PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[HIREDGUN]

Heya!

I was wondering about Zed AI pathing?

(1) Can anyone expound a bit on it?

Specifically...

(2) How many blocks can a Zed "see" when determining which block to attack if they cannot reach you on a platform?

if I build a square wall of 20x20 and leave a door open will they walk around the building to find the opening?

Could they do a simple Maze without tearing thru a wall if all air blocks had a path to you?

Can they only "read" direct path visible blocks or are the hidden blocks in the formula?

Basically How smart have you made them?

 

[SittingDuck]

I am genuinely curious.
What is an example of a game where 2 can look in a chest at the same time?

All the games I am playing right now it is one at a time.

conan exile.... also a bette meele system... but bad choise of ranged weapons

 

[Genosis]

I am genuinely curious.
What is an example of a game where 2 can look in a chest at the same time?

All the games I am playing right now it is one at a time.

I noticed you can while playing Minecraft with my wife this weekend. She had a chest open, I came up beside opened it, placed a stack of blocks, her view of the chest updated, she grabbed the stack.

 

[Perlin_Worm]

A dumb question perhaps. How are arrows retrievable if bodies despawn?

 

[SxR]

Not really. Have taking things out of a shared container AND THEN putting the item in your backpack, all one Transaction. Its exactly what databases do best.

Hmm, maybe. I was trying to more-so just not mention more duping complications. ;d

I mean yeah Databases are great at it, but for what 7DTD uses, perhaps not.

As for a game that does allow both, well World of Warcraft Guild Banks are a perfect example. I think even they used to have a duping problem though.

- - - Updated - - -

A dumb question perhaps. How are arrows retrievable if bodies despawn?

Good question. :f You probably have to be quick, or maybe they end up in the lootable backpack?

 

[wolffblood]

For the 2 people looking at one chest. It is bad enough sometimes with just 1 person to move stuff around if you are crafting due to the stuttering every time something is made. Arrows or fast crafted stuff can be down right atrocious. Though it is much better in A17 by what we are being told. So I could see it being possible later, but not a priority for A17 I'd bet. Unless it is one of those "bonus" things they keep talking about, lol.

 

[Zilla]

conan exile.... also a bette meele system... but bad choise of ranged weapons

Another one is Project Zomboid.

 

[The Gronk]

Heya!I was wondering about Zed AI pathing?

(1) Can anyone expound a bit on it?

Specifically...

(2) How many blocks can a Zed "see" when determining which block to attack if they cannot reach you on a platform?

if I build a square wall of 20x20 and leave a door open will they walk around the building to find the opening?

Could they do a simple Maze without tearing thru a wall if all air blocks had a path to you?

Can they only "read" direct path visible blocks or are the hidden blocks in the formula?

Basically How smart have you made them?

1) I can expand on it, I've got a reasonably good understanding of it.

2) It's not really a case of how far a Z can see, it depends on the total movement cost of getting to you.

Essentially every block within a certain area has a point cost to move across it. The lighter the block (including air blocks) the fewer points it costs to move there. There's an exception for doors which cost less than they should to make doors more likely to be attacked. If the total point cost of walking around the maze is less than the total cost of breaking through the wall then they will walk around.

Hidden blocks are calculated as well.

Pretty smart for something whose prefrontal cortex is dribbling out of their nose.

Anyone interested in the new pathfinding system should watch this...

Note: fataal has said that the 7dtd system doesn't calculate diagonals, probably because the zombie would try to path through two blocks diagonally adjacent when it cannot actually walk there.

 

[Hemfive]

I am genuinely curious.
What is an example of a game where 2 can look in a chest at the same time?

All the games I am playing right now it is one at a time.

It is not only about how many players can look into a chest, thing that works perfectly in many games, even in Dark Age of Camelot (a game of 17 years ago).

Usually is not a problem to wait that someone do his (long) job with the ammo chest during a horde night ...

But ... when you try to open a chest already opened by another player and trigger the bug that cause that you can't open any other chest in the map, until you logoff/logon ... then you have a problem.

 

[wolffblood]

It is not only about how many players can look into a chest, thing that works perfectly in many games, even in Dark Age of Camelot (a game of 17 years ago).
Usually is not a problem to wait that someone do his (long) job with the ammo chest during a horde night ...

But ... when you try to open a chest already opened by another player and trigger the bug that cause that you can't open any other chest in the map, until you logoff/logon ... then you have a problem.

I never have got that bug, didn't even know about it, lol. But I'd still figure it has something to do with how their system currently runs. Being voxel based and those other games aren't. I'd figure it takes a lot more resources and would possibly slow something down. I don't know fully, and would be glad to be told I'm wrong by a dev, hehe.

 

[Death2gnomes]

Have you been keeping up with the statements by the devs?
It's not a design choice, it's a matter of priorities. Far more enemies use two block gaps than one, two block gaps are also harder to implement. It makes sense to do two block AI first then one, otherwise the only enemies you'd have would be dogs and crawlers.

god knows how many prior alphas that its been part of the discussion. what youre saying is this is a non-proirity thing since before a10? yea its a choice.

 

[Death2gnomes]

Yes we do. A game engine consists of a lot of layers. In any big game project that uses a 3rd party engine, you almost always build a bunch of systems on top of that, which becomes your own engine. Just like Unity's own 3d physics system is build on top of nVidia's Physx code. All an engine really is, is the sum total of all systems that the devs consider generic and could be used on another game. Half our code falls into that category.

I like how you explained this!

 

[Death2gnomes]

A Question from a Prefabber. When building a Library with a lot of Bookshelfes, and you don´t want the Player look in every Bookshelf if it is lootable or have only Faketextures. Have you made an empty Bookshelf, so that you don´t have to use the Bookshelftexture, and you can see if it is empty ?

you can paint a block with the bookshelf image.

 

[Cazmyr]

you can paint a block with the bookshelf image.

I am not 100% sure, but I think they were asking about the ....what were they called.......hint blocks? (Something like that)

The ones they display differently to tell you they are empty. A cabinet with the doors open was one, I believe.

I think they are asking if there is one of those for the bookshelf.

 

[The Gronk]

god knows how many prior alphas that its been part of the discussion. what youre saying is this is a non-proirity thing since before a10? yea its a choice.

That's not what I'm saying at all.

Although changing the AI has been discussed for a long time it's only now that it's being implemented. Implementing a new system is best done in stages, we are currently at stage one as far as actually implementing the new AI goes. Once the base code is done and debugged you can then look to expanding upon it. Expect one-block ingress for zombies in stage two and spider zombies for stage three or four.

Prioritized stages instead of intentionally limited design choice.

 

[TopMinder]

I am not 100% sure, but I think they were asking about the ....what were they called.......hint blocks? (Something like that)
The ones they display differently to tell you they are empty. A cabinet with the doors open was one, I believe.

I think they are asking if there is one of those for the bookshelf.

100% my question

 

[rdunham3]

I noticed you can while playing Minecraft with my wife this weekend. She had a chest open, I came up beside opened it, placed a stack of blocks, her view of the chest updated, she grabbed the stack.

It requires having the container system built for multiple concurrent access from the ground up. 7DtD's wasn't. Maybe they'll revisit that and write robust new code, maybe they won't. Definitely not for a17 or they would have been very loudly crowing about it because it's a known irritant for some people.

 

[meganoth]

I never have got that bug, didn't even know about it, lol. But I'd still figure it has something to do with how their system currently runs. Being voxel based and those other games aren't. I'd figure it takes a lot more resources and would possibly slow something down. I don't know fully, and would be glad to be told I'm wrong by a dev, hehe.

Obviously not a dev, but I'm pretty sure voxel has nothing to do with it.

Possible culprit could be a "used" flag for the containers that isn't cleared because of lost network packages or the used-flag clearance command getting processed before the used-flag setting command.

 

[Survager]

Optimization offer!!!

Madmole, Gazz, Prime, Faatal, a lot of problems with hangs (low fps) in 16 Alpha occur when we are in inventory, forge, chemical. station or concrete mixer. This is due to the automatic sorting of recipes when the available amount of resources for the design of items changes.

Maybe in Alpha 17, you need to disable automatic sorting of recipes and add several sorting options: available for creation, alphabetically, and more?

 

[DividingByZero]

god knows how many prior alphas that its been part of the discussion. what youre saying is this is a non-proirity thing since before a10? yea its a choice.

Arm chair developers are the best... :jaded:

Anyways, it would be really inefficient if they attempted to 100% overhaul the AI system before the world mechanics were completed. That isn't to say they can't fix or develop smaller parts of the AI as they go (and they have been), but wide spread changes to the AI aren't a good route to go, yet. As the game changes in large ways, the AI system would need to follow that and could result in much redevelopment each iteration. As it stands, they seem to have a basic AI system that can adapt mostly (just because it isn't ultra complicated) to the changes of the game.

Side note: Did you hear about the guy who lost the left side of his body? He's alright now.

Also... Kraken!