Awful zombie spawn positions

[JCrook1028]

3 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

Minimum requirements on steam also say you need 2GB dedicated graphic memory and a dual core with 2.4GHZ. Really needs an update, in the forums and on steam.

 

 

 

My bad. I really thought 4 was the minimum.

[Roland]

8 hours ago, Boidster said:

It is likely an intentional setting by the POI designer, as I discovered with the house_old_mansard_01 POI. The sleeper volume can be set to "attack" as soon as you enter the volume. Stealth does not apply whatsoever - as soon as you enter the volume, they spawn + wake up + attack.

 

You can experience it pretty quickly if you check out the house_old_mansard_01 poi. It's in the PREGEN maps and probably in any large map. The configuration of the rooftop sleeper volume will pretty much make it mandatory that the zombies pop in (assuming you are looking at the rooftop as you climb the ladder).

 

I agree that it is a bug, but it's a "this is working as designed, but the design is suboptimal" bug, not a "this is broken" bug. I showed above how a small change to that specific POI (nevermind the dozens/hundreds of others that might have similar situations) can make the zombie spawning more natural and impossible to "pop in" as long as you are following the path.

 

I'm convinced this is not a hardware or driver issue, at least not in POIs with sleeper volumes configured certain ways.

I personally think that some peppering of the attack-when-activated sleeper volumes is not a bad thing. Stealth shouldn’t be 100% effective all the time and an occasional situation where you have to adapt and change things up can be good and in no way invalidates the stealth perks people have purchased. I’m not saying you were claiming this but I’ve seen plenty of posts of people complaining that sometimes zombies attack immediately no matter what you try to do stealth-wise and that somehow makes playing stealth pointless. 
 

As for that roof, I bet that if you wrote what you did here as a bug report showing the screenshots of the sleeper volume and how extending it one block down made it so zombies didn’t appear in player sight, there would be a ticket for that made for sure. The devs do not want zombies spawning in the view of players so finding specific areas and being able to point to the cause and reproducing a fix is a pretty compelling report. As other spots in POIs are found those should be reported as well. 

[pApA^LeGBa]

@RolandIt´s fine when you can´t stealth everything. But it´s again such an extreme measure, middle ground, ever heard of it, TFP? You enter the RedMesa and everything in a huge area wakes up. Same for the outdoor shooting range.

 

I avoid those POI´s, it´s just bad game design that really puts you out off immersion in those two. The end of the RedMesa also seems like a desperate attempt to create difficulty by waking up a lot of Z´s in close quarters. Others where you have small rooms and they wake up no matter what you do are fine. It just shouldn´t become too much, otherwise you have a few skills and items that are pointless.

 

 

[Roland]

One huge area in Red Mesa and one shooting range where the designers probably wanted to create an arena battle situation and then intermittent rooms in various POIs is too extreme and makes taking stealth pointless? We’ll have to agree to disagree about that. 

 

I get that not every player would want to play an arena battle and so would hate those POIs but that hardly makes taking stealth pointless. Even having one section in every POI that triggers an immediate attack wouldn’t make taking stealth pointless and those kind of sleeper volumes are not as common as that by a long shot. 
 

My criticism of the system would be to randomize the attack volumes so that they can happen anywhere infrequently so that you can’t memorize when they are going to happen. But making it so that if you take stealth you can always enter every sleeper volume undetected would make exploration too samey. 

[Boidster]

7 hours ago, Roland said:

I personally think that some peppering of the attack-when-activated sleeper volumes is not a bad thing. Stealth shouldn’t be 100% effective all the time and an occasional situation where you have to adapt and change things up can be good and in no way invalidates the stealth perks people have purchased. I’m not saying you were claiming this but I’ve seen plenty of posts of people complaining that sometimes zombies attack immediately no matter what you try to do stealth-wise and that somehow makes playing stealth pointless. 
 

As for that roof, I bet that if you wrote what you did here as a bug report showing the screenshots of the sleeper volume and how extending it one block down made it so zombies didn’t appear in player sight, there would be a ticket for that made for sure. The devs do not want zombies spawning in the view of players so finding specific areas and being able to point to the cause and reproducing a fix is a pretty compelling report. As other spots in POIs are found those should be reported as well. 

Completely agree about the attack-when-activated volumes. They don't bother me at all. Well, I mean they do bother me what with all the abrasions, lacerations, and broken bones, but as a design element they're fine, given the direction TFP has taken POIs in general.

 

I'll copy my stuff over into a bug report, good idea. After thinking about it a bit, my guess is the POI designer figured well, you're facing the ladder when climbing (away from the rooftop) and so you'll never see them spawn. But a smart player will just peek his/her head above the roof to see what's in store, and that causes a problem. "Hey guys, the roof is empty and the loot is just sitting there! Let's goooooo! <pop> AAAAHHHHH GET THESE VULTURES OFF MY FACE MY LEG IS BROKEN!"

[Biscoitoso]

Zombies hiding inside closets and ceiling are a great imersion for me, I like the feel they were humans hiding before die and turn into zombies.

But I miss the great roaming horders from A-14-15.

[Laz Man]

7 minutes ago, Boidster said:

Completely agree about the attack-when-activated volumes. They don't bother me at all. Well, I mean they do bother me what with all the abrasions, lacerations, and broken bones, but as a design element they're fine, given the direction TFP has taken POIs in general.

 

I'll copy my stuff over into a bug report, good idea. After thinking about it a bit, my guess is the POI designer figured well, you're facing the ladder when climbing (away from the rooftop) and so you'll never see them spawn. But a smart player will just peek his/her head above the roof to see what's in store, and that causes a problem. "Hey guys, the roof is empty and the loot is just sitting there! Let's goooooo! <pop> AAAAHHHHH GET THESE VULTURES OFF MY FACE MY LEG IS BROKEN!"

I think they are a fantastic design tool when used correctly.  Having 1000 zombies attack the player when they enter a very small confined space would probably be frustrating for most players versus having a couple or so come up from behind you from a hidden/believable crawl spaces is more believable and can be overcome.

[Solomon]

20 hours ago, JCrook1028 said:

GTX 750 Ti Memory Specs:

 

2048 MBStandard Memory Config

 

So no, you don't meet specs. You only have 2 gig.

 

 

Then can you tell me what is this?:

 

https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GTX+750+Ti&id=2815

 

There are 4gb versions of the GTX 750 Ti series, i know what i bought.

[SylenThunder]

10 minutes ago, Solomon said:

Then can you tell me what is this?:

 

https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GTX+750+Ti&id=2815

 

There are 4gb versions of the GTX 750 Ti series, i know what i bought.

"Max Memory Size" means that it is the max the platform is capable of. It does not mean that is what they shipped with.

According to the manufacturer, that card was only sold default with a 2048MB memory configuration.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/graphics-cards/geforce-gtx-750-ti/specifications/

 

You may have one of the few cards that were built with a 4GB spec, but it is not common. It also doesn't change the fact that the card is a couple of generations behind what is recommended. It sits firmly on the min-spec level for GPU processing power, no matter the amount of VRAM it has. Given the details that we have on your system right now, I can tell you that it will struggle to achieve a steady 60FPS without an SSD and extreme optimization efforts. Your framerates are more likely to hover in the 40-50 range and will tank when you are around larger buildings or any number of torches. Your CPU, RAM, and hard drive will struggle to keep up with loading, so it's no surprise that you are having issues with zeds appearing in front of your face.

[Roland]

3 hours ago, Laz Man said:

I think they are a fantastic design tool when used correctly.  Having 1000 zombies attack the player when they enter a very small confined space would probably be frustrating for most players versus having a couple or so come up from behind you from a hidden/believable crawl spaces is more believable and can be overcome.

Not only that but now with the ragdoll stumbling animations zombies don't drop out of the rafters onto their feet and immediately start hitting you before you even have time to react. Now they do face plants on the floor and just splat in various positions that are not only entertaining to see but also give the player a bit of time to react. I love when zombies fall from above because it can get my heart racing when I didn't expect it, there are too many hilarious landings to count, and I usually am able to use that bit of extra time to dispatch them all  or at least retreat into a previous room and set some traps before getting rekt by raining zombies.

[pApA^LeGBa]

4 hours ago, Roland said:

One huge area in Red Mesa and one shooting range where the designers probably wanted to create an arena battle situation and then intermittent rooms in various POIs is too extreme and makes taking stealth pointless? We’ll have to agree to disagree about that. 

 

I get that not every player would want to play an arena battle and so would hate those POIs but that hardly makes taking stealth pointless. Even having one section in every POI that triggers an immediate attack wouldn’t make taking stealth pointless and those kind of sleeper volumes are not as common as that by a long shot. 
 

My criticism of the system would be to randomize the attack volumes so that they can happen anywhere infrequently so that you can’t memorize when they are going to happen. But making it so that if you take stealth you can always enter every sleeper volume undetected would make exploration too samey. 

 

That just beeing lazy tbh. They just said, ok we want an arena battle so we just nullify the skill.  At least make us trigger a speaker or something else that wakes them up and can´t be avoided, like a guard zombie with a special skill for detection. But like that it´s just lazy bad design tbh.

 

A newer player experiencing this will think that there is something wrong when a skill suddenly doesn´t work for no reason. Not the kind of impression you want your customer to have.

 

If you need to stop a skill from working for no reason to get a certain experience, you have done it wrong. It´s unlogical and bad for the immersion.

[Roland]

34 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

 

That just beeing lazy tbh. They just said, ok we want an arena battle so we just nullify the skill.  At least make us trigger a speaker or something else that wakes them up and can´t be avoided, like a guard zombie with a special skill for detection. But like that it´s just lazy bad design tbh.

 

A newer player experiencing this will think that there is something wrong when a skill suddenly doesn´t work for no reason. Not the kind of impression you want your customer to have.

 

If you need to stop a skill from working for no reason to get a certain experience, you have done it wrong. It´s unlogical and bad for the immersion.

I agree with you that having some sort of trigger device would be cool....the first time. But then after that you always know about it and never trigger it. You can feel about it however you wish but there is nothing bad design-wise for scripted events to happen no matter what. There can be events in a game that are unavoidable. Now if it was unavoidable AND certain death that would be bad. But it isn't certain death is it? The player can survive it in a different manner than pure stealth and that adds variety to the gameplay. And just like you mentioned, if you don't like the Red Mesa facility then you can avoid it and stealth elsewhere.

 

You can call it lazy design but that is just what you say instead of "I don't like it". The fact is that there is nothing about an occasional unavoidable event (provided you choose to go there) that forces a different experience upon the player that they must react to in possibly a new and different way than they normally have been reacting. Also I disagree that gamers will think there was a bug and their stealth failed them. I think they will assume that the zombies were already awake and alert in that room and it was not possible to sneak among them and kill them from the shadows in that instance. That is realistic. If I walk into a room full of sleeping people I can easily stealth through that room. But if they are awake and alert and detect me as I enter the door then stealth is impossible.

 

Sometimes unavoidable bad stuff happens and how you react and adapt means the difference between life and death. Boy, sure seems to fit the survival genre to me. Frankly, I'm surprised you are so against such things. If there were never any bad events beyond the control of the player it would be a very boring and controllable world and the survival aspect of the game would suffer. Is your love of stealth so great that it overwhelms your usual love of anything that bolsters the survival aspect of the game?

[pApA^LeGBa]

That might be an acceptable option in a game that is not open world survival. Like in a FPS with certain pathes that you can´t leave or when it is the story line and absolutly necessary for the story, but not at a random POI. And even a siren that goes off no matter what if you enter a certain area is better than just stopping a skill from working. Make it traderlike so it´s not destroyable.

 

Also no special zombie? They could be well hidden with a certain range of detection.

 

Heck everything is better than a skill just not working anymore. That is bad design. Pretty much everyone experiencing this for the first time thought it´s a bug or wrongly adjusted sleeper volumes. That alone should tell you that this is obviously not the way to go.

[Jugginator]

The skill does say "reduces noise/light", not "this perk makes you soundless and invisible to the zombies when sneaking". If you could sneak around every POI without combat then that would be the holy grail of a perk and a bad game design.

[pApA^LeGBa]

@Jugginator Like i already said in this thread, no problem with not beeing able to sneak up on everything, everywhere.

 

But a huge area where suddenly everything wakes up no matter how far away for no reason other than "we want you to have an arena like battle" is bad design. And it´s not even an arena like battle, it´s a few zombies that just wake up. There isn´t even any special event or big fight triggered. It´s just a normal battle, like you have it when you don´t sneak. That makes it even worse.

 

And i don´t mind the battle. It´s the way it is implented that is bad.

 

If they want to imply arena like battles or have areas where you can´t sneak they should do something else. Not just having them waking up. And at least trigger an event that is worth beeing called arena like battle if this is what it´s about.

 

I really don´t see any problem including something like motion sensors linked to any kind of alarm going off, that you can´t destroy or avoid. Or if bandits are implented a hidden scout inside the POI using a camera to spot you entering, that wakes everything up to make it harder for you to loot things that they want for the duke. Something like that.

[Laz Man]

5 hours ago, Roland said:

Not only that but now with the ragdoll stumbling animations zombies don't drop out of the rafters onto their feet and immediately start hitting you before you even have time to react. Now they do face plants on the floor and just splat in various positions that are not only entertaining to see but also give the player a bit of time to react. I love when zombies fall from above because it can get my heart racing when I didn't expect it, there are too many hilarious landings to count, and I usually am able to use that bit of extra time to dispatch them all  or at least retreat into a previous room and set some traps before getting rekt by raining zombies.

If you haven't tried my A19 Church Prefab, then you should.  Guaranteed heart pumping moments hehehe...

 

Shameless Plug:

https://www.nexusmods.com/7daystodie/mods/876

[Kalen]

4 hours ago, Roland said:

The player can survive it in a different manner than pure stealth and that adds variety to the gameplay.

I think its pretty cool that there are areas where stealth isn't an option and you have to fight.   I think it would be equally cool if there were areas were fighting isn't an option and you have to stealth.

[Roland]

4 hours ago, Laz Man said:

If you haven't tried my A19 Church Prefab, then you should.  Guaranteed heart pumping moments hehehe...

 

Shameless Plug:

https://www.nexusmods.com/7daystodie/mods/876

I had your POI in mind when I was talking about it. And @pApA^LeGBa I do agree with you that having some sort of trigger event like a siren or flashing lights would be a better implementation. Could even be disco lights and music that blares like a trap set by the Duke's men.

[Laz Man]

2 minutes ago, Roland said:

I had your POI in mind when I was talking about it. And @pApA^LeGBa I do agree with you that having some sort of trigger event like a siren or flashing lights would be a better implementation. Could even be disco lights and music that blares like a trap set by the Duke's men.

We have the nice combat music when a good number of them are "triggered" and on their way which is a nice enough warning siren for the player.

[pApA^LeGBa]

@Laz Man Not beeing warned is not what my problem is here.

 

Other than that, i never have that music on. Not only in 7D, i turn this off in every game. I do prefer my own music or like in 7D none at all.

[Solomon]

12 hours ago, SylenThunder said:

"Max Memory Size" means that it is the max the platform is capable of. It does not mean that is what they shipped with.

According to the manufacturer, that card was only sold default with a 2048MB memory configuration.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/graphics-cards/geforce-gtx-750-ti/specifications/

 

You may have one of the few cards that were built with a 4GB spec, but it is not common. It also doesn't change the fact that the card is a couple of generations behind what is recommended. It sits firmly on the min-spec level for GPU processing power, no matter the amount of VRAM it has. Given the details that we have on your system right now, I can tell you that it will struggle to achieve a steady 60FPS without an SSD and extreme optimization efforts. Your framerates are more likely to hover in the 40-50 range and will tank when you are around larger buildings or any number of torches. Your CPU, RAM, and hard drive will struggle to keep up with loading, so it's no surprise that you are having issues with zeds appearing in front of your face.

I know its not common, it was hard to find it but it serves me well also your assuption is right im playing between 45-55fps. The main problem is that the info put on the store page says to a lot of people that they have the recommended specs when they are not.

 

Also just a sidenote but if its possible that this is indeed caused by my hardware not being able to handle the game how can my fathers laptop what runs this game at 10fps not have any problems spawning the zeds in that place? Theres a side window where you can from further away see if the zeds are there or not, in my case most of the time they dont seem to appear but my fathers computer shows that they are always there.

[SylenThunder]

Minimum specs is exactly that. It's the minimum PC specs to be able to start the game and play it. The industry standard for min spec would likely be something like 30FPS at 1280x720 (720p). It just means that if you have that level of hardware, the client will be able to run. It doesn't necessarily mean that it will be an enjoyable experience.

Recomended specs on the other hand, are typically the minimum required to achieve 60FPS stable at 1920x1080 (1080p),

 

And look at how 7 Days' specs compare to those of some other games.

Minimum	7 Days	Rust	Ark	CoD:MW	GTA-V
CPU	2.4Ghz Dual Core	i7-3770 AMD FX-9590	i5-2400 AMD FX-8320	i3-4340 or AMD FX-6300	Core 2 Q6600 @ 2.40GHz
RAM	8 GB	10 GB	8 GB	8GB	4GB
GPU	2 GB Dedicated VRAM	GTX 670 2GB AMD R9 280	GTX 670 2GB Radeon HD 7870 2GB	GTX 670 / GTX 1650 AMD Radeon HD 7950	9800 GT 1GB AMD HD 4870 1GB

 

Minimum	7 Days	Rust	Ark	CoD:MW	GTA-V
CPU	3.0 Ghz Quad Core	i7-4790K AMD R5 1600	Who	i5-2500K AMD R5 1600X	i5 3470 AMD X8 FX-8350
RAM	8 GB	10 GB	Needs	12 GB	4GB
GPU	4 GB Dedicated VRAM	GTX 980 AMD R9 Fury	Specs?	GTX 970 / GTX 1660 AMD Radeon™ R9 390 / RX 580	GTX 660 2GB AMD HD 7870 2GB

 

And if I'm going to be totally honest here, current min spec should be 4GB dedicated VRAM, and recommended specs for 7 Days should read a CPU 3.8GHz hex core, 16GB+ RAM, and 6GB dedicated VRAM on the GPU. It likely won't be changed though, as there is a lot of optimization that is being worked on which will bring it back down again.

 

What I can say is that our min specs should read more like Rust and Ark does with the details on the CPU and GPU.  Ark kind of falls short though in that they don't give Recommended specs anywhere.  If I had to guess I would say i7-4770k, 16GB RAM, and a GTX 960.

Also note that I only put GTA-V in here because every single freaking time someone complains about FPS, they use it as a reference for their potato. Never mind that it released as a finished game three years before this one even started development, and it's not even a Voxel game.

[Solomon]

57 minutes ago, SylenThunder said:

Minimum specs is exactly that. It's the minimum PC specs to be able to start the game and play it. The industry standard for min spec would likely be something like 30FPS at 1280x720 (720p). It just means that if you have that level of hardware, the client will be able to run. It doesn't necessarily mean that it will be an enjoyable experience.

Recomended specs on the other hand, are typically the minimum required to achieve 60FPS stable at 1920x1080 (1080p),

 

And look at how 7 Days' specs compare to those of some other games.

Minimum	7 Days	Rust	Ark	CoD:MW	GTA-V
CPU	2.4Ghz Dual Core	i7-3770 AMD FX-9590	i5-2400 AMD FX-8320	i3-4340 or AMD FX-6300	Core 2 Q6600 @ 2.40GHz
RAM	8 GB	10 GB	8 GB	8GB	4GB
GPU	2 GB Dedicated VRAM	GTX 670 2GB AMD R9 280	GTX 670 2GB Radeon HD 7870 2GB	GTX 670 / GTX 1650 AMD Radeon HD 7950	9800 GT 1GB AMD HD 4870 1GB

 

Minimum	7 Days	Rust	Ark	CoD:MW	GTA-V
CPU	3.0 Ghz Quad Core	i7-4790K AMD R5 1600	Who	i5-2500K AMD R5 1600X	i5 3470 AMD X8 FX-8350
RAM	8 GB	10 GB	Needs	12 GB	4GB
GPU	4 GB Dedicated VRAM	GTX 980 AMD R9 Fury	Specs?	GTX 970 / GTX 1660 AMD Radeon™ R9 390 / RX 580	GTX 660 2GB AMD HD 7870 2GB

 

And if I'm going to be totally honest here, current min spec should be 4GB dedicated VRAM, and recommended specs for 7 Days should read a CPU 3.8GHz hex core, 16GB+ RAM, and 6GB dedicated VRAM on the GPU. It likely won't be changed though, as there is a lot of optimization that is being worked on which will bring it back down again.

 

What I can say is that our min specs should read more like Rust and Ark does with the details on the CPU and GPU.  Ark kind of falls short though in that they don't give Recommended specs anywhere.  If I had to guess I would say i7-4770k, 16GB RAM, and a GTX 960.

Also note that I only put GTA-V in here because every single freaking time someone complains about FPS, they use it as a reference for their potato. Never mind that it released as a finished game three years before this one even started development, and it's not even a Voxel game.

I usually use those few horribly unoptimized games as references like Saints Row IV because despite the game being 7 years old now it still stutters and lags at max graphics unless you have a computer what runs 2019 high end AAA games at max graphics.

[Boidster]

10 hours ago, Solomon said:

Theres a side window where you can from further away see if the zeds are there or not, in my case most of the time they dont seem to appear but my fathers computer shows that they are always there.

Assuming identical video quality options, if you follow the exact same path to get to that window, and in one game the sleepers have spawned and in the other game they have not, that should be reported as a bug. If the volume was triggered, the zombies should spawn and be visible (again, assuming the same settings). You can open the POI in the editor to confirm the location of the volumes, and trace your path to the window to see which volumes it touches.

[Solomon]

30 minutes ago, Boidster said:

Assuming identical video quality options, if you follow the exact same path to get to that window, and in one game the sleepers have spawned and in the other game they have not, that should be reported as a bug. If the volume was triggered, the zombies should spawn and be visible (again, assuming the same settings). You can open the POI in the editor to confirm the location of the volumes, and trace your path to the window to see which volumes it touches.

Yeah gonna look for that, is there something specific i need to see like yellow/red warnings or just confirm whenever they actually spawn or not?