Volume Behaviors in A17?

[Jackelmyer]

Anyone done must testing with Volume behaviors in A17.1? The two main POI's i'm updating have multiple volumes, which, as you all know, were problematic in A16.

Seems like you can weight zombie spawn points now. So I'm debating on reducing the volumes in these POI's. However I'm a little worried about performance and such.

For example, in the Paintball POI, if I wanted to, I could do a single large volume for the entire bottom floor. The problem is i don't want all these zombies woken up just because someone goes onto the POI area as a whole.

I love the weighted zombie idea TFP has. I don't recall that being a part of A16. Would be cooler if I could go more finer control on it and actually assign random, zombie group, or a specific zombie to a sleeper block.

Anyone ditched their many volumes for more simple single volumes? I'd much rather the paintball POI to be reduced to like 3 volumes instead of the several it has. But there'd be like... 60 sleeper blocks and I'd have to spawn like... uh... 30 on the main floor to equate to the same behavior the POI has now but with a variety of volumes.

 

[Pille]

I think the single-volume-approach for the bottom floor might be viable for prefabs having the size of your paintball POI (hotel ostrich uses a similar design), although it's probably not the best solution. Most vanilla prefabs have their volumes placed room-wise. Some of the bigger ones use priority volumes (one big volume for each floor and a few smaller subvolumes to reduce the amount of spawned zombies (see skyscraper_02)).

Btw. there is an upper limit for the max. sleeper count. A single volume won't spawn more than ~20 sleepers (I dunno the exact number).

The two main POI's i'm updating have multiple volumes, which, as you all know, were problematic in A16.

What do you mean?

 

[Guppycur]

I lke multiple volumes; allows me to control what pops when.

 

[Jackelmyer]

I lke multiple volumes; allows me to control what pops when.

Multiple volumes makes it harder to prevent zombie spawns right in front of someone's face. And there used to be more problems with the whole volume respawn issue.

I'm trying to figure out properties of the sleeper block themselves. In Playtest, the multiplier they seems to effect the chance a zombie will spawn doesn't seem to work all that well.

What I'd really like to do is spawn in zombies where soke blocks must spawn and others actually use the probability to spawn attribute. That'd be amazing.

Though even better, I wish we could just place zombies specifically. Like containers. Some for specific zombies. Some helper zombie blocks that are randomized by an assigned group.

Remove volumes all together.

Then set a specific property on the zombie as to when it should spawn.

And then manage the sleeper hearing setting.

Then use the POI area itself as the "home" volume to manage tracking a zombie getting killed in a POI.

Assign sleeper blocks an ID as part of the tracking and give that ID to a spawned Zombie.

OnZombieDeath

Dictionary Lookup of Sleeper ID for sleeper block.

Mark sleeper lock.IsDead = True

Give sleeper blocks an IsSeen flag that's set by player proximity.

So on and so forth.

Zomg. POI's... Exactly as ya want'em.

Buuuuut I waaaaay digress lol.

 

[Guppycur]

Yeh you gotta be crafty and hide the spawns around a corner or in a cabinet, from where the person enters the volume.

I suspect that's how dungeon crawls became a thing, and all of those pallets... Tfp needed a way to hide spawns.

 

[Jackelmyer]

Yeh you gotta be crafty and hide the spawns around a corner or in a cabinet, from where the person enters the volume.
I suspect that's how dungeon crawls became a thing, and all of those pallets... Tfp needed a way to hide spawns.

Agreed. I do like the pallets though. They're pretty cool looking and they do a good job at just that, hiding spawns. Wouldn't mind a bit more variety. but meh. It's nice to have for sure.