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[MOD] Better Than Giant Bees: Hardcore Survival


FlowerChild

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I'm not clear what you mean as far as "hard" vs. "soft" gating - but I think I do understand now where you're coming from on this. Perhaps not my favored direction, but I can see how you're looking at it (viewing it as "gating ranged weapons" as opposed to "gating 1 slightly easier way to kill zed with its own pros/cons" vs "gating another even easier way to kill zed with different pros/cons").

 

Hard gating would be "you *require* x to access y" (like: you absolutely need ranged weapons to survive the city, or you absolutely need iron tools to break into a safe), "soft gating" would be more what you were talking about in terms of there being multiple solutions to gaining access to y (like "I can sneak into the city now with this bow or try to find a more powerful weapon first").

 

Specifically in BTGB, I'm using soft-gating on pretty much every biome other than forests, and the wasteland. All the others are of various degrees of difficulty, and it is left to the player to decide when they are suitably equipped. If at all possible, I'd like to eventually hard-gate (or at least harder-gate) the city so that it acts as the overall objective you're aiming for and the player just can't waltz in there at start and expect to have any chance of suriviving.

 

I tend to use a combination of both in almost all my mods. To my mind, players have plenty of freedom already in creative games, and what a lot of those kinds of games are really lacking is firmer gating of progress in select areas in order to give the whole thing meaning.

 

Like personally, I don't at all view access to the city being a right, but rather it being a privilege that should be earned, and otherwise it should be a place to be feared and avoided. I'd also ask: if that's not the case with the city, then where would it be the case? If you're not going to reserve that one area for the end game, what will you, and why do you think it's necessary that a player should be able to access it earlier? If there are always work arounds to gating, then what purpose does it serve?

 

I also think you should keep in mind with ranged weapons: they aren't just a combat tool, but they're also linked to the player's food supply through hunting.

 

Again, this is based on my experience playing the mod - I thought I stated that.

 

Apologies then. My impression from your previous messages was that you were playing your own mod consisting of various items you had grabbed from BTGB's .xml files. Given that, I thought it unlikely you had a good idea of how the whole thing ties together. If that's not the case, then sure, I'm happy to talk about your experiences.

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Hard gating would be "you *require* x to access y" (like: you absolutely need ranged weapons to survive the city, or you absolutely need iron tools to break into a safe), "soft gating" would be more what you were talking about in terms of there being multiple solutions to gaining access to y

 

Thank you for the explanation.

 

(like "I can sneak into the city now with this bow or try to find a more powerful weapon first").

 

Clarification: That is not what I was talking about. I wasn't meaning "getting into the city in stealth". I was referring to, at least what most of my experiences are like in the city... "combat, combat, combat - getting overwhelmed, run to a new location and attempt to get undetected in a corner somewhere for a few seconds to look at my map, maybe repair my primary weapon, and mentally access my supplies status without getting killed while in my inventory screen" --- sometimes in those moments there is a single zed coming at me that, if I could take him out quietly, would buy me an extra 30-60 seconds of time to breathe.

 

Note: I haven't actually gotten to that point with 1.36 yet - but I do recall being in that position more than once in 1.18. Per your earlier request I'm trying to curtail my feedback to what I have actually experienced - I just point out the above as you seemed to be thinking I meant something that is FAR from what I had intended.

 

Still may not be what you intend to include, but wanted to be clear as apparently I gave a wrong impression of what I was talking about by using a crossbow to take out a single zed while sneaking. In my mind the best city "experiences" are always a mix of heavy combat and moments to breathe -- but hate how in the vanilla game you can just sneak around in total, as there really isn't any fun to that IMO.

 

If at all possible, I'd like to eventually hard-gate (or at least harder-gate) the city so that it acts as the overall objective you're aiming for and the player just can't waltz in there at start and expect to have any chance of suriviving.

 

Something I'd very much like to see as well. I have some ideas on how, but most of my ideas thus far are waiting on content that TFP are still working on. I think the only idea I've come up with that is currently possible would be to make "city variants" of each of the zed types, and make them all a bit scarier - more HP, faster, longer reach, etc. Thus not only making it strictly harder form a number standpoint, but also from a perception standpoint -- if you're used to being able to one-shot a bloated zed with a shotgun to the head and all of a sudden you can't when in the wasteland, etc.

 

Like personally, I don't at all view access to the city being a right, but rather it being a privilege that should be earned, and otherwise it should be a place to be feared and avoided. I'd also ask: if that's not the case with the city, then where would it be the case? If you're not going to reserve that one area for the end game, what will you, and why do you think it's necessary that a player should be able to access it earlier? If there are always work around to gating, then what purpose does it serve?

 

Absolutely agreed, 100%. My desire for the crossbow has never been about "earlier" access to the city - as I would rather see it more gated off as well - but rather an additional late-game hard-gated item that gives options -- so that once a player has "earned" the right to be in the city, he has a little bit more choice as to how to handle it.

 

I also think you should keep in mind with ranged weapons: they aren't just a combat tool, but they're also linked to the player's food supply through hunting.

 

Not something I've forgotten. Particularly with the bolt-drop change we talked about earlier, I see the crossbow as just a late-game hard-gated version of the wooden bow -- enough to deal with rabbits a little more easily, and possibly deal with pig/deer if you want to take the risk (as a single shot won't down them, and the getting more than one shot in with the crossbow - especially one that drops - is a lot more difficult than with a gun... thus the choice, use a few uncommon bolts and risk letting the deer get away, or use the more rare bullets with a better chance of getting fed).

 

Again, just how I see it.

 

 

Apologies then. My impression from your previous messages was that you were playing your own mod consisting of various items you had grabbed from BTGB's .xml files. Given that, I thought it unlikely you had a good idea of how the whole thing ties together. If that's not the case, then sure, I'm happy to talk about your experiences.

 

I fear I may have given the wrong impression. To be clear:

 

1) I play BTGB on its own. It isn't the only environment I play in (obviously), but when I play it, I play it exactly as you have released it.

 

2) NOTHING in my mod has been "grabbed from BTGB .xml files". My own mod has some ideas that are similar to yours (maybe 20% - unless you include very generic things like removing dead animal spawns which we happened to come to independently), and the 100+ hours I played 1.18 of BTGB helped me shape those ideas - but most of those ideas I had before I even knew BTGB existed. The closest I've come to "grabbing" something from BTGB is when I was gating off antibiotics with a very different gate system to yours, I couldn't come up with a name for the intermediary item - so I used rawantibiotics. Based on your other communications, I am in the process of changing that item name - as I absolutely do not want you feeling that I am walking off with your work.

 

3) My pointing out what I saw in your xml file was not a matter of my "looking at what I can take for my own work" -- as a modder I always look under the cover at any mods I play with. Mostly just to learn, but also out of curiosity - sometimes also just because sometimes I see things, as checking other's code for anomolies is part of what I do professionally. It is not meant to be offensive, challenging, or in any way taking your work to call my own.

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[**** NEW RELEASE ****]

 

Version 1.4 of Better Than Giant Bees is ready for download!

 

Download Link

 

This release contains the following changes:

 

WARNING: This version of BTGB makes extensive changes to the probabilities of different biomes occurring and thus if it is used with existing worlds will likely cause big ugly seams all over the place where one biome is replaced by another. If this bothers you, it is recommended that you continue playing with version 1.37 instead. If you are starting a new game, or don't mind the seams, then 1.4 is definitely recommended as biome probabilities make a huge difference to how the game plays, and the previous values were resulting in a depressing lack of some of the rarer biomes.

 

-Changed the probabilities of various biomes occurring to increase the chances of the rarer ones (snow, deserts, burnt forest) appearing.

 

-Changed (further reduced) the size of forest "town" POIs, as they were still a tad too big on occasion.

 

-Changed (reduced) the health loss from dysentery 2 so you can survive it for longer, and increased the duration of dysentery 1 so you have more time to find a cure before things get desperate.

 

-Removed the rivers that surround all biomes. This makes the world feel far more organic, and makes finding water a more interesting problem, but unfortunately, I've yet to find a way to remove the bridges, so you'll still have "lined" roads at biome transitions.

 

Enjoy! :)

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Interesting, might have to start a new save to see how this looks without rivers. Y'know, I think bridges are a listed prefab, not entirely sure but I think you can replace them with nothing.

From another thread:

should be simple enough to make alt bridges with no content if thats the case, rg_bridge_45_01 & rg_bridge_straight_01 are what need changing

 

I think biome dithering is probably my favorite unplanned feature in recent builds, it adds a lot of variety and freshness to the landscape. However I think it could be better if the transition stretched out over a larger area. I wonder if it's configurable.

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I think biome dithering is probably my favorite unplanned feature in recent builds, it adds a lot of variety and freshness to the landscape. However I think it could be better if the transition stretched out over a larger area. I wonder if it's configurable.

 

Well, give it a try without the rivers, as it changes things rather dramatically. The transition area is actually pretty large without them, and I suspect it would get a bit weird if it were any larger as the colors of stuff like grass aren't blended like in MC or what have you, so there's quite a bit of stippling going on and creating geometric patterns in the blended areas.

 

I personally think it looks really good without the rivers, and had some downright beautiful moments earlier with stuff like sandstorms blowing into neighboring forests. Unfortunately, I think it may also do some weird things with roads on occasion, creating very steep slopes, but all in all, I think it's well worth the trade off, plus I'm downright sold on the gameplay benefits of not just being able to run to the nearest biome edge to fill up on water :)

 

It also *really* makes it tempting to nip into bordering biomes when you don't have a river there. I got taken out by a feral earlier tonight due to being lured in by the siren's song of a cooler sitting in a ruined building ;)

 

Now is probably an ideal time to start a new save btw, as I think I'm largely done making changes until the next version of 7 Days. I was putting off the biome changes until I got everything else done I wanted to, as I didn't want to mess up people's existing saves, but also knew that I really needed to tweak those numbers to get everything just right.

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Flowerchild I have been playing your MOD on a MP server that I have and the only thing that we don't like (I actually like it but I have others to take into consideration) is the no sleeping bags for spawn points.

 

Where and how do I add them back in?

 

Everything else is awesome...I tried to talk them into just building some small bases around the wasteland so that no matter where you spawned in there would be a base within a short distance, but I think for some of them that is just to hard as we have to wait to find certain skill books and such.

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Where and how do I add them back in?

 

Bah....wimps :)

 

If you take a look in blocks.xml and do a search on "sleeping", you should find a number of bits that I commented out. All will be marked with "FCMOD" which is the label I use to indicate all changes that I make. The comment I have attached should specifically identify what I'm doing, and if you uncomment all the bits related to disabling the sleeping bag functionality, it'll be restored.

 

If I had it my way I'd actually also get rid of the map and compass icon for last death position so that you couldn't just find your way back as easily, but that will likely have to wait until support for code mods comes along ;)

 

And yeah, you're right in that's largely there to encourage building of multiple bases to act as shelter when you respawn. I find the vanilla sleeping bag mechanics largely make death insignificant, which takes a lot of tension out of...well, pretty much everything.

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Thanks for the quick response....I did that and it added the beds in and I can pick them up and place them no problem, but the recipe for the sleeping bags/bed rolls is not in the game....when I type it in it does not show up.....is it gated with other recipes by chance to a certain book?

 

 

Not a really big issue as the beds still serve as a respawn point.....and they are kinda hard to find now that towns are smaller:)

 

On a side note....I noticed you mentioned reducing the sizes of towns because they where too big (I agree with that, as I usually get bored halfway through looting them because I have acquired tons of stuff) but I have not seen a single town larger than 2 buildings....is this intended or not.....also a lot of the buildings I find are garages and not houses....I would hazard a guess at around 50-60%....the only 2 buildings I have found together where two garages.

 

I like finding lonely houses in the woods....nothing like wandering through the trees and finding a house.

 

Also would it be possible to gate the campfire so that people are encouraged to eat the nasty sandwiches and canned food rather than just kill animals....it makes the canned food and such kinda pointless after day like 10ish.....this may also be an issue simply because I have a MP server and so we get stuff a lot faster than a SP game would....just a thought.

 

It could cause an issue with water but that is not such a bad deal as you could increase the chance of finding jars of water just a little to compensate....may not even need to do that. I found 4-6 jars in the first 15 minutes today.

 

 

Edit...I love the removal of rivers:)

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Thanks for the quick response....I did that and it added the beds in and I can pick them up and place them no problem, but the recipe for the sleeping bags/bed rolls is not in the game....when I type it in it does not show up.....is it gated with other recipes by chance to a certain book?

 

Ah yes, I believe I removed that as it was no longer relevant with the respawn mechanic removed. Take a look in recipes.xml.

 

 

On a side note....I noticed you mentioned reducing the sizes of towns because they where too big (I agree with that, as I usually get bored halfway through looting them because I have acquired tons of stuff) but I have not seen a single town larger than 2 buildings....is this intended or not.....also a lot of the buildings I find are garages and not houses....I would hazard a guess at around 50-60%....the only 2 buildings I have found together where two garages.

 

Forest POI are all uniformly small like that. You need to venture into more dangerous biomes to find larger POIs. There's a whole risk/reward thing going on there.

 

Also would it be possible to gate the campfire so that people are encouraged to eat the nasty sandwiches and canned food rather than just kill animals....it makes the canned food and such kinda pointless after day like 10ish.....this may also be an issue simply because I have a MP server and so we get stuff a lot faster than a SP game would....just a thought.

 

Animals don't respawn in BTGB, so I suspect you will eventually get your wish ;)

 

Out of curiosity, how are you guys killing the animals so early in the game?

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We have been killing the rabbits by running them into the sides of cliffs so they get stuck or into water so they slow down then hitting them with stone axes or clubs. Same with deer....have not seen any pigs yet.

 

We also dig long trench/holes in the ground 3-4x5-6 long then we will chase the animal until it falls in then jump down and kill them with clubs or axes.

 

Another way is to take wood logs and place them on the ground 2 high and make a V shape with them....then chase the animals into them...they get stuck and you can kill them.....had to come up with new ways without the crossbow and the bow is a pain.:)

 

Mostly we use cliffs and water.

 

It is easier to use these tricks with the rabbit than anything else as the rabbits run REALLY fast in a straight line.

 

Although I don't want you to think we have tons of food only tons of rabbit:)...They are everywhere they seem more common now than before...only seen 2-3 deer I think.

 

On another note....the burned out Corner Buildings near/in the dithering of the wasteland are really easy to get to without much challenge....there are lockers and coolers in most along with the sink...the sink give iron pipes and glass jars VERY regularly and I have gotten lots of other stuff....only had a dog get me once and a Feral chased me another (I lost him in a lake).

 

Is there any way to remove the buildings or to make the creatures spawn out in the dithered area...I have found that the dithered areas seem to have almost no bad guys in them.

 

I walked all the way around the wasteland and only had a few zombies show up and I just avoided those. Only when you walk in a bit and get to the Corner Buildings do any zombies start to really show up.

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I was also wondering if you could better explain to me how you get wellness back in BTGB and your food system....and what vitamins are for now.

 

When you eat foods of different types, you get buffs that will last 24 in-game hours and gradually increase your wellness during that time. There are buffs for protein (meat), vegetables, and starch (stuff like pasta and potatoes). Those three buffs can be gained in combination, so if you have a balanced diet, you'll gain wellness faster. So, if all you're eating is rabbit, it'll take you a very long time to gain wellness ;)

 

Vitamins are like a fourth food group. They give you a 24 hour wellness buff that's more potent than the others, and can also be gained in combination with them.

 

You should be getting buff icons for each of those when you eat different foods (unless you're sick in some way, like dysentery), but I'm not entirely certain those will show up in multiplayer unless the client's also have the mod installed.

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The buffs show up for all of us just was not sure what they did exactly.....was assuming that you had to have all 3 to get wellness back.

 

Another thing....I snuck down the road into the wasteland center city.....we just started over because editing the beds back in and updating the server seemed to cause giant cliffs all over the place....not sure why changing one file did that but it did what you said it may do if you use a old save even though it was a save with your mod installed.....anyway I digress on the 2nd day I snuck down the road that goes to the center city and I never encountered a single zombie...I made it into the city and looted 2 shotgun messiah stores and a working man stiffs then snuck back out.....is there anyway to spawn a feral inside each store so that it "guards" the store.....or maybe have zombies spawn on the road.

 

I have not tried it again yet so it may have just been a fluke one off thing but I am going to try again at some point:)

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Another thing....I snuck down the road into the wasteland center city.....we just started over because editing the beds back in and updating the server seemed to cause giant cliffs all over the place....

 

Are you sure that wasn't due to the 11.4 update rather than the mod? Because no, changing the recipe file or putting the bed functionality back in should not do anything like that.

 

Also worth noting is that I haven't updated the mod to 11.4 yet, so whether or not it is compatible with it, and whether that will cause problems, is entirely up in the air right now.

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No that all happened before the 11.4 update.

 

Also as of update 11.4 the world loads and only the chunk I am standing on loads in the rest is just a white void of nothing...any idea when we will get BTGB 11.4:cocksure:

 

Sorry, been occupied with the "1.0" version of KSP the past little while, as I also mod that game. Will get on updating this right now :)

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So I've been trying this out. Managed to get to day 14 but I think I'm throwing in the towel since the last horde included feral zombies and I still don't have any decent ranged weapons. One thing I've really noticed is odd zombie spawning sometimes they're there and other times I'll go through almost a whole biome without seeing any zombies outside of POIs (not sure if that's something to do with the mod or just buggy base game).

 

I like the concept for tiered biomes but I'm not sure I quite understand what I'm supposed to do as a player. Basically anything outside forest I need to be able to handle dogs which I can do with a decent melee weapon. The bees in the desert are a lot harder but they typically leave me alone. Seems like burnt forest and wasteland are totally out until you get some decent firepower.

 

On the other hand I don't feel like any of the biomes I have access to are going to give me decent firepower unless one of the biomes I can access has a chance for a tool shop so i can get metal tools (to break safes) or there's some other way of getting metal tools I don't know about (other than the forge obviously). In all my wandering I found 3 gun parts. I got the book to put gun parts together which would at least give me use of the blunderbuss but the problem is no gunpowder and until you get the ammo book you can't take ammo apart to get gunpowder.

 

I do really like the rareness of the aloe and goldenrod. It really felt like a bit of a quest to get together enough for a supply of bandages and goldenrod tea. Also the way you altered the quality system is way better than vanilla although I feel a little like the whole quality system is a boondoggle anyway.

 

Definitely had fun with it but ended up a little frustrated. Thanks for all the hard work!

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So I've been trying this out. Managed to get to day 14 but I think I'm throwing in the towel since the last horde included feral zombies and I still don't have any decent ranged weapons.

 

Wait...what? Do you mean feral zombies as in huge running extremely tough green dudes or just the regular ferals that know precisely where you are every night on the mod's recommended settings?

 

Last game I played I was up to day 50-something and hadn't seen a single of the former unless I got a little too greedy on the edges of wastelands. The latter I saw every night.

 

If it's the latter, well, not sure what you're doing out at night to begin with, and I'll utter my usual "I only support the recommended settings". If the former, then that's something I likely need to fix :)

 

I like the concept for tiered biomes but I'm not sure I quite understand what I'm supposed to do as a player.

 

I'd say explore, slowly scavenge, build up your abilities, and tackle the various biomes as you feel comfortable with them.

 

Primarily, try to survive. I'm surprised you're not naturally inclined towards it, as in a lot of ways, it's similar to playing nomadic in BTW's early game, which I know you were into.

 

On the other hand I don't feel like any of the biomes I have access to are going to give me decent firepower unless one of the biomes I can access has a chance for a tool shop so i can get metal tools (to break safes) or there's some other way of getting metal tools I don't know about (other than the forge obviously). In all my wandering I found 3 gun parts. I got the book to put gun parts together which would at least give me use of the blunderbuss but the problem is no gunpowder and until you get the ammo book you can't take ammo apart to get gunpowder.

 

Pretty much everything comes from books and learning the relevant skills, as I've almost completely eliminated finding entire tools or weapons, or what have you in favor of the player having to craft them. You can get books in pretty much every biome. The more difficult the biome, generally, the greater the building density, and the greater the number of "special" buildings (like stores), so the more likely it will be that you find skill books.

 

EDIT: Yikes...ok, I see what happened from looking at the .cfgs. Yeah...those were actual big green rip your head off ferals. Will fix for next release :)

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[**** NEW RELEASE ****]

 

Version 1.41 of Better Than Giant Bees is ready for download!

 

Download Link

 

This release contains the following changes:

 

-Updated the mod to version 11.4 of 7 Days to Die.

 

-Changed (increased) the average size of forest POIs slightly, as it was generating relatively useless ones too often. I must have been getting quite lucky in my previous tests with it.

 

-Fixed problem where feral zombies were spawning as part of some of the 7 day interval hordes. That was absolutely not intended :)

 

Enjoy! :)

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So I've been trying this out. Managed to get to day 14 but I think I'm throwing in the towel since the last horde included feral zombies and I still don't have any decent ranged weapons. One thing I've really noticed is odd zombie spawning sometimes they're there and other times I'll go through almost a whole biome without seeing any zombies outside of POIs (not sure if that's something to do with the mod or just buggy base game).

 

 

Hey there. Some of the things you've noticed are issues with the basic 7dtd.

 

1) Odd zombie spawning mechanics have definitely been a 7dtd staple from the start. Even about a week ago in vanilla I spent a game day and night in a wasteland looking for POIs (which didn't exist) without encountering a single non-horde entity.

 

2) Maybe it's just coincidence, but for whatever reason in the vanilla 7dtd alpha 11.x week 2 and 3 hordes have always had the most ferals in my encounters. I finally made it to my first alpha 11.x day 49 horde that actually spawned, and was disappointed to face multitudes of dogs and cops, but no ferals in any form.

 

Edit: Damn you're a fast worker, FlowerChild.

 

Thanks

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Edit: Damn you're a fast worker, FlowerChild.

 

Hehe...well, I was already done updating to 11.4 and was about to upload when I saw Sarudak's post, and thus was able to quickly fix the problem and release, so it was more a matter of timing than anything else :)

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Ah ok. I thought the feral was intentional as some kind of timer hanging over your head to get your butt in gear and I hadn't been moving fast enough. I definitely was enjoying the nomadic play style and was not complaining about that at all as I said I really was enjoying the greater differentiation between biomes. I just didn't understand how I was supposed to be able to handle ferals on day 14.

 

So was finding iron tools before full forge never intended because that was one of my favorite bits of the game. Having some set of iron tools but not all of them gave you an interesting set of capacities that made each play through unique (just like how you get a different set of books each game). Also having to economize your iron pipes for all the different demands: tool repair, repair tool (hehe), cooking grill, and now blunderbuss. That was a lot of fun. As it is I'm sitting on 50 or so pipes and really have nothing to use them for.

 

If the intention is that I'm to keep looking for books until I get a forge and then move into the iron age I'll give that a shot I just assumed that the previous paradigm was still in effect. :)

 

Edit: Oh and wow an update. Thanks for fixing that so quickly!

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Ah ok. I thought the feral was intentional as some kind of timer hanging over your head to get your butt in gear and I hadn't been moving fast enough. I definitely was enjoying the nomadic play style and was not complaining about that at all as I said I really was enjoying the greater differentiation between biomes. I just didn't understand how I was supposed to be able to handle ferals on day 14.

 

Yeah, definitely not by intent. What happened was that I adjusted mob distribution for the wasteland biome in one of my latter releases, and didn't notice/remember that the same spawns were used by some of the 7 day interval hordes. So, the ferals I threw into the mix, also accidentally got thrown into the night hordes.

 

Sorry for that, totally my fault, and thanks for pointing it out :)

 

So was finding iron tools before full forge never intended because that was one of my favorite bits of the game.

 

It was intended at the time, but I've since changed my approach to such things as frankly I found it rather depressing when I found an item that wound up bypassing the progression as a result.

 

You can still find the odd iron tool, especially in the specialty shops found in the tougher biomes, but not the primary ones that you really need to progress.

 

Edit: Oh and wow an update. Thanks for fixing that so quickly!

 

No worries man! Sorry again my mistake resulted in such a downer to an otherwise enjoyable experience :)

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