doughphunghus

Just a thought: and i love "randomness" in my games so im biased. I want to die (sometimes) even if i play perfectly, as it feels more real. Thats why i only build in POIs and see how it goes (always badly!) i think part of the argument is this: if all zombies behave/track you essentially the same, then you only have 1 type of defense to fight against. Now, there are demolishers and screamers, vultures (an animal though) etc so they are all not "the exact same" zombie clone (and therefore ultimately the same defense strategy every game) but the pathing is being argued to be essentially "too good" in that its using a basic strategy to get to you... so after a handful of games you learn the zeds "homing in to get you" strategy, and therefore kinda know how to defend against it rather easily, even with harder settings. additionally: TFP seems to like the current zed fighting strategy/AI, preferring it over others they have made (like a16) given this (and its stated sort of like this above) it would seem logical that if *most* zombies followed the current TFP zombie AI (they know where you are and hunt you) BUT a small fraction of them did not follow that same strategy (say: 10%), it would add a touch of randomness to the game. Your base might be "perfect" and maybe even AFK possible, but that 10% being "not following the default AI playbook" might be enough to ruin your perfect base. basically: every amount/layer/level of "randomness" in zed attack strategy is another amount/layer/level of base design and defense you have to account for, and to me this seems is the argument for having some zeds be "dumber": its that bit of "the unknown zed strategy" that makes it harder to design an impenetrable base. Of course, saying "a16 dumber" implies a lot of really dumb zeds (spinning, etc) but i feel the "desired zed attack strategy" when referring to a16 is mostly "they just can be anywhere, just hitting walls, eventually making holes" and this is a but terrifying if you dont know where all the zeds are (or did not design your base for being able to see everything/the walls/nooks/etc. and defend those positions while your traps/kill tunnel/zone catches most of them. Its actually kinda terrifying to be attacked by zeds and when going back to get ammo/food... you hear zeds in weird and unknown places...oh no, is a zed digging under my safe place? Is that 2 zeds.. oof, i didnt put a window there because.... my 1 strategy i had to defend against is the kill box 10 blocks away..arrrgggh! I cant fight these zeds right now! another thing brought up was essentially "super smart" ones. Once again: a small percentage of them being spawned would probably be fun, because "you just don't know" whats going to happen (as an advanced played). A new player likely wont be able to tell the difference if there were 1 zed strategy or 100 unique ones. Personally i like the spider/jumpers and wish they could jump really high... only sometimes. Just enough so i never know if any jumped over my walls.. personally i think "the less predictable *some* of the zeds are, the more fun the game gets. And sure: play the game long enough and you can probably figure out the zed strategies and work around it.... so.... why not add more (small percentages of) strategies/randomness as the game progresses? Like maybe under 4 blood moons: all zeds have todays AI, but then from (and on) you throw in some "dumb" ones that simply do not walk to the kill box. Maybe they just dig/hit random things. Then, blood moon 15: a few super smart ones sometimes spawn that love going for doors or forges, etc. i think it would he hilarious to be fighting zeds and then "boom" your motorcycle/4x4 explodes because 1. You parked it underground, 2. A single (looks like any given normal zed) "destroys vehicles before attacking player" zed spawned and you ignored it because you didn't know that was a thing (new olayer) or (advanced player) you stepped away from cautiously watching that area to fight some demolishers, had a drink, and kinda forgot about it. anyway: i think? You can los the current zed AI to just be "block destroy" mode, and i hope with bandits we might get AI to put in zeds to be "super smart" (example: district zero overhaul already has the robots open unlocked doors, which is great as many POI doors are unlockable) so maybe with mods it will at least be possible to have many zed attack strategies that vanilla does not implement. Yea, it may be a mod, not vanilla. But i really wish in the end, TFP adds a bit more to the AI of the zeds, even if part of that is "putting some dumb ones in with the normals, and some smart ones" and theres just 3 strategies to defend against. also: maybe the upcoming bandits are the answer? Like "blood moon yeah its a pain but my base is built for it" but pandits are a different strategy to fight against "not on blood moon" and different enough that any existing "normal zed" kill box/tunnel of the base is completely worthless for bandit attack (this 2 strategies to defend against)

i dont watch a lot of streamers, normally when a new alpha drops and i want to see people "experience" the game. Usually i try to find people who are not familiar with the game just to watch them fail basic tasks (with screaming and running and dying, etc) but... I agree: too many have a giant avatar which i dont get. Maybe its because they paid for it and want to get full use out of it? usually they have several other things covering the edges of the screen so you cannot see what day/time they are on, other players joined. Sure, its "their game" but all the clutter usually makes me go "nah" unless they are suffering in game so much (dying to 1 zed) and actually asking for help/advice. i guess, to be constructive, i hope TFP does the UI update in a way you can more easily move ui elements around without special ui mods (the edge elements: day/compass/time/health/players joined/xp) so streamers can fit it all on 1 screen.. with their giant avatar . also: if tfp could release the "in game character avatars" or even "zed avatars" for streaming i think that would be cool. Literally you would have your avatar be you in game character or zeds... it would prob be fun to watch. And maybe easy "avatar scaling" could be an option for them?... else people are just going to be playing huge jen/rekt/etc.

having phone issues, cannot move cursor below quote...nor delete quote..anyway.. more poi ideas: Poopie Pants High ("Home of the Fighting Slugs!") Poopie Pants University Poopie Pants Corporate Training Headquarters? More "large amounts of glass" for buildings, or literally "a place that sells glass". Because its fun to shoot and be attacked with glass breaking everywhere. Maybe glass art sculptures in the parks, etc. but also: some "remnants turned into living quarters for survivors": take any existing bombed out building or remnant, add some ramshackle border/fence, add flags, a bed, etc. as if they were living and defending it. Like use wood boards and metal sheets to cover holes, etc. tree houses (there is only 1 in vanilla i know of, in the backyard of a house) "Corpse processing pits/areas." Like existing "medical tents" but filled with corpses and dumpsters, etc. put them in cities and maybe 1 per town, if at all. Lots of crawlers. Only 1 is in vanilla (a military base) and theres that "corpse bags on a trailer" also. more graveyards. Like "small ones near lone houses" with fresh graves. Make them look quickly made, no fences, etc. More "road damage/construction/holes in the ground. A lot of buildings are torn up, yet the roads and area around it are all "not hurt". The vanilla "road work with giant excavator in the hole with water in pipes in it" is a good example. crashed vehicles not on the roads, like "in the ditches" or just "in the middle of nowhere". The navezgane "car wreck at bottom of ravine" is a great example. Its fun to find remnants/cars away from the literal road surface.

Favorite "dream" poi would be... the fratellis hideout from goonies. And yes: down the fireplace, past chester copperpot, all the way to the well, all the way to the slide and the pirate ship, in the ship, the loot room. Booby traps. edit: apparently its called the "lighthouse lounge"

It would be cool if this is true, and if they can spawn "anything" and drop a few dead chickens/bandits in the mix to have some zeds already chomping down on them when you run into them.

Maybe it's talking about adding even lower tiers, like "concerned" (has hand on chin, brow furrowed) or "whimsical" (forward moonwalks at you) personally "mutated" would be my hope, with another layer of "unique attacks/mutations" vs "a different color than green ferals, has more health obvs". Another thing i was hoping to see some day was "spawn in with missing arm(s)" or gooey holes/parts (like get shot in midsection with shotgun is guys hanging out...or just spawn with guts out, spawn with no eyes, etc.

yeah, i like the "mostly gloom and doom" too because (mostly) it makes it harder to see far (for planing where to go), and enemies come out enough to see only when they are very close and you sometimes don't know its a horde, and also you have less time to prepare for them. And driving gets harder. And its a more "horror feel". There have been times it was so dark/foggy/rainy i have had to just sit in a garage and crouch, slowly starving while i can barely see a few shadows of zombies shuffling very close by, but i know there are more of them somewhere because of noises. And theres a wolf too but its simply too dark. Anyway . For the other issues: Interesting. Hmm, there is not a biome or trader level config thing i have seen... but then again, maybe there actually is something special about them. For the snow biome, i might be able to figure that one out unless it has something do do with the "whiteness of the snow" or something similar that makes the snow biome "special" (like falling snow does something, or the ambient light or something is adjusted for that biome). for the "kicking in" aspect: i have noticed that for "weather stuff" there does seem to be a delay. Like if you start a game with "all rain" it takes a bit for the rain to start, its "default blue skies" for a minute or two. Biome transitioning has usually a tiny bit of delay for weather/effects, but its more like 5 seconds. So im leaning towards "something special about traders" i did not (or cannot) account for. thanks for the input! Ill poke around and see if i can figure the snow and trader weirdness out. edit: ah, you meant "looked removed and then stays and only changes back to miserable skies after being in trader.". Hmmm

Yes please! Bloodstain blocks (flat on one side like road decals or letters) or something would be a nice way to set a tone for some areas.

Thanks 😊Now I really hope it works like it should/as desired. It shouldn't conflict with any of those as it's only modifying the biomes. Good luck and ill check it out!

Updates: - Added mod: "Ambiance: Sky Is Burnt Forest In All Biomes" per request by @Arez here: miserable sky mod request NOTE: This mod is likely not very compatible with my "Weather: Core" mod. but there is an untestd possible workaround (by renaming this mod) listed in this mods readme file. Also: the smoke effect in the burnt forest is not added to all biomes, just the sky spectrum so its grey and smoky looking. - Small patch to "Lights: Harder To Craft". I believe a recent vanilla patch? changed how some meshes were referenced. Something I read on the forums. - Merged Github pull request by 👋IronSharkInc for refactor to "Ailment: Infection Is Random And Quicker". Mod is more efficient in how it works (less random rolling), and also should work more as advertised with respect to infection percent chances as I never knew much about storing variables in buffs so I didn't do that with the original version. - Did some recoloring/editing of my main mod page (see first page in this thread) and added some likely compatibilities/incompatibilities with the District Zero v2.0.1 overhaul, which I am currently "play testing" with several of my mods added.

@Arez: First attempt at the mod is here: 7D2D-Doughs-Mods-a21 main page. the mod is called "Doughs-Ambiance-SkyIsBurntForestInAllBiomes". Let me know if its what you were trying for or if you think it needs tweaks/fixes/etc. I just did the basics/obvious stuff I think needed to be done and only tested for like 5 minutes on the navezgane map with no other mods loaded or weather like rain/snow happening. I'm not sure how all the weather/bloodmoon, etc will conflict or affect it. If you load it with my "Weather-Core" mod it likely will not work well (Weather-Core will override it), but I put notes in the README file in the mod on how to possibly load them both together, but I did not test it.

- The thunder sounds awesome. - The zed color variants (for me) do make a difference, it's not just eye candy. I think with the old standard colored zeds, once you get used to knowing the zeds sounds/movements the "surprise" element when you see a zed wears off as you start just seeing their color (like "yellow" for example) and you know immediately which zed it is, and how to respond to it as a threat/target. Now its a bit more mental processing to figure it out, and thus more of a surprise. It did seem that the old colors were spawning more often than the new ones though? I would love to know/see more "special clothing" variants like the camo shirt I saw the moe? zed wearing. - Small point: I notice opening a dew collector resulted in some... very non dew collector items like the magazine. Dew collectors in the wild are fairly rare so I would want them to yield filters or water/parts to make dew collectors... though maybe that's the drop when they are harvested. but still: just put water/sand/etc in the loot group? - A trophy block appears!! - I really like the balloons and "strung lights" look in the wedding? poi. I assume "strung lights" is a new block but if not that was a very creative design/build. It seemed there were more POI lights on (in general in an area, in the distance, etc) than usual so I hope "lighting" is less of a drag on the game and more lights than before will be available to be "on" in pois/bases without FPS issues. Additionally, turning "on" the dance floor poi didn't seem to trigger a bunch of zeds, it was just "for fun/effect" and that was a nice change from the normal "push button, prepare for swarm".

I ran a quick and dirty test and it appears this is probably just the "spectrum" of the wasteland sky, which looks to be: <spectrum name="burnt_forest"/> I added this spectrum to the forest biome in biomes.xml and it looked similar, as if the sky was very smoky/hazy/grey. Anyway, I might (if time is available) be able to throw something together this weekend that might work, basically adding or replacing the spectrums of all biomes with the burnt forest one. The only thing I'm not sure of is that there are "subbiome" weather specific spectrums, basically defined when its rainy or stormy. I assume those would be dark (enough) as well and would need to not be changed, but it may change the tint of the sky when it rains/storms.

I have not done this in awhile, but I believe you can do something like this. Note: it may not be the best way, and may not work at all, just how I would try. Essentially: have the game replace the question mark blocks with some other block that you can then then delete/replace with normal methods. 1. you need to find (or know) what blocks the question marks are in your prefab. Maybe use admin tools to determine what blocks the question marks are (maybe point at them, being up some menu in the editor that lets you see block types?) or maybe "load up the prefab, then check the game log to see what blocks its erroring on that are blocks it cannot find"? 2. Go into the games files/main install directory and go into this folder: Data/Config. In this folder there will be a file called "BlockUpdates.csv". I believe this is the file that is loaded and used when you do the "prefabupdater loadtable" command @Riamus mentions above. To be safe, first make a copy of this file somewhere, so you can put the original back if needed (fyi: a Steam "Validate files" will also put back the original file)" Then: open the file (with notepad or excel or something). The contents of the file look something like this: OLD Block Name,Combined Shape Name,Converted On,Status,NOTES awningBlock,awningShapes:cube,Alpha.20.0.122,Replaced, awningCNRFull,awningShapes:rampOutsideCornerFull,Alpha.20.0.122,Replaced, awningCNRRound,awningShapes:cornerRound,Alpha.20.0.122,Replaced, awningCNRRoundTop,awningShapes:cubeCornerRoundTop,Alpha.20.0.122,Replaced, If you know what blocks are "question marks" in your POI, you can add them to this file. Lets assume a question mark block in your POI was named "woodenBlock123". If you searched for it in this file, odds are it would not be in the file (because it was not replaced in your POI = there was no line saying what block "woodenBlock123" should be converted to). So; you need to put in the file a line that has "woodenBlock123" and the block you want to convert it to. But... what block to convert to? its likely (as @Riamus indicates) the old woodenBlock123 block "...may not fit the POI as well" if a conversion/update block was listed. BUT: you just want to have a block there, so you can go into your POI and delete/replace it manually, so in theory you can choose "any" block you want... but might as well make it something sorta reasonable (like a plain wooden cube block or something) so maybe it "works well enough" and you don't have to manually replace them all. It's kinda your call on this based on what you know about your POI. Anyway... Searching the file, I found this line, which is probably the "standard wood block" woodBlock,woodShapes:cube,Alpha.20.0.122,Replaced, so I'm going to copy that line, make the change below, then add this new line to the file to replace block "woodenBlock123" with "woodShapes:cube" woodenBlock123,woodShapes:cube,Alpha.20.0.122,Replaced, Then save the file (make sure you save it back as the original "csv" format), and do the steps in the posts above to load the POI/replace the blocks, and you should see that now all the question mark blocks where "woodenBlock123" were are now "woodShapes:cube" blocks, that you can either leave, delete, and/or replace. NOTE: I had this happen to a POI in a previous version, I think certain "fence' blocks were not in the file. I did a replacement like this to put back the "exact" same new fence block definition and it was wonky as yeah, the new blocks were angled differently, and I had made rotations the the old fence blocks. Basically it was no longer a nice looking fence, especially at the corners. But with "blocks I could now delete manually" I cleaned up the corners and just made some changes where things were weird and left the rest. If you really love your POI and want it "perfect/as designed" it can be a bit of work, but I kinda like having some quirks left over so this method works well enpugh for me

Maybe: Make "solder" out of it. Maybe silver for tier lower tier things, gold for higher. like... - make a forge recipe to use the smelted lead with a silver chunk to fabricate a "bar of solder".? Maybe reuse icon for forged steel and recolor it a little - use workbench to turn it into ... strips of solder. ReUse any thin long object as graphic. - make "tree sap" a drop from chopping trees. Reuse fat graphic, color it orange - use chem station? To turn solder strips and tree sap into solder wire? Or "soldering kit"? Not sure of icon to reuse for this. Maybe "repair kit" ? then make that final part an ingredient to craft things.