Dismemberment: SSH's system meets Dead Island 2
17 October 2026. Your ask: "use this system for players and zombies and compare it to dead island 2 and merge the best parts of each." D-236.
The merge in one line: SSH decides how often a limb comes off and how it looks and falls. Dead Island 2 decides what changes when a zombie loses one while it's still alive. Our server decides every cut once, so all ten of you see the same body.
What we found
Visceral CombatSSH's mod
- Limbs come off at death, on the killing hit or a hit on a corpse.
- A chance per calibre: 12-gauge slug 100%, 7.62×51 35%, 5.56 (M855) 10%, 5.45 5%, 9×19 never.
- The zone you hit picks the cut: head, forearm or thigh.
- What sells it: gore caps on the stump, a 2 to 8 s arterial spurt, floor splats, head gargles, death animations, and a physics-driven death fall.
- Most of the code is a Unity ragdoll library, not SSH's. We use Unreal's own equivalent.
Dead Island 2FLESH
- Limbs come off while the zombie is still alive, and it changes how the zombie fights. A lost leg makes a crawler.
- Wound recipes per weapon type, layered skin, muscle and bone, and viscera. These are on our Walker's own body.
- A reaction order that decides what interrupts what.
- Its bullet wounds are mostly sound. Its showpiece is melee.
The merged design
| Part | Where it comes from | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Who decides | ours | The server rolls each cut once and keeps every body's missing parts as state. Players who join late or reconnect see the same body. SSH's mod sends a one-off message, so a late joiner misses it. |
| Chance by calibre | SSH | His table, unchanged to start: slugs always cut, the SR-25 often, 9×19 never. |
| Alive-state limbs | DI2 | When a limb's damage passes 27 points, the hit can take it off a living zombie. A lost leg makes a crawler, a lost arm a one-handed attacker, and both arms leave a biter. The one-armed zombie turns its good side toward you, so a friend can flank the empty one. |
| Melee | DI2 | Blades sever. The crowbar and bat break limbs and crush heads, but never cut. The knife wounds. |
| Stumps and pieces | DI2 SSH | Cut from the Walker's own layers and viscera first, with SSH's caps as the fallback. |
| Blood and sound | SSH | His layers (burst, spray, drops, the arterial spurt) rebuilt in Unreal's particle system, plus a no-repeat sound pool with his gargles. |
| Death fall | SSH ours | His physics-driven fall, rebuilt on Unreal's powered ragdoll from the Game Animation Sample, near zombies only. |
| Weak calibres | ours | A 9 mm kill that can't cut still gets a sharp payoff: a cloth snap, a dry hit, the body going slack. |
| The crowd | ours | A one-armed straggler stays recognisable in the 500-strong crowd, and the crawler's sound follows the limbs it has left. |
Left out on purpose: rifles splitting torsos in two, a detached player-head camera, and a giant variety target before the basics feel right.
Three decisions for you
card 1When does a player's body lose limbs?
- A, at death only (recommended). This is exactly what Visceral Combat does in Tarkov. Wounds show while you're alive.
- B, while alive too. This needs one-armed first-person animations for every gun and new rules for bleeding and for what you keep after the raid. It's about 30 to 45 extra agent-days, and a friend's slug could end your raid in one shot.
- C, rescue-only amputation. A limb can go only once you're already downed. Your friends stabilise you and carry you out, and you're whole again next raid.
card 2Bring a first pass forward to right after the Walker slice?
Yes (recommended): cuts on kills and corpses, stumps, blood and the death fall on the one Walker, months earlier. It's about 21.5 to 29.5 agent-days. Crawlers and one-armed attackers stay at G4. Or keep everything at G4.
card 3When gunfire takes a living zombie's limb, does it interrupt the zombie?
A (recommended): a lost leg drops it straight into the crawl, and a lost arm cancels that arm's swing, so you see the loss at once. Or B, it carries on, or C, Dead Island 2's full reactions. Today gunfire never staggers a zombie, so A is a second exception, after the grapple.
Size
| Piece | Agent-days |
|---|---|
| First pass on the Walker, after W17 (card 2) | 21.5 to 29.5 |
| Alive-state crawlers and one-armed attackers, at G4 | 33.5 to 46.5 |
| Players losing limbs while alive (card 1, option B only) | +30 to 45 |