Boidster

Rolling Stones had a good song about this, and they weren't even living in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse! Though they kinda look like the zombies now. Especially Charlie Watts. /too soon?

Huh, I had a reply here, but it got >poofed<? Odd. I don't think dart traps can be set to "zombie only". If they get power, they shoot. That said, I configured a similar setup and I saw the same behavior. If I step on the plate, I get shot, even though the motion sensor has no targets (set to zombie only). Also, if the motion sensor does have a target, but nobody is standing on the plate, the dart trap still fires. Like the pressure plate is acting as a relay. Something ain't right.

Well before we start troubleshooting, would you like a small snack? *eyes lil_joha suspiciously*

The F6 ought to spawn them where your cursor is pointed (might need to be within a certain range). I use it all the time to spawn test subjects *a few meters over there*. Oh, so now I'm supposed to closely read the original post? PFFFT...what EVER.

Is there a reason? Yes, the reason is that this is how The Fun Pimps have chosen to model their zombies/monsters/mutants/whatever-you-prefer-to-call-them. An option to turn off digging? Never say never, but it seems unlikely. TFP want living underground to retain some of the same challenges as living above ground (a more specific reason). You can mitigate the risk and survive underground still, but you can't just dig 3 blocks down and forever be safe. I'm sure there are mods which turn this off. An option to turn off "Neo-esque" behavior? I assume you're referring to the random and often jerky non-linear movement of many zombies. I'll bet a month of Roland's pay that there will never be an "option" to turn this off because there is no "off/on" with it. It's simply how the movements are animated. I think it would take an overhaul-level mod to change all of that.

I really don't think TFP "wants" us to play any particular way. They give us a world with certain rules and some tools to survive. We choose how we want to play. In my co-op game we survived just fine with a standard box base surrounded on all sides by traps. We got bored with that so we tried a pathing base. That worked fine as well. Next time we're going to try a two-box base with a tunnel underneath and traps all around both boxes, to kite the zombies. I don't think TFP cares how we survive, as long as we're having fun. Min/maxers on YouTube will definitely pump out "THE BEST A20 HORDE BASE!!!!!!!" videos daily, which optimize zombie pathing for maximum carnage. Lots of people like playing that way, after all! I don't understand why "combination of" is dropped from people's citation of that description. The game has some tower-defense elements and if you want to play it as a TD shooter you certainly can. You can also play as a ground-based melee or M60 or explosives specialist. You can hide underground and force the Zs to chase you through tunnels. You can set up a racecourse protected by SMG turrets and run around on your motorcycle during horde night. It's not "a tower defense game", it's a zombie game which can be played using TD techniques. If you want to min/max (minimum risk/maximum zombie carnage), then TD is a very attractive strategy for sure.

You seen Joel around lately? Strange he hasn't been in his shop for a couple of days...

Most of the modlets in this group are very tiny and not that useful for most people. I created them as one-offs and learning exercises usually due to a thread in General Discussion. However, Boid's Stealth Logging might have some utility for anyone trying to understand sleeper volumes and zombie targeting. It will log the following: Player enters a sleeper volume 'Attack' sleeper volume zombies' checks to 'see' the player Enemy targets player Enemy stops targeting player Enemy approaches spot (due to noise) Enemy approaches distraction (thrown rock/snowball) I found it pretty informative when investigating just how attack sleeper volumes work. Not recommended for normal play and definitely not with large #s of spawns around. It doesn't spam the console every tick, but it can write a lot of info if there are a dozen zombies near you all trying to find you. Boid's Stealth Logging is not EAC compatible; the other modlets are just XML so they ought to be fine. Boid's A20 Modlets

I'm unsure what you mean by "aggressive entities" since all zombies/dogs/wolves/bears are aggressive, always. If you mean "always targeting me directly" then I think you are misunderstanding the AI behavior. But yes the game absolutely spawns all sorts of things due to no other reason than the passage of time (or, in the case of screamers, due to "heat" in the chunk). If the zombies see you up on top of your POI then they're going to come after you. Were you crouching? Did you have light sources near you (campfire, holding a torch)? Do you have Feral Sense enabled for your game (significantly increases zombies' ability to find you)? Were you downtown or out in a rural area (changes #, frequency, and difficulty of biome spawns)? The game basically has four types of spawns outside of blood moon: POI, scouts/screamers, biome, and wandering hordes. Biome spawns are individual zombies spawned here and there all day and all night long (more/less difficult depending on which biome you're in, whether your downtown or rural, and whether it's day or night). Biome spawns spawn in as 'active', but not alerted or targeting the player unless they detect you. They'll just wander around. Wandering hordes are small groups which will move as a unit towards a spot near the player. When they are spawned they aren't alerted to you or targeting you, but of course they are moving roughly right at you. With Feral Sense turned on, you might need to be pretty alert and quick to hide if you want to evade detection. If the spot they're trying to get to is within the bounds of your base, they might attack the base I suppose to try to get to their target location. Scout/screamer spawns are generated due to "heat", and lots of what you do generates heat. Building, repairing, workbench/forge/chem/cooking, mining, torches, and definitely the firing of any firearm. You can press F8 twice to see the heat in the chunk you're in. Everything you've described sounds normal I guess, and can be explained by either biome spawns or wandering hordes, especially if you're playing with Feral Sense. You might want to temporarily try out Boid's Stealth Logging, a small mod I made which will log into the console when zombies are targeting you vs. walking to a spot vs. investigating a distraction, etc. You may think "that horde obviously knew where I was and was targeting me", but the log will show otherwise until/unless they detect you. Do not use the mod for normal play - it writes to the log pretty frequently when zombies are around and may impact performance. Turn it on for one of your tests and watch what is happening to gain a better understanding. And post back here if you see something weird. (If you want to keep the mod around, but disabled, you can just rename "mod_info.xml" and the game will ignore it.)

I don't have any UI modification skills at the moment. What I was considering is looking into the fairly simple "did I see you" calculation for attack sleeper Zs and see if I could make it use noise instead of light. I assume that a) this is not a unique idea and b) TFP already thought it through and discarded the idea and c) whatever I might come up with will be worse. But it will be fun to try.

Obligatory, for me: there is no cheese. Did you have fun? Good. Did you survive? Double-plus good. (I'm all in favor of the devs making the "did you survive" part harder and harder with each patch.) The scouts/screamers could be spawning due to base repairs, replacing traps, or normal forge-work/torches/other sources of heat. Any other zombie on the day after is probably just a biome spawn which was suppressed during the horde. The console (F1) will actually tell you when/why it's spawning things. It might offer clues. Yes and no. The wandering hordes are spawned in with a target position calculated near a player at the time the horde was spawned. Their AI task is basically to walk to that point as though they had heard a noise there. They shouldn't have an actual target on the player unless they see/hear you using essentially normal detection rules. Now, if you're in/around your base when the wandering horde is spawned, then their target spot is likely very close to you and if they see you they'll do their normal thing, including bashing down your base. Are you seeing behavior where you know for certain they haven't detected you and they beeline to your base and start bashing it? Check the console as soon as you notice one of these. It will show some info I think about the horde spawn.

In case anybody still cares about this topic, I've finished the Boid's Stealth Logging mod. I may actually publicize this one over in the modding forum 'cause it's kinda useful if you want to really learn how stealth works, IMO. It won't make you like how it works, though! https://www.nexusmods.com/7daystodie/mods/1819?tab=files The mod will log the following events to the console (with some supporting info if available): Player enters a sleeper volume Attack volume zombie tries to 'see' player Zombie targets player Zombie stops targeting player Zombie approaches a spot (due to noise e.g. gunfire or too-loud sneaking) Zombie approaches distraction (thrown rock/snowball)

+Backpacks/dropped loot bags, the supply plane, and junk turrets. So, sledge turret ought to count. Not SMG or shotgun turret, though, strangely.

Game ought not to pick a quest POI with borders intersecting a bedroll. If it needs to remove a bedroll it ought not to delete all player-placed stuff (or reset any/all POIs covered by the bedroll?). That's a crappy sort of bug.

That's fair. I think both "stealth is possible" and "the balance feels wrong" can both be true. What isn't true is "zombies auto-attack always in every volume". Unless maybe you are sprint-sneaking in daylight through all of them! Is sprint sneaking a technique that stealth players often use? Will balance be better if we can crouch-sprint through volumes undetected in broad daylight? I think maybe one of the big issues is that attack volume stealth isn't based on noise (and to be fair to Scyris he did say "no matter how quiet you are"). Players think (understandably) that it should be based on noise, especially with the sleepers hidden here and there and not even looking at the player. The stealth meter currently is useless I think at least in the context of the attack volumes. It's an amalgam of light and noise and one half of that amalgamation is irrelevant to successfully sneaking in an attack volume. Although current light level is an easy number to pull from the player data to calculate the "did they see me" numbers, I don't think it'd be too hard to use, say, the maximum noise volume of the player's crouched walk (or sprint) and do the same sort of calc with that. So if the whole warehouse is asleep and hidden, it's how loud your footsteps are that determine wakey wakey, not whether you're under an overhead light (which the sleepers can't even see).

For A20.1 they goosed acid in chemistry piles ("low" to "medHigh") and sinks ("veryLow" to "med", but there's a "veryLow" gate to even get to a chance for acid). They also added a new "loot chest bonus items" lootgroup which shows up in reinforced chests and the like. For beakers, in A20.1 they now have a chance to drop in Pop-N-Pills crates and also in the "loot chest bonus items".

You may want to read the description more closely. It's pretty useful once you have a supply of AP ammo. Multiple kills per bullet.

The XML implies that there's a different sound, but of course the actual .wav could be identical! <property name="SoundAlert" value="Enemies/Base_Zombie_Male/zombiemalealert"/> <property name="SoundSense" value="Enemies/Base_Zombie_Male/zombiemalesense"/> <property name="SoundHurt" value="Enemies/Base_Zombie_Male/zombiemalepain"/> <property name="SoundDeath" value="Enemies/Base_Zombie_Male/zombiemaledeath"/> <property name="SoundAttack" value="Enemies/Base_Zombie_Male/zombiemaleattack"/> Edit to add: I extracted the sound files and learned a) there are 3 different 'sense' sounds, 6 different 'alert' sounds, and 10 different 'attack' sounds for the standard template zombie male (there are variations and special sounds for some types of zombies i.e. crawler, screamer, demolisher) b) 'sense' sounds are obviously different; 'alert' and 'attack' sounds are quite similar. I can't see any but the most focused player knowing, in the midst of a group of zombies plopping out of ceilings & closets, which sounds signify a real targeting/attack vs. which are just alerted zombies coming to investigate. I actually think the game would play just fine if the 'sense' sounds were used for both 'sense' and 'alert'. You know a zombie is awake and aware - if it starts moving your way you'll know it's been alerted to a noise or whatever. Save the more vicious-sounding noises for real attacks.

Yeah, the numerous tests, accompanying screenshots, debug info, and faatal's own confirmation in this very thread put the lie to this myth. It is perfectly possible to stealth an attack volume. Copious evidence right here in this thread. (It has nothing to do with noise levels, though.) If the argument is that it should be easier, or require lower perk levels, to successfully sneak into every attack volume in every POI, that's fair. Maybe the balance isn't right.

Well, I can't say every single time I guess because I haven't done exhaustive testing of every POI. I've mainly been using warehouse_06 for recent testing, but they've been consistent in my tests there. The distance an attack sleeper can 'see' you is hardcoded to a range of 3m to 15m* though and in the example above I was far enough away (11.1m) to not be detected at my illumination and stealth skill. In a different attack volume, where the Zs are closer when I trigger them? I might get detected. So definitely, stealth is not an always-works thing, and it shouldn't be IMO. 3/5 was good enough to do okay in the ground areas of warehouse_06. Might not be in other POIs. But I think that's alright. I'll try to go through the entire warehouse to see how different volumes react. I actually do wish the Zs would shamble out even if they don't target the player. The game uses different sounds for when the zombies hear something vs. when they target something, which is an organic way to indicate the situation but hard to catch every time. I can't tell every grunt and groan from every other. Roland's idea of bringing back the eye icon is good, as an option or a mod at least. If the player has (and wants to have) a way to know if they're currently targeted, then having the Zs bust out, but not really have a target, would make for exciting duck-and-cover. *Kinda. I'm simplifying a bit.

I probably misunderstand the issue, but I think we've shown that a moderately-perked player (3/5 FtS) can successfully enter an Attack sleeper volume and not a single zombie will stir. What is the evidence of stealth failure that is compounded by having many/most POIs with Attack-style volumes?

Can you expand more on this idea? If you have awakened a group of sleepers (they are in 'active' mode), what is it that would cause you to be right on top of them before they can see you (if the room is lit)?

We play MP and stealth and the only perk we regularly disregard is Pack Mule.