Random Zombies - Day and Night

A mod for Project Zomboid that I started thinking "this will be easy" after forgetting that despite being a software engineer, I haven't seen LUA since the times in which World of Warcraft raiding was Molten Core and never really worked with it. Having said that, it has been a fun small project. Any contribution is welcome.

Mod's Scope

Provide a way to randomize zombies' behaviour given some percentage set up by the user, supporting a night/day schedule and some weather patterns.

Where to download

Steam workshop: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2888099799

Mod's Options

• Start/End time for "night" in different seasons
• Enable/Disable specific preset for some weather patterns (currently rain, snow and fog)
• Percentage of Zombies in the active cell(s) being:
  • Crawlers
  • Shamblers
  • Fast Shamblers
  • Runners
• Percentage of Zombies in the active cell(s) being:
  • Fragile
  • Average
  • Though
• Percentage of Zombies in the active cell(s) being smarter (can open doors and have better hearing and sight)
• Ability to specify different percentages for day and night
• Ability to specify the interval at which these checks are run by the mod (increase/decrease CPU load)

Plugins

With the recent changes anyone can write a plugin for this mod and it will be loaded as priority over the regular day/night/special cases. You can check a template for writing a plugin, at this repository. If you have any issue with the plugins, please open them in that repository issue board instead of this one. Thanks!

Mod's Logic

• Read/Store options' values on Game/Server start
• Check every X time for Zombies in the scene and apply the ratio
• Check for special schedule (weather) being enable and in that case, override the time of day schedule
• In case a schedule is not active, revert to default game/server SandboxVars Zombie Lore settings

Server Configuration Block

[...] stands for other configuration blocks from other mods or the core values of the game.

In your serverconfiguration_SandboxVars.lua:

SandboxVars = {
    [...],
    RandomZombiesFull = {
        Frequency = 7500,
        Enable_Day = 2,
        Enable_Night = 2,
        Enable_Special = 1,
        Special_Threshold = 2,
        Summer_Night_Start = 23,
        Summer_Night_End = 6,
        Autumn_Night_Start = 22,
        Autumn_Night_End = 6,
        Winter_Night_Start = 20,
        Winter_Night_End = 6,
        Spring_Night_Start = 22,
        Spring_Night_End = 6,
        Crawler_Day = 5,
        Shambler_Day = 65,
        FastShambler_Day = 25,
        Sprinter_Day = 5,
        Fragile_Day = 30,
        Normal_Day = 50,
        Tough_Day = 20,
        Smart_Day = 5,
        Crawler_Night = 5,
        Shambler_Night = 25,
        FastShambler_Night = 65,
        Sprinter_Night = 5,
        Fragile_Night = 30,
        Normal_Night = 50,
        Tough_Night = 20,
        Smart_Night = 5,
        Crawler_Special = 5,
        Shambler_Special = 5,
        FastShambler_Special = 25,
        Sprinter_Special = 65,
        Fragile_Special = 30,
        Normal_Special = 50,
        Tough_Special = 20,
        Smart_Special = 5
    },
    [...]
}

Credits

• Project Zomboid Tutorials
• Project Zomboid Wiki - Modding
• Project Zomboid Climate Manager APIs
• Random Zombies by "belette" - used to understand how to properly distribute the ratio of zombies
• Night Sprinters by "The Illuminati" - used to understand how to manage the time and switch between the different presets
• Steam Workshop Formatting Guide