How to find zombies you can hear but can't see?

[Pumathang]

Maybe this is a dumb question, but is there some way to find or detect what direction a zombie is in? It's easy enough out in the open if you just turn around until you find one, but it's really hard when you're in the middle of a building and there are no zombies in sight. Even after looking around the rooms I still can't seem to find all of them. I'm not even sure if there are really zombies every single time, or if the game just plays zombie sound effects periodically to make you THINK there's a zombie right behind you. I thought maybe a zombie might have spawned in a wall, but I'm not willing to take apart the walls of the entire base without even knowing which direction the sound is coming from...

[seven]

The directional audio isn't that great, so it's not always easy to tell. And sometimes the zombies are outside the building, maybe even some distance away, but they will sound close.

[Plato]

Honestly, I have a pair of Lvl Up Headphones which aren't even all that great, and I can hear pin point accuracy. If I put on my cheap dollar store headphones, there's a huge difference in sound. With the cheaper headphones I can't pin point.

So my guess, is Headphones/Speakers will be important here, maybe even perhaps your Windows Sound Control Pane if you try tweaking with some of those options.

[Shane]

has your building got a false ceiling installed, if it has and its not in the land claim area, they will spawn in there... look for cracks in blocks that they are trying to smash through...

happened to us when we renovated a clothing store.

[hpsfamily]

with my headphones i can close my eyes and hit a z with a crossbow. distance is harder in poi

[Khissi]

So, you didn't say, but are you playing single player or multi? I ask this because, when I'm playing with another person, and they are looting/exploring whatever, I can hear THEIR zombie noises.... especially the sleeping ones, and it can be a bit disconcerting when you KNOW you're alone at the base. Just asking...

[Shane]

Originally posted by hpsfamily:

with my headphones i can close my eyes and hit a z with a crossbow. distance is harder in poi

no chance !!

the only thing in gaming that can pinpoint sound to that degree is VR
(and even then it aint easy to achieve)

[Plato]

Originally posted by Shane:

Originally posted by hpsfamily:

with my headphones i can close my eyes and hit a z with a crossbow. distance is harder in poi

no chance !!

the only thing in gaming that can pinpoint sound to that degree is VR
(and even then it aint easy to achieve)

I disagree. If you've ever played Counter-Strike, you can pin point exactly where enemies are. This is quite similar with the Zombies, I can hear basically exactly where they are, on the opposite side of walls, above me, or below me.

Again, all depends on your headphones/sound settings.

[Shane]

yea you can get left/right front/back on both "headphones" & "vr" but you can never get such precision as that. even a IMAX cinema cant achieve it... nor real life ;)

that scene in the bodyguard in the forest complete rubbish hehe

the problem is speakers can deliver left/right front/back, however headphones will make it seem more in your face because your wearing something that literally blocks out R/L external sounds.

at best your headphones are going to cut out sound from the left ear, indicating the enemy i sto your right, beyond that nothing. thats how VR does it, expect the level of reality on VR because its 3D enhances it further

meaning all you have is 100% fire to the left, not "close my eyes and hit the target to the left" ... thats not happening

[Shurenai]

Originally posted by Shane:

yea you can get left/right front/back on both "headphones" & "vr" but you can never get such precision as that. even a IMAX cinema cant achieve it... nor real life ;)

that scene in the bodyguard in the forest complete rubbish hehe

the problem is speakers can deliver left/right front/back, however headphones will make it seem more in your face because your wearing something that literally blocks out R/L external sounds.

at best your headphones are going to cut out sound from the left ear, indicating the enemy i sto your right, beyond that nothing. thats how VR does it, expect the level of reality on VR because its 3D enhances it further

meaning all you have is 100% fire to the left, not "close my eyes and hit the target to the left" ... thats not happening

erm.. With a good quality surround headset you can get audio that can shift forward or back within the side it's on. With a great quality one, it can seamlessly shift the audio from one side to the other by lowering the volume as if the thing were going 'in front of' or 'behind' you, and much more.

In the good sets, it's broken up into the left, left forward surround, left rear surround, center, right, right forward surround, right rear surround- And sometimes even more, all of which can individually present sounds as louder or quieter. allowing you to detect with a great degree of accuracy what direction something is.

It's been a long, long time since audio was just left, or just right in anything but the worst of headsets.

[Shane]

maybe its because i had a drink tonight, but you people are flat out talking rubbish if your trying to convince me you lot can hit a Z with a set of earphones with your eyes shut

of course now i look like the guy talking rubbish because i called it out...

but hey go ahead upload the vid...

[Pumathang]

I'm playing single player, no headphones, just regular windows sound settings. I can definitely tell that they seem to be coming from one direction when I walk back and forth across a room, but there isn't necessarily a zombie nearby. I do have kind of a crappy building I'm trying to renovate (I spawned in a burned forest biome, so I think the buildings here are worse than other biomes)... and I have a really hard time just figuring out if the zombie is outside somewhere or in another room. It's just the moaning/breathing sound... doesn't sound like they're attacking or destroying anything, and I'm not sure if they detect me or not. (I've only been playing for a few days, still figuring stuff out)

I'm not using the entire building as my base... just a cellar type area I walled off as best I could, but I did kind of restore the outside rooms somewhat. Fixed some floors/walls and put up a bunch of doors between them. Sometimes the zombies try to bust down my main base door, but sometimes I find them in other adjacent rooms I'm not using (presumably because they like going after doors?) I guess it's good if they leave my primary door alone, but I still want to get rid of them if they break into an unused room elsewhere in the building, and without knowing which rooms they MIGHT be in, I never know if I'm walking into an ambush. When I don't find any, I assume they're outside somewhere, but... I have also gotten jumped by zombies outside when I didn't hear anything at all.

In other games I've sometimes had issues where I can't hear someone standing next to me if I'm not looking in the right direction, but I honestly don't play around with the sound settings much in any other game to have something to compare it to.