Ways to make zombies more scary

[Nico A.]

Who is scared of the zombies in TDM? Personally, I find them rather annoying.

 

What could make them more scary? I just had the thought that if zombies could mantle and thus reach all the places I can, that would make them a lot scarier IMHO.

[wesp5]

I just had the thought that if zombies could mantle and thus reach all the places I can, that would make them a lot scarier IMHO.

I wouldn't like that. First because this does not at all fit the usual slow zombie stereotype and second I think zombies are bad enough as you can't get rid of them without wasting precious resources like holy water or fire arrows...

[Dragofer]

Hm, my personal opinion is to try to do scary things with humans instead. That butcher in Demagogue's mission was terrifying, the way he suddenly, loudly comes out of a door and goes down the only path I can still use to escape. I don't think people are used to seeing humans in a horror role, so that may feel more raw as an experience.

[Anderson]

We ought to look at John Romero's movie Night of the Living Dead and the whole philosophy behind the early zombie movies to understand what they were terrifying for.

I mean, not running zombies like in new zombie games.

I mean zombies that are crawling but that are huge in numbers. That have to be outsmarted. A horde to be understood.

 

It's not like scary as in the Silent Hill way of course. It's just a constant psychological pressure that they are around and that even if they are slow, they constantly move towards you. Maybe even make them harder to kill than Haunts and make only hits in the head count for anything on hardcore difficulty.

 

 

Which expains the success of No More Room in Hell projects and other revivals of zombies done the good old ways.

Pardon the nostalgia.

Edited July 27, 2016 by Anderson

[Destined]

I agree with Dragofer. It is not the AI that makes a situation creepy. It is the atmosphere of the level (there was actually a whole thread about, what makes a situation creepy some time ago). Also, I think the mantling ability for AI would make mores sense for humans than for AI. However, if I remember correctly, one of the main point against this was the need to create and implement a correct mantling animation. The "the AI can reach everywhere I can" would be nice on a ghost. This, on the other hand, will not work due to the need of the AAS.

[demagogue]

Although I agree with the other points made, to answer the question, if you just want scarier zombies, I'd take notes from Left4Dead (the Valve game not the Baddcog FM) and use its tricks. But if you had to pick one, I'd made a runner bezerker zombie type to mix in with the regular slowpokes.

[Anderson]

Although I agree with the other points made, to answer the question, if you just want scarier zombies, I'd take notes from Left4Dead (the Valve game not the Baddcog FM) and use its tricks. But if you had to pick one, I'd made a runner bezerker zombie type to mix in with the regular slowpokes.

From a mechanical point of view it would make perfect sense. But if I ever had started to build a mission I would instead use well placed scripts, even if my soul would be condemned to the eternal pits of hell of the heretical sin of linearity. All to avoid running zombies. Ever after the trend with fast zombies was given form in many titles, I took the most effort to avoid those motion pictures/games.

[teh_saccade]

the only scary zombie is the one i can't beat in a 100m sprint.

zombies are boring unless they pop out of unexpected places (like graves and in great numbers) - hammer haunts are scary.

I hate levels where there are zombies I have to take ages to "kill" with my sword (because its faster than avoiding them) and haunts that I have to just yawn past, without holy water...

Really slows a level down and they aren't scary adversaries. Ambiance only, I think, like where all the skels and zombies are in the collapse gaol pit in that one level, where you have to get over them to get to the warden's key - and if u fall in - ur toast. Then there's that one at the end that wakes up if you touch him... Now THAT'S scary - waking them up - as wandering "guards" - yawnfest, like haunts. imo.

Best used as surprise "guard mines" and haunts work best as "un-ko-able" guards in crypts and stuff.... other than that - I hate em all. They're pap and I want to kill them with fire arrows, but I'm never allowed, because I just have to yawn in the corner til they walk past... Prefer traps and puzzles to haunt and zed and ghost that comes straight thru all the walls at u and forces u to move on all the time away from it, but eh well - we'll see what happens...

Yep - L4D(1) - one of my fave games after thief games. Fast and numerous and unrelenting = shoot or run..? BOTH!!!!

Edited July 27, 2016 by teh_saccade

[teh_saccade]

I still play No more room in hell... Pwnd that one totally. And the other one... with the GPS thingy ... Contagion...

Never-ending, random, inescapable, fast, overwhelming pressure and panic.

Not sitting in a corner yawning til it shambles past and I can creep up behind it or just put a box in front of it and hack it to death with a sword.

[stumpy]

stick zombie sleeping in a shallow grave, that doesn't look like a grave, so when player wanders by or over the area, the zombie gets up and instant shock from player, there's a chance the zombie will get a hit or two on the player.

basically its a cavity in the ground with a patch over the top that matches the surrounding ground texture, depending on how high you stick the zombies hearing it will stand up when hearing the player wander by.

[esme]

Zombie minefield

[V-Man339]

Ideas that anyone here is free to have, just credit me if it ends up being used, I suppose.

 

• Levels of bodily decay. The Dark Mod zombies are visibly dead corpses, and that's fine, but it's either that or partial skeletal enemies. I've never seen a hanging or broken jaw, or a zombie that's visibly shambling despite a broken leg. The most unnerving zombie aspect I've seen are arrows I can pickpocket from them, and nothing has quite matched that since, so I'd like to see that topped. Hints of their durability are quite welcome for the implication-basis horror.
• I would love to see a level featuring zombies not as "acting" monsters but entranced and wielded in a disturbing manner. I don't know if this fits lore, or if there even is a set of rules regarding how we depict the undead, but what I'm thinking is a room of zombies that simply don't move, standing in place, moaning and simply waiting as though their master put them there for later. The thief's challenge isn't to get past them due to light, but simply to avoid touching them in a tight, confined quarter filled with them. Red strobe lighting exploited to the best extent we could. I feel like whenever I see a zombie asleep it's a bit of a cop out. This is coming from someone who has admittedly not played every level, however. Would love to be proven wrong on this count.
• Crowds of zombies. I've never seen more than five zombies in a room together and I feel like nothing would be creepier than slowly slipping through a dozen zombies all standing still in a room for whatever reason.
• Blind zombies? I don't feel like blind AI is done enough in stealth games (and I feel like there's a dark comedy to it that we aren't eager to admit to), and it's the kind of thing I think Dark Mod would be able to excel at compared to any other game. Notes alluding to someone's lack of sight, or ropes around a house. Context clues pointing to blindness in an AI with sensitive hearing that won't see you is something I have yet to see in a game outside of, for whatever reason, Hitman Absolution's suit level, my least favorite mission in the entire game.

Sorry that turned into a request only semi-related at the end but it's one I'd really like to see.

Hope some of this helps on some level.

[V-Man339]

edit: wrong thread, delete this post please (I need to stop late-night posting)

Edited July 29, 2016 by V-Man339

[Destined]

• Blind zombies? I don't feel like blind AI is done enough in stealth games (and I feel like there's a dark comedy to it that we aren't eager to admit to), and it's the kind of thing I think Dark Mod would be able to excel at compared to any other game. Notes alluding to someone's lack of sight, or ropes around a house. Context clues pointing to blindness in an AI with sensitive hearing that won't see you is something I have yet to see in a game outside of, for whatever reason, Hitman Absolution's suit level, my least favorite mission in the entire game.

 

A blind AI with improved hearing should actually be very easy to realize. You can set the visual acuity of an AI to 0 (= blind) and ramp up the auditory acuity to a level, where the AI will even hear the smallest step. However, this might make the AI too powerful and unable to avoid, if it can actually hear every step...

[Anderson]

 

A blind AI with improved hearing should actually be very easy to realize. You can set the visual acuity of an AI to 0 (= blind) and ramp up the auditory acuity to a level, where the AI will even hear the smallest step. However, this might make the AI too powerful and unable to avoid, if it can actually hear every step...

Can't a middle ground be found so as to make zombies eat players that lose their patience sneaking between them? They shouldn't necesarily hear everything obviously.

[Destined]

I agree, an AI, who can hear everything the player does is completely overpowered. Still, a sound dependent AI would be interesting. The room full of zombies would also be a question of search algorithms. I would find it quite interesting, if the zombies only moves towards the player as long as they hear him. Additionally, I am not sure if the acuity is increased for alerted guards (and if so by how much), but I imagine a situation like this: You have a room full of zombies. When the player sneaks by he is fine as long as he touches noone. If he does not sneak, the zombies get alerted and start moving in his direction, as long as they can hear him. When he stops moving, the zombies do not know where he is and stop moving themselves (or at least after one or two seconds). As long as they are alerted, the player may not move or the zombies themselves will move towards him. After a short time, the alert state is reverted and the player can continue sneaking. But as I said: This largely depends on the AI behaviour. For most situations it would be quite boring if the AI stopped searching just because they no longer see the player.

[Anderson]

I agree, an AI, who can hear everything the player does is completely overpowered. Still, a sound dependent AI would be interesting. The room full of zombies would also be a question of search algorithms. I would find it quite interesting, if the zombies only moves towards the player as long as they hear him. Additionally, I am not sure if the acuity is increased for alerted guards (and if so by how much), but I imagine a situation like this: You have a room full of zombies. When the player sneaks by he is fine as long as he touches noone. If he does not sneak, the zombies get alerted and start moving in his direction, as long as they can hear him. When he stops moving, the zombies do not know where he is and stop moving themselves (or at least after one or two seconds). As long as they are alerted, the player may not move or the zombies themselves will move towards him. After a short time, the alert state is reverted and the player can continue sneaking. But as I said: This largely depends on the AI behaviour. For most situations it would be quite boring if the AI stopped searching just because they no longer see the player.

It it reminiscent of the famous scene in the Silent Hill movie if you saw that.

It must be done right to work and needs a lot of testing.

Also the sound configuration of zombies/haunts is lackluster in my opinion. They need a moreconvincing one, akin to that in Thief for Haunts and for zombies, something what No More Room in Hell has.

Probably nobody would complain if some sounds would be borrowed from an old movie or game because I saw a lot of these reused multiple times and nobody cares. I doubt anybody notices things like that, very weird when you think about it. Not really a fan of piracy too, but good growls are a thing of good editing mostly.

[V-Man339]

Am I the only one who distinctly wants to see a guy with a cane in his own house and have to piece together, looking at signs made of bumps, that he won't see me, merely hear me?

You could even include some kind of cipher the player would need to figure out based on braille.

Seriously considering making a new thread for this.

Semi-relevant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdNcJFG6Xdk

[wesp5]

While the whole thing with blind zombies may be new to some here, in Half-Life and Half-Life 2 plus episodes all the zombies, maybe except for the fast ones, were blind, so this is quite a known concept that works very well...

[AluminumHaste]

I wouldn't like that. First because this does not at all fit the usual slow zombie stereotype and second I think zombies are bad enough as you can't get rid of them without wasting precious resources like holy water or fire arrows...

 

Learn to fight them with Sword, it's do-able.

You have to be careful because you can't block their attacks with your sword, at least I haven't been able to yet anyways.

I actually find the Revenants way easier to fight as they have a standard attack vector.

[AluminumHaste]

lol I just found a really easy way to fight them. If you walk away from them while strafing, they never get close enough to attack you, but you can hit them with your sword in the head no problem.

Just killed a zombie doing that and it never attacked once.

[Anderson]

Correct me, but zombies were almost impossible to kill with the sword/dagger in Thief 1,2, DS. I think they should be stronger possibly. Or to let them have hit boxes for hits in the head counting more, as an analogy to shooting them in the head.

To me it's fairly reasonable to expect a only a few cans of holy water to shoot only the ones I have to.

 

I can play Deus Ex as if it's Quake with purging everything that moves on the map. But not Thief and definately not TDM. It's just not that game. Stealth is much better here, so no reason to go full strafing, rocket fire arrow launching everywhere.

[AluminumHaste]

Yes you are mistaken, Zombies and revenants were killable in T1/2, not even close to impossible.

For example, if you snuck up on a Revanant in T1/2, and did an overhead swing, you would only need 1 or 2 regular hits to kill them.

Zombies however, get back up, so it wasn't usually worth it.

That's how I beat the Cathedral in T1 lol.

[Anderson]

Yes you are mistaken, Zombies and revenants were killable in T1/2, not even close to impossible.

For example, if you snuck up on a Revanant in T1/2, and did an overhead swing, you would only need 1 or 2 regular hits to kill them.

Zombies however, get back up, so it wasn't usually worth it.

That's how I beat the Cathedral in T1 lol.

On Revenants yeah, but if going berserk - better to group them and use mines, fire arrows in areas where you're sure you need to figure out what to search for (cause they become an annoyance to progress the story for the first time).

Zombies were killable, reliably and certainly as well with holy water and fire arrows. Swords were useless. I think that adds to the tension in Thief and might add it to TDM. Though arguably it's not the scary Silent Hill we may dream of. I don't know what else can change them for the better.

Oh and maybe more sounds for them and the revenants.

[NeonsStyle]

I'd like them to be scarier. At the moment, they are just a nuisance.