GenesisCore
- By
GenesisCore is the official successor to ApocalyptoCore—an adaptive world director featuring persistent horde simulation, player-aware pressure, evolving zombie navigation, weather control, and world-specific learning.
What's new
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Version 0.30.0.3
- Added a compact 10-segment player noise meter to the HUD.
- Displays GenesisCore’s real calculated player noise level.
- Low noise starts white and gradually shifts to red as noise increases.
- Reacts to movement, combat, tools, firearms and other detected actions.
- Includes dedicated server synchronization.
- Display only — the existing noise and horde logic remains unchanged.
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Version 0.30.0.2
- ## Version 0.30.0.2
- ### Major Changes Since 0.27.0.2
- * Added a fully persistent regional zombie population system with deterministic regions, biome data, population capacities and strict population conservation.
- * Added natural population movement between neighboring regions based on local pressure, available capacity and world conditions.
- * Added slow, capacity-limited regional population recovery instead of artificial instant population replacement.
- * Added multiple natural migration behaviors, including Distribution, Recovery, Consolidation and rare Mass Movement.
- * Improved horde ecology with natural growth, migration, concentration, instability-based splitting and persistent merge history.
- * Reworked merge and lineage validation so merged hordes can continue evolving without causing false save corruption or rollback.
- * Added immutable lineage identities for naturally founded hordes.
- * Added persistent Regional Agents with stable identities, origin regions, positions, classes, roles and lifecycle states.
- * Added multiple Regional Agent roles, including Wanderers, Scouts, Stragglers, Strays, Signal Finders, Special Zombies and Group Founders.
- * Added atomic conversion between anonymous regional population, individual agents, agent groups and persistent horde members.
- * Added persistent Regional Agent groups with leaders, members, movement, lifecycle intentions and event history.
- * Added natural group behaviors, including dissolution, joining existing hordes and founding completely new hordes.
- * AgentIds are preserved as permanent MemberIds when agents join or create a horde.
- * Added deterministic placement of agents released from dissolved groups across valid neighboring regions.
- * Fixed overdue groups moving or performing other actions before their required dissolution.
- * Removed the unintended active-horde limit from Regional Agent horde foundation.
- * Removed the unintended lifetime limit on how many hordes Regional Agent groups could create.
- * New horde foundation is now uncapped and controlled naturally by population, group formation and world conditions.
- * Added deterministic physical zombie classes for agent-origin horde members.
- * Added permanent regional population loss when agent-origin horde members are killed by a player.
- * Added persistent death provenance containing the member, horde, origin region, killer and death evidence.
- * Added the unified GenesisCore world spawn and population authority.
- * GenesisCore now controls Genesis hordes and ordinary wandering world population while leaving sleepers, quests, POIs, Screamers and Blood Moon under their correct Vanilla systems.
- * Suppressed Vanilla wandering-horde creation without interfering with other Vanilla zombie systems.
- * Added a shared Genesis/Vanilla zombie budget with reserves for players, quests, POIs, Screamers and unknown world entities.
- * Added fair persistent materialization distribution between multiple Genesis hordes.
- * Added optional Blood Moon protection that pauses new Genesis materialization without deleting or resetting persistent hordes.
- * Improved materialization, unloading, rematerialization and restart persistence.
- * Improved permanent death handling so dead persistent members cannot be recreated.
- * Improved Genesis entity filtering to prevent Genesis zombies from contaminating Vanilla AI learning.
- * Expanded diagnostics, audit events, spawn-authority reporting and persistent population validation.
- * Improved save integrity, rollback protection and shutdown handling across regional population, agents, groups, hordes, migrations, splits and merges.
- * No save reset or new world is required.
- * World persistence schema updated to 27.
- * Configuration schema updated to 21.
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Version 0.27.0.2
- Added persistent horde splitting and merging with complete lineage tracking.
- Added natural migration groups with atomic population and capacity growth.
- Added the LifeTracker classification system for Strays, Groups, Hordes and Walking Deaths.
- Added colored map markers for large Genesis anomalies.
- Added expanded death forensics with damage, killer and confidence tracking.
- Improved
- Improved persistent HordeId, MemberId and LineageId protection.
- Improved save validation, rollback safety and long-term population consistency.
- Improved localization support, including the LifeTracker legend.
- Fixed
- Fixed merge-history validation blocking later population changes.
- Merge descendants can now receive natural migration correctly.
- Fixed Migration 56 and adjusted target horde scaling.
- Preserved historical merge parents without freezing the current state of their descendants.
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Version 0.25.2
- 0.21.27–0.21.31 – Projection, roster and presentation improvements
- Ground projection and safe-position searches were heavily optimized.
- Nearby horde members can reuse previously validated terrain results instead of repeatedly scanning the same area. Projection searches now use strict budgets for terrain samples and fallback anchors, preventing excessive collision and height checks during larger horde movement.
- Safe fallback positions are tested at deterministic distances around blocked targets. Positive results remain cached longer than failed results, while different failure types use separate expiration times.
- The adaptive horde roster replaced the original fixed zombie pool.
- Roster selection now considers:
- biome;
- biome difficulty;
- party game stage;
- Genesis progression;
- Director pressure;
- time of day;
- current horde composition;
- category limits;
- class limits;
- total special-zombie limits.
- Zombie types were separated into common, heavy, crawler, mobility, biome-special, tactical and elite categories.
- Feral, radiated, charged and infernal variants received controlled progression gates instead of being enabled globally.
- Biome relationships were added so that specific zombie types appear more naturally in suitable regions. Burnt zombies are favored in Burnt Forest and Wasteland, ranchers are associated with the Desert, and cold-region types receive higher relevance in Snow biomes.
- Boss-like or event-specific entities remain excluded from normal wandering-horde generation, including screamers, demolishers, Grace, zombie dogs, zombie bears and vultures.
- Crawler and spider weights were later adjusted to make them visible more often without allowing them to dominate the roster. Existing progression gates, category caps and normal-zombie majority rules remained intact.
- Detailed per-selection diagnostics were introduced. Every roster decision can now report eligible candidates, weighting, active limits, rejection reasons, chosen class and chosen variant without changing the actual selection result.
- Premonition text rotation was also corrected. A fixed startup seed had caused the same warning to appear repeatedly after restarting the game. Session-based randomization and direct-repeat protection now provide more natural text rotation.
- 0.22.0–0.22.3 – Persistent horde phases and live tracking
- A persistent six-phase horde lifecycle was introduced:
- Dormant;
- Searching;
- Tracking;
- Assault;
- Withdrawal;
- Recovery.
- Each phase received explicit rules for target usage, materialization rights, attack pressure, recovery behavior and allowed transitions.
- Phase state, entry time and transition reason are saved. Restarted sessions rebase phase timing safely so offline time is not treated as active simulation time.
- Automatic phase transitions were added with individual evidence thresholds, minimum durations, transition cooldowns and a separate global Assault cooldown.
- Two overload levels were introduced.
- Reduced overload limits new physical pressure while allowing an existing encounter to continue at lower intensity. Hard overload can prevent or terminate new Assault pressure and move the horde into Withdrawal before the game world becomes overloaded.
- Recovery now requires both sufficient time and sufficient population recovery before another attack phase can begin.
- A live map tracker was added using the native 7 Days to Die navigation-object system. The persistent logical horde appears as a small red marker while the map is open.
- The marker does not use a physical entity, does not add a compass target and does not replace the native map renderer.
- A follow-up fix corrected an engine behavior that caused the marker to appear grey. A single registration flag had been interpreted by the native renderer before the custom color was applied.
- 0.23.0–0.23.2.4 – Encounter architecture, trail memory and persistent movement
- The encounter architecture was separated into strategic and physical states.
- Strategic states:
- Wandering;
- Investigating;
- Pursuing;
- Regrouping.
- Physical encounter states:
- Abstract;
- Preparing;
- Materializing;
- Engaged;
- Withdrawing.
- A full preparation handshake now validates the encounter front, terrain, world limits, loaded chunks, loaded colliders, safe corridors and premonition authorization before physical spawning begins.
- An encounter can only become Engaged after a valid commitment exists and the required opening group has actually materialized.
- Zero successful spawns can no longer produce a completed Assault. Interrupted opening waves return to preparation instead of being counted as successful encounters.
- The logical horde center and the physical encounter front were separated. This prevented planning positions from being mistaken for the actual persistent horde location.
- Balanced corridor positions were introduced around the encounter front, together with separate distances for preparation, interception, disengagement and truth-boundary correction.
- Persistent trail memory replaced continuous direct player tracking.
- Qualified noise, combat, smell or travel evidence stores a last-known location. The horde follows that evidence rather than continuously reading the live player position.
- Old evidence no longer refreshes itself indefinitely. Trail confidence decays, uncertainty expands the search area and the horde eventually returns to natural wandering when no new evidence is found.
- Genesis notifications were changed to use a single temporary chat slot. New Genesis messages replace the previous Genesis message without deleting player, server or other mod chat.
- Persistent nomadic movement was introduced.
- Hordes now retain:
- current heading;
- desired heading;
- course duration;
- segment index;
- boundary-recovery count;
- traveled distance.
- Normal course changes remain gradual, while rare large turns create less predictable long-term movement. World boundaries redirect the horde inward rather than stopping or teleporting it.
- Several truth and persistence fixes followed.
- Preparing no longer means that the horde is physically present. Logical movement continues until real physical presence or encounter commitment requires stability.
- Session-local preparation data such as fronts, corridors and approval states is rebuilt after loading instead of being treated as permanent world truth.
- The tracker now prioritizes:
- the physical Genesis-member centroid;
- a valid active encounter front;
- the canonical logical center.
- Later this was tightened further so the public tracker only displays the physical centroid or logical center. Internal planning fronts are no longer shown publicly as though they were the horde itself.
- Short gaps between physical waves no longer end an established encounter. Commitment and encounter geometry remain active while the next wave is prepared.
- Shutdown and early-session handling were hardened so incomplete preparation cannot overwrite the previous valid save or create a saved Engaged state with zero physical members.
- 0.24.0–0.24.2 – Multi-horde authority and persistent world time
- Early 0.24 development introduced the first persistent multi-horde foundation.
- This exposed two important architectural problems:
- session time could not be treated as permanent world time;
- moving map markers could not be repeatedly destroyed and recreated.
- A dedicated Genesis simulation clock was introduced. Old session-based timing was migrated without simulating offline time.
- Five persistent horde records were established, each with its own location, population, capacity and identity.
- Local travel, smell, noise and combat signals were converted into temporary directional impulses. These impulses decay over time and never store a permanent exact player target.
- The central world runtime became the sole authority for horde movement, membership, population and later physical lifecycle handling.
- The former single-horde runtime was moved into an observer-only role. Legacy pressure and interception information may contribute weak hints, but can no longer directly mutate population, movement or encounter state.
- A controlled population bootstrap was added for clean pre-materialization worlds. A valid early ten-member state could be expanded into five persistent hordes with a 5/5/5/5/4 distribution.
- The bootstrap is not counted as recruitment and is blocked if the world already contains real death or materialization history.
- Missing IDs, duplicated IDs and invalid classes are normalized. Inconsistent roster data blocks saving instead of writing damaged state.
- 0.24.3–0.24.3.2 – Persistent physical hordes and permanent identity
- Persistent logical members were connected to real in-world zombie entities.
- Living members can now materialize in limited batches near their own horde position. They remain physical for as long as the game keeps their chunks loaded.
- There is no Genesis distance-based despawn. Chunk unloading returns the member to a logical state, and returning to the region materializes the same permanent member again.
- Death permanently marks that member as dead.
- World shutdown parks remaining physical bindings safely so the same members can be restored after loading.
- Spawn safety includes:
- native spawn-position checks;
- loaded chunk validation;
- loaded collider validation;
- world boundaries;
- mob-spawn permission;
- trader protection;
- radiation protection;
- bedroll protection;
- land-claim protection;
- minimum distance from the player;
- per-horde limits;
- a global physical-population soft limit.
- Abstract movement pauses while a horde has physical members. The physical member centroid becomes the canonical horde and marker position.
- This release also exposed the most important physical-lifecycle defect in the project: the same permanent member could receive a second physical incarnation if an old entity remained in chunk data during unloading.
- The lifecycle was redesigned around two authoritative bindings:
- permanent member ID to current runtime entity ID;
- runtime entity ID back to permanent member ID.
- A permanent member may have no more than one active entity.
- Death callbacks are accepted only from the currently bound entity. Duplicate death callbacks are ignored.
- Unload callbacks are also accepted only from the current binding. A delayed callback from an older entity cannot return a dead member to a logical state and cannot affect a newer incarnation.
- Population is now calculated from real living member records. The previous hidden minimum population of one was removed.
- Population zero became a valid state.
- A new extinct lifecycle state was introduced. Extinct hordes:
- do not move;
- do not receive impulses;
- do not materialize;
- do not keep active markers;
- are not automatically rebuilt.
- Historical repair logic was narrowed to exact known incident fingerprints. A broad early rule that could have treated all member numbers above five as synthetic was removed before it could damage future legitimate members.
- Save-success and save-failure reporting were separated. A save is reported successful only after the actual successful write path completes.
- Chunk unloading was then fixed at engine level.
- The game marked chunks as unloading before its normal entity-removal path had necessarily removed Genesis entities from every internal list. GenesisCore now removes currently bound members before the unload lock, confirms their absence from both the world registry and exact chunk list, and only then returns the permanent member to its logical state.
- The same verified path is used during world shutdown.
- AI membership resolution was moved to the same authoritative world runtime.
- Active membership now contains:
- runtime entity ID;
- permanent member ID;
- horde ID;
- entity class.
- Old entity IDs are no longer considered active members and cannot authorize guidance.
- Genesis members may consume limited collective knowledge, but they cannot write their own guided behavior back into the Vanilla collective-learning dataset as if it were independent Vanilla evidence.
- 0.24.4–0.24.5.1 – Learning integrity and restart-safe time
- Player and collective learning received a formal integrity boundary.
- Player-learning channels include:
- noise;
- smell;
- travel;
- combat;
- progression;
- recovery;
- elevation behavior;
- underground behavior;
- regions;
- routes;
- possible home-area attachment.
- Player identity remains hashed. Persistent learning does not store an unrestricted exact live player position and cannot directly authorize a spawn at the player.
- Collective learning now distinguishes four source classes:
- Vanilla contributor;
- confirmed Genesis consumer;
- former Genesis member blocked from contribution;
- membership unavailable.
- Only confirmed Vanilla zombies may create new collective evidence.
- Genesis members may consume bounded recommendations but may not feed their own recommendation results back into the dataset.
- A one-time integrity migration removed potentially contaminated collective cells and transitions from the earlier duplicate-entity period. An integrity epoch prevents the purge from repeating.
- Player-learning data remains preserved.
- Learning decay was added with controlled retention, capped catch-up intervals and stale-record expiration.
- A later restart bug revealed that process-local runtime ticks could restart below older saved decay timestamps. Several short sessions could therefore postpone decay indefinitely.
- A persistent monotonic timeline was added using a high-water mark derived from saved, decay, trust, cell and transition timestamps.
- New observations, saves, decay passes and stale-age calculations now use this persistent monotonic time.
- Human-readable runtime logs still use normal session ticks.
- The collective-learning schema and integrity contract remained unchanged so the timeline fix did not trigger another purge.
- 0.24.5–0.24.7.1 – Recovery navigation, member memory and POI awareness
- Local recovery navigation was expanded to recognize:
- doors;
- narrow corridors;
- corners;
- stairs;
- ramps;
- limited elevation transitions;
- blocked passages;
- mixed geometry.
- Only members with confirmed stuck behavior are evaluated.
- Every recovery candidate must pass existing checks for support, body clearance, hazards, step height, segment reachability and micro-route validity.
- Blocked door colliders are never bypassed by artificial waypoints. If no safe side route exists, control returns to Vanilla AI so it may open, attack or reroute naturally.
- Recovery uses short safe intermediate targets only. It does not teleport entities, move through walls, perform artificial height jumps or replace the game’s pathfinder.
- Permanent member memory was introduced.
- Each permanent member can remember limited personal experiences such as:
- successful entrances;
- blocked doors;
- dangerous locations;
- repeated stuck areas;
- successful elevation transitions;
- successful group following;
- limited player encounters;
- successful attack approaches;
- failed attack approaches.
- Memory remains attached to the permanent member ID, surviving chunk unloads and replacement runtime entity IDs.
- Memory is bounded, cleaned during loading and saving, and cannot make an unsafe navigation candidate valid. It may only slightly reorder candidates that have already passed normal safety checks.
- A successful experience may provide a weakened hint to one living horde partner, but full personal memory is never copied.
- Horde-level POI awareness was also added.
- Hordes can learn limited information about:
- cities;
- villages;
- residential areas;
- industrial areas;
- military locations;
- hospitals;
- stores;
- farms;
- wilderness;
- roads;
- bridges;
- buildings;
- interiors;
- dead ends.
- Only currently bound, living physical Genesis members may create POI observations.
- POI discovery is based on local loaded-world inspection. GenesisCore does not enumerate the global world map
- Genesis Horde” to “(GC) Anomaly
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Version 0.21.27
- # GenesisCore – Changelog 0.21.10 to 0.21.27
- * Added a persistent, world-specific learning system for player, Director, and environmental behavior.
- * Implemented safe data storage using temporary files, checksums, backups, and recovery of damaged learning data.
- * Added anonymized player profiles for movement, combat behavior, noise generation, recovery patterns, preferred locations, and long-term playstyle patterns.
- * Integrated collective learning from regular Vanilla zombie behavior.
- * Combined passive observation, shadow evaluation, and controlled live guidance within `GenesisCore.dll`.
- * Added tracking for progress, stagnation, failed approaches, search targets, direction changes, and guidance results.
- * Hardened shutdown and world-transition handling to prevent unsafe Unity access while exiting or changing worlds.
- * Expanded diagnostics with detailed blocking, rejection, cancellation, and failure reasons.
- * Added safe navigation standpoints with checks for ground support, body clearance, collisions, water, hazardous blocks, radiation, trader areas, and loaded chunks.
- * Reworked route evaluation to use bounded evidence from success, progress, and stagnation.
- * Limited repeated stagnation evidence so individual problem areas cannot distort route evaluation indefinitely.
- * Added directional transition memory between world cells.
- * Added local multi-step micro-routes.
- * Stored direction-specific success and failure values for cell transitions.
- * Added multi-sample confirmation and transition debouncing to reduce false transitions near cell boundaries.
- * Added persistent corridor and progress anchors for doors, stairs, corners, and narrow passages.
- * Invalid corridor anchors are projected and repaired onto reachable, safe positions.
- * Added search budgets, geometry caches, and hard limits for expensive route evaluations.
- * Added support for local routes inside the same large world cell.
- * Expanded Vanilla search-state detection, including `InvestigatePosition`, `EAIApproachSpot`, `EAIApproachDistraction`, distraction positions, and existing path targets.
- * Added task and movement timelines for individual zombies.
- * Zombie movement is classified as combat, confirmed search, noise-driven wandering, Genesis directive movement, or unknown wandering.
- * Fully integrated Genesis horde zombies into the diagnostic and membership systems.
- * Unified access to the Genesis runtime membership collection and protected it against incompatible runtime types.
- * Enabled active rescue navigation for stuck Genesis horde zombies.
- * Rescue navigation remains completely blocked while active attack or revenge targets exist.
- * Learned local routes are preferred before dynamically generated escape routes.
- * Added sideways and backward-sideways detours for blocked doors, corners, stairs, and group congestion.
- * Zombies are distributed across different escape directions to reduce mutual blocking.
- * Temporary intermediate targets are restored to the original destination after success, failure, or the end of combat.
- * Failed intermediate targets are blocked per zombie for 60 seconds.
- * Nearly identical failed targets are treated as the same blocked area.
- * Repeatedly failing routes are disabled for the remainder of the current world session.
- * Left-side and right-side escape routes are evaluated and blocked independently.
- * Successful rescue directions and routes receive a limited priority bonus.
- * Strategic Genesis horde targets with invalid heights are no longer passed directly to Vanilla AI.
- * Two-dimensional horde targets are projected onto a real, safe ground height before use.
- * Restored targets are fully checked for support, body clearance, water, and hazards.
- * Removed direct restoration of `Y=0` targets from the active guidance path.
- * Added a shared projection cache for zombies using the same strategic target.
- * Split the projection cache into 16 approach sectors so results from different sides of a building are not mixed.
- * Positive projection cache hits are safely revalidated before every reuse.
- * Separated target-height validation from physical geometry validation to prevent unnecessary repeated checks of the same ground position.
- * Added different cache durations for missing support, blocked body space, water, hazards, unloaded areas, and read failures.
- * Added controlled fallback projection searches using rings at two, four, and six meters.
- * Limited projection searches to a maximum of 13 anchors and 72 standpoint checks.
- * Significantly reduced projection failures and exhausted projection budgets.
- * Greatly reduced general standpoint checks, cache misses, and search-budget exhaustion.
- * Increased the tested success rate of active rescue navigation from 38.5% to 75%.
- * Vanilla attack targets, revenge targets, EAI tasks, A* pathfinding, spawning, materialization, and world blocks remain untouched.
- * Maintained compatibility of persistence, route, and horde schemas throughout the navigation improvements.
- * Preserved fail-closed behavior for unsafe reflection, membership, projection, and navigation states.
- * Expanded diagnostic reports with membership results, rescue candidates, applied rescues, successes, failures, blocked targets, disabled routes, projection-cache activity, revalidation results, and search-budget statistics.
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Version 0.21.10
- ## GenesisCore 0.21.10
- * Added persistent learning across world restarts
- * Added strategy feedback so the Director learns which plans work best
- * Added player archetypes such as Aggressive Fighter, Home Defender, Mobile Scavenger, and Stealth Explorer
- * Improved strategic targeting so short-term noise no longer pulls hordes away from their intended approach
- * Added anonymized player identification, checksums, and backup recovery for learning data
- * No changes were made to spawn sectors, materialization, cohort logic, encounter commitment, or adaptive recovery
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Version 0.21.8
- GenesisCore 0.21.8.0 – Precise Spawn Surfaces & Horde Premonition
- Main Changes
- GenesisCore now performs a more precise and controlled spawn-surface assessment. Safe grass, small plants and comparable non-colliding ground decoration can no longer block an otherwise valid Genesis horde materialization.
- Massive, colliding or dangerous objects remain strictly rejected. This includes vehicles, trees, rocks, walls, doors, furniture, traps, spikes, liquids, unstable surfaces and positions without sufficient body or head clearance.
- No world blocks are removed, replaced, damaged or temporarily modified.
- New Horde Premonition System
- Approaching GenesisCore horde encounters can now produce a localized advance warning before the first zombie physically materializes.
- Exactly one warning text is reserved for each encounter.
- The warning is selected from five localized premonition messages.
- The same text is retained during HUD retries, spawn retries, later batches and rematerialization attempts.
- GenesisCore first uses the verified vanilla tooltip system.
- A tooltip is only considered successful after its controller, window, resolved text and visible label have been confirmed.
- The native tooltip request is sent only once. Later attempts verify or maintain the existing display instead of creating duplicate warnings.
- If the HUD cannot be confirmed, the same localized warning is shown through the in-game chat after six seconds.
- The first materialization is held back for at least four seconds after the warning has actually been confirmed.
- An 18-second failsafe prevents an encounter from becoming permanently blocked if neither HUD nor chat can be confirmed.
- HUD retries, restored confirmations and lost confirmations never create a second encounter trigger.
- Later cohorts, spawn retries and abstractions belonging to the same encounter do not produce additional warnings.
- A new premonition can only occur after the previous encounter has fully closed and the system has completed its distance and time rearm conditions.
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Version 0.20.1
- GenesisCore 0.20.1 – True Population
- Corrected the separation between horde population and capacity.
- Every logical member now truly belongs to the roaming horde.
- Horde growth now adds real members instead of empty capacity.
- Added safe migration for existing saves.
- Physical encounters now use a smaller adaptive portion of the full horde.
- Improved population, recruitment and materialization reporting.
- Added additional save-state consistency protection.
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Version 0.19.0
- GenesisCore v0.19.0 – Adaptive Horde Growth
- Added fully configurable persistent horde growth.
- Horde size now adapts to population and aggression.
- Increased default starting and maximum horde sizes.
- Added gradual group spawning for smoother performance.
- Added GenesisHorde.xml configuration.
- Improved existing-save migration.
- Fixed Genesis zombies disappearing shortly after spawning.
- Improved horde tracking, safety checks, and diagnostics.
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