Version 1.0 (Alpha 22) Dev Diary

[Riamus]

58 minutes ago, faatal said:

The story should work on random maps unless we find a technical reason to only do Nav.

What I meant was that I would only want to go through the story once or twice (maybe again in a year or something).  After that, it's the same story over and over and gets old very quickly for me.  I have a feeling most people would feel the same.  Think of a movie or book that you love.  Would you watch in a dozen times in a row?  Probably not.  But you'll play this game even more times in a row than that.  It isn't that the story in the game or in any movie or book isn't good.  But once you know the story, you need a break between repeating it.  It is fine if it's in random maps, but it really needs to be optional so people don't have to mod the game just to not have to repeat the same story over and over ad nauseum.  And part of that option should be that RWG doesn't need to have trader biome progression since that is really for the story and a random non-story map doesn't need that and many people like special maps - all snow, all wasteland, different biome layouts, traders mixed up more so you don't have them all in groups, etc.

[Adam the Waster]

@faatalI was going through the wiki and I saw these cut weapon mods..

 

Was there suppose to be more elemental effects? 

 

 

[FranticDan]

@faatal i heard in the code that sometimes a sleeper volume will spawn 1 less zombie. Example, a range of 3 - 3, sometimes only 2 will spawn instead of 3?
If this is true, is there a way to force the spawn count? (if this is not true then I guess this is a bug? As it happened a lot in A21)

[4sheetzngeegles]

23 hours ago, Riamus said:

It could be related to the changes that allow zombies to push other zombies up.  It may also let them push others to the side.

Going back to A21 there is an episode by Neebs Gaming Cul De Sacked,
that if combined with the new expandable horizontal movment. Would make
a horde attack over a larger 2d surface width and height. Similar to World War

Z the movie.

 

Presently they still kind of work in a line, and sometimes hop on
each others shoulders. If invisible colliders were added to the back of zombie
models, these would lay horizontally to the ground, be full pass through for
all except the foot collider be it biped, crawler, or dog, and at different
body sections on the zombies. It could change them into a zombie body ladder.
It would be only active while zombie is still alive, functional, I don't know
the nomenclature. Because if it was still active when dead, it would create a
bunch of invisible gates, ruining tracking and directional movement.

 

So that instead of a jump they would progressively climb to different levels
attacking a greater and higher surface area, and create a swarm, using their already
available climbing mechanic, and swarm block damage bonus.

 

The reason; if it's possible to use random body segments is for variable height
attack vs just a shoulder jump which would look a little odd. Basically it
would form a body Zombie body Pyramid of Destruction.

 

The other visual effect could be, more of a writhing swarm. Meaning kill one on bottom
affect those above also. Have a zombie turn and those above fall to the ground. Picture
a pile of maggots or locusts.

[faatal]

On 7/17/2024 at 2:39 PM, zztong said:

And then they appear to start to wander when somebody enters the zombie volume, not before. Or at least that was my observation when playing around with wander volumes. They didn't start to wander when the volume spawned the zombies, so if you have a small volume such as you might find in a tight house, a zombie this is on the ground may stand up and start to wander when you were close because the volume was small -- basically ending up with an Attack volume that way.

 

I believe it was @Riamus who observed it worked better with larger zombie volumes. That was my conclusion after testing as well. I thought a Wander volume worked best when there could be generous zombie volume borders between the zombies and the player to start.

I did not want worse performance, so they operate under similar rules to sleepers and it was a quick feature, so I did not spend much time on it.

 

The zombies would need space to wander and they don't break blocks in that mode, so they can't make space.

[faatal]

1 hour ago, Riamus said:

What I meant was that I would only want to go through the story once or twice (maybe again in a year or something).  After that, it's the same story over and over and gets old very quickly for me.  I have a feeling most people would feel the same.  Think of a movie or book that you love.  Would you watch in a dozen times in a row?  Probably not.  But you'll play this game even more times in a row than that.  It isn't that the story in the game or in any movie or book isn't good.  But once you know the story, you need a break between repeating it.  It is fine if it's in random maps, but it really needs to be optional so people don't have to mod the game just to not have to repeat the same story over and over ad nauseum.  And part of that option should be that RWG doesn't need to have trader biome progression since that is really for the story and a random non-story map doesn't need that and many people like special maps - all snow, all wasteland, different biome layouts, traders mixed up more so you don't have them all in groups, etc.

Regardless of story, we may be moving toward biomes being even more distinct from each other, but the design is not yet done. It will continue to change.

52 minutes ago, Adam the Waster said:

@faatalI was going through the wiki and I saw these cut weapon mods..

 

Was there suppose to be more elemental effects?

That is old stuff I have never seen. Probably predates me working on the game.

34 minutes ago, FranticDan said:

@faatal i heard in the code that sometimes a sleeper volume will spawn 1 less zombie. Example, a range of 3 - 3, sometimes only 2 will spawn instead of 3?
If this is true, is there a way to force the spawn count? (if this is not true then I guess this is a bug? As it happened a lot in A21)

There was a bug where the count could be 0, which was fixed in V1.

[Riamus]

2 hours ago, faatal said:

The zombies would need space to wander and they don't break blocks in that mode, so they can't make space.

That is understandable, but wandering is an option the POI designer can choose, not something required.  If the sleeper volume is in a closet, for example, then they wouldn't be set to wander.  But if they are in a living room, as another example, maybe they would be.  But right now, unless the living room is pretty large or you expand the volume to go beyond the living room, setting them to wander will be no different from setting them to attack because by the time you activate the wander mode, you're so close they will attack.

[Uncle Al]

6 hours ago, Riamus said:

Think of a movie or book that you love.  Would you watch in a dozen times in a row?  

Yes, if it's 'Primer'...

 

To be fair it's not much more than an hour long and takes a few goes to properly get it.

[meganoth]

3 hours ago, Riamus said:

That is understandable, but wandering is an option the POI designer can choose, not something required.  If the sleeper volume is in a closet, for example, then they wouldn't be set to wander.  But if they are in a living room, as another example, maybe they would be.  But right now, unless the living room is pretty large or you expand the volume to go beyond the living room, setting them to wander will be no different from setting them to attack because by the time you activate the wander mode, you're so close they will attack.

 

As long as wandering sleepers are not more perceptive than sleepers the only reason they may detect you earlier than a fixed sleeper is that they wandered nearer to you. That is rather random and since they are wandering very slowly I can't imagine this making a huge difference. Or do I misunderstand something here?

 

Edited July 19 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Jugom]

Speaking of wandering sleepers. I had the other day one wandering away from the premises. 
I did manage to snipe it before it went too far. but now I wonder if there's anything preventing them from going away. It would suck to fail a clear quest because one Z felt adventurous. 
Maybe same as a player failing the quest for going too far a Z counts as dead if it strolls away?

[4sheetzngeegles]

Can the wanderer volume zombies be added to a spawn group called wanderers,
and then duplicated in the entities.xml as say wandererSteve or wandererMoe.
Then their sight angle could be more acute or shorter and their hearing less.

 

This way any zombie can be a wanderer, but still partially allow for the other

mechanics to work without much rework.

[Jugom]

7 hours ago, Adam the Waster said:

@faatalI was going through the wiki and I saw these cut weapon mods..

you seem to be still using the fandom wiki. That has been abandoned.
The wiki editors moved to https://7daystodie.wiki.gg/

[Gronal]

22 minutes ago, Jugom said:

Speaking of wandering sleepers. I had the other day one wandering away from the premises. 
I did manage to snipe it before it went too far. but now I wonder if there's anything preventing them from going away. It would suck to fail a clear quest because one Z felt adventurous. 
Maybe same as a player failing the quest for going too far a Z counts as dead if it strolls away?

From what I think faatal said in an earlier reply to someone (which I can't find again now), they use their spawn point as the center of a radius to wander within. So they shouldn't be able to go too far from the sounds of things.

[Adam the Waster]

6 more days before horde night!!!!

[zztong]

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

As long as wandering sleepers are not more perceptive than sleepers the only reason they may detect you earlier than a fixed sleeper is that they wandered nearer to you. That is rather random and since they are wandering very slowly I can't imagine this making a huge difference. Or do I misunderstand something here?

 

I don't know. I don't get explore the variables and states of zombies when I play, so unless it is one of my own POIs I don't know which zombies are wanderers and which ones have awoken. I think there have been a number of changes that affected stealth, perhaps some still to be tweaked coming out of Experimental, so I'm not really sure of every factor involved right now.

 

Does the zombie's facing influence their perception? I've assumed it does, else stealth with a knife is at an even bigger disadvantage than I have understood. A wandering sleeper seems like it might turn and sort of "sweep" its vision, perhaps perceiving more... maybe ... you tell me.

 

While using stealth, some differences I think I see:

 

* Zombies stand up and become active more, typically during the day. I can't tell if they're detecting me or they're wandering and just waking up because I entered a volume. When they're in close proximity, I think I'm being detected more, but I'm not entirely sure and my play so far is only at lower character levels.

 

* Zombies are losing track of me much more frequently. I suspect there's a bug here, actually. I can get successive bonus damage from stealth within a short amount of time (without the Assassin armor's set bonus) and that used to take many seconds.

 

* I'm wondering if Feral zombies have become more perceptive. I can't really tell.

 

8 hours ago, faatal said:

I did not want worse performance, so they operate under similar rules to sleepers and it was a quick feature, so I did not spend much time on it.

The zombies would need space to wander and they don't break blocks in that mode, so they can't make space.

 

That makes sense to me. Like any new tool, I'm sure POI developers will need some time to figure out the best usage.

Edited July 19 by zztong (see edit history)

[Adam the Waster]

The 25th i believe is stable (i think i Dont remember) will everything thing  be out then. Like the hogs, coyotes Etc

 

God I can't wait 

Edited July 19 by Adam the Waster (see edit history)

[sashabonnie]

Hello @faatal
 

Is there now a software option to add unique items to unique locations in the game?
 

What I mean is, let's say we have a Library POI with different loot containers, and only in this POI or some group of poi, there is a chance to find certain things, but in other locations it would be impossible to find these items.
 

This idea came to me when I was thinking about a story update for the game. So that in the game it becomes possible to look for some notes from this world, as is done in Last of Us. Thus, we would come to the library in order to find one note from the story chain, and the continuation of the story is already revealed in another note, which can only be found in the car, because the plot of the actions of these notes took place in these locations.
 

As far as I understand, now such a possibility exists, but only in this form: we must create a block, assign it as a loot container, and then register a loot group that will contain the items we need, after which these blocks must be placed in the POI.

[Riamus]

7 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

As long as wandering sleepers are not more perceptive than sleepers the only reason they may detect you earlier than a fixed sleeper is that they wandered nearer to you. That is rather random and since they are wandering very slowly I can't imagine this making a huge difference. Or do I misunderstand something here?

 

I'm not sure you saw the original comments on this or maybe tested it.  A wandering sleeper does not start wandering until you enter the sleeper volume.  That means that you can walk up to the edge of the volume and they will still just be standing around.  If the volume is small, then when you enter the volume, you are already too close to the zombies and so it acts like an attack volume.  They won't wander and will instead attack.  This basically prevents wandering somewhere that is large enough to wander, like a living room, but where you need or want the volume to be in a small enough area that you can't trigger the zombies to wander without being too close to them.

 

Take a living room as an example.  Normally, there aren't doors between that and a dining room or kitchen that is adjacent.  It's usually just an open connection between the rooms.  Wandering zombies will wander within the area defined by the sleeper volume.  If you only want them to wander in the living room and not into other rooms, your volume needs to be no larger than the living room.  However, most living rooms are small enough that if you enter such a sleeper volume, you'll already be close enough to the zombies that they'll attack instead of just wandering.

 

I found an example in one of the POI in my game, though I didn't take note of which POI it was.  It might have been Ostrich Hotel, though.  I could see the zombies all standing there - they were spawned but not yet wandering.  I took a step forward and the furthest zombie started wandering around, so it was clearly a sleeper volume set to wander.  I took another step forward and all the zombies attacked because I was too close.  If I was stealthed, I could probably have got the others wandering as well, but I was not using stealth.  So even though it was a sleeper volume set to wander, the volume was too small to get the zombies wandering, other than that one furthest zombie, without being close enough that they'll attack.  That's why having a "buffer" zone that triggers wandering before you enter the sleeper volume would be good.  ZZTong said that there's 4 blocks away from the sleeper volume where the zombies will spawn, letting them spawn before you open a door, for example.  If that same 4 blocks also activated wandering, then that would really make a difference.  The zombies would be wandering before you reach the sleeper volume, which can make it so they are wandering already when you first see them.

6 hours ago, Jugom said:

Speaking of wandering sleepers. I had the other day one wandering away from the premises. 
I did manage to snipe it before it went too far. but now I wonder if there's anything preventing them from going away. It would suck to fail a clear quest because one Z felt adventurous. 
Maybe same as a player failing the quest for going too far a Z counts as dead if it strolls away?

They only wander within their sleeper volume.  After you trigger an attack, they are free to go anywhere and there are some times when they can wander off.  Unless I misunderstand some of that, anyhow.

14 minutes ago, sashabonnie said:

Hello @faatal
 

Is there now a software option to add unique items to unique locations in the game?
 

What I mean is, let's say we have a Library POI with different loot containers, and only in this POI or some group of poi, there is a chance to find certain things, but in other locations it would be impossible to find these items.
 

This idea came to me when I was thinking about a story update for the game. So that in the game it becomes possible to look for some notes from this world, as is done in Last of Us. Thus, we would come to the library in order to find one note from the story chain, and the continuation of the story is already revealed in another note, which can only be found in the car, because the plot of the actions of these notes took place in these locations.
 

As far as I understand, now such a possibility exists, but only in this form: we must create a block, assign it as a loot container, and then register a loot group that will contain the items we need, after which these blocks must be placed in the POI.

AFAIK, that is the way you would do that, yes.  Any loot group that is used in multiple locations will always have the chance to drop the items in that loot group, so you need a unique loot group assigned to some specific container that won't be found somewhere else.

[Jugom]

33 minutes ago, Riamus said:

They only wander within their sleeper volume.  After you trigger an attack, they are free to go anywhere and there are some times when they can wander off.  Unless I misunderstand some of that, anyhow.

it was still sleepwalking. but it was an outside cat Z and just started going for the streets. shot it while it was still on the sidewalk. maybe it would have turned around if I let it alone for longer. 

[Riamus]

21 minutes ago, Jugom said:

it was still sleepwalking. but it was an outside cat Z and just started going for the streets. shot it while it was still on the sidewalk. maybe it would have turned around if I let it alone for longer. 

It could also be a bug.  Without seeing what it did, it would be hard to say for sure.  I haven't done much of any testing with the new wandering sleeper volume setting, so I don't know if there are any issues with it.

[BERKUT]

Are there plans for better synchronization? Because playing on pvp servers is uncomfortable.

[Adam the Waster]

1 hour ago, BERKUT said:

Are there plans for better synchronization? Because playing on pvp servers is uncomfortable.

There mostly focusing on PVE

Edited July 19 by Adam the Waster (see edit history)

[zztong]

9 hours ago, zztong said:

While using stealth, some differences I think I see:

 

I've played a lot more with stealth today at around 26th level and with 3 of 4 Assassin armor pieces Q1 to Q5 and I certainly do not have my pick of armor mods. My stealth skills are at 2, with Agility 4. At night, indoors, best conditions, my noise meter is 1. In various places in POIs, my noise meter while standing will be 2-4. As I felt something (perhaps multiple things) had changed related to stealth, I spent several hours (real time) of play paying close attention to my noise meter than I would have with A21.

 

I think the noise from doing certain actions had increased. I don't really have any benchmarks from A21 and before to compare things to other than my perception. Things like opening a metal door are +30.

 

Moving tends to be about +5 or +10.

Drawing a bow +5. Firing a bow I think is +15.

Interacting with things can be +5, +10, +20 or +30 depending on what it is.

Light matters, as usual. Direct sunlight is the nastiest +30 to +50 so far, but I've not yet walked into a spotlight.

 

I think a zombie death makes noise now and will sometimes wake up a nearby zombie and sometimes not.

 

I think feral zombies are more perceptive, but I'm not really sure.

 

I certainly have more luck with stealth when playing patiently, letting the noise meter clear between actions. Pausing some when moving, etc. Distance from player to zombie still matters. What I'm not sure about is when I open the door if the noise from the door counts from the door's location or from mine.

 

When I do wake a zombie it doesn't seem to always have an accurate idea of where I am. If you play it cool, it might wander and give you a shot or a backstab. This might sound odd, but I'm having more luck with a knife than I have in the past. The experience seems more... variable... unpredictable... at least right now and it is fun to play with.

Edited July 19 by zztong
Didn't remember my stealth and AGL correctly. (see edit history)

[zztong]

On 7/12/2024 at 11:04 AM, zztong said:

I have the Daylight Length set to 16 Hours as I like a longer night. That used to match with the trader opening time (at 0600), but now traders open at 0400.

 

I was playing a Day 7 Horde. I didn't make a horde base, so I was fighting while mobile, basically doing laps around Trader Rekt's place the entire time.

 

At 0400 -- during the horde night -- Trader Rekt opened up. I opened his gates ... he might as well join the fun. I could run around inside the compound during the horde night. Sometimes I would get teleported out and sometimes I wouldn't.

 

I want to think there's a possible exploit here in that I might be able to spend part of a horde night in an indestructible fortress. I'm tempted to set the Daylight Length to 12 hours for the next horde night.

 

I suspect what would be best for the game is if the Traders open at whenever the day starts, rather than a fixed time.

 

I have repeated this. When the trader opens before night ends, the horde continues and you can get into the trader, close the gates, and fire upon the zombies through Trader Rekt's chain link fence. You have an impenetrable fortress for however long the night extends beyond the trader's opening time.

Edited July 20 by zztong (see edit history)

[Adam the Waster]

49 minutes ago, zztong said:

 

I have repeated this. When the trader opens before night ends, the horde continues and you can get into the trader, close the gates, and fire upon the zombies through Trader Rekt's chain link fence. You have an impenetrable fortress for however long the night extends beyond the trader's opening time.

Yeah that's a huge problem 😕