McKeighan Posted November 22, 2018 Share Posted November 22, 2018 Let's start by saying, 7 days isn't the only game I've modded. I've done some fairly extensive modding to DayZ as well, back when it was still using the Arma 2 OA engine (the real DayZ). Anyway, I've always found the subtle parts of modding way more immersive and rewarding to the players then the big over the top stuff. Enough of the intro junk. While playing over the year(s), I've noticed common trend, both with our small hosted, xml modified server (by me), or seen on other people's servers... that while out looting a town, people run out of space in their inventory "quickly". Now, this is either because the gear they're finding is "too good", or the player is a "packrat", or they brought too much with them and have no room to carry what they've found, etc. So, the player is forced with some decisions... More often then not, they will drop a box and load it up with mostly expendable but still good gear. On a less populated server, these boxes wind up in the middle of a road, on a more dense server, they are much better hidden. OR... Sometimes players will just throw gear in a random loot container that they memorize / cart what they can back to their base, and then come back for the gear at a later time (maybe), and then rinse and repeat. I say all that boring stuff to get to the concept. It would be nice to be able to modify code, server side / solo game side, to allow for a touch of realism. If the world was real, simply leaving a box in the middle of a street wouldn't be "safe" at all. The chances of another survivor stumbling upon it would certainly be greater then 0%. The chances of a random small horde stomping it would probably also be greater then 0%. I would like to be able to slap in some code that brings in a small chance that some other event happened while the player wasn't around that stole some of the loot out of their box, or crushed their box all together, or found their box and is now guarding it (Maybe a couple bandits found it just before they got back and the player is now faced with having to chase them off to get their gear back... or die trying..... or maybe now there's a small cluster of zombies around their box in the middle of the street cause they left meat in the box or something else attracted them to it). Maybe the timer would start ticking down once the player was more then "X" amount of meters from the box, and the event wouldn't happen until at least"Y" minutes had passed. Then, it's tested at a low % chance every "Z" minutes (probably every hour in game time would make the most sense) until the box's contents are re-looted, any player is back within the radius, or the box is destroyed. The way it works, rudimentary in my imagination, is the player loots a bunch of stuff, and leaves it in a 4X3 crate (12 spaces). for simplicity, let's say it's 4 engines, and the rest of the spaces are all stacks of 100 stone arrows. The player goes away, back to their base, and logs off the server for dinner with the wife and kids. However, there's still 2 players on the server, server's still active, so time is still moving. Therefore, events still go on. Nobody comes anywhere near his little town he was looting the entire time he was offline. However, enough time has transpired that it tripped the first time check (the "Y" one), and by the 3rd in game hour, an event happens. Let's say, 20 arrows and the highest quality engine get "stolen" by a passer by. (THAT REMINDS ME... The search array, when settling on something in the box, would have to hunt the rest of the box contents to see if there were more of the exact same item, and then always pick the "nicest" version of that object... no looter would take the junkiest version of an AK-47, would they?). Anyway, let's say 4 more in game hours go past, and 1 more event gets triggered, this time another set of arrows go missing, 120 in all. Now our player logs back in, and continues his journey back to his camp, then night comes, does some crafting and hiding from zeds as any normal player would, then in the AM, sets off for his stash he left in the far off town.... still outside the trigger radius... another few events happen, loses 1 more engine and another 60 arrows. But, now that their is a player in the map region, there's an added bonus of the event actually producing an "event". In spawns 4 bandits to "guard" the box. When the player gets back to the box, (and we're going to assume that this is where the player goes for this), the guard mobs are focused on the box, not on the player. the positioning should be 2 nearly on top of it, 1 sort of over watching, and 1 sort of on lookout. Provided that the player doesn't trip the visual of the lookout, he should be able to engage them with a moderate level of maybe won't die. But probably will. Definitely probably. I mean... HUMAN BANDITS. Come on. Just call it a day. Anyway, let's pretend he just got done playing some fortnite and has some caffeine reflexes going still, and was able to kill all 4. Going into the box, he finds... 2 engines, and 600 or so arrows left. Extra points to the pimps if they take that last loot cycle and dispurse some of it on to the 2 dudes that were looting the crate, so on their corpses you find an engine each and 100 arrows... and only 400 arrows left in the crate.... Anyway - I am not sure of the exact story telling mechanic that I would use, I haven't exactly flushed the idea out myself. But I think it's an opportunity that I would go after... it's something that none of the other genre's have really tried yet, at least not in an open world type game. Hope you at least enjoyed the concept. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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