PIMP TALK: Electricity + Doors - Your help is needed!!

[spRonin]

I'd really like this feature as well. I keep hoping for it or a mod but.. none yet

[SenpaiThatIngnoresYou]

My first thought when i saw this thread, was electric powered garage doors.

 

why? Garage door openers on the jeep? NOPE.

 

Mr. Burns style trap doors for base defense. Dig a deep pit, fill it with blade traps, then when enough zombies stand on it push a button and BLOOP zombies in the blender.

[Viktoriusiii]

Its so sad that it was already known when A16.1 came out that we wanted electricity, yet there were ZERO strides made, it stayed completely the same, while other things that were perfectly fine were completely reworked... *sademoji*

[Vedui]

A17 really needed expansion on electricity. Add hookups to doors/drawbridges/hatches. Add that dang flamethrower turret we were teased ages ago. Add the piston/crusher block. Give us a signal block so we can do more complex circuits (and/or/repeating signals etc).

 

/Vedui -

[Odin_the_Mad]

Oh hell yes... let's get some electrically controlled doors and hatches. Think of what minecraft did with allowing redstone control of doors and other objects. It adds a whole new layer of complexity to the electrical system. This is one of those things that I think is a no-brainer. The electrical system needs to be expanded in a major way and this would be a good start.

 

+1 vote for electrically controlled doors, hatches, drawbridge, and whatever other machines and electrical devices you can think of. At the very least it will provide the basic code infrastructure to allow modders to do amazing things with it and expand upon it.

 

We are at 14 pages now, I think TFP have thier answer

[hunluki]

I'm all in:

 

Logical switches and more than one input for electric stuff to make more complicated circuits.

Electric AC for hot days, electric heaters for cold (these should require a well insulated house, even some thermometer for automatisation) and electric Ovens to cook food, even electric furnaces if you have enough power. Any cable management solution would be nice as well.

Also a fridge to keep your food edible (simple stocked foods should rot based on type, cans should be use to keep them fresh for more time).

Electric Cars? I can imagine a long-long-long playtrough where I start as a simple man with some pants made of grass, but after a decent time invested in I can be the cool guy who travels home by his electric car, garage door opens when sees me, park in, attach the car to a solar charger, go in my well insulated house, drink an ice coffee from my fridge while turrets keep me safe from zeds.

Also charging batteries should be faster than 5W. Camera pictures that can be seen on TVs can be also a very useful thing.

Maybe a high level electrician perk to create batteries, solar panels, and the above mentioned stuff.

 

As the thread mentions electric doors, bridges, hatches, elevators, etc.

 

I really love the electric part of the game and I see big potential to improve end-game gameplay with electric stuff.

 

Also new ideas: some plumbing system that can make you clean water (with electricity ofc ), ice cube maker in an advanced fridge that can be combined with drinks to make them buff you on hot days, microwave to make food faster but with lower quality or use it to "buff up" canned food.

 

Also I got a bug back in A16 (don't know that it still exists, I have to check) where circuits got powered off it the input changed. The example where I got this:

 

Battery pack that powers basically everything, got it's energy from a solar panel. When the sun risen it's stopped providing electricity. Turned it on/off solved the issue. Also another is the bottlenecking, the weakest source limits the power output.

Example: Solar cells (outputs 100 watts) --> battery bank (can provide much more than that) --> electric system that uses more than 100 watts.

At night it's okay, battery bank can provide enough power, everything is cool. Sun risen, system begins to use the solar cells to charge batteries and half of the system dies because BB gets cut out from the system and SC provides all the energy.

In this scenario the whole system should be still powered up and battery usage may slow down because SP will charge the BB, or even if the system doesn't require more than 100 watts than it should simply recharge the batteries.

 

Another: Wireless radio stuff. To have cameras far from you and see live feed from it on your TV. Maybe the radio tower can be upgradeable with better batteries, higher perks to increase it's range.

[Hellsmoke]

As cool as it sounds I don't see any reason for having electronic doors other than cheesing the ai by opening and closing certain doors to make them change their chosen path.

 

Once they change the ai it might no longer loop making said doors redundant. If they do touch up electricity I'd rather see invisible wires so we don't have to build weird crap to hide them.

 

More lights would be nice as well. I just think their time would be better spent working on stuff that will compliment the ai they are aiming for instead of the unfinished broken one we temporarily have now.

[VenomsLust]

+1 for options. I like more options.

[Ghostlight]

Jeezuz given the list of things in the game that need urgent attention, I cant believe people are worrying about electric doors.

 

How about implementing a proper electrical system (with multiple inputs/outputs on all devices and proper circuits) instead of the half-assed crap we have, eh? Then worry about ♥♥♥♥ like powered doors.

[MrMobius]

No, I do not care about electric doors of any kind.

 

What I *would* like, is for electricity to be reworked, so that electric fences can be a closed loop, and I'm not limited to logical tree like serial structures.

 

For example, I would like to power a single large circuit system from multiple generators. A simple solution would be the addition of a functional fuse box block.

[OzHawkeye]

I would be in favour of any expansion to the electrical system, including electrically powered machines that operate faster than the current fuel powered ones.

[MrMobius]

Unless electric doors are considerably stronger (or stun zombies like electric fences) than the non powered equivalent, I see no tangible benefit to their addition. In fact, they would be considerably weaker in pure terms as they offer no benefit, but would cost more materials to produce, *and* require power.

 

The only justification for their addition would be some kind of "cool factor".

[Lanadon Conners]

I would strongly support an expansion of the "Electrical System". Every structure in game has some "base" electrical system built in as is shown by light fixtures and appliances so why can't we expand/ repair what is there ?

 

I would love to take over a structure as a base, find it's "Electrical room and make repairs or add generators to get all the lights working again. Maybe the Wiring tool could show us where the wires are in the walls and where circuits need repairs or to be replaced/reconnected. Sure it would add to the "Zombie Attraction factor" but a vault door that opens and closes and locks via electricity would be kinda fun and give players another reason to venture into the basements of some POI's looking for the Electrical room for parts.

[MaxTunnerX]

Why would anyone select only 1 thing?

[Lemmers]

Just give regular doors and bridges a "hold e to open interface" option and let us drop in an electric motor mod that allows the thing to interact with an electric signal while still being functionality the same when used manually.

[ghettochild2600]

I'd also like turrets to not require a power source because they already show a battery attached to them... I've tried messing with the xml file to change this to my liking, but to no avail. It wouldn't allow me to set something that requires power to also make power even if required 0 watts :/

 

If you could put a battery into them and had to change it out it would make sense. Just like actually needing a shotgun or smg to make said turret.

 

Electric garage doors would be nice.

[seagas]

At the very least, allow the drawbridge to be open remotely from a vehicle. Yes it would have to be powered and maybe with the option to add a motor to once built and placed.

[Necrowitch]

At the very least, allow the drawbridge to be open remotely from a vehicle. Yes it would have to be powered and maybe with the option to add a motor to once built and placed.

 

A lovely idea.

[mickle]

It would be fun, but care is needed

 

My two cents:

(1) It could have a massive impact on PvP multiplayer, especially when every second counts. This would make a life-and-death difference in so many scenarios.

 

(2) It could easily break zombie pathfinding (hidden to protect the innocent or those that want to figure it out):

 

ONE POSSIBLE PROBLEM:

Imagine zombies navigating a reversible maze with two "opposite" paths to the center, each ending in a triggered drawbridge, so that exactly one drawbridge is down at a time. IMHO, it would feel too artificial if they'd perpetually turn around in the maze like alternating current in an electrical circuit.

 

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS:

(A) Do nothing. Who knows, maybe zombies

would

behave that way?

(B) However, considering how the Fun Pimps have changed the zombie AI recently, I suspect the devs would update the AI to take random actions (e.g., continue forward into the pit, start attacking random blocks, or turn around) when the pathfinding changes.

© My personal favorite solution would be to change the root exploitable behavior at its source: give the Zombies a range of pathing solutions. Just a warning, the following will be technical:

 

Pathfinding is optimization. One such algorithm for pathfinding is known as A-Star. The A-Star algorithm, like most of the best pathfinding algorithms, takes a heuristic. If this heuristic is admissible (i.e., never over estimates), A-Star returns an optimal path. Straight-line distance is a common admissible heuristic for minimizing distance traveled. Using a greedier heuristic (e.g., straight-line distance * 1.2) opts for paths that are more like a straight line, even if it would have been better to avoid obstacles earlier. By having zombies use different multipliers, they'd come up with different paths. This would cause some to try beating their way to you, while others would take the maze.

 

To convert an admissible distance heuristics to an admissible time heuristics, divide by the quickest travel speed (land speed, water speed, beating bricks to death time, etc.) between the zombie and the player.

 

And for those of you AI nerds out there or those wondering why I nested so many hidden sections:

 

How deep do these hidden sections go?!? I didn't want to the majority of forum visitors to go off the rails discussing such low level details. However, on the off chance that a developer reads my comment and this can help in the slightest, I'm still writing.

 

Yes I know, D* was created for having to replan paths. This is arguably better than my A-Star example. It also takes a heuristic.

 

Yes I am already aware of Goldberg's work at Microsoft on combining A*, reach-based-routing, and landmarking in their 2006 algorithm "Reaching for A*". The level of precomputation is not conducive to such dynamic environments.

 

I'm also vaguely familiar with contraction hierarchies, but never used them myself. My understanding is that they exploit hierarchical connections like you have with streets and highways.

 

 

MY VIEW ON EXPLOITING AI

While it is fun to find and exploit AI, it shouldn't be low-hanging fruit and shouldn't produce results that feel too artificial. I would think it fair and fun to employ a reversible maze base with contingencies for multiple zombie actions, each contingency perhaps creating further sub-contingencies. And then to keep things interesting, having zombies sometimes take ultra low probability actions, just to throw a monkey wrench into our devious mechanications.

 

 

[KingSlayerGM]

snip

I think the solution to this, is improving the AI and adding randomness, as they already did. It is good that zombies can get to you going around an obstacle, but it is absurd that they can navigate mazes like they know them by heart.

 

The real problem is that TFP are now trying to get this game done asap. So they are focusing on things that make the game appear "finished". Like graphics, finalising the gameplay, fixing the bad things.. A system that already works, like electricity, sadly is not in their interest atm to be worked on. At least this is my opinion. This is very sad, because I really want this feature. Being a Minecraft fan, I know the potential that it has and how it could unleash the creativity of players.

[Hollowprime]

Just copy minecraft logic and tones of lines of code and you're done. This was promised as one of the niche additions in A17 but I still see no electric doors hitting the head of passing zombies into the pitfall filled with spikes ..

[Jackelmyer]

+1 here