Gamestage Customization

[CyrusBlaze]

Will try and get straight to the point as I feel this should be fairly easy to understand, and something i think would be fairly 'easy' to implement.

Gamestage currently dictates quite a bit on how the games progression plays out, what zeds you see in POIs, how hard hordes are, and now (for better or worse) what loot you find.

I think that while the Gamestage is a good starting point for how 'progressed' a player is, I think there is room for improvement and customization that can be done with it to allow for a wider group of people to benefit and choose how to play.

So I present the following additions!

Gamestage - Stays essentially the same as it is now, but rather than being then end all be all 'progression' the following will use this core number as their base, allowing for them to be customized by the player

Lootstage

Zombiestage

Hordestage

The above would then used by their perspective systems, this could give players (either via game options or even mods) the option to adjust how these would progress.

Want 'better' loot sooner?  Set your Lootstage to 150%

Want easier non-horde Zombies?  Drop your Zombiestage to 75%

Want stronger hordes? Bump that Hordestage to 175%

Everything else with these would be the same as they are now (assuming each were set to 100%) but rather than use purely the gamestage value, it takes the gamestage and modifies it based off the selected percentage.

Hope that all makes sense, let me know your thoughts or ways this could be adjusted / improved upon.

 

[Blaster_Yoda]

Gamestage is a calculation that controls may aspects of the game, you suggest creating more calculations to the game that would have to be compared every horde/sleeper/day7 spawn which if too many are added/compared would exponentially increase CPU load which isn't terrible at the moment but would have a significant affect on game performance. Not that I dislike the idea just more involved than I think you realize.

I would like to be able to assign multiple mouse/keyboard keys to the same function (yes it can be done with third party tools but I'd rather it just be a feature).  Many games have had alternate key assignments for decades (mostly I just like the ability to move forward and harvest materials with the mouse, combat requires a bit more interaction, so alternate movement keys would be a great start)

Blaster (Thread hijacker since 1995, kidding, it just seems that way).

 

[CyrusBlaze]

Gamestage is a calculation that controls may aspects of the game, you suggest creating more calculations to the game that would have to be compared every horde/sleeper/day7 spawn which if too many are added/compared would exponentially increase CPU load which isn't terrible at the moment but would have a significant affect on game performance. Not that I dislike the idea just more involved than I think you realize.

The impact would likely be quite minimal (if any at all) as all the 'hard' calculation are already currently being done (gamestage itself is actually a pretty simple calculation as is). All this does is add a couple very basic X * y = Z calculation (3 of them with my suggestions). So while yes it will need to calculate those three new variables when the gamestage changes, considering the sheer number of other calculations being done at any given point adding in 3 new (very basic arithmetic) ones would likely equate to a drop in the ocean. (I also imagine the game stage calculation is only updated after a certain amount of time and not constantly recalculating which would further reduce the impact this could possibly have)

As for how involved the coding would be, I feel this would be fairly easy to pull off as many of the potentially impacted systems are referenced in their own ways/sections so it would be a relativity simply matter of renaming the variable they use (currently gamestage) and have the gamestage to 'other stage' calculation called prior to them being processed. Once the key variables are created and passed onto their corresponding sections, the XMLs themselves could very easily be mass modified.

While I haven't seen the core code for this game, and solely based off my experience as a programmer (for what its worth, programming is a large part of my job) splitting one variable into 3 and passing them into the correct procedure/classes/libraries and updating each to the new variable is a pretty simple/straight forward task.

Its all just a matter if enough people and the Pimps think its a good idea or not   (*fingers crossed they see it an love it*)  lol

 

[Blaster_Yoda]

n^n (3^3) is 27 more calculations per CPU flop, (4^4) is 256. Now compare these times 4 and (you do the math "256x256", new CPU's can do it but many older systems would suffer).

The game has already limited calculations to set intervals to allow for better graphics (which are awesome btw).

Not to say it's a "Pimp Dream" but that is the topic of this thread.

Blaster

 

[CyrusBlaze]

As gamestage is currently based on " gameStage = ( playerLevel + daysSurvived ) * difficultyBonus " this likely only updates on a new day, when the player level ups or when the player dies. It is highly unlikely this calculation is running all the time. Once the gamestage does trigger an update, this would update the 3 new variables adding in 3 calculations per gamestage update. These would then stored in their respective variables and referenced when needed by the respective systems.

All the rest of the calculations (such as loot rolls, zombie spawns, horde stuff) are already being done, this would not change them in any way apart from what they use as a starting value (***stage vs gamestage) this would not add any additional complexity or calculations in those systems.

So it would all boil down to how often the gamestage is being calculated / updated as yes, it would add some calculations to it. But as its very unlikely they have the gamestage update running constantly the over all impact / added complexity would be quite minimal.