Zomb... AI Movement Mechanic

Can you not use the same system they use in Castle Ravenloft?

You can find the rules on BGG.com if you ar intrested in how the monsters move there. Basicly they move from tile to tile. While the heroes move from square to square. (a tile consists of several squares)

Is it possible to assign movement categories to various zombies? Arkham Horror has a similar movement for monsters based on category. For your game maybe the zombies spawn from some random pull where players are unsure of what type of zombie they have until it is placed. Then just detail some movement categories so that they still move to surround but in various fashions.

Cheers,
Ron

This is my very first posting here, so please bare with me if I'm talking nonsense.

I'd make the zombies rather dumb, so your calculations get easier. I case it makes them too weak, you can compensate by making them faster/more numerous/more powerful. I'd separate the zombie movement into two parts:
1. Move to the closest character in case a character is really close.
2. Move using a different rule otherwise.

Ad 1. Consider a character to be close only in case it's no more than (let's say) 3 tiles away and/or they lie on a straight (horizontal/vertical) line with the zombie. Here you'd need to find out what exact "distance" is easy enough to spot the closest character at the first sight. When determining the closest character (and/or the move direction) gets too time-consuming, it's not worth doing (you want to spend your time playing, not counting fields...).

In case there are multiple closest characters, you either need to choose one of them or to compute movement for both of them and resolve it somehow:
- You could use a die here, but rolling a die takes time, and so does interpreting the result.
- You could let one player break the tie at their will (the player owning a "zombie-mover token" would do it and pass the token to the next player).
- You could make the zombie move "more in its preferred direction" (how ever you interpret it). The preferred direction could be simply defined as towards the house center, or it could be more complicated. You could print an arrow on each tile determining the preferred direction. That's surely very fast and error-proof.

I see, I've got a whole bunch of ideas now, but no idea if anything of it fits.

Ad 2. In case there's no character close enough, check the zombie position relative to all characters as a whole at once:
- In case all characters are above and left to the zombie, move diagonally up and left
(assuming diagonal moves are allowed and there's no obstacle). The same for the symmetric cases.
- Otherwise, in case all characters are above the zombie, move up. Symmetries again.
- If the above does not apply, move simply in the preferred direction.

You could even have it as ranges.

Generally zombies don't move they simply mill about in the tile they are set up at the start of the game. Once a player reaches line of site the zombies in that area will move 1 tile closer to the player in view (much like Tannhausers Pathfinder system I guess).

If noises are made then zombies in the surrounding tiles will move closer.

melee = zombies with 2 tiles will move in the direction of the noise
gunfire = within 3 tiles of the noise
explosion/grenade = with 5 tiles of the noise.

Is the map static or randomly generated? Looking at the description of the game, with the focus on coop/competition and the blood cards etc, I guess the map layout is secondary? Because if it can be the same every time there are many simple ways to script semi-random movement paths for the zombies, until they get close enough to start hunting someone. Could let you focus on the important parts of the design, and make zombies that require less boring time to figure out which way they are headed.