PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary
- Thread starter madmole
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Aldranon
New member
^I wish zombies would just go beserk on loop bases..When the AI realizes that it can't reach you and always loops it should start hitting the blocks. Thats what Night of the Dead does and it's a good idea for 7dtd too
THIS is a great idea!
Maybe double the chance of berserk after a game hour passes. Or at midnight, all zombies go straight for the player, destroying all blocks in the way.
Call it "Midnight Madness"
(until 2am),Then, have all the super strong zombies for that level come at the "Witching Hour" (3am-4am). Maybe signal that time with a "Screamers call".
Of course people who really like to cheese things might not like it so much. But I think many would like an increase in challenge.
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Jost Amman
Well-known member
Yes, but as far as I can remember, "destroy mode" was mainly (if not always) activated when the AI pathing couldn't reach you.
I'm talking about the case when they can clearly reach you and you're literally a few paces away.
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Blake_
Captain Obvious
Yeah, but that behaviour makes it easier for the player to engage in 1vs X combat at any other situation . They should immediately wake up from that focused behaviour once the player is 3-5 blocks away. It wouldn't make performace cry at all and right now the "what the hell" situation is that you can lick, tap and caress their heads while they hit the wall and they only start seing you after a very noticeable moment, so forcing a check at 3m distance is neither hard on the system nor bad for gameplay. What if you are 5m away? Benefit of the doubt. But I've never seen a TWD zombie turn away from a human that's nearby and stay that way if not attacked.
Matt115
New member
Well if i good remember sometimes if someone were highter they didn't know what to do and watched surviors. Btw damn i wish to see mod which allow players to make wood blocks doors traps and work stations and zombie can only destroy doors traps and wood traps
dcsobral
New member
Night of the Dead does that? I have never observed it. In fact, aside from jerk infected which intentionally attack base structures, their destruction mode seems pretty similar to 7d2d: if they attack base structures if they take damage that wasn't inflicted by the player.I wish zombies would just go beserk on loop bases..When the AI realizes that it can't reach you and always loops it should start hitting the blocks. Thats what Night of the Dead does and it's a good idea for 7dtd too
dcsobral
New member
Yeah, there are very weird cases when a zombie is coming in your direction -- or pathing to you -- and suddenly reverse direction and go attack some block. There was a striking example of it on Kage848's current playthrough, on the first horde night with demolishers. One of the demolishers walking down the path to him just turned 180 at one point and started going back (link at the bottom).
Zombies doing weird things when the player is within reach isn't uncommon in my experience. On SP in my computer the AI task takes one or two seconds to change, so if they are approaching when I suddenly go past them they won't attack me because their current task does not include attacking. Same things go for block destruction: if they are engaged on it before I make myself "available" for attacks they'll keep at it for a couple of seconds before switching to approach and attack me.
But that weird behavior of just deciding to stop pathing to you with no apparent reason, that I find rather frustrating. In some circumstances I can see them going to a block and attacking it, so I suspect it is all related to destroy mode, but I just can't figure out why they are doing it. It is not a case of not having a path. In kage's case I think the demolisher's path was blocked by the zombie in front of it, but I have seen it happen with zombies that were not in contact with any other zombie.
Spoiler
dcsobral
New member
I'm usually frustrated at people who complain about their cheese bases not working anymore. Like people who want to make an underground base where zombies just won't reach them during horde night -- that one is a pet peeve of mine because on alpha 15, before I knew zombies would not dig, I used pillar 50s on the roof of tunnels so I could defend them.
But you have to be careful about these things because what constitutes "cheesing" depends very much on how you think horde nights should be handled. To people who liked underground bunkers, making underground bunkers was their goal. For them, they weren't cheesing it, they were dealing with it. The same goes for loop bases. Just consider this: if there was a real zombie apocalypse then a loop base would be ideal.
But even leaving these more extreme cases, there are people who think the players should be directly engaging zombies during horde night with weapons and there are others that want to work between horde nights so that their bases will take care of zombies during horde night. One is focusing on the FPS element, the other is focusing on the tower defense strategy element. Making something impossible doesn't necessarily mean the game got better for one group, but it does mean the game got worse for another group.
The bunker builders are right to be upset: there's no point in building underground bunkers anymore. As a tower defense person I happen to enjoy this particular change because it gives me a reason to make underground bases (which, incidentally, I stopped doing since alpha 17 because digging became so much slower).
On my own last YouTube playthrough I made an AFK base. It isn't a loop base, just a base that is very effective in killing zombies without my intervention. During horde nights I use the free fly camera to see what's happening. The challenge comes in designing the base, seeing it fail and figuring out how to fix it, then keeping it repaired and the dart traps ammoed.
Many people might find that bases like that shouldn't be possible at all, that the players must be actively engaged in base defense on horde night, but here's the thing: if a base like this is made impossible, it won't change anything about the way these people play. It will just remove that possibility for me and people who enjoy this sort of thing.
Never ask for a playstyle to be made impossible because you don't want other people to do those things. And when it comes to something like this, where you have "people X might not like it" and "many would like an increase in challenge", one has to consider whether that increase in challenge would have any effect whatsoever for the people who would like it, and I don't think so. I hate loop bases, so I just don't use them. I'd appreciate the increase in challenge but, fact is, it wouldn't change anything for me.
I believe it can happen whenever a zombie takes damage, though maybe it's just fall damage.
Blake_
Captain Obvious
Yes. You are correct that when you hit them or when they receive damage they can snap out of it, but that "deaf and blind" behaviour shouldn't happen in the first place. If the player is very close they should immediatly notice it, not a few seconds later if the stars align. Destroy mode needs to be able to disengage if the player gets close, and not by actively punching the entity.
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JCrook1028
New member
dcsobral
New member
I meant the other way around. When they take damage from an unknown source (that is, not a player) they can go into destruction mode. AFAIK, not guaranteeing it.
As for immediately vs after a few seconds, that may be a matter of performance but it also helps avoiding the case where moving towards one goal makes another goal more attractive and vice verse, in a loop. It may be clear to you that the zombie can go attack you but the AI never knows for sure, and this delay helps prevent gross exploits.Also, they are in rage mode. Enraged people tend to ignore their surroundings except for whatever they are focusing their rage on. Well, ok, not "rage mode" because that's a different thing (though I think any zombie in destruction mode should also be in rage mode), but the idea is that they are bashing things around in a fit of rage.
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Blake_
Captain Obvious
By enchantments I meant "buffs" which really are "enchantments" of a sort in videogames. Unless there was a joke somewhere that passed me by.
SpaceBound
New member
Dear hardworking Developers, How many MFB is left to fix before hitting Experimental release?
littlegreen
New member
It was 32 yesterday and we know there is at least one more dev stream next Wednesday... so November in general, is I would say just as good as a guess as "December" - again, in general
Blake_
Captain Obvious
Do we know that next Wednesday is going to be a Gameplay Stream for sure? Maybe I missed the words at the twitch stream, but I haven't seen the announcement yet, and they usually tell us 24 hours after. Also, the last stream is also already up on Youtube.It was 32 yesterday and we know there is at least one more dev stream next Wednesday... so November in general, is I would say just as good as a guess as "December" - again, in general
Spoiler
Maybe they are just looking for devs to play, or maybe 32 bugs left for 10 people are really getting done in 14 days, so next week should be the Streamer announcement for the following one. Just saying. This time it smells like a20. I believe it's really time for the "spider-meat" meme, wasn't @Laz Man the man for that?
BFT2020
Well-known member
I always try to design my bases so the zombies have a fighting chance to get to me. Not that I give them much of one, but at least it is better than thinking they had a change and not having one
Doomofman
Well-known member
I think all the pipe weapons but the Pipe Pistol have been seen in action in the A20 streams. Don't think I saw the Pipe Pistol and they haven't progressed far enough in those playthroughs to get the Lever Action rifle
Laz Man
Fun Pimps Staff
Yeah no level action rifle yet in the playthrough series yet. I think lathan crafted a pipe pistol tho in the playthrough with joel and rick.
All of the pipe weapons in that list will be released in A20.
khzmusik
Well-known member
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