Idea: Changes to default electricity. More realism/challenge?

[doughphunghus]

I'm not sure if this is the place to post "game ideas" and get them shot up/down or if this has been discussed before but...

 

The idea is:

Make POIs/items have all lights "off" by default (except the standalone lamps for POI navigation because..err...they have batteries in them).

Maybe not all POIs if it takes a lot of work (manual modification to each POI). If so, then just the "big ones".

 

It will now be dark inside a POI so you either go in by day and break out curtains/windows or carry a light. When you encounter a POI, you can find an obvious way to power it (a special block like find the fuse box outside, a non moveable generator, that maybe you can repair or put gas into, or bring your own banks/solar cells/generator). When you hook up your own power supply whatever in the POI that lights up, now lights up. Additionally, inside a powered POI, you could maybe tap into whatever fixtures were lit up if you needed to. Or tap into a non-powered one and power that "circuit" (like a single floor)

 

Some reasoning:

Currently in the game, there are lights all over the place that are naturally "on", which would indicate there is power to an entire POI or item (like a streetlight) but you cannot tap into them for power of your own items. It would feel more "realistic" if you could tap into them and run a wire to power something *but* this would also give you infinite power (because they are being powered by some sort of power plant... somewhere) and this would make using batteries/generator/solar for base power pointless. So having each POI "dead" and needing to provide power either at a specific point (power box, etc) or maybe just hooking up to a light?) would add a little more realism/challenge.

 

Additional thoughts:

- To make this work (it it even could, technically), I would imagine the existing POI's that have lights would not need wires to connect everything, there would be just some way to handle it behind the scenes. Just pointing out the POIs would not literally need wires to be seen internally. That would be cool though, esp for streetlights.

- This would give a penalty for "hanging around" inside a lit POI that's not raising the heat map with batteries (its either dark or you're burning up your power or raising the heat map with generator/torches).

- This would create a lot of incentive to use flashlights early in game.

- Make finding and using a POI for a base a little harder (have to light it up with candles/torches until you had enough resources to power things)

- Using a large POI (early in game) would be a lot harder as it would be dark. Additionally, it would be much harder/scarier to run around in the entire POI without default lighting on.

- This would make the "hard to find" solar cells very valuable, and gas much more valuable.

- Streetlights could be attached to the POI's nearest to them so when you power up a POI, the lights outside come on (and you're using up your power for them). In multiplayer this would be interesting as people would likely want to remove the outside lights before powering up a POI...which also kinda gives them away.

- You should be able to move/remove/turn on/of any light fixture you come across (that are functioning), and pick up generators/battery banks/solar cells.

- Since the game has a "wattage penalty" for using up power, if you tried powering a large POI like Dishong Tower with a single battery, it either would power a few lights on the ground floor or just drain the battery very fast. Maybe for large buildings there would be multiple places to tap into to power it (certain areas or floors). When you leave, you take your power supply with you if you brought it.

[doughphunghus]

Update.

I've been reading the forums, and some of the lighting discussions are rather old, so maybe things have changed, but:

- This idea (somewhat) has been suggested in the past.

- It appears (since most POI lights aren't manually turn on/off by default) the lighting for most default lights is baked into the light asset/block, so it's not available to access via "vanilla XML only" modding. It doesn't look like light intensity can be affected by normal XML modding.

- I've read that if you globally replaced the default light blocks POI's use with other blocks (lights you can turn on off) that there may be issues with block rotations in the POI's. Haven't tested it yet. Someone wrote a script to run against POI's to change their setting, which apparently works, but I was thinking more of changing the blocks in the game that the POI's use to all be turn on/off.

 

- It DOES appear that lights are much more "hard to see" at certain parts of the night. So maybe some sort of "eternal twilight" would be a halfway point of making default lighting more subdued. I guess teh Sun in teh game illuminates the indoors quite a bit even in a closed room with no windows.

 

Also: It appears some "overhaul" mods like True Survivial are working on "no lights in POIs" as well, but not "can power the lights back up" idea:

https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?38584-True-Survival/page198&highlight=weather+frequency

[Beelzybub]

I like this idea. It'd be cool even if they only did it to a few quest pois, where part

of the quest is to turn the electricity on.

[doughphunghus]

That would be interesting as the POI "resets" when you start a quest (and they often contain special items) so I imagine they have capability to make special quest POI's or have special blocks (like when the quest is for loot) that are replaced/spawned when a POI is chosen for a quest...so adding special lighting/wires for a quest POI may not be a stretch of the imagination.

[Pille]

If you're in a completely sealed room without light-source, it's still not really dark by day, even if the shadow option is set to 'Far'. At the same time, most POIs do not have enough working lights anyway to be effectively looted without flashlight at night. If they had a sufficient number of them, you would likely run into performance issue and would ruin the atmosphere in the POIs (if it's to bright there). So basically it hardly matters if lights are on or off. It also removes the atmosphere if the players don't activate the fuse boxes because some decently placed flickering lamps may give a prefab a scary touch.

 

I like the basic idea but imo the way the light works must first be fixed.

 

 

- It appears (since most POI lights aren't manually turn on/off by default) the lighting for most default lights is baked into the light asset/block, so it's not available to access via "vanilla XML only" modding. It doesn't look like light intensity can be affected by normal XML modding.

There's an official tool to edit the prefabs and their light blocks. "changing the blocks in the game that the POI's use to all be turn on/off" really terrifies me. Switching all lights to off without touching the blocks.xml is fairly easy. There are no rotation issues.

[doughphunghus]

If you're in a completely sealed room without light-source, it's still not really dark by day, even if the shadow option is set to 'Far'.

...

There's an official tool to edit the prefabs and their light blocks. "changing the blocks in the game that the POI's use to all be turn on/off" really terrifies me. Switching all lights to off without touching the blocks.xml is fairly easy. There are no rotation issues.

 

Interesting. I guess if the lights cannot be "wired up" to be turned on (either practically or technical reasons) then what I'm really looking for (wanting to accomplish) is likely a way to "turn down the sun" so its very dark in the POI's (and underground) during the day, and is absolute darkness at night (inside a POI...away from a window, etc. outside there could be moonlight). That way going into any POI is "dangerous" and you would go in with your own light as the indoors lights aren't that bright at night.

 

So, if switching all the lights "off" is relatively easy, or they're ultimately not that bright then the only thing holding it back being "more scary and dangerous" (for me) is the building penetrating brightness of the sun, which at present I can't control much.

 

Additionally: I guess a quest could still "turn the power on" to something. If not lights, then maybe some of the radio antennas! If you powered up, it would trigger a supply plane or something....somehow...and then stop calling planes after it was powered one time for awhile...hmmm. You'd almost need some sort of "mega capacitor" block that was uncraftable that you'd pump power into for...errr...days and then it discharged, called a plane, then explodes so it couldn't be used over and over. But now I'm rambling

 

Thanks for the info!

[doughphunghus]

what I'm really looking for (wanting to accomplish) is likely a way to "turn down the sun" so its very dark in the POI's (and underground) during the day, and is absolute darkness at night (inside a POI...away from a window, etc. outside there could be moonlight). That way going into any POI is "dangerous" and you would go in with your own light as the indoors lights aren't that bright at night.

 

FYI: I was able to make a mod to allow you to set "0 hours of Daylight" when you start/continue a game here and Claymore made one as well some time ago called "MORE OPTIONS"

 

I played with 0 hours of daylight and loved it. Lights are super dim and you don't just run around ignoring the zombies. And you don't just go into POI at all unless you have a light source. Its my new favorite way to play