PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

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I love the new sleeper system, especially now it works.

I hope that in the future the spawning of them is random and that they only spawn in say 50% of houses in a town. This could free up more to spawn outside and / or maybe improve performance.

Not knowing whether there will be sleepers also adds to the immersion of looting.

 
I gotta say tho it really bugged me seeing plastic wrapped full pallets in those houses, basements and attics no less. I'd love to see how that forklift got those in there and if you say they were hand stacked then why plastic wrapped together. That is done so you can move the whole pallet without spilling the load. Just looks silly and out of place in a house, belongs in warehouses and the back stockrooms of the stores.
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Agreed. Also all the furniture stacked in the middle of the room is a bit weird.... Big improvement for gameplay though, will make things a lot funner.

 
Or, randomize loot locations like you do sleepers. Done.
...send the royalty checks via direct deposit.
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This is a fine idea, too, and they need not be mutually exclusive. In fact I see the two as closely related. They're already on the right track now with impostors. Note that already, in Alpha 16, one house will have a suitcase, and the next instance of the same house will have a duffel bag in the same place.

So the functionality should be all or mostly in place. If one possible thing the impostor block could turn into was nothing (air), then they could pepper PoIs with oodles of them, and it would behave much like sleepers in practice. This may already be possible - I haven't had a chance to try it.

This simple concept of a block that can randomly be A or B has a lot of applications: rooms with differing amounts and types of furniture, spike fields with randomly generated paths through them, damaged floors where you don't know which floorboard will give way, hallways that are occasionally obstructed, ladders and staircases with unanticipated breaks that need fixing, and so on.

 
For the impatient ones !!! I hope this video shows you good enough that things are not developing as fast as you expect, but it is damn of a good developing. Keep kickin pimps.

 
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I'm not opposed to so-called 1 block egress, but I'm not following how it's a logical outgrowth of overhauling these buildings. Why would they want to make it literally twice as easy to bypass the intended flow through the space? Sure, this could be compensated for, but it would require strengthening the walls, sealing more holes, and sacrificing their plausibility as regular old houses built out of common two by fours.

Vent shafts would be traversable only if A) it's actually 0.9-block egress; or B) the building can accommodate the whole 3 block by 3 block cross section of the vent shafts without looking ridiculous. I know at least one PoI already has a cool 1 block vent shaft opening, but it's still pretty hard to tuck away that many blocks.

 
I'm not opposed to so-called 1 block egress, but I'm not following how it's a logical outgrowth of overhauling these buildings. Why would they want to make it literally twice as easy to bypass the intended flow through the space? Sure, this could be compensated for, but it would require strengthening the walls, sealing more holes, and sacrificing their plausibility as regular old houses built out of common two by fours.
Vent shafts would be traversable only if A) it's actually 0.9-block egress; or B) the building can accommodate the whole 3 block by 3 block cross section of the vent shafts without looking ridiculous. I know at least one PoI already has a cool 1 block vent shaft opening, but it's still pretty hard to tuck away that many blocks.
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It seems as though these buildings have been designed with 1-block ingress already in mind. There are few places where it would offer an unfair advantage.

Doors are already far stronger than they should be. Quite often, especially with vault doors, it's easier to go through the wall next to the door than attempt to attack the door itself. This could be balanced by making most buildings out of brick as we do in Britain but given that this game is set in the Southern United States it would look a bit out of place.

I like the idea of traversable ventilation shafts and it's certainly not impossible to implement. I doubt we'll ever see it though as it's a lot of work to make block and player mechanics to do it.

 
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Its a shame that noob spiring is gonna utterly wreck this 'dungeon crawl' experience thing. I'd be keen to see more randomness that rewards players for a keen perception, things like a random creaky floorboard bringing attention to a hidden cache, false walls, safes behind paintings etc...

 
The new stuff really looks great. I even became ill, so +1 for immersion :upset: . Okay okay, it was just the camera shaking in the video that did it.

But -5 for immersion for all the "single rail guided tours" through the houses. Eventually a player will see artifical "borders" and limits in any game but usually a game designer should be interested in hiding them as well as possible. All these houses having one way through is shouting "artifical" at everyone going through them almost immediately.

Please put in a lot of forks, most players will try to look into any room and corner anyway and a labyrinth is much more effective in producing fear and confusion. If I have to go one of two ways I will fear some zombie creeping behind me from the other direction.

Whereas a linear path makes sure that I will feel my back is safe. And if it isn't logic will always tell me the game cheats as there is no possible way a zombie could be behind me.

 
I'm not opposed to so-called 1 block egress, but I'm not following how it's a logical outgrowth of overhauling these buildings. Why would they want to make it literally twice as easy to bypass the intended flow through the space? Sure, this could be compensated for, but it would require strengthening the walls, sealing more holes, and sacrificing their plausibility as regular old houses built out of common two by fours.
Vent shafts would be traversable only if A) it's actually 0.9-block egress; or B) the building can accommodate the whole 3 block by 3 block cross section of the vent shafts without looking ridiculous. I know at least one PoI already has a cool 1 block vent shaft opening, but it's still pretty hard to tuck away that many blocks.
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The level designed POIs can all be bypassed easily by chopping through obstacles or nerdpoling up and over. They are implemented for those who want to have a specific kind of experience. Those spots that are designed as platformer areas can be defeated by laying a few frames instead of trying to employ precision jumping. So I don’t think that the fear of level design bypassing is a good reason not to implement 1-block movement. Those who want to bypass will do it and those who want the experience of fighting through the level will do it.

As I said, there are some awesome and scary designs that could be done with crawl spaces in mind and I agree that creating a hollow duct block and giving the player 0.9 movement would be the best way to do it. That way all those exposed duct blocks in attics and on roofs could be entered....

 
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I love the new building blocks being added. Dungeon houses? Meh, same as the skyscrapers, good for one time then you bust thru the quick way ignoring the path and get the good stuff. I gotta say tho it really bugged me seeing plastic wrapped full pallets in those houses, basements and attics no less. I'd love to see how that forklift got those in there and if you say they were hand stacked then why plastic wrapped together. That is done so you can move the whole pallet without spilling the load. Just looks silly and out of place in a house, belongs in warehouses and the back stockrooms of the stores.
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Heheh....Never underestimate the lengths to which Preppers go. My parents are preppers and...they crazy. Putting whole wrapped pallets into their basement is the least of what they do and there is an entire industry right now that...ah...takes advantage of them...

 
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This game doesn't utilize pure leveled loot.
This game has tiered probabilities that simply make the chance for getting better loot better as you level up. A high level character could still get trash and a low level character could still get a treasure but it just isn't very likely.

Regardless of whether the loot probabilities remain tiered or return to static as they once were it won't change the fact that ANYTIME you open a container the contents are rolled in that moment so you will NEVER get away from the idea that two people could open the same container and get different items. That argument is a non sequitur against leveled loot because the loot is not pregenerated for every container in the game anyway.

Static loot probability tables either make the end game very very very boring if you don't want the early game too OP because even when you are high level most of what you are finding is still going to be trash if the probabilities are static for the entire game.

The problem with making tiered difficulty on locations is you need to give some sort of clue as to the difficulty level of an area and once you've done that you have provided the means for players to skip and ignore whole areas of the world because they know those areas have crap loot.

The way it is now you can find a treasure anywhere so you have to search everywhere. As you progress in level and perks the probability that you will find treasures increases so that you still open everything and search everywhere but the ratio of treasure to trash is better so more of what you find is actually useful.

For single player the system we have now works perfectly with the only weird meta being that people will wait to open good containers until they are higher level and have bought the perks. But if that is how they want to play then more power to them and it is a SP game anyway.

MP gaming is where exploity and unfortunate dynamics can occur where the higher level player insists on being the container opener and things like that but then again with the vaunted "difficult areas" approach you would get the same thing where higher level characters would say, "This is my POI. You go loot that campsite over there." So you are never going to get away from stuff like that in MP no matter what system you choose.
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Roland thanks for the insight, I needed that refresher!

One thing I picked up is that areas with more difficulty (Office tower?) have ability to roll better loot. did I get that right?

Also, loot containers - you mention some POI have better loot is that POI = container like a specify box/container type like a gun shop box or workshop box vs. trash on the ground?

on my MP servers, I don't see or notice anyone talking about this being an owned POI. I also do not let anyone build within 150 blocks of major POI.

PS: does the loot re-spawn still reset when a player comes within 15 blocks of a container? my understanding is it does. The scenario is if you loot the container a 30 game day timer starts and if you come within 15 blocks of the container it resets the timer. So players will leave an item like fiber in the container to keep the timer from resetting.

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Which skyscraper? Dishong Tower? Higashi tower?
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Higashi Tower the drug tower has glass cases with zombies.

 
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