Will stealth finally be worth it in A21? Also all the anti-immersion/Skill system.

[Jinx_DG]

7 hours ago, Ramethzer0 said:

It's so much more fashionable to rage against Devs and call them out!

It's a cookie cutter "rage" and a cookie cutter "call out". I'd give it more credit if the rage and call out wasn't a repeated talking point copied and spat out in cookie cuttter fashion. 

[Roland]

4 hours ago, Jinx_DG said:

It's a cookie cutter "rage" and a cookie cutter "call out". I'd give it more credit if the rage and call out wasn't a repeated talking point copied and spat out in cookie cuttter fashion. 

 

Well the game IS early access after all. "Alpha" I've heard it called sometimes....

[Laz Man]

On 10/14/2022 at 6:19 AM, zztong said:

Attack volumes are special. Once you enter the attack volume it will trigger the ambush. If you don't enter the volume, it won't trigger. The idea is to get to the same height as the zombies to get them to spawn in and then quietly kill them with a bow from outside the attack volume. You won't know where the attack volume starts and stops, but there's little reason for the attack volume to include blocks in a neighboring room. Poke holes in the wall, or roof, to get a good shot.

 

This is nice and all but I wouldn't expect players to have to "game the mechanic."

 

If players want to sneak kill attack volume sleepers, they will need the perk for that.  Hiding and restealthing is another option.

[zztong]

4 hours ago, Laz Man said:

 

This is nice and all but I wouldn't expect players to have to "game the mechanic."

 

If players want to sneak kill attack volume sleepers, they will need the perk for that.  Hiding and restealthing is another option.

 

I wasn't aware there was a perk specific to attack volume sleepers. I've got to go do some reading. I hate to have overlooked that.

 

I wouldn't say I expect players to "game the mechanic." I expect they will adapt to their environment to avoid being ambushed -- that's playing the game.

 

The mechanic provides a language to describe zombie behavior. Example: Why do invisible zombies appear all around me when I reach the top of a ladder? You entered the Zombie Volume vertically; they appeared at the last moment when your feet hit the floor. How do I stop that? Arrange some other vertical ascension and enter that space horizontally... perhaps a ladder on the outside of the building, knock a hole, see zombies, shoot zombies.

 

Edit:

As a POI designer, I admit there is a bit of a thrill seeing a player experience planned surprises. As a professor, there's also a thrill in seeing people detect a complication or challenge and then plan, organize, execute and ultimately overcome it. Go team humanity!

[Uncle Al]

1 hour ago, zztong said:

 

I wasn't aware there was a perk specific to attack volume sleepers. I've got to go do some reading. I hate to have overlooked that.

Laz Man is talking about 'From the Shadows' i.e. the stealth perk.

 

When a volume is triggered now, a distance in meters is calculated based on your ranks in the perk and how well lit you are (and if you have an active light source you automatically fail and all spawned zombies see you). That distance is then checked for each zombie that spawned from the trigger. If a zombie is closer than the calculated distance, they saw you and have aggro on you.  You don't get a sneak attack damage boost either on those targets unless you disengage and restealth.

 

If a zombie was further away than the calculated distance when it spawns then it hasn't seen you. It will probably be active but it is not directly tracking you and you do get stealth damage boost on those zombies.

 

There are a few 'sleeper spawn' volumes still in the game, where the zombies don't even spawn active, but the majority were changed to attack volumes which behave as described above. All the auto-attack volumes were also changed to attack volumes, so zombies always have to pass the stealth check to see you upon spawning. There are a few spawn volumes here and there that are pretty much unstealthable unless you've broken into the volume by a non standard route, because one of the triggered zombies spawns basically on top of the entrance way and will always spot you as their distance from you is less than a meter, but those are very much a rarity.

[zztong]

I think I'm mixing in Attack volumes when I don't mean to. Attack are the default volumes, right? I think I just mean Trigger volumes when we talk of an ambush that I thought ignored stealth. I thought entry into a trigger volume alone, no other factors, triggered the encounter and that Z's would become immediately active and targeting the Player that triggered it.

 

The Combat Encounter comes to mind within a Gun Store. If you enter the combat encounter and proceed to the obvious loot, you trigger a bunch of other volumes and have to deal wth the Zs. But, if you ignore the loot and sneak the perimeter, you can stealth most/all of the place. I've never tried to stealth to the loot. I guess I'll have to do that.

[Uncle Al]

8 hours ago, zztong said:

I think I'm mixing in Attack volumes when I don't mean to. Attack are the default volumes, right? I think I just mean Trigger volumes when we talk of an ambush that I thought ignored stealth. I thought entry into a trigger volume alone, no other factors, triggered the encounter and that Z's would become immediately active and targeting the Player that triggered it.

 

The Combat Encounter comes to mind within a Gun Store. If you enter the combat encounter and proceed to the obvious loot, you trigger a bunch of other volumes and have to deal wth the Zs. But, if you ignore the loot and sneak the perimeter, you can stealth most/all of the place. I've never tried to stealth to the loot. I guess I'll have to do that.

I don't now the correct terms for them to be honest, in the code they're just 0, 1 and 2.

 

0 - Zombies spawn alert but with no target

1 - Zombies spawn asleep

2 - Zombies spawn targetted on the location of the triggering player

 

Zombies that spot the triggering player (closer than the calculated stealth distance) will target the triggering player directly.

 

Generally seems folk call 0 an active spawn, 1 a passive spawn and 2 an aggressive spawn but your milage may vary.

 

Stealthing to the loot in the shooting range works (the zombies will activate and move towards the centre but they don't have a fix on you) but you'll almost certainly have to do it at night.  The centre area is totally exposed and will be very brightly lit in daytime so even with maxed out From the Shadows I think you'll get  spotted by at least the closer zeds.

[theFlu]

10 minutes ago, Uncle Al said:

0s have been greatly reduced, 2s have been completely removed and the vast majority of spawn triggers are now 1s.

 

This is "SleeperVolumeFlags", right?

With a "grep SleeperVolumeFlags *.xml" (under Data/Prefabs/POIs), and visual inspection.. I'm getting about 40% of 2's, 50% of 0's, just a couple of 1's. I'm kinda confused here?

[Uncle Al]

1 hour ago, theFlu said:

 

This is "SleeperVolumeFlags", right?

With a "grep SleeperVolumeFlags *.xml" (under Data/Prefabs/POIs), and visual inspection.. I'm getting about 40% of 2's, 50% of 0's, just a couple of 1's. I'm kinda confused here?

Hmm looks like they changed the behaviour of type 2s, not the number of them.  I've updated my previous post accordingly.

 

Basically it doesn't matter now whether it's a 0, 1 or 2, zombies will only have you as a target if they're closer than the stealth distance calculated when you tripped the spawn.  There's some direct testing of stealthing up to a spawn in a '2' volume in the thread I linked earlier, which shows that type 2 volumes no longer automatically break stealth.

 

Certainly that's been my experience, I haven't found any spots that cannot be stealthed, just some that are really hard, because where you trigger the spawn is in very bright light and/or you get spawns appearing very close to the trigger spot.

[theFlu]

Good, good, we're at least talking of the same version then..

 

39 minutes ago, Uncle Al said:

Basically it doesn't matter now whether it's a 0, 1 or 2, zombies will only have you as a target if they're closer than the stealth distance calculated when you tripped the spawn.

I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to convey here. If I read it as you've written it, it implies that volume-2 zeds would lose agro if you increase your distance to them after triggering? That doesn't seem to be the case in my testing, not now nor back during that Jan thread testing session.

 

I don't think that's your intent; I could try to guess your intent, but I'd rather ask for clarification.

 

44 minutes ago, Uncle Al said:

I haven't found any spots that cannot be stealthed, just some that are really hard

For a sort of a clarification on my position, this part is likely true for the entire game. Max perks and night time etc, and you can stealth every volume in game.

[meganoth]

One question I just discussed with a friend is that light now makes such a big difference, seemingly much more than noise. That is fine concerning lights in the room, but if Uncle Al is right that helmet lights **automatically** make you fail those checks there is a problem for stealthers in practice:

 

What do you do if your monitor is showing pitch black in many rooms? I play with shadows completely off because on my PC shadows produce huge FPS spikes. So rooms have usually more ambient light than default and I still need helmet lights in many rooms. I played with shadows on and there the light level is even worse.

 

Whether you see anything depends not only on the game though, but also on your monitor, the light level in the room you are playing in shining on that monitor, your eyesight.  External factors so to speak.

 

The only in-game remedy to this is are the night-vision-googles, a late-game boost. What can I do before that though? Maybe there needs to be some tier 1 NVG that don't work well or a dimmed down head lamp that does not illuminate much but also does give you a chance to stealth.

 

In practice I seem to remember I used headlamps and have still had sleeping zombies in rooms. Uncle Al, maybe you are wrong about the auto-fail of headlamps?

 

[theFlu]

17 minutes ago, meganoth said:

In practice I seem to remember I used headlamps and have still had sleeping zombies in rooms. Uncle Al, maybe you are wrong about the auto-fail of headlamps?

I spun up my test world to check; I wasn't able to sneak an attack volume with 5/5 perk at midnight with a headlight on. It might not be auto-fail, but the effect of the headlight to the AI stealth values is massive. A torch has a lesser effect, but I wasn't able to sneak my test spot with one of those either. The distance to the furthest zed at trigger is pretty long, about 13-14 blocks.

 

It might not be a hard rule, but it seems pretty flawless for a rule-of-thumb.

 

For the overall darkness issues; for attack volumes, as only walking across a specific pixel line is triggering, looking around with the light on is fine. As long as you don't walk with it on. And as you clear a room, moving "backwards" is always safe of course.

 

Of course, gamma settings are pretty powerful, if one doesn't consider it cheating..

[meganoth]

43 minutes ago, theFlu said:

I spun up my test world to check; I wasn't able to sneak an attack volume with 5/5 perk at midnight with a headlight on. It might not be auto-fail, but the effect of the headlight to the AI stealth values is massive. A torch has a lesser effect, but I wasn't able to sneak my test spot with one of those either. The distance to the furthest zed at trigger is pretty long, about 13-14 blocks.

 

It might not be a hard rule, but it seems pretty flawless for a rule-of-thumb.

 

For the overall darkness issues; for attack volumes, as only walking across a specific pixel line is triggering, looking around with the light on is fine. As long as you don't walk with it on. And as you clear a room, moving "backwards" is always safe of course.

 

Of course, gamma settings are pretty powerful, if one doesn't consider it cheating..

 

A problem with shadows-off and gamma settings is that not surprisingly bright surfaces in daylight are too bright. I might turn down contrast, but I'm playing on a TV screen and for everything else contrast is fine.

 

Oh, I have an idea for early game light source: There could be glow-sticks you can throw into rooms, cheap enough to work in early game, expensive enough you don't throw them everywhere

 

[theFlu]

9 minutes ago, meganoth said:

A problem with shadows-off and gamma settings is that not surprisingly bright surfaces in daylight are too bright.

Yeh, I might be lucky in that I don't care that much if some bright spot is a little burnt; usually I tend to set gamma so that pitch black is mostly dark, so I can see something - and just not care about the max brightness that much. I do play with shadows on, the minimum range shadows don't seem to tank my FPS too much, even if the dark circle looks silly while driving around.

[Uncle Al]

4 hours ago, theFlu said:

 

I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to convey here. If I read it as you've written it, it implies that volume-2 zeds would lose agro if you increase your distance to them after triggering? That doesn't seem to be the case in my testing, not now nor back during that Jan thread testing session.

 

I don't think that's your intent; I could try to guess your intent, but I'd rather ask for clarification.

 

Sorry, you're right, that's not my intention. As far as I'm aware the stealth distance calculation only matters the instant you trigger the spawn. You can't 'increase the distance' after they've spawned.  A zombie either spawns with sight of you or it doesn't

 

You can restealth, obviously, but that's a totally different thing.

3 hours ago, theFlu said:

I spun up my test world to check; I wasn't able to sneak an attack volume with 5/5 perk at midnight with a headlight on. It might not be auto-fail, but the effect of the headlight to the AI stealth values is massive. A torch has a lesser effect, but I wasn't able to sneak my test spot with one of those either. The distance to the furthest zed at trigger is pretty long, about 13-14 blocks.

 

It might not be a hard rule, but it seems pretty flawless for a rule-of-thumb.

 

Thanks for testing.  I never actually tested the auto fail for carrying a light as it was a flat out developer statement that this was the case. I habitually don't stealth with a light source active in game so it never really comes up.  Always better to have tested though.