Zombie Horde 2

Lets a server admin change nearly any aspect of a round on the fly. Admins can hand out weapons and items, reward containers, kevlar points, kill players, and target individual players, all humans, all zombies, or everyone at once. Round manipulation covers changing round states, ending the game early with an optional force restart, adding or removing time or changing the active timer, and starting or stopping resists. It also allows players to join mid-round through a toggle.

Extends Zandronum's built-in event scripts (opens in a new tab) View Zandronum's documentation about the EVENT scripts type with a custom bus that supports defining as many custom events as needed, including ones that can be called clientside. Its one drawback is that, unlike the built-in system, it doesn't support pointers. Some events are still better served by the engine's own system. See the guide on using the eventbus (opens in a new tab) View the eventbus guide for more.

SR50 has always been a controversial movement exploit, and one most casual or new players don't even know exists. In a game where speed matters this much, it doesn't belong. This system detects the combined inputs that cause SR50 and reduces the player's speed in response. Server hosts who want to keep it can disable the system through a cvar.

When a zombie leaves mid-round, their remaining health is distributed among the other zombies, and the round timer is extended based on how much health was left, reducing the chance a round becomes trivial just because a zombie disconnected. Both the amount of health and time added are configurable through cvars, and the system can be disabled entirely.

If a zombie was damaged enough when they left, a kill can be compensated to the human team. The required damage percentage is configurable, and if multiple players qualify, whoever dealt the most damage wins the kill.

Server hosts can configure a grace period after an early zombie leave, after which the map resets. This is like ending the round like normal, minus the stats.

The game can now ban a zombie who leaves mid-round using Zandronum's sv_maxacsbanduration cvar. Server hosts can enable this by setting the cvar, or disable it by setting it to 0. The ban duration matches the value configured there.

When a map starts, server hosts can configure a grace period in which players must move. The HUD informs players of the requirement, clearing once they move. Anyone who stays idle past the deadline is kicked to spectator, with the game announcing who got kicked for inactivity. Kicked players can still rejoin while the round remains joinable.

Zombies are required to actively contribute or they might be kicked for being AFK. An AFK zombie only makes things harder for the zombie team and hands humans an easy kill. Idle zombies are tracked and warned to stay active, and are kicked under the same rules as round-start AFK detection, including the possibility of a ban for leaving early if this is configured.

Every legacy map has received some amount of love: bug fixes, balance changes and general behavior improvements, while staying faithful to the map you remember. Old quirks and issues have been ironed out, plenty of ACS has been fixed, and some maps received visual adjustments where needed. For example, widening rooms to comfortably fit up to 64 players.

The game provides different ways to pick the initial zombie to configure a server to the server host's liking. The different pick system can be selected using the sv_zh2_initialpickmethod cvar:

• Randomized - no special logic, anyone can be picked at any time.
• Legacy - everyone is picked once before the list resets.
• Weight-based - picked by chance, with better odds the longer it's been since you were last picked.

The weight-based method is now the default, with the previous-map check disabled by default. Server hosts are free to tweak or revert either setting.

Additionally, the server can configure other settings such as whether or not we should always skip players that were picked on the previous map. This way the game always selects a fresh group of players.

At the end of a round, players get to vote on the next map from up to three options, and the map with the most votes is picked next. The pool of maps comes from the server's map list, the same one used by Zandronum's built-in map rotation and its maplist command. Players can also vote to replay the current map, pick a random map, or move to the next map in the rotation instead. Map voting is highly configurable:

• Votes can be restricted to only count from players, excluding spectators.
• The voting threshold and cooldown between votes can both be tuned.
• Maps can be restricted to only offer ones that haven't been played yet, skipping any that have. Once every map has been offered, the pool resets, just like the underlying map rotation does.

Map voting can also be turned off entirely, in which case a random map is picked instead.

A new HUD element shows how likely you are to be picked as an initial zombie, calculated from the active pick method and the number of eligible players. It correctly accounts for remembered picks from the last map or earlier rounds when that configuration is enabled, and shows a clear message when the outcome is certain, or a percentage otherwise.

Servers can ship custom radio packs, giving the in-game radio item music to play and share with everyone on the server. Players can also load their own music personally, or share it with others running the same pack. The radio lets a player know if they don't own a given track, and how to add it. See the guide on adding custom radio music (opens in a new tab) View the custom radio music guide for details.

Players can now individually configure how damage they deal is communicated to them:

• A hitmarker on damage (white) or a kill (red).
• A sound on damage, which varies depending on whether the hit was a kill.
• A running total of damage dealt on the HUD, which fades out after a while.
• Floating damage numbers on the target, growing in size, gravity and color with the damage dealt. Shown either per hit or as a combined total, which changes how weapons like the shotgun display their damage.

An ACS-based footstep system that accurately plays footsteps based on what a player is standing on. Pacing scales with player speed, so walking slower produces slower, more muffled steps, and crouching muffles them further. Textures are configured through the STEPDEF lump, which also supports liquid textures and lets mappers attach splash actors that appear when a player walks through them.

An advanced tracer system that visualizes bullet direction and shows accurately where each shot lands, making it easy to see where your bullets are going, or to spot who's shooting at you. Tracers work correctly underwater too, leaving a trail of bubbles along the bullet's path instead of a regular tracer.

A system that spawns blood accurately at the point of impact when a player is shot. It's configurable per weapon, so heavier hitters can produce more blood over a longer period. The sniper, for example, can cause a lot of blood to spurt out. Blood sticks correctly to players and stays in the right position as they turn or move around.

Zombie Horde never really had a weather system. Its features provided were using static actors, often not working well, especially in bigger areas. Zombie Horde 2 provides a full weather system split into three categories:

• Emitter weather - particle effects like rain and snow, and now also dust and sparks, such as around a volcano.
• Randomized weather - event-driven effects like thunder, running through the eventbus when it triggers.
• Ambient weather - a sound layer covering things like rain and wind. It uses spots that track a player's surroundings to decide what should play.

A new, fully clientside visual feed. Not just kills and deaths, but also player safety and initial zombie picks are among the many things this feed will show. It's configurable through cl_zh2_shownobituaries or the game menu. Supported events include:

• Initial picks, with the pick order shown when more than one player is chosen.
• Reaching safety.
• Being scratched or otherwise infected.
• Being cured.
• Dying without another player's involvement, with its own icon for unknown, suicide, falling, drowning, crushing, telefrag and unsafe deaths.
• Being killed by another player or a monster, including the means of death.

Status effects like fire or acid are shown alongside the means of death when they contributed, or on their own when the cause is unclear.

The older log-based messages this replaces are still available as a fallback, and have themselves been improved with more varied, context-aware sentences. Toggle between the two through the game menu or cl_zh2_enableobituaries.

Damage-over-time effects like ignition or acid coverage previously lost track of who caused them, meaning a resulting death wouldn't credit the right player. This data is now retained, so the obituary system can correctly show the inflictor and owner, and the responsible player is properly rewarded for the kill.

Replaces Zandronum's built-in knockback with a custom system, toggleable through a cvar (enabled by default). It follows a similar approach to the engine's own calculation, factoring in mass and damage, and lays the groundwork for more knockback-related features later on.

Note: this feature is not enabled by default for the time being.

Makes allies of the same species gradually more translucent based on distance, with a configurable base translucency.

• sv_zh2_translucentallies - enables translucent clients server-wide, overriding client settings.
• cl_zh2_translucentallies - 0 disables it, 1 enables it only when sv_shootthroughallies or sv_unblockallies is active, and 2 always enables it.
• cl_zh2_translucentalliesdistance - the distance at which allies start turning translucent.
• cl_zh2_baseallytranslucency - the base translucency clients always have, before distance is factored in.

New icons help identify allies and enemies at a glance, including a neutral state shown before initial zombies are picked. Configurable through sv_zh2_teamindicators, cl_zh2_teamindicators, cl_zh2_teamindicatordistance (how far away indicators start appearing), and cl_zh2_showtargetteamindicator (only show an indicator while looking directly at that player).

Replaces Zandronum's built-in identify system, which didn't behave correctly in Zombie Horde 2, with a custom one that shows a player's name and species when looked at. Toggle it with cl_zh2_identifyplayers. This system provides an indication of name and specie if this information is known.