u/TheDjentleman89

I created a new mod that reworks the stealth system. It's part of the "Living Apocalypse" series I'm working on. Below is the mod description; check it out and lmk what you think!

This mod is compatible with Gridless Zombies.

Living Stealth is a complete rework of the vanilla sleeper and stealth behavior, which we all know definitely needed help. I was so tired of walking into a POI or loot room just to have every single zombie know exactly where I was, crouching or running. This mod changes that in the following ways:

• Sleepers: Now, they remain in a dormant state UNLESS: excessive noise, kicking debris on the ground, opening doors/loot too fast in succession. However, that doesn’t mean they know where you are…
• Wake>Investigate>Attack: Zombies don’t see you and immediately aggro to the player. If a sleeper wakes up based off noise, they will go to the last sound source and investigate. If they don’t see you, they go back to being dormant. They will only aggro if they have sight of you!
• Loss of Line of Sight: If a zombie spots you, you can now break LOS to make them lose aggro, where they will investigate your last location.
• Sight rework: 7D2D zombies have evolved their eyesight to better track their prey. Because of this new evolution, player movement makes you more visible depending on stance and action. Sprinting in the daytime? Expect a lot of attention. Sneaking at night? You might be able to land the melee stealth hits!
• Loot room zombies: I know I wasn’t the only one tired of sneaking successfully through an entire POI and when entering the loot room, every zombie near you instantly aggros and walks directly towards you. The triggers that governed those wake ups has been reworked; if you’re quiet enough, you might be able to sneak in and loot undetected!
• Draw Them In: Just like Zombieland’s Tallahassee, you can use noise to your advantage. Smack dumpsters, walls, or noisy objects to trigger investigations. Create openings, pull zombies off your route, or buy yourself time when health is low. Just make sure you’re gone before they arrive.

Now, stealth finally rewards patience, positioning, timing and smart movement. No more psychic zombies. No more instant room-wide aggro. Stealth finally works! If you run into any issues, shoot me a comment and let me know!
Incompatible mods: Any mod that directly overhauls sleeper AI, stealth detection, or zombie targeting behavior. If there’s a mod you’d like to see work with this, let me know!

https://www.nexusmods.com/7daystodie/mods/11052?tab=description

https://7daystodiemods.com/mods/living-stealth

For the past week, I’ve been working hard on getting Living Apocalypse ready for the next update, V1.1. Unfortunately, I’ve run into a lot more issues than expected, so I’ve decided to temporarily remove it from 7D2DMods while I keep working on it.

Right now, in solo testing, I can get a small migration group of 5 zombies to spawn and complete their initial movement. There are still edge cases, like zombies stuttering, stopping, or behaving weirdly, but the core idea is working at a small scale.

The main issues I’m working through are:

• Zombies don’t always progress naturally and may stop after crossing the street.
• Pathing can cause zombies to get stuck on obstacles instead of continuing forward.
• Some spawned zombies fail to find valid terrain and can fall through the world.
• Migration events sometimes fail to spawn.
• Some biome-specific migrations can cause crashes.
• Some logic is causing frame-rate drops and stuttering.
• Gridless Zombies is currently incompatible because it modifies the same pathing logic that Living Apocalypse is trying to use.

The re-release will focus on fixing these issues properly. I don’t want to rush out a half-working mod just to say "Here’s an update!". That’s not how I operate, and it’s not the kind of work I want to put out.

I’m also planning to change how the mods are distributed. Going forward, “Living Apocalypse” will become the main collection that contains all completed mods in one place. Each mod will be compatibility-tested with the others, but you won’t be required to download everything. You’ll be able to pick and choose which parts you want. The city density rework, heatmaps, screamer rework, etc. will all be "Living ____".

Thank you to everyone who tested the mod and provided feedback. It has been an enormous help. I’m looking forward to bringing Living Apocalypse back as a more polished system that improves the game the way it should, instead of only “kind of” working.

Just in time for the weekend, I updated my first mod "Gridless Zombies" with some new features. This is was also to ensure it worked with my new mod, detailed below:

-Improved pathfinding
-Reduced detection range
-Reduced sleeper wake-up range
-Increased stealth effectiveness

Before, zombies often felt like they had superhuman awareness. Now, distance, positioning, movement, and stealth matter much more while keeping the danger intact. Skills and armor that reduced footstep noise don't feel pointless because the sleepers wake up based on detection ranges. It's currently not compatible with Living Apocalypse, but I'll be uploading a new version next week-ish.

Now for my new mod, "Living Apocalypse", a world immersion mod:

-Migration Events: Chance based rolls to encounter migrating zombies moving across roads and through the world. Not a "spawn and attack player" mod, but I wanted actual fluid movement to make the game feel more alive. Sometimes it's 3-5 in a group, sometimes it's a lot worse.
-Natural spawning based on player movement and direction
-Early game protection with smaller migrating groups
-Larger groups unlocked in later progression

-Tech: Migrations only trigger while traveling to avoid constant spawning/tanking frames. Spawning is staggered to decrease stuttering, keeping immersion in the forefront. Groups have a despawn distance from the player, minimizing FPS loss and avoiding excess entity load.

I'm building these on my PC (Ryzen 5, 32g RAM, 1tb HDD, Ryzen 6600) so I'm making sure it's optimized as best as it can be because I want to play it too lol.

Future improvements for Living Apocalypse include:
-Biome based migration density
-Re-worked city density
-Screamer rework
-Game based progression for migration size
-Threat scaling based on player activity
-Environmental storytelling explaining changes in zombie behavior

Would love feedback from anyone who tries it out!

I started creating mods a bit ago and I'm working on a new one, but need your help in what you think would be great versus absolutely not.

I hate that for an apocalypse there doesn't seem to be that many zombies. You go through the woods in Pine or Burnt and you'll run across like 5-8. Cities feel very underwhelming, driving the main roads are boring, and the "immersion" factor like the old days isn't there anymore, you know? So, my idea was to create a mod that fixes all of those things, however I want feedback from other players as well so I can make something that brings new excitement. The mod would have a few parts:

-Migration events: A chance while driving on highways to come across a mass of zombies. They don't aggro the player immediately, but are just literally migrating across the road. Size depends on biome, the spawning is done in a way that feels organic, and to stop new games from being unplayable the events won't happen until after the first blood moon. Sizes vary from groups of 5 to the ultra rare 50+ group. I'll ensure it's optimized as well so it doesn't kill your computer haha.
-Screamer Radius: Right now they're just annoying, but what if they called zombies from a certain chunk radius around the player? I'll be adding that, expanding on it to where the longer the screamer exists, the bigger the radius
-AI tweaks: Zombies are dumb. These zombies aren't for some reason. How can something that's dead know EXACTLY what block to hit to tear down a whole build, like an undead engineer? So I'll also adjust that as well, doing like a 60/40 split of smart/dumb zombies.
-City density: I'll also be tweaking the way zombies spawn in cities to make them feel more scary. They wouldn't just roam solo dolo, so I'll add where sometimes you'll run into small groups.
-Aggro/Persistance: Going to work that as well.

My question to you guys is; does this seem like an organic way to increase the danger of 7D2D? Are those features you guys would use and like to see? What other things would be nice to have in regards to the above? I'm building all my mods on my potato PC, so I'm not going to make something that even I couldn't play haha. Optimization and making sure the mod doesn't nuke frames or cause crashes is my biggest priority, besides making something people will want to use. I look forward to getting your feedback!

I know it’s going to sound wierd and I hope you don’t make fun of me, but I figured it can’t hurt to ask in case someone else is crazy like me lol. I got out in 2023 and I’m having a TERRIBLE time sleeping. The 13 years of night watch, GQ, underway… it messed up my sleep schedule.

Call me Joe Navy, but does anyone have a 5 minute or more audio recording of your berthing sounds? I was on a carrier, berthing was under the forward mess decks, so I’m looking for that kind of craziness. Ammo elevators, scullery, the ventilation, the JP-5 pumps kicking on, the banging of the waves on the hull… I want to see if I can get an audio or black screen recording to see if that helps with my sleep. I’ve tried melatonin, fans, white noise, etc but it’s all more annoying than helpful, plus tinnitus/ptsd makes it even worse. I’m hoping that the sounds can put me into a familiar state to let me finally sleep.

I’m working with a therapist and he thought this was a good idea as well. Appreciate the clowning and help in advance!