Boidster
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Posts posted by Boidster
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1 hour ago, Roland said:
There are some roof tops that the zombies wake up every single time during the day when you step foot on the rooftop but stay asleep if you do it at night. I think that this is pretty good evidence that #4 is true.
Yep. And once I got into the code it was clear that it is only light level (that is, light falling on the player) vs. the zombie's detection range (line-of-sight be damned) that determined whether sleepers wake up (with auto-targeting depending on crouching/not-crouching, and player's skill if crouched). Noise plays no role. Once they're awake, of course, noise plays a role. The stealth logger shows the light level and detection and all of that, for anyone interested.
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Oops, sorry, it's the same link! I'll update my post above. It links to "Boid's A20 Miscellaneous Modlets" which includes both the Stealth Logger and the Lights Out modlets.
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7 hours ago, Novamourne said:
The gameplay loop changed from exploring and checking every nook and cranny into an endless cycle of Point A to Point B rinse & repeat quest completions.
I agree that doing nothing but quests would minimize the time spent getting maximized loot, which is why I don't play the game that way. I haven't played the latest alpha yet, though - is doing quests mandatory now? I would definitely not like to be forced into min/maxing.
7 hours ago, Novamourne said:Game Stage should not make sure you are powerful enough to do anything you want, but that's what it does.
I agree Game Stage should not make you powerful, but that is not what it does. It makes the zombies more powerful as you progress. Check out gamestages.xml and entitygroups.xml for details.
7 hours ago, Novamourne said:Some places should be more dangerous and you should have to be aptly prepared to go there with skills, equipment, and consumables - all of which are not considered in Game Stage difficulty scaling. Progression is important, and watching the color of my gear change isn't progression enough.
This is a pretty good description (except for the last part) of what Game Stage does, though? POI zombie volumes are set to different difficulty groups, and the type of zombies which spawn as parts of those groups get harder as Game Stage goes up. So a Tier 5 POI will have harder spawns than a Tier 1 POI at the same Game Stage, but both tiers will get harder zombies as your GS goes up. Is that not what you're asking for? Possibly there's just a misunderstanding of the mechanic.
The last part - your gear getting better - is now controlled by Loot Stage, not Game Stage. Loot Stage can also be affected by POI tier and also biome, so you will find better loot in a T5 in the wastelands, but presumably the extra difficulty balances it out. Or not, I think, in your opinion.
7 hours ago, Novamourne said:Now, so much of the game is inaccessible to you in a single playthrough. ... The skill system locks you into weapon choices.
Can you elaborate a bit? I usually perk into pistol and shotgun, but on horde night I stick with TAR and M50, which are plenty effective. Which parts of the game are inaccessible, or which weapons are locked out to you? Perhaps your game has a bug - do you run any mods?
7 hours ago, Novamourne said:The old roaming hordes were so much more immersive and enjoyable.
For what it's worth, these still exist. See gamestages.xml for details, spawner "WanderingHorde". You might also enjoy just bumping up the quantity of biome spawns, so the game is more populated in general. And Feral Sense will keep your head on a swivel.
7 hours ago, Novamourne said:It got replaced by an incessant and compulsory interaction with combat
For what it's worth, you can hide and avoid screamer hordes also. In fact, hiding from a screamer prevents her from calling in any help at all. One silent crossbow from cover and the threat is eliminated. Or a turret can take care of her for you. But if she screams, the zombies she calls are just normal zombies. They'll lose interest in you if you hide from them.
Edit to add: it is also pretty easy to turn them off if you want. If you're okay with using a text editor.
7 hours ago, Novamourne said:We should have to loot to craft. We should need to craft to put our loot to use.
I will sign your petition. I'm fine with complete guns being found in loot, but I'd love for highest-tier stuff only being available via crafting. It is not a popular opinion, and not one shared by TFP, so it's not going to happen except via mod, I think. That said, we still play our game with a full crafting setup (and farm) every time, because we're not really interested in min/maxing our experience. We like crafting, so we do it. Could we prioritize finding/buying ammo and not need to craft it? Sure. Could we buy or be awarded all the mods we want if we just focused on the A->B grind of questing? Yeah. But we don't like playing that way, so we don't. We spend our days exploring the nooks and crannies of the map (with 4x normal spawn rates) and prepping for BMH. But not everyone likes playing that way, so it's nice the game gives some options.
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1 hour ago, No_Name_Idea said:
If that's the case, does From The Shadows perk even affect anything anymore? If what you said is true then the only useful thing about the perk would be the the restealth time reduction :v
You may be interested in the Stealth Logging modlet. It'll show you (in the log/console, so it's for educational purposes only - not useful as an in-game stealth monitor during fights) which "awake" zombies are actually targeting you vs. which ones are targeting a noise that just happened to come from where you're standing. (And it's not really even "noise" - the stealth system is very much light/visibility based)
There's also a modlet which allows one-shotting lights (Boid's Lights Out), to improve stealth. Requires buying From the Shadows level 2.
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The three best pieces of advice I got:
1) Express the anal glands at least twice a year, or more often if you're trying to monetize the channel
2) Obsessive toy-humping can be stopped with increased outdoor activity
3) It is perfectly normal to sniff butts as a greeting, however not everyone is comfortable with that so ask first
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On 5/10/2022 at 11:54 AM, Sal said:
So who are YOU to decide. Now go sit down son.
I am nobody to decide, Dad. We are in agreement, then: neither of us should claim that this or that perk objectively "serves no useful purpose". Subjectively, for my play style, some perks are preferred, others not. For your play style, you'll prefer different perks from me. Cool, man. Play how ya like. To the extent that many different play styles all disfavor a particular perk, it could either be because a) it legit needs some tweaking (looking at you Pack Mule) or b) the play style it's designed for just isn't a very popular style (my theory about Charismatic Nature).
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13 hours ago, Roland said:
It’s okay to be shut out of some options by choosing other options.
But if I eat the cake, then I won't have the cake! How would I even?
8 hours ago, Sal said:Stop liking what I don't like.
I use Charismatic Nature in every game, but I'm a team player. Also animal tracking, lock picking, huntsman, and treasure hunter, depending on my mood. Who are you to decide what is or is not a useful skill to other people?
Okay, you're right on Pack Mule. But my solution to that would be something like having Pack Mule open up spots even to pocket mods. That is, if you haven't Pack-Mule'd the spots yet, then pocket mods won't help. And you still need the pocket mods to actually use the spots. So maybe 3 spots are unlocked, but not usable when you start. You can make pocket mods to make them usable. Beyond that, additional mods won't help until you perk into Pack Mule to unlock the spots.
Pack Mule = "I can effectively carry more weight"
Pocket Mods = "I have crafted containers where I can put all that weight I can now carry"
I do not expect this will be a popular idea.
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TIL that RPGs don't have classes.
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At GS330, the maximum size of a wave is 444 Zs, so getting 300 of them isn't too bad. What is your day length set to? On 60-minute days, you're killing 100 zombies per player every 5 minutes (2-hour wave). A zombie every 3 seconds. Not too shabby? On 120-minute days, maybe it's more shabby.
Are you actually running out of zombies to kill during the wave, so the spawn rate is limiting your kill rate?
1 hour ago, Roland said:Since there are three of you, you should be able to change the setting to around 20 zombies per player and get a faster spawn rate than if it is at the default of 8 zombies per player.
I think that's this:
6 hours ago, Pernicious said:GamePref.BloodMoonEnemyCount = 64
The per-player limit for blood moon spawning.
The Wiki page is pretty up to date. I'm in an intimate relationship with the person who last updated it.
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I, for one, am absolutely incensed that a for-profit company made a business deal with a different for-profit company all in the name of seeking profit. What is this world coming to? Next thing you know I'm going to have go get a Steam account just to play Steam games using Steam's infrastructure after giving Steam money. Where does the madness end?!?
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6 hours ago, Callum123456789 said:
madmole is working hard on bringing sharp sticks back to the game now in 2 forms!
Well at least then we could defend ourselves!
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13 minutes ago, Matt115 said:
Madmole is busy working on return of hornets!
I thought you said "bad" answers. I'd love to have the hornets back! I may be in a very small minority, though.
I think this would be very, very bad: Madmole is working on integrating NFTs to <ahem>...break down barriers to player choice while providing a paradigm-shifting user experience where players can EARN while they PLAY! Presales begin in August - get in early for the best returns on your investment!
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12 hours ago, Roland said:
So let’s drop “3” and proceed to at least “4”
FIVE IS RIGHT OUT!
/somebody better get this reference of my faith in humanity will take another hit
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Is this going to be some streaming-only thing where it's really the PC game sent to the console? Or is this the old A15-ish console version making a comeback in GamePass? Or is this...is this...I can't say it I might jinx it.
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A starting point for removing normal thunderstorms might be to go into biomes.xml and find all of these lines:
<Precipitation min="0" max="0" prob="1"/>
And set them all as shown above, min=0, max=0. That will prevent any precipitation (and, I'm assuming, storms) from every biome.
I don't think it'll do anything about bloodmoon, though. The "weather" during BM is not controlled in XML as far as I know. Might just have to disable blood moons entirely.
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On 3/25/2022 at 2:19 PM, ElDudorino said:
14 is 40% higher than 10 so that's what he was referring to with the 40% thing. Still, you're going from a low number to another low number, so it's not that impressive.
Except - and this is where that mod can really help clarify things - all of the probability numbers are relative to each other. A loot table probabilty of 0.14 does not mean 14% chance. Depending on the makeup of the loot group(s) involved in a particular loot search, that 0.14 might mean 3% or it might mean 40%. Putting on the goggles at lootstage 200 will make Tier 3 items 40% more likely to show up, relative to searches without the goggles. That could mean going from 2% to 2.8% actual chance or it might mean 20% to 28% actual chance. Or something else. It all depends on what you're searching and how the RNG navigates through the loot groups.
It's a pretty complex system, which is why I wrote the mod.
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3 hours ago, White-Gandalf said:
And, by the way: Unix is only one little example of correct client-server division of accountability.
I'm unsure how to interpret this in the context of your argument about 7D2D's claimed horrible netcode. Are you talking about OS kernel communications as an example to follow for a client-server game? Or are you claiming that client-server apps running on Unix are inherently "correct"? Have we moved out of a discussion of games running client-server over TCP/IP and into an OS war?
Just this very week I had to work with a vendor to correct a problem in their node-based app which was not properly handling HTTPS-over-HTTP tunnelling through Squid proxy. They allow non-SSL traffic to the server, but of course that would be stupid so they need to correctly configure a tunnel. This was on CentOS 7, which I presume meets your definition for "Unix", though perhaps you are a purist. Should this client-server comms be labeled "correct" since it's on *nix?
Anyway, my point is that client-server app code - game or otherwise - is not "solved" by any means. There are best practices and risks and mitigations and a lot of cat-and-mouse as mentioned above. 7D2D might be pretty bad in this area; I don't actually have a strong argument there. But "solved in 1971" (or 1969) seems like an unserious argument.
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You can see exactly how it affects your lootstage on your character info page:
SpoilerAs to it being trivial, I dunno if I'd put it that way. Certainly by the time your lootstage is "in the hundreds", you're already well into T3 loot and the effect will be pretty minor. But even there, at lootstage 200, adding the goggles will increase the odds of a T3 item (before other adjustments and calculations*) by 40% (from 0.10 to 0.14).
T3 loot probability table:
<loot level="200" prob="0.10"/>
<loot level="201" prob="0.11"/>
<loot level="202" prob="0.12"/>
<loot level="203" prob="0.13"/>
<loot level="204" prob="0.14"/>*If you want to see all of the calculations and RNG results, try this mod.
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19 hours ago, Ripflex said:
You are forgetting, if your level is low, you would most likely not find any other than ingredients to craft them - it's why you find Aloe cream 99& of the time at level one.
BFT2020 covered this above in detail. I just want to emphasize a general point that players tend to significantly overestimate how much loot is controlled by lootstage. Most stuff is just fixed probabilities (80.9% of loot container RNG checks, in fact, as posted earlier). If'n ya don't believe, try the loot logger mod.
The lootstage-scaling is really only used to manage your progression from crap weapons/armor/tools/crafting to xtreem pwnage weapons/armor/tools/crafting.
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12 hours ago, eXSe said:
We lost immersive progression for skills (tools, weapons and crafting).
Oh is that what the kids are calling it these days?
Geez, it's not like we're banned for saying "learn b###TCP TIMEOUT - CLIENT CONNECTION LOST
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Hmm...maybe don't @-spam the devs and mods. Posting into Pimp Dreams forum might be the best place for your wish list. But I am curious what [zombie game] x [zombie game] looks like as a 'crossover'. A recognizable character appearing in each other's game? An Easter-egg Shotgun Messiah crate in L4D?
From a business standpoint, I don't see much incentive from Valve's point of view to include 7D2D assets in their game. They have a very successful, multi-million-copy-selling zombie game franchise. Why give a smaller competitor advertising in their game? Does it somehow push more units? Valve would probably make TFP pay for the privilege!
In the other direction, maybe there's a small incentive, but I wouldn't think TFP would be interested in any sort of crossover with L4D assets until 7D2D is established as a finished game, and showing success. And there still wouldn't be much incentive for Valve to allow such a crossover, e.g. to license the assets. Again, why give a boost to a relatively direct competitor? Only if there is legit chance to capture more audience for your game.
I think when these things happen it's either between rough equals with stable user bases, like when very-popular Fighting Game A's character makes a cameo in very-popular Fighting Game B, or between somewhat-to-very different franchises. For example a Lego x L4D crossover. Neither is a threat to the other and the x-over could really go either way: zombie-themed Lego game, or Lego as build components in the zombie game. See also Mass Effect's SSV Normandy showing up in No Man's Sky. There you have an asset from a monster-huge franchise showing up in a smaller studio's game. Probably it cost Hello Games non-trivial ducats to get that license and EA didn't really see NMS as a direct competitor. Possibly NMS players unfamiliar with Mass Effect would see the ship and think, "wow that looks cool I wonder what game it's from?" and push a few more units of Mass Effect. NMS gets a shiny event to keep players engaged and EA maybe gets a bit of advertising.
That type of business relationship probably doesn't make sense between Valve and TFP. Maybe when 7D2D is the dominant zombie experience, as has been prophesied.
Creatively, I could see TFP saying, "why the f--- would we want their crap in our game? We are kicking an entirely different collection of ass."
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I don't play PvP so I don't have any useful comments for you, but you might also want to post in the Servers forum. Server owners advertise in there and presumably people looking for servers will also be in there and could give you some feedback.
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4 minutes ago, Maharin said:
I sincerely have it memorized to 50 decimal places.
That seems pretty irrational.
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Are there any plans on making stealth actually stealth?
in General Discussion
Posted · Edited by Boidster (see edit history)
Hmm...you may misinterpret how the system works. There are no RNG stealth checks. Whether you are detected and/or targeted is strictly based on:
1) how illuminated you are
2) how much noise you are making
3) the zombies' detection ability (differs per zombie, so I guess there is a little RNG here: Arlene #1 might hear slightly better than Arlene #2)
If you cross a sleeper threshold, #1 is compared to all zombies' vision in the sleeper volume. Line-of-sight is ignored and that is arguably a Bad Thing, for sure! IIRC faatal said [or maybe it was a comment in the code] that this mechanic is a temporary stop-gap to get the system mostly working). But in any case there is no RNG component to "do I wake up the sleepers". There are some volumes (though I think it is more rare than players believe) which will always wake up when the player enters. "Scripted fights" if you want. Edit to add: okay not really. Reviewing our investigation in the older thread, the "worst" type of volume is an Attack volume, which gives the sleepers that ignore-LOS check to "see" you. In some cases, the volume might be designed - i.e. with zombies in the ceiling right over your head - so that that check nearly always succeeds and the zombies target you. But the volume is following the same rules as any other Attack volume, say one where the zombies are more spread out and don't have such an easy chance "seeing" you.
In my testing in the older thread, though, I was able to safely traverse a few volumes which players thought were "auto-attack" volumes. I needed several levels in the stealth skills though, and shooting out lights definitely helped! (Why don't the shots wake up the zombies?!? Gooood question...it definitely ain't perfect.)
If there are awake zombies around you, then they can detect sounds which, again, have no RNG component at the moment the noise is made. (As mentioned there is an RNG component giving small boosts/nerfs to individual zombies' hearing, but this is done at spawn time, not for each noise.) If the noise a) reaches the zombie and b) is above the hearing threshold of the zombie, it will go investigate the noise (but not necessarily target you!). Your stealth skills and equipment can muffle noises.
If a zombie is facing you, then we're back to player visibility vs. zombie visual acuity, but with line-of-sight considered of course. No RNG component. Your stealth skills and equipment can make you less visible.