PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[bayaholic]

Can we mine the granite? I would love granite countertops in my kitchen to match my campfire and forge. My gold plated sink too.

 

[Pille]

Start at the edge of the map, and cast a ray inward toward the player (like sticking a pin in a pincushion). Where the ray hits a player placed block, the digger zombie can spawn no closer than that. It could be a single block the zombie could easily go around, but our goal is optimization, not perfection. Then you can do any other checks necessary, like pushing the zombie spawn back just beyond the player's hearing radius.

I am not sure that I can follow you. What about air blocks? What happens if the ray hits an air block?

 

[graphite]

I am not sure that I can follow you. What about air blocks? What happens if the ray hits an air block?

Air blocks can have opacity to casted rays

 

[meganoth]

That is why I think that granite should not transfer sideways SI and not get sideways SI (i.e. granite would always fall if nothing is below it), so a staircase design is not possible. EDIT: Correction, it is possible, but you need to put stone or concrete ledges under and between the granite.

We already have a situation that a small pillar can hold any massive building if just the sideways SI is enough to hold all the horizontal blocks (if I understand SI correctly):

    ...
xcccccc
MASSIVE
xcccccc
c
c
c

with this it doesn't matter how much weight is above, you just have to check that the blocks supported by the pillar below (for example the blocks denoted as x) can hold the blocks sideways from it. Since the block x gives full "strength" sideways no matter how stable the pillar below is, this at least is already possible, just that the pillar has to be underneath.

 

[stallionsden]

This digging zombie idea seems floored before it is given any chance sorry. But i myself don't want tunnels everywhere cause of a digging zombie. Defending against such digging as won't be an issue as 2 steps take place. TFP always puts in counter actions to be able to defend.

2. Gamers will again always be able to find ways to defend from such diggging as.

All your left with is holes every where.

As for the terrain being replaced by a digging z lol that is absurd to say the least because that be like it is magical. And if I am in my base and magically appears a digging z that be as bad as teleporting as everyone was complaining about. And then there is no sign of how it got there cause the holes been covered you then need to refer to the above and repeat in a loop.

 

[sinda]

Only the parts are supposed to become useful and interesting instead of every pistol receiver being the same as every other pistol receiver... with one number changed.

can't wait!!!

 

[stallionsden]

Perlin caves shouldn't be a problem. Just give us a surveyors camera thing lol. If your gonna build a base or lol or prefab you need to survelleince the area you intend to build to check for so weaknesses caves etc. No need for this foundation stuff.

 

[Jackelmyer]

That is why I think that granite should not transfer sideways SI and not get sideways SI (i.e. granite would always fall if nothing is below it), so a staircase design is not possible.

If granite falls if there's nothing below it, the purpose of granite is defeated at least how I envision granite.

The point of granite is to ensure air blocks in naturally made caves, caverns, tunnels, or around terrain that zombies dig through, have some form of SI reset above the air pocket.

If granite falls with nothing under it, it wouldn't ever be able to form a ceiling.

I don't like a big world granite slab. Where at -20 height, there's some granite layer a few blocks thick. You just narrow SI problems that way.

But that image of a base on top of granite wouldn't work if Granite had the SI of Stone. The shelf of granite would have collapsed itself.

 

[Jackelmyer]

Perlin caves shouldn't be a problem. Just give us a surveyors camera thing lol. If your gonna build a base or lol or prefab you need to survelleince the area you intend to build to check for so weaknesses caves etc. No need for this foundation stuff.

That could work. Tedious as hell. I'd rather a world game mechanic handle it.

 

[Roland]

Perlin caves shouldn't be a problem. Just give us a surveyors camera thing lol. If your gonna build a base or lol or prefab you need to survelleince the area you intend to build to check for so weaknesses caves etc. No need for this foundation stuff.

Just disable it on PvP servers I suppose?

 

[meganoth]

If granite falls if there's nothing below it, the purpose of granite is defeated at least how I envision granite.
The point of granite is to ensure air blocks naturally made, caves, caverns, tunnels, or around terrain that zombies dig through, have some form of SI reset above the air pocket.

If granite falls with nothing under it, it wouldn't ever be able to form a ceiling.

Think of a cave with a normal ceiling of stone. Above that ceiling of stone, maybe directly or any number of layers above is the granite layer. Works.

But anyway, since I wrote that, I had to edit my post because giving granite no sideways stability doesn't prevent a staircase design, it just makes it slightly bigger. So yes, giving it the SI of stone should work as well. It would make 7day statics a bit more out there than it is already.

 

[Jackelmyer]

Think of a cave with a normal ceiling of stone. Above that ceiling of stone, maybe directly or any number of layers above is the granite layer. Works.

I suppose you could wrap the cave in stone then wrap it in granite. But that just seems to complicate things that aren't that complicated imo. Granite with normal behaving SI side faces doesn't allow for bases built on a shelf like that.

 

[Roland]

Well that's the thing... It may end up increasing load instead of alleviating it. (But still potentially allowing caverns under buildings, as Roland suggested).It ultimately comes down to the way it's coded I guess...

Well, I was using dirt as an example... How about this:

2 wood frames out over a cliff.

1 foundation block.

200 reinforced concrete blocks stacked high.

Now I know it's not a "safe" building. But still weird .

It's not that I don't appreciate the approach...

It's much better than the: if "x" blocks down from the user placed block exist, then SI all good.

Your way is better, but it still has some holes...

I believe SI calculations happens nearly all the time, and massively too... So I wonder if the game just demands to much raw CPU?

So when it's released, maybe it'll be more optimized... And our PC's will be upgraded...

So maybe then?

I see what you are saying and my only thought is how good of an exploit is that really? Lets say that a large enough area could be attached to the side of a cliff to be useful as a safe base. There is still the weak point of contact that only takes a few hits and the whole thing comes down. People build stilt bases now that sometime in the future will be quite risky to rely upon.

 

[meganoth]

I suppose you could wrap the cave in stone then wrap it in granite. But that just seems to complicate things that aren't that complicated imo.

You don't need to wrap. There is no use case for Granite below or at the side of a cave. But you are right, it just complicates things

Granite with normal behaving SI side faces doesn't allow for bases built on a shelf like that.

Why not? The step design allows for arbitrary long sideways building. i,e,:

     gg
    gg
   gg
  gg
 gg
gg
gg
g

would work because whenever you go from granite block to block above, SI resets and the granite to the side obviously has no problem to attach.

If you wanted to say that the ledge on top of the "leaning" pillar can only stretch for a limited horizontal length, that is correct though

 

[Jackelmyer]

I believe SI calculations happens nearly all the time, and massively too... So I wonder if the game just demands to much raw CPU?

I believe SI is only calculated after the world has been generated and only if a change to a block occurs.

Change being: damaged, block upgraded, new block connected, SI being checked of a neighboring block (i.e. near by SI has changed in reach of current block), entity moves over block invoking SI check + entity weight.

I just realized that we have a basic mechanic for all this.

Trap blocks. Simply need to reverse their behavior to fit almost all of these ideas. With a few behaviors tweaked.

 

[Clockwork Orange]

The problem with SI above bedrock is that you can hollow out anything below base SI and it will be floating

 

[Jackelmyer]

The problem with SI above bedrock is that you can hollow out anything below base SI and it will be floating

The current floated designs on most of what's being discussed already countered that.

 

[Crater Creator]

Problem is what happens if player leaves the underground once [a zombie that digs down from the surface] has been triggered.

Fair question. Perhaps the digger zombies can also be climber zombies, and could climb out of the hole if the player returns to the surface. Or they could fully commit to their task once started, and not stop digging down until they're finished (remember, other zombies aren't diggers). The other zombies could ignore the hole in progress until it went all the way through. Or we could re-examine whether a diagonal shaft is really more Swiss-cheesy than a vertical shaft.

Tougher is fine. Being an unknowing victim to a system design is generally a rather frustrating situation.
Not knowing Zombies are destroying the ground under your base has no means for defense.

It's like if they implemented a random lightning strike that insta kills you.

Except it can insta kill your base in effect.

I think most or all of the proposals start the zombies at or above your level, so they'd only dig under your base if you're under your base. Besides, don't you mole players like to dig down to bedrock anyway?

Avoiding gravel in spawning i can see viable and pathing round it is also possible but we would use that surely to funnel zombies and could be expensive resource wise for only the gain of preventing one type of cave in.

This would be another reason to skip the process of the dig-and-backfill zombie literally digging its way towards you, and just spawn it up against your wall, where it conceptually would have ended up given time and good pathing algorithms etc.

Take a reinforced concrete block, call it a foundation block...
Benefits:

3) Players could create underground lairs and tunnels without messing up or worrying about what they did above ground.

This point shouldn't be oversold, however. If you dig out too much under the foundation block, it will still collapse like anything else. Then whatever's above it stops receiving the benefit, and is vulnerable to collapse itself. It's not as though you can dig under the foundation carefree with no risk to what's above.

 

[Darkfoxx117]

It's not as though you can dig under the foundation carefree with no risk to what's above.

I believe the way people are explaining it is yes you can dig care free under your base with the foundation blocks as long as you don't undermine the dirt blocks directly underneath and to the sides (the ones touching the foundation blocks).

So you could in theory go 2 dirt blocks lower than the foundation and excavate a football field size cavern if you wish.

 

[Crater Creator]

That wouldn't work. The granite has Stone SI itself. Which I think would cause the platform of granite to collapse before you could build that structure. Which is why I like this granite idea so much.
Granite top resets SI.

Otherwise... It's stone.

And in my version of granite, zombies can still bash granite to bits. So that base likely wouldn't stay up for long. The granite would eventually collapse with zombies banging on the little support below.

And who does that? lol. Dig such a huge pit and not just build from the ground all the way up? Looking at it a few more times made me giggle.

Okay, you're technically correct. How about this then? The SI of stone is 7 by the way.

If you think this will collapse, please tell me which block, specifically, won't work.

To be clear, I'm not saying you can build a stilt base with granite, since you can already do that. But I am saying you can build even bigger, heavier, less supported stilt bases than you already could. It's not necessarily a deal breaker, but it's something to consider, especially since zombies will not bang on the support right now, and we don't know what the solution to stilt bases will be or what assumptions the design may be predicated on to work.