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Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!


madmole

Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!  

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  1. 1. Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

    • A18 Stable is Out!
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    • :)
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Hmmm...a bit of a dead board tonight considering A18 was released a few hours ago. I thought you'd all be thanking TFP's. Too busy playing it already?

 

Nice try but if A18 is released to the public then this will happen on a Monday.

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We are aggressively fixing bugs at this point, so hopefully it will be fixed before exp.

 

Hi Faatal. Glad to hear your team is bug squashing. Assuming you are the programmer that deals with zombie AI, I have a question for you: Is it intended behaviour that zombies should know the layout of a building without having line of sight?

 

I will give you two examples:

 

Example 1:

I'm on top of a roof and a pack of zombie dogs spot me. Instead of trying to bight through the building I'm on, they break down the neighbour's door, run up stairs, breaking several other doors, make their way into the attic, break through the roof, walk across a plank from the neighbour's roof to me.

 

Example 2:

I'm in a simple block shaped based on horde night without windows, and all the zombies are focusing on the door. I place a barb wire block in front of the door, and they all move away from the door and choose the same wall block to start attacking. I place a barb wire block on that block (that they cannot see from the outside), and they all move to a different block and so on.

 

These were A17.2 scenarios. I would assume that this is not intended behaviour because traditionally, zombies don't have xray vision, and don't have the mental capacity to avoid traps.

 

I have seen it being mentioned (I think by Roland) that some sort of random behaviour will be (or already has been) introduced that should mean that not all zombies behave like they did in the given scenarios. Is that the intended fix? I hope not. I really don't think any zombie should behave that way.

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Hi Faatal. Glad to hear your team is bug squashing. Assuming you are the programmer that deals with zombie AI, I have a question for you: Is it intended behaviour that zombies should know the layout of a building without having line of sight?

 

I will give you two examples:

 

Example 1:

I'm on top of a roof and a pack of zombie dogs spot me. Instead of trying to bight through the building I'm on, they break down the neighbour's door, run up stairs, breaking several other doors, make their way into the attic, break through the roof, walk across a plank from the neighbour's roof to me.

 

Example 2:

I'm in a simple block shaped based on horde night without windows, and all the zombies are focusing on the door. I place a barb wire block in front of the door, and they all move away from the door and choose the same wall block to start attacking. I place a barb wire block on that block (that they cannot see from the outside), and they all move to a different block and so on.

 

These were A17.2 scenarios. I would assume that this is not intended behaviour because traditionally, zombies don't have xray vision, and don't have the mental capacity to avoid traps.

 

I have seen it being mentioned (I think by Roland) that some sort of random behaviour will be (or already has been) introduced that should mean that not all zombies behave like they did in the given scenarios. Is that the intended fix? I hope not. I really don't think any zombie should behave that way.

 

Hi Hotpoon. Just to explain to you my knowledge about how pathing AI works, as it can answer example 2. Imagine a grid across the distance between you and the zombies, and each grid square has a difficulty level attached to it. So a hill might be difficulty 5, a jumpable stone block might be 7, a tall block they can't jump over could be a 10. The pathfinding is done by calculating the least amount of resistance between you and them. If you have a wall between you and the zombies and you place something else between you (even if they can't see it), they can choose a different path to get to you.

Pathfinding is already relatively CPU intensive, as it has to calculate this several times a second. Now add that 7 days is a 3d world, so it has to calculate height patterns into the grid. Basically, to include sight and non-sight differences would make it even more intensive to calculate.

 

Example 1 is more likely that they follow your scent. The reason the zombies chose the door to bang on first in your second example, even though it might be just as strong as the walls, is because it favours your 'scent' (known as breadcrumbs in pathfinding).

 

So both behaviours are intended for the purpose that anything more will eat up more CPU usage.

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I love that miracle that happens soon after that.

I do as well brother! :)

I'm just asking for an OPTION that would have more of a concrete presence of rules where it would be hard to put in CM and do these things like changing the time for convenience sake. One reason why I don't like fast traveling in MMOs is that it breaks emersion but if that's an option I'd be an idiot not to use it. I'm not telling you to remove console command as your beer analogy implies.

I understand what you're saying. When I was an admin for a server for a couple of years I can honestly say I never once abused the rights because, well I like a challenge. There will always be admins that abuse those powers and thats just life.

They pay for the servers or hire others to do the admin work but again the server owner paid for the server so if said admin wants to cheat they basically pay for that power. Now having said that, I have been on servers where they have rules listed and I have caught admins abusing there own rules via admin rights.

 

What does one do, never play on that server again. Over time that server numbers will drop and that server will die. Admins need that power in order to run a server, believe me you.

I would turn on God mode and fly mode whenever I was doing inspections and or stalking someone to catch them cheating. The best advice I can give is look for a reputable server so that you will have peace of mind. ;)

If you are honestly talking about your self, I would have to agree with Madmole. You gotta learn self control my friend.

 

Honestly, I don't see what this "feature" has brought to the game except zombies digging through stairs and zombies bothering me when I'm mining resources.

It makes the game more challenging and if I'm being honest, gives me peace of mind knowing other players cannot hide underground anymore as I never go underground. Now I'm not saying my peace of mind matters at all, for it does not. Lots of players do not like that change and I completely understand that and I'm sure TFP do as well, maybe that is why Madmole hinted at....I honestly do not know but we shall find out when A18 drops. Cross you're fingers that maybe TFP have created an option, perk, book or something that eliminates or helps mitigate this machanic. Personally I hope not but many do and its understandable why. :)

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Hi Hotpoon. Just to explain to you my knowledge about how pathing AI works, as it can answer example 2. Imagine a grid across the distance between you and the zombies, and each grid square has a difficulty level attached to it. So a hill might be difficulty 5, a jumpable stone block might be 7, a tall block they can't jump over could be a 10. The pathfinding is done by calculating the least amount of resistance between you and them. If you have a wall between you and the zombies and you place something else between you (even if they can't see it), they can choose a different path to get to you.

Pathfinding is already relatively CPU intensive, as it has to calculate this several times a second. Now add that 7 days is a 3d world, so it has to calculate height patterns into the grid. Basically, to include sight and non-sight differences would make it even more intensive to calculate.

 

Example 1 is more likely that they follow your scent. The reason the zombies chose the door to bang on first in your second example, even though it might be just as strong as the walls, is because it favours your 'scent' (known as breadcrumbs in pathfinding).

 

So both behaviours are intended for the purpose that anything more will eat up more CPU usage.

 

Hi ZombieHorde

 

Interesting what you say about about example 2. If that is the case, they might not be actively avoiding the barb wire simply because it is barb wire, but even so, it's not great that the AI knows the block difficulty level without line of sight.

 

In Example 1, I never went into the neighbour's house - I nerd poled up to the roof, so they weren't following scent. The neighbour's house was a sealed, untouched POI.

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As a Server admin for quite a while now, things Server Admin powers let me do to make the game more fun:

 

I spend hours flying across the map, restocking the roads and various POIs with cars for looting.

I fly through the walls on POIs and put random chests filled with POI appropriate goodies hidden where people wouldn't normally look. The bottom of a lake, the top of a mountain, inside a cave, behind the walls, etc.

Minibike shows it is right in front of a client that isn't there? Teleport and Spawn a new one in for them.

Have a community area with a bunch of player bases. Community Traders can be built - any style and a trader can be spawned in after we build it.

Want a block that can only be pulled from CM for decorative purposes for your base? If it has no real effect on anyone else - Sure, I'll spawn in that shorter tree, etc.

Horde night over early but players still looking for action? Spawn in a few wandering hordes or screamers to keep it going.

Base or trader got damaged by some hacker? Determine the coordinates and restore a backup of that chunk (Just remember to have your region files backed up hourly).

 

Just be mature enough to only use them when filling the admin role and then shut it back off.

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what the command I would love to have a better fov?

 

If you hit F1 before your game loads in, and paste sg OptionsFieldOfViewNew 100 in the console and press enter, it should set your FOV to 100. You have to do it every time though. I have been bitching about this for a while too.

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I get the point. I don't share it in full. Default is nice. Options are good. How hard (psichologically cofoundery beliefsystem speaking) would be to implement a tiny option like that? Maybe I'm barking at the wrong Duke. Shawn is busy right now. I'll try again in a few months lol.

 

Maybe dressing up as Zd Moe and jumping over opened hatches would summon him.

 

You'd be better off reading some self help books so you can control yourself instead of petitioning for useless features. We're not making the game difficult to access for some .00001% minority who can't keep their hands out of the cookie jar.

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Is there any chance the LCB offline modifier bug is among the 56 MFs left to squash? Would love to see that working as designed.

Would love to play A18 without it, too, but still...

 

There is no design or bugs for it. We'd like to hear (Not now) a collective list of wanted LCB features from you guys for 19 so we can finalize that.

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No. Zombies can't spawn out of chunk range, so if you really want a lame safe underground base, start digging down from the highest mountain peak.

 

I'm one that hates underground bases as well, still though I've been telling others to do exactly what you said. Glad to know I'm not the only one that plays this game above ground :)

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Hey Madmole. While I loved the new powered draw bridge triggered by a motion sensor, I wish that you used a different type of block to start the bridge. This 45 degree angle is simply too steep to work right.

 

I didn't know the name of the new 4 meter ramp blocks. I can redo the video for youtube once the garage door is textured, that was a quick preview.

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I'm just asking for an OPTION that would have more of a concrete presence of rules where it would be hard to put in CM and do these things like changing the time for convenience sake. One reason why I don't like fast traveling in MMOs is that it breaks emersion but if that's an option I'd be an idiot not to use it. I'm not telling you to remove console command as your beer analogy implies.

 

Yes you are. "Make it hard". No thanks, why should we ruin the experience for normal players who wouldn't cheat because they know it ruins their experience. I keep repeating we could make it hard, and you would still cheat, because all you would have to do is exit to the menu and enable cheats and restart the game and cheat. So no matter what we do, you will need to address your self control issues and recognize your behavior change is the feature you need.

 

We want to focus on bandits so we can't just do these random requests that yield no gains towards our goals.

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Ah, those points make sense. What wouldn't make sense is that just because I'm the admin, I get to cheat and you don't. Now watch how superior I am to you as you die to my special gaming talents!

 

Yes, I had a 'friend' like this back in the day.

 

Happens on a lot of servers and games online. I saw it in Rust, Ark, even Quake back in the day with aim bots etc. Best option is to know the server owner so you know no shenanigans are going on.

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