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2) Guess i was not clear. I don't know that the drop rate would need to be lower, in SP, but if your stumps only dropped the survivor cases in, say, 1 in 10 loots and it still seemed to be too much for SP games, then the drop rate on the corpse is the gate and an easy number to change in SP. This seems easier than trying to addjust the case drop rate, when there are potentially lots of items on that list. (Does that make sense?)
I agree the issue would be a player not knowing there was an option. I don't know how much text can appear on an item. (for instance "survivor's journal and map" as the item name; using the new crafting system, a player has the option to craft "xp reward" or "key for suspicious stump"). A player might find several suspicious stumps and need to discover that they can "break" them and get loot. But when they find a journal they discover there is another option. Possible a "locked" label on the stump would add an additional clue.
3) That makes sense - I wondered why there were no / few cars in random worlds and they are everywhere in the original map. And I had noticed they could be pushed around. Wonder if that will change with the new looting system?
Too bad they cannot just use the model and make it a block (old style zombies) they don't need to move, or have physics.
7) Eggs. I forgot about eggs. Well, you could add eggs to tree loot, but catching them might be fun. Or have a chance that they are in the snare with meat and feathers. (Not that bad of an idea - bird traps are usually "cage" like items (boxes or small pit with wood / stone cover) so they could survive for a while . . . and lay eggs.
Exploits must be a real problem in multi-player. But if the crafting time was long (gives you something to do at night, early game) and the "curing" time was long, I don't know that it would be a real problem. For birds you would need seeds, so self limiting (and if you have a big farm, will you really be wasting your time making / setting traps?) Rabbit could be a problem, with the new forge crafting requiring skins. But it is a gated skill. Someone needs to spend resources to learn it, if they don't start with it.
So the question is will it be so great that everyone takes that instead of any other skill of that level?
9) Quality. Yes, the system is really limiting. I should have known you did not just add a damage buff : ) Accuracy, damage and slower degrade. All make sense. And the one item to repair is rough. Possible work around would be to have "quality" repair kit recipe make two normal repair kits? So for the same raw materials you essentially get twice the mileage?
How many parts contribute to accuracy? I think it might just be the barrel. Can individual gun parts be repaired - or do they need to be in a weapon? Could you just upgrade that one piece to "Quality" - adding the accuracy and retaining all the other aspects (quality level).
That is a tough one. And A13 is supposed to reduce the number of gun parts.
Oh well. I am about to head home, where there is no internet, so it will be Monday before I am back on-line. Hopefully with more observations, etc.
Have a great week-end.
These:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=524885834
Thanks :)
P.S nice mod dude :))
1. I can still look into the drop rate to see if I can't make it balance out a little more. There might be a Goldilocks rate somewhere in there.
2. I getcha. Though making it have a chance to drop wouldn't be too difficult if I gave the suspicious stump another set loot. The loot.xml can use something called "lootgroups" which can have many various things added to them and then the container can be set to use a specific loot group.
For example I could have a "briefcase group" and a "survivor stash" group. The briefcase group would contain only the survivor's briefcase but the survivor stash group will contain various nice goodies.
I can then set the suspicious stump to randomly use one of the two groups. So, say, 70 percent chance it drops stash and a 30 percent chance it will drop the briefcase group (and thus, a briefcase since its the only thing in the group).
Adjusting the name of the key or giving it a description could work. Though the above mentioned change with drop chance sounds like the easiest way around it to me, currently.
3. Yes, it will change with the new harvest system because they're going to make the cars into actual blocks now. So they no longer eat performance and they can be more freely litered across the land. Plus, with luck, they can respawn loot. I'm sure us modders can make them respawn loot somehow even if they don't in the vanilla game.
7. I'll look into it when A13 hits. With the new harvest system there may be an easier way for me to have trees give you some eggs. Though I could also have 12 eggs drop in fridges and just remove nests.
I'll definitely look in on it though. I've never really liked the birdnests on the ground and you've given me some ideas on how to circumvent them. Thanks.
One issue with balance is if you can farm meat easily when it may reduce the need to even farm. What have a giant berry, potatoe and corn farm when you can just smack down a couple of lures and have all the meat products you'd like?
Though I might be overthinking it. I guess anyone who is going to exploit it were going to exploit it no matter what I did to it so I might aswell just accept it. I don't know. Lol.
9. I could make a recipe that gives you two repair kits but I couldn't actually name it anything else. So it might be a bit confusing to see a two different repairkit recipes in the menu and not know which one nets you two.
Actually I've been thinking about making a recipe for crafting oil. Perhaps out of fat (make it useful) in a beaker. I've seen some people make recipes for it using plant seeds but I'm not sure. Anyway I could make a recipe for it and lock it behind the Chemistry book we discussed earlier.
I think only the barrel contributes to accuracy - though you could make any part contribute to it, really. I could upgrade just one part to "Quality", yes. Though this brings with it a problem with durability. You see everytime you fire a weapon all the parts degrade a little. If one part breaks the gun breaks. You might notice that when you shoot your pistol it may suddenly go for little over half full on its durability to suddenly being broken in one shot.
This is because one of the parts had a lower durability than the other parts and it broke. It's only as strong as its weakest link, in this regard. So to ensure that quality weapons have superior durability I make quality versions of all the parts.
I didn't know A13 was going to reduce the number of gun parts. Hopefully it won't be too drastic. I don't know if you've noticed it yet but I actually have two versions of the hunting rifle in the game with one just needing a different part to be made. One is a bolt rifle (basically like vanilla) except it has a scope. The other is has no scope but has a larger magazine size.
You have a great weekend aswell. :)
@KingOfHyrule
Nothing, they're trash. You've already gained your experience by crafting them. They're only named what they are instead of, say, "ruined notes" because their names make it obvious what you get when you craft them using notes. Crafting a Survivor Note into a "Gain 1k Experience" is what gets you the experience. The red "Gain 1k Experience" note itself is useless and can be thrown away or turned into paper to put towards making a cardboard box or something. :)
Started a new game - gunner, but I also figured out that I needed replace the mixer file, with the one from Magoli's pre-fabs to see all those cool buildings. Thought, at first I had really screwed up the "suspicious stumps." I had spawned in the desert and while I found a lot of stumps (graphically) none of them had the option to interact - no regular stump loot, no suspicious stump loot.
I actually did not miss it, too much, as I could just use the journals to get xp or notes (still not really certain how I did either, I was just trying different options.) Eventually I found a plains / forest biome and picked up a couple of survivor cases from the suspicious stumps, so it seems to be an issue with the desert biomes spawning the stump visual, but not the lootable versions. (i.e. a vanilla game issue)
I did figure out the bolt rifle vs. hunting rifle - I was switching parts around and only looking at the damage stat. I had been using a hunting rifle and noticed the larger clip, then "upgraded" to a bolt rifle and was quite happy to see the scope option (even with the single shot). It was day 6 and I had a nice horde of dogs chasing me - I climbed a POI and most ran past, to mill around out in the desert. Where I picked them off one by one, with the scope.
Used a bunch of notes to learn animal trapping to test that. Rabbits for corn does not seem over-powered. I made three traps, got a total of 6 pieces of rabbit meat and 3 skins. Rabbit meat, on its own does not do much for hunger. I think, if I have a cooking pot, I would tend to use my corn as part of a stew - venison or bear really has a big payoff.
But I still think the idea of a small game snare, no bait = rabbit, seed as bait = bird meat / feathers / eggs might be a very useful early game option. I think people will still garden as corn / potatoes make stew (as noted, above) and corn makes alcohol and cornbread (no smell travel food option).
Had a new thought on the Journals and Stumps (I think : ) Since I was worried that a new / modded .xml mixer would not spawn your suspicious stumps, I was thinking about an option to use vanilla stumps (instead of suspicious stumps) - they have default loot, but if you "used" a journal "key" on a stump it spawns either the lootable (not locked) case, or just the higher end loot. I don't really know which would be more compatible with other mods - a change to a vanilla item or creating your own items, which might not be part of the world spawn. (Thinking about Skyrim, where changes to vanilla resources would likely cause problems, but it was not a randomly generated world - only specifically located "triggers" acted that way, I believe.)
Next issue I gave some more thought to was the "quality" firearm specialization. My character had the ability to make higher quality magnum pistols, but the components are fairly rare - I got lucky and found a few key pieces and had a "green" weapon by level 20 / day 7. Even if I had all the extra components, my best crafted gun would have been less effective (I think).
But the "basic" magnum was pretty powerful - one shots for all zombies, except cops, fat exploders and speedy crawlers (and one head shot did it for all of them). I don't think a faulty "Quality" magnum, start of game gear, doing that much damage is a good idea (from a ballance perspective). So here is another idea. Treat the quality gun skill the same as other quality items - you have a special recipe that uses the same basic parts as the vanilla weapon, but actually crafts a weapon with the "improved stats".
We may have discussed this - and your concern might have been the misuse in MP. One person simply takes everyone's magnum, strips it to components, reassembles it and viola' a better weapon. . . but that is essentially true for every specialized skill. A medic makes all the healing items, etc. Makes creating an effective team even more important - players may need to pick different backgrounds, even though they ultimately want to play with a different focus, since the only way to get the highest quality items is start with all that knowledge.
I also found a few more doors that need to be destroyed vs. degrading to "unlocked" - it seems to be (many times) when the original door has been "reinforced" and most often with wooden doors. You will see the damage but it will still stay locked until you have destroyed it. I tried to get a few screen captures, but won't be able to post them until the next time I bring my computer in for updates. But there are so few of these doors that I think it is a non-issue. Some doors are just stubborn : )
But I was baffled by the honey ham. I had found a nice cache of honey / wasp nests and killed the pig. But nothing came up in the crafting menu, when I searched for honey or ham. I converted some honey to cans and tried cooking. Used a stick, a grill, and a cook pot, with the pork and honey cans and honey in jars in my inventory and never got an option to cook honey glazed ham. Am I missing something?
And I know what you mean about oil. As my new character was heavily dependant on guns, I needed bullets and repair kits. I could invest notes in the "forge" line - pottery and explosives, mine coal and potassium nitrate, and "re-purpose" ammo (all 9mm pistol ammo was changed into magnum loads as soon as I had a working firearm). But there was nothing I could do to adapt to a need for oil / repair kits. Looting every garbage pile, with my fingers crossed or doing a cost / benefit analysis for every zombie (will this be the one with the oil) was annoying. I would always find some, eventually, but seldom were my weapons maintained at peak performance.
A couple of times I almost quit the game and modified the recipe .xml to add corn oil : )
You situation with the dogs sounds very familiar indeed. I love those little experiences haha.
1. Stumps
Just to help clear things up for ya my stumps do not use the rwgmixer at all. They're actually placed by the biomes.xml - believe it or not.
I think adding your own item would be the most compatible. Whenever you alter a vanilla code you run into the possiblity of some other mod relying on it but not working because it requires it to be vanilla. If that makes sense. Though thats just my opinion on it.
Unrelated but I've been thinking of giving my mini-mods some SD2DX versions so players can easily add them with the mod manager. Though I still need to research it more because I don't know if that tool breaks EAC even if you're not adding asset-changing mods. I've also been contacted by a nice gentleman working on a simple XML mod manager for 7 Days to Die that is similar but doesnt' touch asset files so I could fall back on that if need be.
2. Quality weapons
Yeah the Magnum is a beast. Though I've always felt its damage was offset nicely by the expensive ammunition.
I think we did touch on the issue with keeping the recipe roughly the same. It was indeed concerns I had with exploiting it in multiplayer. I didn't want people to just hand their weapon to a pro and have them easily smack them together quality versions. Though it is more than that. Like I mentioned before the actual durability of the weapon is determined by the parts. I wanted the quality weapons to have higher durability than normal, to similuate being used by a professional who knows how to take care of their weapon.
I could, however, reduce the cost of this. I could make it require just the single part. Though again whats to keep some high-level from just taking a bunch of crappy faulty parts and turning them into flawless quality parts for everyone else? By making you require multiple parts I increase the difficulty of this being done so that players are less likely to do it for all their buddies or whatever.
Since again, most of the perks that come with the weapon aren't meant to really be thought of as "this is a superior weapon" but rather as "this weapon is being used by a pro".
I could lower the cost so you only need two of the parts, however, if what its at now is too harsh. I could also look into tweaking some of the values. For example while a flawless normal pistol may do more damage than a faulty quality pistol, I can make it so that the quality weapons always have more durability than the normal weapons. I could also adjust their minimum value so that a quality weapon is always at least as good as a Good weapon. If that makes sense.
3. Doors
Interesting indeed. I look forward to seeing those pictures. Hopefully I can figure this out but no promises. Like I said before in the code this shouldn't even be possible but there is always a possiblity. Normally I woudl suspect that may, just maybe, lag is preventing them from registering the change in class (door vs doorsecure) but since you play SP I'm skeptical this could be the cause.
4. Honey Ham
The recipe calls for you to cook it on the campfire using a cooking grill. The recipe is 1 boiled pork and 1 can of honey. Does that work?
5. Oil
I'll definitely add a recipe or two, then. I don't really know the real-world process of making oil so seeing people add recipes that require seeds always surprised me a little. I don't know if that makes more sense then me using animal fat but damnit I want to give it a use other than tallow. Or maybe tallow itself would be better than fat... though I think tallow would be less likely to contain any oils since its been boiled. I don't know the realism of it, but I will add a recipe.
Also, funny thing, but I actually boosted the weapon oil drop rate in the loot xmls.
Vanilla:
junk - 2,6
automotive - 1,4
Modded:
junk - 4,7
automotive - 2,6
As always I appreciate the input.
@DRGDaSurviver
I grew up before the time of the twitter or the text messaging over phones. For me I don't know why so many people these days have such a phobia of reading or writing. I see very often people say "TL;DR" to something that was at most a few paragraphs long. I've see them call well structured discussion "wall of texts" because it contains more than one sentence.
Though to be fair I spend a lot of my leisure time reading novels which would make this entire topic look like a brief chapter in comparision. This wasn't anything I'd personally consider "long". Would it be too pretenious of me to say its because of my age?
As I mentioned in one comment - I don't have the skills to do this kind of modding. But I am happy to devote some time to a project that expands the vanilla game that was getting a little stale. (Especially when we are still looking at another month, or more, before A13 comes out.)
I may not get to sit around in my office and play games, but nothing prevents me from sitting in my office and typing : )
I took what I thought was reasonable precautions - camped out on top floor or multistory building, blocked up entrances and stairwells with rubble and concrete blocks (the sort of thing a nomad would have available.) Used a ladder to the third floor as my entrance and blocked that off.
And got swarmed. I had a bolt rifle and 80-90 rounds of ammo, a green / blue magnum with 150+ rounds of ammo. The zombies tore through the concrete walls of the POI. They ripped through the rubble / concrete blocks in the stairs. They knocked holes in the floor (above them / beneath me). I mowed them down in the stairwell and they climbed to the next levels and dropped down on my head.
So, yep, the idea that no base is safe? Mole has meet that goal. Pretty sad when the only game styles that work are build like a madman, pits / traps / spikes / walls, snipe as many as you can and hope attrition thins out the rest - or stock up on beer and run like a madman, all night : )
1) Stumps. Since I did find them in the other biomes, you may want to look at the desert biome, specifically. I had lots of stump like visuals, but they were not yours. It may be an issue only with that biome.
I do suspect you are right - at least that was what I was told, repeatedly by Skryim modders - create new instances, don't modify vanilla assets. Don't know anything about mod loaders for this game. Sounds like computer coding stuff : )
(I do note that if you look at the console, after the game loads, it seems to check for a mod folder . . . and finds nothing. At least in my case.)
2) Quality weapons. I guess I am still a little unsure of how the game mechanics work to craft a gun. I thought the basic parts were what was used to decide the total (average) quality of the weapon, but you mentioned your quality weapon creation was more dependant on player crafting levels.
Thus, I could see that having a 60th level gunsmith taking grey weapon parts and turning them into purples would be a major issue. But if that same 60th level gunsmith crafted a "Quality" weapon out of all grey parts, the final weapon would still be grey.
I think what I am missing is that there is no way to add accuracy / damage / longevity to the final weapon - all those stats are determined by the components. If I finally understand the limitations of the crafting system, I am not certain there is a way to overcome those "game features" : )
It may be that choosing a background with quality firearms does give you a nice boost at the beginning (with the starting weapon) but ultimately you find yourself moving up to vanilla weapons. If so, the long range benefit may well be in something like better crafting of repair kits and ammo. It is not weapon durability, but extra repair kits would be close. It is not accuracy, but a damage boost will help when your head shot misses.
3) I will post screen shots as soon as I can. I would not spend a lot of effort on trying to track it down, though. The mix actually works pretty nicely. I have no problem with the fact that some doors just have to be destroyed. The idea that not every door needs to be destroyed is much more reasonable. (I probably should test what happens if you re-inforce a door that was locked, but did not need to be destroyed - unless you have already done that. I just left them as 'whatever commercial door' and figured zombies won't open them, so they still slow them down.
4) Arggggghhhhh. A two part recipe. I need to boil the pork, then grill it with honey? That makes perfect sense (and I never thought of it) since most "ham" is pre-cooked / smoked, not raw. Slow "cooking" it in a sauce is really just giving it a better flavor . . . must go and kill a pig and test this. Thanks.
5) Oil - from seeds is fairly accurate, from what I know - "pressing" them = oil. Ever had a jar of peanut butter that needed to be "mixed" back up, because some oil had separated out ? (all natural will do it faster). I don't know of any reason that animal based oils would be any different. But I am not a gun person. I would gues there might be some reason why petroleum / mineral oils are used. I always thought the oil was simply to reduce chances of rust. Although, come to think of it, heat would certainly create some interesting smells with non-mineral oil / petroleum based oil.
"Who is cooking bacon?" "Oh, it is just Joe, rapid firing his assault rifle, smeared with animal fat : )"
I had not looked that closely at the drop numbers. So you increased the amount, when oil actually drops? Did you modify the actual 'weighting' for the drops? That is something I have always wondered if the Pimps every think about / consider when adding stuff to a loot table. Every new item decreases the drop chance for all items already on the list - so an item that had a pretty reasonable drop rate now becomes very rare.
I am actually hoping that A13 might solve some of this, in that loot becomes less random. If I need oil, I look for a car. Just about everyone of them (that is not a rusted frame in the desert) would / should have 4-8 quarts of oil. I don't even need a wrench. Just something to poke a hole in the oil pan, and something to catch the oil in.
Later. I am heading home to go pig hunting.
About the mod folder... the game does have a default mod folder location. I'm not sure how much can be done with this, its not very well documented. I do know you can use it to add in custom icons, however. Its pretty cool for that. All you have to do is drag-drop a folder there and tada, custom icons.
I've considered working on custom icons for some of the things my mod adds (so you dont see a bunch of the same icon) but my issue comes from the fact that it doesn't get "pushed" to clients on servers. Meaning if the player doesn't have the icons in their mod folder they wont see them in-game.
1. Quality weapons
Oh yes, don't get me wrong, the attributes of the parts are what determine the level of the gun. The thing is that to make "quality parts" you have to to craft them. This is where the player level coems into effect. When you put a weapon together with parts you don't craft it the same way you craft, say, a wooden club or bow.
To make a quality part you have to craft them using multiple of the same parts as ingredients. This isn't the same as what guns do with their "part" system.
There might be a clever way I can handle quality upgrades (turning normals to quality) where it bypasses the level of the player and uses the level of the original part but atm I don't know how to go about doing that. I will probably give it a look at some point to see if there are any other ways for me to approach it. No promises I can find a more elegant system, though.
I could add accuracy and damage to the final weapon, I think, now that I look at it and refresh my memory. The issue is the durability. Remember what I said before that the gun breaks when the weakest part in it breaks? A gun's health is only as good as its weakest part. So to make a quality weapon have more durability than a normal gun I need to give it special parts.
If all I wanted was accuracy and damage bosots I could probably do it without needing any new parts - just rearrange the grid-location of the default parts. I might do that in the long run, actually, since it sounds more elegant than what I have now. Though I hate to lose durability. I'll need to think on it - if you have any thoughts on the matter I'd love to hear them.
2. Oil
Ah I see. It makes more sense now. Currently I made a oil recipe that requires tallow and water to boil in a beaker. Takes 50 minutes. What are your thoughts on this? Should I also add a recipe that uses seeds? Is 50 minutes too short considering its making the all holy and beloved weapon oil?
I mostly want to use tallow because animalfat is so underused in the game yet I always have stacks of the stuff doing nothing. It'd be quite nice if it had more uses, I think.
Yes, I increased the amount that will drop, when it does drop. I didn't increase its odds of actually dropping, though. I basically made it so that when you DO get oil, you get more than you used to.
Speaking of taking oil from a car I could actually make it so that you could "harvest" oil from a car with a empty jar the same way you get water from a lake. The only problem is that its a infinite source. There are similar mods that let you get gas from the gas station pumps. Great in theory but the fact that they become these infinite sources subtracts from the experience, imo.
Also you might be interested to know that while I originally planned to wait for A13 to start working on any mod changes I'm going to go ahead and start on them now - though I won't be pushing myself to get them ironed out too quickly. The reason I've decided to start now is because, as fate so happens, thanks to a friendly offer I will now have admin control of a server with the mod running so I have a bit more motivation to get the revisions pushed out.
So far I have adjusted the loot table of the stump, exploding fat guy and crawling feral. I've added a tallow recipe and started working on the code for the Chemistry book (writen by Phill Fry the Chemistry Guy). Also gave the exploding fatman the lumbering walk of the... well, lumbering snow zombie. Should help tell them appart a bit.
Once thats settled I hope to rework the snare system like we discussed earlier and possibly remove birdnests and rely on trees for feathers and add eggs to the fridges. Though I will need to work up a balance for the trees to make up for the lack of nests. Before the feathers were meant to be as a nice addition to the trees - if I remove nests it would be a lot more critical.
Finally when thats squared away I hope to look more closely at the quality guns to see if there are any other ways I can handle it.
Thats all just off the top of my head, though. I'll be rereading through the feedback provided here as I work on the mod to see if I missed anything. There were a lot of little gems in there and I'd hate to forget about something. Lol.
Personal Reminder (for my benefit): Add axes to the lumberjack. I remember you mentioned this earlier. Also apparently A13 will give them some loot love. I was already planning to do some of this since you mentioned it earlier but madmole told us what they will have and a lot of this I can already implement:
"Lumberjacks in 13 will have axes, chainsaw parts and schematics, coats, warm clothing loot etc. "
Sounds good to me. Also I might remove medcine-related books from the normal loot table and make it so they drop exclusive in medicine cabinets and nurses. Or just medicine cabinets. Perhaps I can tuck the chemisty book in there too... would it make sense? Any thoughts on this?
thanks for the time to type that and yes
i do understand that there is now reasons
for the amount of time that you put into
well... what you do and i am happy that there
is *some* normal people in this world :)
Thanks For The Reply :)
Found an underground bunker. First one I have ever found. Had to explore. Wasted more time.
Finally found a pig, boiled it and grilled it. A lot of work, but a tasty treat. (Ate it right away, since I noticed it was very smelly.)
Infinite sources does pose a real "game" problem. I guess there might be some way to make it more difficult (require you to have read the "gas can filling for dummies book" : ) or craft some tool. It is a little funny about the gas - I recently posted in another thread something I had read that indicated a normal gas station has a resevoir of some 30,000 gals. of gas. So pretty much infinite as far as a single survivor would know.
Is your "50" minutes "game" time or real time? Are you going to burn through a ton of wood / coal to cook that? Three minutes for a piece of wood (not lumber or stick) means 17 pieces. Several trees worth of fire. And your heat map? You would probably spend more resources killing hordes : )
I don't know. If it was me, I might just up the drop rate / amount in cars, probably adjust loot min / max for a car to allow it to spawn more items. Cars are still rare in RNG, but if you knew you would find oil in 30% of them, plus chances for the other loot types? You would have a goal - must find cars vs. loot every trash bag and hope.
One thought that just occured to me is make the tallow / oil a simple craft, but only for certain classes. But that could be mis-used in multi-player, I suspect.
If I recall, my Frozen Lumberjack loot list included fire axe, shovel, pickaxe and small chance of chain saw (I was pushing things with the shovel and pickaxe, but they are "fire suppression" gear for people working in large national forests, etc. as I understand it.)
I also modified the Frozen Hunter to have a chance to drop . . . uhm . . . hunting gear? Shotgun / Hunting rifle (rare); shotgun shells and ammo (common); hunting knife - I may have also added beer, because, well everyone knows the best way to stay warm in a tree stand or blind is to consumer alcohol : )
The frozen worker got an assortment of oil, hammers, wrenches, boards, pipes, nails and nailgun (very rare).
Not sure I would even miss eggs, since they are not much use early game (can't eat them raw and can't boil them until you have a cook pot - unless you mod the recipe : ) They are great for bacon and eggs, since, for some odd reason it does not smell and makes a great travel food. Possibly for this iteration you could simply have them drop from trees?
Glad to hear you are working on the mods. I stopped holding my breath on A13 a while back. I had not even planned on playing 7D2D until winter break, in December. Figured there would be something new by then - but you and magoli had lots of new stuff for me to try.
If you are doing some work on the systems, though, one idea I had (and did not mention, since there were so many other things to talk about) was the time it takes to "start" a new character. Even though there is a grace period (no zombie spawns), once weather hits and even with bears, a couple game hours can pass, just while you are picking a class, etc. It gets easier, if you have done it before and know exactly what to expect, but it also is more of an impact on short day cycles where every minute counts.
My thought was what if all the recipes you learned as a "x class" were contained in a single book "x class" book. Short term it would mean only having to read one book, the list of what you learn could scroll, but you would already be putting on your gear, starting to loot area, etc. Potentially a real savings of "game time".
Long term, it might make adjusting the classes much easier - simply add / remove a recipe as needed vs. changing the case contents. It would also make a "help" guide easier to create / update. Instead of listing the books each character gets, which means a reader will need to access another section with the info on what each book teaches, you simply list the recipes. All the info on a specific class will be contained in one section, which will also make it a lot easier for a player to compare classes (and an easy way to look at balance issues.)
For instance, a player might look at the "medic" class and be able to see, almost immediately, the strengths (lots of healing goodness) and the weaknesses (no real combat or other crafting skills.) They might still want to play the medic, but they would have a chance to think through the options and figure out a potential play-style / strategy.
Or you might look at the long laundry list of crafting recipes for the carpenter, and decide that you want to remove some of the more "specialized" end game type items, while still giving him a fairly wide range of building options. He could still choose to learn all of the items by getting the appropriate book, or decide to branch out into other areas instead of becoming a master carpenter.
I like the idea of adding medicine books to nurse and med cabinet loot tables. Perhaps more rare on nurses, but more available in medicine chests.
(I am all in favor of anything that adds a little depth to the game vs. rng. The idea of certain zombies or loot items having a good chance of giving specific, related loot makes sense. It gives a player a lot more control - you need to learn to make first aid kits? Look for medical types or search medicine cabinets. You want to find garden tools, hammers, wrenches, odd vehicle parts, oil? Search garages. Looking for rifles / non-hand guns, chain saws and axes? Search solitary cabins.)
I've only seen a bunker once and it was on someone elses server. Jealous. Though with the admin tool and enough patience I could probably just build my own... still, takes from the experience. Lol.
On the topic of food do you think I should up the food+ rate on the foods? Or do you think its balanced as is? I understand from a gameplay perspective while they have values that they have but its kinda silly that you can mow through an entire cornfield and barely be full. Lol.
1. Infinite sources
Only way I could gate it behind abook is if the siphon hose (or whatever) was locked behind a recipe. Although... I might, MIGHT be able to regulate it a little by making the gaspump constantly "upgrading". So maybe every three days you have one day where it can be looted but then you have to wait another three days. Would be no visual way to tell if its "on" or "off" though.
Alternatively I could also make them containers that hold gascans so that they respawn loot like everything else. Any thoughts on this?
2. Oil
I'll be honest I never really understood the time ratio. I think it'd be 50 in-game minutes, though it may depend on your day length settings or something. Antibiotics take a craft time of "150". I think its measured in seconds. Bottled water is 20, for another comparision. In relation maybe 50 isn't high enough.
The amount of wood you need to burn depends on how long it takes to cook. Though I'm adding a new log to the game called "Fuel Log" - I know really creative. This is basically a normal log coated with tallow that you can learn from the chemisty book. This log has like x3 the burn time of a normal log.
3. Cars
For what its worth I diid add the car's loot to the "garage" loot and increased its abundance. So loot all the garages you find, might find some goodies.
4. Tallow/Oil simple craft
I'm not sure what you mean. Like, a craft that you can make with just the crafting menu?
5. Frozen Zombies
Ah, a shovel. Didn't think about that. With all that snow it would make sense for him to have a shovel, I think. I'll give the lumberjack the axe and the hunter the shovel. Will also add some hunting goodies to the hunter. I'll be honest, I almost never ever see the frozen zombies so I didn't even know one was a "hunter". Lol. I know one is kinda skinny and one is big and burly.
I like the suggestions you've made here with the loot. It would also help make them more worthwhile. Because before, despite all having x3 the health of a normal zombie, they dropped the same junk loot. Living in the harsh snow biome should be a bit more rewarding due to the risk.
6. Eggs
Hm. Dropping from trees is possible but... I dont know it feels extra video-gamey to me lol. Maybe the small trees can have a chance to drop them, with the logic being that the small trees are easier for you to reach the nests to keep the eggs from breaking.
Though the new traps have a chance to capture birds which will always give you at least one egg. Add to the eggs you can find in the fridge and maybe it will balance itself out well enough.
Also maybe I will add a "scrambled eggs" recipe so you can cook two eggs in a pot. I might be able to borrow the tallow or animalfat icon for this. No perfect but it might work.
7. X Class
I understand that it can be a hassle to read all those books and such. I would love nothing more than to make X Class books that have everything. That isn't possible, unfortunately. If more than one recipe book is tied to an item/block it will break the recipe. You cant have the same thing be taught by two different books. This is why my Notes do not actually teach you anything but rather give you the recipe book.
Though this may have been addressed in A12.5. This didn't work "back in the day" and I never really tested to see if it was ever changed. I will investigate it next time I'm modding but I don't expect it to work. If not, then this isn't something I can do despite knowing it would be a better system. I can only do so much before the game restricts me.
8. Carpenter and Book Loot
I'll might consider breaking this up a little. I believe currently the book costs 20 notes. I could lower it down to 15 for "basics" and 10 for the decor-specific blocks that don't really serve much purpose. The refine work, essentially. I could do a even 10-10 split but I don't know... It is a pretty powerful book to have and I don't want it to be too easy for non-builders to unlock it early, you know?
If I do break it up, though, I would kinda be making it even more rare to find in loot since I'd be adding yet another book to the RNG. Perhaps I could offset it by making these books only spawn in the hardware store? It makes sense that they would have it. I'd want barns and nobel to have it, too, but I can't give their bookcases special loot without touching all bookcases. Not without modding their prefabs. Which is outside my level of expertise.
Or maybe there is a way I haven't noticed before. I'll look into this later, though its not a big priority at the moment.
Making the tools specific to garage loot is a smart idea. Currently they spawn any book, like bookcases. I could remove the tool schematics from the bookcase loot and add it specific to the garage loot.
Perhaps I can add the miner-related schematics to special crates that only appear in mines.. Though this could be difficult to test, I think it can be done.
I might also be able to add a special bookbag that can spawn in houses that has specific books. Maybe the old resident was a college student or something..
I am just ending day #8, but I have a stack of notes that I have not even bothered to use. Sure there are some weapon scematics and medical items that would be nice, but even though I have the parts for a sniper rifle, I have been intentionally *not* learning to craft it - forcing myself to work with the hunting / bolt rifle.
It is just odd.
Have you uploaded any of the modifications to the . . . uhm . . . mod? I was already getting the itch to start a new game, last night, and if you have any new stuff for testing, I suspect at least one day this week-end will be rainy and cold. Perfect for marathon game testing.
Now on to your post: Shiny tokens = brass. Knew that. But for some reason I never run out of brass. Perhaps cheerleaders just love me, but I typically end up with so many "brass trophy" loots I just stop picking them up. Multi-player is probably different.
Food - I have mixed feelings on this. I have often found it problematic that you can eat an entire deer in a single day and still be hungry. But I have to admit Mole's point about it being a "survival" game - a single deer would feed a group for a week. A rabbit would sustain a single survirvor for a day. But there are just so many of them (well, except when you intentionally seek them out to make honey ham.) I think this is something the Pimps will be adjusting for quite a while. The only suggestion I would make is to double check your new items and ensure that a "combo" food gives enough benefit, in excess of the individual components, to give a player a reason to make the extra effort.
For instance, it does not seem that rabbit stew really offers much, compared to individual items, so I am usually going to just roast the rabbit and eat it. Venison stew really makes that corn and potato a lot more valuable. Does that make sense?
Infinite resources - again a game mechanic, where "reality" does not always make a good game. If there were actual story / end-game / quests in the game, finding a resevoir of 20,000 gals of gas, to jump start your civilization would be great. In the current game state? Not so much (although I can imagine some interesting PVP situations, where a gas station might be more important than a high end concrete base and groups are fighting over ownership of these resources.)
Times - I think the time listed in crafting is "real world" time, in seconds. It would be easy to check, since you could simply cook something with a long time (alcohol in a beaker), while the day length was set to 30 minutes (or some other short span) and compare how long (real world time) it takes vs. cooking the same item while day length is set to 120 minutes.
So 50 minutes of crafting would be 3000 real world seconds - which was why I was concerned about the fuel requirment. 50 seconds of crafting would be very different and a single piece of wood is sufficient for cooking three of these items.
I did do some quick checking in one of my "reference books" - tallow is just melted fat that allows impurities to be skimmed off, resulting in a more "pure" substance for using as fuel for candles or creating soap, etc. Then I did some introspection and began to wonder what was used for firearm care and feeding, before petrochemical industry was developed. I suspect that plant oils and animal fat were used by early frontiersmen, wild west gunmen and civil war soldiers. (But I don't have any actual references to back up my hunch.)
My Tallow / Oil simple craft was just that - if you have already "purified" the fats, by cooking them down, either create an alternative recipe for repair kit that uses tallow instead of oil, or a recipe that "clarifies" the tallow, retaining only the "oil" vs. the solids.
Frozen Zombies - I seem to find myself in the frozen biomes rather frequently. There are three zombie variations, specific to that biome - lumberjack, hunter and worker (all frozen). My reasoning was much the same as yours. Why is there a stronger zombie version, biome specific, with a non-generic name that points to an occupation and yet they give me the same loot as the cheerleader? So I fixed that for them (the Pimps) - just used the old air drop crates that were still in the .xml but never used. Creating a new loot setting is more elegant, but I was not comfortable coding that. I might have been able to do it with trial and error, but it was just easier to cheat and use their "extra" items.
Trees dropping eggs does seem rather "video gamey", but there is a real game limitation - not possible to search trees (well, I guess you could change that, but . . .) If they were more useful early game I would say it is important to keep them available in fairly large quantities. But with the snare option and fridge loot, people who really want bacon and eggs will be able to satisfy the need.
Although I just had a thought. What if the tree dropped "nests" instead? The nest was a "usuable" item that spawned eggs / feathers (you would have to create an intermediary, wouldn't you, since I don't know that "using" an item can create additonal loot - at least I can't think of any situations where you get more than a single jar or tin can, for instance.)
What if the nest was "placeable", like the suitcase, but "unlocked" so the next interaction "looted" it? You could have the same loot spawn, but a more "realistic" way of getting the nests. After looting it could explode to prevent respawn issues.
Scrambled Eggs? How about Animal fat and one egg? Two or three eggs is an omelet. Add meat or vegetables? (Okay that last might be going overboard, but I just discovered I am hungry, so it is clouding my judgement.) But I really like the idea of the egg plus animal fat.
X-class. Limitation of the game. Of course. I am ashamed to say I did not think of that. I really thought you just liked making a lot of new features, broke down all the crafting options and made books, then put them together to create classes. So I was not sure how to approach suggesting a simple replacement for the character creation. <LOL>
Which makes my other idea even more of a problem - I was going to suggest limiting the intitial skills / recipes, but give each starting character a number of notes. Thus, your basic carpenter could detail other aspects of the background - perhaps learned carpentry in the military and has a little weapon knowledge. But then you have basic equipment issues, etc.
Carpentry books - I guess one question would be what is actually included in the basic book. Is it just frames and wood walls? (Doors / hatches are in security; spikes are in traps) Add in ladders and simple fences, it is a little more useful. How does it stack up against something like the masonry book - which gives you cobblestone frame, cobblestone rocks and ultimately cobblestone walls, which are much stronger than wood, as far as I know. Scrap iron book - with scrap iron frames and walls, plus allows you to improve / re-inforce wood items?
It is too bad that there is not a way the game will let you check to see if a character already knows a recipe. Then you could gate stronger versions of skills by requiring lower level skills (that is what I tried to do with one version of my very simple skill book creations system - learning to craft a hunting rifle was fairly simple, but to craft the book for a sniper rifle, you had to have a hunting rifle book. So, essentially, you could jump right to sniper, but you still had to find / craft a hunting rifle book, even if you did not read it)
You might want to consider something like that. All books require five notes to craft, minimum. But some books are stand alone (carpentry), while others require a foundation (masonry would be five notes, plus a carpentry book to simulate the fact that building frames, etc. require some knowledge of carpentry. A character could simply craft a carpentry book and use it to craft the masonry book - a total of 10 notes, but would never be able to make other basic wood items; or they could learn to craft wood, make a second book to craft the masonry book, showing a progression of learning and spend 15 notes, total.)
As far as book spawns, I like the idea of some special books showing up in logical places - but I don't know that I would go overboard creating all sorts of new lootable items. That may be why I am feeling this game is going so quickly - almost every ruined house, ruined apt building, etc. had a book case. I got a lot of duplicates, but I also found a lot of recipes, just looting this one POI.
I think there are already "garage" loot tables, with a specific container. Adding a small chance of spawning a "garage specific book" (i.e. a loot table with a list of certain books, again weighted so a common carpentry book would show up more often than a text on working with concrete / steel, for instance) makes sense. Gun schematics, ammo crafting tomes might be suited to gun safes. The medical texts in medicine cabinets. "Handy man" texts in working stiff's crates. (I would need to look at .xml files to see if any other specific containers lend themselves to a logical loot assignment. I will try to do that either tonight, or this week-end.)
Didn't you mention earlier that you upped the note rate on your game? Could that have anything to do with it? Its also possible that all my new recipe books have make it the "normal" book (literally, the one that does nothing but give paper) stop balancing the recipe books out as well as it used to.
I'll be honest here and admit I don't know how loot probability works at all. The plain book has a probability of 20. I have a theory that the probabilty adds "rolls" to that item. So while there is only one entry of the Book it's probabilty of 20 makes the loot roll for it as if its present 20 times in the list, giving it a higher percentage simply because it has so many more entries. But with all my new added recipes those 20 extra raffles don't favor it as much.
Or maybe not. I honestly don't know. I'll have to get off my bum and actually PLAY the game some to get a "feel" for it to find that sweet spot I guess. Blah. :)
2. Uploaded Modifications
Not yet though since you're up for testing I would love for you to try out what I have done so far. I'll touch more on that later.
3. Food
I get what you mean. I do try to keep a certain balance with my custom food recipes to keep things worthwhile. I never really looked at the vanilla ones though. I'll take a look...
F=Food, W=Water, Wel=Welness.
Rabbit Stew: 15F, 15W, 1Wel
Boiled Rabbit+potato+corn+water: 13F, 25W, 0.8W
Boiled Rabbit+bakedpotato+corncob+water= 14F, 27W, 0.88Wel
The stew does seem to still be better, even if you actually took the time to cook all the ingredients. Though I agree it isn't by much. Actually in the vanilla files the rabbit gives more food than the pig. Go figure. I'll make some quick adjustments to my mod's values.
4. Oils
Interesting stuff. Hm. How about 4 tallow and a empty jar = 1 oil. That way it would still be worthwhile to use the beaker but not necessary to do so? How does that sound?
5. Frozen zombies
You might like what I've done with them, then. More on that in a bit.
6. Trees
Trees dropping nests... You son of a b..... I just got done modding in my trees and then you just strut in here and knock it all over with your clever ideas. Brilliant. I actually wanted to make a craftable birdsnest but wasn't comfortable with the exploitive nature that could bring. This would be a great way to help balance things out. I'll work on it tomorrow then. Thank you, keep these gems coming. :)
7. Scrambled Eggs
Animal fat... thats a good idea. I was just using two eggs and was a bit upset with the fact that I couldn't use water since I didn't want to fall back into the "eating glass" curse nor did I want to get bowls back from it. Fat would be a nice standin for water. I'm not sure about veggies but I can add some meat and make that the omelet. I want to avoid using just one egg since the food it would give back probably wouldn't feel worth it if its too low. Kinda like eating blueberries - sure it works but why bother.
I never boil the eggs for the same reason, the amount of food they give never seemed worth the effort.
Not sure what Im going to do about the icon or model, though. The scrabbled eggs already look a little silly since you're technically holding cornbread lol. I don't care TOO much though since you're meant ot eat it, not look at it.
8. X-Class
Don't be ashamed. I'm happy you brought it up because I checked in on it. It used to break the recipe. If two items taught the same recipe it would like cancel each other out or something. It would act like no recipe book exists and anyone could make it without reading the book. Thats how it used to be for me anyway the last time I tried this. It was a long time ago though.
I just tried it to see if 12.5 fixed it and it seems to be working now. The only flaw I could see is that it may make other books incorrectly flag themselves as "learned" even if you dont know all the recipes.
For example:
Book A teaches Torch and Chair.
Book B teaches Torch.
Read Book B and it marks Book A and B as "learned" but Chair is still locked and you'll have to read Book A to unlock the chair.
Still this is great news. I hated having to "eat" my notes to get the book and always wanted them to just teach you the recipes themselves. If you hadn't brought it up I never would had looked back into it. :)
Of course I also made the X-Class recipes aswell. Now, I haven't deeply tested this so there might be problems that aren't apparent ot me at the moment. Though from my quick tests it seems to be working fine. I'm quite pleased. Thanks again for that motivational push.
9. Starting with notes
Hm. I like it. It could be a "Wildcard Skill". I'm not sure how well it'd balance out though. I'm not sure how many I should give though. Do you think 20 would be too much considering they could either get a professional skill or learn 4 common skills. Maybe. Maybe not. I do like the idea of a wildcard, though.
Maybe I could add a Lottery Box they can craft with their Wildcard that will give them one random Fine-Quality weapon and ammo so that they can opt to get a good weapon early on instead of putting it towards a skill. Hm. Not sure if it'd play out well though. Thoughts on all of this?
10. Carptentry Books
I could just singleout everything that is decor that serves no practical purpose. Like tables, chairs, ect. Though if I do add a Wildcard this could be less a big deal. Infact with my recent loot changes it might already not be much of a problem. I'm not sure.
11. Learn recipe to unlock recipes
In a way you could make it so you require a certain skill knowledge to make another skill. To use your hunting rifle - sniper rifle as an example this is I would do it:
Hunting Rifle book teaches you how ot make a hunting rifle a "sniper rifle training" book. You make the sniper rifle training book. By itself it does nothing. In the loot the sniperrifleschematic will be replaced by a "Sniper Rifle Learned" book. You combine this with the training book to craft a sniper rifle schematic.
It could be an interesting system though the added steps may make it harder for noobs to figure out if they don't read instructions lol.
A "tier up" system like this makes sense. Though I'm not sure how I would balance it out for the classes. I'm already making some stretches as it is to make the classes specieal. The more I think about it more I like it. Though Im not sure what recipes will be standalone and what one s will have prerequisites or how well it would fit in the class system.
Just for exaple though think about the carpeter book and how we discussed before the idea of breaking the "clutter" items out of it. I could make it the base book only teach you the basics like frames and make it so you have to "upgrade" into the next stage that teaches the clutter items.
I think its possible but it might not be the most elegant of methods. The most difficult part would be balancing it all out - which is probably a bit too much for me to handle if I'm being honest. It's a cool idea though. Just not sure if its something that would "play well" with my mod as it stands. I'm open to ideas though - I'm not writing it off completely. I just don't expect its something I can really "pull off" in any satisfying way.
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I will now begin work on my second post. I plan to number it which is why I didn't want to include it in this post. I guess I could had went with an A,B,C format but. Meh. Stay tuned.