PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

Status
Not open for further replies.
I have a few questions about the Feral Sense Option:


Adding on to this, did they ever update the heat map similar to how it used to be? I know cooking meat / carrying meat etc used to trigger zombies, I could have sworn light shining through windows would draw them in. Anymore I don't even have windows, I build a beacon for all to see within miles around, with forges and vampires roaring and torches lighting it up from the inside and outside like a Christmas tree, and zombies don't care

 
Adding on to this, did they ever update the heat map similar to how it used to be? I know cooking meat / carrying meat etc used to trigger zombies, I could have sworn light shining through windows would draw them in. Anymore I don't even have windows, I build a beacon for all to see within miles around, with forges and vampires roaring and torches lighting it up from the inside and outside like a Christmas tree, and zombies don't care
Torches, campfires and forges do increase heat in an area. Breaking things also does. The rate? The more campfires, forges ...etc,   the faster screamers will come once they start coming, with little pause in between.

Shooting, breaking wood spikes over again and also hitting metal are good ways to call a screamer.

Smell is no longer a thing, but I would love to see zds and animals attack storage containers made by the player (with food inside). That would be awesome and a good way to bring a part of that gameplay without performace drawbacks.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
but I would love to see zds and animals attack storage containers made by the player
This could be neat, especially since most people don't worry about losing resources to zeds unless they dig under your base and drop it.  If they attacked "your stuff" you would have an incentive to build your base to also also protect your possessions (and while looting, like in your vehicle/temp storage), and zeds might path (and destroy) to your chests/workstations/generators/etc instead of just you, so you couldn't just leave them unattended (maybe without traps/protection/etc.

 
This could be neat, especially since most people don't worry about losing resources to zeds unless they dig under your base and drop it.  If they attacked "your stuff" you would have an incentive to build your base to also also protect your possessions (and while looting, like in your vehicle/temp storage), and zeds might path (and destroy) to your chests/workstations/generators/etc instead of just you, so you couldn't just leave them unattended (maybe without traps/protection/etc.
at higher game stage levels where the vomiters attack.. that pretty green stuff WILL eat the containers if they get hit ... :)

 
@meganoth Unless I give you explicit permission to tag me, I request that you refrain from doing so. The exception here would be if it's important, of which this is far from that.

Also, that joke was of poor taste. I hope you're better than that. ;)

 
at higher game stage levels where the vomiters attack.. that pretty green stuff WILL eat the containers if they get hit ... :)
Naah. I'm talking specific targeting of your food containters by all the entities and predators (or even a special infected "sniffer"), not fortuitous damage that might or might not result in storage loss depending on your positioning (above ground or under).

But I'm partial to a special "digger zd" that goes for the containers and can target them wherever they are.

 
That only enforces more gamey behaviour like placing your horde base far away from your living base.

I don't see why you would want that.

 
That only enforces more gamey behaviour like placing your horde base far away from your living base.

I don't see why you would want that.
Who would ever do that??

Real men/women don't need no sissy walls.   It just slows down on the kill'n that needs to be done!

My horde base is a six-pack of beer and something that causes them zombies to stop a mov'n!

 
That only enforces more gamey behaviour like placing your horde base far away from your living base.

I don't see why you would want that.
True if it's based on the heatmap. But.... what if predator AI and/or some special infected has that behaviour of targeting storage with food ? Then it wouldn't enforce that "gamey behaviour" you talk about any more than it already does, as no matter where you settle, critters will get to your food if you didn't build any defense. Granted somebody would need to be in the area, because if it isn't loaded, nobody would witness stuff happening (of course).

 
Well, people tend to have *light* defenses around their base but not the kind to stop a 7 day horde.

 
Well, people tend to have *light* defenses around their base but not the kind to stop a 7 day horde.
Of course, in order to avoid that, there can be some gamestage limiter to the frequency of those spawns/actions . Or even X amount of food containers/resources for it to trigger that behaviour in predators/entities and become dangerous.

Two positive things to consider a change in AI that allows predators/some entities to destroy food storages:

1. Madmole cursing and running.

2. Madmole cursing and shouting while running.

It's worth it . Totally worth it.

 
That only enforces more gamey behaviour like placing your horde base far away from your living base.

I don't see why you would want that.
It'd be like wandering hordes in the past, the attacks would happen even in uninhabited chunks.  Besides, who uses their home base as their horde base anyway?

 
I feel like not using your main base as your hoard base is kind of an optimizing the fun out of the game moment. the same was true for sky or bedrock bases.

You are here for the zombie apocalypse movie experience..   having a dedicated hoard base kinda undermines that. but this is just my opinion.

Admittedly i feel that is more of an issue of the game advertising  when its gona murder you ahead of time.. something that is already unrealistically courteous .

It would be more difficult to pull off a horde base if the hordes gave no warning. But that could be a little unfair .. so at the end of the day its up the player to maintain the spirit of the whole situation and not go too overboard trying to exploit it into being trivial 

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Torches, campfires and forges do increase heat in an area. Breaking things also does. The rate? The more campfires, forges ...etc,   the faster screamers will come once they start coming, with little pause in between.

Shooting, breaking wood spikes over again and also hitting metal are good ways to call a screamer.

Smell is no longer a thing, but I would love to see zds and animals attack storage containers made by the player (with food inside). That would be awesome and a good way to bring a part of that gameplay without performace drawbacks.
This would be annoying as hell - why? because we have smell in the past and it  wasn't cool. More? this would need to recreate a lot of things again and make scavenging very rare and early stage- why? because the best option would be sitting in base to avoid to be destroyed when you are not there- so mining would be to risk , finding parts of tools and weapons and doing quest not effective- so people would mostry create spikes because to avoid being rushed .

This could be neat, especially since most people don't worry about losing resources to zeds unless they dig under your base and drop it.  If they attacked "your stuff" you would have an incentive to build your base to also also protect your possessions (and while looting, like in your vehicle/temp storage), and zeds might path (and destroy) to your chests/workstations/generators/etc instead of just you, so you couldn't just leave them unattended (maybe without traps/protection/etc.
Well if zombie would focusing on this stiff it would be just bad because- zombie are going to be stronger and stronger so if you one time lose 1-2 chest you woudn't to "run" in this " arms race"

That only enforces more gamey behaviour like placing your horde base far away from your living base.

I don't see why you would want that.
Well i think some people just want to play as hard game as possible-  like dwarves fortress but this type of games have one big problem- is just unpopular so maybe only 100 -1000 people would buy it. Yeah ds3 is hard but you only will lose 1 hour if you do something wrong, this same in total war , biding of issac etc. But if you can play 20 and you can lose everything because small bug or mistake this will  discourage most people to play this game

 
Entities attacking food storage is too gamey for my tastes.  Since a food spoilage system at this point is very unlikely, I think the following could be alternatives.

1) Food abundance setting for loot and/or harvest (e.g. 25% 50%  etc.)

Since food scarcity is subjective based on many different factors (e.g. number of players, player skill, etc.)

2) Food sink at higher levels (e.g. more upper tier food recipes with better incentives, quest related turn ins, etc.)

 
Entities attacking food storage is too gamey for my tastes.  Since a food spoilage system at this point is very unlikely, I think the following could be alternatives.

1) Food abundance setting for loot and/or harvest (e.g. 25% 50%  etc.)

Since food scarcity is subjective based on many different factors (e.g. number of players, player skill, etc.)

2) Food sink at higher levels (e.g. more upper tier food recipes with better incentives, quest related turn ins, etc.)
I like all of those and we can say that they are a given in the long term (7dtd design is targeting exactly what you say) though I was aiming for more of an emergent gameplay situation instead of "game rules". Right now there are only screamers and wandering hordes. Sure, a future random encounter system would trump everything suggested on the subject, but in the mean time....

The easiest way to put something of the likes would probably be an additional AI predator behaviour that let's some predators have a chance (small?) to attack storage containers (easiest thing would be that they occasionally target ALL of the containers placed by the player). That behaviour would result in emergent gameplay and it would be cool as predators are scarce on day time in the forest, which is the starting biome. It could probably be disabled for the night, idk.  If it's too much of a "meals on wheels", we shall then wait for most of the animals being Zds (pet project? and my wishful thinking!) so we wouldn't get extra food at all.

A loot percentage for food is awesome, yet I would settle for the general kind if it had more crazy abundance options , like (6%-12%-25%-50%-75%-100%-200%-300%-500% )

 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top