PC Sleeper volumes, What did they bring?

[-Holo-]

I haven't seen much discussions about just the sleeper system introduced in A16.

Whats the general consensus about them?

This is my take of what they brought to the game.

When I first heard about the feature, I thought it was cool, having some corpses being able to wake up, like that blue guy laying around all the places in A15.

But in A16, every indoors zombie was sleeping and they were hard to wake and stumbled up on their feets awkwardly, allowing to be blunted to death before they could come up many times.

There were decoys that were dead, but generally POI's were still and just cleared out anything visible.

(not mentioning the spawning system that spawned in zombies right behind you, or right infront of you)

in A17 Most of the sleepers seems to be sleeping up in the ceilings and shoved inside closets up to the point it was incredibly predicable and just silly attempts at jumpscares. The system felt a bit better with less zombies visible spawning in.

A18 has pretty same as in A17, but they feel even more deaf and blind. Although here they can hit you while getting up somehow, so not entirely as easy to kill them while standing up. There is also no decoy sleepers anymore ?

All in all, I think the sleepers were hugely detrimental to the game, since there are so few zombies.

walking in the streets, you know there is litterally 0 zombies in the buildings around you, (until you entered one)

so you could make all the noise in the world, and little to none zombie would hear it.

Thats my (and my friends) view's on sleepers.

 

[RipClaw]

The problem is the number of zombies the game can handle at the same time. If you had literally hundreds of zombies on the streets at the same time, the game would become a slide show. Therefore the sleeper system is necessary to save resources.

With the encounter system you should get the impression that there are more zombies on the streets without the system having to manage more zombies.

Personally I think it's good to get some rest outside the POIs. I can't imagine how I can for example build something if I have to fight hordes of zombies all the time. Place a block, kill 10 zombies and then place another block ? That would be annoying.

 

[-Holo-]

The problem is the number of zombies the game can handle at the same time. If you had literally hundreds of zombies on the streets at the same time, the game would become a slide show. Therefore the sleeper system is necessary to save resources.
With the encounter system you should get the impression that there are more zombies on the streets without the system having to manage more zombies.

Personally I think it's good to get some rest outside the POIs. I can't imagine how I can for example build something if I have to fight hordes of zombies all the time. Place a block, kill 10 zombies and then place another block ? That would be annoying.

I think the earlier alphas had the zombies quite right with lots in the city areas (as one would expect most zombies) and fewer roaming the forests and other biomes.

So building was rarely a problem, unless you wanted to settle in the center of a city, then one had to work for it

With the occlusion system and other performance improvements (not the microsplat, lol) I'd think the game should be able to handle more zombies then ever :/

 

[RipClaw]

I think the earlier alphas had the zombies quite right with lots in the city areas (as one would expect most zombies) and fewer roaming the forests and other biomes.So building was rarely a problem, unless you wanted to settle in the center of a city, then one had to work for it

In older Alphas there was a lot of flat land outside the cities. In A18 the land outside the cities is often hilly.

The best you can do is to build on the outskirts of the city or dig a lot.

With the occlusion system and other performance improvements (not the microsplat, lol) I'd think the game should be able to handle more zombies then ever :/

But these performance improvements were used to add for example higher resolution textures.

 

[Ghostlight]

I liked the concept of the sleepers but they were poorly implemented. Predictably hiding in cupboards and roof spaces got old quick. Had there just been more of them scattered about and more likely to wake up and start moving towards the player it could have been great.

They reduced them in A18 which was a big mistake in my opinion as this simply meant even less zombies inside POIs, which were already lacking zombies. Heck the whole game severely lacks zombies to the point of boredom. Check out State of Decay to see it done right.

As I said above the game needs MUCH more sleepers in POIs and they need to be less obvious and start moving towards the player from several rooms away. I love the idea of zombies coming at me from every doorway and stairwell because I made a noise searching a cupboard. Give me a reason to shut inner doors as I loot! As it is POIs are just bland like every other aspect of the game outside horde night has become. No challenge. No zombies.

The problem is the number of zombies the game can handle at the same time. If you had literally hundreds of zombies on the streets at the same time, the game would become a slide show.

That's weird, since A15 and A16 managed tons of zombies in cities with no effort. And for the short time I tried modding in more zombies in A18 (a LOT more with maxAlive set to 64) it ran absolutely fine. So are we all suffering because a few players a running on potatoes?

 

[-Holo-]

I'm gonna test a mod I found yesterday that increases the radius sleepers have around them to have a chance to wake up (only 3m apparently to the mod) and change that up to 150 radius, Have no idea if that means sleepers nextdoors would spawn and have a chance to wake up.

if that will work, then being silent and having silencer might be something to consider again.

If that's how it works, then maybe we can get to shoot zombies in the house nextdoor via windows and openings again! \o/

 

[Viktoriusiii]

There were decoys that were dead, but generally POI's were still and just cleared out anything visible.

(not mentioning the spawning system that spawned in zombies right behind you, or right infront of you)

If I am wrong, please correct me, but I am 99% sure that there never were any decoys.

That was always one of my gripes, that EVERY guy sleeping was a zombie, so they were basicially all just easy to oneshot.

I would have liked that 90% were actually dead and hitting/shooting them was such a loud noise that the others would wake up. But that never was the case. With the introduction of sleepers, the "undead guy 'block'" was removed, there was never any overlap, which was the problem

 

[-Holo-]

If I am wrong, please correct me, but I am 99% sure that there never were any decoys.That was always one of my gripes, that EVERY guy sleeping was a zombie, so they were basicially all just easy to oneshot.

I would have liked that 90% were actually dead and hitting/shooting them was such a loud noise that the others would wake up. But that never was the case. With the introduction of sleepers, the "undead guy 'block'" was removed, there was never any overlap, which was the problem

I'm almost certain there was some sleepers with 1 hp, that was just there as decoy and could not move, but I can be mistaken, played so very little A17 since it had removed too many of the systems I liked from earlier.

And yes. That is what I and my friends also would like, to have one in ten be a real zombie, and maybe one in ten of the closet having a zombie in it.

 

[RipClaw]

That's weird, since A15 and A16 managed tons of zombies in cities with no effort. And for the short time I tried modding in more zombies in A18 (a LOT more with maxAlive set to 64) it ran absolutely fine. So are we all suffering because a few players a running on potatoes?

Compare the texture quality of A15/A16 with the current one. The resources saved by optimizations have already been invested for better graphics.

Even with the optimizations you need a better computer to run A18 than you needed for A15/A16. And that with the few zombies on the streets. In addition, the buildings in A15 were empty. Every zombie was on the streets.

If you only pass a building, you'll be spawning sleepers. You can see that on the console. But most zombies aren't very sensitive to noise, so they don't run into the street when shots are fired. This can be seen in the prefab editor when you look at the zombie spawn points.

And what is a potato for you? I have a Core i5 7500 with 32 GB RAM and a GTX 1060 6GB. This allows me to play most games at high settings. Is that already a potato for you?

 

[-Holo-]

But better textures shouldn't have to come at the expense of lesser zombies :/

(and should only cost Vram, not gpu performance)

And buildings in A15 was not empty. We're playing it on and off right now and zombies indoors hear us fighting on the streets and shredding their way out to join the combat. It's glorious,

Where did the demands for better textures and fluff come from? I can't really recall much complaints about how it looked back at A14/15

 

[Ornias]

I always like the system where I went into a house and outside zombies would start pathing to you. It felt more organic. I knew I only had a minute or so to loot before the house would be surrounded. Now I just get a helmet light and snipe all the sleepers with no worries about outside interference.

 

[Limdood]

this simply meant even less zombies inside POIs, which were already lacking zombies.

A17 had upwards of 40 zombies inside a 3 story, fancy single family home. the tiny little 1 story cabins often had 12 zombies or so. You'd walk into a hallway and look up to see ductwork running along both sides of the hallway up near the ceiling with 7 zombies standing 8 feet in the air on unaccessible vents.

it made no sense.

The sleeper system was and is rather subpar. There is no mystery to it (the decoys were never in the game, every zombie woke up). The game feels dead (all POIs are silent. Nothing moves until the player enters a room or hits a wall. No shuffling zombies wandering the POIs in addition to the sleepers). And they used the sleepers to replace the outdoor zombies in cities and to a lesser extent, towns (In the days of A15 and earlier, the hub city was a risky place to go...once you made noise, you ended up with a steady stream of zombies endlessly heading towards you. Towns had a good dozen or more zombies wandering around outside that had to be cleared if you wanted to safely enter a POI.

The game benefits from sleepers. They were a good addition. But they were a terrible REPLACEMENT.

 

[SylenThunder]

Just some clarification.

1. No there were never any decoys. There is a gore block that looks kinda like a sitting sleeper though.

2. Sleepers have been in the game for FAR longer than since a16. It's been a core component for most of the client versions. The behavior was just different. Changes have largely been made to increase optimization, and to prevent cheezing the game mechanics. I mean back in a14 you could just make some noise in the street and all the zeds in the POI would bash down the walls and get out. Making it stupid easy for you to clear a POI before looting.

3. In a18 the number of sleepers in POIs was reduced so that there could be more zeds outside in the streets. It was reduced by a fairly large number.

 

[Viktoriusiii]

so that there could be more zeds outside in the streets.

 

[SylenThunder]

View attachment 30904

It's still a work in progress. Zeds are costly, and the number active has been reduced since UMA was introduced back in a14.

Did you maybe forget that this is an Alpha game where core gameplay components are still being worked on? The current sleeper system was only just introduced in a17, and the AI was completely re-worked then and again in a18.

 

[Kalen]

Just some clarification.
1. No there were never any decoys. There is a gore block that looks kinda like a sitting sleeper though.

2. Sleepers have been in the game for FAR longer than since a16. It's been a core component for most of the client versions. The behavior was just different. Changes have largely been made to increase optimization, and to prevent cheezing the game mechanics. I mean back in a14 you could just make some noise in the street and all the zeds in the POI would bash down the walls and get out. Making it stupid easy for you to clear a POI before looting.

3. In a18 the number of sleepers in POIs was reduced so that there could be more zeds outside in the streets. It was reduced by a fairly large number.

Hmmm, not sure this is correct.

I dont remember there being sleepers in older alphas.... I remember there were zombies inside houses that would tear up the place because they could sense you outside. They removed zombies from POIs, so as long as you got past the zombies outside you were relatively safe inside (A11ish?). Then they added sleepers to make POIs a little more dangerous.

My memory isn't perfectly clear on this, so I might be mistaken.

Looking at the release notes for A16

Sleeper zombies have a chance to be a decoy meaning they are already dead. We added this so we could remove the old corpse loot block. Note: you have to damage them first before you can loot them.

I sort of remember the decoys.

 

[BobTheBard]

Compare the texture quality of A15/A16 with the current one. The resources saved by optimizations have already been invested for better graphics.

This seems a curious decision to me. I only really noticed the graphical changes while mining because the ore textures are different, but you can bet I noticed the sudden lack of zombies in my zombie game. I think they need to start looking for more optimizations if adding new graphics means the game can't handle zombies outside of horde night, because zombies are sort of the point of a zombie-themed survival game.

 

[Guest]

It's still a work in progress. Zeds are costly, and the number active has been reduced since UMA was introduced back in a14.
Did you maybe forget that this is an Alpha game where core gameplay components are still being worked on? The current sleeper system was only just introduced in a17, and the AI was completely re-worked then and again in a18.

Gold in 2020, right?

I wonder how many of the "alpha" features will make it into the final version after all, since I doubt that every system that's currently a work in progress (food/farming, perks, RWG, animations, combat, spawning) will get finished and optimized in a year.

On topic: I agree with OP. A feature that was supposed to add variability and tension to looting (I don't remember it being touted as an optimization measure at all, but maybe that's just my crappy memory), instead made looting runs a very predictable and arcade-like rinse & repeat experience. Trigger sleeper volume, kill a handful of zombies, loot containers at your leisure, go to the next sleeper volume.

There's barely any tension, stealth is wasted (as a strategy it's completely inferior to just running in and bashing the crap out of the currently active sleeper volume) and zombie-apocalyptic immersion is basically out the window.

That encounter system better be a work of art.

 

[BobTheBard]

There's barely any tension, stealth is wasted (as a strategy it's completely inferior to just running in and bashing the crap out of the currently active sleeper volume) and zombie-apocalyptic immersion is basically out the window.

On the contrary, because sleepers are so predictable stealth is actually overpowered. Once you spec up in it you can one-shot basically any sleeper before they wake up and loot with impunity since you can avoid the ones you don't want to fight and kill the ones who are in the way instantly without waking the rest. This is a favorite tactic of people who play on the highest difficulties.

 

[theFlu]

1. No there were never any decoys. There is a gore block that looks kinda like a sitting sleeper though.

The aforementioned "1 HP inactive sleepers" were a thing, though, or am I just losing my mind here? You'd walk up to them and poke them with a stone axe and they'd die. Not a True Scotsm- err, a Real Decoy, but pretty close in my book..?