Nevergrey

And contrary to the guys in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. you will even understand what they say. 😉

Thank you very much! No '7 Days To Rage'!

And if 1 bandit dies, 1 Zombie spawns? Or spawns another bandit then? 🤔 New gaming mode ... AI spawn race. 🙂

God forbid! No one wants that (hopefully).

They turn visible when they attack. Invisible attacks wouldn't be possible for them. I don't have any plans with 7D2D, I'm no part of TFP. It's quiet simple: If it turns out that the bandit AI breaks gameplay for me and bandits can't be deactivated in the options menu, I'll stay with a version that doesn't include bandits. It seems that this would be the last Alpha 20. As far as I understood bandits will introduce in A21. I play solo and offline only at the moment, so staying with a specific Alpha would work fine for me.

Thanks for keeping us up to date, faatal.

I'd like to know that too. Hated wrote: "A20.4 with fixes can be expected on EXP later this week or early next week." That was on February 22...

I've played a few games where the allegedly 'advanced' AI ruins the gameplay because of artificial stupidity. The more complex the AI gets, the more error-prone it gets (tendentially). There's a reason why F.E.A.R. still has one of the best (the best?) shooter AI so far - F.E.A.R. 1 was released 2005! Do you know more recent shooters with equally 'clever' enemies? And 7 Days To Die is far more complex regarding gameplay than F.E.A.R. I'm afraid that TFP will put too much complexity in the bandit AI. Making bandits invisible would be one way to make them more challenging without adding complexity to their AI. If they trace the player(s), they get invisible - until they attack.

Yep, I understand. In Dead Rising 2 you have a daughter (Katey). She is already infected with the virus, but not yet transformed into a Zombie. You need to find a specific vaccine (Zombrex), that you need to inject her regularly to avoid her 'Zombification'. This could work in 7DtD too: You find other Survivors (just NPCs, no Sidekicks) and need to find medicine on the map to keep them human. Until .... I don't know. Until the NPCs get rescued by a helicopter every 7 days? Just weird ideas for a already great game. I hope weird ideas are allowed in this thread.

It shouldn't be a problem to add such gameplay as DLC or MOD. If the AI works for it. Or a Arena MOD. Where you fight against Zombies or Bandits. Or fighting against Zombies as a bandit! Maybe bandit fractions could be an option for Multiplayer. Every fraction can build its own base and different fractions fight against each other, and Zombies. This could be interesting at Blood Moon. Should all teams work together against the Zombie hordes, or should one team let the Zombies do the rough work and capture the base of another team then? It would be essential to build an even stronger base, because after the Zombie hordes a bandit fraction could attack. I don't know if this would be possible only for multiplayer or with the AI in solo/offline play too. It would be great if the AI could do that too, and not just human players.

I'm not sure if stealth will work. You have for example a large lava field in Navezgane. Where should a bandit take cover after he/she followed you? Behind the one tree that stands there? A Reason for invisiblity? What about the same reason that made Susan Richards to 'Invisible Woman'? Radiation. https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Susan_Storm_(Earth-616) Quote: Dr. Susan "Sue" Richards (née Storm), aka the Invisible Woman, is an American superpowered adventurer. She was a college student before she was exposed to high levels of cosmic radiation when boyfriend and scientist, Dr, Reed Richards, took her with her younger brother, Johnny Storm and pilot Ben Grimm, into space in the stolen rocket Marvel-1. The radiation mutated her and her friends, turning her invisible and allowing her to create forcefields. Please tell me when I start to bug you. I'll keep quiet then.

And one of this perks could be that you detect bandits better. You start with nearly invisible bandits on the map. And while you improve your ability to detect them (for example with special eyeglasses that you can craft), your ability to see them increases. This would be fit in an RPG.

What do you think about the feature that Bandits could get invisible? Not completely invisible, more like the Predator's cloak effect when being in stealth mode.

Ok, we'll see if this works ... in intelligent ways. 😉

7Dtd isn't Half Life. The AI fights in HL1 and HL2 are scripted most of the time. But did you see what happened in 'The Forest' when two tribes fight? It can take minutes and it is very boring to watch. While fights between you and the AI can get rather intense in this game.

This could make the game maybe too easy. Just lure Zombies in a bandit troop and watch things going boom. What would you do with bandits in horde nights? If Zombies are the enemies of bandits too, I'd expect attacks on the Bandit's base too. Do Bandits have bases at all? And if not, what will they do in horde nights? I'd feel foolish if I had to defend my base, while some bandits make a coffee party in a meadow nearby. IMO bandits should be Zombies with guns that don't fight other Zombies. Bandits should just be another roaming enemy that keep you entertained.

Thanks for the info. Then I don't need to think about creating very large maps and probably struggle with memory issues while generating them. Navezgane is big enough for me. 6K maps shouldn't be a problem with 24 GB RAM. I can also live without Dynamic Mesh. Please continue your great work. Thanks for the time and effort you put into this game. I like fighting zombies, surviving, crafting, building, and random generated worlds in computer games. 7 Days To Die combines all this features in one package. I'm eager to see how this masterpiece continues evolving.

Regarding bandit stealth I see two solutions: Thief-like stealth. I doubt this can be realized by the AI since human player movements are rather unpredictable. The other option would be Predator-like stealth: bandits become invisible for a short period of time. Interesting.... Or they just spawn behind the player. Then we have enemy spawning like in Doom 3? Please no! Stealth for players? Apart from just critical hits? I don't see the environment for this. At least not in the outside areas. I reckon that this could work for indoor patrols. But is it possible to create patrol routes on random maps? Before things get way too complicated (and buggy), please let bandits just be 'Zombies with guns'.

Well ... you normally don't cuss quietly. Noise attracts Zombies. So things could go wrong for the bandits, not for the player. 🤭

Zombie AI is already not bad in comparison to the AI in DayZ. DayZ Zombies are dangerous, because they are very fast. And the melee combat system of DayZ is a disaster. And DayZ Zombies can chase you forever. If they can track you. I saw Zombies running dozens of times around a fence, then jumping over the fence - while about one virtual metre away there was an wide open gate. You can kill DayZ Zombies easily while they lurk near an open window. They just don't react when you hit them. I never saw such AI flaws in 7DtD (at least not in A20, I didn't play the earlier Alpha versions). There seem to be even complaints that the Alpha 20 AI is too good. 😉 But hopefully you don't dumb the Zombie AI down. So far it is ok.

Why not just making the AI of the bandits adjustable? Mediocre FPS level for default players, F.E.A.R.-AI for masochists. 😈

I reckon that 64 zeds spawning at once would already make the solo game unplayable because of performance issues. Did anyone here (aside from the developers) ever had all 64 Zombies in a solo game? What happened? Playing with 1 FPS? 😉

Thanks for the info regarding bandits, Roland. I'm very curious about them now. I had some more or less dull ideas for future versions, but overall this game is already great. So what I really want to know (and I hope the relevant developer could answer this question): What are the realistic system recommendations for enjoying A21 without any fundamental limitations? Are the recommended system specs (especially regarding CPU and memory) on Steam still correct (when not running a dedicated server)? 3.2 Ghz Quad Core CPU, 12 GB RAM?

Radiation could be the story behind the bandits: They are searching for Uranium. This bandits are not completely zombified yet (that's the reason why they can still use weapons and react more tactical than standard zeds). They heard about a cure made of special isotopes, that they can find only in some areas on the map. The bandids could have special dogs instead of Geiger counters, that are trained to find radioactive materials (like truffle pigs finding fungi). A type of dogs like the blind dogs in S.T.A.L.K.E.R maybe, or big creatures like the 'Beast of Gévaudan' in the movie 'Brotherhood Of The Wolf' (picture of a model below).

Sounds interesting. If there are whole radiated cities, I'd also expect to find different zeds there. Mutated rats for example.