PC Advanced options are needed.

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Slingblade2040

Active member
title says it all. the way this game is going and how it seems each alpha things are dumbed down and the game itself is made easier and easier I think its way past time for them to make an advanced options screen. 

the advanced options should let us set wandering horde size, amount of zombies alive in the world, spawn rate of zombies in the cities, spawn rate of animals, how often traders and vending machines restock, the times traders are open, how much damage zombies can do the player and a few other things maybe even plant growth rates.

I know some mods allow this but at this point its ridiculous to expect us to download and install mods for some simple stuff that should be in the game already.  this isn't asking for a major overhaul just another options screen for further customization of game play without the need for mods.  

 
What you are asking for is more complicated than you think, considering the game is still changing.  Everything they add as options during alpha needs to be tested and and made to work with each new alpha release.  That's not trivial and is a waste of developer time right now.

If you want all those options before beta at least (or likely later) then you will have to work with mods.  Sure, they will add some things as they get closer to beta but don't expect too much until then.

 
Slingblade2040 said:
it seems each alpha things are dumbed down and the game itself is made easier and easier
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I have no argument against TFP adding whatever dials, knobs, and sliders they want to the advanced options. More the merrier. But I'd like you to consider the possibility that, with each passing alpha, your skill might be increasing. The game is not being "dumbed down", you are being "smarted up". Possibly.

 
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To be fair, I started with a20 and recently tried a16.4 to see what all the fuss was about and it does seem like the game has been dumbed down a fair bit.

I am comfortable enough with the xml files at this point to fix things like spawn rate and number of zombies alive (same line of code actually) though and think it's worth everybody's while to spend a half hour learning how they all work to fix a lot of the simple stuff. And I'm interested to see where the game is headed since it seems like there's a lot that is being and will be overhauled.

 
Slingblade2040 said:
title says it all. the way this game is going and how it seems each alpha things are dumbed down and the game itself is made easier and easier I think its way past time for them to make an advanced options screen. 

the advanced options should let us set wandering horde size, amount of zombies alive in the world, spawn rate of zombies in the cities, spawn rate of animals, how often traders and vending machines restock, the times traders are open, how much damage zombies can do the player and a few other things maybe even plant growth rates.

I know some mods allow this but at this point its ridiculous to expect us to download and install mods for some simple stuff that should be in the game already.  this isn't asking for a major overhaul just another options screen for further customization of game play without the need for mods.  
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You can make all those changes easily by editing the gamestages.xml. I currently have wandering horde set at 30 and doubled the number of wandering zombies, no mods at all. It didn't take long to do, you just have to be sure to make a copy of your edited xmls since they will be overwritten with each update.

 
With a few extra minutes of work you can make your changes into a modlet that will persist across versions. It'll save you trouble in the long run plus it's shareable that way.

 
I “think” you can edit the xml’s to remove vultures altogether except when they are part of a poi.

 
I've never tried but can't you remove vultures from PoIs as well if you remove them from any groups they're part of in entitygroups.xml?  Or if that fails, set their groups in gamestages.xml to have an emptyChance of 1?

 
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I think you might want to change what spawns in place of a vulture instead.  if you do that, I think the POIs will spawn that entity rather than the vulture.

 
Maharin said:
What you are asking for is more complicated than you think, considering the game is still changing.  Everything they add as options during alpha needs to be tested and and made to work with each new alpha release.  That's not trivial and is a waste of developer time right now.

If you want all those options before beta at least (or likely later) then you will have to work with mods.  Sure, they will add some things as they get closer to beta but don't expect too much until then.
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I don't see how adding a slider that changes settings is that difficult or any different than what is already done by modders.  Hell they already have those options for the blood moon days, how often air drops happen or zombie speed so it's not like this is a massive over haul to gameplay.  It's just for example adding a tab saying how big do you want your wandering hordes or how much damage do you want zombies doing.

To the rest who suggested editing xml files or adding mods yes. I know that is possible and while it's easy for some of us to change the files or add mods with the mod launcher alot of people would find that difficult or just don't  like adding mods for some reason.

Having those extra settings isn't game breaking or asking them to add a brand new gameplay dynamic or a overhaul to how the game works. 

 
Maharin was overstating the difficulty involved but the idea is that any option they add has to have its functionality maintained with each update, so if they overhaul the way one function works then every option needs to be reworked to match the new code and then tested to make sure it still works in the same way. It's not the biggest deal but it's not nothing.

I agree that more customizability within the game would be great but I did come to the conclusion after a while that the game will just never be quite what I want without mods. The devs have different ideas than I do about how the game should play and so modding is pretty much a necessity.

They've already opened up a lot of options for tweaking via exposed xml files and support for modlets to patch them in (as well as more in-depth mods), and given their support for modding I wouldn't be surprised if they add some sort of mod search interface into the later versions of the game.

 
Slingblade2040 said:
I don't see how adding a slider that changes settings is that difficult or any different than what is already done by modders.
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He didn't say difficult. He said complicated. Those are two very different things. They could add all the sliders and options they want to the game, but until the game is finished (in terms of mechanics and balance) there is little sense in introducing advanced options like that for everything since it simply adds more they'll have to manage, curate and test with every single update. Their time and resources are better spent elsewhere.

I would love to have more advanced options in the game as well, but I don't think it's an issue since the game is in early access.

 
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