car horn spawns zeds?

[intorpere]

Sometimes when I'm trying to clear an area, I use a car horn to draw out zombies. My latest base has a long corridor of indestructible fence, with a doorway built at the end, leading to my enclosed base area. At the other (open) end of the fence corridor is the street, where I have a few cars parked.

So, having just come from that corridor, I know it's clear, and yet when I blare the car horn, I keep finding one or two all the way down by the door. It seems like they must be spawning there. I can't imagine why they'd sneak past me and the car to go down that way just to beat on the door.

Am I right that the car horn causes zombies to spawn? That's the exact opposite of what I'm trying to accomplish.

[Quill]

Horns don't spawn zombies. It's just a noise

What you're more likely running into is the BS mechanic (Building Spawn)

When you approach a structure within 9 tiles of a window/door that allows you to view inside the structure then it will spawn zombies inside the building. If these conditions have not been met these zombies do not exist. This effect only happens once but if you're not careful you can run into the "surprise zombies"

This is very noticeable if you clear out all the zombies around the mall and then approach the mall's main entrance. You can see the zombies appear out of thin air

Once you clear a town go from building to building and look inside them at the correct distance and this will get the last remaining undead

[intorpere]

There are no buildings involved. The "corridor" is just a tall fence on either side of the road. One end of the road has a double door built across it. The other end is open, where the car is. The zombies are not past the door, but on the same side, in the corridor.

To see what I'm referring to, map coordinates for the door are 1413 x 262

[Armagenesis]

Originally posted by intorpere:

There are no buildings involved. The "corridor" is just a tall fence on either side of the road. One end of the road has a double door built across it. The other end is open, where the car is. The zombies are not past the door, but on the same side, in the corridor.

To see what I'm referring to, map coordinates for the door are 1413 x 262

Pretty sure that coordinate is in the middle of nowhere out of even the visible areas. It's where Kingsmouth in KY map is located if I recall. If that's the case then it could be the mod doing something funny to the game's spawning mechanic.

But then again, I experienced something like this pretty often with the drive-in theater south of Rosewood. Where I got munched on by a random zombie appearing out of nowhere despite already making sure the area was secure. It could be a bug, but I can only guess.

[intorpere]

It's on the eastern edge of Louisville. Three houses with a big fence around them, middle one has a pond. No mods.

[Nordil(Hun)]

Originally posted by intorpere:

It's on the eastern edge of Louisville. Three houses with a big fence around them, middle one has a pond. No mods.

Well Lville is a heavily infested area. Sounding the car horn will make zeds aware of you. It should have quite a large range alerting the zeds via noise. Remember a fast shambler can cross a whole screen(max distance) in about 13-5 seconds. So when you go sound the horn, step out of the car, go over to check already about 20 seconds or so should pass, to be exact you need to count the seconds to give yourself an idea from how far you managed to pull them zeds towards to you.

[intorpere]

Sure, but the only way for them to get to that door, is if they're running past me and the car. I don't think they're doing that. The car horn spawns them. That's the only explanation.

[Nordil(Hun)]

Originally posted by intorpere:

Sure, but the only way for them to get to that door, is if they're running past me and the car. I don't think they're doing that. The car horn spawns them. That's the only explanation.

It definetly should not, if you could give me the exact location pinpointing the location where the car is parked i could have a bit more ideas.
Cuz as per my understanding you are somewhere around these parts. But i failed to locate where you park the car where is the double door etc as per your description.
https://map.projectzomboid.com/?#12049x2507x1568

[intorpere]

Oh, didn't realize I could link to the exact location.
Here: https://map.projectzomboid.com/?#14118x2625x15701

The car is parked on the left, in the street at the end of the driveway. The door is blocking the other end, leading to the three houses.

[Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia]

Did you clear out the woods inside that compound? Are all the fences intact? Did you make sure that the area was cleared again after building the doors to make sure no zombies had migrated in?

[Armagenesis]

I doubt the game spawns those zombies, but it's possible there's a bug that caused that to happen.
If you'd like, you can try "cheating" a little to ensure whether they actually do spawn out of nowhere or you just missed it. In debug mode, there's a population map which you can use to pinpoint every zombie in your immediate area.

[intorpere]

First time using debug mode. Hadn't thought of that, but it seems to explain it. For one, there are a lot more zombies in the vicinity than I'd realized. The horn only attracts a few of them each time.

What surprised me though is the pathing. They don't all bee-line for the car. They path to random locations in the general vicinity of the car, created by blowing the horn. Sometimes these pathing destinations are pretty far from the source of the noise. Sometimes down the fenced in road, towards my base. Sometimes taking a very long time to get there.

Essentially, they have been sneaking past me, ignoring the exact location of the car, ignoring my character, to get to their random pathing destination created by blowing the horn.

[Nordil(Hun)]

Originally posted by intorpere:

First time using debug mode. Hadn't thought of that, but it seems to explain it. For one, there are a lot more zombies in the vicinity than I'd realized. The horn only attracts a few of them each time.

What surprised me though is the pathing. They don't all bee-line for the car. They path to random locations in the general vicinity of the car, created by blowing the horn. Sometimes these pathing destinations are pretty far from the source of the noise. Sometimes down the fenced in road, towards my base. Sometimes taking a very long time to get there.

Essentially, they have been sneaking past me, ignoring the exact location of the car, ignoring my character, to get to their random pathing destination created by blowing the horn.

See nothing really out of the ordinary.
The zombies do not always act in a way you expect them. They are moving in the general direction of the sound, but on occasion for instance you can encounter zeds that are actually moving the opposite direction.(Which is probably an early cell redistribution fix.)
Also just as an FYI on occasions you can have even delayed response from zeds, like there is a large sound somewhere, you can expect zombies to arrive for at least 2-3 days to check it out:)