Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: [1] 2

Author Topic: Zombie Modding / Evil Biomes  (Read 8640 times)

thunderbeard

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Zombie Modding / Evil Biomes
« on: September 03, 2012, 04:41:36 pm »

So I've embarked on an evil biome and I'm very much overrun with reanimating animal people zombies (and now dwarves). I know of the two of methods that can actually destroy zombies:

Atom Smashers
Obsidian forming

Would it be possible to go into the raws and make zombies destructible to water or (preferably) magma? Maybe make reanimated undead have bones made of wood? I know that magma kills enemies through bleeding damage, but I've personally dropped goblins into magma pools and they've been incinerated into nothing. Why are zombies immune to such a fate? I've also read that there is some kind of hitpoint system for zombies as well, however embarking on an evil biome doesn't give me that luxury. There is also cage traps, but I'd like to eradicate these pets.

Otherwise I love the challenge of playing on a Terrifying biome. But I personally think that zombies/thralls need a nerf and so do evil biomes in the sense that only creatures on ground level should reanimate. But that's small stuff in comparison to the overall zombie OPness.
« Last Edit: September 03, 2012, 04:48:16 pm by thunderbeard »
Logged

GreatWyrmGold

  • Bay Watcher
  • Sane, by the local standards.
    • View Profile
Re: Zombie Modding / Evil Biomes
« Reply #1 on: September 03, 2012, 04:58:22 pm »

No. The procedural generation making zombies is hardcoded.
Zombies are easy to kill, but hard to keep down. Tossing them into a magma-filled pit with some kind of weapon trap or something might work, by collapsing the zombie and incinerating the corpse.
Or, toss all corpses down a pit and hope you don't get fliers.

Terrifying biomes deserve the name.
Logged
Sig
Are you a GM with players who haven't posted? TheDelinquent Players Help will have Bay12 give you an action!
[GreatWyrmGold] gets a little crown. May it forever be his mark of Cain; let no one argue pointless subjects with him lest they receive the same.

i2amroy

  • Bay Watcher
  • Cats, ruling the world one dwarf at a time
    • View Profile
Re: Zombie Modding / Evil Biomes
« Reply #2 on: September 03, 2012, 08:49:31 pm »

IIRC you can make zombies destroyable by magma if you go into the material_template_default.txt and add a melting point (such as [MELTING_POINT:11000] to all of the body materials that currently lack a melting point (so bone, muscle, skin, etc.). Then the zombies should run around in the magma for a little while and then melt into blobs that are destroyed.
Logged
Quote from: PTTG
It would be brutally difficult and probably won't work. In other words, it's absolutely dwarven!
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - A fun zombie survival rougelike that I'm dev-ing for.

GreatWyrmGold

  • Bay Watcher
  • Sane, by the local standards.
    • View Profile
Re: Zombie Modding / Evil Biomes
« Reply #3 on: September 03, 2012, 08:58:58 pm »

Why don't zombies normally melt while normal critters do?
Logged
Sig
Are you a GM with players who haven't posted? TheDelinquent Players Help will have Bay12 give you an action!
[GreatWyrmGold] gets a little crown. May it forever be his mark of Cain; let no one argue pointless subjects with him lest they receive the same.

thunderbeard

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Zombie Modding / Evil Biomes
« Reply #4 on: September 04, 2012, 12:36:13 am »

IIRC you can make zombies destroyable by magma if you go into the material_template_default.txt and add a melting point (such as [MELTING_POINT:11000] to all of the body materials that currently lack a melting point (so bone, muscle, skin, etc.). Then the zombies should run around in the magma for a little while and then melt into blobs that are destroyed.
That is exactly what I was looking for! :)

Why wouldn't this already be in the game? Bones should burn to ash, realistically.
« Last Edit: September 05, 2012, 09:24:30 am by thunderbeard »
Logged

i2amroy

  • Bay Watcher
  • Cats, ruling the world one dwarf at a time
    • View Profile
Re: Zombie Modding / Evil Biomes
« Reply #5 on: September 04, 2012, 03:30:37 am »

The reason why normal creatures can die and zombies can't is that normal creatures are technically dying of blood loss, at which point their corpse is damaged and then destroyed by the lava. Zombies on the other hand can't die of blood loss, and as long as they are alive their bones don't become XXbonesXX, making them immune to lava (since body materials by default have a heat damage point, but living creatures can't be damaged that way to destruction, only corpses and objects). Living creatures can melt though, meaning that if you add melting points to all of their materials then zombies will melt in lava, killing them.
Logged
Quote from: PTTG
It would be brutally difficult and probably won't work. In other words, it's absolutely dwarven!
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - A fun zombie survival rougelike that I'm dev-ing for.

malvado

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Zombie Modding / Evil Biomes
« Reply #6 on: September 04, 2012, 06:08:46 am »

Well, honestly I've never really thought that Zombies and other undead are properly implemented in the game, for instance :

*Bone smashing weapons that ought to reduce a skeleton to dust (or anything to pulp) does not destroy reanimated corpses or even parts.
*Slashing and piercing weapons do not help destroy reanimated body parts even when they might sever an arm in two.
*Undead reanimation is simply put to powerfull , if you are unlucky and walk into a tomb filled with cadavers they can all be "reanimated" instantanly without problems for the undead :
Honestly the undead should have trouble reanimating 200 bodies at once (something like that has happened, funny when you are surrounded by 5 or 10 enemies inn every single tile , and keeping them reanimated over time should also wex the undead / necromancer / mummy somehow.
*There's no weapon avaibable that would in some way affect the undead : No blessed / holy weapons , no torches to set corpses afire , no bonuses for using silver weapons , no bonuses for maces and so on.

So basically If it was possible to use a mod that could impact all those areas it would be fine. I personally find the undead fun but overpowered by at least ^100 :P
Logged

GreatWyrmGold

  • Bay Watcher
  • Sane, by the local standards.
    • View Profile
Re: Zombie Modding / Evil Biomes
« Reply #7 on: September 04, 2012, 03:26:41 pm »

To reply to your problems with the incomplete implementation of the undead:

*True
*Piercing, yeah, but how do you cut an arm with a spear? As to the other bit, you can server an arm's lower arm, killing it instantly and causing only the lower arm to reanimate.
*How are you certain this isn't intentional? Losing is Fun, Urist McTooSlow.
*True enough...but why would maces get a bonus?

Besides, zombies are easy to cause to collapse, at which point they aren't a threat if you dump the corpse into magma or a pit they can't escape from. And you did get a fair warning about the evil area...
Logged
Sig
Are you a GM with players who haven't posted? TheDelinquent Players Help will have Bay12 give you an action!
[GreatWyrmGold] gets a little crown. May it forever be his mark of Cain; let no one argue pointless subjects with him lest they receive the same.

i2amroy

  • Bay Watcher
  • Cats, ruling the world one dwarf at a time
    • View Profile
Re: Zombie Modding / Evil Biomes
« Reply #8 on: September 04, 2012, 06:05:38 pm »

*There's no weapon avaibable that would in some way affect the undead : No blessed / holy weapons , no torches to set corpses afire , no bonuses for using silver weapons , no bonuses for maces and so on.
Not to put out your holy fury (since I agree with a lot of it and a fair amount is actually planned for the future, it just hasn't been implemented yet), but unless corpses are really old and they were stored in a dry place then they actually burn really badly. First it would be difficult to get them to catch in the first place, and then they would burn for a long time, (since most problems with burning to death is pain/blood loss, not structural damage) so all that lighting the zombies on fire would do is make them even more dangerous for the next few hours before they finally collapsed.
Logged
Quote from: PTTG
It would be brutally difficult and probably won't work. In other words, it's absolutely dwarven!
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - A fun zombie survival rougelike that I'm dev-ing for.

Hectonkhyres

  • Bay Watcher
  • Has a Fetish for Skulking Filth-
    • View Profile
Re: Zombie Modding / Evil Biomes
« Reply #9 on: September 04, 2012, 06:19:06 pm »

They still shouldn't burn worse than living dwarves.
Logged
And now the thread is about starfish porn.
...originally read that as 'perpetual motion pants' and thought how could I have missed this??

GreatWyrmGold

  • Bay Watcher
  • Sane, by the local standards.
    • View Profile
Re: Zombie Modding / Evil Biomes
« Reply #10 on: September 04, 2012, 06:21:16 pm »

*There's no weapon avaibable that would in some way affect the undead : No blessed / holy weapons , no torches to set corpses afire , no bonuses for using silver weapons , no bonuses for maces and so on.
Not to put out your holy fury (since I agree with a lot of it and a fair amount is actually planned for the future, it just hasn't been implemented yet), but unless corpses are really old and they were stored in a dry place then they actually burn really badly. First it would be difficult to get them to catch in the first place, and then they would burn for a long time, (since most problems with burning to death is pain/blood loss, not structural damage) so all that lighting the zombies on fire would do is make them even more dangerous for the next few hours before they finally collapsed.
This is why the few zombie survival guides that take themselves seriously and many that don't advise the use of fire as a tool, not a weapon.

They still shouldn't burn worse than living dwarves.
Dwarves' clothes burn well. Zombies don't wear clothes.
Logged
Sig
Are you a GM with players who haven't posted? TheDelinquent Players Help will have Bay12 give you an action!
[GreatWyrmGold] gets a little crown. May it forever be his mark of Cain; let no one argue pointless subjects with him lest they receive the same.

Broken

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Zombie Modding / Evil Biomes
« Reply #11 on: September 05, 2012, 02:11:44 am »

We are not talking about fire. We are talking about MAGMA. you now, SMELT ROCK. it should be more than capable to completely melt
bodies.
Logged
Quote
In a hole in the ground there lived a dwarf. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a dwarf fortress, and that means magma.
Dwarf fortress: Tales of terror and inevitability

crazysheep

  • Bay Watcher
  • [PREFSTRING:fluffy wool]
    • View Profile
Re: Zombie Modding / Evil Biomes
« Reply #12 on: September 05, 2012, 02:17:42 am »

The problem of magma not killing zombies is a known bug, and IIRC Toady said as much too (the mechanics of magma not killing zombies was chalked down to undefined melting points for tissue templates IIRC). As the kitty pointed out a couple of posts back, the workaround is to add melting points to tissues to allow body melting to occur.

Also, do note that since this is the tissue template that's broken, the body not melting in magma/lava effect also applies to living dwarves - they tend to drown or die of blood loss rather than die of melting body parts.
Logged
"Don't be in such a hurry to grow up, for there's nothing a kid can't do."

malvado

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Zombie Modding / Evil Biomes
« Reply #13 on: September 06, 2012, 03:01:17 am »

Well, for those of you who actually do read a bit of fantasy you will see that there's different takes on the "zombie / undead" burning thing.
In a Game of Thrones the undead are weak vs Fire and dies relatively fast when put to the torch. Vampires and some other entities does not exactly enjoy fire either and most vampires get's a penalization when exposed to sunlight ( some even burst into flames :P )

As for the fact that a mummy can raise litterally hundreds of undead in an instant it is mostly problematic in adventure mode since they are not limited to tombs, but can litterally appear almost anywhere underground (temples, forts , tombs , sewers ) .

The bonuses for weapons is mostly an old thing coming from ad&d where it was more difficult to do damage with a piercing weapon on a skeleton than bashing it to smittering with a mace type weapon. Sure if you had a big enough sword you could probably hack the skeleton in 2 pieces, but again you had a damage penalization.
In DF skeletons and Zombies are way more lethal since every body part you separate can be "reanimated" and ensures a lot of fun for unlucky adventurers!

Basically being able to add something like Weakness:Fire , Weakness:Blunt , Weakness:Holy could be a big help when modding or making sure that a mummy can't reanimate several hundred undead at once but would reanimate corpses around them over time and would have a limit on the number they could control effectively. An effective range would also be desireable where either the undead would collapse or they would loose direct control over them.
Logged

DG

  • Bay Watcher
  • Pull the Lever
    • View Profile
Re: Zombie Modding / Evil Biomes
« Reply #14 on: September 06, 2012, 08:28:09 am »

Severed hands need a nerf. Without the forearm (and the muscle and tendon to bone connections that entails) a hand wouldn't be able to exert enough grip to be dangerous (or have enough mass behind it for that matter). If you haven't considerd it, grab hold of something very tightly and look at what your forearm is doing.

Also, learning the secrets of life and death needs to be more difficult. A few sentences on a rock shouldn't let you know how to immediately raise undead and not have to eat or drink anymore and live forever unaging. It should require several moments of contemplation at the very least...
Logged
Pages: [1] 2