Ingame prefab editor discussion

[Firecat]

There are some really helpful posts/tutorials out there on using the game's inbuilt prefab editor (All hail Genosis' concise series of youtube tutorials! You saved me more time, man. Thanks.) But there are still some things that haven't been covered (that I could find) and I was curious about. So I thought I'd start a thread where I (or anyone else) could post questions about the prefab editor and hopefully someone with more experience will know the answer. Or if not, we can all scratch ours heads together asking"now what DOES that do??" (If there is already a thread like this and I just missed it, sorry! Feel free to move/delete this one!I did see the "getting started prefabbing" thread sticky but that seems mostly centered around the player-made 2D prefab creator, not the ingame one, and some of it is out of date).

So to start: most recently I've been testing out sleeper volumes. I went through and figured out what kind of zombies spawn based on what type of group you set the volume to be (some of them are obvious, "group soldier zombie" is a no-brainer for example, others I had to manually test to know for sure). But I couldn't figure out what "boss volume" and "priority volume" in the sleeper volume settings do. I tried setting a volume to boss volume, for instance, and I saw no noticeable difference in the zombies that spawned in it.

Also does anyone know what those "arrow helper", "cross helper", "missing block", and "imposter filler" blocks in the creative menu are? (they are on the first page if you click the "all blocks" filter). A lot of the creative menu blocks are self explanatory (loot helper blocks seem to spawn in a random version of the loot container that may or may not be lootable, for example, and the exclamation mark lets you pick where the quest activation marker for the building shows up. Etc.) but I was at a loss as to what those four do. Anybody know?

Thanks guys! I a relatively new player and I've been having a lot of fun playing with 7 days to die (and the prefab editor since I discovered it) I'm really excited to meet you all.

 

[Andy Red]

Great thread idea!

Following on to these questions, I hope you don't mind me asking a related question too...in regards to the individual sleeper settings for sight and hearing - are these values for block radius or the angle the zombies are facing or something else?

Also, what's up with the fire/burnt zombies? I practically have to sit on their heads to wake them up in a play test, even with sight and hearing levels up high.

 

[Firecat]

Great thread idea!
Following on to these questions, I hope you don't mind me asking a related question too...in regards to the individual sleeper settings for sight and hearing - are these values for block radius or the angle the zombies are facing or something else?

Also, what's up with the fire/burnt zombies? I practically have to sit on their heads to wake them up in a play test, even with sight and hearing levels up high.

I'm not sure what's up with that stuff, Andy! I've been wondering about some of that myself. Hopefully somebody here knows how all that works.

 

[Firecat]

In other news, I was having sleeper volume issues with my first prefab, so I ran some pretty extensive tests and here is how things (seem to) work as far as I could determine.

Group ID: A group ID of 0 is neutral. A newly created sleeper volume has a group ID of 0 by default (unless it is a copy of a volume that had been given a different ID). Volumes with a group ID of 0 not related to one another, and operate individually under the normal rules. Sometimes they seem to get mucked up if they are touching one another, overlapping with other volumes, etc. but I haven't figured out yet anything consistent that makes this nonsense happen.

Volumes with a group ID that is a number greater than 0 (1 or higher) are distinct from volumes with any other number ID or 0, and any other volumes with the same number ID are treated as part of the same volume. Entering the proximity of any of the volumes spawns the zombies in all of the volumes that have the same group ID. This is very handy if you have an awkward shaped area or sleepers on different elevations but you want them all to operate as if they were in the same volume.

Sleeper volume spawning rules: Zombies spawn when you enter an area within 8 blocks HORIZONTALLY of the volume or another volume of the same group ID. Vertically (from above or below) it seems you have to enter the same horizontal plane as a volume (or another volume of the same group ID) before zombies will spawn.

Priority volume setting: As far as I can tell, this is used when one volume is inside of or overlapping another volume. It gives the volume with priority turned on control over any zombies inside of it. If this is not turned on, which zombies belong to which volume in an overlapping area appears to be roughly dependent upon which volume was created first (but not reliably).

Boss volume setting: I STILL don't know what this does.

So, that's everything I've managed to figure out about sleeper volumes (or THINK I've figured out, anyway), I hope its helpful.

 

[Pille]

Also does anyone know what those "arrow helper", "cross helper", "missing block", and "imposter filler" blocks in the creative menu are? (they are on the first page if you click the "all blocks" filter).

No, time for more answers atm but...

"arrow helpers" are used in unfinished POIs to indicate the intended path during the creation process. So they seem to fulfill some kind of comment function.

"missing block" - Sometimes TFP remove blocks from their game. If you load an old prefab into the editor, all blocks that no longer exist will be replaced by "missing blocks". It's a technical helper block.

"imposter filler" - It's a block helping you to optimize the distance mesh of your POIs. If your building has a hole revealing it's interioir, you can tape it up using imposter filler. That will stop the game from including the interior into the distance mesh.

Not sure about "cross helper" and I am too lazy to check where they're used.^^

 

[Firecat]

No, time for more answers atm but...

"arrow helpers" are used in unfinished POIs to indicate the intended path during the creation process. So they seem to fulfill some kind of comment function.

"missing block" - Sometimes TFP remove blocks from their game. If you load an old prefab into the editor, all blocks that no longer exist will be replaced by "missing blocks". It's a technical helper block.

"imposter filler" - It's a block helping you to optimize the distance mesh of your POIs. If your building has a hole revealing it's interioir, you can tape it up using imposter filler. That will stop the game from including the interior into the distance mesh.

Not sure about "cross helper" and I am too lazy to check where they're used.^^

That makes sense! Thanks Pille!

 

[SHODAN]

Good stuff!

How do you lock containers in prefabs? By default containers spawn unlocked and random usual items when playtested..