So I decided to track Sleeper volumes in Poi's and how many are ambushes.

[BarryTGash]

7 hours ago, Boidster said:

with military stealth boots, full military light armor, and max stealth perks (+Night Stalker 2 & Urban Combat 3)

 

Appreciate your thoroughness as always. What tier is restuarant_02, 3 I think? The gear and skills you're packing are quite advanced - I would imagine if your test could be repeated with max stealth skills, primarily padded armour (for stealth not damage mitigation), a couple of muffled connectors, no stealth boots or books, then that might represent better a typical player's progression when they hit tier 3 quests. What you're rolling with would be tier 4 at least perhaps?

 

I don't think any changes would really affect my personal playstyle too much. I'm far too impatient to sneak everywhere. I'll sneak what I can sneak and go Conan (not O'Brien), then Rambo when the sneaking is done

 

6 hours ago, Roland said:

Is it an ambush if they aren't targeting you when they fall to the ground?

 

An ambush is defined as a surprise attack from a concealed location. I don't think the success matters, just the intent. As we all know what it's referring to in the context of 7D2D, I think the word is good enough.

  

6 hours ago, Kyonshi said:

The importance that feelings should gain regarding concepts that require factual and technical data to be fixed, if there's a need to, is largely debatable.

 

But in this situation, the players do not have access to the code - the technical data is not available, thus anecdotal interpretation is the best players can provide unless they can devote the time required to perform multiple runs of the same POI. But even those results are just based on feelings/reactions rather than technical data.

 

Granted, everyone's reactions will be different, as yours are to who you replied to. We, as players, cannot accurately determine who is more correct. Only TFP, who have access to the technical data, can determine who appears to be having the more correct experience. If more players are not experiencing things as intended then perhaps things need tweaking. Conversely, if the majority appear to be fine, are there enough in the minority to change anything?

 

4 hours ago, asmosnuts said:

 I think the spawning in after you enter the room is a much bigger problem

 

Agreed.

 

2 hours ago, Laz Man said:

Some randomness would help

 

And agreed!

 

Edited February 1, 2022 by BarryTGash (see edit history)

[Viktoriusiii]

12 hours ago, Roland said:

Interesting...I could have sworn you participated in some of those threads.

Either I have honestly forgotten... or I didn't.

I left in mid A17 and only REALLY sporadicially left comments here on the forum.
But honestly... so long ago... but I never felt it was a problem at least.

Why that was, I can not say.

[meganoth]

8 hours ago, BarryTGash said:

 

Appreciate your thoroughness as always. What tier is restuarant_02, 3 I think? The gear and skills you're packing are quite advanced - I would imagine if your test could be repeated with max stealth skills, primarily padded armour (for stealth not damage mitigation), a couple of muffled connectors, no stealth boots or books, then that might represent better a typical player's progression when they hit tier 3 quests. What you're rolling with would be tier 4 at least perhaps?

 

I don't think any changes would really affect my personal playstyle too much. I'm far too impatient to sneak everywhere. I'll sneak what I can sneak and go Conan (not O'Brien), then Rambo when the sneaking is done

 

 

An ambush is defined as a surprise attack from a concealed location. I don't think the success matters, just the intent. As we all know what it's referring to in the context of 7D2D, I think the word is good enough.

  

 

But in this situation, the players do not have access to the code - the technical data is not available, thus anecdotal interpretation is the best players can provide unless they can devote the time required to perform multiple runs of the same POI. But even those results are just based on feelings/reactions rather than technical data.

 

Not exactly. Most players have bits and pieces of knowledge from previous versions that colors their experiences and lets them interpret actions of the zombies in that light. Best example is that it is difficult for long time players to notice that  zombies actually might not have seen you when they fall out of closets.

 

 

8 hours ago, BarryTGash said:

 

Granted, everyone's reactions will be different, as yours are to who you replied to. We, as players, cannot accurately determine who is more correct. Only TFP, who have access to the technical data, can determine who appears to be having the more correct experience. If more players are not experiencing things as intended then perhaps things need tweaking. Conversely, if the majority appear to be fine, are there enough in the minority to change anything?

 

 

Agreed.

 

 

And agreed!

 

 

[Boidster]

9 hours ago, BarryTGash said:

The gear and skills you're packing are quite advanced - I would imagine if your test could be repeated with max stealth skills, primarily padded armour (for stealth not damage mitigation), a couple of muffled connectors, no stealth boots or books, then that might represent better a typical player's progression when they hit tier 3 quests.

 

I will try that, however I actually think that setup might be more stealthy. The military armor has a 10% noise increase per piece and I had no muffled connectors in it. I don't think padded adds any noise at all. Losing the military boots and the nightstalker book would net +15% noise, but I think the total noise level would be -15% (-30% from switching to padded, +15% due to loss of boots & book). But I'll test it out. I originally was just testing the proposition that the volumes are auto-attack, auto-GPS, and un-stealthable. That is clearly not true.

[Boidster]

10 hours ago, BarryTGash said:

But in this situation, the players do not have access to the code

 

*pushes glasses up nose* Ackshually, if you are a coder or are code-curious, you can see all of it, with TFP's blessings, using a tool like dotPeek or dnSpy. It's how all the expert modders are able to do their thing. Here's a bit relevant to the stealth discussion:

 

Spoiler

  public int GetSleeperDisturbedLevel(float dist, float lightLevel)
  {
    float t = dist / this.sightRangeBase;
    if ((double) t <= 1.0)
    {
      float num1 = Mathf.Lerp(this.sightWakeThresholdAtRange.x, this.sightWakeThresholdAtRange.y, t);
      if ((double) lightLevel > (double) num1)
        return 2;
      float num2 = Mathf.Lerp(this.sightGroanThresholdAtRange.x, this.sightGroanThresholdAtRange.y, t);
      if ((double) lightLevel > (double) num2)
        return 1;
    }
    return 0;
  }

 

There is a LOT of code to wade through. This is just the "EntityAlive" class, in 4pt font. There are hundreds of classes.

[ElDudorino]

I doubt you'll get a different result. Based on what you've already shared it's probably true that a zombie whose ambush has been triggered won't necessarily actually know where you are.

 

The core issue is the same, though. Way too many zombies don't 'exist' until you trigger their spawn, or hide in ridiculous places to trigger a jump-scare so you have to be sure to trigger their ambush condition to clear them out. They will remain in the ambush position even if you shotgun blast somebody in the same room if you haven't stepped over their trigger, and if you expose them without triggering the ambush they can stare directly at you while you flash a light in their eyes and they won't react. That's just silly, and I think the insistence on having jump scares in every PoI (usually several) is weak.

[Roland]

10 hours ago, BarryTGash said:

An ambush is defined as a surprise attack from a concealed location. I don't think the success matters, just the intent. As we all know what it's referring to in the context of 7D2D, I think the word is good enough.

 

The question is not about success or failure of the ambush. The question is whether the zombies know the player is there. A trigger causes them to fall from the rafters but that is all they are doing-- falling. They aren't trying to attack or surprise anyone. There is no intent to do anything other than get up after falling. In a battle, the enemy soldiers who are ambushing know that their prey is there and attack with the intent to kill them completely. If their ambush fails for some reason, I agree that it can still be an ambush. If the soldiers come stumbling out of the woods without knowing enemies are there but the enemies get surprised by the sudden appearance of soldiers-- that's not an ambush.

 

So I don't think ambush is a good enough word if the zombies falling out of the ceiling supports is simply a triggered physics event but the zombies are not already attacking and may never attack if the player keeps his cool and remains hidden in the shadows and then shoots them in the head and gets the stealth bonus as well.

[ElDudorino]

That's just semantics. Maybe there's a better word to use than "ambush" but clearly we all understand the phenomenon that's being discussed. The zombies don't fall from the ceiling unless you step into the zone that triggers them falling, so it's obviously designed in the same way an ambush is designed, but you can call it a triggered physics event or whatever. In many cases the ceiling section the zombies are in is completely closed off so the player has no way to get the drop on them and shoot them first.

 

In the case of closet ambushes (or whatever word is appropriate), you can often get the drop on them by just smashing every closet door you come across in case someone is there, but it's honestly silly that it's so common you basically have to assume every closet door has something behind it.

 

Also, those rooftop zombies who are hidden behind a closed vent that doesn't open and they suddenly break through the metal when you get close... what is that all about? How did you get there, zombie? We're throwing any semblance of logic or common sense out the window in order to have a jump scare that's honestly predictable after the first time but will be repeated on rooftop after rooftop.

[Roland]

1 hour ago, ElDudorino said:

That's just semantics. Maybe there's a better word to use than "ambush" but clearly we all understand the phenomenon that's being discussed. The zombies don't fall from the ceiling unless you step into the zone that triggers them falling, so it's obviously designed in the same way an ambush is designed, but you can call it a triggered physics event or whatever. In many cases the ceiling section the zombies are in is completely closed off so the player has no way to get the drop on them and shoot them first.

 

I'm sorry but it is not just semantics. Enemies aware of you vs enemies not aware of you are very different things. Forget about the words and focus on the gameplay aspect. 

 

How can you as a player react and play if the enemies are already aware of you when they fall vs how can you as a player react and play if the enemies are not aware of you as they fall?

 

In the first case your only recourse is to either run away and hide and hope they don't track you until they lose interest and then you can return and stealth kill them or you can just abandon stealth and destroy them with guns blazing.

 

In the second case you can crouch and hide and watch what they do before setting up a klling headshot still from stealth or you can retreat and re-emerge once you know they are unaware of you or you can throw a rock to make them head in whichever direction you want them to go and then kill them from stealth or you can abandon stealth and kill them guns blazing.

 

In the first case you can't get the drop on them because they are aware of you first. In the second case you can still get the drop on them because they are unaware of you even though they are now moving around.

 

I understand that at least part of what you are talking about is the problem with the trigger not happening so those zombies never fall and the player passes on by and then the quest becomes grueling to complete because you have to find those untriggered zeds. I agree that is a problem and I hope they can fix that possibly with backup triggers when you leave a volume so that anything that did not trigger, triggers so you can turn around and clear before getting too far along.

 

But my focus is on stealth gameplay and I personally much prefer there to be enemies that fall and wake up (unaware of the player), enemies that roam around (unaware of the player) and enemies that are dormant. I like that variety much more than just all enemies being dormant and we as players have stealth gameplay that is limited to shooting the heads of unconscious zombies. I'm not sure how anyone could advocate for gameplay limited to what adds up to shooting up a coma ward but who knows...?

Edited February 1, 2022 by Roland (see edit history)

[Roland]

 

In other words, if zombies are falling out of ceilings or falling out of closets and they are doing so unaware of me so I can still choose to stealth and get the drop on them or play it some other way then I am perfectly fine with that happening in 11/12 rooms of a POI. Why are 12/12 rooms of sleeping comatose enemies laying in plain sight okay and not too much of the same thing but anything more than 2-3 rooms of conscious zombies is just too much and needs to be made more random and rare? 

 

It really really seems to me to be that you guys really just prefer coma patients as enemies. Should we change the game so that the blood moon puts them into an even deeper sleep for even greater thrills....?

[ElDudorino]

I advocated for roaming zombies in this very thread and it seems like you're conveniently ignoring that.  Unfortunately there *aren't* roaming zombies in PoIs, unless you count the ones on the street who come to investigate the PoI after you go in.  You have sleepers in obvious places, and then you have sleepers set up for jump scares.  And I expect that most players would never know that the jump scare zombies technically don't know you're there, because intuitively when a zombie jumps out of a closet at you the moment you pass by you're going to assume it knows you're there and you're going to react accordingly.  But also, like BarryTGash says, when everything is an ambush, nothing is an ambush.  The jump scare/ambush/whatever you want to call them are cheapened because they're constant.  You don't get a break from them in PoIs and it just feels sloppy and messy, like the devs knew they wanted to put in some scares so they just took the paintbrush and swiped it all over everything.

[Roland]

1 minute ago, ElDudorino said:

I advocated for roaming zombies in this very thread and it seems like you're conveniently ignoring that.

 

Not at all. Glad you want roaming enemies. Me too. But I don't necessarily care if they start roaming before I reach them or as I reach them. It doesn't bother me to see the event that woke them up and started them roaming. Of course, I'd like the variety of having the already roaming type as well. Also, I'm not just talking about you, I'm talking about the general dislike of zombies falling out of ceiling. 

 

6 minutes ago, ElDudorino said:

And I expect that most players would never know that the jump scare zombies technically don't know you're there, because intuitively when a zombie jumps out of a closet at you the moment you pass by you're going to assume it knows you're there and you're going to react accordingly. 

 

That's true. But there are tons of things about this game that new players aren't going to know until they experience it and figure out what is happening. I started noticing that some of the zombies didn't attack me right away. After more experience and coming here and reading if I discover that most of the time the zombies are unaware of me then that is a huge discovery and will affect how I stealth in the game. Provided that it is true that most of the time when zombies come crashing into view awake but unaware of us then, to me, that is a welcome addition to stealth gameplay.

 

9 minutes ago, ElDudorino said:

But also, like BarryTGash says, when everything is an ambush, nothing is an ambush.

 

Not if it turns out that most of them aren't actually ambushes. I know you want to diminish my conceptual argument about aware vs unaware enemies to just a semantics argument but I hope other readers are discerning enough to see that if zombies are moving around (whether they surprised you or not) unaware of the player and the player is able to maintain stealth then that is very very different than zombies moving to attack the player knowing exactly where the player is. You can call one of those events an ambush but not the other and not because I'm trying to find some slight nuance of phrase to make my point.

 

12 minutes ago, ElDudorino said:

The jump scare/ambush/whatever you want to call them are cheapened because they're constant.  You don't get a break from them in PoIs and it just feels sloppy and messy, like the devs knew they wanted to put in some scares so they just took the paintbrush and swiped it all over everything.

 

Even if it was true that they were constantly falling out of places in every single room (which in my experience is not true), if they are unaware of the player when they do so and the player has the choice between stealth or open attack, then so what? You know what has been overdone and painted with a broad brush? Sleepers. In A16 thats all we had and then in A17-A19 we had mostly sleepers and some attack volumes where the zombies were aware and attacked the players. But did we hear a loud outcry about getting no breaks from comatose enemies? Did anyone ask why are all these sleepers so constant? No...they complained about the few attack volumes that broke it up every once in awhile.

 

Again, it bears testing. I would not want 11/12 rooms where zombies emerge already aware of me and attacking me. If it turns out that is the case then for sure I am 100% for changing that. But if it turns out that in most of those rooms the zombies don't know I'm there then 110% that is more enjoyable and engaging gameplay than shooting frozen sleeping enemies. That's how I see it.

[Boidster]

I think they definitely made a stylistic choice about the hidden zombies. Part of the issue they are trying to overcome is the problem of zombies popping into view when you cross a threshold. They have limits to how many zombie entities can be active at once and they try to keep it under control by only spawning zombies as needed while you proceed down the One True Path in a POI. When you enter the living room and trigger the sleeper volume, they don't want Zs to suddenly appear so they hide them behind boxes, in closets, in the ceiling, etc.

 

Ideally, a POI would be fully populated (with a mix of roaming, sleeping, and a few hidden) zombies before you enter it, but I dunno if that is technically feasible. It does look like some of the POI rework has tried to address it. In an earlier thread where we looked at an Army Camp POI, it sure looked to me like there was one big sleeper volume covering the entire camp, so that as soon as you entered the POI all of the Zs would spawn (inside tents or otherwise hidden) so that you could approach any area from any direction and not see pop-ins. Probably that sort of technique is required for an open-landscape POI like the army camp. In building-based POIs, TFP seems to have decided (maybe due to those technical limitations) to spawn zombies in as-you-go, and rely a lot on closet and ceiling zombies to obscure the moment they are spawned.

 

Laz Man said that they are trying to find POIs where zombies pop in and fix them, which implies that the "populate the entire POI as soon as I step foot on it" is not an option. They're trying to fix room-by-room issues, meaning our almost-always-hidden zombie occupants are the norm going forward. It could be that TFP really would prefer the more organically-populated POIs like we've described, but it's not technically feasible. Or if feasible, too costly to recode everything and rebuild the POIs so...closet zombies it is.

[Weazelsun]

From personal experience the modern house poi's definitely do seem to always have zombies wake up even when stealthed. Examples:

 

modern_house_01 when you go up the stairs via the garage and then the loot room.

modern_house_09 = loot room zombies wake up

modern_house_10 = again loot room zombies wake up

modern_house_13 = pretty much most zombies wake up in each of its zone. Zombie on the roof wakes up and falls down along with the zombies in the pool shed waking up. Then the zombie behind the trap door in the dining room. Zombie in the bathroom. Zombie behind the trap door across from the bathroom. Then the zombies in the loot room, bedroom and bathroom.

 

[Boidster]

1 hour ago, Weazelsun said:

modern_house_13 = pretty much most zombies wake up in each of its zone. Zombie on the roof wakes up and falls down along with the zombies in the pool shed waking up. Then the zombie behind the trap door in the dining room. Zombie in the bathroom. Zombie behind the trap door across from the bathroom. Then the zombies in the loot room, bedroom and bathroom.

 

I changed to padded (as suggested above) and removed both of the books from my skills, and only took 3 levels of the agility stealth perks. Then I bravely headed into house_modern_13. The pool-house zombies woke up because I stupidly stepped on trash. One of them targeted me, the other headed my way, but wasn't targeting so it lost interest when I backed away and sat still.

 

Entering the house, no zombies woke up so I shot the closet right by the entry window. Z was sleeping in there so she got murdered.

 

Spoiler

 

Then I walked around the living room area and shot the bathroom door. There was a dude and he did start walking towards me. Unsure if he was targeting me or just investigating the noise, but I shot him anyhow.

 

Spoiler

 

Then I walked to the kitchen area and shot another closet. Zombie sleeping in there did not wake up, but one did drop from the ceiling back where I had successfully snuck around before (didn't even drop when I shot the bathroom guy above). Must have made her d20 hearing check this time. She was not targeting me.

 

Spoiler

 

I didn't do the whole POI, but generally it seems to play like the others. Even with only 3 levels in the perks and no books, it is at least moderately stealthable. But stealth doesn't scale with gamestage so definitely higher-level, higher-perked players will do better.

[ElDudorino]

2 hours ago, Boidster said:

I think they definitely made a stylistic choice about the hidden zombies. Part of the issue they are trying to overcome is the problem of zombies popping into view when you cross a threshold. They have limits to how many zombie entities can be active at once and they try to keep it under control by only spawning zombies as needed while you proceed down the One True Path in a POI. When you enter the living room and trigger the sleeper volume, they don't want Zs to suddenly appear so they hide them behind boxes, in closets, in the ceiling, etc.

I wonder if it's an issue of trying to handle the AI of too many zombies pathfinding their way through the building and making decisions as they go? Maybe they could work around that by making the AI the thing that 'pops in.' Basically, set each zombie a really basic circular path or whatever and then once the player reaches the trigger point they could start running more complex AI. I get the impression something like this happens in a lot of open world games where entities don't seem very dynamic until they are in some way targeting you or another NPC.

 

The game is still great regardless but as it is I find wandering through city streets to be much more dynamic and interesting gameplay... but with worse loot and no trader rewards.

Edited February 1, 2022 by ElDudorino (see edit history)

[hiemfire]

4 hours ago, Roland said:

Not if it turns out that most of them aren't actually ambushes. I know you want to diminish my conceptual argument about aware vs unaware enemies

From what I could tell they're not arguing aware vs unaware, but the actual way the zombie locations have been placed and toggle from static or spawn in, regardless of them being aware/attack or unaware/investigating active.  Aware "ambush" vs unaware "ambush" really doesn't matter if the "ambushes" are so common that they can be reasonably expected to be present in the gross majority of the POIs.

Edited February 1, 2022 by hiemfire
Removed a half thought that really wasn't needed (see edit history)

[Laz Man]

5 hours ago, ElDudorino said:

I advocated for roaming zombies in this very thread and it seems like you're conveniently ignoring that.  Unfortunately there *aren't* roaming zombies in PoIs, unless you count the ones on the street who come to investigate the PoI after you go in.  You have sleepers in obvious places, and then you have sleepers set up for jump scares.  And I expect that most players would never know that the jump scare zombies technically don't know you're there, because intuitively when a zombie jumps out of a closet at you the moment you pass by you're going to assume it knows you're there and you're going to react accordingly.  But also, like BarryTGash says, when everything is an ambush, nothing is an ambush.  The jump scare/ambush/whatever you want to call them are cheapened because they're constant.  You don't get a break from them in PoIs and it just feels sloppy and messy, like the devs knew they wanted to put in some scares so they just took the paintbrush and swiped it all over everything.

 

Keep in mind there are several level designers and we do discuss combat pacing.  We also discuss not over using specific setups so if you have specific POIs in mind, I encourage you to report them so we can take a look.

 

For example, I think in A19 someone reported that one of the fire stations had too many attack volumes and it was eventually adjusted once the designer reviewed the feedback.

[Roland]

29 minutes ago, hiemfire said:

From what I could tell they're not arguing aware vs unaware, but the actual way the zombie locations have been placed and toggle from static or spawn in, regardless of them being aware/attack or unaware/investigating active. You're the one stuck on the  Aware "ambush" vs unaware "ambush" really doesn't matter if the "ambushes" are so common that they can be reasonably expected to be present in the gross majority of the POIs.

 

lol....I'm stuck on it because it matters if you are playing stealth. It certainly should matter to you. Your biggest beef with the attack volumes were that the player was forced out of stealth. I argued back then that we could retreat and hide until stealth was reacquired and then return but your counterpoint to that was that stealth had been broken for no fault of the player and the game shouldn't do that or it invalidates the points spent.

 

Now it looks like stealth isn't being broken. We just have some active zombies who fall through a ceiling near us or stumble out of a closet near us but they aren't aware of us. So the game DOESN"T automatically break stealth and our points aren't invalidated and we have a better variety of stealth gameplay now.  But you still are not happy with it and it really pushes someone like me to start wondering if you guys simply really do just want sleeping enemies to shoot at, period. 

 

That's why I'm stuck on the aware vs unaware question. Why aren't you? Why aren't you celebrating that it looks like stealth points are being honored? Is the appeal of shooting immobile targets that seductive?

 

29 minutes ago, hiemfire said:

doesn't matter if the "ambushes" are so common that they can be reasonably expected to be present in the gross majority of the POIs.

 

And yet....sleeping zombies being so common that they can be reasonably expected to be present in the gross majority of the POIs is considered heaven...?

 

 

I'll stop now. I've made my point and am now belaboring it. If it is simply that you don't like it that a lot of zombies are waking up now in POIs and the fact that they crash out of ceilings and closets is annoying, then you don't like it. Fine. You guys keep talking about spawn placements and how zombies waking up all over the place is so horrible because there was no opportunity for the player to shoot them before they could wake up. I'm going to go test the game more and see exactly how often I can remain in stealth against enemies that are way more interesting than snoozers. 

Edited February 1, 2022 by Roland (see edit history)

[Laz Man]

4 hours ago, Boidster said:

I think they definitely made a stylistic choice about the hidden zombies. Part of the issue they are trying to overcome is the problem of zombies popping into view when you cross a threshold. They have limits to how many zombie entities can be active at once and they try to keep it under control by only spawning zombies as needed while you proceed down the One True Path in a POI. When you enter the living room and trigger the sleeper volume, they don't want Zs to suddenly appear so they hide them behind boxes, in closets, in the ceiling, etc.

 

Ideally, a POI would be fully populated (with a mix of roaming, sleeping, and a few hidden) zombies before you enter it, but I dunno if that is technically feasible. It does look like some of the POI rework has tried to address it. In an earlier thread where we looked at an Army Camp POI, it sure looked to me like there was one big sleeper volume covering the entire camp, so that as soon as you entered the POI all of the Zs would spawn (inside tents or otherwise hidden) so that you could approach any area from any direction and not see pop-ins. Probably that sort of technique is required for an open-landscape POI like the army camp. In building-based POIs, TFP seems to have decided (maybe due to those technical limitations) to spawn zombies in as-you-go, and rely a lot on closet and ceiling zombies to obscure the moment they are spawned.

 

Laz Man said that they are trying to find POIs where zombies pop in and fix them, which implies that the "populate the entire POI as soon as I step foot on it" is not an option. They're trying to fix room-by-room issues, meaning our almost-always-hidden zombie occupants are the norm going forward. It could be that TFP really would prefer the more organically-populated POIs like we've described, but it's not technically feasible. Or if feasible, too costly to recode everything and rebuild the POIs so...closet zombies it is.

 

In my opinion monster closet phobia is a result of older Alpha limitations at the time just like how back in the day almost every picture frame had hidden loot behind them.

 

Although I dont believe they will go away completely the team has many more options to vary the experience.

 

Personally, I try to setup multiple spawn locations per volume so each play through is not exactly the same.  I also mixup my sleeper placement so some are exposed while others are not so observant players have stealth opportunities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[bdubyah]

Aren't wandering sleepers still on the table for a21? I don't know the exact implementation obviously, but it if works how you think it would I'd bet the majority of volumes would change to use that. Or at least they should. 

 

I think that would make things a lot better. 

Edited February 2, 2022 by bdubyah (see edit history)

[theFlu]

There's talk of "wandering" vs "ambush" or some such.. I have an issue with describing something as "wandering" when it instantly breaks something that is clearly one-time use obstacle. If it's pretending to be a "patrol", have the behaviour limited to the ones who can activate without "breaking out."

 

There's no suspension of disbelief sufficient for "it happens to break out from its hidy-hole exactly now" combined with "it happens to wander to the exact spot the player was when it broke" .. If the difference between "ambush" and "not ambush" in only seen in an aggro-tag only visible via DM, then ... distinction without difference.

[Boidster]

1 hour ago, theFlu said:

There's no suspension of disbelief sufficient for "it happens to break out from its hidy-hole exactly now" combined with "it happens to wander to the exact spot the player was when it broke" .. If the difference between "ambush" and "not ambush" in only seen in an aggro-tag only visible via DM, then ... distinction without difference.

 

It was only two examples and apologies if you're referring to some specific POI which does this, but the tests above show that they often don't break out at predetermined times and are in fact quite happy to stay 'sleeping' in their hidey holes until the stealthy player chooses to break/open the concealment. And they often stay sleeping even after that. The only time they will walk towards where you are is if they detect a noise <where you were standing>; they don't necessarily detect *you* right away. Stealth.txt has the deets.

 

In my tests, only twice (out of 10 or so sleepers) did the zombie lock onto me. Once I stepped on trash and didn't back away fast enough and the other...I dunno exactly what happened. Maybe too much light from the kitchen? In two cases, zombies walked right past me after stumbling out of their hiding spots. Clearly they heard something in my vicinity and came to investigate, but never did see me just 2m away. I think it's easy to interpret the 'investigating' phase as a GPS lock, but keeping calm and scooting back into shadows can save the encounter. Basically, I think there are no auto-aggro rooms like we had in A19. Instead, it works as described in stealth.txt, and a skilled stealthy player can defeat the jump-scare hiding zombies.

 

I'm not arguing against a more organic wandering/patrolling zombie idea. I think that would be great.

[Boidster]

I poked into the code a bit more and...well, there's a lot, but I think it jibes with the idea of "sleepers do not auto-attack players". Even for sleeper volumes marked "attack" in the POI design. What seems to happen with "attack" volumes is that the zombie gets a sort of freebie check to see if it can see the player. If it can see the player, then it will attack. If it can't, it may still investigate a noise and head your way.

 

Passive and Active volumes don't get that 'freebie' check to see you. They would have to turn your way and see you normally I guess.

 

For the code-inclined, here's what I found:

 

Spoiler

In SleeperVolumes.cs there's a "CheckTouching" method which appears to detect when the player is touching a volume. The important part is highlighted in orange.

 

public void CheckTouching(World _world, EntityPlayer _player)  {
    ... 
    else if (etriggerType == SleeperVolume.ETriggerType.Attack && <bunch of math>)
      this.TouchGroup(_world, _player, true);

 

The TouchGroup method just iterates over all the sleeper groups and calls Touch() on them. This is where the zombie gets its 'freebie' chance to see the player:

 

bool flag = trigger == 2 ;  -- this will be 'true' on an "Attack" sleeper, which is trigger type 2
foreach ([zombie in the volume])
{ ...some irrelevant stuff snipped...
    if (flag && _player.Stealth.CanSleeperAttackDetect(entity)) -- if it's "Attack" and the sleeper can detect the player...
    {
      entity.ConditionalTriggerSleeperWakeUp(); -- wake up
      entity.SetAttackTarget((EntityAlive) _player, 1200); -- set the player as the attack target
    }
    else  -- either not "Attack" or can't see the player
      entity.SetSleeperActive(); -- go into Active mode
  }

 

Finally, the CanSleeperAttackDetect() method uses light and distance to check whether the zombie can see the player:

 

  public bool CanSleeperAttackDetect(EntityAlive _e) -- the 'e' variable here is the sleeper zombie
  {
    if (this.player.IsCrouching) -- you gotta be crouching...
    {
      float num = Mathf.Lerp(3f, 15f, (float) (((double) this.lightAttackPercent - 0.349999994039536) * 1.53846156597137));
      if ((double) _e.GetDistance((Entity) this.player) > (double) num)
        return false;  -- bunch of math above determines if we reach this 'false' return (sleeper can't detect you)
    }
    return true;  -- not crouching? sleeper will auto-detect you
  }

 

 

 

Edited February 2, 2022 by Boidster (see edit history)

[theFlu]

54 minutes ago, Boidster said:

I think it's easy to interpret the 'investigating' phase as a GPS lock, but keeping calm and scooting back into shadows can save the encounter. Basically, I think there are no auto-aggro rooms like we had in A19.

I don't really disagree with anything you've laid out there; I was just pointing out that it doesn't really make any difference to the experience whether a zed is walking to me or to the spot under my feet. You'll have to maneuver like you have agro anyway, unless you're willing to risk getting pummeled.