More Head! Less Body.

[Bromulus]

Here is the dream goal I am looking to achieve:

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#1) A zombies body highly resistant to damage.

#2) A zombie is instakilled killed with a headshot.

#3) Current Zombie HP values remain intact.

#4) Solution has no bearing on the effectiveness of weapons on animals, other players or bandits.

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To achieve this I think we have to get the code that makes it happen off of the weapons and onto the Zombies themselves. Which is proving to be the sticking point.

Below is an open discussion of ideas on the subject.
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I had a thought on Head Shots and Body Invulnerability when it comes to constructing the perfect classic Zombie.

If we could assign a material to zombies, like we can blocks and items, say "Zorganic", we could do a pretty neat trick I think.

We could make all weapons 50% (75% whatever) less effective against Zorganic material but then make damage within the head hitbox X100 (or whatever).

		
<property name="DamageBonus.head" value="100" />
<property name="DamageBonus.zorganic" value="0.5" />

Weapons do little against zombies bodies but headshots are typically fatal.

More importantly, in fact the whole point of this approach, all other entities like animals, bandits other players, friendly fire etc remains exactly how it should be when it comes to hitting their body. Yes, their headshots would be fatal as well but guess what, we want that anyway, lore remains intact all good.

Now if this route wont work what about calling out damage specifics against a CLASS or ENTITY type? For example if we could say:

		
<property name="DamageBonus.head" value="100" />
<property name="DamageBonus.entity.zombie" value="0.5" />

We'd be in business.

My code is just greeked in to give you the jist of how we'd want to call it in a perfect world.

Also trying to think of existing examples where an item, like a weapon, does something specific to an entity... like maybe fire to hay or something. Anything like that could give us a clue on if/how to proceed.

Think anything like this is a possibility?

[Brian9824]

Pretty sure you can just go into entityclasses and assign a damage multiplier to head of say 100 and make a multiplier of every other part like .001.

This way headshots to zombies do 100x the damage and body shots do almost nothing. I know there are several mods already where they have made it headshot only.

[Valmar]

Actually there is already a property to make body shows less powerful.

For example:
<property name="DamageBonus.head" value="15" />
<property name="DamageBonus.body" value="0.3" />

Headshots will deal 15x damage but body shots will only deal 30% of the base damage.

Although unlike what you're after this would effect all entities, including NPCs and Traders.

We can assign custom materials and bonuses to said materials but I dont think it works on entites, only blocks.

[Bromulus]

Publicado originalmente por brian9824:

Pretty sure you can just go into entityclasses and assign a damage multiplier to head of say 100 and make a multiplier of every other part like .001.

This way headshots to zombies do 100x the damage and body shots do almost nothing. I know there are several mods already where they have made it headshot only.

Wait... but the mods I see are pulling this off by tying it to the weapon item itself though. So say the machete does 50% damage to bodies. The problem is the machete then does 50% damage to everything/anything with a body. Making hunting and fighting off humans a bit of a chore and/or immersion breaker.

Are you saying there is a mod that is somehow assigning head/body "damage recieved" multipliers to the entity itself? That would be big. I've only seen modifiers on the "damage deliverers".

HIGHLY curious...

[Bromulus]

Publicado originalmente por Valmar:

but I dont think it works on entites

Well unless

Publicado originalmente por brian9824:

is on to something huge that we don't know about... I'm saying we should persue this for a second. Maybe?

[Bromulus]

OK wait... I have another approach

INVISIBLE ARMOR!

Attached to every zombie entity.

• a set of gloves, boots, legs, chest... NO HELMET.

• no degradation

• disable them from being a lootable item

• crank the Concussive and Puncture protection (and pssssst you could even go negative with the fire protection, these crazy dry walking husks)

• Return all of the Damage.Body of your weapons to their former human hurting animal killing glory.

Well?

[Valmar]

I have never heard of what Brian suggests, for what its worth. Far as I know its not possible to make a specific entity take more headshot damage. There are dismemberment values you can adjust but I've never seen an entity have something that suggests you can tone down or increase the amount of headshot damage he can take. I'd be interested to see the code for this to know how its done.

As for armor its not possible to equip them with armor. Even if you make a UMA zombie that wears armor, far as I know, its purely visual and actually offers no protection.

There is one possible way I can think of to make headshots and bodyshots specific to zombies. But its kinda... flakey. Its a real "hacky" workaround, for lack of a better word.

You can make two buffs. Headshot and body. These two buffs can be told to deal a flat amount of damage when applied and can both be told to only apply if hit in the head or torso - but make it so it only applies if the entity is not a player on the headshot buff but the bodyshot would actually need to apply only if its a player.

Then make all weapons deal these two buffs all the time and probably do a little balance adjustment to the base damage to compensate for the extra damage.

That is quite a bit of work to achieve. Buffs are also not perfect. They dont triger instantly, or at least I could never discover a way to make them to do so. There is a tiny delay. So you might get a situation where you shoot a zombie in the head, it growls and steps towards you but then falls over dead seemingly at random because the buff kicked in and took away t he rest of the health.

I dont know for sure it would play out like that, though. Maybe you wouldnt notice on them. But in my experience with making a "block/dodge" right click mechanic on melee weapons t hat use buffs I did notice it doesnt trigger instantly and takes a moment. That might had just been in my unique usage case though.



Side-Note: My approach to the animals in my CHS mod, where I use headshot and body multipliers to get this effect, was to basically lower the animals health down a bit. While not the perfect solution it did help nulify the fact that body shots were nerfed. Doing half the amount of body damage is canceled out by the animal only having half the vanilla health, afterall.

[Bromulus]

Publicado originalmente por Valmar:

I have never heard of what Brian suggests, for what its worth. Far as I know its not possible to make a specific entity take more headshot damage. There are dismemberment values you can adjust but I've never seen an entity have something that suggests you can tone down or increase the amount of headshot damage he can take. I'd be interested to see the code for this to know how its done.

Highly skeptical myself.

Publicado originalmente por Valmar:

As for armor its not possible to equip them with armor.

Really? We cant attach armor right to the entity on spawn? Well hell.

The buff idea does sound iffy. Hmmmm.

Publicado originalmente por Valmar:

Side-Note: My approach to the animals in my CHS mod, where I use headshot and body multipliers to get this effect, was to basically lower the animals health down a bit. While not the perfect solution it did help nulify the fact that body shots were nerfed. Doing half the amount of body damage is canceled out by the animal only having half the vanilla health, afterall.

Noted and I was trying that from an earlier suggestion you made.

It's still eating at me (get it?) for some reason in game though. Also its affecting friendly fire and will totally make the bandit/npc situation weird. So I am racking my brain for a more entity based solution.

Have you played with hitboxes?

[Bromulus]

So....

HITBOXES!

I see the game clearly makes a distinction between head and body hitboxes, and i read about the devs tinkering with the sizes of said boxes (Hey Now).

So I wonder if there is a way in the xml to radically reduce the size of or just disable an entity's hitboxes all together? Particulalry the "body".

[Valmar]

I dont believe that is possible to achieve on an entity-level. It would be possible to do to weapons though. Course then it effects everything, not just zombies.

[Bromulus]

Publicado originalmente por Valmar:

I dont believe that is possible to achieve on an entity-level. It would be possible to do to weapons though. Course then it effects everything, not just zombies.

Doh! Refusing to accept defeat, lol.

OK so when i read about the devs adjusting the hitbox size on an entity that is something in the source that we can't mess with. Gotchya.

How did you ever discover the DamageBonus.Body attribute anyway? I haven't come across any occurence of it in original xml's.

[Valmar]

Publicado originalmente por Bromulus:

How did you ever discover the DamageBonus.Body attribute anyway? I haven't come across any occurence of it in original xml's.

Random goofing around long time ago just to see if it possible. I think the first time tried was Torso and it didn't work. I'm not sure. Its been so long its hard to remember.

[Bromulus]

Publicado originalmente por Valmar:

Publicado originalmente por Bromulus:

How did you ever discover the DamageBonus.Body attribute anyway? I haven't come across any occurence of it in original xml's.

Random goofing around long time ago just to see if it possible. I think the first time tried was Torso and it didn't work. I'm not sure. Its been so long its hard to remember.

Well it's quite a find, and it's sole existence is why I keep this post alive, what makes me think there are other essoteric attributes out there.

[Valmar]

Someone who knows how to open/read the .dll file can probably tell you ALL the hidden properties. A super-techy-savvy user by the name of StompyNZ, for example, once showed me a full list of all the hidden quest.xml... things... that can be used. Its has quite a lot of stuff that isn't present anyone in the vanilla file that could open up a lot of possibilities.

Though not all of them seem to actually work yet (probably why they're not officially in use yet, probably just the "ground work" being laid out). Sort of like how modders discovered the hidden gyrocopter and motorcyle models. The models are there but they're still not coded into the game yet.

I wouldn't be surprised if theres a lot of hidden little gems in other files awell. For example if I recall correctly there is actually a property you can add to a loot container in loot.xml that will make it give the player a buff or quest when they open it.

Like maybe the chest you find was rigged with a trap and shot you with a poison dart so now you have to cure it before you puke out your liver or something.

Though my memory is about as reliable as a politican after election. So take that with a grain of salt.

[Bromulus]

Publicado originalmente por Valmar:

Though my memory is about as reliable as a politican after election. So take that with a grain of salt.

Ha! Love it.

Publicado originalmente por Valmar:

(probably why they're not officially in use yet, probably just the "ground work" being laid out).

Not that I want to ever take anything away from a company that at least gives me the "option" to create a living breathing universe filled with nothing but proper walkers... but... it is also fathomable that instead of proactively being laid out these could just be untapped features that were included in the purchased "survival base package for Unity" from China or "failed apocolypse title" from Russia.

Either way, cool stuff. [/quote]

[Valmar]

Removed your duplicate post for you :p