A20 impressions - lots of good, lots of "it's still not improved since forever?"

[Spatch]

The point to my post wasn't which is easiest, the point was that it was disingenuous to me to support one way but not all ways.  My idea of letting people run and hide in fear, should not be something that is discouraged by TFP and it clearly was - there was no other reason to add heat-seeking vultures! 

 

I know the way the wind blows though, so I'll continue to cheese the horde using their stupid AI   Still love the game, just miss some of the old ways of doing things.

[Maxley]

On 12/13/2021 at 5:21 AM, just.dont said:

And then, there are issues that's with us for a while now, but nothing was done about them in A20:

1) Bloodmoon. For quite a while, TFP seems to find time and spend some effort to make certain static defense setups completely useless. Yet, ever since we got our current buff system, nobody at TFP pays attention to the fact that now you can *outrun* nightmare-speed zombies very reliably with a few buffs, and thus all you need for bloodmoon defense is a bunch of stimulants and enough explosives (and a decent gun, but that's secondary). I'm not sure why static defenses get all the TFP attention (even though many of them require considerable effort to build) while the issue of being able to defend a bloodmoon with just a couple of items and a lot of running in an empty field gets *no* attention.

 

I agree that the player should not be able to outrun nightmare speed zombies, at least not for very long. I definitely think some of the perks like Cardio and Sexual Tyrannosaurus are overpowered as well as getting 10 stamina back for every kill with a bat. But people wouldn't be happy if those were nerfed.

 

I know this would never be implemented but what i feel would solve this problem is if there were an exhaustion meter which fills based on the players level of exertion. The more sprinting and power attacks a player does in a short time, the faster it fills. It might take a couple of minutes to fill fully. Once full, the players stamina regeneration is reduced significantly for a duration, maybe a couple of minutes until it goes back down to zero.

 

EDIT:

Actually there is another solution. They could add a zombie that spits slime at the player which slows the players movement speed for a duration. You would just have to be careful to dodge these projectiles but if u get hit it could allow the other zombies to catch you.

Edited December 17, 2021 by Maxley
edit (see edit history)

[Darklegend222]

6 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

Well, it takes multiple hours of constrained testing (i.e. do the same tasks of 2-4 real-time hours length in the same world at the same internal time twice) to test your theory without other factors weighing in. I wouldn't do that unpayed.

 

Even if that restart does anything it would be like the horde night restart on relog. Sure, it prevents the first horde nights stopping early, but that stopping is intentional. It would only be a bug if the stopping were even earlier than planned. And in this case it is expected as well, that less zombies spawn in explored areas (until respawn which happens after 7 days).

 

Sadly environmental zombie spawns seem not to get listed in the logfile. If they were we could have generated statistics simply by counting those lines in normal logfiles.

 

 

All of that makes sense aside from the part where you do it unpaid.. you really can't be bothered to just play a game of which you moderate and close it every hour as opposed to 2-4? Very little testing needs to be done, the point is if you notice a difference in enemy spawns or anything getting backed up and not being removed as it should.

[meganoth]

18 hours ago, Darklegend222 said:

All of that makes sense aside from the part where you do it unpaid.. you really can't be bothered to just play a game of which you moderate and close it every hour as opposed to 2-4? Very little testing needs to be done, the point is if you notice a difference in enemy spawns or anything getting backed up and not being removed as it should.

 

What does "close it every hour" mean?

 

And I was saying that I would not expect you to do it unpaid. Since I have no beef with zombie spawns I definitely won't. 😉

 

There is a big difference between subjectively noticing fewer zombies and providing hard facts. How do you show zombies "backing up" ? How do you show it isn't just randomness or a group of zombies not noticing you?

 

[Darklegend222]

3 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

What does "close it every hour" mean?

 

And I was saying that I would not expect you to do it unpaid. Since I have no beef with zombie spawns I definitely won't. 😉

 

There is a big difference between subjectively noticing fewer zombies and providing hard facts. How do you show zombies "backing up" ? How do you show it isn't just randomness or a group of zombies not noticing you?

 

Forgive me for assuming you meant me and not you, I didn't comprehend that part. I find it relatively easy, on worlds where I constantly explore and don't kill anything i see. Then I see absolutely nothing after 2-3 days other than a random stray. The moment I begin killing anything again though, especially at spawn is where things start getting fixed.

 

Then you have the issue of having explored so far and chunks being rendered to the point it's probably best to restart anyway. I have made threads on this before and the answers I got were "you're not exploring far enough and depleting spawns in your area, or you're going too far out and not killing anything". Thus I decided to restart my game every in-game day at 04:00 and I've never had an issue since.

 

Me and Roland had a tiny conversation about deer, he said they're a night creature (which I don't think we're both sure of). I am sure though that after a game closure and reopen can allow a deer to spawn during the day as I saw a deer within the first minute of spawning, then again at 07:00 the next day (with restarts at 04:00 roughly).

 

As you said though, it's hard to get concrete evidence since the logs don't provide anything, but I can tell it fixes a lot of problems. Many people were saying they didn't see any zombies and maybe an animal without any restarting. Meanwhile I happen to be the one restarting and I can't travel on a road for 600m without seeing and killing at least 5 chickens, rabbits, maybe a boar and a deer. Chickens and rabits are plentiful and I get around 3 stacks of meat by day 3-4.

[meganoth]

26 minutes ago, Darklegend222 said:

Forgive me for assuming you meant me and not you, I didn't comprehend that part. I find it relatively easy, on worlds where I constantly explore and don't kill anything i see. Then I see absolutely nothing after 2-3 days other than a random stray. The moment I begin killing anything again though, especially at spawn is where things start getting fixed.

 

Then you have the issue of having explored so far and chunks being rendered to the point it's probably best to restart anyway. I have made threads on this before and the answers I got were "you're not exploring far enough and depleting spawns in your area, or you're going too far out and not killing anything". Thus I decided to restart my game every in-game day at 04:00 and I've never had an issue since.

 

Me and Roland had a tiny conversation about deer, he said they're a night creature (which I don't think we're both sure of). I am sure though that after a game closure and reopen can allow a deer to spawn during the day as I saw a deer within the first minute of spawning, then again at 07:00 the next day (with restarts at 04:00 roughly).

 

As you said though, it's hard to get concrete evidence since the logs don't provide anything, but I can tell it fixes a lot of problems. Many people were saying they didn't see any zombies and maybe an animal without any restarting. Meanwhile I happen to be the one restarting and I can't travel on a road for 600m without seeing and killing at least 5 chickens, rabbits, maybe a boar and a deer. Chickens and rabits are plentiful and I get around 3 stacks of meat by day 3-4.

 

I don't see much difference to my experience though. Sure, there are lulls around my base especially, but if we are talking about rabbits for example I just need to drive into a random direction, stop and crouch for a few seconds and most of the time I see 1 or 2 of them highlighted in green around me. The difficult question is: Are we seeing the same thing and interpret it differently or is there an actual objective difference?

 

Even if I did now restart the game every hour and noticed more zombies (which I wouldn't be surprised if it happened) this would still not tell us much, because from my viewpoint the game works as expected even if I don't restart.

 

Here is a test maybe if you are playing on a pregen world: Play the game for 2 hours, don't restart. Drive to the center of 2 towns you haven't been before and 2 you already have been, but not in the last 3 in-game days. Write down the coordinates, the time and the number of zombies you saw after standing there, shooting with a shotgun 3 times (once per minute) and waiting for 5 minutes. Also tell us which pregen world, your player level and what armor you have on you.

 

I then do the same and count as well. This way we will see if our games are fundamentally different and we also see what number of zombies to expect in visted areas after respawn and new areas.

 

 

Edited December 18, 2021 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Darklegend222]

1 minute ago, meganoth said:

 

I don't see much difference to my experience though. Sure, there are lulls around my base especially, but if we are talking about rabbits for example I just need to drive into a random direction, stop and crouch for a few seconds and most of the time I see 1 or 2 of them highlighted in green around me. The difficult question is: Are we seeing the same thing and interpret it differently or is there an actual objective difference?

 

Even if I did now restart the game every hour and noticed more zombies (which I wouldn't be surprised if it happened) this would still not tell us much, because from my viewpoint the game works as expected even if I don't restart.

 

Here is a test maybe if you are playing on a pregen world: Play the game for 2 hours, don't restart. Drive to the center of 2 towns you haven't been before and 2 you already have been, but not in the last 3 in-game days. Write down the coordinates, the time and the number of zombies you saw after standing there, shooting with a shotgun 3 times (once per minute) and waiting for 5 minutes. Also tell us which pregen world, your player level and what armor you have on you.

 

I then do the same and count as well. This way we will see if our games are fundamentally different and we also see what number of zombies to expect in visted areas after respawn and new areas.

 

 

I can do that, I'll be turning on cheat mode and giving myself a bicycle, a side by side Q1 shotgun, quality 1 stone sledgehammer, and all scrap armor quality level 3. As I don't have a save on a pre-gen world I'll just make one and go from there, it is a weekend after all!

 

I'll take the time to jot the numbers down and see if I can't come up with a spreadsheet

[Darklegend222]

4 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

I don't see much difference to my experience though. Sure, there are lulls around my base especially, but if we are talking about rabbits for example I just need to drive into a random direction, stop and crouch for a few seconds and most of the time I see 1 or 2 of them highlighted in green around me. The difficult question is: Are we seeing the same thing and interpret it differently or is there an actual objective difference?

 

Even if I did now restart the game every hour and noticed more zombies (which I wouldn't be surprised if it happened) this would still not tell us much, because from my viewpoint the game works as expected even if I don't restart.

 

Here is a test maybe if you are playing on a pregen world: Play the game for 2 hours, don't restart. Drive to the center of 2 towns you haven't been before and 2 you already have been, but not in the last 3 in-game days. Write down the coordinates, the time and the number of zombies you saw after standing there, shooting with a shotgun 3 times (once per minute) and waiting for 5 minutes. Also tell us which pregen world, your player level and what armor you have on you.

 

I then do the same and count as well. This way we will see if our games are fundamentally different and we also see what number of zombies to expect in visted areas after respawn and new areas.

 

 

I've uploaded the spreadsheet to Google Drive, the link is here:  https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1PbeV3Yqh918DWQw3f09L-ehRHvOG7rUO?usp=sharing It's a major mess. It got the job done and for video settings I had grass distance set to low, and everything else set to ultra. DoF and motion blur were disabled. I put a note section on the far right which is just a giant blob of text so I wish you the best of luck going through all of it. I took note of everything as I saw it. https://pastebin.com/qBFtuHxZ. From what I've gathered, it seems that the wilderness and POI zombies don't have their information being as backed up anymore. In A19.6, there were times it didn't matter how much I explored, I wouldn't see a zombie for 4-5 in game days unless they were in POIs. Since city tiles are now technically POIs, it doesn't have everything as obstructed as before (at least from what I've gathered and my very limited knowledge).

[meganoth]

@Darklegend222: Ok, finally had time to do the test as well, though I had to use the stable version now. Don't know if that is the reason for the discrepancy, but at the places where you specified town 4 and 5 there was only wilderness in my world.

 

I didn't count zombies on the way to towns, just rode into the central place, then looked around. Since driving in already made some zombies follow me I usually saw 2-3 zombies attack me without a shot fired and since I used the shotgun to get rid of them that got me another 0-2 zombies. Which isn't that much really.

 

The results:

 

town      Before shots        After shots

1                   3                          1

2                   2                          0

3                  3                           2

 

I had expected more, so I made another visit to town 3 at night and shot 20 times, but even that added only another 2 zombies.

 

This seems to suggest that that one event with ~10 zombies coming from outside while I was raiding a POI raid at night must really have been a wandering horde and not the result of feral sense. Or player level/gamestage makes a difference or I just had luck.

 

 

 

Edited December 23, 2021 by meganoth (see edit history)

[theFlu]

Hmm. This isn't exactly usable data, but .. I started a new game having read this thread. Pretty basic settings, 60 min, warrior, feral sense..

I landed near a small town, figured I'd mostly just clear POIs for a while, not exactly nomad, but not building anything either. Ran a few quests since the trader is right there, so I moved around a bit, but not that much.

 

Day 1, cleared my "stash house." A burnt building with a few inhabitants. Day 1 night spawns showed up, got ate by a dire. Quiet @%$#s still, first indication of danger was a row of teeth on my derriere. I was just messing about anyway, so I figured I'd just try if something has changed about running from those.. nope, couple chomps later the puppy had earned his ham. Spawned upstairs, turned it around and charred him on the grill afterwards. I guess you can call that recycling.

 

That wasn't the point though.. sleepers aside, after clearing the area it remained perfectly clear until day 4, the 3 day respawn. The trip to the trader is about 300 meters, and between my base and Jen's, there were about 5 daytime zeds. I think that was roughly the case on the first day as well. In the night, some more friends showed up, but there was a wandering horde at that time too, so, nothing exact to say.

 

I'd say the five zeds weren't too few for the area, it's a noob-friendly small town location; but I guess I would like to see them respawn at least daily, maybe even twice a day. Having the place clear for days feels.. safe

[Ghostlight]

On 12/13/2021 at 1:21 PM, just.dont said:

First of all, A20 gives off much better first impressions than A19

 

I guess a full set of guns on day 1 is going to impress anyone.

[Ghostlight]

On 12/16/2021 at 10:55 AM, pApA^LeGBa said:

In the forest the towns are as empty as in A19. Feral sense doesn´t change that at all. I constantly can travel a few hundred meters without seeing a single zombie. Wether it has changed or not, this is just a huge flaw.

 

More zombies should be everywhere, not just in harder biomes.

I completely agree. This has always been a problem in recent alphas, and I have always had to change the XML files to add many more zombies. The thing is, these settings need to be dynamic and dependant on gamestage (if that is still I thing, I just reinstalled yesterday and haven't played much yet). At the start of the game, the numbers are more or less OK. But later, with an established base and good gear, you want a TON more zombies in the world, just to keep it fun and interesting. I remember in alphas from waaay back being genuinely scared to enter big towns early because the number of Zs in the streets was very intimidating.

[Ghostlight]

On 12/17/2021 at 12:59 PM, Spatch said:

In two posts above, the defense was essentially "why shouldn't the player be able to, if they want to?".  So where was that defense when some of us liked to dig deep underground bases and crouch in fear during horde night?  Where was that defense when some of us liked to ride our mini-bikes around during horde night? 

 

I think everything and anything a player can devise to handle horde night should be allowed. Making changes to the game specifically to shut down any popular strategy (beyond exploits) is not a good idea. Look at Demolishers. They single-handedly took a ton of very fun base designs off the table.

 

Also why can't I ride round on my mini-bike to avoid the horde? I've not heard that before.

Can someone tell me...

 

1) Which file has that setting to control zombie count and respawn in the open world (it's been so long since I played)

 

2) How to edit a post on these forums. 😕

[saltychipmunk]

Honestly So many issues with hoard night would be solved if they just make it so the zombies are after our crafting stations / storage  and not just us. 

 

That would fix hoard base cheese , that would fix buff cheese , that could fix  pathing exploit cheeses.

 

I just don't get it. it seems clear that the desired gameplay TFP want is for players to fortify their base and survive waves of zombies.   You get exactly that if you make it so zombies go after your valuables. 

 

 

[theFlu]

5 minutes ago, saltychipmunk said:

so the zombies are after our crafting stations / storage

It's a nice idea, but it wouldn't really change anything And it can't realistically be implemented.

- they can't just load extra chunks to load you storage in to be attacked if you've placed it a 100m away. Too heavy to compute for TFP's tastes.

- if it was implemented somehow, people would at Best be forced to have a concrete bunker "behind" their defenses. Having all routes to the cache leading through your defenses would preserve whatever current cheese you're using.

- since you can move your stuff around pretty easily, you might just make "lure" boxes and stations within your defenses. This would lessen the onslaught on yourself, spreading the damage, and done right, give you great opportunities for easy DPS, especially via explosives. All this would depend on the implementation, of course, but the players would figure out new exploits within a week.

[Ghostlight]

1 hour ago, saltychipmunk said:

Honestly So many issues with hoard night would be solved if they just make it so the zombies are after our crafting stations / storage  and not just us.

 

This is a terrible idea, unless it were implemented as an option. Not everyone wants to engage and fight the horde. Some people might just want to devise ways to survive it through non-combat means. This should be a perfectly viable approach.

[meganoth]

13 hours ago, Ghostlight said:

 

I think everything and anything a player can devise to handle horde night should be allowed. Making changes to the game specifically to shut down any popular strategy (beyond exploits) is not a good idea.

 

But that's just it. Those popular strategies are sometimes exploits.

 

The developers have the authority to define what is exploit and what isn't. Certainly not any random player, because you can always find a player judging their exploit not being an exploit. Nothing would ever be judged an exploit.

 

13 hours ago, Ghostlight said:

Look at Demolishers. They single-handedly took a ton of very fun base designs off the table.

 

Also why can't I ride round on my mini-bike to avoid the horde? I've not heard that before.

Can someone tell me...

 

Vultures will hunt you on horde night if you try.

 

13 hours ago, Ghostlight said:

 

1) Which file has that setting to control zombie count and respawn in the open world (it's been so long since I played)

 

Just use a mod, there is a large selection of ones to increase zombie count

 

13 hours ago, Ghostlight said:

 

2) How to edit a post on these forums. 😕

 

[Roland]

11 hours ago, saltychipmunk said:

Honestly So many issues with hoard night would be solved if they just make it so the zombies are after our crafting stations / storage  and not just us. 

 

That would fix hoard base cheese , that would fix buff cheese , that could fix  pathing exploit cheeses.

 

I just don't get it. it seems clear that the desired gameplay TFP want is for players to fortify their base and survive waves of zombies.   You get exactly that if you make it so zombies go after your valuables. 

 

 

 

In entityclasses.xml you can specify targets for the AI. Here is the list given in the xml notes:

 

<!--Classes for AITarget:
        <property name="Class" value="EntityAnimalRabbit"/> and chicken
        <property name="Class" value="EntityAnimalStag"/>
        <property name="Class" value="EntityBackpack"/>
        <property name="Class" value="EntityBandit"/>
        <property name="Class" value="EntityEnemyAnimal"/>
        <property name="Class" value="EntityLootContainer"/>
        <property name="Class" value="EntityMinibike"/>
        <property name="Class" value="EntityNPC"/>
        <property name="Class" value="EntityPlayer"/>
        <property name="Class" value="EntitySupplyCrate"/>
        <property name="Class" value="EntitySupplyPlane"/>
        <property name="Class" value="EntitySurvivor"/>
        <property name="Class" value="EntityVulture"/>
        <property name="Class" value="EntityZombie"/>
        <property name="Class" value="EntityZombieCop"/>
        <property name="Class" value="EntityZombieDog"/>
    -->

 

So you could try changing the AITask of Approachandattacktarget from EntityPlayer to say EntityNPC and then spawn a trader in the middle of your base to test it out and see if your ideas about the zombies attacking something in your base instead of you is actually an exciting and fun change. Not sure if horde night AI is separate from the everyday AI but it might be an interesting project to look through and find out.

[Kosmic Kerman]

On 12/22/2021 at 9:20 AM, saltychipmunk said:

Honestly So many issues with hoard night would be solved if they just make it so the zombies are after our crafting stations / storage  and not just us. 

 

That would fix hoard base cheese , that would fix buff cheese , that could fix  pathing exploit cheeses.

 

I just don't get it. it seems clear that the desired gameplay TFP want is for players to fortify their base and survive waves of zombies.   You get exactly that if you make it so zombies go after your valuables. 

 

 

How exactly do you think this would affect "Horde Base Cheese?"  The zombies still need to path to whatever they are targeting. The same strategies people use for Horde Bases will still work if the Zombies target something else.  All someone has to do is make the most desirable path to the item targeted, the path that is full of traps.

 

Also, why does this matter? Build your base and play how you like. Let others do the same. 

[Ray_Garraty]

On 12/13/2021 at 4:21 PM, just.dont said:

binding biome loot modifier to the player (instead of POIs, for example) is especially appalling, as it allows much more abuses - for example, killing the bloodmoon horde at the edge of the wasteland to get much better content in their loot bags.

Yeah, that's exactly what I thought.

In A20 for the first time I intentionally placed my horde base in the Wasteland to harvest fallen zombies loot bags, and it's really worth it, man! 😁

[RyanX]

On 12/16/2021 at 12:46 PM, Darklegend222 said:

 until The Fun Pimps decide to further optimize the cleanup and spawning system.

 

 

Don't hold your breath for anything to get optimized with TFP.  Spawning has been bad for ages.  The last time I died it was because I was in a closet and a zombie pop spawned between me and the way out.  It's terrible.

[Darklegend222]

28 minutes ago, RyanX said:

Don't hold your breath for anything to get optimized with TFP.  Spawning has been bad for ages.  The last time I died it was because I was in a closet and a zombie pop spawned between me and the way out.  It's terrible.

That's a leeper volume assuming you're in a closet. I'm specifically referring to in-world spawning.

 

I can't go as far as you can to say they won't ever fix it. It was perfect in A16.4 since sleeper volumes weren't necessarily a hindrance. There was a lot less zombies per POI and they didn't move, just slept on the floor completely still.

 

They do the sleeper volumes for 2 reasons, one so the zombies spawn at proper times since only 64 zombies can be active at a time. Ever run through a giant POI during bloodmoon which is set to 64? As you kill the hoard the zombies spawn in.

 

The other reason is for auto wake-up so traps can work properly and you can't fully stealth unless it's nighttime. Which could use tweaking, but it's a different conversation for another thread.

 

As for in-world spawning which is what we're referring to, I feel that it's buggy and creatures aren't despawning or getting removed as they should. Further exploration on the matter doesn't do much since there is so "spawning_log.txt" for us to see how the system is handling it.

[Krougal]

There is always going to be cheese. And the anti-cheese just seems to punish everyone else in unintended ways by taking options off the table and then new cheese is found anyway. Can't we just all enjoy our cheese?

 

Gaming the system is always going to be a thing. It's degrees it goes from "clueless a noob" to "someone who understands the mechanics of the game and makes good use of them" to "how much can I abuse this before it breaks the game completely". When does it go from good gameplay to cheese? That is different for everyone, but I feel like there has been good gameplay that has been removed in the name of preventing cheese.

 

[Ghostlight]

On 12/23/2021 at 12:31 AM, meganoth said:

Just use a mod, there is a large selection of ones to increase zombie count

 

Why would I use a mod when it is so easy to edit the XML config files?

[meganoth]

43 minutes ago, Ghostlight said:

 

Why would I use a mod when it is so easy to edit the XML config files?

 

Simple, someone else did the work for you to search relevant settings, test and balance the mod. Since there are a few spawing mechanisms in the game you might need changes in more than one place.

 

If I wanted to do this I would simply download a mod and if needed change some of its values.

 

Edited December 26, 2021 by meganoth (see edit history)