PC Stealth Builds. How are you guys doing?

[zztong]

A thought occured to me while perched for the night upon my water tower.

Can all the minscript be XML'd out? Or do you have to go into some PoI design mode?

I won't be able to look until tonight, but I don't recall minscripts being in the POI XML.

 

[Kazgrel]

That first sentence doesn't really mean anything to me as it is stated. While I was a software engineer in a previous career, I've never written code for Unity, so maybe the sentence would be clearer if I had.

What I do know many of those triggers are relatively new in the life of 7d2d POIs. That is, you started to get them in 1.0. The minscript feature is pretty new too, and I think that's probably the work of TFP developers, not Unity. That's speculation on my part based on my POI/Mod experiences dating from A19. I'm not privy to TFP's engineering decisions so I have to guess as my only method for filling in the gaps.

That is to say, we've had trigger volumes for quite a while, but we've not had key racks, buttons and minscripts that let them do things like make a volume spawn waves from the same sleeper placements, make cool sounds play, make things explode, etc. When minscripts came about we started to see much heavier use of these advanced tricks and TFP's existing POIs got refits, as they tend to get a little attention with each version.

I realize it might seem weird to characterize a feature that arrived a couple of years ago as new, but I don't recall triggers having a huge role in A19, A20, A21, and I saw 1.0 as when they started to ramp up. Though time and my memory can make things cloudy, so maybe I'm just not remembering things correctly.

Having played stealth a lot from A18 up to 1.0, your experience with the triggers matches mine. Couple the increasing presence of such triggers with a bunch of buddies running around guns blazing and it's tough to get good value out of stealth mid-late game. I've gone back to my strength/fort roots as of 2.0 and found it much more enjoyable, though it pains me when I see us making a stockpile of explosive arrows/bolts and no one's specced for archery...

 

[zztong]

Can all the minscript be XML'd out? Or do you have to go into some PoI design mode?

I was mistaken. Minscripts are in the XML. These are from base_military_01.xml ...

<property name="SVS47" value="spawn GroupZomSoldier 5^waitalive 2^spawn GroupZomSoldier 5"/>
<property name="SVS40" value="spawn GroupZomSoldier 5^waitalive 2^spawn GroupZomBadass 5"/>
<property name="SVS39" value="spawn GroupZomSoldier 5^waitalive 2^spawn GroupZomBadass 5"/>
<property name="SVS38" value="spawn GroupZomSoldier 5^waitalive 2^spawn GroupZomBadass 5^trigger 5^"/>
<property name="SVS33" value="spawn ZomJanitorOnly 1^sleep 1^spawn ZomJanitorOnly 1^sleep 1^spawn ZomJanitorOnly 1"/>
<property name="SVS31" value="spawn GroupGenericZombie 5^waitalive 2^spawn GroupGenericZombie 5"/>
<property name="SVS29" value="spawn GroupZomSoldier 5^waitalive 2^spawn GroupZomSoldier 5"/>
<property name="SVS28" value="spawn GroupZomSoldier 5^waitalive 2^spawn GroupZomSoldier 5"/>
<property name="SVS27" value="spawn GroupZomSoldier 10^waitalive 4^spawn GroupZomSoldier 10"/>

I'd point out a few things. First, not all minscripts spawn zombies. For instance this one from quarry_02.xml ...

<property name="SVS65" value="sound explosion_buzzer1^sleep 1.5^sound explosion_buzzer1^sleep 1.5^sound explosion_buzzer1"/>

Second, POI XML files could not be affected by the 7d2d XPath system. This means if you want to hunt down and eliminate all of those zombie spawning scripts you would have to write a program and then run it on all the Vanilla POIs and any POIs in modlets or LocalPrefabs.

I suppose what you could do is write such a program, run it on all the Vanilla POIs, put all of those POIs into a modlet, and then they would get used instead of the unmodified Vanilla POIs because POIs in modlet get preference for loading when there are two POIs with the same name ... at least the last I tried it.

 

[Rotor]

My inquiry was related to removing "gotcha" respawn, or teleporting zombies.

Interesting! Might be mostly doable. If it breaks quests, so be it, I don't quest anyways. Thanks, maybe some day.

 

[zztong]

My inquiry was related to removing "gotcha" respawn, or teleporting zombies.

Interesting! Might be mostly doable. If it breaks quests, so be it, I don't quest anyways. Thanks, maybe some day.

Since I think TFP controls the implementation of the minscript feature as well as the miscripts themselves, and since they have a new interest in giving players options, they could put an option into the game "No Zombies Waves" and then add a command (or commands) to the minscript feature that was sensitive to that setting. Then the POI designers could code with that option in mind.

A minscript might go from:

spawn GroupZomSoldier 5
waitalive 2
spawn GroupZomSoldier 5

to:

spawn GroupZomSoldier 5
waitalive 2
spawnifwavesallowed GroupZomSoldier 5

As for it if breaks quests... I could see where if you eliminated a minscript entirely how something else might count on it. So, instead of wiping out the minscripts, replace it with a minscript that just makes a sound.

 

[Rotor]

Since I think TFP controls the implementation of the minscript feature as well as the miscripts themselves, and since they have a new interest in giving players options, they could put an option into the game "No Zombies Waves" and then add a command (or commands) to the minscript feature that was sensitive to that setting. Then the POI designers could code with that option in mind.

A minscript might go from:

spawn GroupZomSoldier 5
waitalive 2
spawn GroupZomSoldier 5

to:

spawn GroupZomSoldier 5
waitalive 2
spawnifwavesallowed GroupZomSoldier 5

As for it if breaks quests... I could see where if you eliminated a minscript entirely how something else might count on it. So, instead of wiping out the minscripts, replace it with a minscript that just makes a sound.

Let me know when the MOD is ready .

 

[meganoth]

Since I think TFP controls the implementation of the minscript feature as well as the miscripts themselves, and since they have a new interest in giving players options, they could put an option into the game "No Zombies Waves" and then add a command (or commands) to the minscript feature that was sensitive to that setting. Then the POI designers could code with that option in mind.

A minscript might go from:

spawn GroupZomSoldier 5
waitalive 2
spawn GroupZomSoldier 5

to:

spawn GroupZomSoldier 5
waitalive 2
spawnifwavesallowed GroupZomSoldier 5

As for it if breaks quests... I could see where if you eliminated a minscript entirely how something else might count on it. So, instead of wiping out the minscripts, replace it with a minscript that just makes a sound.

Less intrusive to balance and leaving quests working would be if the "waitalive" would be conditional, as in "waitaliveifwavesallowed 2"

 

[theFlu]

Less intrusive to balance and leaving quests working would be if the "waitalive" would be conditional, as in "waitaliveifwavesallowed 2"

Wouldn't that be "spawn everything at once, and cook the S Series in particular"?

 

[zztong]

Less intrusive to balance and leaving quests working would be if the "waitalive" would be conditional, as in "waitaliveifwavesallowed 2"

That could be. I was putting the condition on the action itself as there could be more after the waitalive and I didn't necessarily want to prevent other actions, like sounds. If TFP had any interest in this, I think it was Faatal who developed the minscripts feature and their take on the best way to accomplish the goal would the best answer.

 

[Vaeliorin]

I usually play semi-stealth, and doing the Pop 'n' Pills Factory today (the first tier 5 I've done in a long time, and the only one I used to like) and I don't think I'll ever run a T5 again. I got to the final room, sniped the vast majority of the zombies, was looking for the last couple dots on the map, and suddenly there were dozens of green/blue/orange zombies all over the top of me. I retreated while trying to fight them off, eventually accidentally backed into a bathroom, and ended up dying.

So yeah...not going to be doing anymore T5s unless I'm strapped up for guns blazing.

 

[meganoth]

Wouldn't that be "spawn everything at once, and cook the S Series in particular"?

Possibly. If the waitalive was added for that reason it could be changed to a fixed (minimal) time delay instead

 

[InfiniteWarrior]

you're left trying to guess

My guess was they wanted to make things more challenging for multiplayer because they were tired of seeing teams go through zombies like a knife through butter.

It's impossible, I think, to balance a game like this for both multiplayer and single player play unless there's some way to detect whether a team or individual is clearing a POI and adjust volumes accordingly, but that seems like overkill. If playing single player, you'll just need to be way more careful and come up with strategies for managing stamina, utilizing the environment and spreading out the zombies so they'll be more manageable, etc. Sounds like a challenge to me, whether playing single or multiplayer. Quite a different thing to spawning zombies in spaces you've already cleared.

 

[Rotor]

... you'll just need to be way more careful and come up with strategies for managing stamina, utilizing the environment and spreading out the zombies so they'll be more manageable, etc. Sounds like a challenge to me, whether playing single or multiplayer. Quite a different thing to spawning zombies in spaces you've already cleared.

"Ain't nobody got time fo dat!"

I am just bringing a bunch of dynamite with me, if'n when I get there.