Just some quick and not too serious thoughts on a new gametype. I'm tired of that monster invasion mode, which forces you to face dozens of dull UT monsters.

RS don't look like as if they've got a lot of spare time to make a set of unique BW monsters or something, but they seem too good at working with textures and special fx.

The new invasion gametype (ZombieZ) could feature some types of undead based right off the standard player models. Re-texturing a human player to make a zombie is much easier than making an unique creature, 'cause the former already have animations and physics.

All the zombiez could have their textures separated into two layers: the outer one and the inner one, showing mutilated entrails and all. The metal parts for both textures coincede. So each time a zombie is hit, a part of his outer texture is removed, exposing awful wounds.

All the zombiez are armed with JW weapons If you smash some zombie's head with a shotgun load, that doesn't affect him at all. If you tear away his right hand, he picks the weapon with his left hand. If you deprive him of his left leg, he gets a clutch (seriously) after taking his weapon with his left hand. And so on, and so forth.

The whole idea behind this is to provide some Invasion-style fun with lots of gore and monsters. Nothing very serious.

Zombie types:

1. Human zombies. Look exactly like classical zombies with pale skin, empty eye sockets and all.
2. Skaarj zombies. Look like freshly skinned Skaarj, spilling blood all the time and leaving bloody tracks.
3. Robot zombies. Broken robots beyond repair posessed by some evil force. A lot of special effects can be applied here: sparks, lightning arcs and all.

Try this.

What you are proposing may sound easy, but in reality it's not a simple line of code to write.

Interesting ideas, though if I shoot a zombie in the head, I expect it to fall. And die.

As for the dismemberment; Blue Moon Rising (check link) has that currently. But to add moving, dismembered monsters, you are going to need new animations.

Interesting idea giving them random junk, but I think having no weapon at all would be more common, with a rare occurance of them using a weapon.

I like that idea for the two texture layers though. But unfortunately, I don't think it'd work as easy as you think, but I'm not too sure.

As for using the stock characters, well, they seem too weird for zombies. Something more along the lines of regular civilians would, in my opinion, look a lot better.

I like that idea for the two texture layers though. But unfortunately, I don't think it'd work as easy as you think, but I'm not too sure.[/quote]

Bullets leave holes in walls? They can leave holes in bodies. Some sort of decal that 'dissolves' the alpha channel of the main texture, showing what's beneath. UT supports multiple texture layers

Thanx for the linkie, another great mod.

Well, maybe that'd work then, but I dunno, it just seems like you'd see it somewhere else if it was fairly easy. Might be something worth looking into.

As for the bullet holes, those are merely decals placed over the (mainly) flat surfaces. UT2k4 doesn't seem to handle decals on players as well, I think the RS guys tried already.

As for the headless zombies, many games already feature zombies without heads. I guess it kind of depends on what kind of zombie you want.

The typical viral zombie generally high jacks the nervous system (and often takes up residence in the brain, controlling the very basic motor skills of said brain) and destroying the brain/severing the spine at some point at like the neck usually takes care of them.

Examples: Resident Evil, Solanum zombies, Many zombie movies

Then you got the parasite zombies, which have some entity infecting the body and generally controlling the the body physically, like a puppeteer. Killing them usually means killing the parasite.

Examples: The Flood, Half-Life Zombies, and from what I heard, the RE4 zombie things

Then you got the magic based zombies, which are merely animated husks controlled by some magical or extraplanar entity, be it some crazy necromancer or a demon from the very pits of hell. Or both. No clue how you'd destroy them, other than simply enough trauma to the skeletal frame to render them immovable. Or complete dismemberment renders them fairly harmless. Head Shots typically don't affect them.

Examples: Evil Dead, Quake 1, Doom 3 (although these ones don't behave the same as your typical magic one, much less durable)

Lastly you got the engineered zombies. Found in several games, these suckers are former humans with metallic augmentations. Your typical cyborg bad guy, although generally those cyborg bad guys are using corpses for their body. Seems like typically you can kill them as if they were a regular living thing.

Examples: Quake 2 and 4

Y'know what I'd like to see? When you die, your corpse turns into a Zombie while you respawn into a fresh body.

So the more you kill, the more Zombies spawn in... Hell hath no more vacancies!!!

This is true. There is no way of implementing hit decals on moving models without seeing massive amounts of bugs, this was explained by DarkCarnivour.

If you examine the EPIC forums for Ut2004 mods you might find some good zombie gametypes and mutators available for reference.

Ever since it appeared in CS:S, zombie based survival games are quite common.

Im sure you can find a nice zombie pack for invasion also.

PS: Invasion is alot more fun with a few extra critters other than the default ones, I use wehtam Invasion 3 and the satore monsterpack for over 30 different monsters to shoot. Not so dull, especialy with BW, WoE and UT2 for over 50 different guns to kill em with

I've kinda been working a bit on BMR, letting all 58 zombies they have made be available to kill rather than the boring, near identical 10 they have normally.

I'm also seeing what I can do towards enabling BW gore and making the BMR hud more suited for BW. This isn't gonna be released publicly, but if anyone would like to go against a bigger selection of zombies, feel free to PM me.

P.S. This is just a little project I'm doing to help learn myself more familiar with programming, its not gonna be anything serious.

I would love to see this. There are a couple of zombie mutators out for 2004, but one of them spawns skarj and other original UT monsters as well, and the other mutator only spawns monsters when a player is killed.

Anyone ever play corpsemania for original UT? That's the sort of thing I'd love, only without the ghosts, mega zombies and ghouls. Hundreds of zombies + ballistic weapons sounds like heaven...

Again, make sure you check out BMR (link can be found above) to help satisfy your BW + Zombie needs.

Not exactly perfect, but it is a good start.

Hell YES!

That's EXACTLY what I want...

Sounds like a cool idea.

Heh. After I wrote that post I decided to google something along the lines of "UT2004 corpse mania" and one of the first hits I got was you on these very forums asking for something along the lines of exactly that. I guess great minds think alike

It'd be an awesome thing for someone with a lot of disposable income to sponsor.

*looks around hopefully*