zztong

One option towards realism (just spitballing here) would be to replace gasoline with alcohol and then remove gasoline from salvage. Leave alcohol only to be distilled by players or bought from traders. You could even have different levels of fuel to express different qualities of production, age, methanol vs ethanol, etc. It might even give folks a reason to buy into farming on a larger scale and a greater use for Super Corn.

Oh, interesting. I never would have guessed years. I guess that explains a number of things about the vanilla POIs and the established traders. I was thinking either days or months. I guess it all depends on what you pick as a reference. The game coughs up usable gasoline via salvage, which doesn't have a shelf life measured in years unless it was all stabilized. The game also still has a working electrical grid (because POIs have lights) which I think would collapse in a matter of days unless zombies have an interest in keeping it fueled, managed, and repaired.

Thanks for the review. I don't tend to make "dungeon crawl" POIs as that's not how I play or think about POIs. I also think breaking into POIs is normal.

With that experience, I don't understand your criticism. You know there are different software development methodologies and project teams can tailor their process. You should know not to get hung up on version numbering/labels and that iterative approaches can be done without Agile sprints. They've got a hybrid approach going. They've been clear about their process and it isn't unprofessional. We could potentially translate their approach into the terms you'd like. For instance, you might say the version known as "A20" is currently in Alpha testing, with Beta testing (A20-EXP) expected to begin in a matter of weeks, followed eventually by the Gold version of A20 in probably a matter of months. They have the luxury of not having external interfaces and deadlines to meet so they can create contingency time on demand (up to the limits of their funding.)

My impression of the defaults, the results, and things the creators have said. Yes, you can certainly make lots of things happen with the settings. My opinion, if you will. Nothing more.

Interesting. KingGen (my opinion) really likes cities so chews through more POIs. Nitrogen (my opinion) spent more time on a balance between city and the country, so a bit less dense. It sounds like vanilla is less dense than that, which really helps the ratio. But also vanilla (A19) doesn't always use all the POIs at its disposal. For instance, you can end up with maps that have no skyscrapers.

Oh yes, with vanilla RWG you're probably right. My mind is still anchored in the RWG, Nitrogen, KingGen A19 competition and I've probably not seen a vanilla RWG map in a great many months. I think we were still seeing different Pump-n-Gas POIs across the street from one another. I think there's only one Poopy Days POI.

I agree that while A20 RWG promises significant and exciting advancements, that players are still going to eventually find it repetitive. The human brain is pretty good at finding patterns. I suspect even the randomness introduced by Parts will feel the same after a while. Several months back I did some analysis. Using a variety of map generators, I was seeing 8k maps with 2,500 to 3,500 POIs being placed depending on the number and size of cities desired. A19 (vanilla) has around 500 POIs. A20 is adding how many new vanilla POIs... around 200... so 700 total? If the map needs 2,500 POIs, then you're looking at roughly 2,500 / 700 = 3 to 4 copies of each POI to perhaps 3,500 / 700 = 5 copies of each POI. Let's throw in the CompoPack. Yes, this is going to assume that all the CP POIs are placeable. Many are quite large and do not place well and/or are very thematic/unique and may get excluded for matters of taste. For A19 vanilla (~500 POIs) and CP 47 (~500 POIs) we get around 2,500 / 1,000 to 3,500 / 1,000 = 2.5 to 3.5 copies of each POI. For A20, let say for the sake of discussion CompoPack 48 is approaching 700. Now we're talking maybe 1,400 POIs total. 2,500 / 1,600 to 3,500 / 1,400 = 1.7 to 2.5 copies of each POI. (Better!) So, take a step back here. Even with hundreds more POIs, we're still probably going to struggle to have more than two semi-unique cities per map. Trying to reduce repetition by increasing the number of POIs make sense, but numerically speaking it seems to me we need to add more POIs than TFP and the community has created to-date. Other things that will make a map more repetitive will be: increasing the number of cities increasing the size of cities increasing the size of the map The first two bullets often have me trying to think of ways to make the Wilderness more of an attraction for play, but the city is so appealing to players. Cities have dense-packed POIs, so there's a high concentration of loot and zombies, plus that's where you find the traders. The high tier POIs are usually in cities too. Players don't really leave the cities, except maybe to mine, but then they don't usually go far. The last bullet I think is worthy of some discussion too. If you go to a 16k map, you've quadrupled the map area. The need to place 2,500 POIs turned into a need to place 10,000 POIs. Assuming the goal would be to make unique cities on 16k maps then... well... maybe AI needs to be making POIs. Certainly, and this will lead to some interesting placement issues. Finding two Fire Departments next to each other is undesirable. How does RWG know that two different Fire House POIs should not go next to each other? Finding a bunch of fast-food restaurants next to each other is normal. Finding a bunch of McDonalds next to each other would be silly. How does the RWG know which POIs are in the same chain? It can know not to use the same POI, but functional equivalents are a challenge.

I tried to run KG with that configuration, but I didn't get the same error, probably because I don't really have all the POIs you have listed. Maybe comment out chunks of POIs and see if the error goes away? Then you'd know if it was a POI line that had a problem and you can start to narrow it down. I wish KG would tell you the line of the config file it was parsing. Or, maybe it has completed parsing by then.

I find fast map generation speed is handy when I'm making test worlds. When making new POIs, I frequently need to make a quick map to see the test POI placed in a variety of settings and to test how it works. But when it comes time to make a world for a game, I'm completely cool with the generator slowing down and doing a better job. From memory, IIRC there was a conversation about roads where there was some mention of how KG keeps its speed up by only looking for paths every so many blocks. (I think somebody was trying to get a road to cross a natural bridge.) I'm not sure why I felt like saying that. I guess it just seemed like a possibly useful observation.

Well, Zombies want brains and I'm all out of those. I'd like to feed the chickens but they just run away. They must not like cornmeal.

Y'all control the code. Make all landmines appear and act like air blocks during the streamer weekend.

2.5 Days To Stream, 7 Days to Die ... It could be more catchy. We need a "D" word to replace "Stream."

You might be able to get close to what you want with existing configuration options... You can change the size of the protected area provided by a Land Claim block. You can configure the game to allow you to have more than one Land Claim block. You can configure the area protected by a bedroll. You can configure the amount of damage the AI can do to blocks. Set the Land Claim Size to something large. I've no idea what the maximum allowed would be. If you set it via the "New Game" window, 71 is the largest preset they've given. If there is a max and its not big enough, let yourself place more than one Land Claim Block. If its bedrolls that suppress spawning, then you can change that radius too. Then, build walls around your perimeter to keep out the random spawns. Then you can have some fun of managing the maintenance of your walls. If you find the Z's are doing too much damage to your walls for your tastes/goals, you can change the BlockDamageAI setting so that Z's do less damage to blocks. serverconfig.xml <!-- Land claim options --> <property name="LandClaimCount" value="1"/> <!-- Maximum allowed land claims per player. --> <property name="LandClaimSize" value="41"/> <!-- Size in blocks that is protected by a keystone --> <property name="LandClaimDeadZone" value="30"/> <!-- Keystones must be this many blocks apart (unless you are friends with the other player) --> serverconfig.xml <property name="BedrollDeadZoneSize" value="15"/> <!-- Size (box "radius", so a box with 2 times the given value for each side's length) of bedroll deadzone, no zombies will spawn inside this area, and any cleared sleeper volumes that touch a bedroll deadzone will not spawn after they've been cleared. --> serverconfig.xml <property name="BlockDamageAI" value="100"/> <!-- How much damage do AIs to blocks (percentage in whole numbers) -->

Or, as an alternative suggestion, let you drop a bedroll onto a bed to claim the bed. They could perhaps change the appearance so that the bed looked like it had a sleeping bag on it. Then, they could let you retrieve the bedroll off of the bed just as you would retrieve a bedroll on the ground.

You have Army bases. All of the branches of the armed forces in the USA fly helicopters. I don't know that there's a Heliport POI. I'll think about that. Switching gears... A significant challenge I see with an Air Force Base POI is the length of the runway for airplanes (not helicopters) which is what I'd expect to see at an AFB. The length of the runway at the AFB I was stationed at many years ago was 2 miles long, which is 3,129 blocks. The AFB would effectively be a 4k map. You're going to end up scaling it back, pretty much like how the distances between 7D2D cities is way too small. How long is a reasonable scaled back runway? 1,000, 500, 250, 100 Blocks? If you make a Wilderness POI 250x250 Blocks, the placement will generally cut into mountains and make a bunch of square cliffs. With A20 and Tiles, maybe the AFB becomes a custom type of city. Then you'll get a nice level patch of land integrated into the surrounding terrain. However, it doesn't appear you'll have control over how the Tiles are selected and arranged, meaning a runway spanning multiple Tiles might not actually fit together based on RWG choices.

I've done this at pretty much at all game stages, even with just a primitive bow and a club. At the early game stages, one rank in the skill that lets you move faster as you reload (Run and Gun?) and one rank in the skill that lessens the stamina drain from running (Cardio?) are all that is needed to kite the horde, but even they aren't entirely necessary. You'll just get to do more shooting and less running with them. Basically, you back away from them in one of these directions: NE, SE, SW or NW and the horde will fall in line behind you. Keep firing as you back up. When they get close, turn and run -- you can outrun them in light or no armor. A little coffee helps. At higher levels, and with better weapons, you just get to do a whole lot more rock and roll. Being mobile with the M60 and 4k ammo is pretty fun. Eventually, once you get this approach down, you can end up with a hybrid approach, where you use POIs as impromptu places to make a stand in some bottleneck until it becomes unviable, then you go mobile again. The downside to this approach, while fun, is that it generates a lot less experience than those folks in elaborate horde bases can get. The upside is it can be more entertaining.

It's Elwin00's suggestion. I don't have anything invested in it. I'm not even sure it would yield a significantly different, or improved, experience. And, what you suggest is the default. This is a forum. We discuss to discuss, I guess. It just seemed clear to me that with the right interpretation, his suggestion could be largely implemented using existing game mechanics. That is, the game continues to place wandering hordes as it currently does, but the decision of when to do that changes from being time-based to being based on some hidden movement mechanic. As for the issues you raise, do people complain today about being unable to see newly placed wandering hordes from upon high? I've no idea. I've not seen it, but I only play on one community server. If you say so, I believe you. Does flying a gyrocopter force the game to spawn or despawn zombies? Certainly, depending on your relative altitude and distance to POIs you can even trigger Zombie Volumes to populate. Does proximity to the ground matter for a Gyroscope and spawning a wandering horde? I've never tried to study it. I'd guess the circumstances should be the same with, or without, Elwin00's suggestion.

I can empathize. I sometimes get tired of maintaining a horde base and that's one reason I don't always build one. Have you tried taking on a horde in the open? It is quite doable, though the experience comes slower until you really have the gear and ammo to "rock and roll." The various mobility/reload skills become really handy. An 8k map generated by KingGen typically places around 3,250 POIs. If the average POI has 15 Z's, you've got around 50,000 Zs to track. If you use the CompoPack, it would be 100,000 Zs or more. Yes, technically possible in terms of storage (location 3 integers, type of Z is 1 integer) is like 7k to track them all. Making them mobile on a strategic map means looping through each one every so often. If you make that frequent then the game will suffer. If you want them all to move within each of their POIs, like from room to room, then you're doomed. The game can't keep every POI in memory. That's why only a region around players is relevant. Taking a step back, easily 99% (and more) of that has no relation to player, so to what effect is it worth tracking that many Z's? I think the eventual and planned feature to have a few wandering Z's within an active POI might help out here. Your second point I cited (and referred to in the post before this) does seem possible and perhaps compelling if it leads to more advanced events beyond not having a wandering horde show up behind you. I dunno. Just my opinion. Regards.

I think the gist of the idea was that the game's server could track the location of several "wandering horde" markers as they move about the game map and perhaps a count of the number of zombies it represents. That's basically 4 integers of storage and a little CPU to update the numbers every once in a while. After some short period of time, the server moves the marker some reasonable distance and perhaps adds a few zombies. As it moves around and the number of Z's increase, perhaps the server decides to "split" a marker into two, up to some maximum number of markers, like 8. When a PC and a marker get near each other, the server can then translate the marker into a wandering horde. Anyways, that's what I envisioned his suggestion to be. Not necessarily more Z's than the game already instantiates, but some underlying reason and pattern to wandering hordes other than the game concluding it is time to place one near a PC. That said, I wonder if the end results would be very similar, unless the markers provided the possibility of other kinds of events. For instance, perhaps when the max number of markers is full of zombies, a horde night is triggered. Or, perhaps the markers are all attempting to converge on some location (or POI), which might trigger some event? At this point I'm just riffing on what I think the theme was from the original post.

I'd like to be able to turn off the thunder and red sky so there was no hint of notice given. I'd like to be able to randomize the start time too, that way you don't just look around at 10pm every night. Other than that, the randomization settings work well. I tend to take on hordes in the open, so getting caught away from base isn't really a problem.

I believe that is a Nitrogen feature. I could be wrong.

I'm not part of the KingGen team, but I suspect they'd want to know some details, like the stack trace for the error and the configuration you're trying, such as a sample line where you added the min and max. Your "error about float or something" sounds kind of like an unexpected type cast. If so, then there might be some value in your configuration file that it was hoping was in a different format. (Maybe text where a number should be?) Based on your description, I'm curious. Did you take something like this... abandoned_house_03,21,16,28,-1,2,burnt_forest/snow/pine_forest/desert/wasteland,wilderness/city/town/rural,residentialold,, ... and make it A or B...? (The difference is 1 comma) A: (incorrect) abandoned_house_03,21,16,28,-1,2,burnt_forest/snow/pine_forest/desert/wasteland,wilderness/city/town/rural,residentialold,,1,2 B: (correct) abandoned_house_03,21,16,28,-1,2,burnt_forest/snow/pine_forest/desert/wasteland,wilderness/city/town/rural,residentialold,1,2 ... as if you just added 1,2 to the end then you gave it too many parameters. There were already enough commas and you just had to fill in the blanks. If this was the problem, and you fix it, I've no idea how it threw an "error about float or something."

I don't think there are many Decorations out there in mods. I could be wrong. Size would be a good indicator. My traps are 3x3, my tents are 2x3, IIRC. There might be one tent that is larger. Most TFP Decorations are a single block. You could experiment with zztong_Storm_Cellar_01 which I have marked as a POI, but it is potentially small enough that you might try it as a Decoration on level ground. I don't think it will work out well, plus it would be weird to just find a random Storm Cellar off in the wilderness. For A20, that Storm Cellar will become a Part for farm POIs... or at least that's my plan since I don't have A20 I cannot work ahead to have something ready to go with an experimental release.

I wouldn't put the Tents into your KingGen config file. While they were built in the Prefab Editor like a POI, they're really intended to be placed as decorations in the biome.xml file. The same is true of my Hunter's Traps. Those tents are tiny pup-tents. As a decoration you'll come across them in the wilderness and sometimes in settlements. If you make them a POI, they'll chew up space that could have gone to more meaningful content. The biome.xml file in my modlet will take care of placing them for you even with a KingGen map. I think this is because decorations aren't part of world generation.