamageBonus.body" value=".1" />

 

This makes the body able to take a lot of damage and makes it a very inefficient way to kill a zed. Head shots only!

 

At the same time, they still react to body shots and take leg damage from all weapons and traps and can become crawlers. Pretty cool!

 

The last thing I did was to open 'entitygroups.xml' and removed all lines referring to 'Hornet' so they no longer spawn at all.

 

 

The horde I got that night was fun in that all of the zombie traits I found to be immersion-breaking were gone. I also had to be really accurate with my weapons to avoid wasting a lot of ammunition. Very "Walking Dead" feel so far, which was the idea!

 

Cops make their hulkish noises, but don't charge, spit, or explode.

 

Bye-bye hornets and zombies moon-walking up walls!

 

I haven't take the time to remove Spider screams yet, but if I do I'll post that here a well.

 

Happy hunting!

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Just to add my own two cents you /can/ make headshots super lethal and make body shots do jack all.

 

<property name="DamageBonus.head" value="10 />

<property name="DamageBonus.body" value="0.6" />

 

In this example headshots will do 10x their base damage. Body shows will only do 60% of their base damage. You can lower or increase these values to what you want. So if you wanted to make zombies almost immune to body damage you could set the body value to 0.1 - they'd only take 10% of the weapon damage if the shot lands on their body.

 

This would be a lot easier than making balance changes to health and damage.

 

Thanks for this great bit of info, it encouraged me finally to tweak the amount of body damage it takes to kill a zombie, which supports me "roleplaying" to always go with headshots, even if it makes fighting harder.

 

I went with 0.5 multiplier to start with, and might tune it lower eventually, when we (me and my girlfriend) first get used to it.

Only weapons I left without the malus are Shotguns, as they have been turned into "AOE debuffing weapons" now anyway, so they don't do much with headshots, but slow the zombies down (IF the debuff actually works), allowing for some extra tactical options when fighting in hub cities for example.

 

This coupled with 10% loot and night/day speeds turned around (well, tripled day speeds and old day speeds for nights, actually) makes the game much more intense and exciting. Now every shot counts, as ammo is always running low in early to mid game.

 

Great thread with great advice, once again. Thanks guys. :-)

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