Alpha 21 Discussion Overflow

[sillls]

25 minutes ago, Roland said:

 

Your video? Sorry, didn't open it. I was discussing the forums and the date I joined was February 9, 2014.

 

*karate chops sillls in the throat*

But really, what do you think? Could TFP's possibly add this type of water? 

[Riamus]

6 hours ago, Aerial said:

1.  Repetitive quest lists.  It feels like I get the same pool of 6 - 8 clear/fetch-clear/fetch quests for a given trader and tier list, regardless of how many eligible POIs are in the adjacent town.   In a small town I can see that being due to there only being so many POIs of that tier available, but in the big cities there ought to be enough to avoid repeats, I would think.  Especially for the lower tiers. 

This one is frustrating.  I think the problem is that the trader will first fill out the quest list with POI that are within a certain radius.  Any POI in the town outside that radius are ignored if a certain threshold is reached.  This means that lower tier quests will always be the same set of maybe 8-10 POI even in a town that has dozens of POI of that tier.  When the POI within range don't include enough, it starts looking further away.  But that tends to only happen starting at tier 4 most of the time and by then, there often aren't that many in your town so it isn't as obvious that it's ignoring half of your town's POI as it is at lower tiers.  And it is funny that once it does expand to greater distances, you can end up getting quests 6km away when there are definitely enough appropriate POI within 4km.  So it appears to only be an issue when you have enough POI within a small radius.

 

I would really like to see them make it so that the game will choose any appropriate tier POI from within the town the trader is attached to, regardless of distance.  I might limit that to only tier 2+ so that you don't end up with a 2km walk in a large town before you can get a bicycle from completing tier 1.  Or it could be that tier 1 will also open up to the entire town once you complete tier 1 so you can still do tier 1 quests that appear further away if you want to after completing the initial tier 1 quests.  There are other options as well.  Anything to increase the number of different POI available for quests would be appreciated.

[Riamus]

1 hour ago, JoeCavallo said:

I'm sorry if it was asked or talked about it before, but could it be done that jumping in the game is always the same, and if you put points into Parkour perks that you need to press space ( jump key) twice because sometimes you need to jump just a bit to squeeze in some tight areas like jump on the garage door, or in attics and if you jump too high you get bumped into the roof and it slides you away from your wanted spot. 

I don't think I'd want the double spacebar to jump higher idea.  It works okay in games where your jumps are really far but for the ways jumping is in this game I don't think I'd like that.  I'd rather see something where you tap the spacebar for a short jump and hold it for a high jump.  Or just allow something like Shift-Spacebar for a short jump once you have high parkour.  I have tried using stealth for short jumps and they are short jumps but they are usually too short at that point.

[Jost Amman]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

 

Your video? Sorry, didn't open it. I was discussing the forums and the date I joined was February 9, 2014.

 

*karate chops sillls in the throat*

Spoiler

 

 

[hiemfire]

7 hours ago, amazing25grace said:

Hey fun pimps!

 

Got a new idea for a quest after watch GNS and Jawoodle how about making a POI that has a sound system that calls in a mini hoard to a known position of the poi. And your given supplies to fortify it and a few in game hours to complete your preparations and fight the mini hoard for a decent reward. 

 

What you guys think? 

So a Bloodmoon?

[4sheetzngeegles]

8 hours ago, amazing25grace said:

Hey fun pimps!

 

Got a new idea for a quest after watch GNS and Jawoodle how about making a POI that has a sound system that calls in a mini hoard to a known position of the poi. And your given supplies to fortify it and a few in game hours to complete your preparations and fight the mini hoard for a decent reward. 

 

What you guys think? 

That is the same mechanic as GnaMod, would be nice though as a sub game, similar to the old Horde Mode from yester year.

[GoofMcGee]

12 hours ago, Roland said:

I found out about this forum from the Steam forum since they talk and complain about its existence ALL THE TIME going back 9 1/2 years ago...lol

Don't look too deep.  They kicked me out because I was convinced A15 was never coming.  Oh no, wait.....that was reddit.  And who hasn't been kicked out of 78 reddit forums......right?.....  um.....   @%$#.  

Edited May 25, 2023 by GoofMcGee (see edit history)

[Doomofman]

3 hours ago, Laz Man said:

The quest list has undergone some improvements.  I believe you shouldn't get the same POI in your list as often after completing one there previously.

 

I'm hoping with the changes to how POIs spawn, the first T1 quests we get wont all be from the same like 10 POIs or so like it is now

[meganoth]

20 minutes ago, Doomofman said:

 

I'm hoping with the changes to how POIs spawn, the first T1 quests we get wont all be from the same like 10 POIs or so like it is now

 

After about 10 quests you will be promoted to T2 quests. The problem is if you get the same POIs after 5 quests already.

 

How many (questable) POIs does a typical town have? If we say that it needs 10 each of tier 1 and 2 and at least 5 tier3 (at that point you should easily be able to travel to adjacent towns for quests) then a town would need to have at least 25 buildings, which seems a lot. One solution would be to place a lot more wilderness POIs that act as viable quest buildings in reach of multiple towns.

 

Since wilderness seemed too empty in previous alphas that solution would kill two birds with one stone. Laz Man, how many wilderness POIs did you add this alpha ?  😉

 

Edited May 25, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)

[mstdv inc]

53 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

After about 10 quests you will be promoted to T2 quests. The problem is if you get the same POIs after 5 quests already.

 

How many (questable) POIs does a typical town have? If we say that it needs 10 each of tier 1 and 2 and at least 5 tier3 (at that point you should easily be able to travel to adjacent towns for quests) then a town would need to have at least 25 buildings, which seems a lot. One solution would be to place a lot more wilderness POIs that act as viable quest buildings in reach of multiple towns.

 

Since wilderness seemed too empty in previous alphas that solution would kill two birds with one stone. Laz Man, how many wilderness POIs did you add this alpha ? 😉

 

Usually there are enough POIs of 1-3 levels in the city so that they do not repeat. The problem is that the maximum radius is set for quests in which the search for a suitable POI is performed, so that the player does not have to run 1 km on foot from the merchant to the task of the first level. If we increase the radius, we can get more choices. If we exclude POIs from the list after completing the task, we will not receive repetitions.
In order not to worry about the distance for entry-level quests, I would give out a bike as a reward for the initial quest.

[Doomofman]

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

 

After about 10 quests you will be promoted to T2 quests. The problem is if you get the same POIs after 5 quests already.

 

How many (questable) POIs does a typical town have? If we say that it needs 10 each of tier 1 and 2 and at least 5 tier3 (at that point you should easily be able to travel to adjacent towns for quests) then a town would need to have at least 25 buildings, which seems a lot. One solution would be to place a lot more wilderness POIs that act as viable quest buildings in reach of multiple towns.

 

Since wilderness seemed too empty in previous alphas that solution would kill two birds with one stone. Laz Man, how many wilderness POIs did you add this alpha ?  😉

 

 

What I mean is, you start 5 different playthroughs and odds are you'll have the same T1 quest POIs available each time. The Pass N Gas with the dirt pile out front, the farm with the skip, the L shaped house where you enter via a ladder to the loft etc Almost always get these POIs as T1 quests on each playthrough, I guess because they're all set to spawn near the trader. 

 

26 minutes ago, mstdv inc said:

Usually there are enough POIs of 1-3 levels in the city so that they do not repeat. The problem is that the maximum radius is set for quests in which the search for a suitable POI is performed, so that the player does not have to run 1 km on foot from the merchant to the task of the first level. If we increase the radius, we can get more choices. If we exclude POIs from the list after completing the task, we will not receive repetitions.
In order not to worry about the distance for entry-level quests, I would give out a bike as a reward for the initial quest.

 

What I'm hoping for is the change to traders not always being at that entrance tile will help with this. As the entrance tile seems to always be the same 'zone' resulting in the same nearby POIs

 

Edited May 25, 2023 by Doomofman (see edit history)

[Guppycur]

23 hours ago, amazing25grace said:

Hey fun pimps!

 

Got a new idea for a quest after watch GNS and Jawoodle how about making a POI that has a sound system that calls in a mini hoard to a known position of the poi. And your given supplies to fortify it and a few in game hours to complete your preparations and fight the mini hoard for a decent reward. 

 

What you guys think? 

...it used to be in the base game.  It was called "horde mode" and it was glorious.

20 hours ago, Roland said:

I found out about this forum from the Steam forum since they talk and complain about its existence ALL THE TIME going back 9 1/2 years ago...lol

I googled to find it so I could complain about zombies seeing me through blocks when I was on a roof.  

 

Man, feels like twenty five thousand posts ago...

[Callum123456789]

Imo if its possible horde mode inspired quests should definitely be a thing I watched some videos on it and it looks so fun certainly hope it sees some light at some point.

[Riamus]

6 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

After about 10 quests you will be promoted to T2 quests. The problem is if you get the same POIs after 5 quests already.

 

How many (questable) POIs does a typical town have? If we say that it needs 10 each of tier 1 and 2 and at least 5 tier3 (at that point you should easily be able to travel to adjacent towns for quests) then a town would need to have at least 25 buildings, which seems a lot. One solution would be to place a lot more wilderness POIs that act as viable quest buildings in reach of multiple towns.

 

Since wilderness seemed too empty in previous alphas that solution would kill two birds with one stone. Laz Man, how many wilderness POIs did you add this alpha ?  😉

 

People often want to make larger towns.  Even in RWG, you can get some decent-sized towns.  In maps made by hand or using a third party map generator, towns can be huge.  I understand that TFP's not really interested in what's done with third party tools but a change here would impact RWG as well and so would be worth looking into.  What is the largest RWG town size possible?  Maybe 20 tiles?  Some tiles can have 3-4 POI on them (not sure if any vanilla tiles have more than that).  That can make a town have over 50 POI.  Considering you usually only get 2-3 tier 5 POI and maybe 5-7 tier 4, that means a LOT of the POI are lower tiers.  Not all are questable but a lot of them will be.  In the current game, you will only get quests for low-tier POI that are close to the trader even if there are twice as many in the town.  If you want to play the same map more than once, it means you're doing the exact same quests each game even when there are many other options to choose from.  It means that a large part of the town is ignored for questing.

 

So a town with 25 buildings would easily be possible - any town that has tier 5 buildings is almost guaranteed to have well over 25 buildings.  And being unable to quest in most of them because they are too far from the trader is a bad thing.

 

As I said previously, there are options to change this that really aren't too difficult.  The radius can be increased with probably nothing more than changing a single number, for example.  Making it so that you don't repeat the same POI quest until there aren't any other choices is a good option that Laz Man said was being done, though that still means that if the radius is small you'll still run into the same problem but that you won't see the same quests until after completing the others.  So you'll still have a limited number of quest options but they'll be spread out instead of RNG causing them to repeat right in a row.  Another option that would require a bit more effort/programming is to have the quests tied to the town the trader is attached to.  This would allow the trader to give quests anywhere in the town, no matter how big the town is.  That would be ideal, I think.  Now, you do run into issues with distance, especially before getting a bike.  You don't want to have to run huge distances to complete tier 1 quests.  So, as I suggested before, tier 1 quests can either be limited in distance from the trader while all others have a larger range or tier 1 can be limited in distance until completing tier 1 and then even tier 1 can be increased to the full distance.

 

Making the trader give more quests to wilderness POIs would be very nice as well.  I don't think I've ever quested in the wilderness except at a couple tier 4 quest points like Red Mesa.  I'm pretty sure there are lower tier questable wilderness POI, though I haven't actually checked.  But if there are, they're never used.  I know that the "country tiles" for A21 are supposed to make it so you can quest wilderness POI more and that will be a good thing.

Edited May 25, 2023 by Riamus (see edit history)

[Aldranon]

I get rid of as many mountains and hills and single POI's in the map generator.

Then when the ground is flat you end up with pretty large towns.

[Syphon583]

20 hours ago, sillls said:

But really, what do you think? Could TFP's possibly add this type of water? 

There's nothing in the video that describes how this technology behaves in-game. What's different about this water that affects how the player interacts with it? As far as I could tell, this video simply showcases the ability for developers to quickly and easily add water to their environments. Don't get me wrong, it was a cool video, but nothing about it described how it affects the player. Their water simulations are ones that can and have already be done in other games.

 

The big thing to remember when it comes to 7DTD is that it is a fully destructible world, and the water needs to be able to react to changes made in the world. The water used in this game (as of A21) will be water voxels, not a single flowing simulation as shown in the video.

 

Again, cool video, but there's not enough information there to really say if it would be applicable to a game like 7DTD. Also, it almost goes without saying that at this point, the game is getting closer and closer to gold and it is highly unlikely that, if TFP wanted to use this new tech, it would be for one of their future games.

[meganoth]

5 hours ago, Doomofman said:

 

What I mean is, you start 5 different playthroughs and odds are you'll have the same T1 quest POIs available each time. The Pass N Gas with the dirt pile out front, the farm with the skip, the L shaped house where you enter via a ladder to the loft etc Almost always get these POIs as T1 quests on each playthrough, I guess because they're all set to spawn near the trader. 

 

 

What I'm hoping for is the change to traders not always being at that entrance tile will help with this. As the entrance tile seems to always be the same 'zone' resulting in the same nearby POIs

 

 

That is an interesting point you are making here: That due to district settings the same POIs could be placed near the trader. 

 

I am not sure about it though: Farm, Pass N Gas and the L shaped house would probably belong to rural, commercial and residential zones, all the zones you would find in a small starting town.

 

 

[meganoth]

42 minutes ago, Riamus said:

People often want to make larger towns.  Even in RWG, you can get some decent-sized towns.  In maps made by hand or using a third party map generator, towns can be huge.  I understand that TFP's not really interested in what's done with third party tools but a change here would impact RWG as well and so would be worth looking into.  What is the largest RWG town size possible?  Maybe 20 tiles?  Some tiles can have 3-4 POI on them (not sure if any vanilla tiles have more than that).  That can make a town have over 50 POI.  Considering you usually only get 2-3 tier 5 POI and maybe 5-7 tier 4, that means a LOT of the POI are lower tiers.  Not all are questable but a lot of them will be.  In the current game, you will only get quests for low-tier POI that are close to the trader even if there are twice as many in the town.  If you want to play the same map more than once, it means you're doing the exact same quests each game even when there are many other options to choose from.  It means that a large part of the town is ignored for questing.

 

So a town with 25 buildings would easily be possible - any town that has tier 5 buildings is almost guaranteed to have well over 25 buildings.  And being unable to quest in most of them because they are too far from the trader is a bad thing.

 

As I said previously, there are options to change this that really aren't too difficult.  The radius can be increased with probably nothing more than changing a single number, for example.  Making it so that you don't repeat the same POI quest until there aren't any other choices is a good option that Laz Man said was being done, though that still means that if the radius is small you'll still run into the same problem but that you won't see the same quests until after completing the others.  So you'll still have a limited number of quest options but they'll be spread out instead of RNG causing them to repeat right in a row.  Another option that would require a bit more effort/programming is to have the quests tied to the town the trader is attached to.  This would allow the trader to give quests anywhere in the town, no matter how big the town is.  That would be ideal, I think.  Now, you do run into issues with distance, especially before getting a bike.  You don't want to have to run huge distances to complete tier 1 quests.  So, as I suggested before, tier 1 quests can either be limited in distance from the trader while all others have a larger range or tier 1 can be limited in distance until completing tier 1 and then even tier 1 can be increased to the full distance.

 

Making the trader give more quests to wilderness POIs would be very nice as well.  I don't think I've ever quested in the wilderness except at a couple tier 4 quest points like Red Mesa.  I'm pretty sure there are lower tier questable wilderness POI, though I haven't actually checked.  But if there are, they're never used.  I know that the "country tiles" for A21 are supposed to make it so you can quest wilderness POI more and that will be a good thing.

 

I think Laz Man mentioned multiple improvements. I think simply increasing max range by ~3% after each quest (together with excluding already used POIs) would solve the problem. Eventually I would get quests far away but at that time I would also have a selection of 5*5= 25 quests to choose from and a gyro.

 

[meilodasreh]

I have once brought up the suggestion of "Sudoku style POIs" to have a bigger variety.

What I mean is you wouldn't notice you solved one and the same sudoku several times after another, just because its orientation is rotated and/or mirrored.

 

Well for POIs rotation would not really help,

but a mirrored one would maybe some kind of "quick win" to add variety?

 

A mirrored POI would be somewhat recognizable, but would play/feel different because obviously every way you take is oriented the other way round.

 

Just a thought, don't know cause I'm no coder,

but when generating the world, it could just check "mirrored (yes/no)" randomly and generate it accordingly...boom, two times count of possible POI setups,

higher replayability because things don't feel that repetitive so fast?

Edited May 25, 2023 by meilodasreh (see edit history)

[Riamus]

25 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

I think Laz Man mentioned multiple improvements. I think simply increasing max range by ~3% after each quest (together with excluding already used POIs) would solve the problem. Eventually I would get quests far away but at that time I would also have a selection of 5*5= 25 quests to choose from and a gyro.

 

If range were increased slightly after each quest, that could work very well.

 

15 minutes ago, meilodasreh said:

I have once brought up the suggestion of "Sudoku style POIs" to have a bigger variety.

What I mean is you wouldn't notice you solved one and the same sudoku several times after another, just because its orientation is rotated and/or mirrored.

 

Well for POIs rotation would not really help,

but a mirrored one would maybe some kind of "quick win" to add variety?

 

A mirrored POI would be somewhat recognizable, but would play/feel different because obviously every way you take is oriented the other way round.

 

Just a thought, don't know cause I'm no coder,

but when generating the world, it could just check "mirrored (yes/no)" randomly and generate it accordingly...boom, two times count of possible POI setups,

higher replayability because things don't feel that repetitive so fast?

I've never understood using mirroring like that.  Take a race have that has a mirrored option for a track.  To me, it is the same track and I just turn opposite directions.  At least with reversed direction, it feels different.  For a POI, if it was mirrored, I wouldn't think it was a different POI.  I'd know it was exactly the same and just mirrored.  Not really worth the effort to make something that won't really be any different, imo.

[meilodasreh]

17 minutes ago, Riamus said:

I've never understood using mirroring like that...To me, it is the same...

Yes of course after some time you will recognize it.

You are thinking of it as a player that knows stuff inside out. Then it doesn't make much of a difference I agree.

But take perspective of a new player.

Seeing a POI for the second or third time, you barely recognize "Have I been here before? Oh yeah right I remember, here I think I have to take the left...yes..."

But that same POI mirrored, it would be more like "hey I remember this place, wasn't it a left turn here...no wait...hmmm...must be a different one"

 

Of course that doesn't work infinitely,

and maybe for a guy with a really good memory it even comes clear immediately that it's just a "trick", and of course that guy may even be like "oh how lame that is just a mirrored version of that one from the last session yesterday, how stupid do they think I am"

No pun intended, congrat you for your really big brain 😛

 

edit:

I once played a racing game for weeks without noticing that figure 8 race track was a mirrored one 😄

Edited May 25, 2023 by meilodasreh (see edit history)

[Riamus]

1 hour ago, meilodasreh said:

Yes of course after some time you will recognize it.

You are thinking of it as a player that knows stuff inside out. Then it doesn't make much of a difference I agree.

But take perspective of a new player.

Seeing a POI for the second or third time, you barely recognize "Have I been here before? Oh yeah right I remember, here I think I have to take the left...yes..."

But that same POI mirrored, it would be more like "hey I remember this place, wasn't it a left turn here...no wait...hmmm...must be a different one"

 

Of course that doesn't work infinitely,

and maybe for a guy with a really good memory it even comes clear immediately that it's just a "trick", and of course that guy may even be like "oh how lame that is just a mirrored version of that one from the last session yesterday, how stupid do they think I am"

No pun intended, congrat you for your really big brain 😛

 

edit:

I once played a racing game for weeks without noticing that figure 8 race track was a mirrored one 😄

Sure, you can get maybe a couple of runs before realizing it is the same.  My point was really whether it is with the effort of making such a feature just for that little bit of not realizing it.  After all, mirroring the entire POI including grounds probably isn't difficult from a programming standpoint but making it look right on the tile if mirrored may not be so simple without manually designing it mirrored.  And changing only the building without changing the land on the POI will often mean things like sidewalks won't line up, so that wouldn't be an option.  I just think it is far too much effort for what is very little value - a couple of runs without noticing and then you are right back where you were without it.

Edited May 25, 2023 by Riamus (see edit history)

[meilodasreh]

Yeah maybe you're right. I definitely cannot judge the effort it would take to implement such a thing.

And adding completely new POIs is of course better than said "mirroring trick" with existing ones.

Though also complete new ones will get old fast after a few runs, and these take definitely much more effort to make.

 

Whatever...are we there, yet? It really feels somehow mayjuneish if you ask me 😄  (yes I know, memorial day and stuff...it's just I don't care)

[DanLW]

2 hours ago, Syphon583 said:

The big thing to remember when it comes to 7DTD is that it is a fully destructible world, and the water needs to be able to react to changes made in the world. The water used in this game (as of A21) will be water voxels, not a single flowing simulation as shown in the video.

Realistic water simulation in a voxel world will be cool once it becomes reality.  Likely won't be in this game, but one day...

 

Roland (I think) posted a video of a game years ago that had voxel water that would fill volumes.  I don't remember if the feeding volume would lower and drain out.

 

Working flowing Voxel water that can fill, flow, and drain realistically would make for some interesting builds.  Imagine being able to build a tank that a pump would fill over time, and releasing the water in that tank into a trough to "flush" a whole bunch of zombies at once.  Or having an island base in the middle of a flowing river.  Or the dread of having water that could actually flood a mine if you aren't careful.

[Roland]

2 minutes ago, DanLW said:

Realistic water simulation in a voxel world will be cool once it becomes reality.  Likely won't be in this game, but one day...

 

Roland (I think) posted a video of a game years ago that had voxel water that would fill volumes.  I don't remember if the feeding volume would lower and drain out.

 

Working flowing Voxel water that can fill, flow, and drain realistically would make for some interesting builds.  Imagine being able to build a tank that a pump would fill over time, and releasing the water in that tank into a trough to "flush" a whole bunch of zombies at once.  Or having an island base in the middle of a flowing river.  Or the dread of having water that could actually flood a mine if you aren't careful.

 

It was Portal Knights. Yes, water volume would fill and drain. But in that game the world is destroyed and blown apart into remnants so that you are only playing in very limited arena-- a few chunks at a time and floating in space so that digging down can only go a dozen layers or so-- so much less demanding than 7 Days to Die.

 

Still, a very cool water mechanic and hopefully something that could be done someday on a larger scale. I would love a fully voxel first person Terraria-type game someday with the insane spelunking depths and water/lava draining/filling mechanics of that game--not to mention all the rest.