PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[toores]

There you go. Quests are coming and if you want your prefabs to work with them you'll have to do things with the super cool tools the developers are building for us. That's all I can say.

Nice! This will add tons of gameplay.

 

[meganoth]

... but handcrafted variation can't compete with procedural variation for creating the thousands of hours worth of non-repetitive content that makes this game stand out.

Not in numbers, but in quality, and you still need the handcrafted stuff as input for the procedural variation to get any complexity into the variation.

Procedural variation alone is high in quantity but low on quality. For example it is easy to place a variable number of dogs or lamps in a poi, but that variation is shallow and won't surprise or entertain you after the third visit of the same poi. To make procedural variation interesting you still need to handcraft each variation.

So the only advantage of the procedural variation is the randomness of placement but the effort of creating all these handcrafted variations is still there.

Procedural variation can even be detrimental if non-sensical combinations are selected by the procedural placer. Contrived example: A quest npc and a zombie bear are placed in the same cave and you wonder how the NPC gets out alive each day to scrounge for food.

Just look at games that already tried procedural variation, players usually sense the shallowness of the variation quite fast and complain about it. Examples: Skyrim and Fallout 4 quests (even though Bethesda had the people to produce lots of handcrafted variations to supply the procedural generator, but the skeleton of each handcrafted variation probably stuck out to observant players). Even better and everyone's favourite example: No Man's Sky. I'm not talking about the other serious problems NMS had, a lot of critics also talked about how the random worlds and animals feel just like basically the same few worlds and animals with slighty different colors and textures. (Disclaimer: I haven't played any of these games, but followed the controversies in news and forums).

 

[Roland]

I think in order for it to be fun it has to blend in with the world, like in Red Dead Redemption. Is it cool to find a random note that tells you to do something? Maybe once or twice, but most of the times it isn't. Now, is it fun to walk down a road and come across a griving woman asking for help cause his husband is trapped in a house surrounded by zombies? Hell yeah.
The quest system is one of the things that should make the world feel alive; that should make the player forget he's playing a game. That's very hard to accomplish, but if you nail it you got one hell of a game.

Hmmmmm for this to be the case you would hypothetically need to develop a quest system that could hijack the sleeper volumes and loot of a particular POI so that when triggered, the quest would repopulate the POI to support the quest conditions. Even cooler would be if the devs made these “hijacking” tools available to modders so that community created quests could become as popular as community created prefabs.....

Hypothetically speaking....

 

[Maharin]

Bullfrogs confirmed. =)

Only if they look like this.

 

[Xtrakicking]

Hmmmmm for this to be the case you would hypothetically need to develop a quest system that could hijack the sleeper volumes and loot of a particular POI so that when triggered, the quest would repopulate the POI to support the quest conditions. Even cooler would be if the devs made these “hijacking” tools available to modders so that community created quests could become as popular as community created prefabs.....
Hypothetically speaking....

Either that or just a system that spawns the house with the husband inside and walkers around whenever the lady appears. That is, spawn a completely new POI for the occasion instead of hijacking an existing one.

I like the hijacking idea better, obviously, but an easier solution would be that.

 

[Aldranon]

I think in order for it to be fun it has to blend in with the world, like in Red Dead Redemption. Is it cool to find a random note that tells you to do something? Maybe once or twice, but most of the times it isn't. Now, is it fun to walk down a road and come across a griving woman asking for help cause his husband is trapped in a house surrounded by zombies? Hell yeah.
The quest system is one of the things that should make the world feel alive; that should make the player forget he's playing a game. That's very hard to accomplish, but if you nail it you got one hell of a game.

I was thinking how you would do random quests.

1) Spawning Quest Initiators: NPC's/POI's that if interacted with correctly and possibly some triggers are active (Player rep > 50, Evil Bandits power > 1500, player has specific item or gamestage).

2) Quest story arc modifier: Active triggers, Prior quest results and "game stage" could affect parts or the entire quest!

3) Friend and enemy NPC's: They could like/hate the player so much that a Quest story is created: Enemy kidnaped a friendly ally demands (money, item, ect). Friendly tells of some secret item, money location.

Something like that could make for virtually endless play!

 

[Maharin]

Hmmmmm for this to be the case you would hypothetically need to develop a quest system that could hijack the sleeper volumes and loot of a particular POI so that when triggered, the quest would repopulate the POI to support the quest conditions. Even cooler would be if the devs made these “hijacking” tools available to modders so that community created quests could become as popular as community created prefabs.....
Hypothetically speaking....

If they had a separate subsystem for spawns instead of having them defined with the POI, that could work easily enough. Have the POI's define where spawns could be, not what or when. Then game difficulty could increase the percentage of active spawn points within POI's and the quest system could also weigh in with what and when.

 

[Anabella]

We /literally/ just had an a16 update... not seeing why we're asking for 17 just yet... there's still plenty to do IMO. <shrug>

Yea me either. As far as the streaming 7D2D. I am still doing it and have no plans to stop. I am still getting viewers on it and gain more each time I stream it seems for the most part.

 

[Noctoras]

I would agree, but don't you think the fact that EVERY game now a days is EA means the rules have changed? Much like DLC was NEVER a thing back in the nes days now it is standard. EA is quickly becoming a standard way to fund projects further. It isn't all about bug testing. This game and others prove some bugs aren't even worth fixing right away. The main advantage of releasing today is the early influx of cash to continue the project. It is the new way of going to investors and asking for money.

There is an incentive problem whatsoever and we are at fault.

Look at prominent EA examples like PubG or DayZ (or Ark, Rust and others). An EA game is hyped so you will find 80% of those buying will be early adopters buying right in the first weeks. That's where the cash flow is. Further development down the line will only see comparably little money trickling in and actually further development might even be a loss business.

Of course a team cannot just go after 4 weeks and drop the game and start another EA project, which would be the most economic thing to do. This is due to the reputation loss not allowing that. Had we no reputation system this would be the way to go. Nonetheless unless I use the game to promote future games, incentive for further development is reduced by most of the cash flow already acquired.

Early access is a double edged sword and I personally don't like it. That doesnt matter as I have to accept it for what it is, but it's not the best incentive for a good finish job.

This entire statement does not refer to 7d2d, but to the business of Early Access as such.

 

[Roland]

There is another incentive that does apply to this game:

The owners love what they are doing.

 

[Gazz]

That's the most encouraging thing I've heard in some time. I'm hopefully preaching to the choir (or the architect of the church as the case may be), but handcrafted variation can't compete with procedural variation for creating the thousands of hours worth of non-repetitive content that makes this game stand out.

Very small tidbit that will probably be of interest to modders:

<placeholder name="lootYardHelper">

can now also spawn an air block so there's no guarantee that the loot container X in prefab Y is always there.

Random loot, yes, but not necessarily always in the same place...

Or maybe you have a door that's sometimes there or a door that's sometimes wood and sometimes metal or... I'm sure you'll find uses. =P

 

[Royal Deluxe]

Traps i see in future, bad traps hidden in RNG

 

[Crater Creator]

Very small tidbit that will probably be of interest to modders:
<placeholder name="lootYardHelper">

can now also spawn an air block so there's no guarantee that the loot container X in prefab Y is always there.

Random loot, yes, but not necessarily always in the same place...

Or maybe you have a door that's sometimes there or a door that's sometimes wood and sometimes metal or... I'm sure you'll find uses. =P

Very small maybe, but the potential is tremendous if all PoIs are populated with this in mind. I've been talking about this all year, and you've just made my day. :high5:

 

[Gazz]

Hehe, don't I know it.

Prefab builders will LOVE that.

You could place a "clutter appliance" like a juicer or toaster and it might be some random thing... or nothing.

You could fill all kitchen counter spots with this random block and get a "different kitchen" every time.

And that's only the start.

Like the bread said, a trap that's always there is not very dangerous. You only need to pay attention the first time.

A trap that may show up in every 10th prefab of that kind... when you already "know" that this room is safe?

We'll be having sooooo much fun with this "nothing". =P

It's getting hard to keep track of all the new stuff but we're getting some amazing framework changes in to support diversity and random generation in so many spots.

And none of that is very good for showing off in a video so *shrug*.

 

[Spiral]

any work being done to support more zombies?

The amount of zombies even maxed seems rather low

 

[Aldranon]

Hehe, don't I know it.Prefab builders will LOVE that.

You could place a "clutter appliance" like a juicer or toaster and it might be some random thing... or nothing.

You could fill all kitchen counter spots with this random block and get a "different kitchen" every time.

And that's only the start.

Like the bread said, a trap that's always there is not very dangerous. You only need to pay attention the first time.

A trap that may show up in every 10th prefab of that kind... when you already "know" that this room is safe?

We'll be having sooooo much fun with this "nothing". =P

It's getting hard to keep track of all the new stuff but we're getting some amazing framework changes in to support diversity and random generation in so many spots.

And none of that is very good for showing off in a video so *shrug*.

That is awesome! A complete random, dangerous and interesting place that is never the same. I guess I'll need to do more clean sweeps of areas than just cherry pick the good poi's!

THAT extended the game by 10 more years for me!

 

[Syrex]

back in a video for A16 I believe it was, there was mention that if I made a wood frame (or any frame base) I could right-click or hold "r" key or something and choose the desired shape from a picture menu (kind of like how painting is now). Is this going to become a "thing" or did that idea get dropped?

 

[Roland]

back in a video for A16 I believe it was, there was mention that if I made a wood frame (or any frame base) I could right-click or hold "r" key or something and choose the desired shape from a picture menu (kind of like how painting is now). Is this going to become a "thing" or did that idea get dropped?

It’s not dropped. Madmole is very much for the feature and has personally put work into it even. It just depends on time and resources. I think we will definitely see it but it could just as easily be pushed to the sequel as make it into this game. Hopefully it will make it into this game.

 

[Subquake]

It’s not dropped. Madmole is very much for the feature and has personally put work into it even. It just depends on time and resources. I think we will definitely see it but it could just as easily be pushed to the sequel as make it into this game. Hopefully it will make it into this game.

That feature would clean up inventory and recipe clutter a lot while building stuff.

 

[sillls]

Each has their own qualities. But imho unreal kills unity. Altho I do believe and to my understanding you can't do voxel on unreal engine or have fully destructible worlds and this is where unity exceeds.
So each has their own exceeding qualities and their own downfalls to. Someone whom has more knowledge maybe able to correct me or add to it

Thanks