PC 300th level attempt, No Guns, No Deaths, no Cheats.

[4sheetzngeegles]

@Dead Smarty

Yes, the easiest way to figure out which color tint you want to use

You could use Krita, or Photoshop, and look at the hd color pallets

the one that looks like a gradient. The reason for using the decimals

vs the full example 255 0 0 is read also, but is at full intensity. or 1f.

It will make the screen just an unuseable red slate. To quickly learn the limits

Try this 3 step check.    

Type                  weather fogcolor .1 0 0        then             weather fogcolor .5 0 0

The third number      weather fogcolor .25 0 0.

You will see the intensity on screen and know if you need to go to the upper end

at .5 or lower end below .25 for comfort. that is your nominal or best personal preference.

Just follow the same limit for the other color mixes.

@WarMongerian

You need notepad++ its free. One plugin that is extremely helpful is "compare".

You use this to compare your xml edits to the original file if you get an error after editing.

Semi quick instructions for editing fog out, Luckily for now it is not a mandatory call.

Prerequisite     Install Notepad ++

1 Goto 7 dtd game folder, open  data folder,  make a backup of the config folder .

 "This is to be able to instantly go back to the original settings , if a mistake is made.

2 Open config folder,  open Biomes.xml.     scroll down until you see the weather config for snow biome

"highlight the line or lines that have     Example:    <Fog min=".23" max=".35" prob="100"/>    on yours it can be 100 or 1 that is just a difference in fractional rep

                                                                                   This is mine yours will have different numbers:   

Highlight the fog line including the open and closing <            />  right mouse click and close comment, Its the same as REM on dos makes it user instruction not live

Do it for each of the weather groupings under snow. Save

3 Once snow biome is done ;  you you see a  minus sign to the left of this text     <biome name="snow" topsoil_block="terrSnow" biomemapcolor="#FFFFFF"

left click the minus sign to collapse snow biome config then repeat for forest. Repeat 1 2 3 until all biomes are done.

Permanently no more fog.  I simplified mine, I only have one config per biome.   set at 100 percent probability.

Easier for me to edit and know which changes I am looking at on screen.

 

[Dead Smarty]

The reason for using the decimals

vs the full example 255 0 0 is read also, but is at full intensity. or 1f.

It will make the screen just an unuseable red slate. To quickly learn the limits

Try this 3 step check.    

Type                  weather fogcolor .1 0 0        then             weather fogcolor .5 0 0

The third number      weather fogcolor .25 0 0.

You will see the intensity on screen and know if you need to go to the upper end

at .5 or lower end below .25 for comfort. that is your nominal or best personal preference.

Just follow the same limit for the other color mixes.

Nitpick: 255 = FF
On topic: Isn't it more efficient to keep the vallue integer and add another number for intensity? Maybe I'm stuck too much in the old days, when integers were 1 byte and floating point numbers 6 bytes. You know, the days of floppy disks with less than 1 MB storage...

 

[YourMirror]

Nitpick: 255 = FF
On topic: Isn't it more efficient to keep the vallue integer and add another number for intensity? Maybe I'm stuck too much in the old days, when integers were 1 byte and floating point numbers 6 bytes. You know, the days of floppy disks with less than 1 MB storage...

Bwoah, yes making sure you keep within the 640K memory limit when coding stuff. Squeezing in stuff in upper memory and highmemory if you could load the himem.sys driver. Beautiful times.

 

[4sheetzngeegles]

You may be right, actually in any art program that is absolutely right.

In this game they gave a lot of variable choices.

This all came for reading and experimentation.

These are things that I found out by experimenting constantly.
The values can work as a whole number, and a decimal. They set
a lot of the numeric values to accept multiple input types. I guess
to cover different modes of mathematical thinking.

For fog color as example: When I typed weather I opened my log
and copied the output for read/learning.

By default using a single whole number renders it as grayscale, like in the height file, 0 is bedrock, 255 is top mountain peak,

0 0 0 and 255 255 255 are the RGB render codes for the art program, but with the same output.
"0-255 Black to white    X   ,1f        or 100%, it gets muddy going back and forth. But at the end of the property they included
the intensity as a float. ",1f". The only problem with that was that whole numbers only rendered at full intensity.

So I experimented, and made a mental graph from 0 to 1.0 so for me
it meant that 0 is at the bottom of the square grid, 1 is at the top
and inputting .10 as red .10 as green .10 as blue was like me mixing = 10%
percentages of paint. But since the whole number it seems is multiplied
by the intensity then 255 x 1 = 255 or 255 255 255. are full intensity because intensity defaults to ,1f
white. In normal visual spectrum white includes all colors at once equally. So
i logically figured if a whole integer x intensity is a constant. Then
putting in the colors as an decimal would act like a potentiometer or dimmer
switch in electricity.

The greater the percentage the closer to full intensity it got, it gave
me more flexible control. "255  or  255 255 255 or 1 or 1 1 1 are basically
all representations of white"  But so are .10 .10 .10   .15 .15 .15  .50 .50 .50
The only difference is since intensity defaults to 1 as the multiplier the intensity
is only 10% 15% and 50% brightness. But if you've ever looked at a zombie texture
you would remember that the actual texture is a lot duller in the file than when rendered
on screen. I figured after reading unity manual and other ebooks I could find;
that the color and lighting were following the same principles or mathematics,
computations across the board and lucked out. These are the results.

 

[Jugginator]

No guns, only torch. 

 

[WarMongerian]

No guns, only torch. 

Lol.  I used to be able to use the torch mod on my weapons, now I cannot run around with anyone who does, let alone use it myself. 

 

[Jugginator]

Lol.  I used to be able to use the torch mod on my weapons, now I cannot run around with anyone who does, let alone use it myself. 

It's a little challenge one of my friends and I would do at the start of a lot of games, keeping going with only the torch.

Too bright for you?

 

[WarMongerian]

Too bright for you?

Yep.  some days I can take it, at least for  time, but other days I cannot.  Thank god for sunglasses.

 

[WarMongerian]

My game is inching forward, because I'm also playing in another game, but I am documenting that game, and in doing so, I am learning things I can use to make documenting my private game far less of a headache, like moving all my video files to my 2 boxes of mostly unused USB flash drives, and getting my hard drive freed up enough room so I stop getting low memory warnings.

Because my friend plays everyday, and most of the time, twice a day, I'm having a bit of trouble keeping up with him, but it was harder last weekend than it is this weekend, so going forward, I'll be playing/recording/publishing videos again.

 

[Grandpa Minion]

The game designers have a bad idea, "the zombies must be allowed to come at the player from all points of the compass", and so they design the AI to spawn them in such a fashion.  the result?  If an intelligent player builds a base that allows the zombies to walk in the front door, but no other way in, the zombies will just try to beat their way through the players walls, and make such a path. 

when you come to the point and realize zombies are no challenge.. its time to move to pvp. 

Playing against real players attacking your base vs pre programmed zombies is a whole new ball of wax

 

[WarMongerian]

when you come to the point and realize zombies are no challenge.. its time to move to pvp. 

Playing against real players attacking your base vs pre programmed zombies is a whole new ball of wax

Yes, PvP is something else.

However, I'm too old to play StarCraft 2 these days, because I'm in poor health.  Imagine a zombies horror game played by a guy that has limited eyesight, impaired nerves/finger dexterity, an where even the sudden appearance of another friendly player can get my old heart racing...

I'll stick with single player/co-op play.

I have gone through a  couple folders of old videos, and have managed to free up some drive space.  I have a 464 GB SSD, but was down under 90 GB free space when the recordings shut down, due to low memory.  How many GB do most folks have on their HHD or SSD?

 

[Dead Smarty]

Internal SSD laptop 1TB, PS5 4TB
External for backup PS4/5 HD 2TB and 4TB, SSD 2TB.
And somewhere an ancient 360 GB firewire that probably doesn't even work anymore.

 

[4sheetzngeegles]

@WarMongerian

There is not nearly enough info to try to figure this out. At least not for me.

Some important variables:
Software used to do the recording***Preference settings for the software including FPS and resolution
Is the software writing to SSD or external hd***Computer system settings for pagefile
How much ram the program uses to run plus it's buffer***What else is running in the background
How much initial ram is installed***How long was the recording session

I have run my computer down to 64k free disk space without exaggeration because of pagefile settings.

Personal storage: 250gig ssd internal, right now hovering at 32gig freespace, 65TeraByte external hard

drives. 16TB being used in USB slots now, Hot swappable.

What do you want to do in detail?

 

[WarMongerian]

I'm wanting to develop the habit of documenting my game play, in order to write a story of my little digital dudes (mis)adventures.  To that end, I am using my friends game as practice.  I have been trying to keep a log/diary of our play sessions.  The problem is, I have been to exhausted do do much playing of my personal game.  This need not be a problem, but I need some thing to work off of.

Right now, I'm trying to make very short videos, at the start and end of out play sessions.  My friend plays on a regular schedule, but that totals 11 multi hour periods a week.

So, first I need to make the short videos, from playing in his game, which I am doing, and then get them organized and placed into a dedicated folder on one of my flash drives (which I am trying to do), and then write up anything that happened in the game, and build a story around that.  Getting some thoughts written down, based on what happens when playing, is part of the story I want to write.  Another part is making 6 videos for each Horde Night I playthrough.  The whole HN takes something like 36 minutes, and my internet/youTube cannot handle that size file (30+ min), but it can handle 6-7 min videos.  I may or may not publish my Horde Nights, but I will use them for taking still images, and using them in story.

I am working on getting a table set up, in the text document, where I can watch the video, copy info down, and have this in text and/or still images, for later use in the story.  My problem is that I am just so tired out by all the playing, I lack the get up and go, to play my game, and do all the behind the scenes stuff.

I'm currently migrating/mass deleting many videos too my USB drives/recycle bin.  So far, I have reached two horde nights from back in Jan (6 part videos) are on a drive, but I still have many more to move.  In my friends game, we just reached 0100 hrs, day 21, and will be playing our third blood moon today/tonight.  My personal game is a bit behind, day 20 just after noon, so I do need to catch up a little bit.

I am wondering if I have enough free space on my drive, to just start working on the current videos, and making sure that they all get on an appropriate flash drive in a timely fashion.  When I got 7 days to die, back last year of feb 2nd, I was playing a crazy number of hours, but my health situation has caused me to have to slow way down, and now I'm having trouble maintaining my friends play schedule.

Anyway, I'm getting ready to start todays' morning play session.

 

[4sheetzngeegles]

@WarMongerian

I've read it all, got a clear picture, writing notes and suggestions from what I have learned

from my past.

Immediate thing to look at, If you don't, often pull stuff back from your recycle bin.

Then reduce your recycle bin/bins to the minimum allocated space.  Like this



Do this before all of the other deletions, then check freespace difference.  It can sometimes give some breathing room.

Next is the temp folders, scattered about. Some temp files, are large. But were only used when installing something.

Some things can be archived and shrunk by WinRAR until you are sure what to get rid of. After shrinking then delete those

its kind of a failsafe for OFMSideways moments.

 

[WarMongerian]

Got all the way up to three days ago worth of videos moved to flash drives, and even managed to get to bed for the first time in I don't know how long (I have just been falling asleep in my chair lately), but sleep in a bed is way more restful.  I now just have the last three days worth of videos to move, and tonight's play session is due to start...

We made it past third Horde Night in our joint game, my private game is still on day 20, and I'll try to catch up after tonight joint game session.

 

[Arez]

They work exactly like a ditch thou. Are ditches a cheat?

But they're not exactly ditches.  

They are exploitative but it doesn't really matter because they don't work that well anyway. They won't stop zombies from pathing over them enough to be truly effective. They're more of a fun little gimmick. There are more effective ways to exploit zombie behavior. 

1)  Dead is Dead.  If my little digital dude bites the farm, I quit and restart.

2)  No Guns.  I won't be using any types of firearms.  I also won't use any kind of traps, explosives, or other weapons, except for:

3)  Gathering Tools are ok to use as weapons.

4)  Bows and Crossbows are fair game.  I prefer to craft my own, over getting them as loot, and will never buy them.

5)  Knives & Machetes are fair game.  I can craft them, might find/use them, but cannot buy them.

I'm in the middle of a video series just like this.

Melee only. No ranged weapons, which includes bows.

Traps are ok except for the ones that shoot projectiles.

I use throwables too, but not very often because I really don't like the throwing mechanics in this game.

My horde base is a tiny ground-level shack. I believe it's 5x5. With 30+ days in and no deaths, I have found no reason to change it - though I haven't gotten demos yet. 

I use mods that change aesthetics. I have my zombies which are basically reskins of vanilla zombies, so no change in difficulty, except that the series still takes place in A21 and I've updated my zombies for V1.0 making them more tanky than A21 zombies.

I use lighting mods to make it darker at night. 

The one mod I use that changes the behavior of the game is Path Smoothing, meaning zombies will run straight towards you instead of pathing on the grid. Faatal has revealed that the grid pathing zombies utilize is for efficiency and not for any gameplay purposes. Does it make it easier? Yes. Zombies don't make sudden unpredictable movements when advancing towards you. I have the zombies set to nightmare speed at night. 

And if I die, that's it. I am gone...never to return again. 

 

[theFlu]

But they're not exactly ditches.

Indeed .. weird they are, but as the biggest advantage they offer is to replace the drawbridge, as the actual one is (was?) busted.. oh well.

 

[avalonnn]

In an early playthrough, I set loot and xp to max, and got every (?perk?). It helped me learn what each of them does.

 

[WarMongerian]

But they're not exactly ditches.  

They are exploitative but it doesn't really matter because they don't work that well anyway. They won't stop zombies from pathing over them enough to be truly effective. They're more of a fun little gimmick. There are more effective ways to exploit zombie behavior. 

I'm in the middle of a video series just like this.

Melee only. No ranged weapons, which includes bows.

Traps are ok except for the ones that shoot projectiles.

I use throwables too, but not very often because I really don't like the throwing mechanics in this game.

My horde base is a tiny ground-level shack. I believe it's 5x5. With 30+ days in and no deaths, I have found no reason to change it - though I haven't gotten demos yet. 

I use mods that change aesthetics. I have my zombies which are basically reskins of vanilla zombies, so no change in difficulty, except that the series still takes place in A21 and I've updated my zombies for V1.0 making them more tanky than A21 zombies.

I use lighting mods to make it darker at night. 

The one mod I use that changes the behavior of the game is Path Smoothing, meaning zombies will run straight towards you instead of pathing on the grid. Faatal has revealed that the grid pathing zombies utilize is for efficiency and not for any gameplay purposes. Does it make it easier? Yes. Zombies don't make sudden unpredictable movements when advancing towards you. I have the zombies set to nightmare speed at night. 

And if I die, that's it. I am gone...never to return again. 

Interesting, can I get a link to your videos?

In an early playthrough, I set loot and xp to max, and got every (?perk?). It helped me learn what each of them does.

Indeed.  I'm sure that, once I have done the level 300 thing a time or too, I'll be up for some more difficult settings, but the zombies in my game will always be the Walking Dead. 

I'm up to day 21, but third Horde Night will have to wait till thursday, as I have things to do today.  I plan to use my phone to set a 6:06 timer, which give me the ability to pause my game, stop the video capture software, restart it, and then continue the game.  This in the past/other games, has allowed me to make videos of just about 1 game hour, so 6 of these allow for a Horde Night to be recorded in 6 videos, which are short enough for me to publish to youTube without too much fuss & trouble.  I will also try to use the videos to grab a screenshot or two.