Objective: Don't take hits from zombies

[Dragofer]

It crossed my mind that zombie-related scenarios could do with this kind of setup:

 

- Objective: Don't take hits from zombies.

- Script: If the player takes 2 or 3 hits or 40 damage from the zombie team...

- If failed: trigger a scripted sequence, like fading vision, coughing, "collapse" via a camvator, fail mission

 

 

Arguably not for all scenarios, i.e. if the zombies are resurrected corpses, but I reckon it'd make things more believable when all the AIs were clearly zombified by contagion, even more so if it happens while the player is around.

 

 

The part I'd like to ask about: how to tell the damage came from a zombie?

Edited June 7, 2017 by Dragofer

[Sotha]

I do not know if you can track where the player gets damage.

 

A simpler way would be

"Do not let the zombies get close to you (melee range)."

 

Bind a trigger on the zombie. If the player gets too close to the zombie and trigger is fired, run a script. The script makes the player play "cough cough" sound effect and whatever you want.

 

For gameplay purposes, you could make it easier for the player. Let's say the mission has a global variable "contagion" it starts at 0. Every time the zombie trigger is fired, the contagion is increased by one.

 

Now you could have various effects like

contagion 0 no effects

contagion 2 player coughs a bit

contagion 4 player coughs a lot and takes one time damage of 25 (healable with health potion)

contagion 8 player coughs a lot, heartbeat pounding, player takes one time damage of 50 (healable with health potion)

contagion 10 player takes one time damage of 1000 (dies) and play zombification sound effect.

 

Alternatively you could remove the contagion variable altogether and simply have the zombie trigger run coughing and start a special script that sickens the player who steadily loses hp for a while.

[stumpy]

you could use the stim/response system,

stim on zombie

response on player

or visa-versa

(be a bit like zombie has radiation and player gets too close then radiation hurts player)

maybe if fire burns the player then a custom stim/response could do the same type of thing.

[Obsttorte]

You could alter the damage def used by the zombies so that the attack applies a stim at the player that could get counted. This is basically how holy water arrows work for example. They create a holy water stim once they hit a surface that deals extra damage to undead.

[VanishedOne]

Necromancy seems fitting enough for this thread...

You could alter the damage def used by the zombies so that the attack applies a stim at the player that could get counted. This is basically how holy water arrows work for example. They create a holy water stim once they hit a surface that deals extra damage to undead.

Is it actually possible to apply a stim via a damage def? If memory serves, what projectiles do on impact is spawn a result entity, which can carry stims just like any other entity that has a location in the world. But zombies do melee damage. When I've previously asked about applying stims via melee attacks, nobody had a simple way to do it. (This would also apply to a question I had about identifying which weapon the player was doing damage with.)

Edited September 18, 2017 by VanishedOne

[Destined]

If I understand correctly, the fire arrow (as an example) uses a damage defnition with the spawnargs "has_result" and "def_result", that (as you correctly said) spawns a result entity. So, if you would create a damage definition that has a "has result" "1" and a "def_result" "custom_damage_result" with the latter just having a stim definition (see fireball or fire arrow) and give this damage to zombies it might work.

[VanishedOne]

It's the projectile entity that has the "has_result" and "def_result" spawnargs, not the damage defs. The standard set-up for projectiles seems to be that they 'detonate' on impact, removing the projectile entity and spawning any specified result entity (and projectile and result can each have a def_damage, e.g. atdm:result_projectile_rock inherits from atdm:moveable_rock_small so it has atdm:damage_moveable). For melee, I think what happens is that the "melee" frame command is used with the damage def.

anim melee_attack   		models/md5/chars/undead/zombie/zombie_attack_lefthand.md5anim
   	{
	frame 12    sound snd_swing
        frame 15    melee melee_zombie_Left

    }

Which is basically where we ended up before. It's possible to spawn entities via frame commands, and to call script functions: SteveL made a script to apply a stim specifically to the target of an attack. So it's possible, with some customisation of the anim defs. I queried Obsttorte's comment about just specifying a stim in a damage def because that would be so much simpler and more convenient.

Edited September 18, 2017 by VanishedOne

[Destined]

What happens when you add "has_result" "1" and "def_result" "atdm:result_arrow_firearrow" to the definition of "melee_zombie_Left/Right"? Should this not lead to the melee attack having the result? That way you could immediately see, if the result can also be added to a melee attack (in this case it should cause an explosion). If this works, it would be possible to use this "result" system for melee attacks as well.

Another idea: You could redefine the zombie's attack and make it a ranged attack with a very low range and the regular animations. That way you could create an invisible projectile and use the known entity approach.

[Obsttorte]

I don't think that the result approach can be applied to melee attack. If I am not completely wrong the result system is restricted to idProjectile spawnclass entities.