I hope the shovel has mods to make it a more effective weapon. Maybe in exchage for upping entity damage it sacrifices block damage depending on mods you put in. for example adding nails or spikes to the shovelhead, would help killing zombies, but really would damper digging with it.
I'd really just (rather than sticking on nails or spikes) prefer to go over to my workbench, hammer it flat, and then shave and reshape it down with a bench grinder (workbench, no need to actually HAVE a grinder or make us use one) into a spear, like an assagai (or however it's spelled. It's a boar spear). With this you can impale and slash. Throw it, and it's heavy enough to carry good impact, but you could also pin zombies to things, like buildings. Trees. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
You already have a decent animation for throwing and for thrusting with the shovel. Those could be modified. The model shouldn't be too hard, or even possibly finding a Unity asset. The real trick would possibly be adding the behaviors and events.
At least this is my thought process for modding a shovel, and making it useful and unique. Also gives the melee boys and girls a new toy to work with. Develop new strategies. New tough choices. (Do I throw the spear and pin that zombie, blocking the door, and then run... or do I step back after and use my pistol to shoot the conga line... Do I do something else? What if I lose the spear, either by missing or say a target breaks the thing trying to get off of it? ... Etc)
Directional audio would also be a blessing, Can often never tell what direction they are coming from as the game seems to lack positional audio.
I don't know why this keeps coming up. They DO have directional/positional audio. It is very noticeable. It's also very noticeable when you don't have your headphones right. Eeeeverything is out of position.
I'm visually challenged. (Tough time seeing some things, but not blind.) I use my hearing a lot to give me an edge. Sound is maaaajorly important to me. I normally play with Logitech G430 headset on. (Great headset for $40.) It has full directional audio support. BUT my latest pair broke last month. So I've been using a pair of my old Sony over-ear, 2 channel (Stereo) headphones to play. I've gotten them on backwards a few times when I was in a hurry (coming back from AFK).. and it
seeeriously screwed up my situational awareness. I was looking in completely the wrong direction, until I flipped them around. And with them positioned correctly, I was back on target for looking, finding, spotting.
Today my NEW G430's came in (replacement set). The difference? Night and day. Positioning became even more precise, as well as I could hear things from farther way. Not even that it was louder necessarily. Bigger drivers on the headphones portion, so probably more energy delivered to the eardrum. So potentially louder, but I had made no volume adjustments between yesterday and today, or even a month ago with my old set. It is simply the difference between using old prescription glasses and a new prescription you can actually see with.
If you're having trouble with directional audio, consider what you're using. Are you on desktop speakers? How many channels does it support? Are they arranged properly so the right and left channels (and others if available) are working properly and arranged properly? Are all of them powered? Do they have good channel separation?
If you're using headphones, make sure you're wearing them right. Test to make sure the channels are functioning properly. Is there good balance? Is there good channel separation?
I *can* say that positional audio for above and below could be a little better, but that's probably more difficult to do. Without surround sound speakers or headphones it is likely more difficult to tell whether above or below. Maybe that's the actual complaint?
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One thing I would love for the Devs to do, and I think would create a better game environment is altering audio based on not just distance but .... like audio occlusion. Basically the way that sound propagates through materials. It's the muffled effect you get through walls... cutting out some sound s like higher pitches, while bass is fine. Etc. - I have no idea if this has been worked on at all for Alpha 17 as there were mentions to changes in the audio (music, but also there are new sounds of course because vehicles).
We use our ears a lot, just as much as our eyes to tell us where things are, and where danger is. Sometimes it is a little difficult to tell if a zombie is in the next room or three rooms over. And of course it's not a deal-breaker. But basically most game sounds are played using volume to approximate distance and channel balance to approximate direction based on input to the listeners ear. They often don't account for things in the way. And rarely reverberation, that I've seen/heard anyway. Some do, like Battlefield, and I think some other shooters. Rainbow Six: Siege I think. Escape from Tarkov a bit. Maybe Arma III these days. But the real one that has put a lot of thought into it is
Interstellar Marines. I'm a Spearhead member (an original backer).
One of the features I helped the devs there with is audio implementation, especially with this kind of problem. And I will say that it makes a huge difference when you're in the middle of a pitched battle, OR going room to room trying to be sneaky, when sound and object interaction comes into play. I've always been an audiophile, but I'm more so now.
I raise the idea, not to copy, but in that it plays an important role to the game experience. It creates better spatial awareness, as well as creates more atmosphere. Sound is life.
The Devs are doing a wonderful job, hands down. I'd love to bounce around ideas to model this in the future if it's not already in play. If it is, I'd love to see and discuss, and test what could be done to tweak it and polish it. I do think this can be aped pretty quickly, depending on what the digital audio workspace and software is like for TFP, but I'm sure there'd have to be a framework built so that the system knows what to do in what environments with the audio pipeline. Maybe there are a few conditions, five or six that alter the sound. (Wood, metal, stone, air, water, underground.)
Though this will have to interact with stealth and detection, so maybe it's just a big PITA.
Anyway, that's enough of my mad ramblings. I've got zombies to kill and buildings to loot. And a bunker to finish.
