zztong

Perhaps a swimming bonus is the set bonus for not wearing any clothes.

That is fun. I play that way a lot. Just take on the horde in the street. It's a good time. You can even do it with a bow. Bring coffee. I recommend the trait that lets you reload on the move.

The web tells me there are 33 swamps in AZ. I don't know any of them personally. Perhaps all/some/many are man-made and the pictures don't necessarily give me a creepy remote bayou feel, but maybe there's enough to say "sure, let's do a swamp biome" ... ?

I will sometimes play what I call a "Sprint." The idea is I want a quick game that I can play in a night or over a weekend. I make a world, start the game, use godmode to teleport myself to a corner of the map, then turn off godmode. My goal is to get to the opposite corner of the map in some amount of time, often 2-3 game days. I want the time to be enough that I need to worry about food/water and face a tough choice about what to do during the night -- do I hunker down and hide, or do I try to make progress. There can be other interesting choices. For instance, do I spend time looking for a cooking pot? Hunting while traveling is easy enough, but being able to cook the food and boil water is handy. Where do I find water? If its the Vanilla game, how much time do I spend searching POIs for water? Do I want to spend time looking for better tools? What skills would you take that are different than normal? Is Iron Gut more useful now? Maybe reduced stamina loss from running would be handy. If you want a longer spring, spawn in, try to reach all four corners of the map, and then get back to the starting point -- kind of like if somebody inserted you via helicopter, you're scouting, and then need to get back the LZ for a pickup. Give yourself BDUs and maybe a gun with a couple of clips of ammo, maybe some rations.

Oh, so you're in the World Editor, not the Prefab Editor. I don't know very much about the World Editor. I never really use that.

While that would be handy and nice, I can't decide if it is a reasonable expectation to have documentation for something still in development. YES -- because even their own team needs it. NO -- fixing it would require constant rework delaying future releases. MAYBE -- assuming you ever plan to have such documentation, maintaining it is perhaps easier than writing it at the end? I do recognize that it makes breaking into this space much harder. The reality today is, unless you just want to make a quick POI and then move on, find a mentor. You can be productive reasonably quickly by watching videos, but there are lots and lots of related lessons. I started with Genosis' videos -- they were great for starting ~A19 -- and then got lots of advice from Stallionsden and the CP crew related to optimization and errors, plus Prefab Editor tricks and tools beyond the basics.

When you say "the Editor", do you mean the World Editor or the Prefab Editor? For the Prefab Editor, little bits go out of date for each version and the POI-RWG interaction options change too. It kind of takes a community of folks with similar interests to pass along the knowledge. Talking to those folks in Discord keeps me up-to-date. If it relates to the Prefab Editor, feel free to DM me. Otherwise, the CompoPack's #prefabber-hangout has been quite active with POI developers.

Dead? Has it even started yet?

You basically get that if you don't skew POI bias and weight in rwgmixer.xml, though it really comes down to which Tiles are selected and how many POIs of what size and district fit onto those Tiles. You can have POIs that can only land on a certain Tile, and if that Tile only gets selected once, then RWG might face an overabundance of choices for a few spots. That's normally rare -- RWG usually faces a shortage of unique POIs -- and have to use duplicate POIs. That's for POIs. I'm not aware of bias/weight or an attempt to "level" the placement when it comes to (Settlement) Tiles. RWG appears to just pick randomly from among the Tiles that meet its immediate need -- "I need a Country Town Corner" -- and this works for Vanilla because they only tend to ship 1 Tile of each type (there are a couple of exceptions). But when you throw in a modlet that adds a bunch of Tiles, you see the randomization sometimes go heavy on a specific Tile and doesn't actively attempt to include each Tile at least once in the world. And, of course, it doesn't need each Tile type in the same amounts. For instance, it doesn't usually need the Downtown Cap tile, so if that's the source of the only 100x100 Downtown POI marker, then POIs of that size may not show up. That would be handy. Like the weight/bias settings, you'd want to go easy on restricting most of the POIs or you'll probably start to end up with empty lots in settlements. That is, save the setting for a few POIs if you're dealing with Vanilla numbers of POIs, but if you get up into the CompoPack numbers of POIs then you can be a bit more liberal with that kind of feature and not get empty spots. A feature that would be handy for some worlds, and overhauls, would be the ability to mark a POI as a "Story POI" or "Unique POI" such that it only got placed once, ever. Again, you can't go crazy with that setting or you'll end up with empty spots on a map. But if you did that with a few (say max 5) POIs it would work out great, assuming that a supporting Tile got used. -- That's the complication. If a POI is required, then a supporting Tile for it is required. How does RWG figure that out?

My understanding is... The rains in game will fall mainly on the plains.

Ah, thanks. I guess that gives you more biome tiles to reach the desired percentages requested by the user and as a result the biomes on a map might not be as obviously blocky. Oh, that's excellent. I missed the burnt forest enough that I made a small one manually on a custom Gateway Tile. There had been a few times I'd painted that biome back onto a map in a world's biomes file just to have it around. Something that just occurred to me to ask is that if Stamps in modlets were going to be supported again? I have a couple of stamps in my modlet and they don't seem to get used in A21. The feature worked for a couple of different types of stamps in A20, though other types threw exceptions.

I'll take this conversation as an opportunity to express if I thought RWG had a gap, it is when dealing with an overabundance of Tiles. The bias/weight system I think handles an overabundance of POIs, but bias/weight does not affect Tiles. Thus, when RWG is given a large selection of Tiles for a specific District, it doesn't take into account how many times it has previously used each Tile.

I could be wrong, but I believe RWG's "bias and weight" feature should accomplish similar if you don't mess around with them to much. It will also prioritize placement of higher tiers over lower tiers, keeping your lower tiers from filling up all the space. This is handy because there are fewer higher tier POIs and people hate maps that are short on higher tier content.

You might say that, but I would phrase it otherwise. The process of random world generation is capable of much more randomization, but the amount of material available to it to use is limited. For example, the Vanilla game comes with 47 Tiles, essentially 1 of each type (with few exceptions). If RWG needs a "Country Residential Corner" tile, you're getting "rwg_tile_countryresidential_corner" for certain because that's the only choice available to RWG. Assume you're making a Vanilla 8k map ... RWG might use that tile 12 times. That means the little garage on that Tile appears in your world 12 times. That Tile also demands some POIs be placed... So for that tile, RWG has to try to find 4 POIs of size Extra Small (25x25) as well as 7 POIs of size Small (42x42) that are tagged as "countryresidential" to put onto that Tile. If that Tile appears 12 times on your map, then RWG needs 48 XS POIs and 84 S POIs that are tagged as "countryresidential." The game only comes with 62 POIs that have that tag, and some of those probably aren't either of those sizes. You can either have duplicates or empty lots in your Country Town. RWG will use duplicates. Again, assuming you're talking about an 8k map -- If you want to eliminate duplicate Tiles, then you probably need 12 more Country Residential Corner Tiles. If you want to eliminate duplicate POIs in the Country Residential district, then you probably need around another 80 POIs just for Country Residential. I feel for you. I looked to world generation starting in A19 and concluded the biggest need was world variety and that numbers of POIs was the answer. Then in A20 with the advent of Tiles, I concluded Tiles and POIs was the answer. That's driven the development of my collection of Tiles and POIs -- numbers. Try to keep the quality at an average level, and address the numbers. The numbers are staggering. I doubt we ever reach having enough Tiles and POIs for an 8k world to be completely unique. Throw in the CompoPack if you really want to attack variety as that's something like 2,500 POIs. It still won't be enough. You either need to thin out the number of cities and wilderness POIs, shrink the map, perhaps both, or start cranking out the content. For reference, counting the number of POIs with a "countryresidential" tag: zztong@ZZMonolith:~/7dData/Prefabs/POIs$ grep "name=\"Tags\"" *.xml | grep "countryresidential" | wc -l 62

What does this mean? I'm confused by the word "tiles" as that is also an element to city building, basically 150x150 POI-like things. RWG had been dividing up the world into 150x150 plots for some gain. These "biome tiles" sound like something other than that...? What's the new size? That is, I get it is X/4, but I don't know what X was and I suspect 150/4=37.5 makes no sense...?

Assuming you're talking about using just Vanilla content... You could maybe do 1 City, 1 Country Town, 1 Western Town but you still might run short of houses for Residential in the City. In the Wilderness you could spread everything out. I think you'd have to place everything by hand. It's a question of math. For each City, you have some number of Districts. For each District, you have some number of Tiles. For each Tile, there are certain POI markers to fill depending on the specific Tile. There aren't enough Tiles to avoid repeating those, so you're going to get some repeating Tile content. It's amazing how thin POIs can get when you subdivide them into Districts and Sizes that make them eligible to be on Tiles. If you start adding custom POIs you can begin to alleviate the repetition, but you're going to need lots and lots of POIs and Tiles to fill an 8k map with entirely unique content. I suspect Vanilla plus The Community hasn't made enough POIs yet to do that. (And The Community has made lots and lots of POIs.) Traders are easy to make unique. There's usually 10 of them. Trim the map back to 5 traders and they're unique.

Agreed. There's also no reason for a Dew Collector to need a filter. It should collect murky water. I'd also argue a Chemistry Set doesn't need a filter for a water recipe as it probably includes a way to distill water. The game is off in its own water reality that borrows a little from actual reality.

True, we are short on technology gadgets as placeable salvage. I have a number of portable battery units that recharge off of solar panels. They have lights, making them kind of the modern equivalent of a lantern, but with outlets that recharge tools, computers, and phones, power radios, whatever. Then there's the equivalent for a house, like a Power Wall, for example. Regarding EVs, they're easily mixed up with gasoline powered vehicles in appearance. It's the trappings that go along with EVs that I miss and some projection towards how things might be in 2033. My own EV is 11 years old. I charge it in my garage, but there's no charger block nor any good generic block and texture to use to make a home charger. There are no public charger blocks. Those things are in my city today. The solar panels in the game look dated. Away from appearances, rigging up a small windmill to recharge batteries that power an EV is far more believable than a player refining gasoline from oil shale. For that matter, distilling methyl or ethyl alcohol to make fuel for an engine makes more sense for using a gasoline/diesel engine along with some mechanic skill to make the vehicle conversion.

Yes, I look at the world and see a lack of renewable energies, electric vehicles, etc. -- less so than I see in real world 2024. But the game is an alternative history, so for whatever reason the 7D2D world is 2010 in the year 2033.

With a normal sleeper, you see them standing there. When they awaken they become active and you see their animations. With a "casket sleeper", I think you'd see a casket. When the sleeper awakened (like normal or if the casket took damage), the game would replace the casket with an open casket and place an active sleeper appropriate for the volume. Backing up a little, when the game decides to populate a zombie volume, it selects which sleepers to place. If some of the possible sleepers are "casket sleepers", then if they get selected the casket would appear closed because it is full of a sleeper. If the "casket sleeper" wasn't selected, the game could choose between an open casket or a closed but empty casket.

Sleepers are a block. They get placed when their zombie volume gets activated. I think it would be cool if there were sleepers that looked like other objects, from which the sleeper would emerge. A couple of us were talking on Discord today that it would be cool if a zombie could emerge from a closed casket. I think a zombie emerging from dirt would be cool. Right now we build armoires around sleepers, but we could have a armoire from which a sleeper emerged that didn't require surrounding the sleeper. You could maybe have a sleeper get out of a car, or pile out of the military truck.

Agreed. I believe I suggested (once upon a time) a variant that resembled the store signs like "Pop-n-Pills", "Shotgun Messiah", and so forth, but without any logo. The other thing that goes with a suggestion like this is that the text a POI creator puts on the sign should not get deleted when a POI is converted to a new version of the game, which is a problem with the current writable player signs.

RimWorld as well. I'd like to think 7D2D might get there when they turn their attention to Steam Workshop integration.

I would say: The Farming where the seeds stay planted. (I put that back with a modlet.) Carrying water from water sources. (I put that back with a modlet.) Some old versions of POIs. (I add them back with a modlet, but keep the updated ones of course.) Generally speaking, everything I miss is still possible. There are some old RWG outcomes that I would appreciate having as an option: Custom stamps had promise but they didn't all work and don't seem to work at all right now. A single central city does sound appealing. I'd probably rather be able to specify exact numbers of cities, towns, country towns, western towns, rather than the vague "few, default, many" choices.

I added a recipe that lets me craft an "Unfiltered Dew Collector" that produces Murky Water. There's a recipe to add a filter later if you want to get a regular Dew Collector. These are in addition to letting me carry Murky Water away from a water source like a lake or river.