TropiCata: Plants vs Zombies

[Xaritscin]

Summary

Mods "general update to plant zombies and triffids in the mod"

Purpose of change

The original release of the triffid update left me a bit bitter as i felt the didnt really fit well in terms of implementations. I have decided to make a facelift patch to further flesh out the idea of the triffids getting smarter and more powerfull in the Tropical Region, including their new experimental use of enslaved zombies as a way to gain an edge over the blob.

Describe the solution

-added a new json file of death effects for the evolved plant boomers
-upgraded the garden zombie as the basic zed for the new plant zombie family with pollen breath as its signature hability
-renamed thorny children to garden children as they will be the junior base for new children plant zed upgrades
-changed all factions of the non vanilla plant zeds to triffids
-added triffid podlings and gardenlings which represent a new innovation apart of the triffid sprigs
-added triffid overqueens which act as inmobile progenitors in certain triffid locations
-buffed the "egg" production of triffid lifegivers and nerfed their speed to further represent their ingame lore
-updated the triffid blossom and triffid garden overmap locations for the new enemies
-added a new "overgrown lot" location that can spawn on cities with 4 variations (2 residential + 2 commercial)

Note: no changes done to the Thorny Shambler, it will still be a blob aligned plant zombie as its part of the base game. These new zeds will not be related to it and instead will be a sort of war experiment by the alien plants.

Describe alternatives you've considered

keep plant zeds as rare evolutions of the Thorny Shambler and not go deeper into triffid biology to spice up gameplay.

Testing

Tested the new locations and the new enemies. seems to be working as intended albeit the amount of regular zeds found on cities may hamper their survival on spawn.

Additional context

These plant zeds were originally meant to be an addition to triffid content sites like overgrown greenhouses or overtaken botanic gardens. the zombies would be under control of the plants via sap, pollen, vines and so on as a sort of indentured servants but i didnt have planned well how they would be used so they were just slapped onto the regular zombie stock.

[github-actions]

Spell checker encountered unrecognized words in the in-game text added in this pull request. See below for details.

Click to expand

• An undead child seemingly mutated by alien flora. It has several colorful flowers on its head and an uncanningly serene expression.

This alert is automatically generated. You can simply disregard if this is inaccurate, or (optionally) you can also add the new words to tools/spell_checker/dictionary.txt so they will not trigger an alert next time.

[github-actions]

Spell checker encountered unrecognized words in the in-game text added in this pull request. See below for details.

Click to expand

• An enormous triffid rooted to the ground. It absorbs nutrients and sunlight all day and night to release new podlings into the garden.
• An undead child seemingly mutated by alien flora. It has several colorful flowers on its head and an uncanningly serene expression.
• triffid gardenling
• triffid gardenlings
• triffid overqueen
• triffid overqueens
• triffid podling
• triffid podlings

This alert is automatically generated. You can simply disregard if this is inaccurate, or (optionally) you can also add the new words to tools/spell_checker/dictionary.txt so they will not trigger an alert next time.

[moll]

@Xaritscin: I think the typo in zed_plant.json that the spell checker highlighted above was still left in — "uncanningly". I presume you meant "uncannily".