Project Outbreak Zombies

2.4.15

2.4.15
Hotfix: Romero, Zombie Girl, Zombie Medic, Zombie Worker, the Handyman and the Firefighter from Project Outbreak Variety no longer spawn as a head with the rest of the body missing. Update Project Outbreak Variety to 1.2.6 as well.

2.4.14

2.4.14
Hotfix: spawning a Crawlers x4, x8 or x16 group no longer kicks every player from a multiplayer server with a system failure.

2.4.13

2.4.13
Server stability and frame time update for large hordes. Scripted knockdowns (the Nightingale's scream, Survival Gear electro and fences, Structures wire) now queue and fall a few bodies per frame instead of all in one frame. This goes after the dedicated server crashes seen when several Giants were knocked over at once; on our dedicated test server, three electro lure blasts over eight Giants and a 500-zombie crowd, then all eight Giants dying in the same frame, ran without a crash. Settled Giant corpses no longer cost frame time every frame. Horde despawns, spawns and deletes are spread across frames instead of landing in one server tick. Each zombie also does less background work on servers and clients, and fewer debug lines are printed.
Deliberate changes: the Nightingale's scream no longer knocks Giants down. When you lower Creatures per Player, extra zombies are removed at most 4 per player every 2 seconds. Players more than 340 m away no longer count as watching the Nightingale.
Also in this update: ambient zombies no longer freeze in place after one or two wander legs. Crawlers now drag themselves head first at about 0.45 m/s (about 10 % slower), with new Game Master groups Crawlers x4, x8 and x16. A group of crawlers no longer twitches or pushes itself apart, crawlers no longer snap round or slide sideways in turns, and the crawler leg bite now stays down on the ground instead of standing the crawler up at its start and end. A Shambler or Sprinter shot in the leg now barely takes damage, falls and crawls on as a Crawler; set it with the Game Master setting Leg Shot Crawler Chance (default 100 %, 0 turns it off). The Brute stays on its feet. When many corpses lie piled up after a big fight, some piled bodies out of view can disappear early to keep the frame rate up; lone corpses and corpses near a player stay. Corpses now disappear on time instead of lingering for minutes under load. Dedicated servers skip a Giant drawing pass they never needed.
Project Outbreak soldier voice lines are now off by default. Turn them on with Custom Soldier Voices. When the setting is off, soldiers no longer use the Project Outbreak lines for target down and out of ammo.

2.4.12

2.4.12
Faster filtered Game Master lists and spawn-browser tab switching. Suppressed shots keep a hit zombie's retaliation private unless it gains another reason to alert nearby zombies. Reduces unnecessary pursuit checks for zombies that cannot throw victims.

2.4.10

2.4.10
Fixes lag spikes on servers and Game Master hosts (consoles included) that came with 2.4.9. With cooperative climbing off (the default), the game no longer restarts the cooperative climbing system over and over, and zombies below a player on a roof no longer wait in fixed spots by the wall. Each zombie also does less background work on every machine.

2.4.9

2.4.9
Zombies can now climb suitable walls blocking their route, cross the top and keep hunting. A suitable ledge is required; the height limit for climbing from the ground in one move is about 2.4 m. New Game Master setting: Zombie Climb Chance. New optional cooperative climbing (off by default): crowded zombies brace against a wall and others climb over them. Fixes a race that could leave a reclaimed weapon unable to reload or drop after a zombie grab.

2.4.8

2.4.8
Ferals slide much less. A sprinting Feral now keeps its bound instead of dropping back to the crawl every second, uses the fast crawl between crawl and bound, and stops and starts in the right gait at once.

2.4.7

2.4.7
Larger hordes: distant zombies use lightweight stand-ins that keep moving, pursue prey, react to gunfire, attack and feed, and become full zombies when players approach or a climb is needed. Sprinter stand-ins run, soldiers fight back, and stand-in attacks work with Infection. Fixed incomplete horde arrivals, population accounting, frame-capped server budgets and turning-body cleanup. Other mods' groups stay full zombies unless they opt in; mod authors can disable individual appearances. Ambience cards now count and recycle only their own creatures. Added helicopter body chains and configurable zombie sound volume. Fixed dropped rifles remaining suspended for other players. Game Master filtering and prey-list updates do less repeated work. Reduced script initialization overhead.

2.3.4

2.3.4
Fixes some Variety zombies appearing with missing torsos, arms and legs when joining a dedicated server after they were dressed and stripped.

Keeps blood on their clothing and preserves their existing skin appearance. Requires Creature Melee AI 1.8.0.

2.3.3

2.3.3
Fixes a single zombie destroying a whole helicopter in one grab on servers where another add-on makes vehicle hulls weak to melee damage. Each strike from a zombie holding on to a helicopter now removes the same small amount of hull health however the hull is set up, so a hanging zombie wears the helicopter down over time as intended.

Requires Creature Melee AI 1.8.0.

2.3.2

2.3.2
Fixes a server crash when a body wearing certain modded gear rose as a zombie. Gear attachments that are missing from replication, such as some OTAC back panel pouches, now stay with the body, while the rest of the carried kit still moves to the zombie.

A zombie rising while a player joins or lags no longer loses its clothing transfer to a four-second timeout.

Requires Creature Melee AI 1.8.0.

2.3.1

2.3.1
Servers can hide Infection, Spawner and Ambience startup popups through outbreak.json while keeping those systems active. Infection symptom popups are off by default and can be enabled through outbreak.json.

A zombie with Slung Rifle Chance set to 0 no longer receives a rifle from Director or Ambience spawning. Modders can change the slung rifles by overriding Configs/Wardrobe/Z_SlungWeapons.conf, without editing scripts.

Includes updated Workshop information and component licence clarification. Requires Creature Melee AI 1.8.0.

2.3.0

2.3.0
- Zombies grab reachable helicopter skids during takeoff, hang on through flight and fall off during hard turns. Zombies beside a lifting helicopter reach for its rail.
- Improved helicopter reach, hand contact and release.
- Game Master Zombify keeps modded robes and coats through the turn.
- Zombify leaves bodies that cannot wear clothing as they are and tells the Game Master why.
- Game Masters and servers can make Nephilim use only neck grabs, without lifting and throwing people.

2.2.0

2.2.0
- Standing zombies can climb suitable house walls to pursue people on rooftops.
- Removed the redundant Climber and Climbers x4 Game Master cards. Existing mission placements remain compatible.
- Improved wall grips, pull-over and movement on sloping roofs.
- Reduced routine climbing logs on servers.
- Safe Zones can kill zombies when critical kills only is enabled.
- Fixed horde population tracking across spawner restarts.
- Added concise server logs for Safe Zone and Spawner settings.
- Restored the Nephilim's broad body on dedicated-server clients through holding, throwing and recovery.
- Corrected the position of players held by a Nephilim. Their dropped weapons fall to the ground instead of floating.
- Possessed creatures no longer get pulled into automatic corpse feeding.
- Bodies that cannot reanimate in place can use nearby clear ground as a fallback.

2.1.3

2.1.2

2.1.2
- Modders can add their own outfits to the shambler clothing pool.
- Hotfix: Ferals lunge forward without snapping back when the next attack starts.
- Ferals can leap onto a standing player or soldier and pin them down. CAREFUL: this attack is lethal. Game Masters can set Feral Pin Chance: the default is 10%.
- Press Fire once before the finishing blow to shove the feral off into a temporary ragdoll. 
- Possessed Sprinters can tackle people while running. Rebind Tackle while running in Settings.
- Shamblers can perform standing grab-bites again.
- Improved multiplayer Nephilim control so its AI does not compete with the player while carrying someone.
- The Nephilim returns to AI control when possession ends, including while carrying.
- Carry Mode instructions now correctly say Fire throws the held person.
- Improved carried-player movement and the transition into a thrown ragdoll.
- Improved how the Nephilim looks when ragdolled on remote clients.
- Reduced startup script overhead for large mod lists.
- Supports separate living-head voices for the Abomination in Special Zombies & Creatures.
- Game Masters can change health per Abomination head with the new Abomination Head Health setting.

2.1.1

2.1.1
- New Game Master Safe Zone card: automatic zombie births stay out of its circle. Living zombies may follow a player in by default, die when they stop chasing, or die as soon as they enter.
- Optional Nightingale and Nephilim Ambience arrivals, off by default. They only arm when Special Zombies & Creatures is installed.
- Fix a bug caused the area-wide ambient spawner not to work

2.1.0

A Game Master who takes control of a zombie can press the fire key to make it swing its own attack. 

Ambience settings (Active or Paused, Build Around, population, distances, budget, creature mix, source faction, signals and Ambient Hives) are now kept when the server saves the session. Named Ambience cards from the server configuration are found again after a restart instead of being created twice.

Fixed a crash when a Game Master takes control of a zombie while a human animation mod, for example TAO or Better Weapon Immersion, is loaded.

The infection turn plays as one smooth sequence. The dying body keeps the side it fell on, and the zombie rises from the same pose.

Removed the old staged convulsion animations.

Ambience and Roaming Horde checks do less work in large scenes. Timing and results are unchanged.

2.0.1

2.0.0

2.0.0
- Optional ordinary zombie appearances now install through Project Outbreak Variety. The Nephilim and Nightingale now install through Special Zombies & Creatures. Existing saved placements and published resource references remain compatible.
- Game Masters can choose how many people raised by Zombify, Place as Zombie and Reanimate return as Runners instead of Walkers.
- Game Master Zombify now lets a targeted player respawn normally while the old body rises as an AI zombie. That rise still happens if the old body is removed before respawn. The zombie appears when the player dies. The player still uses the normal death screen and respawn.
- Large Reanimate All groups give every new zombie time to settle on the ground, and preserve a corpse if its replacement cannot finish safely.
- The published New Zombies group is available in Game Master again, including when Variety is not installed.
- When a person turns, their gear stays on the new body. Guns drop by default. The new global Reanimated / Turned Keep Their Guns setting keeps them stowed on the zombie instead. Zombies cannot use them.
- Destroyed zombie heads no longer cause repeated script errors with medical damage mods.

1.3.3

1.3.3
- The Nephilim now nearly always grabs and throws someone he closes on, instead of sometimes only hitting them. Game Masters can set how often this happens in the world settings.
- A thrown man no longer hangs in the air for a moment after the Nephilim has already thrown him.
- Automatic respawn no longer picks a faction nobody can play as. On some scenarios that left a player with no body at all.
- A soldier who dies in a vehicle stays in the seat again and can be pulled out with Remove Casualty. Before, the body fell through the vehicle and blocked the seat for good.
- Zombifying someone who sits in a vehicle now gets them out first, so they turn on the ground beside it.

1.3.2

1.3.2
- A Mass Grave now takes three explosive blasts to collapse. Any grenade, charge or shell counts as one blast, however big. Game Masters can change the number from 1 to 10 in the Mass Grave's properties. Fire still burns it down.
- Zombies keep their intended body appearance across connected players.
- Fixed on dedicated servers: some newer zombies could only be hit at floor level after they got back up. Their hitboxes now move with the body, while walking and after they recover.
- The newer zombies, the Nephilim and the Nightingale now use 2K textures instead of 4K. They look the same, and the download is much smaller.

1.3.1

1.3.1
- Fixed players being disconnected from dedicated servers when a zombie in the torn M88 uniform appeared, and being unable to rejoin while one was in the world.
- Fixed the Nephilim's body stretching after gunfire knocks him down.

1.3.0

1.3.0
- Game Masters can place a Mass Grave (Destructible Spawner). It leaks zombies until you blow it up. They crawl out of the pile instead of appearing standing. Small-arms fire barely hurts it. Creatures already out stay in the world. It takes a route like the spawner, even while it leaks.
- New Zombies!
- The new zombie families make up 40% of spawned zombies by default. Game Masters can set anything from none to all of them with the New Zombie Share setting in the global zombie settings.
- Adds 24 new zombie appearances to ordinary hordes, each with its original look and a native physical ragdoll.
- Melee hits can shove zombies back. Game Masters can set the chance from 0% to 100% in the global zombie settings; the default is 90%.
- A zombie shoved back into other zombies can knock them off balance: each zombie it bumps into may stumble, and a stumbling zombie may fall over and get back up. Game Masters set both chances in the global zombie settings; the defaults are 60% to stumble and 25% of those to fall.
- Zombie and survivor voices now come from the body and pick up the room, so a horde no longer goes quiet and you can tell which way a moan is coming from.
- Large scenarios no longer silently stop at 128 AI. Outbreak now raises the game's active-AI limit at the start of every mission (default 1000) and writes that to the server log. Mission makers can set their own value.
- A soldier who is tackled no longer jumps back to their feet the instant the zombie on top of them is shot. They stay down for a moment and end up prone, so squadmates still firing at the zombie do not hit a friend who suddenly stands up. Single player and servers.
- A reanimation that got stuck retrying forever when clothing could not be moved now stops instead of looping for the rest of the session.
- A zombie being reanimated no longer has its headshot-only floor-hold cancelled by the rise itself.
- Zombie animations now use their own resources so Tactical Animation Overhaul and other human animation mods can continue to control living characters.
- Zombify, Place as Zombie and Reanimate now use a physical fall, grounded convulsions and a native get-up. Existing people retain their outfits and carried items; placed zombies leave no equipment behind.
- Turning zombies can be killed before they rise. Held weapons drop without a second inventory-removal request.
- Fixed waypoints placed on a zombie spawner being lost when the server restarts. The spawner's settings always came back, but its route did not, so a restart quietly left every spawner sending zombies nowhere. Routes are now saved with the spawner and come back with it, keeping the markers you placed where you put them.
- Route markers left over from an older session, which no spawner owns any more, are now cleared away shortly after the server starts instead of sitting on the map forever.
- Servers can now be set up in advance with a settings file. Zombies, the ambient population and the infection settings are already running the way you chose the moment the server starts, with nobody logged in as Game Master.
- Spawners and the ambient population can now be placed in a scenario in the editor, and each server can tune them from its own settings file without changing the scenario.
- A spawner can now wait for something to happen instead of starting straight away: a player reaching an area, or a base changing hands.
- New trigger area you can place in the editor. Put one where you want, name what it should set off, and it will set it off when somebody walks in.
- The world-wide zombie settings - how far they see and hear, how tough they are, whether a kill is permanent - can now come from the same server settings file.
- Military zombies can now appear in a bloodstained, torn M88 uniform with ragged sleeves, worn pockets and damaged trousers.

Note: a route placed before this update cannot be recovered and has to be placed once more. Every restart after that keeps it.
- Improved Nephilim faces, mouth shading and skin detail, with restored localized wounds and bloodshot green, brown, grey or blue eyes.
- Added Male AAB appearances with four levels of decay, different wounds and four facial expressions.
- Added Nephilim, known to survivors as Neph, with shirtless and randomized military outfits. Every Nephilim you place has one of four skin tones and faces.
- Nephilim uses arcing throws, contact chokes and knockdown slaps, sprints at full speed, and moves on from downed enemies. Nobody can break free of his throws and chokes.
- Added separate health controls for Nephilim, shamblers, sprinters, crawlers and ferals.
- AAB and Decayed zombies join ordinary hordes instead of appearing as separate Game Master entries. Nephilim stays out of mixed hordes.
- Fixed Nephilim stretching during knockdowns and improved his native trousers, sleeve, collar, shoulder and upper-arm fit.
- Thrown spears now knock Nephilim down on every fourth hit while still dealing damage and embedding on every hit.
- Fixed overlapping heads and mismatched body collision on AAB and Decayed horde appearances.
- Fixed some AAB and Decayed zombies appearing without a head.
- Reanimated zombies from the new families now come back with their own look instead of as an ordinary survivor.
- Nephilim now has his own snarls, attack cries, pain sounds and death vocals.
- Added the Nightingale, a crying Afflicted nurse who calls a horde and seeks cover from living hunters.
- Refined the Nightingale with natural skin tones, detailed wounds and smoother shoulder and wrist movement.
- Nightingale now has fitted scrub top and pants over a complete body, with a closer waist, a smoother back and a closer sleeve fit. Corrected her facing during movement and attacks and smoothed a protruding patch on her upper arm. Her top and trousers now share textured teal fabric with faded wear and more natural dried blood stains, without the repeated stripe pattern. Every Nightingale you place has blonde, red or brunette hair.
- Nightingale keeps her original crying pose. Her screams play with scream animations, and her body and clothing use the complete native character skeleton for ragdoll movement.
- Nightingale: when hunted she runs into nearby buildings, hides upstairs where she can reach a floor, and closes doors behind her. Her scream now calls her horde: she screams as she stands up to run or attack, and every so often from her hiding place before crying again, and anyone within ten metres of a scream is knocked off their feet, at most once a minute.
- The Nightingale's horde comes from the moment she is found: waves keep coming every 22 seconds and on every scream until she dies, and nobody comes while she is still unfound.
- The Nightingale's horde is now capped: at most 100 of hers alive at once, 24 per player near her. Gunfire near her makes them come faster, and they always form out of sight.
- The Nightingale breathes in fear while she hides, with new breathing takes, and has five new screams.
- Fixed see-through gaps along the spine, over the head, at the waist and on the arms of AAB zombies without a shirt or hat.
- Fixed Decayed zombies showing a red and white checkerboard instead of their skin.
- The Nightingale opens doors like a person and never breaks doors, windows or fences, even with Breach on.

1.2.3

- Reworked Faction System to enable more compatibility with more scenarios
- Removed an old unused horde spawn system

1.2.2

- Added Custom Soldier Voices, a Game Master setting (on by default). Turn it off and living, non-zombie characters use the base game's voice lines instead of Project Outbreak's. Zombie voices are unaffected. Available in the Game Master settings, a mission header, and the placeable rules prefab.
- Spawner routes are now drawn on the map as a filled arrow with a marker at every point, and the line drapes over hills instead of sinking through them.
- Route points are created and moved directly: right-click the newest point to extend the route, and drag any point to move it. New points are placed clear of whatever they were added from, so they can no longer appear buried inside it.
- Fixed the Game Master logging an attribute registration error every session.

1.2.1

1.2.1
- Corrects a false warning about Game Master settings. Existing settings and zombie behavior are unchanged.
- Fixes ArmaVision showing No properties when Project Outbreak settings are loaded.

1.2.0

1.2.0
- Fixed Zombie Permanent Kills with ACE Medical hit-zone mods. Headshots, explosions and fire can finish Zombies again, while ordinary body damage still only knocks them down. Servers without ACE are unchanged.
- New setting: Placing Ignores AI Limit. Off by default. Turn it on to keep placing creatures by hand after Project Outbreak's active-AI budget is full. Ambience, directed spawning and reanimation keep their own budgets.
- Fixed scenario-authored zombie rules being absent from published packages.
- Bonus Zombie vocals

1.1.6

New Game Master setting: with Zombie Permanent Kills set to headshots, explosives and fire only, a new Body-damage Down Time slider sets how long a zombie stays down after normal body damage, from getting back up at once to staying down for five minutes. Zombies now stay down for exactly the time that was set. Before, they could get back up on their own much sooner. The slider only becomes active while the permanent-kills mode is switched on.

1.1.5

Hotfix 1.1.5:
- Fixed being unable to fire or reload after a zombie tackled or pinned you. Your controls now come back as soon as you are back.
- Being tackled while climbing a ladder no longer throws your weapon into the wall you were on. The drop waits until you are on solid ground.
- Being released while holding a jerrycan or the field receiver no longer leaves your gun unusable. The item is put away for you.
- Parked and quiet cars no longer attract zombies. A vehicle that is running and moving still makes noise they can hear.