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A16 - Gnamod


Haidrgna

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Haidrgna, thanks for the response and this awesome variation of the game.

 

I restarted a new world, and everything was working fine (felt a bit more confident thinking I knew what I was doing). Got a nice area, built a nice 7x7 pole base, and was nicely stocked with weapons (best lot of the 3 tries so far). Night one was as to be expected, everything held and I could do mostly melee to save ammo. Day 2 was spent upgrading, getting some workstations upstairs (workbench, forge and chem station) to start production on ammo. The stash had a lot of food (but almost no ammo... no biggie I thought). Did some exploring, got the air drop, and waited for night 2. It was a nice fight. Had some exploding Big Mommas, and a few waves of Zs... was a good test for day 2 with only poles and no other defenses. Day 3 was mostly a waste as I was searching for a water source to fill my jars so I could make more glue (needed in some recipes). Did not fine any (GNASpose2) in my seed. No biggie, if I could just find some tires, I'd have a minibike so I could drive around. VERY FEW tires around, went 0-for-2. Made about 20 explosive x-bow bolts and got ready for night 3.

 

HOLY BALLS!!!! I ran into what Dreamdancer did. When they started coming, I was looking west and saw about 10-12 banging on that wall. Cool, no prob, gonna destroy them with my explosive bolts. Bam bam... awesome. Look to the North... there are 10-12 banging on that wall. Look to the South, about 10-12 banging on that wall. Afraid to look behind me, as the noise there suggested the same. Uh oh. At 23:00, I'm outta bolts, and the poles are about to crumble. Climb upstairs and kill over 50 Zs (because I had to re-read the quest when I got up there and once again before the whole thing collapsed).

 

So, yeah, that happened! :) Was momentarily frustrated at the insane exponential increase in horde strength... but then realized... this was the most fun I've had in a while. Kudos to you.

 

Gonna dust off my pride, put it back on the shelf, dream a little bit about what I need to do differently, and I'm gonna conquer Night 3 tomorrow. Probably not, but 'eff it, I'm gonna try!!!

 

Thanks Haidrgna, really, thanks! Keep up the good work, looking forward to seeing this thing progress.

 

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Hmm. Playing horde mode, I think the hordes might need a touch of rebalancing. Night 3 I got a horde that felt like a night 70. At least. 2 cops, multiple Wights, tons of spiders and utility guys(who do high block damage), birds, and a truly absurd number of total zombies. With 11 wide walls, 2 full walls were stacked to the brim with zombies, with more behind unable to reach the front. And for every zombie I killed, 2 more seemed to take their place. And way, way past the blood moon limit. This was the kind of horde I usually have steel walls, fans, and turrets before facing. My concrete toothy and barb wire was annihilated. It was a rout.

 

Really, really love the mod, it's the most fun I've had on the game for a while. But it feels a little disheartening to so quickly run into something that seems quite literally impossible so early on.

 

Me too, just ran in to the insane Night 3 attack. Was not expecting THAT!!! Holy Balls!

I've never played Multiplayer in 7d2d, but I think for this mod, this might be a good idea (if the lag/frames don't make it unplayable with so many Zs at once--maybe the lack of trees, buildings, etc. will help balance the load).

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Yey!!!

 

Thanks for the response. It's nice to know that this is being worked on actively.

 

Anyway I did some poking on my own with the creative menu and found the quest so I was able to progress for a while... Until i reach the third night (I play with the 120 min day cycle) and hell broke loose: I built a massive building, as I ussually do, but no amount of concrete could have saved me.

 

ALL the Zs attacked only one of the walls, there were so many Zs that they chewed up 4 layers of concrete as if was wood (slighty exagerated) and all my ammo, explosives and weapons were emptied/broken in a manner of minutes (also slighty exagerated)...

 

I did win almost 200k that night alone, though haha :rapture:

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I'd be down to jump in on a multiplayer of this mod if anyone wants to host(my computer is a potato, so hosting it on mine is not a keen plan). 30 minute days, a few players, see how far we can go in a few hours? Set up a time, my calendar is pretty open the next few days. I have discord. Tag is #4349

 

Haidgr, Thanks for the super quick response. Glad to hear it's being updated and looking forward to the single player version. Having the quest paper be for sale in the shop sounds really useful. One suggestion I might add is after the first couple runs of 5 zeds, have it be more. 10-20 or even more. 50 kills for 10,000 coins. Reason is there is a bit of a hang time between one quest ending and another beginning, so if you are rapid-fire killing a horde(or killing many at a time with exploding bolts), some of your kills don't get counted. And every kill counts.

 

For changes to the vendor, my suggestions would be: Always have at least one stack of water. Been a couple days I've seen no drinks at all, and seen people looking for water for glue in comments(gotta get that crossbow for the exploding bolts). I would make heal items and vitamins more expensive. Maybe make meat pies a little rarer. I'd put engines(or gasoline, not both) in the secret stash items or rare in the normal. Power feels like it should be a struggle to get and/or keep going, as electric fences feel like they'll be really strong in this, and other traps will be a really powerful panic button. It is possible to set up a base that can handle literally any number of enemies with enough work in vanilla, and you want that to be really hard to reach, or hard to keep running.

 

I think it might be good to have the starter kit be a little less random. Sometimes starting with cloth and other times with bandit armor is a big swing. Some days starting with amazing weapons, other days with a compound bow, a pistol and a hunting rifle. In the long run, if the mod stays popular and its worth it to you to keep investing energy into it, having starting classes ala Valmod/Ravenhearst could be cool. Nothing as involved as that, just a variety of preset balanced starter kits. One with sniper and pistol, one with crossbow and hunting rifle, one with an 8 shot shotgun, one with great armor but less advanced ranged weapons, one with a lot of building materials, a nailgun and a workbench, one just with a bunch of extra cash, a hunting knife and some rags. Or even some unique weapons that you can only get in the starter kit(if you include a unique melee, need to also include a recipe for it or somehow make it always repair perfectly) . Though Idk, maybe people prefer the randomness? There is something to be said for being forced to adapt.

 

Idk though, overall it seems a great idea. And congrats on the sudden surge of attention you have gotten from the splash on all the major 7days folks' YouTube channels. I think your idea has really hit a chord for people.

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Other things that need to always be there: Clay and concrete. Not finding forged iron isn't too big a deal, as there is often a forge and you can make it. But your biomes don't seem to have any clay, and 2 days in a row without any showing up is rough. And -any- morning that doesn't bring concrete, unless you were lucky enough to score a mixer, is probably the last day. Unless you saved up, which is hard to do given the expense, you might as well just quit the game. Sitting here on the morning of the 3rd day, looking at the shambles of my walls and the 30k in my pocket, with no forged iron, no clay, no concrete, and no hope at all of even putting up a token resistance against the 3rd night...

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This mod somehow indeed seems to tick all the boxes, random starter pack with great loot, shopping for stuff, building a base and continuous action. The starting kit is originally for the Nomad Mode mod, which is supposed to be really random. I added them to the shop list so people can buy another for a chance of more good stuff, but they are supposed to be something to get you going right away. The vendor should just be selling armor and clothes as well.

 

The vendor is going to have to go through a good retouching, I think I can now make it spawn stuff more consistantly, but will need to make the lists for that, having it have like a stack of drinks (or murky water) and have always some food (even if it is just ration cans) and at least a stack of meds. Ammo will be more tricky, but thats why the vendor sells lead, brass, coal and potas, you can essentially start producing ammo from day 1. The mod is all about the choices, buying everything might not work every time.

 

I do not agree that the vendor should always sell concrete, but when it does it should sell enough at once. I think currently it nearly always has it in large amounts, but it hardly matters if the amount of zeds is just to much for a single person to keep up with.

 

I am also still thinking about the day 1 pacing, right now you can get a lot of distraction from the screamers to a point where if you play with shorter days (like 12 hours of daylight) you will not get everything properly setup or have the time to think of a strategy with what is available.

 

But there is 2 things thats on my list, vendor and price balance (the prices are just either vanilla values or arbitrary set, I want them to be based on the mats they are made off + crafting investment needed, such as time and workstations needed) and horde/zombie distribution. For multiplayer the current version works, but might be a bit to insane since it really goes to max zombies quickly. Thats why the lists of zombies that can spawn need to reflect what you can have.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Other things that need to always be there: Clay and concrete. Not finding forged iron isn't too big a deal, as there is often a forge and you can make it. But your biomes don't seem to have any clay, and 2 days in a row without any showing up is rough. And -any- morning that doesn't bring concrete, unless you were lucky enough to score a mixer, is probably the last day. Unless you saved up, which is hard to do given the expense, you might as well just quit the game. Sitting here on the morning of the 3rd day, looking at the shambles of my walls and the 30k in my pocket, with no forged iron, no clay, no concrete, and no hope at all of even putting up a token resistance against the 3rd night...

 

Clay exists in Gnamod in All biomes, it will always be around in layers 3+, it may look like dirt from above, but there are dirt blocks that have a bit of clay and clay blocks that have a bit of dirt. Its just not visible on the surface, requires a bit of effort to get to, but its there if the vendor does not sell.

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For balancing single vs multiplayer: Are you using gamestage to determine the hordes? If so, one way to rebalance for fewer players(which is an added challenge simply due to fewer vendors) would be to simply change the line in gamestage.xml that is the gamestage equation. Currently having multiple players around doesn't really increase the gamestage very much. You could tweak the equation to increase the weighting of having multiple players. just setting diminishingReturns to 0 would do a lot. This probably wouldn't change the number of zombies much, but you could use it to tinker with when the worst nasties show up for smaller player groups.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Of note: This wouldn't reduce the gamestage for smaller groups, it would increase it for larger, so you'd have to balance around that.

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Also, playing again with longer days, getting self-made concrete before day 3 seems to be pretty easy, so yeah, it might not need to be always in the vendor.

 

One thought might be to have the vendor have slightly smaller pools of gear with larger groups, if you can easily code that. Obviously larger groups need more stuff, but the tricky thing with the vendor doesn't tend to be if they have -enough-, but if they have any of the thing you want at all. Having 3, 4, or more vendors ends up practically guaranteeing that all of the basic stuff is always there, and makes it very likely that at least a few high importance items will show up each day(high capacity shotguns, exploding bolts, desert eagles, AKs etc).

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Couple questions and thoughts: How would MP work with the beacon? Each player has their own? Do they spawn different items? What would the heat look like if the two were stacked together inside the same base? What if three where there? Oh my!

 

In my first two plays, I tried to work my way to make my own steel and concrete mix, to save money. However, I never quite got there, because I don't think I was high enough level to earn the perks (concrete or steel) in enough time to make it worth it. With the longer crafting times, starting production mid-day 3 was just too late to make a difference. Any chance we can get these perks unlocked from the very start, to allow us to start production of these key resources on day 1 if we get the right mats? I know this is supposed to be a mod that focuses on killing and buying, but having an ability to be a little self-sufficient would be nice.

 

One thing I would NOT want you to change is the randomness of the stash or make everything always available. I love the challenge of opening up the stash at 1am that first night and looking at what is there and what is not. Makes me think about what I have to change in my strategy (if at all) on the fly before the next screamer shows up... and to me, that is fun. "Uh oh, no _____, change of plans... what am I gonna do now?" LOVE IT!!!! Of course, I can't get to day 4 yet, so for me, wiping due to random spawning of items in stash after about 4-6 IRL hours of play is no big deal, it's not like I've invested 50 hours in the world. If it doesn't work, fight like mad until dead, learn, try again!!!

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

I'd be down to jump in on a multiplayer of this mod if anyone wants to host(my computer is a potato, so hosting it on mine is not a keen plan). 30 minute days, a few players, see how far we can go in a few hours? Set up a time, my calendar is pretty open the next few days. I have discord. Tag is #4349

 

Haidgr, Thanks for the super quick response. Glad to hear it's being updated and looking forward to the single player version. Having the quest paper be for sale in the shop sounds really useful. One suggestion I might add is after the first couple runs of 5 zeds, have it be more. 10-20 or even more. 50 kills for 10,000 coins. Reason is there is a bit of a hang time between one quest ending and another beginning, so if you are rapid-fire killing a horde(or killing many at a time with exploding bolts), some of your kills don't get counted. And every kill counts.

 

For changes to the vendor, my suggestions would be: Always have at least one stack of water. Been a couple days I've seen no drinks at all, and seen people looking for water for glue in comments(gotta get that crossbow for the exploding bolts). I would make heal items and vitamins more expensive. Maybe make meat pies a little rarer. I'd put engines(or gasoline, not both) in the secret stash items or rare in the normal. Power feels like it should be a struggle to get and/or keep going, as electric fences feel like they'll be really strong in this, and other traps will be a really powerful panic button. It is possible to set up a base that can handle literally any number of enemies with enough work in vanilla, and you want that to be really hard to reach, or hard to keep running.

 

I think it might be good to have the starter kit be a little less random. Sometimes starting with cloth and other times with bandit armor is a big swing. Some days starting with amazing weapons, other days with a compound bow, a pistol and a hunting rifle. In the long run, if the mod stays popular and its worth it to you to keep investing energy into it, having starting classes ala Valmod/Ravenhearst could be cool. Nothing as involved as that, just a variety of preset balanced starter kits. One with sniper and pistol, one with crossbow and hunting rifle, one with an 8 shot shotgun, one with great armor but less advanced ranged weapons, one with a lot of building materials, a nailgun and a workbench, one just with a bunch of extra cash, a hunting knife and some rags. Or even some unique weapons that you can only get in the starter kit(if you include a unique melee, need to also include a recipe for it or somehow make it always repair perfectly) . Though Idk, maybe people prefer the randomness? There is something to be said for being forced to adapt.

Idk though, overall it seems a great idea. And congrats on the sudden surge of attention you have gotten from the splash on all the major 7days folks' YouTube channels. I think your idea has really hit a chord for people.

 

Yep, I've seen the link in the launcher for a long time, never really learned anything about it until I saw Kage848 and GEdge give it a go. I'm hooked now.

 

I'd be up for doing MP, but I've never done it before on PC (I'm a recent convert from XB1), so have no idea how to set it up or even join something in progress. I'm a bit of a dinosaur (age) and not even sure what is Discord (ha---well, that's kinda sad really, not funny).

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I have run into something of a game breaking flaw... most recent play, made it to 3rd night and as usual it was a hellscape. Both lines of my defenses fell(the outer was just cobble) and I retreated to the roof, but then I fell off. And my way back up had been destroyed(I'd just had frames). So I downed a grain alcohol and started playing run'n'gun. Eventually I was just being mobbed too much and found myself just naturally straying further and further from the base. Partly to give myself half a moment of inventory shuffling, partly just from being chased further and further away. I fought through the night and survived(approaching night 4 still no deaths), but came back to the base to find a whole bunch of cops just milling around. They didn't bother to touch my flag. It took only a couple hundred damage all told. Mopped up with the morning light and went to work rebuilding.

 

Issue is that this presents a kind of removes a lot of the tension. Knowing that, if I run away my base will be safe sort of undermines the core engagement. Not sure if this is meaningfully fixable though, as zombie behavior is hard coded...

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Man... It seems like you have to start saving up -everything- right from the start. Looking for tool and die, stocking brass, lead, coal, nitrate, etc. Or idk maybe just overbuying ammo. Because some days there is no ammo. And if you use over 1000 rounds over the course of a night(none of it autofire even), run yourself out of almost everything, and wake up to no ammo in the store, you are at the end of your adventure....

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Yeah this mod idea seems easy at first, but there is a lot stuff that is hard to balance.

 

There are no game stages involved, its just heat. Heat is fickle and can be high or low depending on player activity. The kind of zombies the screamers can call are on game stages, but those are only used on day 1.

 

I noticed many of the things as well, I have so far failed to get the zombies to actually want to Attack the beacon, when I make the bottom block a door (which they more easily attack) the thing collapses on spawn. I probably will severly reduce the HP the vendor and core blocks have so if zombies breach they will far more likely break it (or wittle it down if you survive).

 

The mode was never intended for days longer than 60 minutes, we played it MP on 40 and 12 hours daylight, thats rough solo so 60 / 14 would probably be more optimal for SP. If you go 90 or 120 you can more easily spend your day 1 farming zombies and building up a solid base. I cannot force people to play on shorter days, but the experience will vary greatly. The mod is intended as a throw away arcade style compared to other Gnamod mods, and I think you should really play it dead is dead when going solo.

 

I also noticed that the cops summoned by the hordes do not always attack and somehow might just not see the player or have a different way of engaging compared to normal zeds. The running off base, I might correct this by making the area smaller and surrounding it with radioactive biomes much closer, probably with their own spawns on (while the only biome you want to be in would be in the center). Currently the world is to large probably for the mode. I will have to think what will be the best solution to this, I am hoping I can make the beacon more volatile so you will need to defend it.

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I am also curious what would happen if you made a block and gave it EntityType=Player. Looking at the entityclasses, the npc bandits are given the Player class, which might be the tag that makes zombies attack it. If you can give an object 2 entitytypes,, or if entitytype being right isn't needed for inheritance, and give it a physicsbody of a regular block, it might just trick the system into working like a block but encouraging zeds to eat it.

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I am also curious what would happen if you made a block and gave it EntityType=Player. Looking at the entityclasses, the npc bandits are given the Player class, which might be the tag that makes zombies attack it. If you can give an object 2 entitytypes,, or if entitytype being right isn't needed for inheritance, and give it a physicsbody of a regular block, it might just trick the system into working like a block but encouraging zeds to eat it.

 

I'm no expert, but if my research is correct (mostly watching Vendui and CapOO), making it a door won't do anything, as Zeds don't "attack" doors more than anything else, supposedly they just see them as empty blocks, so will head toward a door if it is the proper path to the player. Just having a random door is not going to trigger or attract a Zed.

 

From my experience, it seems the Zeds HATE the pigs and boars. They constantly attack them, even ignoring me in the process. Maybe coding the bottom block of the beacon as a boar or pig will get the Zeds excited to attack the base. Of course, if you could code it as a player, that would do the trick as well, but not sure if that would make it problem some other way.

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I have been trying to figure out how to code it as a 'player' type for the past several hours, since I was curious about this. But apparently the game has separate things that are 'Entities' and 'Blocks' that each have different sets of properties. And so far, I am having trouble making zombies want to attack any 'Block' object, and I am uncertain any 'Entity' object can hold weight. By that I mean structural weight, being able to hold other objects on top of it, which is important as the beacon is multiple separate objects. I am going to poke at it to see if Entities can be given the Structural property.

 

Btw Haidgr, sorry for cluttering your thread with all this...

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The download link is still an old version, if you want to play the latest version for now it is only available on SphereII's launcher. When I get around updating this post I will also update the download link.

 

I am not sure its even possible to give a block an entity type, but I can look into it.

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It does not seem to be possible to give a block an entity type. And I cannot figure out if it is possible to make a block spawn an entity in an exact location. If it is, one could plantgrowing an invisible, structural air block in the beacon stack, and then spawn a crate-like entity in that air gap. I've made -that- aspect work, creating a gap above the second vendor that works to support the flag(BeaconLight) but will still fall if its base is destroyed. But the function calls to spawn entities are lost in the bowels of the dlls somewhere, and I can find no easy description of how they work or how to call them. So it would take a deep dive into the dlls to figure it out and even then it might not actually be possible without -changing- them.

 

So at this point it looks like you have to set your own homemade lose conditions.

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Well, on my third attempt, I SURVIVED night 3. Barely... based got seriously damaged, but my redundant SI strategy paid off. Used a modified version of what Kage848 did in WotW (I think he got from Daniel Sobral: https://imgur.com/gallery/0vJUl) I replaced ladders with a 1/2 wedge and tip ramp, which the Zeds climbed no problem. I think what saved me was 2 things: one, I started with a crossbow and 100+ exploding bolts, and two, I built a side tower I could jump to to see under my base and shoot the 30+ Zeds beating on the walls. So many exploding green cops, even after 4am. Used all my bolts and my 2 shotgun turrets ran out of bullets early.

 

Unfortunately, the trader stash has almost nothing useful for me on day 4. No ammo I can use in the turrets and almost no ammo for my weak guns. Oh well, learned some new things for my other games. If night 4 is any stronger than night 3, it'll make short work of me. :(

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I have seen other people have issues with the coins, a friend of mine even had negative cash after dying with a stack of coins. I am not sure I can do something about these things, since they not likely caused by my tweaks but rather inherent to the coin system. If you lose coins you can always replace them using the creative menu, until I find a cause that I can fix. Losing coins to the quest or the note you forgot to read, I will improve that system, it just does not work that well.

 

Zombies can spawn on terrain blocks, if a screamer calls them, I do not think a bedroll helps there, place some blocks on the grass that is within your walls to prevent any zeds from spawning inside.

 

Zombies intentionally despawn faster and leave less blocks, I will make sure in the next version that if loot is dropped it will be there to pickup (unless the block gets blown up as well, that is just a risk). Dead zombies take memory too and thus need to clear out as fast as possible to keep the mod playable on higher days.

 

I will possibly make the next version have a normal trader in the world as well, or make selling possible to the vendor (not sure on the last one). A trader somewhere a bit away you can go too might work for this mode.

 

I am not sure what you mean with the last screenshot, is the base version of the mod not working for you?

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Well, on my third attempt, I SURVIVED night 3. Barely... based got seriously damaged, but my redundant SI strategy paid off. Used a modified version of what Kage848 did in WotW (I think he got from Daniel Sobral: https://imgur.com/gallery/0vJUl) I replaced ladders with a 1/2 wedge and tip ramp, which the Zeds climbed no problem. I think what saved me was 2 things: one, I started with a crossbow and 100+ exploding bolts, and two, I built a side tower I could jump to to see under my base and shoot the 30+ Zeds beating on the walls. So many exploding green cops, even after 4am. Used all my bolts and my 2 shotgun turrets ran out of bullets early.

 

Unfortunately, the trader stash has almost nothing useful for me on day 4. No ammo I can use in the turrets and almost no ammo for my weak guns. Oh well, learned some new things for my other games. If night 4 is any stronger than night 3, it'll make short work of me. :(

 

It gets harder each day, but sort of sticks now after a certain point since it uses the same buggy list (that list has a typo in it that makes a lot more cops of one type than it should). This will be corrected in the next version, I am hoping to get a release candidate soon, but right now my priority is to get the mod documentation up to where the mod(s) are so that there is less confusion. I have learned a lot by watching the streamers that played the mod as well, the mod is either to hard for some and for others it just stops after some days with a similar challenge every day rather than it still going up. I need to find a good way to control the horde sizes more.

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It gets harder each day, but sort of sticks now after a certain point since it uses the same buggy list (that list has a typo in it that makes a lot more cops of one type than it should). This will be corrected in the next version, I am hoping to get a release candidate soon, but right now my priority is to get the mod documentation up to where the mod(s) are so that there is less confusion. I have learned a lot by watching the streamers that played the mod as well, the mod is either to hard for some and for others it just stops after some days with a similar challenge every day rather than it still going up. I need to find a good way to control the horde sizes more.

 

Man, no worries, thanks for such a cool change-of-pace. I'm pretty mad at myself, got killed early in night 4 but due to a mistake I made. I had built a second side tower to be able to shoot at the Zeds banging on my SI pillars. However, I forgot to build it down a couple levels for support. Well, at about midnight, with things looking like I might have a chance at survival, I jump over there and knock out about 10+ Zeds with a few explody bolt... then CRASH... the tower comes down. Of course, with about 60+ Zeds running around, I cannot get back up to a safe level, and try to kite as long as I can. Turns out a cop exploded near the base... I think the pillar would have been fine (it was polished steel for bottom 3 blocks), but the dirt ground underneath it was a crater.... DANG!! Despite my bad luck with the day 4 stash (no useful ammo or guns), I thought I had a chance... but under pressure, I forgot my cardinal rule of digging foundations. Bleh... okay, world 4 coming up tonight. Live and Learn!!! Good gosh I love this mod, thanks SOOO Much!

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