Rethink Triggers for Zombie Spawns

[Lokeus]

On 6/27/2023 at 8:39 PM, The_Great_Sephiroth said:

Literally every zombie movie out there has people hiding from zombies. Not always successfully, but it's a thing. Some of us enjoy hunting zeds in the night as well, using the darkness as cover. There are many reasons stealth is completely viable, but on the same token, it should not be so effective that I can wipe out hordes of zeds solo. Currently, it is not, to my knowledge.

 

Hm, i don`t think you`re right. When you don`t trigger any scripts from the makers you can kill hordes with stealth without any problems. I play difficulty 7/8 and when i am in downtown with my medium bow on T5 in stealth on any roof i can shoot an insane amount of zeds without getting harmed in any way 😀 But yes, this isn`t too unrealistic indeed according to many zombie films and stories. Therefore i would wish the zombies in 7d would work a bit different. I played with ferral sense once, it`s fun but so intense that you aren`t doing anything else but killing zombies all the time and stealth gets completely worthless. If there would be a bar to adjust the ferral sense intensity, this would be great

[The_Great_Sephiroth]

I agree with the adjuster. I would like them to have improved detection at night. Assume their dead eyes see better in the dark (less light blinding them?) and maybe they can hear better. This would make nights much more dangerous again.

 

As for stealth, I don't know what beta you're playing but I have been in max stealth (5/5 from the shadows) and had zeds on the other side of a big house hear me, wake up, and start trashing the place before I can even get to whatever leads to the area those zeds are in. Currently, I find it buggy in that sense.

 

Take for example the Shamway Foods in the northeast part of the desert, just before you enter the burnt forest. I was in the back, full stealth, using my axe to destroy the various things on the floor that make noise before I get to them. I had cleared everything outside, verified that the zeds up at the sealed front entrance were asleep, made a wide circle, and gone in the back door. Killed the one in that back area and was moving behind the freezers to the office. Suddenly I hear things being damaged. I cannot see anything anywhere. I circle back to the front and the sleepers had somehow heard me in the back of the building from the opposite corner and were tearing their way into the store towards that back office. It has happened twice out of the half-dozen or so times I went there. Other times stealth works and I can kill MOST without waking them.

 

Then again, it's an alpha. I just go with the flow for now.

[Riamus]

2 hours ago, The_Great_Sephiroth said:

As for stealth, I don't know what beta you're playing but I have been in max stealth (5/5 from the shadows) and had zeds on the other side of a big house hear me, wake up, and start trashing the place before I can even get to whatever leads to the area those zeds are in. Currently, I find it buggy in that sense.

That may be another issue than stealth.  Last night, I started a tier 4 quest (not stealthing) and as soon as I stepped forward from the activation point, the entire POI lit up like a Christmas tree.  Red dots everywhere.  Some of those were still sleeping but most were active.  I'm pretty sure that isn't intended.

[The_Great_Sephiroth]

Red dots? You have a map that shows them?

[hiemfire]

3 hours ago, The_Great_Sephiroth said:

Red dots? You have a map that shows them?

Should be showing up on your compass during quests with a "clear area" requirement when in proximity to enemies that count towards the quest req if you've not modded that out. Was added in A19 or 20 iirc.

[SoulzBaen]

My biggest issue with triggers is stealth. I've purposely stayed away from POI's that have "trigger" rooms and the like as they completely render any stealth build useless. Even if you have max skills, T6 Padded, magazines, all the stealth bells and whistles, these triggers set off "alerted" zeds every time...making such a build useless. And I've been finding more triggers lately. I'm not a GunzBlazin! type of player(Only ever really have a gun for horde night, rest of the time it's knives and X-Bows,) but more and more it would seem the POI/Level design is trying to force that style of play. Not a fan.

[Riamus]

22 hours ago, The_Great_Sephiroth said:

Red dots? You have a map that shows them?

As hiemfire said, these show on your compass for any activated enemies that are part of a clear quest.

[AH64_Jimbo]

On 6/26/2023 at 1:50 AM, Riamus said:

There should never be a way to accidentally cause a quest to not be possible to complete and breaking a trigger point or bypassing a trigger point is extremely easy.  Players often will not follow the intended path and they should not have to in order to get the zombies to spawn.

This is a good caution for POI designers. I have used triggers to spawn zombies, but nearly anytime I do, I mark the sleeper volume as "Quest Exclude". That way even if those zombies are never triggered, a quest can still be completed.

 

As an aside I am nearly done updating my airport mod for Alpha 21; Prefabs are done, but I have to figure out how to put it on a map since some of my map editing tools are broken like MapToolz.