Smells only come from the player's stealth code. Would be weird having storage boxes running stealth code to see if you could see or hear them.
I have thoughts and wonderings about that.
Wouldn't smelly storage naturally fit into the heat-map system? Not that I would need that, but it seems related.
And, about the heat-map system, it seems like it changed drastically at some point but I'm not really sure if it's working differently or not.
In the old days if I had some fires and crafting going on at Base I might have Screamers attack while I'm there, or maybe I'd leave for some questing and come back and immediately get the attack.
Now, I NEVER experience Screamer horde attack at my base even with a full day of crafting, but when I'm off to stealth through a distant POI I will be hit with the screamer attack. It feels rather disconnected in that context; no apparent cause and effect from activities, as if the heat-map is a myth or something.
As a player it can be somewhat frustrating (and as a developer even more so) when a carefully planned system is crunching away at data and complex statics behind the scenes only to result in something that feels like a completely random event when experienced.
I like the concept of storms causing different behavior in the zombies. A cause and effect can easily be read there.
I don't like the heat map currently. I wouldn't have known that it existed if I hadn't read about it as it currently feels like a random encounter. It seems like the same effect could have more easily been triggered by a timer or by XP milestones achieved.
I'm wondering how the Smell system will feel in game, if it will just seem like additional enemies kind of like Feral Sense, or will there be some obvious behavioral differences, like they run into the area aggressively and ready to fight, but without knowing the immediate target to attack.
Anyway, looking forward to trying it out.