PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary

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Crater Creator said:
Hmm.  That's actually disappointing, to me.  Bandits that don't care about loot wouldn't be very bandit-like. :(

Perhaps the spawning of bandits could be affected by loot, even if their targeting/pathing isn't.  The game could (infrequently) add up the EconomicValues of the player-placed items in every container in the chunk, and ever so often this value could add to an 'economic activity' map.  When the economic activity reaches a threshold, the game spawns a scouting party of bandits.  In other words, it's a rinse and repeat version of the activity map that generates screamers.

That, and air drops, seem like two targets in which bandits should be dynamically interested.
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Very solid idea! I love it! Make Zombies use heat map, make bandits use both heat map AND economy value!

 
Quillbeatssword said:
Why though? The inability to do that is literally my least favorite immersion breaking part of this game 🙃 "Yeah, Lemme just yehaw into this buildin full er sleepin Zambers"

Uh? Hell no. Slap the wall. Wake them up. Group them. Frag out. Survive. 🙄

At least give us an option toggle to turn that off 🤔

Don't get me wrong. I respect the hell out of the time people put into their POI development. But I can only deal with Zombies nonsensically standing on top of trusses or hiding in closets when they aren't even smart enough to open a door so many times before I want to headbutt my tv.

There's a reason some of us mod the sleepers out or at least minimize the volumes to wake them up quicker. 

I'd rather have an option to turn sleepers off completely and replace them with normal spawning zombies.
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We sorta had that many alphas ago when we didn't have sleeper volume grouping.  Was cool the first couple of times but was very one dimensional and not very performant. 

Chances are very slim at this point that there will be major POI redesigns across the board apart from art updates.

 
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Blake_ said:
@faatal, good day to you sir !  I have a couple of questions :

1- Any news about bandits? Specifically, do you know if they are in and working at some level?

2- What are you working on at the moment? 

3- Can you give us a cool a21 screenshot? It would ignite the hype train and give us something to talk about.

Thanks in advance!
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1 I have done AI, anim controller and weapon work for them, and have them spawning as wandering bandits, but there is a lot more work to be done.

2 General bugs.

3 Fixing bugs does not make for cool screenshots.

 
faatal said:
Yes, since we will want bandits doing some idle movements, but it will probably be confined to their volume or part of the volume. Zombies would just use it too.
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That's actually good. Means they can be in different places each time but you don't have to worry about them all ending up in one room or something if they could move freely. Nice. 🙂

 
bdubyah said:
That's actually good. Means they can be in different places each time but you don't have to worry about them all ending up in one room or something if they could move freely. Nice. 🙂
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just dont make the mistake of having 1 massive volume with them wandering, odds are they would all group together as if looking at one of snowdogs nudy magazines.

would be nice if we could say set behaviors, such as patrol so they wander the volume, like the parking lot or the yard. linked volumes and they wander around it as if patrolling, while others can nap, tinker around a work station, or pretend to be snowdog.

 
faatal said:
1 I have done AI, anim controller and weapon work for them, and have them spawning as wandering bandits, but there is a lot more work to be done.

2 General bugs.

3 Fixing bugs does not make for cool screenshots.
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Does that mean that they are confirmed for a21 as basic "wandering" ones for now? Please do tell. I gather it's a tricky question as their full surrounding behaviour isn't yet finished, but can we get a yes? lol.

I made a poll with my closest friends. And they all answered the same thing with different words: they want to kill something that is fully human and not invulnerable (traders), that has pain feedback. The reason? to watch them die. And hear them. That made me very uncomfortable for two reasons: first is that I probably should think carefully about my choice of partners in the future, and secondly, let's forget about the first one because I kinda totally agree.

 
faatal said:
3 Fixing bugs does not make for cool screenshots.
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Factorio developers found out that this is not true. And their stellar reputation partly comes from them even talking about minute details of their bug fixing with  or without pictures before and after. For example they once made a blog post about them fixing alignments lines in their UI with pictures and forum users were happy to read about that. Another blog post just narrated the search for a very elusive bug.

Naturally the detail they went into resulted in a lot of work for the one doing the blog post, but lets say an explanation of a bug and optionally two pictures of an interesting* bug could be done relatively fast and still keep Blake_ happy 😉

* interesting either in the result, the search method or how hidden he was. Factorio devs even posted the code in question and a lot of forum users were tech-savy enough to get entertainment or knowledge from that.

 
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Quillbeatssword said:
Well. Sort of. Certain mods already make up for that in other ways. Other gameplay mechanics could also.

Instead of houses full of ambush zombies. Sitting and nonsensically waiting for you to enter a certain room even though you just shot off 30 rounds outside the front door

You'd just have houses full of potential zombie spawns. That could and would enter any fighting they hear. Now couple that with increased hearing/sight ranges for zombies. Then things like random wandering hordes.

I'm not saying you couldn't still spawn zombies in closets and on trusses but they wouldn't be completely oblivious to the outside world. So yeah. If you shoot a gun every zombie in any house on the street might come for you.

But if you're moving quietly and happen to get surprised and have to shoot it could get really bad. Really quick. With every zombie on the street now coming while you're corned inside of a house. 

Now Imagine that happening as a random horde of 5-60 zeds are close too. Now Imagine that at night..

There are plenty of ways to keep zombies dangerous and random WITHOUT turning it into a weird dungeon crawler 🙄

But like I said. I do also enjoy the suspense of exploring a new poi. Just not all the time. Sometimes I just wish it was more organic. 

That's why a toggle would be ideal.

Wouldn't be that hard. Just a toggle to replace all sleepers with static zombie spawns. You could even make those spawns have a 100% chance of occurring so then a poi with 14 sleepers would still jave 14 zombies in those 14 spots. They just wouldn't be oblivious. 

Imagine firing a gun in a city and waking that many pois at once. Can you imagine how crazy that could get and fast? 🤔
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I hear ya.  However, it's not as simple as you make it.  I'm sure with enough R&D and time anything is possible.  Even if there was a desire to redesign that system, we just don't have the time anymore.  

Game has to remain performant for up to 8 players minimum.  I know there are a ton of folks out there that have servers who try to accommodate more then that as well.

meganoth said:
Factorio developers found out that this is not true. And their stellar reputation partly comes from them even talking about minute details of their bug fixing with  or without pictures before and after. For example they once made a blog post about them fixing alignments lines in their UI with pictures and forum users were happy to read about that. Another blog post just narrated the search for a very elusive bug.

Naturally the detail they went into resulted in a lot of work for the one doing the blog post, but lets say an explanation of a bug and optionally two pictures of an interesting* bug could be done relatively fast and still keep Blake_ happy 😉

* interesting either in the result, the search method or how hidden he was. Factorio devs even posted the code in question and a lot of forum users were tech-savy enough to get entertainment or knowledge from that.
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Okay, I will take a stab.  There was a recent NRE that would occur when using one of the ingame dev tools within the prefab editor.

I suspect it was caused by a recent commit due to the nature of the NRE mentioned in the unity error log.

I wrote up a ticket and passed it along to our QA lead asap as it was slowing down several teammates work.

Shawn comes to the rescue the very next day and fixes the bug almost immediately.  Rejoice!!!!

programming.jpg

 
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We need a three animated hit combo primary attack to make melee combat acceptable. It's below average as of right now. Your hits don't flow into each other and it makes combat fill unnaturally interrupted. I know exactly what my friend is talking about when he said the combats bad and it's the main reason why he won't play the game. I hope that is on some type of road map. If not I'd highly would consider it. I know this isn't a combat game and to temper expectations for an ambitious game that tries to tackle so much but I know this game could do better with an effort to improve how the core combat works.

 
I know I am strange, but I am eagerly waiting the first time I attempt to throw a grenade through the hole in the door only to have it bounce back at me.  I also know it will be when I am getting swarmed by zombies and desperately trying to get out of that situation  🙂

 
Cr0wst0rm said:
Glad to see some work done there, are you planning to make them behave just like any player would do? (Basebuilding, driving vehicles, etc?) I think that is what most of the players expect, it would be kind of stress feeling you get in rust, only difference that you can stop anytime you can, unlike online...
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I wouldn't expect any of that. From what we've heard the goal is basically "zombies with guns". No shade intended for the devs, any implementation will be welcomed with open arms.

 
Blake_ said:
Does that mean that they are confirmed for a21 as basic "wandering" ones for now? Please do tell. I gather it's a tricky question as their full surrounding behaviour isn't yet finished, but can we get a yes? lol.
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Nothing with bandits is confirmed. They need to reach a certain functionality and quality level before initial release and we are short on time for A21.

 
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