Roland's Top Ten Ranked: Items that have been added

NiteViper said:
Or if loot rooms were to not get spread around more, at least make them more challenging to get to, maybe booby traps or something.
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Or do it old school style: have a high level Zed you must defeat holding the key to the loot room in their pocket and every block surrounding the room with 50k steel blocks.
 
meganoth said:
A link to that representation by Roland would have been useful, I don't know which of his many posts in this thread you are refering to. Anyway, like me he is not a part of TFP, he is not representing TFP in any way.
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🙂
Unfortunately, the place in the first post that my quota referred to where Roland said:
" Recently, I returned to A16 and the pathing of the zombies was abysmal. They would simply run in circles or endless run up and down ladders and get stuck on corners and blocks. In my opinion the improved AI and pathing that TFP added post A16 has greatly improved the game."
....irretrievably lost.

I replied to this:
"they started running in circles and skipping waypoints after the "AI improvement" began.
You won't see this behavior before the A15 ;)"

....what does it have to do with you or TFP?

...i give up, there's nothing to talk about, it needs to end 🥺
 
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n2n1 said:
🙂
Unfortunately, the place in the first post that my quota referred to where Roland said:
" Recently, I returned to A16 and the pathing of the zombies was abysmal. They would simply run in circles or endless run up and down ladders and get stuck on corners and blocks. In my opinion the improved AI and pathing that TFP added post A16 has greatly improved the game."
....irretrievably lost.

I replied to this:
"they started running in circles and skipping waypoints after the "AI improvement" began.
You won't see this behavior before the A15 ;)"

....what does it have to do with you or TFP?

...i give up, there's nothing to talk about, it needs to end 🥺
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That part you quoted is still there. It’s not irretrievably anything. It’s also true. In alpha 15 and before zombies would just stand below your perch spinning in circles. In Alpha 16 they would endlessly loop around stairways and ladders that led to a one block gap between them and you. They would also suddenly start walking or running in circles while chasing you and many got stuck on terrain never making it to your base on horde night.

A17 was the start of brand new code for pathing and new AI tasks that significantly improved zombie behavior. The first iteration was predictable and exploitable but since that time it has gotten better and better. What we have now is supremely better than what we had in A16 or any alpha before. It’s not perfect but it is objectively better. Zombies can attack in 3d space and not just 2d space. Zombies have variable abilities to see pathways but they all have a much better time navigating the world, They start destroying nearby blocks if there is no path to you instead of spinning in circles doing nothing. They jump gaps. Now they can traverse 1-block openings.

I’ll say it again that the modern AI for zombies is the best it’s ever been and one of the great additions to the game.
 
I agree that more variation on POI design, including less maze-y POIs, would be great. But it is not like all POIs are mazes with one single path leading to the loot at the end, there is already more variety than that in the existing POIs, including some of the massive T5 POIs and smaller POIS that simply are not big enough for it. In short, I see the problem, but it is a small problem to me.

I have also tried not following the laid out path at times, and occasionally ended up not having found all zombies and hence not finished a quest, to great frustration. That frustration has been bigger than the frustration over feeling that I am being led by the hand.
 
Roland said:
I’ll say it again that the modern AI for zombies is the best it’s ever been and one of the great additions to the game.
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🧐 ???

... they dig stairs, bother trees for no reason, go along a closed path (like in a CIRCLE) like ants along prepared routes during a blood moon and fall in designated places, can find an unobvious passage to the player without knowing the plan of the building, one or more of the attacking crowd can just stand and do nothing, run up to the player along the trajectory of a chess knight ....
...and at the same time, on "this" - they spend a lot of processor time, so much so that the number of zombies has to be limited... :unsure:

When "solving problems" and "improve", we need to do it in such a way that there are no new problems, or at least so that there are fewer of them and the benefits exceed the costs.

🥸аhem...
The behavior of zombies was originally more natural and suitable for the essence of zombies. You don't need to come up with complex algorithms for passages for them. They push straight ahead. Yes, you can stand and tease him and the zombie will lick his lips and stretch his hands to you, and he doesn't need to know that three meters away there is a hole in the fence ... These are zombies. Zombies do not make plans. They gnaw through the fence and eat you in a crowd.
 
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Roland said:
Some players take efficiency to an extreme.
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It seems that you did not quite understand me. The very concept of "optimal" is very broad. What is optimal in one case will be absolutely not optimal in another.

I will give a simple example from programming. Let's say we need to fill an array of 10 elements with numbers from 1 to 10. This can be done in two ways.
Method 1.
For i=1 to 10 do Array := i;
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Method 2.
Array[1] := 1;
Array[2] := 2;
Array[3] := 3;
Array[4] := 4;
Array[5] := 5;
Array[6] := 6;
Array[7] := 7;
Array[8] := 8;
Array[9] := 9;
Array[10] := 10;
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Which of these methods is optimal? The correct answer is both. Method 1 is optimal in terms of RAM consumption. Method 2 is optimal in terms of CPU time consumption.

Let's get back to the game. Here, the same concept of "optimal play" will be different for everyone. For one, optimal play is to reach the highest possible level as quickly as possible. For another, it is to get the best equipment as quickly as possible. For a third, it may be the ability to build the safest base possible. And so on. Therefore, I am interested in what a specific player means by "optimal play".
 
Soulmonster said:
I agree that more variation on POI design, including less maze-y POIs, would be great. But it is not like all POIs are mazes with one single path leading to the loot at the end, there is already more variety than that in the existing POIs, including some of the massive T5 POIs and smaller POIS that simply are not big enough for it. In short, I see the problem, but it is a small problem to me.

I have also tried not following the laid out path at times, and occasionally ended up not having found all zombies and hence not finished a quest, to great frustration. That frustration has been bigger than the frustration over feeling that I am being led by the hand.
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So, can we concentrate on that last for a moment? It's the one, actual issue with POIs that needs to be resolved somehow, whether it's a Unity scripting restriction or not. Is not the reason that manual and proximity triggers are scripted to fire? And, if you miss one, the zombies associated with them don't spawn. Simple as that.

If that's the reason and not some "floating error," what other way around it is there but linear paths?
 
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