PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[Doombringer101]

One man constructing an underground sky scraper in a few weeks is immersion breaking enough

Being able to carry all the materials to construct said structure in your backpack at the same time even more so lol.

 

[Jackelmyer]

I would expect less radioactivity in Deep Caves.
This moment i am not sure what way is the best. All suggestions and plans i heared, read and how it imagine them are one or more of the Following

* Nightmare for Architects (Playstyle Breaking)

* Immersion Breaking

* Not part of a rock-paper-scissors System

* Hard to code

* Performance consumptive

...

Hold the phone. Hmm?

Which suggestions are you saying apply to which bullet point?

Regarding radio activity in deep caves, if something happened with the planet where the radio activity spikes on blood moon, then it'd make sense. /shrug OMG! 7D2D is the way it is due to global warming! <GASP!>

Caverns, Caves, yeah, can be ugly for Architects. That's why I'm suggesting them as kind of a Rural spawn POI. Not common. Less likely that an architect would run into one. Less challenging to resolve one single Cavern causing an SI issue than a bunch of sprawling caves and tunnels.

Immersion breaking to have Caverns? Don't follow.

I feel very ignorant right now as I don't understand what you're talking about in regards to a Rock Paper Scissor system. Would love more detail on what you're referring to.

Hard to code Cavern's? No. Would be POI placement with a big Y offset. Roughly. Radiation underground, that definitely could be tougher.

Performance? Radiation underground, probably not incredibly performance impacting. But could be I suppose. Just depends on how the "Surface" is defined. That could be tough from a hard to code perspective.

 

[Pille]

Personally, I like the radiation idea much less than I do zombies coming out of the ground. I want to defend my underground base and not be expelled from it by radiation or gas to go fight topside. The idea of the zombies spawning a block or two from air in these small pockets and then digging to air is also much less intrusive on SI than large caverns under ground.

How can food bars destroy your immersion if 'zombies spawning a block or two from air in these small pockets' is okay for you? lol

 

[Roland]

How can food bars destroy your immersion if 'zombies spawning a block or two from air in these small pockets' is okay for you? lol

Don't try to understand me. I share what I like and dislike. I never attempt to be consistent.

Okay serious answer...

I don't like the onscreen icons because the game is much more beautiful to interact with without them. For me, there are enough cues for status that I don't need them. I enjoy less clutter.

I've seen enough zombie movies in which zombies are crawling out of the ground to make what Kinyajuu describes as believable. We won't see them spawn. We'll just see them break through the sides of our tunnels. Maybe as a coder you can't disassociate the coding method that makes it happen from the visual result. I see zombies crawling out of the walls of my tunnels and think "Cool! buried zombies are being affected by the blood moon and being animated" and you see the same but think "Those things didn't exist until just a second ago when the game spawned them there". Right now I can just imagine that zombies from the Indian Burial ground that I had no idea I'd dug through are all mad because of the Red Moon and are going to go all Poltergeist Swimming Pool on me. I'll bet some land development firm simply moved the headstones but left all the bodies behind....

 

[Pille]

Don't try to understand me. I share what I like and dislike. I never attempt to be consistent.

Ahh ok, I thought moderators are like robots - self-consistent, flawless, emotionless and so on...

Edit:

Too late Roland. I am not going to change my comment. Just one short comment, ground != solid rock.

 

[Doombringer101]

Actually I am against all kind of underground challenges because they don't make any sense or they are hard to code (as Royal Deluxe stated).^^

No challenge = boring.

I get that you just want to build and play adult minecraft, there are settings that allow you to do this.

There is no setting that makes the underground challenging and there needs to be, simple as that.

I am all for you being able to turn it off tho so its a win - win.

As to being hard to code, let the Pimp's worry about that, they will make whatever choice suits them.

Immersion pfft, over rated, subjective and ultimately mutable (change the IP as required).

 

[Jackelmyer]

Personally, I like the radiation idea much less than I do zombies coming out of the ground. I want to defend my underground base and not be expelled from it by radiation or gas to go fight topside. The idea of the zombies spawning a block or two from air in these small pockets and then digging to air is also much less intrusive on SI than large caverns under ground.

From my perspective, the reasoning doesn't pair with this. The reason to push players top side for blood moon is to help simplify the game development IMO. Zombies chasing players underground adds way way way too much complexity from a coding and design perspective. Zombies in the caves without an entrance seems worse than Snakes on a Plane. That doesn't make sense or work well for me. If they're going to be popping out of the "earth", 40 blocks under the surface... I don't want it from an immersion perspective alone. That sounds ridiculous.

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of caves and caverns but using them as an argument to protect SI rather than Kinyajuu's originally presented idea is backwards.

Nah. Not even remotely backwards Roland. Cavern's placed as a POI using POI placement rules that mitigate overlap aren't ever changing against the terrain. They don't randomly bring things down. They're points of interest to discover. It dramatically simplifies underground content that has a far smaller impact to the SI system than anything else I've heard. Can it make someones base fall down if built over it? Yep. But did it magically appear AFTER your base was built? No. It's an absolutely fair counter to digging zombies.

The zombies would spawn right next to the existing excavations made by the player and then break into those already existing tunnels and chambers and start hunting the player. It wouldn't significantly add to the underground air pocket footprint that wasn't already created by the players themselves. These airpockets wouldn't even exist until a player was detected underground and then they would generate adjacent to already existing tunnels and chambers.

Caverns would greatly increase the number of underground airpockets causing havok with SI on the surface.

Drama queen. It wouldn't add havok if placed sparsely like rural placements and maybe a max 2 per biome. If you wanted, you could have indicators on the surface that a cavern lay underground.

The problem with zombies underground isn't really about the 1x2 or 2x2 block area they destroy when spawning. Though that could add up. The problem is the dang zombies often wander off with a mind of their own and create huge paths of destruction in their wake. If you put wandering hordes in under ground, they will cause repeated cave in's at a minimum. And that likely will just grow into an ugly pit.

 

[Darkfoxx117]

Well, I think people should be allowed to be safe underground, so they can actually leave their base for weeklong expeditions without coming home to a base wrecked by screamers. That's my main reason for building underground, so I can leave the base for more than 10 minutes to go do the fun stuff, raiding cities.

Alternatively you could just have a forge room underground then you won't get screamers and still be able to build up top it's the best of both worlds.

 

[Pille]

No challenge = boring.I get that you just want to build and play adult minecraft, there are settings that allow you to do this.

No I don't want to play adult minecraft. I want a challenge that makes sense and I don't want challenges at all costs (no matter how silly they are).

 

[Jackelmyer]

Don't try to understand me. I share what I like and dislike. I never attempt to be consistent.


Okay serious answer...

I don't like the onscreen icons because the game is much more beautiful to interact with without them. For me, there are enough cues for status that I don't need them. I enjoy less clutter.

I've seen enough zombie movies in which zombies are crawling out of the ground to make what Kinyajuu describes as believable. Maybe as a coder you can't disassociate the coding method to make it happen from the visual result. I see zombies crawling out of the walls of my tunnels and think "Cool!" and you see the same but think "Those things didn't exist until just a second ago when the game spawned them there". Right now I just think that zombies from the indian burial ground that I had no idea I'd dug through are all mad because of the Red Moon and going to go all Poltergeist Swimming Pool on me.

Ok I agree with you on the cool aspect. I'm trying to keep game mechanics in mind though and the consequences of implementing mechanics like that. In the movies. Awesome. But then again, in the movies, they don't care about the world falling to dust unless it's a cool part of the 2.5 hour story. Movies are great to draw ideas from. Horrible to model after.

- - - Updated - - -

No I don't want to play adult minecraft. I want a challenge that makes sense and I don't want challenges at all costs (no matter how silly they are).

Thank you. Though I do like the hazards of mining Nitrate, Coal, and Shale. Makes sense to me.

 

[Tin]

So if we think about how "filling underground with radiation" would work, that means we may have to see some fixes to the Voxel Map. Right now we still have issues where terrain dug out reappears for a moment and then blinks away. Snap points some how stretch out and seem like they're connecting to blocks that never connected to the voxel/block that has the graphic being stretched. etc. I would assume this is much the same data that would be needed define where radiation underground starts and ends. So it's likely still going to be a challenge.
Though yeah, air quality underground is probably going to be just as challenging as weather. Aaand likely not really worth it.

Disagree. No need for extra complex algorithm or some Volumetric calculation.

They could go the cheap route and use a lot of existing systems already in use.

Use the campfire/forge AOE mechanic already in the game <- works already done on that.

Underground block distribution to place the new block <- works already done

Layer depth placements <- works already done.

On impact property (to activate the effect) <- works already done.

Buff's to apply to lower o2 or cause and explosion or add radiation<- already done.

Probably the one of the things overly time consuming is they would need to add a way to set a probability to randomize it's triggering.

edit: changed word to better explain

 

[spacepiggio]

That's a neat idea.

I like to put Iron Bars in front of my Chests but you can not open them through the bars. You can shoot through them but not open Chests.

I use them underground so you can still access the Chest in the gap of the Stone & IB. It would be nice to be able to open them.

 

[Pille]

Thank you. Though I do like the hazards of mining Nitrate, Coal, and Shale. Makes sense to me.

Mhh what hazards? Collapsing blocks?

 

[Tin]

Don't try to understand me. I share what I like and dislike. I never attempt to be consistent.


Okay serious answer...

I don't like the onscreen icons because the game is much more beautiful to interact with without them. For me, there are enough cues for status that I don't need them. I enjoy less clutter.

I've seen enough zombie movies in which zombies are crawling out of the ground to make what Kinyajuu describes as believable. We won't see them spawn. We'll just see them break through the sides of our tunnels. Maybe as a coder you can't disassociate the coding method that makes it happen from the visual result. I see zombies crawling out of the walls of my tunnels and think "Cool! buried zombies are being affected by the blood moon and being animated" and you see the same but think "Those things didn't exist until just a second ago when the game spawned them there". Right now I can just imagine that zombies from the Indian Burial ground that I had no idea I'd dug through are all mad because of the Red Moon and are going to go all Poltergeist Swimming Pool on me. I'll bet some land development firm simply moved the headstones but left all the bodies behind....

I say go with greed and add everything >.>

Let the chips fall were they may and just pick up the ones that work out the best.

 

[Jackelmyer]

Mhh what hazards? Collapsing blocks?

Tin originally came up with the idea I think, but this was my elaboration.

Oh I kinda like this. On a small chance... Hitting one of these blocks ignites all same types of blocks and block hit.
Nitrate releases gas which rapidly reduces health in a 15-20 block radius. Start taking damage without an O2 tank or something.

Coal releases gas that slowly ticks down Wellness. O2 tank to counter as well.

Shale ignites when hit and has a 5 second time before it blows up. Radius 30. Zero block damage on blast. Run yer ass off.

That seems a bit more valid and immersive at making mining itself more hazardous.

 

[Doombringer101]

No I don't want to play adult minecraft. I want a challenge that makes sense and I don't want challenges at all costs (no matter how silly they are).

The 'makes sense' part is pointless to even mention, the Pimp's can define how the world works to suit whatever they like and it suddenly 'makes sense' within the IP.

The rationale may not suit individual players ideas of what the world should be but that is irrelevant, the Pimp's determine the storyline and therefore define the immersion/reality of their 'world'.

People have issues with immersion on corpses/infected punching through concrete but this is simply the way the world works to make the game more challenging etc.

Underground challenges are simply more of the same.

 

[Jackelmyer]

Disagree. No need for a complex algorithm or some Volumetric calculation. They could go the cheap route and a lot of existing systems already in use.

Use the campfire/forge AOE mechanic already in the game <- works already done on that.

Underground block distribution to place the new block <- works already done

Layer depth placements <- works already done.

On impact property (to activate the effect) <- works already done.

Buff's to apply to lower o2 or cause and explosion or add radiation<- already done.

Probably the one of the things overly time consuming is they would need to add a way to set a probability to randomize it's triggering.

I don't follow you.

CampFire/Forge AOE mechanic - Don't think we can use this for Radiation. We could then end up with a radiation effect from every block near you which would be a huge performance hit I'd guess if done as Campfire/Forge effect. Though if you reversed it, and had the effect kind of work backwards originating at the player to determine if an effect would be triggered, maybe?

Not sure how block distribution works in this.

Layer Depth Placements is a part of the world generation process, a hugely non-performant task. Which is why it's in world gen processes.

On impact properties. What if I just don't move. I don't get a radiation effect?

Buffs? I think the best tie in here is the walk across effect you can apply to asphalt and such. From an activation perspective. Explosions? If we're talking about something like shale exploding, that'd be simpler, like tweaking the drop/turns into functionality I'd imagine or block damage received process.

Sorry, I think you're commenting on a lot of points in several smaller bullet points. <3 I'm lost homie.

 

[Pille]

The 'makes sense' part is pointless to even mention, the Pimp's can define how the world works to suit whatever they like and it suddenly 'makes sense' within the IP.The rationale may not suit individual players ideas of what the world should be but that is irrelevant, the Pimp's determine the storyline and therefore define the immersion/reality of their 'world'.

People have issues with immersion on corpses/infected punching through concrete but this is simply the way the world works to make the game more challenging etc.

Underground challenges are simply more of the same.

'Makes sense' means the game world should be credible and consistent. They cannot simply 'define how the world works' without affecting these two properties.

 

[Jackelmyer]

The 'makes sense' part is pointless to even mention, the Pimp's can define how the world works to suit whatever they like and it suddenly 'makes sense' within the IP.The rationale may not suit individual players ideas of what the world should be but that is irrelevant, the Pimp's determine the storyline and therefore define the immersion/reality of their 'world'.

People have issues with immersion on corpses/infected punching through concrete but this is simply the way the world works to make the game more challenging etc.

Underground challenges are simply more of the same.

I think zombies punching through concrete and underground challenges don't pair well in comparison.

Zombies punching through concrete? Well yeah. We want zombies to get at us but we want to build stuff. So... Zombies punch through concrete. Kind of required. And kind of already committed to from the Kickstart. Zombies were gonna come at you and you'd have a base to defend from but they could go through it.

Underground game play? I don't see much at all except "There will be mining" in the original goals of 7D2D. Underground is both the most free place 7D2D can design and also the more restricted, if simply considering their main goals.

They didn't commit to much in regards to underground play so, yeah, they can do whatever they want.

They built a Structural Integrity system that relies on the underground being stable... Aw nuts!

Rock? Meet Hard Place. Hard Place? Meet Rock.

 

[Doombringer101]

'Makes sense' means the game world should be credible and consistent. They cannot simply 'define how the world works' without affecting these two properties.

Those two properties simply realign with any changes to how the world works, they do not dictate anything.