"TO Be or Not To Be" that is the question

[4sheetzngeegles]

This is basically and is always a personal opinion, because i am but a single individual.

 

First and this is an absolute, no matter what you do.

 

You can satisfy, Some of the people all of the time, All of the people some of the time,
but never, All of the people All of the time.

 

I post this to neither single out, ostracize, or alienate anyone. It's just an observation
from reading posts, watching streams, participating in the forum, but, mostly from playing
the Game.

 

Is it perfect? No. Nothing is, but; Is it flexible? Yes. Easily proven in the manner which
it is written, .xml,.raw,.png, partially open environmental files "resources.assets and
blocktextureatlases, a microsoft.net controller file. Most of all proven in the fact that
this is an open forum, with a plethora of sub forums, including positive, questionable,
and negative feedback. Transmorph "modding, tools, and tutorials", and a wish list.

 

I know for a fact that the FP staff listens, because there are some aspects and some specific
actions that i asked about that are in game now. I take no credit. The FP staff may have been
brainstorming dealing with soft/hardware engine limitations and heading the same way. Either
way for that I give a big THANK YOU.

 

Some, if not many of the volatile responses, are answerable and adjustable, in the support structure
provided by other players. Modders. And with a little personal endeavor the person that does
not like or agree with a specific change.

 

This is a non-biased opinion, And yes it would probably be great if every single Infinitesimal
possibility were incorporated into the off the shelf version, "Vanilla" but then again would it
really? Modding allows for the infinite variables. Then along comes the purity argument.

 

Example: You purchase a car, call it a widget, it looks like every other widget out there, but you
order yours in candy apple blue lacquer, at the core its still a widget, then the default stereo
doesn't sound like you want so you get a Blaupunkt, some subs, and an amp. You are now driving
a loud blue widget, its still a just a widget at the core.

 

The point is a modded 7DTD game isn't more or less, it's still the vanilla game, but with Eye Candy.
Made to order.

 

Just imagine if TFP had decided to write this game in Obfuscated Exe and data files.

All you would have is a gray widget, that was exactly like every other widget out there. Good luck
finding it when you come back out of the mall.

 

4Sheetz

 

Responses encouraged and gladly accepted.

Edited May 5, 2023 by 4sheetzngeegles
sould to sound (see edit history)

[Gamida]

2 hours ago, 4sheetzngeegles said:

I know for a fact that the FP staff listens, because there are some aspects and some specific

actions that i asked about that are in game now. I take no credit.

 

 

 

Well I will on at least one lol.

I was among those that voiced the opinion that wanted driving with the mouse added.

I just found it too awkward using the A,W and D keys only. They did add that and I admit others asked too

and maybe they were going to add it anyway, who knows. That is not the one I take credit for though.

First when books were being added I mentioned on forum that it would be nice if some books were part of

the rewards when you did a quest. Madmole even responded that it was a good idea and not long after he mentioned that

it had been added. Of course it was back before the Great Forum Reform so there is now no proof of it. I even have the link to the post saved

and tried it on the Way Back Machine but it wasn't archived. I also thought I had screen shotted it for future generations to see but must have been on one of my older computers I retired

over the years.

 

TL;DR

Yes the Fun Pimps have listened to players.

[theFlu]

Among all those caveats and other softening language, I managed to scavenge roughly two points you're making:

- The game is moddable

- TFP do listen to feedback

 

From your car example, I assume you're arguing for everyone to chill with requests and mod their own car.. but if I have to mod my car and none of the servers are accepting me in with my mods, I can't race my V8-mod on the public roads. Not to mention, I have to learn how to install a damn steering wheel when TFP just couldn't be bothered to do it for me ..? There's a claim somewhere there, I guess, but I can't really find it?

[4sheetzngeegles]

Thanks for the replies Gamida; theFlu.

 

Gamida: For me it was the animals running when hurt then returning. a conversation with faatal. way back.

The second was a conversation with Mad Mole. where they indexed the weapons on the belt to return to their respective spots.

The third and I like this best of all is the AI head turn, the best even though the graphics were older was from 7.11.  Now its here.

 

theFlu: It's not an argument to just do it yourself, It was more of a presentation to ask some of the modders directly. It doesn't

always work, but it came from my experience when I first joined the forum. I felt lost, at first, when some of the game aspects

were changed from earlier alphas. I was invited to join a discord and they opened a door sharing their talents with me. This allowed

me to not only understand what each mod did and how it worked, but how i could add or change it to what I needed. They even taught me

how to edit specific values that made my personal computer work better for me.

 

For the server maybe someone can create a Mod whitelist that allows client side mods that are more QOL to interact if non intrusive to server play.

so i do understand your point.  I just wrote it that way to prompt responses that would clarify a point of view that i had not seen yet.

And you did: client side mods vs logon access to servers. A viable pimp dream, or possibly mod.

[RipClaw]

Mods are nice and all but they are not the solution to everything.

 

For example, there are aspects of the game that even mods can't change. For example, that zombies can dig. It is a hard coded part of the AI and there is no way to disable it.

So players who want to use underground bases in the same way as in Alpha 15 and Alpha 16 have repeatedly asked for an option to disable digging in the zombie AI.

 

Yes the fun pimps sometimes listen to players but only if it matches what they themselves would like to see. This also leads to frustration for players who don't agree with the direction the game is going and were hoping they could change the Fun Pimps' minds about certain decisions.

One such thing I argued against was when a few players started a discussion that players shouldn't be able to drive away from the horde or go swimming in a lake during horde night. I believed that players should be given the freedom to play the way they want. Others felt that players should be forced to stay in their base and fight the horde. The  result was that in the next alpha we had radioactive supersonic vultures and zombies that can swim.
 

One thing you forget in your enthusiasm about modding is that not everyone is able to create mods or even knows how to install mods. Even tools like the modlauncher don't change that. As long as the management of mods is not done directly in the game it will always be a hurdle for many players. 
 

[theFlu]

I have nothing against mods either; I quite liked to use plenty of UI mods in WoW for example. That type of mod would be absolutely fine to allow to differ on clients; that's the point in wow, you can't seriously effect game play with them. But even just defining the class of "non-gameplay-effecting mods" is quite a bit of work. That's a small subset of QoL mods people are using though, all kinds of craft-from-boxes etc are getting pretty popular, and aren't limited just to the UI. Not sure if defining the acceptable mods would be worth the effort, I'd like it, but would it get enough mileage?

 

15 minutes ago, RipClaw said:

not everyone is able to create mods or even knows how to install mods.

This bears repeating; it's not even a matter of smarts. Universities have had to start teach their Comp Sci students things like "what is a folder". These are people who have applied for and been accepted to study .. computers. And figuring out "what a folder is" is sort of a prerequisite for modding 7dtd at this stage. Computer literacy is taking a nose dive as everything has been automated behind "simple" UIs. Will modding be greatly improved by gold? Well, I hope so, but I'm not betting either way. But I wouldn't dare recommend it as a great fix.

[Maharin]

Without any context, I blame @Roland.

[BFT2020]

13 hours ago, RipClaw said:

For example, there are aspects of the game that even mods can't change. For example, that zombies can dig. It is a hard coded part of the AI and there is no way to disable it.

So players who want to use underground bases in the same way as in Alpha 15 and Alpha 16 have repeatedly asked for an option to disable digging in the zombie AI.

 

I don't think that is true.  You can't xml edit out digging zombies, but with some knowledge you can remove digging zombies out when you start using c# code.

[Gamida]

13 hours ago, RipClaw said:

For example, there are aspects of the game that even mods can't change. For example, that zombies can dig. It is a hard coded part of the AI and there is no way to disable it.

So players who want to use underground bases in the same way as in Alpha 15 and Alpha 16 have repeatedly asked for an option to disable digging in the zombie AI.

 

 

27 minutes ago, BFT2020 said:

 

I don't think that is true.  You can't xml edit out digging zombies, but with some knowledge you can remove digging zombies out when you start using c# code.

 

Yeah I am pretty sure I have used a mod that is suppose to stop zombies from digging, or at least it brings down their damage to dirt (ground) so low that they just can't do much damage.

[RipClaw]

1 hour ago, BFT2020 said:

I don't think that is true.  You can't xml edit out digging zombies, but with some knowledge you can remove digging zombies out when you start using c# code.

You can try it but a developer said that it is part of the pathfinding and therefore not so easy to remove. I believe it was @faatal
 

1 hour ago, Gamida said:

Yeah I am pretty sure I have used a mod that is suppose to stop zombies from digging, or at least it brings down their damage to dirt (ground) so low that they just can't do much damage.

Reducing the damage of the zombies to dirt is more of a workaround.

Edited May 6, 2023 by RipClaw (see edit history)

[Gamida]

1 hour ago, RipClaw said:

You can try it but a developer said that it is part of the pathfinding and therefore not so easy to remove. I believe it was @faatal
 

Reducing the damage of the zombies to dirt is more of a workaround.

 

 

I don't recall the pathfinding part. It may be so.

lol isn't that what mods are, a workaround so the game acts as you want.

I should have mentioned that I think the damage they do is like 1hp so it should have worked pretty well

[BFT2020]

On 5/6/2023 at 11:44 AM, RipClaw said:

You can try it but a developer said that it is part of the pathfinding and therefore not so easy to remove. I believe it was @faatal
 

Reducing the damage of the zombies to dirt is more of a workaround.

 

Never said it would be easy to remove, I was just responding to your comment that there was no way to disable digging zombies.

[Star69]

I, personally, have not modded the vanilla game other than simple xml edits. However, I was once addicted to COD: Modern Warfare and I really, really wanted some mods made for stuff that I and a few friends wanted to try. My solution, I befriended a really good modder in the forums. We talked a lot about what we wanted and he said it would take some work but could be done. Also, what really helped it along is that we offered to slide him some cash for his trouble. It wasn't a big sum of money but this guy had been recently unemployed and so it was a win-win situation.....we got the mod we wanted and he got a little cash.  Now something like this may not be for everyone however it does show there are ways available to get what you desire.

[4sheetzngeegles]

WIN\WIN Scenario?

I tried to find a Mod resolution for the underground bases, both dll and xml, that was also non
intrusive to core game play. It is buried and entrenched as Faatal stated. The controller animation
and states would need to be changed. Im not on payrole so None for me thanks.

 

Here are the options that I found to partially resolve the dilemma for Diggers vs diggerZ.

 

1 Turn off zombie generation in the main menu. It would work but would only render a better looking
version of Minecraft. Unless it is a pure base building scenario.

 

2 In spawning.xml comment out all of the biome spawns. Then conceptually the only time a player should
encounter a zombie is during a fetch\clear quest, scavenging and horde night. I think The Pois have a
different spawn governor. By preset volume.

 

3 This is an offshoot number 2, and depends on the player's main time working in the base. If night time
working in base primarily, then in spawning.xml comment out all of the nighttime spawns. and vice versa.
Still, on horde night, they will oops all over the base.

 

4 Now this is more detailed, (Z AI) is based off of senses, Sight Hearing Smell, and Feral which is basically
a multiplier of the others. Number 3, then disable feral sense, then in entities.xml lower sight hearing
and smell distance to 1 meter. and raise light sensitivity to the max for both parameters for all entities
including animals. This will basically make the ai all but Blind and Deaf and with a severely stuffy nose.
But unless you make a clone of each enemy entity, these settings will render even the dwellers atrophic.
In other words, a player could walk in with a rolled news paper and scavenge most places. Also set chase time
distance to a minimum. The degradation to this attribute, now also renders them to the attention span of a Gnat.

 

5 Is built on number 4, with this a player would have to set sound in sounds.xml to the lowest bucket so an auger
would end up generating sound as strong as walking on cloth. In blocks.xml all of the heat generating items
forge bench station Etc. set all HeatMapStrength, HeatMapTime, HeatMapFrequency to 1. In items.xml comment out
any line <property name="Smell"  That is highlight that entire line right click on it and select block comment.
rinse repeat. So nothing will smell, gun shots will be the same as whacking a pillow. Work centers and tools
will be using cold fusion, and the enemy will be deaf and blind with a stuffy nose and no attention span.

Anyone seeking to have this done for their play through can achieve it by using Notepad++, the compare plugin,
find and replace the parameters they choose. No deep modding tech needed, just need a desire to do it.