Improved Hordes

Horde alert, Survivor!

The hordes we’ve been getting recently seem to be… different. The old scouts seem to have returned alongside the screamer, and the wandering hordes have been acting smarter-than-usual. The animals seem to have also been affected… what’s going on?

Backstory

This mod was initially an idea FilUnderscore came up with after playing A19, and reflecting on the past alphas where he felt wandering hordes used to be more dangerous and unpredictable. He wanted to bring this back and focus on improving both wandering hordes and scout hordes, to bring more difficulty (and customization) into the game, as he felt the only real threat was the blood moon.

Features

Improved Hordes

• Customizable hordes that scale with gamestage progression to always keep the game feeling difficult. (Note: Balancing is still WIP.)
• Combines a new heatmap system with the vanilla heatmap system for smarter difficulty scaling, taking biomes into account.
• Additionally, hordes can also be grouped into larger hordes to allow for variations in enemies.

Better Wandering Hordes

• Wandering hordes work off a schedule generated at the end of every blood moon (except for Day 1/whatever day you are on when the mod is first initialized). This schedule also determines what hordes are feral and which aren’t.
  • Feral hordes can sense your location and wander closer to increase the chances of encountering you especially near buildings. Non-feral hordes wander by in more distant proximity and are not as harmful, meaning you might not even notice them sometimes.

Refreshed Scout Hordes

• Scouts have gotten a refresh, namely the addition of feral scout hordes.
  • The likelihood of a scout horde being feral increases as you hang around in an area.
  • As scouts scream, they contribute more heat to nearby areas which attracts harder hordes in these areas, thereby increasing the likelihood of a feral scout spawning.
  • Feral scouts are much more aggressive and will stick around 2x longer than a regular scout. They have a tendency for attracting more zombies than expected.
    • The benefit of this however is that scouts will now walk away given enough time and no disturbances in the environment are sensed (that means don’t use your forges/cement mixers/campfires/augers for a while.) If disturbances are sensed, the scouts will stick around for longer, be warned.
  • On a final note, the original spider zombie scout trio have returned in their original, feral, and radiated variants now.

New Patrol Hordes

Utilising the new heatmap system, hordes begin to roam frequently visited areas on a determined frequency depending on the amount of heat generated in an area and biome difficulty. Avoiding detection lowers the heat in surrounding areas.

Horde AI

• Changed some base entity behaviors to allow animals in particular to behave alongside zombie hordes.
• Smarter AI which allows hordes to make use of the game’s sensing systems to detect players through sound and sight, making stealth a much more important area of play.
• Horde Entities rely on command lists to find out what to do next, this behavior is most noticeable with scouts as they can change what they are doing at any moment if they sense a change in the environment around them.

Add-ons

Note: These are optional. The ImprovedHordes mod must be installed for the add-ons to work. Installation for these add-ons is the same as for the ImprovedHordes mod, the folders prefixed with “IH-” go into your 7 Days to Die “Mods” folder.

Bigger Hordes Add-on

Increases the maximum size of hordes when spawned.

Random Hordes Add-on

Removes gamestage dependent spawn count increases and instead lets the zombie hordes occur at random sizes. You could get big or small hordes, totally random.

Reduced Screamer Scout Spawns Add-on

Halves the chance that a screamer will spawn. To further modify the chance, you can modify the XML file included in the “IH-ReducedScreamerScoutSpawnsAddon” folder in your Mods folder.

No Screamer Scouts Add-on

Makes it so scouts no longer spawn.

Note: If there are not many zombies, change the max_alive_per_horde_player setting in your “Mods/ImprovedHordes/Config/ImprovedHordes/settings.xml” file.

Screenshots

Installation

Note: This mod can be added to existing saves to start working, no new save is required. Testing has been done on removing the mod from an existing save game, and no issues have currently been uncovered.

For Clients

Note: This mod is not client-side EAC-compatible and will not run with EAC enabled due to how mod DLL loading works in A20.

Download and extract the latest release into a new folder called ImprovedHordes, then drag and drop the newly created ImprovedHordes folder into the Mods folder in your 7 Days to Die install folder (create one if it does not exist).

To verify you have installed the mod correctly, located inside your Mods folder should be an ImprovedHordes folder (containing the Config folder, ImprovedHordes.dll and ModInfo.xml files).

Settings can be modified in the Config/ImprovedHordes/settings.xml file in the ImprovedHordes mod folder.

For Dedicated Servers

The mod only needs to be installed on the server, as it is a server-side mod, so any client that joins your server without the mod installed will be able to experience it. The installation instructions are the same as the above, however it is installed in the Mods folder of the dedicated server.

Changelog

Improved Hordes 1.2.1 Update Released for Alpha 20.6 B9

Added

• Command to spawn in custom horde types that are not referenced in the Improved Hordes code.
  • Usage: improvedhordes spawn <horde type> <hordegroup name> <group distance> <all> (player id)

Fixed

• Fixed issue #8 “Null Reference Exception thrown when player logs out while HordeSpawner is attempting to spawn”
  • A warning message should now instead appear, letting you know that the entity spawn was attempted but unsuccessful.

Improved Hordes 1.2.0 Released for Alpha 20.6 B9.

Updated for compatibility with Alpha 20.6 b9.

Added

• POI Tags for horde spawns.
  • This means you will no longer encounter animal hordes in cities/towns, and this makes them more common in the wilderness/smaller pois. This also means you will now encounter more zombie hordes while looting large areas, since the potential horde pool is smaller in those areas.
  • Additional information in the improvedhordes stats command regarding the current POI tags in your area. (Requires permission level 0.)

Changed

• Commands have been rewritten to be more modular behind-the-scenes.
  • This should change none of the existing functionality, but provide easier navigating through the console command menu.
• Hordes and gamestage difficulty is now additionally decided on where the horde will spawn location-wise, on top of the player group’s average gamestage, instead of what biome the player group is currently in.
  • This means that hordes that spawn in the wasteland near a wasteland-forest, wasteland-desert, etc. boundary will have the difficulty of a wasteland horde, vice versa.
  • So don’t build too close to the wasteland when starting out, or you’ll have a lot of zombies knocking on your door.
• Animal horde AI now prioritizes running away from players first before going to their target location.

Improved Hordes 1.1.1 Update Released for Alpha 20.5 B2

• Updated for compatibility with Alpha 20.5 b2.
• Added
  • Optional Mod Manager support.
  • New Settings
    • <enabled> in <wandering_horde> to enable/disable custom wandering hordes.
    • <enabled> in <heat_tracker> to enable/disable the heat difficulty settings and patrol hordes.
    • New option group.
      • <sense_dist> The distance in meters at which hordes can sense players nearby.
      • <threshold> The threshold before players nearby are sensed.
      • New option group.
        • <wander_time> The number of ticks that horde entities will wander before moving on.

Commands

For more information about the commands, type in the in-game console

help improvedhordes

Note: Requires a permission level of 0.

Wiki

For information such as changing mod settings or creating your own custom wandering/scout hordes, check out the Improved Hordes Wiki.

Mod Support

Although mod support has not yet been tested, this should work with other mods that add new entities into the game that use the AI ApproachSpot/Wander properties, and can also be manually added with xpath. Mods that modify AI behavior may not work with this.

Terms of Use

Definitions

• Private Use = Using the mod for personal use or hosting/running a server with the mod installed.
• Binaries = The DLL file (ImprovedHordes.dll) distributed alongside the Improved Hordes mod.
• Source Code = The files that fall under the “Source” directory in the Improved Hordes GitHub repository.
• XML Files = The files that fall under the “Config” directory in the Improved Hordes mod folder.
• Mod Author = FilUnderscore, the original author of the Improved Hordes mod.
• Original Sources = GitHub, Forum

Use

You are allowed to use Improved Hordes with or without any kind of modifications made to its source material.

Distribution

• You are not allowed to distribute the Binaries and/or Source Code and/or XML Files of Improved Hordes in exchange for payment.
• You are allowed to distribute modifications made to the XML Files of the Improved Hordes mod provided you give appropriate credit to the Mod Author and provide a link to the original sources of Improved Hordes and these Terms of Use.
• You are not allowed to distribute the original nor modified Binaries and/or Source Code of the Improved Hordes mod without prior written consent from the Mod Author.
• You are allowed to distribute links to the original sources of Improved Hordes.

Modification

Any modifications made to the Improved Hordes Source Code and Binaries are limited to private use only if not stated otherwise with written consent from the Mod Author.

Liability

Mod Author is not responsible for any damage that may be caused during an incorrect or correct installation of Improved Hordes.

Written Consent

If you have been given written consent from the Mod Author to do one or more of the following: use, reuse, distribute, duplicate, copy or modify Improved Hordes outside of private use only, you are obligated to give appropriate credit to the Mod Author, provide a link to the original sources of Improved Hordes and these Terms of Use, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable matter, but not in any way that suggests the Mod Author endorses you or your use.

All rights to the Improved Hordes Binaries, Source Code, and XML Files are shared with The Fun Pimps.

Download Improved Hordes
Download Bigger Hordes Add-on
Download Random Hordes Add-on
Download Reduced Screamer Scout Spawns Add-on
Download No Screamer Scouts Add-on

The forum topic of the mod is here.

Credits: FilUnderscore