PC v1.x Developer Diary

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Riamus said:
This is unfortunate.  It is a loss of character customization.  Sure, the bonus from these items was nice, but being able to customize the look of your character is sometimes more important. 

If you are getting rid of all these customization items, not to mention all the clothing options, please at least consider an ability to change how stuff you are wearing looks.  Many games give you this option these days and it is a great way to allow customization without needing to have a ton of items.  You had a semblance of it before with being able to change hats to look like ball caps, cowboy hats, etc by using a mod.  If you give each item a customization slot that lets you choose a good variety of options that aren't necessarily items that are in the game anymore (or ever), it would at least not lead to everyone being exactly the same.  Note that I am not referring to the dye slot.  You should have both, imo.

Yes, it means you need art for these things, but you can use the old art.  And yes, it means that maybe someone is getting a bonus for the lumberjack set out whatever set and yet look like they should not be getting that bonus because of how they look, but is that really a problem?

I don't have stats on it, but I have a string feeling that character customization is one of the top requested/wanted features in any game that has a player character you can see on screen.

Yeah, lighting is definitely backwards.  If I stand in a bright spot while I'm a dark room, it should be harder to see in the dark spaces, not easier.  If I stand in a shadow, it shouldn't make the brightly lit spaces around me harder to see.
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Yeah, I agree.

The thing that weirdly bothers me though, what even is a "strength mod"? Is it just going to be a unexplained mod that boosts strength for no reason? I think it made at least a little bit more sense to have like, certain pieces of clothing/accessories give certain bonuses, like how shades gave perception, not just a item for the sake of a stat boost without any kind of reasoning. It'd feel weird to me if instead of shades, we had more of these mods which are literally just "perception mod" or something. I don't know, it's hard to explain.

 
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User said:
Yeah, I agree.

The thing that weirdly bothers me though, what even is a "strength mod"? Is it just going to be a unexplained mod that boosts strength for no reason? I think it made at least a little bit more sense to have like, certain pieces of clothing/accessories give certain bonuses, like how shades gave perception, not just a item for the sake of a stat boost without any kind of reasoning. It'd feel weird to me if instead of shades, we had more of these mods which are literally just "perception mod" or something. I don't know, it's hard to explain.
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I imagine it's just a placeholder for now, and will have an actual name and icon by the time A22 is ready.

 
khzmusik said:
RE: zombie looting, my understanding is that looting would require the bodies be around longer, which degrades performance immensely.

RE: interior/exterior lighting. Is there any way to make this easily moddable? Perhaps not through XML, but at least through defining some variables in C# that modders could easily change through a simple Harmony patch or something?

I ask because, frankly, the way A21 handles interior lighting is exactly backwards from how our eyes actually work.

If your eyes are adjusted to exterior (brighter) ambient light, then the interior (darker) places should look darker than normal. When crossing into those spaces, the spaces initially look nearly pitch-black, but as your eyes adjust the interior spaces look brighter than normal. (And the exterior spaces look very bright, almost washed-out.)

But in game, when standing outside, dark interior spaces look like they're brightly lit. When transitioning into those spaces, they lose their lighting and look darker. Even worse: if you find a brightly-lit spot in that space and stand in it, the entire space suddenly becomes brightly lit. I find it incredibly annoying, and I have heard others express the same opinion.

Of course, you can make your game's lighting work however you like, I'm just asking for the ability of players or modders to override it.

EDIT: For example - my guess is there's probably some variable that controls how much darker it gets when you are in a dark space vs. a bright space. Simply allowing this value to be set via XML would mean we could just enter a negative number rather than a positive one, and that would solve most of the problems.
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Yes, any entity being drawn in the world decreases performance whether dead or alive, so removing them is also good.

Inside/outside ambient light scaling is already in worldglobal.xml since it was implemented. It is not meant as a simulation of eyes. It was simply to make outside bright and inside dark as ambient light is a global value, so you can't use it to make part of a mesh dark and other part bright. Block ambient occlusion does allow different parts of the mesh at different brightness values, but the implementation had problems and was not fast. The improved version works better.

 
Riamus said:
Yes, it means you need art for these things, but you can use the old art.
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Consider this.

What is now -> you EITHER had a bandana OR a cigar in your mouth

What you're asking ->  you can hav BOTH a bandana AND a cigar in your mouth

Imagine now of all the weird combinations you could have with "visible" mods that before the change were actual clothing slots.

 
Jost Amman said:
Consider this.

What is now -> you EITHER had a bandana OR a cigar in your mouth

What you're asking ->  you can hav BOTH a bandana AND a cigar in your mouth

Imagine now of all the weird combinations you could have with "visible" mods that before the change were actual clothing slots.
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I never said that.  I said it should have a dye slot as well as a customization slot.  Right now, if all visualization of the items is removed as they are saying, then all you get is the bonus and can't see any changes.  That's what I think is a bad move.  If you're going to wear sunglasses, show them.  Don't just give us the bonus.  If you're going to use the cigar, show it.  Don't just give us the bonus.  As I said, yes, this requires you to have art for these items, but you can use the old art.

 
Riamus said:
I never said that.  I said it should have a dye slot as well as a customization slot.  Right now, if all visualization of the items is removed as they are saying, then all you get is the bonus and can't see any changes.  That's what I think is a bad move.  If you're going to wear sunglasses, show them.  Don't just give us the bonus.  If you're going to use the cigar, show it.  Don't just give us the bonus.  As I said, yes, this requires you to have art for these items, but you can use the old art.
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Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear. That's precisely what I was saying would be an issue.

For the way you want it done to work, they'll have to custom fit every single possible combination of overlapping models in a way that they don't look weird.

My example about the bandana covering the mouth, having the cigar sticking out if you also equip the cigar, it's the perfect example.

Not to mention that aligning correctly different layers of "clothing" on top of each other would be tricky, to say the least.

 
Jost Amman said:
Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear. That's precisely what I was saying would be an issue.

For the way you want it done to work, they'll have to custom fit every single possible combination of overlapping models in a way that they don't look weird.

My example about the bandana covering the mouth, having the cigar sticking out if you also equip the cigar, it's the perfect example.

Not to mention that aligning correctly different layers of "clothing" on top of each other would be tricky, to say the least.
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 I do hope it shows up. Then again how would stuff work for the enforcer armor? Are you going to wear shades on your shades? 

 
No. Clothing mods will not show.

I know this sounds like a huge reduction in customization, but you'll just have to trust us that we have a plan and will reveal that plan once it's ready.

We fully understand your concerns. I, Allan, understand your concerns as I'm a player too. I'm on your side. Trust the process.

 
Jost Amman said:
Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear. That's precisely what I was saying would be an issue.

For the way you want it done to work, they'll have to custom fit every single possible combination of overlapping models in a way that they don't look weird.

My example about the bandana covering the mouth, having the cigar sticking out if you also equip the cigar, it's the perfect example.

Not to mention that aligning correctly different layers of "clothing" on top of each other would be tricky, to say the least.
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I was not suggesting any change from how it works today.  You already can't have a bandana and cigar at the same time and I wasn't saying you should.  In the same way, you shouldn't have multiple pairs of glasses at the same time.

schwanz9000 said:
No. Clothing mods will not show.

I know this sounds like a huge reduction in customization, but you'll just have to trust us that we have a plan and will reveal that plan once it's ready.

We fully understand your concerns. I, Allan, understand your concerns as I'm a player too. I'm on your side. Trust the process.
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Thank you for the reply.  I hope it is as you say.  Lack of customization of characters is a pretty significant negative for a lot of people.

 
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schwanz9000 said:
No. Clothing mods will not show.

I know this sounds like a huge reduction in customization, but you'll just have to trust us that we have a plan and will reveal that plan once it's ready.

We fully understand your concerns. I, Allan, understand your concerns as I'm a player too. I'm on your side. Trust the process.
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I appreciate the transparency 

Thanks

 
I don't mind waiting and seeing but yes, this seems like a loss of customization in the short term. Also, having a mod which increases your stats but is just... an unlabelled non-existent object seems very odd and It would be odd no matter what the item's function is. I'm hoping it's as @Old Crow said, that "generic blue square" is just a placeholder and that they'll at least get a name and a thumbnail even if they don't appear on character models; releasing it in A22 as-is would be a really weird decision IMO.

 
FramFramson said:
I don't mind waiting and seeing but yes, this seems like a loss of customization in the short term. Also, having a mod which increases your stats but is just... an unlabelled non-existent object seems very odd and It would be odd no matter what the item's function is. I'm hoping it's as @Old Crow said, that "generic blue square" is just a placeholder and that they'll at least get a name and a thumbnail even if they don't appear on character models; releasing it in A22 as-is would be a really weird decision IMO.
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I don't see why it wouldn't be. It'd have to be a huge act of supreme laziness not to update a placeholder like that.

 
faatal said:
Inside/outside ambient light scaling is already in worldglobal.xml since it was implemented. It is not meant as a simulation of eyes. It was simply to make outside bright and inside dark as ambient light is a global value, so you can't use it to make part of a mesh dark and other part bright. Block ambient occlusion does allow different parts of the mesh at different brightness values, but the implementation had problems and was not fast. The improved version works better.
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That is outstanding, I didn't know it was in worldglobal.xml.

I will definitely mess around with it.

When the lighting is changed, please keep that bit. :)

 
Riamus said:
it would at least not lead to everyone being exactly the same.
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You mean all eight of you....?

I agree that coming up with a way for all the players on a modified server of 50 players to all look unique would be cool and if TFP has a plan for that then I'm not arguing against it. But I do wonder if people forget that this game officially supports at most eight people when they express dismay about fewer customization options. 

Even with the current system with layered clothing and armor--all with a dye slot for coloring, it seems like most people end up looking pretty samey anyway since there are only a limited number of outer armor sets. The new outfits look 1000% better, eliminate layering (which made everyone's outfit look puffy and bulky), bring the huge amount of mod slots available down to a better balanced amount, come in a much larger variety of sets than we currently have (counting what's viewable once armor is equipped and layers over the clothing beneath), and add bonuses that haven't existed before in clothing.  

 
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