Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Matt115]

20 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

Yes and no. When a bandit gets spawned it reduces the amount of zombies by at least 1, but when no bandit is around you still have the full zombie count available.

 

Wasn't it mentioned by someone from TFP already that bandits will be used sparringly (or am I imagining this) ? Don't expect simply 10 or 20% of environmental zombies just being substituted by bandits. If TFP did this they would severely lessen the impact of the bandits.

 

Well  this depends on number of "bandit's POI" because bandits there will be active probably most of time. 

[meganoth]

29 minutes ago, Matt115 said:

Well  this depends on number of "bandit's POI" because bandits there will be active probably most of time. 

 

No. ALL NPCs who are not in your current chunk are neither active nor spawned at all.

49 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

I can already imagine a "war of spawns" between bandits and zombies...

A bandit is attacking, but, suddenly, a zombie spawns, and the bandit magically disappears into oblivion! 

 

No, the bandit has priority then. So you will hear just a loud ***DOOOONG*** as that zombie hits the closed metal hatch where he ordinarily would have flushed up into the world as a spawn.

 

[faatal]

4 hours ago, Matt115 said:

What do you mean by "numbers" here?

The number of bandits that are spawned at any one time. Say a bandit takes x2 the performance of a zombie, then I would not want more that half of them in the world compared to the number of zombies a computer can manage and still have a reasonable FPS. Now that does not mean the world will have bandits everywhere. That depends on game play goals. I would like bandits to be rare, because this is a zombie game and 99% of the population is dead or a zombie.

[Matt115]

6 minutes ago, faatal said:

I would like bandits to be rare, because this is a zombie game and 99% of the population is dead or a zombie.

Well we agree about that

[Jost Amman]

@faatal I remember we discussed briefly a long time ago about the possibility (I proposed) to use "decision trees" for the bandits AI (I only have a non-professional understanding of what that is TBH). At the time, you said you were against it for some reason.

 

So, I'm curious... what type of AI "approach" are you going to use for bandits?

I've heard programmers talk about "scripted AI", "decision tree AI" or even "learning AI".

Have you got any juicy detail to share on that? 

[Matt115]

1 hour ago, Jost Amman said:

@faatal I remember we discussed briefly a long time ago about the possibility (I proposed) to use "decision trees" for the bandits AI (I only have a non-professional understanding of what that is TBH). At the time, you said you were against it for some reason.

 

So, I'm curious... what type of AI "approach" are you going to use for bandits?

I've heard programmers talk about "scripted AI", "decision tree AI" or even "learning AI".

Have you got any juicy detail to share on that? 

I have! i hope this will be forgotten like '90 aestetic xd

[xyth]

20 hours ago, faatal said:

EAI has been optimized over the years I've been working on it and UAI being dead, I have not touched it. I do plan to remove it at some point, but hopefully the bandit framework will be adequate to extend from for modders.

 

Good bandit performance and numbers is a goal, so they will run adequately on all systems.

It is still in the works. There were some issues with platform changes and then there was a bad merge of some of my changes that they backed out and may end up having to hand merge.

 

I do think your making the right call on using EAI for bandits, especially since you have to get them working on older, less capable machines.   Thank you in advance for keeping modding in mind as you code.  Zombie specific hooks in the current EAI were hard to work around, so please keep that in mind as well.   No worries on removing the old UAI codebase;  if that must happen,  we will mod it back in.   We appreciate all you do! 

[Nevergrey]

3 hours ago, faatal said:

I would like bandits to be rare, because this is a zombie game and 99% of the population is dead or a zombie.

Thank you very much! No '7 Days To Rage'!

[Matt115]

1 hour ago, xyth said:

 

I do think your making the right call on using EAI for bandits, especially since you have to get them working on older, less capable machines.   Thank you in advance for keeping modding in mind as you code.  Zombie specific hooks in the current EAI were hard to work around, so please keep that in mind as well.   No worries on removing the old UAI codebase;  if that must happen,  we will mod it back in.   We appreciate all you do! 

I usually would say something what i think about mods but i agree with you that they doing good job

Edited March 31, 2022 by Matt115 (see edit history)

[saulysw]

If a bandit loses a fight with a zombie, could they "turn" into a zombie bandit?

[Blake_]

8 hours ago, faatal said:

The number of bandits that are spawned at any one time. Say a bandit takes x2 the performance of a zombie, then I would not want more that half of them in the world compared to the number of zombies a computer can manage and still have a reasonable FPS. Now that does not mean the world will have bandits everywhere. That depends on game play goals. I would like bandits to be rare, because this is a zombie game and 99% of the population is dead or a zombie.

For reference, Fallout 3, which is a weird and unfair comparison to 7dtd, had usually around 16 bandits/entities tops on a POI. They were enough to give the player a good sense of thrill and "emotional romantic moments" with 'them guts flying around'. Skyrim POIs and some quest scenes spawned around 30 entities, but that was unusual, as lesser numbers were more common.

 

In reality , you can give a single player thrill enough with just 3 bandits. Now, the AI has to be good, like good good. Good to the level of full-on smooth pathing for MANY more meters than the sexiest zd, extra comments, cover, heal, help, grenades, fluff, etc.

 

 

 

 

[faatal]

9 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

@faatal I remember we discussed briefly a long time ago about the possibility (I proposed) to use "decision trees" for the bandits AI (I only have a non-professional understanding of what that is TBH). At the time, you said you were against it for some reason.

 

So, I'm curious... what type of AI "approach" are you going to use for bandits?

I've heard programmers talk about "scripted AI", "decision tree AI" or even "learning AI".

Have you got any juicy detail to share on that? 

I'm not against decision trees for any reason other than I don't need them for what I want to do. What we have now could be called decision lists, which are lists of tasks that get checked in order. Bandits will probably have more task types added to support new behaviors.

 

The key thing I'm doing now is a full cleanup of the zombie controller parameters, states and transitions and their avatar controller code, to get ready to be copied for the bandits, as I don't want the bandits starting from some legacy mess.

Edited April 1, 2022 by faatal (see edit history)

[Ripflex]

Maybe have 4 Bandits being the most to spawn for an encounter and turn off further zombies spawns due to noise or feral sense attraction to avoid heavy performance hits.  Also scripted bandits ambushes instead of sleeper spawns in certain POIs would be interesting.

 

@faatal About Graphic APIs, have TFP consider DX12 for performance boost instead of Vulkan, since Unity has issues with Vulkan ?

 

 

[Jost Amman]

2 hours ago, faatal said:

What we have now could be called decision lists

Now I've learned something new, thanks!   

[Blake_]

5 hours ago, faatal said:

We are planning 3000 bandits per square inch. All cursing at once.

I see. Thanks ! 

[beerfly]

27 minutes ago, Blake_ said:

I see. Thanks ! 

But, what happens if one of them steps out of this square inch ?

[Survager]

I hope the bandits will sit by the fire, play the guitar, tell stories about zombies and jokes )

[meilodasreh]

8 hours ago, saulysw said:

If a bandit loses a fight with a zombie, could they "turn" into a zombie bandit?

Yes! And when a bandit loses a fight against another bandit, he will become a bandit bandit!

 

...wait...that doesn't make any sense at all!

Let's just stay with what you said.

[Nevergrey]

3 hours ago, Survager said:

I hope the bandits will sit by the fire, play the guitar, tell stories about zombies and jokes )

And contrary to the guys in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. you will even understand what they say. 😉

 

[Matt115]

4 hours ago, Survager said:

I hope the bandits will sit by the fire, play the guitar, tell stories about zombies and jokes )

I hope they will work just like minecraft pillagers 

[Morloc]

7 hours ago, Survager said:

I hope the bandits will sit by the fire, play the guitar, tell stories about zombies and jokes

 

 

 

 

Arch-Necromancer Morloc

[wolfbain5]

any plans on opening up some new hotkeys? well the option for players to customize a few more. personally getting tired of the nvg and the flashlights being on the same button.

Edited April 1, 2022 by wolfbain5 (see edit history)

[faatal]

17 hours ago, Ripflex said:

Maybe have 4 Bandits being the most to spawn for an encounter and turn off further zombies spawns due to noise or feral sense attraction to avoid heavy performance hits.  Also scripted bandits ambushes instead of sleeper spawns in certain POIs would be interesting.

 

@faatal About Graphic APIs, have TFP consider DX12 for performance boost instead of Vulkan, since Unity has issues with Vulkan ?

Sure, I've looked at it, but it works about as well as Vulkan in Unity. Unity is supposedly making a push to improve DX12 support. I saw it on their roadmap. Maybe next year.

[Laz Man]

 

[Beelzebubs Ghost]

35 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

 

 

What's this? It obviously can't be an April fools joke - not on the 2nd of April anyway...

 

Just curious, regarding A21 - any news from any developer on more fire based weapons?

 

Or does anyone know how to mod fire arrows to inflict indefinite burning? 

 

Thanks.