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But here are a few thoughts (I always say that before writing War and Peace, parts I and II : )
First test game I chose rifleman - did not help that I spawned almost in the 0,0 city, surrounded by nastiness, but more on that later. Got to a "quiet" spot and actually did the work of reading and equiping. And noticed I had no rifle. At first I thought it was an interesting change in your start equipment - you know how to craft the items, but don't start out with one. Quickly got gacked by dogs (did not run quite far enough) and decided to just make a new test game.
Pick Vet and got a good spawn location - forest with snow very close. Had a weapon, and everything (so you may want to check the Rifleman, if you have not already done so.) Did a lot of exploring in snow, so I got a good chance to see the changes in loot goodness. Snow made gathering bowls of snow, to make water and cook fairly easy. Advancement, without a bookcase heavy POI was a lot slower, but I was able to set up a decent base for the 7 day horde, in a pre-fab fire watch tower (from Magoli's mod pack, I believe)
The non-suitcase loot option in your stumps seemed to play better. I still found a few of the loot filled suitcases, but they were a much smaller number. Perhaps still a bit too much for single player, but for multiplayer where they need to be shared out? A big group will probably still want more : )
New walk for explosive fat people was nice - if I had time to sit back and watch them, it was easy to tell. In a large group or horde, I just took no chances. Speedy crawlers do seem to be more rare. Rare non-spitting cops? I had them everywhere. Freaked out the first few times, but then I started hunting cops. And hunters. And feral crawlers. The loot was not over-powered, for the most part - I would get a nice weapon part, or good haul of ammo, once in a while. The real game changers would come when the RNG gods would offset the 20 broken pieces of weapons or faulty '0' condition actual weapons, with a good, or better usable weapon. My starting assault rifle got retired, quickly, when I found a good hunting rifle that did over twice the damage - and all that 10 mm ammo was recrafted into 7.62.
Third test game I picked "Miner", since I don't usually do much mining (potassium nitrate, when I can get to it easily, but not much else, unless I just find a great cave system - since the new zombie GPS allows them to dig down, almost effortlessly, so my usual concrete and metal doors are far less protection and digging out an "escape" route just takes too much game time.)
My first thought was that Miner needed a little love almost as much as the Medic, since both lack decent combat skills. But this game also spawned me in the 0,0 city. This time I did not panic. I could hear zombies, dogs, etc. all around, but not actually see any, so I cautiously looted a couple cars. Still nothing. Probably a game bug, but the "grace" period, with no spawns in your area, resulted in waste-land / hub looting, with no enemies. Filled up my entire back pack with food, water, engines, batteries, etc. before I ran out into the desert . . . and just kept running.
Spent my first night huddled on a high rock formation with a few scrap frames to help fortify the walls and had to tear up a book to make a cardboard container to sort loot. Had almost 20 eggs from the intial fridge forage, and a cookpot, so I could test out the scrambled eggs. Very nice - not a ton of food, from each, but good for traveling the next day. Still think it might be nice to do animal fat and eggs.
Continued my tree loot test - I had chopped down a few trees to make spikes in the Vet game, but had not actually seen any drop a nest. Thought it might be a biome / frozen pine tree thing (all birds have gone to warmer places). Took quite a while until I actually found a nest - but could not figure out how to place / loot it (I thought it might be like the suitcases, place it on the ground, it becomes a regular lootable nest, loot it to get eggs / feathers. Nope. Placed it and could not interact with it. Finally hit it with my axe out of frustration : )
This was not a real issue, since there were still tons of nest all over the ground - but this could be because of the rgw mixer for the Magoli pre-fabs. I also wanted to do more tests on the animal snares. I had set up three in my Vet. game, but never had any corn. This time I had corn, so I thought I would give it another test.
Stupid me, I thought there would be another crafting option - snare, snare with corn. Did not even realise, until I was playing with the oil refiner that I was probably supposed to do something similar with the corn and set trap.
One thing I noticed that might be a problem was that the snares seemed to reset themselves after a harvest: i.e. I would set the trap, later it would have caught a rabbit, which I would take, then it would not "explode" but go back to the partial hay bale. A couple of days later, I was back in the area and saw they had all caught more rabbits. Is this working as intended?
Miner does not have the ability to craft "clay" in to "balls of clay" unless he purchases the pottery book. Seems odd that he has forging and mold making skills, along with just about every other option for harvesting materials from the earth, but not that.
Finally found a couple holes in the ground, but one was pretty much vertical. The other went down only a short distance until a drop off, so I could not test - or even look for the new mine stuff. Will give it another shot in the next couple of late nights. Did find one "miner's corpse" but it was empty / had none of the special miner loot.
Even though I had not found any shale oil ; ) I had one oil barrel and enough scrap metal to waste on a refiner. Finally figured out how to "charge" it (lack of internet at home really tests my memory) and got gas. Sigh. For some reason I was expecting to get oil, which I really needed to repair my guns, as day 6 was coming up. Looking back at your notes, today, I see this is exactly how it was set up. But, just FYI, as I understand it, the refining of crude oil gives you several products, including gas, diesel and reg. oil.
All in all (since I am keeping this short : ) I really like what you have done - so many changes (at least the ones I was able to test) address issues of player options and smart play. The idea that you can "hunt" for specific zombie types, because you know they will have something better than junk, alone, adds a very nice element.
Tweaks on the class features / balance will come, but just having one book to read vs. 4-7 of them, means you are up and running / scavenging almost immediately.
Biggest "issues" are more vanilla game related / things you can't control. One or two nice random drops are still game changers.
(I was slowly working my way up with rifles - collecting parts and buying rifle and 7.62 ammo books, then I got a blue sawed off shotgun. I went from a poor pistol, that would take 5-10 head shots for fat guys, exploding fat guys, speedy crawlers and non-spitting cops, to a weapon that did it in 2 shots. Granted I did not have a lot of ammo, but it allowed me to take risks with heavy hitters - which would often pay off with more ammo. I still kept my low end rifle, when I finally was able to craft it, for hunting / sniping. Then I got a "good" sniper rifle and went from <50 points with a 7.62 mm to >100 points with the same ammo. This is where the idea of building skills would be nice.)
In multi-player, again the need to share out weapons / ammo would impact this, but in SP, I typically run around with one melee, one long range gun and one short range gun. The choice is simple - what does the most damage, with the ammo available.
The sad thing is that I can't remember the last time I actually needed to use a bow or crossbow, for any length of time. Tons of steel tipped arrows as loot and they sit in a storage box. It has me wanting to start a "survivor", with the mad bow skills, next. But I also want to test the melee option, bruiser. Melee, without a decent melee weapon or traps or wood frames is pretty tough (for me). I have been infected three times with my Miner, and had four sprained legs from crawlers.
There need to be more days in my week-ends : )
Rifleman -
Sorry about that. Fortunately I did catch that problem early on and it didn't make it in the release version. That was a beta issue.
Cops -
Yeah I've noticed they're not spawning quite as rarely as I anticapated. Same with the feral crawlers, in all honesty. It's a bit surprising, really . I'm going to fool around with it abit more and see about lowering the number down a bit. I hope for my next version to be focused primarily on balance tweaks. Instead of putting out an update for each little balance change I hope to wait until I have a few changes. I don't wanna overbear people with updates.
Of course should I come across a critical problem I'll fix it immediately.
Miner -
I have an idea of how to offset some of this that may work. I'm thinking I'll make two new items - a survivor's knife and axe. I could make them exclusive to the class selection so there is no way to find or craft them. I could also make it so they cannot be repaired but have a somewhat higher durability. This way you can start off with something decent that can act as a temporary weapon until you find something better.
Eggs -
Doh. I forgot about the animal fat suggestion. I still like it, I just didn't remember it. I'm always up for giving uses to some of the things that have little use. Like animal fat. I'm wondering though if the omelet should use it. Currently the recipe is three egs and one grilled small game. As I can only have four ingredients for a recipe I'd need to remove an egg to add an animal fat. What do you think?
Trees -
You're right, actually. You won't find nests in winter trees. Or dead and burnt trees, for that matter.
Nests -
It works kinda like a snare does. You place it and wait. It doesn't instantly spawn loot. First it takes 15 in-game minutes I believe. Or however long it takes for wet concrete to "set" for reinforced concrete blocks. The max limit you can have for these "upgraderated" blocks is 15. After the first looting though it becomes a normal birdsnest and will adhere to the loot respawn setting of the server.
You shouldn't had been finding nests all over the place. Im not sure the prefabs have anything to do with it as the nests are in the biomes.xml Though its possible they're in the mixer too - I've honestly never spent much time in there. I'll look in lowering the probability again.
Though its possible the mixer is causing it. I mean, according to the xml, the birdnest is more rare than blueberries. Heck, they're as rare as those little patches of coal you can sometimes find ontop of the ground. According to their probability in the biomes, anyway.
Snares -
Yes, to bait them you place them on the ground and click them with the left mouse button while holding an ear of corn. They aren't meant to compeltely destroy themselves after looting, just revert back their original trap. The idea being that you reset the snare after taking the harvest.
Though now that you bring it up it probably would be better to force the player to build it again and replant it each time. Could also be a nice counter to the farming concerns I have with it too. I'll probably change it in the next revision.
Miner -
You make a good point about the miner. I guess the idea was that if he knew how to work with clay he would know the proper "layout" to make a mold. Though in hindsight I think you're right and he probably should start off with it. I'll add that to the next vision.
Refiner-
You'll be happy to know that, following your past advice, all current and future revisions will include with them a detailed Guide text file that explains all the features and mechanics.
I wasn't aware it gives multiple products. I don't really know much about the real-world applications of these things. I have a few ideas for this, though.
Firstly and most simply I could make it so that it gives both gas and a little oil.
Or!
I could make it so that if you upgrade it with both X amount of glass jars and crude oil it will produce weapon oil.
Or!
I could make it so that if you upgrade it with gascans it will turn the gas into weapon oil. Though I'm not sure how well to balance that one out. How many would you get per can? 3?
What are your thoughts on the above methods? Any of those sound interesting?
Vanilla issues -
Wait until you learn that you can cheat yourself to recipes by repairing items. Lol. Thats right - repairing an item will unlock the recipe in the crafting grid. I only recently figured this out - part of why I need to make special starting weapons/tools that can't be crafted.
Some of these issues with finding amazing weapons early on could perhaps be pulled back a bit if I made it so that complete guns do not drop and only parts do. Or rather, guns above a certain quality do not drop. What quality that should be though I don't really know.
Bruiser -
I'll admit I have a soft spot for the bruiser class. There is so much more I wish I could do with him though. For example I would want him to have higher tolerance to stuns and bleeding. That isn't something I can do, unfortunately. The system just isn't there for it. However I did think up an interesting little boost I can give Bruiser and the Medic class. I could let them start with one special pill that, when taken, will jump their wellness level up something like 20 points. This would in turn let them, essentially, start with more health and stamina.
I could also, perhaps, give the bruiser and medic a special item that, when taken, will make them immune to bleed, stun and infection for a short period. Though to craft thse items they will have to sacrifice like, 5 wellness points and some health. Think of it like an empty blood bag.
This could give them an adrenaline shot to tempoary boost defense. Perhaps even with a small healing effect for the bruiser class. I'm just picturing a bruiser in scrap armor with a combat axe going blood lust berserk in a group of zombies. Lol.
Does that sound like a fun perk?
Several hours later (thanks it a little issue with nvidia drivers update removing all my video driver info) I seem to have a working computer, again. We will see.
But it did mean I could upload my screen shots.
(these are from the underground bunker - metal door.)
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=531023804
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=531023796
(these are of a wood door)
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=531023679
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=531023709
Hope that helps. (I also noticed that I had to break through a couple trap doors, last night, but did not get screen shots.)
Cops make a nice change. Same as the speedy crawlers. Yes, there might be a lot of them, but just look how many anorexic cheerleaders are running around. And old gamers might get a kick out of an associational memory - "Send More Cops" . . .
Miners - I gave into the impulse to start a new game, so I did not really get a chance to do a lot more with the miner. It might be that they have some hidden options that were not my usual play style, so I could not really incorporate them. And they really are a good MP option, since they will be working in a team.
Trees - glad I had figured out your logic. But . . . still smoking trees, probably not, but after a short while? I see nests in bare trees in winter, trees that have had limbs / trunk broken, etc. Perhaps some of those eggs are not the freshest, but odd thing is eggs really last a fairly long time - especially in cooler weather (from what I have read).
Eggs - mostly I just think there should be more options for animal fat and the most obvious use is cooking; scrambled eggs are good, omelet is a nice option and just this AM I was frying up some carrots, potatos and chicken and thought - hashbrowns : )
Nests - I remember reading that the Pimps upped the spawn rate for nests, possibly when they added bow. Some biomes seem to have more, but that might just be because it is hard to miss a bird's nest on the ground in the snow . . . Not certain why you have the delay on the ones that drop from trees, though. Are you waiting for the bird to come and lay and egg? I thought it was just an interesting way to keep nests / eggs / feathers, but put them in a more logical location - up in trees. You cut down the tree and get a nest, it has to be placed on the ground to be able to loot it (game mechanic issue), but the player "sees" right away what they got from the nest. Then it goes boom and you have to go find another tree.
Snares - yep, set it once, catch an animal and you need to make a new one. They are incredibly easy / cheap to make, but are a nice way to get food / skins in the early game. Once you have a decent firearm, and can one-shot a bear or pig, you probably won't be making / needing a lot of these. Why did you decide corn vs. seed? Is the reward for corn baited that much better? (Especially since you made the "meats" fairly equal?)
Miner Two - the clay / ball of clay issue will go away with A13, but who knows when that will happen. It just sort of caught me off guard. But that is about the most useful / needed thing in the pottery skill. Clay bowls are pretty common loot items and re-usable. If they were more rare, the usefullness of the clay bowl as a cooking tool, would make the skill more desirable (although I still think you might consider allowing murky bowls of water to be turned into clean bowls of water using the humble 'stick' vs. needing the cooking pot.
Refiner - one of my "projects" over the summer was to do a fair amount of reading in the post-apocalypse / survival genres, as well as related research on various technologies that are key to our current level of civilization, or I would have no clue about petroleum distallation. One thing I had noticed was, in the vanilla game, it seemed no one had actually thought through the situation. You have a game object, listed as an oil barrel. From which you get gas. The barrels are typically 55 gal. You get a small portion of that. Why do gas stations (which have, according to one source I read, 20,000 to 30,000 gals of fuel in the underground tanks) store 55 gal drums of gas? Used oil, from oil changes I could understand. New oil for oil changes I could understand. But 55 gals of oil would make a lot of repair kits, so we must pour most of it out on the ground (or there is only a small amount left in each barrel.)
Problem with the vanilla game is how to do get your processor to give oil and gas? It may be fairly straight forward, just charge it as normal, but when you open it to loot it, there is a small number of oil containers and fairly close to the same gas as vanilla. I really don't think you need to make it more complicated than that.
Vanilla learn by doing - I had seen this mentioned in a few threads. But had not bothered to test the limits, myself (and since I don't bother keeping detailed notes on every book / recipe I have found and read, it would have been a challenge to track.) But I had a few instances when I suspected this was what had happened. I suspect this might be one of the issues with the crafting grid that the Pimps could not solve, leading to the removal of that system.
(So I would not waste a lot of sleep trying to figure out "non-craftable" items : )
I will admit I am not a fan of removing working weapons as loot. I was not pleased when the Pimps introduced a world where everyone tore apart their guns and threw the pieces to the wind. It made absolutely no sense from any perspective other than "we need to make the game more 'grindy' to keep people from noticing that after the first 7 days, it is pretty much just more of the same."
I tend to play a nomadic style (which was easier until the Pimps decided to make people play a more nomadic style by amping up zombie hordes so they tear through any base. In an odd twist of logic, no one noticed that the people who play as nomads have the least defensible bases, which means they get hosed : ) I don't want to have to carry around 10 different weapon pieces, waiting for the schematic or last part - but never know which one will be found. Nor do I like having to limit my exploration, so I can keep going back to double check to see if I have enough parts to build a weapon, or if the recent piece I found was better than one I stored back at "temp base night 4".
But I am told when the game hits BETA, they will be spending some time on balance and bugs : )
Bruiser - I must admit, I was again caught off guard when gearing up. I was expecting a melee class and he had a shotgun : ) It came in very handy, as I spawned right next to an bunker POI and the starting shells pretty much allowed me to clear the POI, with ease. But then I was a little stuck. Hiting roaming zombies, to gather notes to gain a new skill, by hitting them over the head with a stone axe seemed a little out of character.
Although the starting armor did make it a less dumb idea. Eventually I cut down some trees and gathered enough scrap metal to make a re-inforced club and melee became a good option - expect for speedy crawlers, cops and exploding fat people. The funny thing was I had no way to repair the clubs, so I would just craft new ones.
The idea of giving them a "perk" of + 20 wellness is interesting. Your very own "super soldier" serum. Then the scrap armor and the re-inforced club and you have a pretty good starting character, who just wades in and hits things vs. another ranged shooter. They also had 6 of the higher grade of bandage, so if they did get hit and started to bleed, they still have a higher survivability chance.
One thing I started to wonder, was if you were not being to generous, with starting knowledge / gear (not just the bruiser getting clubs and a shotgun, but a few other classes start with one decent gun, but also know another gun / ammo combo.) It might be easier to balance them if every class had a weapon / defense focus, but had to learn other methods. Then give them non-combat type skills to round them out.
I don't know. I am playing SP, so my characters need to be able to do everything. In a party, I could hang out at the back and play medic, or snipe away, while someone else waded in with a melee weapon.
I am also trying to test the choices based on "real game" conditions vs. pouring over the .xml files to see exactly what each character has. It is likely, that on paper, there are a lot of small items that help - but I may not even use, since I am really only testing early game through day 8. Someone, like the miner, might really start to shine after the first horde, when you are in resource gather mode to get steel / concrete upgrades for the next horde visit.
Ah! I understand the problem now. My door-smashing does not work on the doors that players can craft and place. This was intentional as I felt it could be misused and plus lower base defenses as a whole. I didn't know prefabs used the player doors. Though in hindsight maybe I should have. I need to play more I guess.
I can probably fix this. Though I will wait until A13 for this because fixing it would cause issues for any player door currently placed. Not a big issue, they'd just have to replace the doors. But its still an inconvience and I'd rather wait until players need to reset their map anyway before I make such a change for something relatively small like this.
Cops -
All the same, I'm still going to look into lowering their spawn rate a bit. I worry it might be a bit too harsh for new players on day one. Plus they drop some decent loot. I've made some slight adjustments and I hope its balanced it out some.
Trees -
If it becomes struggle to keep feathers and eggs I'll consider adding them to the snow trees.
Eggs -
I agree, there should be more uses for animal fat. I'm just not that creative when it comes to these things. I can't think of any practical uses for it that can be done in the game. I mean, in real life sure there are a lot of options but in-game I'm kinda limited.
Hashbrowns sounds like a good idea that I can probably work with in-game. Perhaps two boiled potatoes in a pot of animal fat?
Any other ideas of what foods can be made using fat and ingredients that are already in the game? The more “complicated” they are to make (such as needing two cooking steps) the more I can boost their resulting food gain and still maintain balance, I think.
Nests -
The reason I have a delay is, like you said, to simulate that you're waiting for a bird to come back and use it. Whatever eggs or feathers it had in it you already took when you retrieved the birdsnest. Though having it be a one-time loot as a method for getting eggs and feathers is one way to do it. I never really thought of it that way. I'll try this method for a while and see what the feedback is like. I think they're both good approaches.
Snares -
Originally when I was doing the update I was going to switch it over to cornseed like we had discussed prior. However I ended up modding the farm plants, including corn, in a way that made this impossible.
You see in the game the seeds are “items” that “place as a block” when you right-click. This is why you can plant the seeds anywhere – even places they can't grow like pavement. This would have wasted the seed because the plant will vanish after it realizes it can't grow there.
What I did was quite simple – I skipped the seed altogether. I took the “block” the seed turns into and renamed it “seed” and gave it to same icon. So from a player perspective, it hasn't changed. However now since what you're holding is not an item but the actual block directly you'll notice you can no longer accidentally place it where it cannot grow because it won't let you.
This was essentially small “quality of life” improvement. However I realized after doing this change that since the seed was now a block item I could no longer assign an “upgrade” command to it. So I stuck with the plain corn.
Perhaps in the future I will add a new item – Animal Feed – that you can craft with, say, cornseed and maple/pine seed which can then be used to bait the traps. I could probably add it to the “junk” loot table too. Hm. Not sure, there are a lot of ways this could be approached so I'm not really sure what would be best.
Clay Bowls -
Boiling a bowl of water on a stick seems kinda... iffy to me. What if you clean the water by using a bowl as the cooking source? Instead of a pot, use an empty bowl to boil your murky bowls into clean bowls. Like you're it pouring it from one bowl or another or something. Heck, I could probably do the same thing with the glass jars. Would that be satisfactory?
Refiner -
The “oil barrels” giving gas always baffled me a bit too. It's why I changed that. They're oil barrels – they should give oil. You're right that it isn't realistic how you get so little from such a large keg that should last you like months. Though it is a game and we do need to keep game balance an issue. If all you needed was one gas station to have an infinite supply gas or one barrel to have a infinite supply of oil... Well that removes some of the challenge.
The processor is “upgraded” into a new block when you use the oil on it. Kind of like how you upgrade wood frames into, well, wood walls. The block they turn into is set to “grow” like a plant, which tells it to change into a different block after a set amount of time. That block it then grows into is a container which I have pretty much full control ever as to what drops. That is how it currently functions, anyway. I could tell it to drop both gas and oil
Do you think it would be too complicated if you had to upgrade it with jars and oil to get weaponoil?
Guns -
I will admit that I'm in a similar boat. I don't really get why there are weapon parts scattered everywhere instead of actual guns. Though from a gameplay perspective I understand it. I've been thinking of alternative ways to approach this while maintaining a gameplay balance.
One idea I had was to make finding guns a bit more common BUT counter it by having it so guns you find complete are never above the Fine quality. The parts, in turn, could be more rare but have a higher chance of being non-crap.
Currently we find a bunch of crappy weapon parts littered all over the place but only occasionally find a gun. I could kinda flip that around this way. So now you find guns but what you really want are those rare parts to make your gun even better. I don't know, its an idea.
Bruiser -
He's supposed to spawn with a Quality Spiked Club and shotgun. Did you not get the club?
I envisioned him more the CQC character. Melee and shotty. Wait until you see the Boomstick shotgun I added in this next beta. Would suit him well, I think. Though you'd probably need to cheat with creative menu to get it early on thanks to the new weapon upgrade system. I'll talk more about that later. :)
Classes Balance -
I could perhaps make a new pistol exclusive for the medic that cannot be crafted. I could give it a bit of a boost to durability so that it lasts longer to compensate for it being a one-use weapon. The miner could perhaps start with a blunderbuss and some pipebombs. The builder could start with a sawed off shotgun.
That sound like it would help even it out a bit? I could also, perhaps, let them start with a Knowledge book to help compensate for their lack of offense focus. That way they get a bit of a wildcard talent early on.
Here is a new beta if you're still interested in some testing.
{LINK REMOVED}https://www.mediafire.com/
#12c9c8haesjsm
Heres a quick changelog of some of the changes:
1. Scrambled eggs uses animal fat.
2. Adjusted sound of assault rifle.
3. Some adjustment to the durability of the SMG.
4. Miner can make claylumps
5. Buffed siege shells block damage and recipe return.
6. Nerfed siege shells entity damage.
7. Can't find weapons greater than "fine" quality
8. Medic and Bruiser start with a one-time-use, class-specific pill to boost their wellness.
9. Snares destroy themselves after being looted.
10. Various loot balances.
11. Slightly nerfed spawn rate of rare zombies.
12. Hunter Class now longer starts with crossbow schematics.
13. Hunter Class now starts with an iron bow.
14. Survivor Class now starts with a crossbow and crossbow schematics.
The biggest change though is a new “upgrade” system I'm trying out. I used the input and suggestions you gave previous on the subject, though it isn't exactly what you were asking for. The guide in the beta isn't updated for it yet, I still need to write it out and such – assuming it works out well.
I'll try to give a rough description.
Okay, so. I've added new weapon mods (silencers, shotgun choke) and have tied these unlocks to an upgrade system using the survivor notes. For example now when you learn how to make a pistol you will also learn how to make Weapon_Mod:_Pistol. If you craft this you gain a recipe book that will teach you how to make a silenced pistol.
With the Weapon Mod: Sniper you can learn how to make silenced sniper and high-powered scope sniper.
With the sawed off shotgun you can learn how to make a Boomstick. I think it would make Ash proud, it can even dual-fire.
With the bow it will teach you how to make iron bow.
With a fireaxe it will teach steel fireaxe and combat axe.
With ammo it will teach you the alt ammo types like hollow tip. The arrows and bolts have been placed behind an upgrade path like this as well.
That's just a couple to serve as examples
The formats are:
Weapon_Mod;_XXXX
Tool_Mod:_XXXX
Ammo_Mod:_XXXX
Oh, and yeah, silenced weapons are in the game now. Only downside is that crafting them in the grid can look kinda funny if you're expecting it to visually represent the gun. This is one of those problems that will be fixed once the grid is gone lol.
As I mentioned, I spent most of my "free" time yesterday upgrading to Windows 10, updating my video drivers and doing clean install of 7D2D. Did not really get time to test it all out, so I just left my computer at the office.
However, since I could not play test, I did spend some time "thinking". Come in, today, and find out you have already got another Beta ready to test : )
Can't wait, but it may not be for a couple of days (semester mid-term time).
But let me hand off my latest ideas, you can kick them around a bit and see how they fit.
(Funny, my "solution" for the melee focus was a starting spiked club - my favorite melee weapon, decent damage and stun. A little "boost" for a quality item and he could stand toe to toe with frozen zombies, exploding fat people and lesser cops. Limited to looting luck, as it would need pipe drops for repairs, but a back-up weapon of re-inforced club - perhaps the "every day" basher vs. the "special occasion" basher. I was even going to suggest no shotgun, to start.)
Some things you did not already adjust / add?
Miner love. One word. Auger. Fairly rare, high end loot item (I think I have only ever found / crafted a couple of them in playing for some 18 months.) But useful as a melee weapon and immediate crafting / mining. (Needs gas, so makes the refinery an important craft item vs. "mini-biker- miner" : ) At 170 (the standard for your starting gear, that is not random) it can / will be upgraded, with any new parts, and so will stay useful all game. Can't go gonzo on melee at start but a great option to take out a zombie, or two, until you get a "real" weapon.
Medic love. Two words. Chemical Warfare : ) I had all sorts of ideas along the lines of your buff med for the melee focus, but I am not certain the health buff makes as much sense. The best thing I came up with was a short buff med, but the buff was speed vs. health (that adrenaline rush - like caffeine / alchohol, but not just stamina regen, it would actually make you run faster, swing faster. Trouble was I did not know if that was even possible in the game.) My second best idea was a recipe for pain relievers (real world old school "willow bark" brought up to game standards - possibly crafted from tree seeds vs. bark, or from trunks. Then, driving in today, I started thinking about tasers (I believe some emt / paramedics carry them in certain areas) How cool to see the little medic hit a zombie with a taser and watch the zombie do that funny dance for a short period of time - essentially just enough time for the medic to thump it repeatedly with a stone axe : )
But the coding question made it more funny than a good option. So I started thinking about bears and hikers carrying pepper spray and the idea started to gel. The key skill of the medic is that they know the human body - to heal or to hurt. Zombies (for now and except for dogs) are in human bodies. So the medic knows how to formulate a "pepper spray" that works against zombies - but a simple stun buff vs. complicated dance. They can craft this "ammo" out of fairly common materials - paper / cloth and plants, etc. Delivery system uses the 9 mm model (and upgrade items) but uses compressed air vs. gunpowder, has a longer load time, single shot (although your new boomstick / two shot would be another option. The medic is not going to fight off a horde, but like the miner, gives them a limited powerful weapon for single targets.
*edit* - Forgot one "food" related item. I think you might want to consider adding your "new" foods to even more loot containers. For many players, finding a jar of blueberry jam may be the first exposure to a neat new food item. With varied loot tables for different zombies, they could be specific - cops get cornbread and jam (no jelly doughnuts in the game); hunters get three meat stews, replace the generic alcohol with your craft brews of mead, etc.
Doors - I am not certain it is all that big of a deal. It is not a bug, which was my worry. From a game play perspective, I actually like the fact that some doors are locked and can be "jimmied" open, others need to be destroyed and replaced. It adds variety to the world.
Cops - I can understand wanting to make them less likely to spawn. I did find it funny when I got a small horde: three cops, a nurse, two more cops and two nurses. But I got a beaker out of it : ) The cops could be a challenge on day #1, but they are easier to avoid than speedy crawlers and easier to see.
Trees - I don't think it will ever become an issue, unless you figure out how to keep nests from spawning on the ground. (Have you tried commenting out the nest spawn info, where you have made the modifications, then seeing if they still spawn - meaning they are getting called / placed through another code section?)
Eggs - The scrambled eggs and omelet are the obvious ones. I tend to make hash browns just using one / two potatoes and frying them. I suspect there are people who boil them, but one thing about food in the game, it is like camping - variety is nice, but labor intensive cooking is not really a good game mechanic. My personal thought is that there are not many ways to prepare food, early game, when you don't have a pot, etc. And once you have all those things people are likely to just stick with high return standards (venison stew, bear stew.)
Nests - makes sense, just confused me at first - I guess I was not clear when I made the suggestion, so I was envisoning a system where no birds nested on the ground, you harvested nests from trees during the chopping down of the tree, then placed the nest on the ground and harvested the eggs / feathers that were in the nest. You might still get a random feather from a tree with no nest, but the nest was the step up, with eggs and feathers. Putting them on the ground and waiting for some random bird to show seemed like what is in vanilla game - birds nesting on the ground, birds which we never see : )
Snares - corn changes make sense. My guess is the corn had the ability to grow on non-fertile soil as an early game issue (grow on the plains vs. plowed / tilled ground) that never got changed. My thought would be a little complicated - simple snare = rabbit; snare upgraded with seed (tree, flower) = rabbit / bird / ??? (I don't remember what your third was) equal chances of each; snare upgraded with ear of corn = bird / deer @ 50% each (idea is bait is higher to attract deer, but birds can still fly : ) Seed upgrade is mostly a role-playing thing - no real benefit to catching a non-rabbit. Using an ear of corn gives you a decent chance of a big score.
Clay bowls - on a stick . . . Here is the rational I used. The cooking system is fairly limited and does not really reflect simple options. Cooking, on a campfire, without a metal grill or iron pot can be done, fairly easily. Primitive peoples used flat rocks for "frying", water tight baskets / pottery filled with water, to which were added hot rocks to boil / cook foods. So I simply "ignore" the stick - it is only used to turn the food on a heated rock or used like chopsticks to add hot rocks from the fire. The clay bowl could simply sit on a bed of coals, or on a "tripod" of three rocks to be heated to boiling. Baked potatoes were simply wrapped in wet leaves and placed in coals. Meats could be cooked in leaves or roast an entire pig in a pit. Jerky and pemican were both crafted with a simple fire and wood sticks / rack.
Refiner - I do think it will be overly complicated if you require jars (and how do the glass jars suddenly become plastic containters : ) In A13 the Pimps may be introducing 'crafting' stations, which will change all of this. But for now? I would just have the player "charge" the refiner with a barrel of oil (we will pretend that this oil is "used" so cannot be directly applied to a weapon, etc.) or the new mined resource (one single resource as a charge - idea is it is crude oil, so more junk for less return). An oil drum charge might be equal to four or five crude oil resources. A single crude oil resource would give you, say 2-3 oils and 2-3 gas cans, while a drum would give you 8-15 oils and 8-15 gas cans. (Your mileage may vary : )
Guns - really interested in testing how this plays. As I have mentioned, as a nomadic player, I would prefer finding a lower quality working weapon over a higher quality part. Even better if there was a system, such as yours, where my class choice gave me one specific weapon type that I could "upgrade" into a Quality weapon. It makes your early choices mean a lot more, over the game play. I don't start a rifleman and dump rifles as soon as I find a slightly better shotgun, etc. If I am finding entire weapons, then I will likely find that same quality rifle - which can be modified to be a quality rifle. I also think that the system generates a quality for a weapon, but there can be variations in the qualities of the individual components. Thus, I might find a "good" rifle, but it might have one "fine" component, matched with other low end good components (but with complete weapons being so rare, it is hard to check this.)
Bruiser - nope, no spiked club. For some reason I thought I had read he started with one, but it did not spawn for me. (just checked the .xml - the version 15.7 had spiked club in loot table, the beta2 did not.)
Class balance - notes in post above.
Beta testing - looking forward to it.
Did not have this issue the last time. Windows 10 issue? New brower issue? Don't know.
Well the bruiser has always been given a spiked club, far as I remember. I'm not sure why you didn't get one.
Miner love – An auger is a bit much to start with. Though I guess its no worse than my past plans of giving the Survivor a minibike. Lol. I can give him a quality steel pickaxe though to start off with. That should be nice. Perhaps a few iron ingots too.
Medic love – I don't believe its possible to make your character move faster. If it was I would add a buff to the highways to make it so you run faster on them. Even the “berserking” buffs I was trying out with the bruiser didn't work out well for me.
Though to be fair, when it comes to modding I find the buffs to be the most confusing and alien. I've tried in the past, several times, to get the hang of it but never succeeded. Its way beyond me, though I do believe there are a lot of hidden possibilities in there.
There are already painkillers in the game. You're suggesting the medic should be able to craft these with tree seeds?
Tasers, actually, I have tried before! I was toying with the idea, long ago, of making “capturable” zombies. You see you can actually place blocks that look like zombies. They don't have AI and just kinda stand their performing their default idle animation. What I was going to do was make it so that to get this you had to loot a LIVING zombie. Much easier said than done since you have to be close to them and they hit you before you get a chance to open them.
I made a “stun staff” that you could jab them with to make them get stunned. It wasn't perfect, though. My inexperience with the buffs.xml was really causing troubles. Then I found out that the “zombie blocks” disappeared whenever you looked away from them and it couldn't be fixed so I kinda gave up on the idea.
A stun gun (or pepper spray) is probably possible with the right modded buff. I just lack the knowledge to make it a reality. I'm not versed enough in the buffs to make such a thing work, unfortunately.
Foods – I have added a few of my foods and drinks to the loot tables already, actually. Meads, Energy Drink, canned foods, bowls of soup, honey ham.... Having zombies drop food, other than rotten food or cans, is a bit too video-gamey for me. I don't want to eat anything that came out of a cop zombie's pants – no matter how much “jelly” is on it. Lol
I will add the mead to the snow zombies, though. :)
Trees -
No, I haven't tried removing them altogether to see if they still spawn. It wouldn't be difficult to do, I just haven't felt the need to bother with it just yet. I guess I'm waiting to get more of a “feel” for how often they currently spawn and then move on from there. I should play more than I do. I've spent more hours modding than I have actually playing. Modding IS the game!
Nests -
Fair enough, it is pretty vanilla in that regard. I might change things around at some point then, after playing it this way for a while. Get a taste for both styles.
Snare -
Gopher is the third option. Non-baited: rabbit. Baited: rabbit, bird, gopher, pig. An issue with using just seeds from trees is that there are different tree seeds. Maple and pine. You can't both be the “bait”. I can't say “use either of these” - it has to be one or the other. If you can bait the trap with pine seed why can't you bait it with maple seed? It wouldn't be consistent. So I either use something already there like corn (arguably the most common plant in the game) or I add in a new item specifically for this, like Animal Feed. Though how does one make it?
Multiple tree seeds? Multiple tree seeds of several kinds? Multiple seeds of any kind? The more variation on combinations I have the more instances of “Animal Seed” will show up in the crafting menu, introducing clutter. Using just corn is the most straightforward method, though I admit it is a cop-out on my part. Though I could add animal seed to the loot and have it be a loot-only option.
Clay bowls -
I understand the system isn't realistic. Though a lot about the game isn't. I get where you're coming from, I do, I just don't see it as a big deal. However, here is an interesting compromise I just discovered. You don't NEED to have a cooking tool at all. Surprise twist there. So what I will do is add a new recipe of bowls of water that can just be made on the campfire, no tool. They will take twice as long, however. The way I rationalize it is that you can cook a larger quantity of water faster in a pot then you could if you did them bowl-by-bowl.
Plus, you know, balance. Lol. Question now remains: should water jars be treated the same way?
Refiner -
Are the weapon oil containers plastic? I always figured they were glass.
Far as I know I can't actually make it use two different items like this. Like you're suggesting using oil barrel = X, crude oil = Y. I can't really do this. My “jar and crude oil” approach may have given you the impression that I could. The reason it would work with a jar and oil is because both of these would HAVE to be used to get a certain resource – in that case weapon oil.
In your example I could use either, with each one giving a different result. That I can't do.
See: Crude oil changes refiner to refiner 2, which will over time turn into refiner 3 which drops the gas. But you can change refiner 2 with glass jars to make it turn into refiner 4 which will give you weapon oil. That is why that would work but having a “use oil barrel or use crude oil” approach will not.
This will likely be possible in A13 though when I can make these into “harvest tools” and assign them to give you different returns when used on the block. Just for example – not sure I'd go that route or not.
Guns -
I don't think it would mean THAT much more, to be honest. Honestly I don't even know if I'll be keeping the Quality weapons when A13 hits. Though I will admit what you're envisioning here does sound pretty neat and gives me second thoughts on canning Quality weapons. I'll have to think it over more.
Bruiser -
Ah I see so it was a beta bug. Odd. Sorry about that. I'm not really sure how that came about. I probably removed it, mistaking it for the schematic, when I introduced the “single recipe” method.
Difficulty accessing file -
I'm sorry. I'm not sure what the problem was but here is a new link that will hopefully fix the issue:
{LINK REMOVED}http://www.mediafire.com/
download/c7w4cfqg1ldl6da/ValmodBeta_16.3.zip
Also new in this update is a bridge. You can craft a toggleable bridge that you turn on or off with a remote. Borrowed the code from Maverick on the forums and adjusted it very so slightly.
New link worked perfectly. Looking forward to testing. (I actually enjoy this part, probably even more than just playing the game - don't take this the wrong way, but it is likely my hard wired teacher bent, when you discover you have a very talented student in the class and reviewing their work is not the normal drudgery of grading. It is interesting and rewarding as you see a project really become something of merit.)
I guess I don't realize how overpowered the auger is. I have only had one, in a game and did not use it much. Tested it on a stone formation and had an issue with the game physics (or lack thereof - we add gravity to bows and arrows, but we ignore the weight / lever aspects of using an auger - a tool made to bore DOWN into the ground - in a horizontal position : )
It did not seem to be that much faster than using a good quality pick, but I had read it was also useful as a weapon (that whole horizontal position, again). So my thought was a cool miner specific tool (anyone can get a pick and crafting levels are the same, without a lot of "quality" options), it is self limiting - needing gas, which created a motivation for miner to craft the refinery station, and works as a down and dirty melee weapon, while keeping in line with the idea of a miner (who is not a weapons nut).
Medic and pain pills - one thing I have tried on the last test run was to turn off air drops. Your survivor cases make a lot more sense (cache of good stuff) vs. the stupidity of the air drops (no logical choices, just random loot, dropped no where near your actual location, etc.) The big items missing from your survivor cases (as far as I have seen, in game) is medicine - antibiotics and pain meds.
Historically, pain relief was obtained by chewing willow bark (black willow, speficially, I believe). Aspirin is our modern chemical synthesis of the same compound, with less side effects. Many other plants were the foundations of modern medicines and are still used by certain practitioners of natural / herbal medicine. For instance, I believe salves, like "Tiger Balm", etc. use the same chemical found in hot peppers and some mint plants can be used as a topical pain reliever (chewed for tooth ache, rubbed on bee stings).
Granted, none of these plants are in the game. But it is not a real stretch to suggest useful medicines could be crafted by the medic from varieties that are found in the game.
The pepper spray "weapon", as I envisioned it, would fire a very low damage projectile, with spread (much like a shotgun, loaded with rock salt), but would have the damage buff of a spiked club (stun only). I don't understand all the coding issues, but I wondered if you could simply copy the code from the club and past it onto the new weapon. Perhaps something like the flaming / exploding arrows and crossbow bolts.
As another alternative (although I don't think it is as clean) you could let medics craft napalm. Again a specialized weapon, which does little initial damage but has a 100% chance of setting the target on fire. For a long time. Perhaps with a larger magazine (more shots before needing to refuel. Craft the "ammo" out of coal lumps and animal fat, perhaps cooked in a beaker (need to give them a beaker to start.)
I have seen some of your foods as loot, which is what gave me the idea. It was really cool when I found the first jar of mead / blueberry mead / health drink / energy drink, etc. I don't use the pull-down crafting menu, very much, so finding something as loot, gave me the incentive to track down how to craft it (i.e. looking for blueberry mead was how I discovered the jam and cornbread options.)
If only one thing can be used to "bait" a snare, I would suggest the pine seeds. (I don't think we have oak seeds - acorns - which would be good, but pine "nuts" from some species are edible, and tasty : )
No cooking tool needed? Arghhh. When I think of the time I wasted trying to figure out how to make a low end / early game cooking tool - a flat stone, a scrap iron "pie" iron . . . and the stick only has a single item slot, which is why I started using cans of boiled water and eggs in the crafting menu, etc. Since my game focus is mostly early game (I tend to get bored quickly, so by day 14-21 I start to lose interest as the game gets really repetative) it is early game options that make the most difference. Recent Alphas have made cooking pots fairly common, but, sometimes either for loot carrying limits or just "role-playing" reasons, I don't want to carry a heavy iron pot with me, everywhere.
I really like that you have made clay bowls a useful item, since they are easy to craft from easily gathered materials available in most biomes. But since so many of your recipes require the evil iron pot, they really end up being more baggage to carry vs. a great alternative system. Just my opinion, though.
Refiners, oil and gas. I think, since two inputs are not possible (well, other than the add glass, as you noted) I would make it simple. Charge the refiner with "crude oil" - crude oil either comes from the mined resource or oil barrels (one crafting step for either, 2 recipes for "crude oil"). After a period of time, you can loot the refiner for gas and oil. Since you don't have to add anything to get the gas cans, I don't think you need to worry about adding jars for the oil (and the icon for "oil" appears to be a standard plastic oil container, of one quart size, found at any automotive store or even many grocery stores.)
So, new files downloaded. May do a quick check, this evening to ensure Windows 10 has no more surprises in store, then some testing over the week-end. One issue in living in an "off-grid" cabin is the vagaries of weather - no sun means my solar panels are not feeding my gaming habit. But I just filled up the back-up generator, yesterday, so I should be good to go, no matter the weather . . .
I think my biggest gripe with it is that its viewed as more of a end-game thing. Like, in my past multiplayer games its usually regarded as that item that everyone wants to have. Like “FINALLY I found an auger!” The minibike is in a similar position. A lot view these as long-term end-game objectives, in my experience.
Though I am open to change so I'll ask around on my server, see what others think. If the idea garners a lot of support then I'll try it out. I doubt it will though since last time when I was going to add a minibike to the survivor class (this was back when the survivor started with nothing really “special” to him) it received a surprising amount of complaints. To the point of some claiming giving him a minibike would make him the “only class worth taking”.
Now, I didn't agree with that then and I don't agree with it now. However when you have so many people tell you that you're wrong, I'm pressed to listen. Peer pressure for the win?
Medic and pain pills -
I kinda like the whole air-drop thing, myself. I just wish the flare didn't go out. I pretty much NEVER find them when I go searching. The only times I do find them seem to be from complete chance, like I just happen to run past one while heading to a town. This was even worse back when the plane was glitched and you didn't actually see where it was. You can mod them to appear on the map but I don't know how fair that would be.
I'm not against the medic being able to craft painpills. Infact I think it would be nice to add another perk to him since he's a support role. I just don't know what in-game items to use as ingredients. I could perhaps make it so you can pickup the driftwood logs in the game. Then have it so you can either craft them into planks or, if you're a medic, you can combine it with red and yellow flowers to get like five painkillers? I don't know, I'm just spit-balling at this point.
My “issue” with the pepper spray isn't how to make it work as weapon. This is relatively simple, actually. The problem I have is the buff. Making it stun a zombie. Now I can make it stun him for a moment but I don't know how to get him into a longer “stun lock”. By time you switch back to a relal weapon to finish him off he'll be walking towards you again.
A special chemical bomb does sound pretty cool, though I don't know if I can achieve it with the xml. The only thing that has “splash damage” is explosives and I don't know if they can be causes to give a buff to set them on fire since it doesn't hit them directly.
Snares -
You really want to save that corn don't you :)
Okay, here's an idea. You can craft 3 pine seed or 3 maple seed into Animal Feed. How's that sound?
Cooking bowls -
Hm. I suppose I could let you some of the bowl-related recipes without a pot but offset it by increasing the cooking time to make it worthwhile to still use the pot. I don't think I want to do that with bottles of water, though, so this would be a exclusive feature for bowls. Sound good?
Refiners -
Oil barrels already give you crude oil, if thats what you're suggesting with them.
I can add some oil to the refiner loot. Maybe 4-6.
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You know, I been meaning to point this out earlier but I kept getting side tracked by mod talk. If you're using Windows 10 I recommend you do a bit of google research into its various security issues and steps to prevent them. Though even when you tell it to stop doing all its shady stuff it STILL does it “secretly” but you can still gimp it some by turning various “features” off.
If that sort of thing even matters to you, of course.
I guess I am just jaded, but I just can't get all that excited about chasing around to find pieces to craft a tool that will allow me to mine stuff (or cut down trees faster, or nail up boards faster). I thought they were all interesting items when I found them (only once or twice each, after 18 months of playing the game). But in most games, by the time I hit "end game" I have already completed most / all of the taskes that they would help with - so what is the purpose . . .
I like the air drop, also. I know it is a legacy from much earlier versions (remember the "how long can you last challenge, with different air drops on each day? I think the loot containers are still in the .xml files - that is how I created different loot lists for snow zombies, etc.) My issue is that they are so poorly implemented in the game. I wonder if anyone at the Pimps actually did even the smallest bit of research, before just thowing in some generic coded mechanic.
In a past life, I practiced signaling a plane for air drops, in survival school. Pretty easy to do with a small mirror or just a reflective surface (like the concave bottom of a soda can). I also flew as medical crew on training missions where pilots / load masters were practicing "hot off loads" - dumping stuff out of the open back end of a low flying plane. We are talking training to hit a target within a few meters, not a kilometer, or more, away.
So I always change the .xml to have crates show up. I figure if the Pimps can't be bothered to come up with a more reasonable representation (even if it is a game), I will fix it the only way I can. Which is why I like your survivor cases better. It is far more logical and the mechanic more "believable". Putting together that sort of stash is exactly what my characters often do. Finding a journal, that helps you "find" / "loot" that stash is more satisfying than watching some plane appear randomly on the horizon and dump a bunch of garbage or over-powered weapon parts. (I understand that your system still has the chance of you finding the case first, but it is still logical that you find a case, which can't be opened and with a little more searching find the "survivor" who hid it.) I am a sucker for consistency in a game world. Nothing ruins immersion like an arbitrary feature that looks like it was included just because they could.
There are not any game assets that directly link to "pain med" so anything is going to be a stretch. My original thoughts were the red and yellow flowers, possibly with "bark dust" or "wood shavings" (one new asset to be crafted from either logs or sticks - sticks from bushes would be ideal, but no way for the game to limit that - a stick is a stick.) Goldenrod tea already gives some wellness, I believe. Cooking up some fairly common herbs, in a beaker to get a pain med is not much more of a stretch than cooking up corn meal in a beaker to get alcohol, or potassium nitrate and moldy bread to get antibiotics. Neither of those are even close to being accurate / realistic.
I was not thinking of a real "napalm bomb" (i.e. needs a splash effect) but I probably did not select the best analogy. I wanted something that did not need the accuracy of a sniper bullet, since any hit was going to set the zombie on fire, which is why I mentioned a shotgun spread. But I don't know how you would adjust the fire burn rate / damage. In essence I would see a flamethrower-like / flare gun-like item that would put "paid" to most normal zombies, while frostys / cops / fat guys might take 2 or 3. But I just don't know how to make that work via game mechanics - without making it so overpowered everyone wants to be a medic : )
I guess it is a lot like the Miner. You have picked a "support" class character, not a front line fighter. But every once in a while you have a limited ability to open a very large can of whoop a$$. Especially for single players, since *not* being able to kill zombies is not really an option.
You have found me out. I am a corn horder. (I actually just "harvested" my corn "crop" - a student had tracked down a heritage "Hopi Blue Corn" and given me a pack as a graduation present - I let them graduate, so I got a present. I am not a good farmer. Only 8-10 corn stalks actually grew and from that I was able to harvest two large ears of corn. Lots of seed, but not giving up a whole ear to some varmint : )
It really is not that big of a deal (not worth creating another seed asset, anyway.) The base snare still gives rabbits / skins. Birds / feathers / eggs would be nice, but I can pass on the gopher. And I just would not feel right getting a whole pig from a snare. However, once they finally get water back in the game, I will probably be pestering you to add an option to set a trap in water and get fish <BG>.
Exclusive clay bowl goodness is exactly what I had in mind. After all we can already craft clean water in used tin cans using a campfire and stick. I think a clay bowl option is reasonable. At the very least I would suggest you allow some of your "bowls of heated soup" (because, quite honestly, if I could soup in a pan in real life, it is normally just eaten out of the pan vs. putting it into a bowl : ) I guess the sweet spot I am looking for is for someone to look at the skills and see the ability to craft clay bowls, which allow tasty food options, as comparable to other "early game" common skills. I think you do it a disservice if the only reason anyone takes that skill is because they have to have it to make balls of clay, for forge molds.
I had seen the option to convert oil barrels to crude and back (tried it when I was figuring out how to use my nice new refiner.) So that is a "no change" change. The only change would be to allow the refiner to produce both gas and oil from the junk you fill it with.
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Windows 10 hints. I had actually read some of that advice (on these forums, I think : ) so when I did the install I opted out of the "quick" default and turned off everything, option-wise I could find.
And while I realize there is little I can do, it still matters, even if only in principle. After all I am the person who keeps harping on little things like "things promised in KickStarter / Early Access" vs. "things actually delivered in the game, so far." One of the things that amazes me is how much you and other modders have been able to add to this game vs. how much the Pimps themselves have added, over the last several months.
Well it also baffles me : )
I get what you're saying – it does often feel like by time you find them you've already finished your building plans. Hopefully my “Dynamic loot” for snow zombies and dead miners will help balance that out a bit.
Air drops -
I think they do plan to, eventually, let you signal for air drops. There is a flare in the game and I believe I remember reading them say they had intended for it to be used for supply drops but they never got it working. Maybe by then we have helicopters of our own and can just go travel to a military camp to barter with npc's for stuff. Or something. That's 2 years down the line though lol.
Drugs are fun -
The bushes could work. I could probably make it so you can “harvest” them like you do plants to get... something. Then have this sometime combine with goldenrood and red flowers to make a painkiller. Though really I don't see the point in bothering. Painkillers aren't really that good. They give a tiny little health back at the price of some hydration. I've never used them and just have them pilling up in stacks half the time. Would anyone even care/want to craft these things?
While I can think of ways to get a burning acid/pepper spray in the game (using shotgun's spread mechanics, like you say) I don't know if it would look, play or work well enough to be enjoyable or useful. Perhaps I will fiddle with the idea at some point further down the road.
Corn, marvelous corn-
Too late! Already added Animal Feed. Deal with it. :)
Water traps sound great. Though I don't know if it will be possible. I don't know of any way to make a block “check” its surroundings for water in such a way. The game has a built in method for plants to tell if there is light or dirt but I dont know if such a thing works for water. I would be nice, though. I've seen some mods that add fishing in the game but I don't really find the method to be most elegant.
If I understand it right (which I might not, I haven't extensively looked at the code itself, just a video) they have a stick (fishingpole) that can turn a waterblock into a container that has fish, using bait as the “upgrade” tool.
Bowls-
I think you'll like the next coming update then. Pretty much all the recipes that involve bowls can be cooked without a tool. Though since there is no tool, there is no crafting grid. You have to select it manually from the little side list. This can make it a bit awkward but I don't intend for people to use this is a primary way of cooking so I don't see it as a big deal.
Oil-
I never really understood the need to craft X back into the oil barrel. Aesthetics maybe? For decoration? Though blowing up a oil barrel can cause a pretty nice boom so maybe that's the idea. I've honestly never seen anyone who actually uses explosive traps though so...
Windows 10
Hopefully it'll be less intrusive in a few months. At least they have been getting flak for it. Though there are so many people who either don't know or frankly don't care about the privacy violations so maybe I'm just being naive.
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I'm not sure why the Pimp's are so “slow” on some of these things. Though Gods help you if you say that in the wrong place or you will be assaulted with “you're ignorant, learn X, Y, Z” from the fanbase defense squad. Like I had modded in “quality-range” crossbows (as in they have quality) back before they did. Funny enough when they did add it, we had the same exact values too. That was amusing, I didn't have to change anything.
Back before they bothered to add the new arrow heads to loot (making it impossible to find) I had modded in. The update that fixed it even used the same probability – again its funny to see how in-sync I was.
The broken sledgehammer code, been busted for ages... still not fixed in vanilla. Like one day after A12.5 we got swarms of people pointing out the bug in gunpowder recipe. I had fixed it in like a minute after noticing it. Super easy, just needs one number change. The devs said it would be easy to fix and implied it'll be a hotfix. They haven't fixed it to this day. Poor Vanilla guys.
Then there was the mess with the “exploit” fix for cloth. There was some sort of exp exploit where players could just make bandages and turn them back into cloth , or with ductape, to keep doing it over and over again until the level up. Like crazy people. The solution to this apparently broke a lot of cloth recipes. Meanwhile I just made “gain xp” in the recipe for those special “back and forth” items be 0. They did eventually fix this I believe.
Then you have the matter of electric lights... How is people have been begging and asking for these things forever now and they're only now teasing us with a single spotlight. Yet some random modder nobody ended up getting all the electric lights to work in like a day of random fiddling around.
It isn't my intention to rag on the Pimps. I enjoy their game and appreciate they make modding as easy as it is. Not every game gives you such level of control. These xml files are great. I'm just sharing little experiences I've had with them over the years (figuratively speaking). It's been an amusing adventure. Lol.