Dismemberment: SSH's system meets Dead Island 2
17 October 2026, updated with your three decisions. 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.
What you decided
D-237Players lose limbs at death only
On the killing hit and on the body afterwards, at SSH's calibre chances, exactly as Visceral Combat does in Tarkov. Wounds show while you're alive. The AI-driven hostile survivors (G4) follow the same rule (C-220).
D-238A first pass right after the Walker slice
On the one Walker: cuts on kills and corpses, stumps, blood, the gargles and the physics death fall, beside the grapple. Crawlers and one-armed attackers stay at G4.
D-239Dead Island 2's full reactions, adapted to our guns
- Every hit still gets the light flinch by zone and side.
- Each round drains a stability bar by its calibre: a slug or 7.62×51 can stumble or floor a zombie in one or two hits, while 9 mm and 5.45 build up over several.
- When the bar empties, Dead Island 2's sets pick a stumble or knockdown by where and from which side it was hit, with get-ups.
- The 1.2 s stagger-resistance window holds for gunfire too, so nobody can stun-lock a zombie.
- A lost arm stops it and stumbles it; a lost leg drops it into the crawl.
- Lethality and time to kill are re-measured, and the horde tuned to stay deadly.
Size
| Piece | Agent-days |
|---|---|
| First pass on the Walker, after W17 (D-238) | 21.5 to 29.5 |
| Dead Island 2's reactions on top (D-239, first estimate) | about 5 to 8 |
| Alive-state crawlers and one-armed attackers, at G4 | 33.5 to 46.5 |