Where are the zombies? Development priorities.

[Fran]

An empty, boring world. One would think this flaw would be at the top of the list of things to nail down.

Can't even remember the last Alpha where the game felt like a zombie survival sandbox instead of a human versus wildlife simulator. And while initially amusing, the current "every POI is a dungeon" approach is very lacking as well.

I wonder what is TFPs thought process.

[ArrowLoki]

try to set more complex settings when creating the world

[MoistGamer]

Originally posted by ArrowLoki:

try to set more complex settings when creating the world

I dont think its a setting issue? If OP is referring to the lack of zombies in the world, aside from cities, I'd have to agree. Even in the cities theres one or two roaming around, the rest are just spawn tokens waiting to neatly appear in their little closets and hiding places in each house.

Once in a while, and i mean a great while, a stream of zombies all wearing hazmat gear walk by my house. Thats about it.

6 days of nothing, 1 day to die. Is the current title of the game.

[Pulikutya]

Its a common complaint, something is wrong with spawns. I doubt we will hear about it until they fix it.

[Vagatarean]

Something is broken. Just started a new file and it has never been this bad. The game essentially has turned into Rust with the zombie focus falling out of view on a back burner. Hopefully this is just a glitch and as Pulitkutya said will be fixed.

[DthBlayde]

world spawns are set in the biome files. There -are- free roaming zeds in the wild, but there aren't nearly as numerous as past iterations. Gone are the days where you didn't even dare to start claiming a city or town before doing a street sweep first. This is not a bug or glitch, but a long running complaint in the spawning change.

Even the old wandering hordes have a fairly high chance of not appearing ( in SP games. I think it's a 30% chance of no horde., checked twice daily) and even when they DO spawn, it's not right on top of us anymore but some distance away... and entirely possible to miss altogether.

Since the "sleeper" concept was introduced, the shift has undeniably turned to POI based zed infestations. I would like to think this will change once the mechanics and behavior have been fully fleshed out and tweaked.

There are still the options of more dangerous biomes like the Wasteland, or contending with more vicious wildlife and "night stalkers" at night time, and mods to bring back a more threatening outdoor zed presence.

[Xen]

Whenever i go in cities and stuff all i find are zombies, it all depends on your settings as well as some file stuff

[Shurenai]

Think of it like this... You're building a machine, You've got a tentative blueprint and built a part of it, It works- It's not perfect but the part appears to work without causing issues. It could be fine tuned, It could be polished...But you haven't finished the rest of the parts for the machine yet, so you can't really put it through it's paces and ensure it will work properly in the end.

So, what do you do? Do you spend your time refining, tuning, and polishing that single part, when you know it could be a waste of time doing so as the part might just blow out? Or worse, you might over-tone or under-tune as you can't set the piece against the machine to be sure it fits after your changes? Or do you work on other parts so that you can finish the machine before beginning to polish and tune?


That's basically the situation we have here with zombie spawns. The spawning system, by and large, is complete. It's just missing the tuning and polishing. There was a point in the previous versions where all the wandering zombies were causing performance issues and degrading the gameplay- So it was scaled backwards pending performance improvements., The system still works, there's just less zombies around now.

Now they're doing a bunch of work on all of the other parts and trying to finish the last few so every part of the machine is here and can all be tuned and polished together at the same time.

"If it works, don't fix it." is a very important but often true phrase. It works, It just doesn't make as many zombies as some people would like. And, in the end, performance is still a bit of a sticky subject amongst the community- Some people have no issues, some have lots of issues. So until they finish working on the other parts and begin doing serious optimization and debugging passes to clear up performance problems, it's unlikely that they'll scale the spawns back up in the vanilla game.


Plus, For those that want more, and can handle more with their rig, Modding exists and it's not too hard to 'correct'; Which is, at least in my eyes, all the more reason to wait on making the change in the game itself until they work on performance.

[=JpS=Red5]

If you want more wandering zombies, there is a mod for that. I am currently running a mod that spawns 4 times the number of wandering zombies as well as larger wandering hordes. I play a single player game at Nomad and it is just right for me.

Shurenai really said it well though. While this game is being developed, you can expect content and mechanics to change as they need it to. Sometimes it is for testing purposes, sometimes it is to implement a feature in phases, and sometimes ideas do not work out as expected. Hopefully when the game is released, it will be where everyone wants it to be...and if not, did I mention modding? ;)

[Muhammad sumbul]

Originally posted by =JpS=Red5:

What's the name of this mod?

[Crater Creator]

First you get feature complete, then you optimize. That is standard practice. We are still in alpha, which is when you add features.

Unfortunately for the players that want more zombies, zombie count is limited by performance. Ergo, the game needs optimization (like redoing all the zombie models to be more efficient) before more zombies can be added.

Feature complete -> optimization -> more zombies

That is (my undersranding of) TFP’s thought process.

[Fran]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

Think of it like this... You're building a machine, You've got a tentative blueprint and built a part of it, It works- It's not perfect but the part appears to work without causing issues. It could be fine tuned, It could be polished...But you haven't finished the rest of the parts for the machine yet, so you can't really put it through it's paces and ensure it will work properly in the end.

So, what do you do? Do you spend your time refining, tuning, and polishing that single part, when you know it could be a waste of time doing so as the part might just blow out? Or worse, you might over-tone or under-tune as you can't set the piece against the machine to be sure it fits after your changes? Or do you work on other parts so that you can finish the machine before beginning to polish and tune?

Yes, if it's an essential part of the machine that renders it useless it if it blows out, then it makes a lot more sense to have it work perfectly before stacking up more stuff on top of it.

If the game wasn't able to perform in feature-lighter earlier alphas, then it should've been addresed as priority number one before introducing anything else.

Originally posted by Shurenai:

"If it works, don't fix it." is a very important but often true phrase. It works, It just doesn't make as many zombies as some people would like. And, in the end, performance is still a bit of a sticky subject amongst the community- Some people have no issues, some have lots of issues. So until they finish working on the other parts and begin doing serious optimization and debugging passes to clear up performance problems, it's unlikely that they'll scale the spawns back up in the vanilla game.

Thing is... it doesn't work. Deserted cities and environment is just sad.

[Shurenai]

Originally posted by fran:

Originally posted by Shurenai:

Think of it like this... You're building a machine, You've got a tentative blueprint and built a part of it, It works- It's not perfect but the part appears to work without causing issues. It could be fine tuned, It could be polished...But you haven't finished the rest of the parts for the machine yet, so you can't really put it through it's paces and ensure it will work properly in the end.

So, what do you do? Do you spend your time refining, tuning, and polishing that single part, when you know it could be a waste of time doing so as the part might just blow out? Or worse, you might over-tone or under-tune as you can't set the piece against the machine to be sure it fits after your changes? Or do you work on other parts so that you can finish the machine before beginning to polish and tune?

Yes, if it's an essential part of the machine that renders it useless it if it blows out, then it makes a lot more sense to have it work perfectly before stacking up more stuff on top of it.

If the game wasn't able to perform in feature-lighter earlier alphas, then it should've been addresed as priority number one before introducing anything else.

Originally posted by Shurenai:

"If it works, don't fix it." is a very important but often true phrase. It works, It just doesn't make as many zombies as some people would like. And, in the end, performance is still a bit of a sticky subject amongst the community- Some people have no issues, some have lots of issues. So until they finish working on the other parts and begin doing serious optimization and debugging passes to clear up performance problems, it's unlikely that they'll scale the spawns back up in the vanilla game.

Thing is... it doesn't work. Deserted cities and environment is just sad.

Sad as it might be from your perspective, It remains that the spawning system spawns zombies in, doesn't error, and is fully capable of spawning more or less zombies as set by the XML. The system in question works, It's just set in low gear. And the amount of zombies roaming around is purely subjective to the individual- You think it's sad, I think it's a blessing; I remember the old days when you couldn't walk 5 blocks without being entangled with another zombie, traveling, exploring, and trying to loot houses was a frustrating mess.

It's highly likely, at least IMO, that when they address the spawn counts that they'll add a game option for determining how many you want.


As for whether the game was able to perform, You don't address that as priority 1 in alpha. You don't build the house upon a half built foundation- You finish the foundation, then build the house.

Bug fixing and optimizing is a very tricky business- There's a reason so many games will have PatchA patch something out, and then PatchB,C or D a few weeks down the line accidentally re-introduces the same bug. 7DTD has already had a fair share of exactly that- Patching out the age old backpack-fell-through-the-world issue only for it to crop up every other alpha. Was gone in 15, back in 16, gone in 17, back in 18, seems to be gone in 19...

They do in fact do SOME bugfixing and optimizing, Just enough to keep the game in a mostly playable state for most people; Otherwise the game wouldn't be testable.. But my point here is that, If you do a bunch of fine tuning, tweaking, polishing, bugfixing and optimizing on a feature, Then you change anything in the game that has even a tangential relationship to that feature, you're going to break all your careful tweaks and have to redo them- This magnifies development time. Development would go from, loosely speaking,

"Develop develop develop bugfix optimize done"
to
"Develop bugfix optimize, develop re-bugfix re-optimize, develop re-bugfix re-optimize done"

Now magnify that over the course of 7 years of development. We'd still be back in the era of A12, maybe A13 if they took the time to completely optimize and refine every new version to the highest degree.


Now, When your game is a completed product, You pretty much have no choice but to take that time to polish the game after every pass. 7DTD however is not a finished game- It's an in progress game in it's alpha state, features are still being added regularly, entire systems are being rewritten- Fundamentally, the foundation of the house is still being built. It'd be kinda dumb to start building and furnishing the house now when you know changes to the foundation are forthcoming.

Anywho, I'm tired and it's bedtime, so gnight. :P

[magnetmannen WW3]

slap some mods in that baby , and dont use that nitrogen thing to make maps, it dont work, the ingame maopmaker works great, make a 4k map so the zombies get constentrated, and modify the game, by making a folder in your 7 days to die game folder called"mods" and drop all mod files in it, thats all u got to do to mod the game.

i modified max zombies and a horde mod, lots of z now ingame. my guess is the finished game will have these as standard.

other mods i took was traps, and inventory increase.

[FT]

Go into your Steam Library and RightClick 7Days. Select "Properties", then "Local Files", then "Browse".
Inside the folder this opens, select "Data", then "Config", then scroll all the way down.
RightClick "SpawningXML" and choose to OpenWith NotePad.

Make it fullscreen and you'll see the five biomes listed, most with four types of spawns below. If you change the "MaxCount" numbers like shown below for each of the 5biomes, it'll give you 10X more wondering zombies during the Day, 2X as many at night, and 2X as many animals (both aggressive and passive).


<biome name="pine_forest">
<spawn maxcount="10" respawndelay="2.9" time="Day" entitygroup="ZombiesAll" />
<spawn maxcount="2" respawndelay="3.3" time="Night" entitygroup="ZombiesNight" />
<spawn maxcount="2" respawndelay="1" time="Any" entitygroup="WildGameForest" spawnDeadChance="0" />
<spawn maxcount="2" respawndelay="1.1" time="Night" entitygroup="EnemyAnimalsForest" spawnDeadChance="0" />
</biome>


When adjusting the Wasteland Biome, however, it only has 3 sections (no passive animals) and its NightTime "REspawning" has 0 delay...meaning they get replaced as fast as you kill them....so probably leave that at default (I think of 3) Like this:

<biome name="wasteland">
<spawn maxcount="10" respawndelay="0.3" time="Day" entitygroup="ZombiesAll" />
<spawn maxcount="3" respawndelay="0" time="Night" entitygroup="ZombiesWastelandNight" />
<spawn maxcount="2" respawndelay="0.3" time="Any" entitygroup="EnemyAnimalsWasteland" spawnDeadChance="0" />
</biome>


Congratulations, you modded the zombie counts yourself!
If you want to reset it back to normal, you can just keep a copy/pasted version of the original on your desktop or somewhere safe. Or you can select the "Verify Files" option from Steam which resets them back to normal.
The game will sometimes reset these back to default when updating the game...luckily it's only a couple of numbers.

[FT]

10X more wondering zeds during the day will likely drag your computer down to 50-60fps (fewer if you're on a really old system or if your computer is poorly setup).
With this many, you can run 10blocks in most directions and start swinging at zombies.
Fewer is probably a good plan. Leaving Animal and NightTime spawns at default is probably a good idea (adjusting only the zombie Daytime MaxCount....probably to 5 or fewer instead of 10, lol).