State of Decay: Dong Free Guarantee

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Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Has there been an updated ETA on the PC version coming out? The official forum states that some websites are calling it happening this month on the 22nd. I figure it's just theory crafting, but dredging through the forums to confirm that is like pulling teeth.

Really want to get this, but it'd be equivalent to dropping $50 on a game since I have to order a new Xbox power supply. And given that it doesn't have a fully realized sandbox option yet, gently caress that.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2013 22:32

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 23:41

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Just had an insane defense of my HQ on breakdown level 2. Five hordes spawned in around Ascension Church. All of them were directly next to the church and beelined to it. Then it turns out a nearby house was overrun (but not infested) with zombies, which came running when everyone started firing over the walls at the fifty or so zombies swarming from every direction. Then a juggernaut decided to muck in. :stonk:

Ended up losing the walls and the exterior. The survivors actually said the gently caress with it and ran inside after a bit of fighting, hiding behind the windows and trying to hold the interior. The only one who stayed was the guy in the watchtower, who constantly sniped them with a pistol as each person tried to hold a window. I ended up having a survivor do laps around the house to distract the zombies long enough for the watchtower guard to snipe them. He got a level in cardio from it. :v:

Makes me wonder what Breakdown level 5 or 6 is like.

Edit: Also had a ranch out in the middle of nowhere that was absolutely overrun with zombies. I pulled up to it in my truck, got out, and then they started spilling out of the top floor windows like it was a clown car. It was just a constant tide of them. I promptly got back in my truck, started the engine, and drove off. gently caress that. :stare:

Archonex fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Nov 30, 2013

# ¿ Nov 30, 2013 22:15

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Godmachine posted:

Doesn't it go up to 10? Muahahah!

Jesus christ. I just assumed it went up to six since that was the highest unlock for a hero I saw. :stare:

Also, it turns out that finding a missing character is easy when they're armed with a military grade LMG. A SWAT cop hero I recruited somehow botched a solo hunt, went missing, then turned up right outside my stronghold a few days later. I wasn't sure which house to look for him in until I heard what sounded like him chewing through an entire horde with that gun.

Cue me entering the house the sounds came from with him standing over a pile of corpses. And of course he pulls the "terrified character" VA as an intro, despite having more firepower on him than Rambo.

Also, i'm still not sure how to get survivors that are companions to fire their guns. It's kind of obnoxious that they don't do it when we're getting swarmed. Is there any way to get them to do that? Also, is there a way to give them a rucksack to carry?

Edit: Another thing i've noted. The old call-in's from the vanilla game are in breakdown. You can get them by finding the right heroes, which randomly appear in the world to recruit (possibly according to your fame), or starting as one after unlocking a hero type.

Already found the US army officer and the preacher, which give the artillery strike and the words of inspiration, respectively.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Nov 30, 2013

# ¿ Nov 30, 2013 22:53

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Danger - Octopus! posted:

Where are some good places to find melee weapons? I started the game earlier today and am doing missions around the church, but all my melee weapons have broken and I can't find any.

Check out the town in the northwest of the map. At the shopping complex there is a martial arts studio. I never got a chance to check it out due to the swarms of zombies up there, but it'd probably give you a few nerdy weapons.

Is there anything like a military base or something available? I found one single heavy assault weapon on breakdown level one, then the rest were SMG's or pistols. Granted, the light machine gun I found is ridiculous, despite it encumbering me.

Edit: Well this is new. Reached breakdown level 5 and the Savini residence is occupied by an enclave. This only leaves the Alamo left to inhabit since the RV parked near the city. Worse still, the RV was parked at one of the major locations hordes like to enter the city from, meaning I had little prep time as the game spawned hordes all over the city. :stonk:

On the plus side, I picked up a second army hero as part of the free "get a hero recruit at the start of the level" mission that always seems to pop up. Now I have two guys with LMG's standing watch at the Alamo. With a single outpost defending hordes can only hit it from one direction without getting cut to pieces. The first fifteen minutes were still an insane last ditch firefight as my gunner hero and my cop hero just mowed everything down as every zombie, freak, and horde in the city beelined to me though.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Dec 1, 2013

# ¿ Dec 1, 2013 21:14

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

gently caress the ROW posted:

Grenade launcher watch tower NPCS: gee thanks for blowing up all my carsss

They're actually pretty useful in the later stages, i've found. Just have to park your cars in a safe place depending on the HQ you're in. Plus, ammo for the thing is so rare that it's easier to just toss it to a NPC rather than deal with lugging it around looking for a good use.

On another note, has anyone had an odd bug where all of your NPC's run off and disappear when set up at Snyder's? I've noticed them running out of the HQ en-masse at the start of loading a game, never to re-appear unless I reload. It's the only HQ where that happens at, which leads me to assume it's a bug.

Also just discovered that there actually are military bases of sorts. More like checkpoints, and they have a special version of the ammo resource if you can find them. I cracked one open and was rewarded with a ton of assault rifle/LMG ammo. Not sure if that's new to breakdown or not, but it was a pleasant surprise when I discovered it when wandering the game world.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2013 04:07

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Tommofork posted:

I have an outpost literally across the road from Snyder's and at least three survivors are just hanging out there at any given moment.

It is pretty funny watching them run like crazy to get there.

Wish I could figure out what was up with that. It's driving me crazy that they disappear. Does that have something to do with the "away from home" thing, where you can check in on them? I never figured out the purpose of that either, except to force you to have a fetch task to re-enable someone.

In other news, I hit breakdown level five. Maybe I just have terrible luck, but apparently the game's decided to remove almost all the resources from the game. I cleaned out 12 houses and found only items. Was an hour before I found a food spawn at all. Between all of that I had a poo poo-ton of infestations and hordes hit the town. The entire town where ascension church is is basically cleaned out, with me having minimal supplies to show for it.

It's also the first time I failed a "neighbor wants your help with cleaning out an infestation" mission. Took my best guy out there (he has rage, maxed edged weapon specialization, and great gear) and he nearly died. My loving sword actually broke from the sheer amount of killing I did. I used six chemical firebombs, an artillery strike, and who knows how much ammunition and they just kept coming.

Meanwhile all of my resource surpluses from the earlier levels are looking nice. I've got like 15 medicine, 15 ammunition, and 26 food, tops. I lucked out and found a gas station with three food resources in it. On top of that i've got an rear end in a top hat (who is also one of my best zombie killers, and lead the disastrous raid on an infested trailer park) who keeps having morale issues, three of my four army heroes are constantly sick, and i'm having severe influence issues due to the lack of resource pick-ups. :stare:

I also suspect that the game is starting to handicap my characters. They seem to be running out of stamina faster, losing weapon durability faster, and they're definitely taking more damage than before. My best zombie killers are actually getting their asses kicked now. Thank god for the survivor manning the watchtower. That grenade launcher is still overpowered as hell when they have an elevation advantage.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2013 06:38

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Fewd posted:

Weapons on NPCs don't use ammo from the stash or their inventories, right?

Not that I can tell. It's just a back end calculation that seems that deducts from the ammo supply. Pretty sure it's even across all weapons too.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2013 07:12

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Good Lord Fisher! posted:

My reaction when this happened to me was to immediately execute by horde the perpetrator.

Then I destroyed all the grenade launchers we had in a fit of rage, which I am now regretting.

Seriously, grenade launchers are so good starting around level 5. You don't even need to actively use them. Just assign someone with one in a watchtower and cackle as your godlike sniper of a grenadier promptly annihilates every horde that comes at you.

For bonus points, try opting to enable sharpshooting in a small town. He'll arc the grenades so that you basically get mortar-esque fire support if you're in range. You just have to be careful that you don't try to melee a horde if you do that. He can't see you and the grenades do friendly fire damage.

Also had my first unintentional casualty on level 5. Sacrificed two people I left behind to get the achievements/character unlocks, but that was it.

My poor cop, Owen, who I had from level 1, got ripped apart in an epic defense of a guy running supplies to our base. He managed to kill like 30 zombies with his LMG by using the bullet time skill. Then his suppressor broke, and he had to keep shooting to stay alive. They kept coming, and he kept killing until he was pretty much firing from on top of a massive pile of flaming zombie corpses. KC Winters, my military gunner hero, escaped, but then a Big'un came crashing through my rear defenses, grabbed Owen from behind, and tore him limb from limb as he held the rear guard.

Kind of fitting too, since along with my military officer hero Diane he was the one who was always organizing hunts against freaks and infestations. This level he was the only one doing that too since Diane was sick and then ran away when she was on the verge of death. She managed to survive, somehow, but he was basically the only one leading the charge in keeping the survivors safe on the NPC end of things in the meantime.

His profile even states that he used to record home videos of him pantomiming fighting zombies in his basement, like a true goon. So he went out doing what he loved. I even noticed the number of freaks and zombies in the town dropped sharply after that. Talk about building a funeral pyre. :black101:

Edit: Also, it's clever how zombies are actually persistent. I confirmed this last stage by noting the position of a Big'un surrounded by a bunch of screamers and zombies that Owen was absolutely determined to kill for some reason. I kept sending him back, and I saw it roaming the area several times while passing through. It even tried to ambush one of my characters as I was scavenging.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Dec 2, 2013

# ¿ Dec 2, 2013 22:22

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Bedurndurn posted:

The undead labs webpage is now a 'Hosted by Gator hosting' default thing right now. Hopefully that means somebody is now actively trying to fix things. I want that modding forum back up darn it.

They posted on facebook that the forums were having trouble. Maybe the release day rush of breakdown wrecked them?

In other news, if you want a crazy mod, check out the Romero mod. It has a ton of stuff to customize the game, including the option to make the game basically be a Romero movie. IE: Zombies bites are very lethal, black fever can be contracted from zombie attacks if you aren't careful, etc, etc.

It was originally just about making the game more like a Romero movie, but the mod maker since achieved that a few updates ago and apparently has moved on to including a fairly impressive number of optional features.

This includes new ways to lure zombies, customizable zombie types (IE: You can have them all be the classical shamblers, runners, or a mix of both/other types.), graphical enhancements, cheat modes, options for the number of survivors in the world, a number of "harder than hard" modes, an optional mode where all survivors start off with the black fever ( :stonk:

) and have to survive it before they're truly "safe" (meaning your HQ can easily get overrun by converted undead from within if you aren't careful about handling medical affairs, I guess.), and so much more.

Really, it's easier to just check out the latest update out at any given time and read down the primary feature list in the mod description. He seems to add new features in just about every released update, so checking back regularly is a good idea. Heck, he just released a new version yesterday, in fact.

This is the latest version out. It's Breakdown compatible, obviously. He apparently is busy re-enabling optional features that the Breakdown expansion broke. Sounds like he's gotten most of them working again.

http://www.moddb.com/games/state-of-decay/downloads/george-romero-mod-t15-breakdown-update-1

A fair warning though, if you include Romero zombies the game ought to get insanely tough around breakdown 5 or 6. If I understand how he worked the expanded zombie spawns in you're looking at hordes being everywhere. And not actual hordes. To nail that Romero feel the mod maker apparently decided to make it so that zombies are tougher (head shots are a must with guns now) and much more numerous.

They also appear to perk up and cluster at noises easier too. So using stealth in the city and towns is a must. Sure as heck makes distraction items, foraging in the country-side, and using the ranger station/other out of the way HQ's more useful as well.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2013 00:10

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Mister Bates posted:

Can you assign specific people to watchtower duty? I've got two expert marksmen with longarms who are never up there, and the person most frequently manning the tower is the random drunkard with a .22LR revolver.

I'm not sure how it counts it, but i've noticed that some survivors seem to have a predilection to certain tasks. The cop I posted that story about on the last page always was "on missions" and starting zombie hunt missions, the meth head looking hero I picked up at the start of the level was always missing or spazzing out, one guy was always on watchtower duty if he wasn't foraging, another was always getting pissed off and running off to murder zombies himself, etc, etc. Not sure what's up with that. Maybe someone who's poked around on the back end can say what's up.

An easy way to get a weapon you want in the watchtower though is to pay attention to who's in there commonly. Then just give them the gun you want. That's what I did to ensure the grenade launcher is always active on defense, and it's not failed me yet with a 12 person HQ across two or three levels of Breakdown. So long as the NPC's aren't offering to take shifts (they seem to do this with larger communities) they'll always prioritize going up there over any other NPC actions.

quote:

Having trouble finding any guns got me thinking - this game is set in the rural Southern US, so where the hell are the crates of 5-20 random Mosin-Nagants that are ubiquitous at basically every gun show and gun store in the country ever? I've found a Mosin, but considering how popular they are as a novice rifle, and how stupidly easy they are to find, there should probably be a few more of them. Hell, I know of places that sell them in batches of ten.

It got mocked after I suggested it exists last page, but there's actually a military base in game. It just isn't labeled on the map. I picked up about seven top tier assault rifles, two military ammo resources, and two 100 round capacity very light weight LMG's (Which was a :stare:

moment.) up there when I started a new game and checked it out. Spoilers for details about it below, obviously.

Near the fair ground in that district of warehouses there are a bunch of semi-hidden wrecked military outposts. These can potentially have a poo poo-ton of military ammo resources and extremely high end guns. Check around the SE end of the fenced off area. If you enter a warehouse and see a lot of fencing, followed by a concrete construction inside that looks like an impromptu jail and an execution range next to it, that's probably it.

If you have a hard time finding it, you can also look for a blackboard in the building. There's some unique/neat details to the area. The HQ of the military outpost has a blackboard in the back detailing their operation. Not sure if it needs high detail graphics to be readable, but if you find a building with that look outside. There'll be a few green tents. Inside them is usually a large military stash.

Some of the other buildings appeared to have a few military stashes hidden around them, but I got chased off by a poo poo-ton of zombies before I could confirm it. I should note that on breakdown level 5 the place was overrun with army zombies. In fact, five minutes after starting a new profile there, a nearby neighbor enclave started a Zed Hunt offer there. It was the first time where I had to kill multiple army zombies to complete that mission type. This wasn't counting the two dozen other normal zombies that showed up after a brief firefight as well.

Suffice to say that you should be prepared for a fight, or some heavy duty stealth if you go there. The zombies can climb the tall fences and hem you in if you aren't careful. Definitely felt like a sort of "end game" exploration area to me, given how many threats there were.

Mental Midget posted:

Welp, I was holding off on buying the PC version because I already have the 360 version of the game plus the DLC. I guess once it goes back to $9.99 on Steam for the base game I have no choice but to pick it up.

It's honestly worth $10 as it is. Breakdown gets "Romeroish" around breakdown level 5. And it adds so much infinitely replayable content that it's kind of crazy that it's as cheap as it is. That's before you add in mods like the Romero mod too.

Once the modding forums get back up I imagine that some of the mods will be fairly impressive as well. People were already trying to hack together an editor that'd let them enable stuff like survivors shooting outside the HQ, find a way to make them pick up rucksacks, and scavenge on their own as well.

Heck, the Romero mod is a pretty impressive example of modding all by itself, given the lack of official mod tools. Seems like the game was built to be fairly moddable for the PC with a bit of work on modder's end of things.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Dec 3, 2013

# ¿ Dec 3, 2013 00:20

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Tommofork posted:

Dear god man are you insane? Did you run out of weapons or something?

Also Snyder's public service announcement: Park your least valuable car in the parking spot to the front on the gas station side. Sometimes a zombie will be lying down outside the gas station and your survivors will try real hard to snipe it through your car. It does not end well for the car.

A couple of other military stashes: The crashed army helicopter outside the fairgrounds and a tent next to the dam. The dam is to the west of the fairgrounds town.

There's also a military checkpoint on the bridge on the west end of the map.

Really, the towns and marked houses tend to be where most of the common loot spawns. If you want to get this game's equivalent of "epic purps", you gotta hoof it off the beaten trail and risk getting eaten. Case in point, the fairly massive military compound I stumbled across. Or all of the off-road campsites and stashes.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2013 03:52

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Do NPC's collect vehicles in simulation mode? I started up the game today to find that all of the nearby vehicles were parked neatly at nearby parking slots.

Also, does anyone know what the "away from home" status actually does? I have NPC's randomly go into that state, and I was wondering if they're supposed to be foraging or something. Would be nice if I wasn't the only one doing work automatically in active play.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2013 20:11

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

So does anyone know where the mod tools are? The forums are still down if i'm not mistaken, so it's a pain to find them.

Was looking to see if I could expand on survivor NPC functionality (IE: Let them use guns out in the world, make them more active, see if there's a way to get them to scavenge on their own, make enclaves more than just merchants and mission givers, etc etc.) but the config files aren't readable.

I assume someone's found a way around this since the Romero mod exists.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2013 23:09

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

So I was poking around in the files after finding an extractor, and there's some neat stuff that's disabled. There's an entire facility subset for power generation for instance. Tempted to see if it can be re-enabled with the current modding tools. Apparently it works, but was cut from release due to unexplained issues.

There's also a few AI priorities i've chanced across that explain why survivors are sometimes so lovely at defending their HQ when you're nearby. Some of the AI priorities seem odd, like vigilance having some weird issues, and barricading never taking place outside of the sieges.

There's also some AI behavior stuff i've found, but I can't figure out how it ties into RTS mode yet. I'm assuming RTS mode is how the map handles NPC movement and such. In addition to that, a post I chanced across mentions that proper AI for NPC's firing weapons when out and about is currently commented out. Not sure why, but if that's true I may try and re-enable it to see what sort of hilarity results.

There's also some odd stuff that I was curious about. Does the campaign version of the game have a failure event where you lose if too many buildings get infested? Because I found an event that indicates that's a thing.

Edit: Vigilance actually apparently handles defending an area. Except I don't think most NPC's in Breakdown spawn with guns and ammo, and I don't see any indication that it actually sets up barricades properly when not in a siege mission. Meaning that half of what i'm reading for NPC AI defending a location doesn't actually seem like it works.

For instance, there's

quote:

OnOutOfAmmo = function (self,entity, sender)
entity:Reload();
end,

REACHED_BARRICADE = function(self, entity)
if (entity.actor:BarricadeIsAcquired() or entity.vigilantPos~= nil) then
self:StartVigilant(entity)
entity:SelectPipe(0, 'do_nothing')
else
entity:SelectPipe(0, 'UL_Ally_SiegeDefense_Try_Acquire')
end
entity.actor.RemoveContextTag(0, entity.id, "Behavior_Navigating");
end,

---------------------------------------------
TRY_ACQUIRE = function(self, entity)
--Log('[UL_Ally_Siege] SIGNAL: TRY_ACQUIRE')
entity.Behavior:AcquireBarricade(entity)
end,

---------------------------------------------
-- idle found a nearby zombie on a barricade. try to shoot it
ZOMBIE_ON_BARRICADE_NEARBY = function(self, entity)
--self:ReleaseBarricade(entity)
AI.SetBehaviorVariable(entity.id, "DealWithEnemyRanged", true);
end,

ModeVigilantStop = function(self, entity)
self.parent:TO_IDLE(entity);

I've never seen a NPC shoot a zombie off of a barricaded window. In fact unless it's a siege mission, they'll just run out to punch it in the face. If it is a siege mission they'll just keep re-barricading the thing until a zombie sneaks up on them or it gets through. Seems like there might be a bit of an AI logic issue there. I'd have to keep checking to see if i'm right. Just mucked into the extracted files not long ago.

Either way, it seems like some modders could have some real fun with messing with the game. With the extractor you can pretty much do whatever you want.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 05:39 on Dec 4, 2013

# ¿ Dec 4, 2013 04:31

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Kasonic posted:

Oh man, given the many threads of forgotten features the devs have hinted at there's probably a lot of hidden gems in the code. I could see a lot of life left in this game if anyone can change up win-states or facility functions.

I'm chancing across a lot of stuff that implies that the scope of the project used to be much bigger. I also just found some more stuff that might interest people. Spotted it in a list of different expertise types in an XML file. I'll bold the interesting stuff since I had to reformat it after copy and pasting. Obviously this is a list of the various skills you can level up in game.

quote:

GameTokensLibrary Name="Family">
<GameToken Name="Expertise.MeleeUnarmed" LocalOnly="0"
Description="Combat ability; used w/ no large weapon" Value="0" Type="Int"/>

<GameToken Name="Expertise.MeleeBlunt" LocalOnly="0"
Description="Combat ability; used with bashing weapons" Value="0" Type="Int"/><GameToken Name="Expertise.MeleeBlade" LocalOnly="0"
Description="Combat ability; used with axes and bladed weapons" Value="0" Type="Int"/>

<GameToken Name="Expertise.GunPistol"
LocalOnly="0"
Description="Gun ability: used with handguns and revolvers" Value="0" Type="Int"/>

<GameToken Name="Expertise.GunShotgun" LocalOnly="0"
Description="Gun ability: used with shotguns" Value="0" Type="Int"/>

<GameToken Name="Expertise.GunRifle" LocalOnly="0" Description="Gun ability; used with rifles" Value="0" Type="Int"/>

<GameToken Name="Expertise.GunAssault" LocalOnly="0" Description="Gun ability; used with assault rifles and SMGs" Value="0" Type="Int"/>

<GameToken Name="Expertise.GunHeavy" LocalOnly="0" Description="Gun ability; used with machine guns" Value="0" Type="Int"/>

<GameToken Name="Expertise.Medicine" LocalOnly="0" Description="Medical ability; used with Medical Bag item" Value="0" Type="Int"/>

<GameToken Name="Expertise.Repair" LocalOnly="0" Description="Repair ability; used with Tool Kit item" Value="0" Type="Int"/>

<GameToken Name="Expertise.Psychology" LocalOnly="0" Description="Npc interaction ability" Value="0" Type="Int"/>

<GameToken Name="Influence" LocalOnly="0" Description="Available currency" Value="0" Type="Int"/>

<GameToken Name="Renown" LocalOnly="0" Description="Wealth rating; determines available influence each day" Value="0" Type="Int"/>

Looks like there were at least three skill sets that didn't make it to release. I'm guessing the items are in too, just disabled. I found the items file but haven't gotten around to checking it yet to see if they're there.

The game's pretty much a gold mine of potential if some decent modders pick it up. Hell, the LUA's contain what appears to be all of the code for handling AI behavior in the game world.

Assuming i'm not missing something important in how they compiled and set up their file structure, you could even script some new behaviors with a decent enough understanding of the code. I imagine it'd even be possible to have the AI survivors actually do stuff other than generate missions with enough effort. IE: Have them scavenge on their own, roam the world and do their own thing, etc, etc. Looks like they had to cut a lot of stuff to make it as an arcade release.

I may try tweaking the AI priorities, at least. I want to see if I can get them to actually shoot zombies when not on the watchtower and intelligently defend the HQ. It'd make places like the Alamo much more livable.

Edit: Just to give an idea of what someone can do with a bit of time, check out this video of the Romero mod.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVBEuo_BFf8

Imagine fighting off that many zombies at the start of breakdown level 6 with just your starting assortment of survivors. Really puts an emphasis on being prepared before you move into the city. And that's just the first real mod someone's made for the game.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 05:56 on Dec 4, 2013

# ¿ Dec 4, 2013 05:30

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Woebin posted:

I like seeing you dig through the code and finding this stuff, but for future posting you might want to use [ code] tags rather than [ quote] tags. Without spaces, of course.

Forgot the forums even had that option. Though it might stretch the screen, which I know can be obnoxious for some people.

So I think I found the code that handles part of the initiation of ranged attacks. Just like the post I chanced across said, some of it is commented out. Specifically, there appears to be variants of a NPC attacking with a gun. This ranges from the current "boom headshot" version of headshotting, to panicked gunfire, to sweeping the zombies.

code:

    AI.BeginGoalPipe("Ally_stick_with_player_attack_ranged");
--      AI.PushGoal("firecmd",0,FIREMODE_SECONDARY);
        AI.PushGoal("locate", 0, "ULZombie");
        AI.PushGoal("+firecmd",0,FIREMODE_BURST, AILASTOPRES_USE);
        AI.PushGoal("locate",0,"formation_player",1000);
        AI.PushGoal("+acqtarget",0,"");
        AI.PushGoal("+stick",2.0,2.5,AILASTOPRES_LOOKAT+AI_REQUEST_PARTIAL_PATH,STICK_SHORTCUTNAV);
    AI.EndGoalPipe();

That's the initiator for when they're following you. Still don't have any idea what FIREMODE_SECONDARY does yet. It's doubtful given that this code appears to have been made specifically for State of Decay, but maybe it was a hold-over from Crysis? Were there originally alternate fire modes for some weapons? Or was it a way to determine when a different type of fire mode (I'll get into that later on in the post.) occurs for AI survivors? It's one of those things I haven't chanced across in the code yet.

And here's the segment with alternate fire modes. For people aren't aware, the -- means a segment is commented out and effectively does nothing in the code. I'm obviously not 100% sure yet (There's a lot of code to go through.) but this next snippet appears to be part of the code for when an ally is following you and doing nothing.

code:

 AI.BeginGoalPipe("Ally_shooter_idle");
        AI.PushGoal('ul_locatevisible', 1, 'ULZombieTest', 50)
        AI.PushGoal("+firecmd",0,FIREMODE_BURST, AILASTOPRES_USE);
--        AI.PushGoal("+firecmd",0,FIREMODE_BURST_ONCE, AILASTOPRES_USE);
--        AI.PushGoal("+firecmd",0,FIREMODE_AIM_SWEEP, AILASTOPRES_USE);
--        AI.PushGoal("+firecmd",0,FIREMODE_PANIC_SPREAD, AILASTOPRES_USE);
        AI.PushGoal("timeout",1,0.5,1.0);
    AI.EndGoalPipe();

Not sure if AILASTOPRES_USE handles actual use of ammo in the inventory or does something else (Really need to get around to tracking that down, but i'm having fun parsing out how different bits of the AI work.), but if you need ammo in their inventory that might explain some of the problems.

If there is an ammo limitation there, commenting it out would ensure they'd use it (if that's the only issue), albeit at the cost of giving them infinite ammo. Then again, for mods that do shambler hordes like the Romero mod, that could be useful. :stonk:

And here's a long one just for fun. The siege defense code in the ul_pipemanager file.

code:

    --==============================================================================
    -- Siege defense
    --==============================================================================

    -- idle. try to find a zombie target
    AI.BeginGoalPipe('UL_Ally_SiegeDefense_Idle')
        AI.PushGoal('locate', 0, 'ULZombieBarricade', 15, 0)                            -- find a barricade zombie target
        AI.PushGoal('+branch', 0, 'END', IF_LASTOP_FAILED)                              -- check if a zombie was found
        AI.PushGoal('ul_locatevisible', 1, 'ULZombieBarricade', 15, 0)                  -- find a barricade zombie target
        AI.PushGoal('+branch', 0, 'END', IF_LASTOP_FAILED)                              -- check if a zombie was found
        AI.PushGoal('signal', 1, 1, 'ZOMBIE_ON_BARRICADE_NEARBY', SIGNALFILTER_SENDER)  -- tell the behavior there's a barricade zombie nearby
        AI.PushLabel('END')
        AI.PushGoal('timeout', 1, 1)
        AI.PushGoal('signal', 1, 1, 'TRY_ACQUIRE', SIGNALFILTER_SENDER)                 -- Tell the behavior to check to see if we acquired a barricade point
    AI.EndGoalPipe()

    AI.BeginGoalPipe('UL_Ally_SiegeDefense_Try_Acquire')
        AI.PushGoal('timeout', 1, .1)                                                   -- Wait a short time
        AI.PushGoal('signal', 1, 1, 'TRY_ACQUIRE', SIGNALFILTER_SENDER)                 -- Tell the behavior to check to see if we acquired a barricade point
    AI.EndGoalPipe()

    -- acquire a barricade target
    AI.BeginGoalPipe('UL_Ally_SiegeDefense_AcquireBarricadeTarget')
        AI.PushGoal('locate', 0, 'ULZombieBarricade', 15, 0)
        AI.PushGoal('+branch', 0, 'FOUND_ZOMBIE', IF_LASTOP_SUCCEED)
        AI.PushGoal('firecmd', 0, FIREMODE_OFF)
        AI.PushGoal('signal', 1, 1, 'ZOMBIE_CLEAR', SIGNALFILTER_SENDER)
        AI.PushGoal('branch', 0, 'END', BRANCH_ALWAYS)
        AI.PushLabel('FOUND_ZOMBIE')
            AI.PushGoal('+acqtarget', 0, '')
            AI.PushGoal('+ul_face', 1, 0)
            AI.PushGoal('+firecmd', 1, FIREMODE_AIM, AILASTOPRES_USE, 0.5, -1, AI_FIRECMD_CONTINUE_WHEN_DONE)
            AI.PushGoal('+firecmd', 0, FIREMODE_BURST, AILASTOPRES_USE)
            AI.PushGoal('signal', 1, 1, 'ZOMBIE_TARGETED', SIGNALFILTER_SENDER)
            AI.PushGoal('branch', 0, 'END', BRANCH_ALWAYS)
        AI.PushLabel('END')
    AI.EndGoalPipe()

    -- shoot a barricade target
    AI.BeginGoalPipe('UL_Ally_SiegeDefense_ShootBarricadeTarget')
        AI.PushGoal('locate', 0, 'firetarget', 0, 0)
        --AI.PushGoal('+branch', 0, 'END', IF_LASTOP_FAILED)
        AI.PushGoal("acqtarget", 0, "");
            AI.PushGoal('+firecmd', 1, FIREMODE_AIM, AILASTOPRES_USE, 0.5, -1, AI_FIRECMD_CONTINUE_WHEN_DONE)
            AI.PushGoal('+firecmd', 0, FIREMODE_BURST, AILASTOPRES_USE)
        --AI.PushGoal('firecmd', 0, FIREMODE_OFF)
        AI.PushGoal('signal', 1, 1, 'ZOMBIE_LOST', SIGNALFILTER_SENDER)
        AI.PushLabel('END')
    AI.EndGoalPipe()

    -- go to a barricade build location
    AI.BeginGoalPipe('UL_Ally_SiegeDefense_GoToBarricade')
        AI.PushGoal('+run', 0, 1)                                                   -- make sure the AI runs to the target
        AI.PushGoal('+locate', 0, 'refpoint')                                       -- use the reference point as the target barricade position
        AI.PushGoal('+approach', 1, 0.75, AILASTOPRES_USE)                          -- approach the builder position
        AI.PushGoal('+branch', 0, 'SUCCESS', IF_LASTOP_SUCCEED)
        AI.PushGoal("+signal", 1, 1, "GP_NPC_Pathfinding_Failed", SIGNALFILTER_SENDER);
        AI.PushGoal('+branch', 0, 'END', BRANCH_ALWAYS)
        AI.PushLabel("SUCCESS")
        AI.PushGoal('+signal', 0, 1, 'REACHED_BARRICADE', SIGNALFILTER_SENDER)      -- tell the entity it can build now
        AI.PushLabel("END")
    AI.EndGoalPipe()

If it isn't obvious, it's doing maybe like half of that stuff at the moment. Specifically, the lack of them firing is the issue that i've never seen happen, and never heard of anyone getting them to do. Furthermore, it looks like the home defense code might just be separate from the overall siege code (Unless they've just named the home and enclave siege AI the same as the various siege code in the code, in which case their coder needs to be slapped for creating readability issues.), just as the enclave code doesn't have NPC's automatically barricading. Which would explain why they just let the zombies waltz in and munch on them. Might be worth it to fix it so that at least home NPC's use the siege defense code if so.

Fire mode "burst" is apparently the default fire type as well. I haven't gotten around to trying in-game tweaks yet since i'm still in the reading phase, but i'm assuming it's the same method of insanely accurate type of shooting every watchtower NPC has. See the posts describing how NPC's were headshotting zombies from the tower through buildings for an example of how accurate they are.

The panic and sweep options are commented out everywhere i've seen them so far. Need to see if they have actual code for handling different fire modes actually working. Assuming they aren't actually activated in the game it might be worth it to work them into certain survivor actions. Sweep would be useful for larger zombie encounters if it works like how it sounds, and panicked fire would be good for atmosphere when you get mobbed.

There's also some junk code left over from Crysis. Most likely because it's running on the Cryengine. I've found some code for the characters from that game, what appears to be the level name definitions for Crysis 1, and part of the multiplayer related files from Crysis that almost certainly don't work.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Dec 4, 2013

# ¿ Dec 4, 2013 20:09

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Vitamin P posted:

I had 39/100 unlocked for the Hero at the end, so between that and 50-odd from the tower, plus the firebombs, it must have been over a hundred zombies killed in the battle, and it was ridiculously cool, if a little disappointing that even all that couldn't actually kill any of the crew. That said, a feral or juggernaut running around in all that mess would have been very problematic.

Zombies just start getting really lethal around level 5. Try letting one bite you. It'll take off about 20 percent of your HP. Their scratches aren't as much of an issue. So long as they can head them off at the entrance, NPC survivors seem to be pretty good at avoiding getting bitten too.

That being said, wait until you hit level 6. For me there was a massive upsurge in the number of Big'un's running around, most hordes appeared to be accompanied by a freak, and I think the dots showing where zombies were disappeared from the map.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2013 20:48

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Mister Bates posted:

Forgive the lovely quality, it's a cellphone photo of a TV.

I think they have to have the 'Away From Home' status for it to show up as an option. It doesn't really do anything, it just shows you where they are and lets you go meet up with them if you want to, but it's kind of a cool little touch.

Still trying to figure out if that actually does anything. So far it seems just like an extra fetch task. Not sure if they go out and collect gear or something, but i've had them show up at buildings I cleaned out of resources but left an item or two.

Really hard to test what it does in game as well. Have to keep track of all of the buildings you loot and hope you remember what the leftovers in each one are.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2013 22:02

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Feeble posted:

This is even more annoying because that's exactly what they say they're doing. Lily actually says "I'll send anyone who's available" which kind of implies multiple people.

That's one of the things that's really starting to annoy me about Breakdown. I'm loving the gameplay thus far but could they really not get ahold of the voice actors they used for the story campaign? I've gotten the Military captain from the main game who's voice I remember being all sharp and authoritative and now she just sounds like every other female survivor.

Good news. It took me like 12 hours, but I believe I figured out a way to modify almost every part of the game. Was a royal pain in the rear end to do too. The only exception I can think of off the top of my head is the geographical layout of the level Breakdown takes on itself, but it sounds like you might even be able to do that with the Cryengine SDK going off of what the devs have said.

I had to find an app to extract the PAK files into a readable/editable format for people, and then find an app that'd get them back into a readable format the game can use. And the forums are down again too, so I had no support there. :stonk:

Though from what it sounds like it seems like most mods that were being made were made using a hex editor before now. Which means the forums probably wouldn't have been much help anyways. Also means that if this works that's a huge step forward for modding the game, assuming it hasn't become widespread yet.

Sounds like most mods were made via a hex editor prior to now, which made it a pain in the rear end to do anything other than editing numerical variables. The way i'm doing it is actually unpacking those files I posted excerpts from up above, then recompiling them into their win.bmd format. Win.bmd was the big issue with making mods before since it's not exactly a standard file type. In reality it turns out a win.bmd file is just a converted XML file. After some searching I managed to find a program that automatically converts a XML file to a win.BMD file. Meaning you can set up large scale changes really fast, and make some crazy changes like editing the AI behavior and even the base gameplay of the game as well.

I'll post the method to extract/compile the files once I get all the apps rared together and a readme explaining what to do written out. Also, I should probably make sure everything is working with Breakdown. Assuming you can also plug in LUA's (The game prioritizes "loose" files over the PAK's.) into the data folders, the end result is that you can do anything up to and potentially including pretty much coding your own features from scratch. I'm pretty sure the PAK files actually contain all of the code the game runs on too, so holy poo poo.

I should add that this also includes things like being able to make entirely new characters (With new models, once I dredge up a way to get them in a readable format.), new traits, new radio skills, new and edited AI behaviors, and literally pretty much anything else that can be thought of.

cyxx posted:

I really enjoy this game but man, carrying a rucksack back to the outpost everytime gets so tiring. Is there a way to automate it? Or do I have to hoof it/drive everytime

Once I get a chance i'll make sure my idea works by making a mod that removes the cooldown from runners, letting you call as many as you want so long as you have free NPC's. :getin:

Only thing I need to set up now is a way to import models to the game. But I think I have a lead on that as well. Steam has a modding group that mentions a way to mess with models. Need to read up on what they've found so far.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Dec 10, 2013

# ¿ Dec 5, 2013 01:37

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

So good news. Just tried my method of modding the game and it works. I altered the time to recharge the call scavengers ability so that it only takes 5 seconds. This means that you can always call community members to scavenge a location/pick up goods so long as they're not all busy with another task. I'll upload the mod to dropbox once I get a free moment.

quote:

Yep, although one guy had manually decoded a few of the Win.bmd files, but I think they gave up to wait for Breakdown. This is extremely awesome. Can you link to the XML to win.BMD coverter? Last I tried modding I couldn't find a converter that worked.

I'll have to do it when I get home. Currently out and about, and don't have the free time to write up a manual on how to make mods for the game, how to install them, how to recompile them, etc, etc. I'll upload all of that stuff with the mod I made.

If there's any other modifications people would like to see between now and then, just post here. Small stuff like altering cooldown times, changing prices on items, etc, etc, doesn't take much time at all once I find the variable in the code. Could be a good opportunity to take some of the clunkier stuff out of the game.

I also just found the code that handles entity limits for the world map. Meaning number of enclaves in the world for breakdown and story mode, max number of hordes, max number of infestations, max number of zombies in the world, max number of survivors, max number of hero survivors, etc, etc. Can mess about with them too if anyone has any ideas on changes.

Grey Fox V2 posted:

Is the Romero mod a option included in the Breakdown DLC? I don't see any mention in the OP.

If the title is anything to go by, the OP is extremely outdated. The Romero mod is a mod some lunatic apparently made by using a hex editor or whatever method people were using until now. The Undead Lab forums were down again when I checked them, so it's kind of hard for me to see how he made it.

quote:

Great. Well at least I know now it's just the game.

Even better news! I now have my next project on what to look at fixing in the code. :science:

If you can talk to them to send them home, i'll look at commenting out the code that handles dismissing them on the start of a mission. Hopefully it won't create too many bugs. Only thing I can think of that'd be an issue is when you already have four survivors following you. Not sure if five would fit into a truck, or even if it'll let you have that many/take them into missions.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 03:50 on Dec 5, 2013

# ¿ Dec 5, 2013 03:17

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Fewd posted:

Speaking of this, is there a good description anywhere of how the difficulty changes between Breakdown tiers? I'm only on 2 so far as I just started playing. So far only difference between 1 and 2 I noticed was that there's a bit more freaks on the streets.

I found the XML file that determines the maximum limits on different things in the different levels of Breakdown. 10 looked horrifying from what I remember of it. To give an idea, it had a 100% chance of all zombies being runners, there was apparently a maximum of 15 survivors in the world, and basically everything hates you forever.

If I can remember what file it's in i'll post the code here.

Woebin posted:

This is good, right? I mean it doesn't suck.

Seconding requests to silence Lilly and remove Juggernauts if possible. It's cool of you to muck about with this stuff.

You could probably do this by removing the references in whatever handles initiating Lilly's sound. I may do that eventually. Removing Juggernauts is definitely doable too. How that'd interface with Breakdown 10 at this point is beyond me though. Unless it was a cheat mod the number of max hordes, zombies, and infestations would probably have to be upped to compensate for the loss of difficulty, since I think I recall a snippet that suggested they replaced a lot of freaks.

In other news, I just finished up a huge loving guide on how to mod the game, including a walkthrough of how I did the no cooldown on scavengers mod and the mod itself. The rar i'm setting up also includes all of the software I found that let me do it. I tried to make it as detailed and extensive as possible so that even a newbie to modding could easily muck around in the game's code to do stuff. So give it a try and tell me how bad my manual writing skills are. :v:

I'll be uploading the rar with the no cooldown on scavengers mod in it in a few moments. Just trying to get it up on dropbox. Then I can work on other mods that people suggested. I'll probably look at the ammo boosting thing and adjusting the stuff with simple variables that people suggested next, since that's easier than trying to flowchart how the gently caress their AI logic works between multiple XML code files. It seems like an unreadable mess at first glance. :psyduck:

Edit: Here it is. This link also includes the mod that removes the cooldown on calling a NPC scavenger when playing Breakdown. It's in the libs folder. Just copy the entire libs folder to the "game" (Without the "", obviously.) folder in your State of Decay installation.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/l8k8jm6ko8xdzly/SOD%20Modding%20Packager.rar

Let me know if I hosed something up or forgot to add some sort of important detail. It's late here so I probably did. :v:

Archonex fucked around with this message at 10:01 on Dec 5, 2013

# ¿ Dec 5, 2013 08:52

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Le0 posted:

Hey thanks dude, just downloaded your stuff and will take a look at it.
Going to try and mod some stuff maybe.

Let me know how it works out. Curious to see if I missed anything important in my guide and the modding tools.

Also, I found what appears to be the level settings for Breakdown again. Here's a comparison between level 1 and level 11 (It says it's 10, but really the count starts at 0 so :v:

code:

<SandboxGroup Scenario="0">
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="70" OutputId="Sandbox.MaxCars" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="1" OutputId="Sandbox.ScoreMultiplier" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="80" OutputId="Sandbox.Survivors.Cap" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="40" OutputId="Sandbox.Survivors.Rare" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="16" OutputId="Sandbox.Zombie.PercentFast" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="77" OutputId="Sandbox.Zombie.PercentSlow" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="7" OutputId="Sandbox.Zombie.PercentDormant" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="5" OutputId="Sandbox.Zombie.PercentArmyZombie" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="1" OutputId="Sandbox.Zombie.PercentScreamer" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="1" OutputId="Sandbox.Zombie.PercentBloater" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="1" OutputId="Sandbox.Zombie.PercentJuggernaut" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="1" OutputId="Sandbox.Zombie.PercentFeral" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="1" OutputId="Sandbox.Zombie.DensityMultiplier" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="8" OutputId="Sandbox.Zombie.MaxHordes" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="6" OutputId="Sandbox.Zombie.MaxInfestations" />

And the last level listed.

code:

  <SandboxGroup Scenario="10">
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="15" OutputId="Sandbox.MaxCars" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="11" OutputId="Sandbox.ScoreMultiplier" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="20" OutputId="Sandbox.Survivors.Cap" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="15" OutputId="Sandbox.Survivors.Rare" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="100" OutputId="Sandbox.Zombie.PercentFast" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="0" OutputId="Sandbox.Zombie.PercentSlow" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="7" OutputId="Sandbox.Zombie.PercentDormant" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="20" OutputId="Sandbox.Zombie.PercentArmyZombie" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="5" OutputId="Sandbox.Zombie.PercentScreamer" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="5" OutputId="Sandbox.Zombie.PercentBloater" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="8" OutputId="Sandbox.Zombie.PercentJuggernaut" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="8" OutputId="Sandbox.Zombie.PercentFeral" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="2" OutputId="Sandbox.Zombie.DensityMultiplier" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="24" OutputId="Sandbox.Zombie.MaxHordes" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="24" OutputId="Sandbox.Zombie.MaxInfestations" />
    <RTSValue OutputAmount="1" OutputId="Game.UI.HideZombieBlips" />
  </SandboxGroup>

If you can't tell the difference, the difference between the two is huge. Barely any cars, barely any survivors, every zombie is a runner, 3x the number of hordes and infestations can be active compared to level 1, lots of freaks, no zombie blips on the map, etc, etc. Obviously all of that is modifiable too.

Le0 posted:

Did you find anything related to the vehicle physics? Cause I think this area could use some work if it is not part of the core game engine.

Edit: I think I saw something physics related. Keep in mind that from what I can tell so far, using the method I posted appears to give you literally all of the game decompiled to mod as you want. Heck, you can even see remnants of the code from Crysis, which I assume came with the CryEngine SDK. That includes what appears to be some rudimentary server and multiplayer stuff from that game.

So physics is definitely going to be in there somewhere. I just would need to find the file containing it again. It's a bit late to be doing that here tonight, though.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 09:58 on Dec 5, 2013

# ¿ Dec 5, 2013 09:47

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

So one more post before I call it a night. Should I post this stuff to the Undead Lab forums when they come back up? I know there's also a fairly large steam modding group that'd probably go batshit crazy over this if they haven't hacked together a similar modding kit yet. Not sure if unpacking a game like that is bannable by Steam's standards, though, which is why I ask.

I'm also not sure if they worked together a full set of modding tools yet. Though the lack of mods outside of the Romero mod (and people using hex editors) suggests that I might be the first one to actually scrap together working mod tools for the game. I've seen random bits and pieces that suggest people have tried, but nothing that actually works as a complete set of tools like what I posted at the dropbox link.

I guess a confirmation that no one else did this yet, along with whether or not some Steam admin is going to throw a tantrum after mistaking what the tools do are my primary concerns about passing the packaged tools around. I don't want to cause any problems.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 11:13 on Dec 5, 2013

# ¿ Dec 5, 2013 10:43

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

So if I could find the hotkey listings for the game in the code, I could try a neat experiment. Found this code segment in the goalpipe code for allies. Wanted to see if I could use it to give them the order to open or hold fire.

code:

    -- hold fire
    AI.BeginGoalPipe("UL_Ally_HoldFire")
        AI.PushGoal("firecmd", 0, FIREMODE_OFF, 0)
    AI.EndGoalPipe()

    AI.BeginGoalPipe("UL_Ally_FireModeOn")
        AI.PushGoal("+firecmd", 0, FIREMODE_BURST)
    AI.EndGoalPipe()

Unfortunately I have no idea where that is at the moment. Otherwise you could use emotes to give the order to shoot things. As it is i'm trying to find the code that removes a party member if you start a mission, since it looks like Tommofork has the issue of ammunition and item drops handled fairly well.

Also, a bit of searching around the code reveals that the SWAT backup team is listed as a "mercenary" or "merc" NPC type. Which is different from survivors. Merging some of their AI behavior with survivors would probably let survivors automatically shoot stuff provided all of the necessary code was linked together.

gileadexile posted:

I presume it's not worth asking if any of these mods work on 360, right?

I can't think of a way they could. That's one of the benefits of being a PC nerd. You get sweet modding/replayability capabilities with your games.

Attention Horse posted:

Is there any way to mod in friendly fire? I would like to destroy some survivor enclaves and take their stuff

This may already exist. Stand near a NPC with a grenade launcher when they have a target. Hilarity can ensue. Otherwise it seems like it might be too much trouble for me to check out at the moment given that I literally just mucked into this crap a day ago. Feel free to check out the code for FF features though.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 14:17 on Dec 5, 2013

# ¿ Dec 5, 2013 14:13

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Le0 posted:

Archonex, I could access the undeadlabs forums yesterday and nowhere did I find a nice modding kit with everything like you did. Granted I didn't check for very long but all I've seen are mostly mods. I did however found a post claiming that they had a XML compiler working but only that part.

In all cases I'd post this on undeadlabs cause the devs are very open about modding and this would help a ton of people honestly and more modding can only be better, also internet fame

Forget about steam forums honestly it's dogshit and people who really care would go to undeadlabs I bet. Your call anyway.

Unfortunately they're still down for me. So they'll need to come back up before I can post the packaged modding kit there.

Need to go for a bit, but when I get back I may have come up with a way to import models to the game. Cross your fingers, since I need to test my idea to see if it's right. If so you can start looking at making your own objects/custom characters to put in the game.

I also think I found a way to disable Lilly's voice. Not the pop-up box/subtitles though, yet. But that's probably a good thing, since you don't want to miss time sensitive missions that could get your survivors killed. If I can get time to go through the many triggers for it today i'll upload a mod that shuts her up.

If i'm right about how sounds work in this game I may also have a way to import sound effects. I need to check to see what format they're currently in, and whether or not the game can accept alternate formats such as MP3's, OGG's, etc, etc. If so I can write up another ( :stonk:

) guide showing you how to add custom sounds to the game in literally any way you want. That's the benefit (and downside, for the person making the guides) of having access to the code, I guess.

Something will probably come up in my idea for modding these things in that throws a kink in my plans, but if not i'll re-upload the packaged modding kit files with the new updates on dropbox.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Dec 5, 2013

# ¿ Dec 5, 2013 18:44

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

LeJackal posted:

I couldn't say. I'm fumbling through the code with my meager amounts of programming experience and still working on my own stuff. This particular simulation you want would require the insertion of an entirely new module somewhere, and that location I don't know. The second problem is placing the bonus effects, which I'm not sure are numerical. From facilities.xml:

Stat Bonuses are defined elsewhere, so I'd also need to write a new bonus or substitute an existing one.

Overall I'd need to:
1) Locate the RTS element rollover that grants bonuses
2) Insert a 'Super Rested' module
3) Capacity:Population COmparison
4) Apply the Bonus

Not something I feel up to doing. I've already done a lot on this already.

There's generally at least three things i've found that seem to need to be changed for a fair number of stat tweaks. The variable handling the UI display if it exists, the actual variable (In the case of stuff like skills.) for usage, and any relevant RTS data that isn't referenced by a global variable. For RTS stuff it may be one or two more or less, depending on what you want to mess with.

It's actually not that difficult to do. The really hard part is finding this stuff in the code first. Thankfully, the global variables are mostly all in one file named something like "global constants". They seem to handle a fair amount of the game, and the actual file names for the XML/Win.BMD files are fairly indicative of what each file handles, usually. The really complex stuff is in how the AI's logic for the game is handled. It's such a complicated mess. :stonk:

Mental Midget posted:

I wonder if there's a way to mod it so that if you pick up a rucksack, and then pick up an additional rucksack you're still carrying just one, but it just adds the total value of both rucksacks together when it is turned in. Carrying multiple bags of stuff is like my #1 wishlist item.

You'd have to mess with how rucksacks are handled. And how NPC's handle them. It'd be easier to just create a mod for loading them into cars, really.

If you wanted to create a cheat mod that let you pick up multiple sacks, you'd probably want to address how NPC's handle multiple rucksacks, weight increasing with each sack, etc, etc. At least one of the hero models doesn't show rucksacks to begin with, so it's not that much of a graphical issue as much as it is a coding issue.

Kasonic posted:

Sadly I think stuff like throwing rucks in trucks is out of reach of modding; adding additional geometry and/or physics properties to stuff is probably too deep in the matrix. (I'd love to be wrong!)

Would it be possible to give the Juggarnaut other freak abilities, like a death gas cloud and a banshee scream? Now that's a motherfucker.

My only out-there suggestion at the moment is if you could cause driving to gradually consume fuel resources. Hell, maybe even vary it between trucks and compacts realistically. But I have no idea if the game tracks driving like that.

It'd be possible to add rucksacks to vehicles. But you'd need to do work that falls outside of just changing variables to tweak gameplay. Assuming there isn't something hard coded preventing it, the simplest way I can think of would require you to basically code a special command that a player could execute on pressing a key. We already have access to the XML and LUA files that allow for this, so it's feasible to do that.

If I had to take a wild guess at what needed to be done, you'd need to code a hotkey command (Probably need to find whatever file handles hotkey controls for this.) to handle loading/unloading resources from a vehicle, add a variable that handles the list of rucksacks in a vehicle, with each list being independent to a spawned vehicle (So a variable that'd have to be global in some capacity, while independent in each vehicle.) so that the game didn't just track it in every vehicle throughout the world, and then do the work of coding a way to subtract and add rucksacks to that list when the relevant hotkey is pressed.

If you want to make it really fancy, you'd want to assign a variable to each vehicle type (IE: Trucks, sedans, etc, etc.) that limits how large the list can get, simulating storage space in the car. And have some ease of use features like displaying the storage used/storage max in the message ticker at the top right of the game's screen where all the world messages get displayed in game when you get in a car.

If you wanted to do something more graphically complex than a simple "You loaded the car, it has ___ of ____ space left in it." ticker that appears in the top right of the screen you'd need to edit the relevant models. But that's not really needed if you're clever about how you go about it. Obviously the ticker method is better for workability compared to that since you wouldn't have to mess with graphics. Lots of mod heavy games like Skyrim and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. go the text route as opposed to visually mapping everything out too, so it'd be nothing new.

As far as I can tell you can literally do pretty much anything in terms of editting with the current unpacked files. It's just a matter of how much time you want to put into it. I haven't run into anything hardcoded (In fact, I haven't found any other data files relevant to the actual game itself yet that aren't PAK files.) yet either. The obvious exception to that being mapping out a new level, since you'd need either the CryEngine SDK or whatever tools they used to do that.

The zombie's going invisible thing is also something I noticed. It's probably a delay being caused by some sort of combat related process not being tailored for that many zombies. I can't imagine it being an engine limitation at the very least, which means it could be fixed if you could figure out what was causing it. Who knows what the cause is, though.

Also, I totally forgot to see if I could mess about with models yesterday. Though it seems people are more interested in the code, so there's probably no rush for that.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Dec 7, 2013

# ¿ Dec 7, 2013 07:54

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

bitcoin bastard posted:

I don't have time today, but I want to play around with the scavenger code to see if I can get it to let you send more than one scavenger to the same building at the same time. Combined with a removed scavenger cooldown (which already works fine), you could just send X scavengers to a building at the same time to clean it out.

E: And what I _really_ want to mess around with, but probably won't work, would be replacing the 'scavenge this building' option with individual 'scavenge X resource from this building' entries. That way you don't have to collect 3 foods along with the 1 fuel you actually wanted.

You might have found it already, but in radiooptions.xml there's an if clause that can handle this. Check under the call scavengers section at the top of the XML file. You'll at least need to comment out the part of the code for it that disables sending another one if you already have a scavenger there or inbound.

Atmus posted:

Haha awesome. Death From Above artillery strike counts as one of the things you can use to take a crowd of zombies out with you while dying.

There's a variable on almost all items called something like BlazeofGlory. For items set to zero you can't pop it when dying. I'm assuming with it set to 1 you can. Makes me wonder what sort of stuff you could have go off when a PC or NPC dies.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2013 02:33

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

FrickenMoron posted:

The thing I really hate though with the huge bases is that even with snyder etc you never feel like really defending it. That one piddly watchtower usually doesnt even cover the north entrance! The only place I've really seen survivors defend a lot is the savini residence and the church, they climb on all those tables and shoot the zombies.

Breakdown feels like a "lazy" dlc. Don't get me wrong, it's a lot more fun to play than story mode, but they didnt really add anything to the game. No new zombie types, no new voicework except a very few lines from Lilly (Or were those cut from the original?), no new base locations. Why cant we setup the courthouse or something like that? Or fortify that huge warehouse near the Grange into a base.

Has anyone actually ever used the farm in the middle of the map as a base? It looks like a real chore to gather resources from.

The real problem is that the AI for defending the bases is wonky as hell. I think this is because the current way it's coded makes it hard for the AI to differentiate between the various defensive actions it has until you get enough people to have someone in the base always doing certain tasks.

It really needs someone to mod it in so that they'll properly defend them all the time. I've noticed that places like the farm should have active defenders shooting, but they often don't. Likewise, after you get to a certain number of people places like the Alamo start getting more people firing guns. Meanwhile half the base is inside doing random activities. The only reason I can come up for this happening is that the order of priority for the various HQ activities is a bit off.

I'm pretty sure that Snyder's is just buggy as hell too. Something about the placement of activity points in the base is hosed up. That's why the NPC's keep running out to outposts and disappearing until you reload. When it's working they should be hanging out in the interior, working on building plots, or up on the various parts of the loading dock defending with guns, which they sometimes do if you have enough people to offset the ones lost from them running off.

I really don't want to get into a big modding project this week, but if I have some time after that point I may consider fixing up the way the AI interacts with the HQ. It'd really improve the game.

Edit: Hordes also usually just have one route to attack bases as well, and it's on the same path that the watchtower is. If hordes hit the side entrances of Snyder's more often that place would have a really great trade off for all the building slots.

Anyone who's seen the military base at the Fairgrounds also knows how dangerous that place would be if zombies attacked from there more often too.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Dec 8, 2013

# ¿ Dec 8, 2013 11:52

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Tommofork posted:

I googled it yesterday myself.

Well that was interesting. I did a supply run mission, the kind where you radio scavenger and then protect them while they loot. Right before the end the survivor stopped gathering and started boarding up windows while I stood by, confused.

A wave of zombies spawns in and the survivor takes up position behind the barricaded window and starts shooting out of it. I don't think I've seen that happen before.

That's the vigilance and enclave defense behaviors. They shouldn't be triggering during a scavenger run. :stare:

What the gently caress was happening around the scavenger while that was going on? That's really interesting. I ask because i'm really considering trying to fix up the AI so it does all of the tasks properly. Also, which building was he scavenging? Was it a home base, or somewhere else?

Also, the more I look at AI priorities for tasks, the more I see how broken it appears to be. When I get the chance i'll post a list of the primary tasks. Like maybe a third of them actually take place regularly. It's really hosed up. If even half of them were done the game would be far more replayable and enjoyable, I think. They'd actually defend locations intelligently, set up defenses and traps, and generally be pretty self sufficient.

Edit: Also, how would people feel about an adjusted breakdown difficulty level? This would be a special difficulty level where you have the difficulty of zombies per, say, level 6 or so, but resources and survivors wouldn't be as scarce, meaning you could play indefinitely easier if you wanted.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Dec 9, 2013

# ¿ Dec 9, 2013 00:48

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

LeJackal posted:

I would appreciate you looking at that. A lot of other modifications are pretty straightforward, but the AI behavior is way out there.

So things on my to do list:

Update survivor AI to be more intelligent - This is the big project of the bunch. In fact, I may actually need help to do everything I want to do in this one.
1. Make them better about shooting things. This is most evident if you enable calling SWAT backup. They barely shoot at all.
2. Enable and fix up the AI priority for defending and maintaining a base.
3. Enable more than 1 survivor to accompany you.
4. Enable scavengers to come to a location at your beck and call. The cooldown for this is stupid. (Done.)

Optional update to make ammo a bit more plentiful.

1. The way I want to do this is to make it so that ammo stocks are increased per day similar to food and medicine. It doesn't make sense that part of your food and medicine stockpiles are cracked open every day to be put into the stash, but bullets aren't. This should effect and deepen gameplay by a fair bit while still remaining that element of scarcity that can pop up. This also is less "cheaty" and more of a long lasting change than just increasing direct ammo drops from turning in rucksacks and looting stuff.

This way you're encouraged to ration the resource if it's low, and you still have to think before blowing a cache on a big encounter, deepening gameplay and making you think about when you want to go all rambo on the zombie menace to ensure a mission gets done. This also should increase the depth of the RTS meta-game, since you'll want to devote outposts to ammo generation to ensure you have a positive ammo gain for longer games.

Optional update to make the zombie apocalypse more of a zombie apocalypse.

1. Make them more numerous.
2. Add in an option for shamblers only (With a mandatory number increase.) for hardcore zombie spergs.
3. Look at the feasibility of increasing the danger of hordes once the AI for survivors is fixed up a bit. IE: Ever wanted a horde of 20 shamblers to hit a base? This would be your ticket if mixed with the old school zombie option. Or you could just leave the horde as it is in vanilla, and get zerged by runners and sprinters mixed in with shamblers.
4. See about the possibility of a chance to introduce sickness on bites. This may require tweaking medical facilities a bit, or re-enabling the disabled medical skills.
5. See about the feasibility of increasing horde activity and aggressiveness. As it currently is, part of the reason the game gets boring is that once you set up outposts at choke points you're pretty much set to do whatever. Having the hordes cluster up into groups occasionally so that they could push past your outposts through sheer weight of numbers might make things more interesting.

Optional update to make the home selection system a bit more realistic.
1. The Romero mod addresses this, but only in the form of a cheat mod that breaks gameplay. It doesn't make sense that you need ____ people to inhabit a location. I mean, that's how poo poo starts to go down in the movies! Some idiots think five of them can defend an entire mall, and then they are proven horribly wrong when someone cocks up. Cue tragedy. :v:

To that end, you should just need the materials to inhabit a location. There shouldn't be a survivor limit to do so. The materials account for the requirements to fortify the location so that it gets all the accouterments you see when you move into a base.

I've already worked on this a bit, and the results are hilarious. A feral freak snuck into the fair grounds and ripped a survivor apart when the others were busy defending against a swarm of zombies with guns up on the bleachers. Really makes you think about whether you actually should move into that awesome base before doing so, as opposed to it being just a tiered progression. Especially if you have increased numbers of zombies in the world.

2. You should be able to deconstruct facilities at the cost of some materials being used up to do it. They're built in, so it makes sense that you'd have to use some building materials to get them out. Not sure if this is doable yet, but i'll take a look at it.

3. See if activity points in homes are modifiable and assignable without the CryEngine SDK. If so, it should theoretically be possible to create new home sites from scratch.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Dec 9, 2013

# ¿ Dec 9, 2013 02:24

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Tommofork posted:

Bummed out since I noticed that the zombies not showing up on radar thing defaults to showing zombies again whenever I load a game. I thought maybe I had screwed something but after disabling mods it still happens.

Surprise me drat it.

They do show up when they initially detect you or if you search a house (IE: Go to all the dots, which gives you a limited radius of radar around the house so you can properly secure it.) fully. Or are they always visible? I don't think the latter should be happening, though I could be mistaken.

With the current "more zombies" setup i've got going this leads to some hilarious pants making GBS threads moments when you have to fire a gun to survive. Sometimes you'll see 50 white dots light up on the minimap as every zombie in five blocks decides to see what that loud bang noise was, since the game decided to move/spawn them there while offline mode was running.

It's definitely funny, and sprinting back home with a train of zombies on your rear end is hilarious, but i'm not sure it's quite balanced yet. Then again that is kind of the point of a zombie apocalypse I guess.

I will say that with the mods i've set up, i'm finally having a hard time surviving. I've had some hilariously hosed up deaths. Playing on Breakdown level 6 is alternatively a magical and horrifying experience. I should have about 15 survivors now, but i'm hiding out at Trumbull County Fair Grounds with only maybe 8 since a fairly decent number of them have died from being blind-sided or doing something stupid.

That includes a feral breaking into our compound and ripping a survivor apart as everyone tried to beat off the two hordes outside, numerous situations where I fired a gun when I thought it was safe only to see a swarm of white dots come running from every direction, and a countless number of disasters that occurred from trying to wipe out infestations without the proper supplies, which are absolutely needed now to safely do it.

Still kind of need the ammo thing working to balance out the difficulty though. Once that's done I think I could release something. Swore I wasn't going to work on this until after this week, but I couldn't sleep so I figured i'd make use of the time.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 13:49 on Dec 9, 2013

# ¿ Dec 9, 2013 13:39

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Karl Sharks posted:

I can't seem to get the xml2bmd thing to work. It pops up with a console window for about half a second saying "one or more arguments are not correct" I think. No idea what is wrong there. I'm running windows 7, for the record.

That's what happens if you open it without the XML file selected. I walked through how to do it in the manual, but you have to drag the XML file onto the BMD converter app. It'll run the conversion process automatically and output the win.BMD file into the same folder/directory as the converter.

If that's not working then something else is going on there. Not sure what, since i'd need more info.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2013 17:04

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Atmus posted:

Sometimes other survivors set up there before you.

It's also got better defensive AI than the Savini residence. I've yet to see more than the guy in the watchtower defend Savini with guns. But the Alamo will, with enough survivors with guns on standby, sometimes set up a straight up zombie style turkey shoot.

You'll know when it happens since they'll be positioned at every corner of the roof, blowing away zombies like it's no big deal. If you've got a couple people with grenade launchers it gets hilarious since they carpet the entire area of the town in mortar-like explosions.

Granted, if the AI was fixed so that they did this all the time Savini might be better. But i'm not sure if they have as many defensive points as the Alamo does.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Dec 9, 2013

# ¿ Dec 9, 2013 18:42

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

LeJackal posted:

The other handy thing is after you crack an Ammo Box you swim in about 1,000 Influence.

This makes me want to finish up my resource granting mod I mentioned, since the current mod is pretty game breaking and more of a "go loving nuts on zombies" cheat mod.

In other news, I found the actual data that handles zombie density. Breakdown has 11 levels of difficulty that are levied against this data.

It's also interesting in that the code confirms my suspicion that zombie density is different according to geographical location. Meaning places like the ranger station and the farmhouse technically do have a use if you don't just globally ramp up up horde density to insane levels like how the Romero's mod does.

Modifying this in conjunction with the breakdown zombie density settings should make creating a more deadly zombie apocalypse extremely easy. It also could be adjusted to make city areas and town areas far more dangerous, giving a logical trade-off to actually basing yourself there as opposed to somewhere more out of the way.

The file in question also contains parameters for the zombie AI. It seems a bit toned down. Probably because with how random and wonky the current survivor AI is, it'd drive min-maxers up a wall to have a swarm of zombies assault the Alamo or Savini residence because someone fired a gun. May look at changing that if I get the chance.

code:

-<Subgroup Name="Density">-<Value Name="Agricultural" Default="50"><NameText Text="" Notes="" Flags=""/>
</Value>-<Value Name="Commercial" Default="100"><NameText Text="" Notes="" Flags=""/>
</Value>-<Value Name="Industrial" Default="75"><NameText Text="" Notes="" Flags=""/>
</Value>-<Value Name="Park" Default="35"><NameText Text="" Notes="" Flags=""/>
</Value>-<Value Name="Residential" Default="100"><NameText Text="" Notes="" Flags=""/>
</Value>-<Value Name="Wilderness" Default="20"><NameText Text="" Notes="" Flags=""/>
</Value>-<Value Name="Interior" Default="3"><NameText Text="" Notes="" Flags=""/>
</Value>-<Value Name="InteriorCap" Default="5"><NameText Text="" Notes="" Flags=""/>

There's also some other neat stuff in that file, but i'll have to post it in a bit.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Dec 9, 2013

# ¿ Dec 9, 2013 20:45

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

So I checked out rtsevents.xml. This file contains everything that handles global and local events in the game, so far as I can tell.

If you think something's hardcoded? Odds are it's in there.

So far i've figured out how to enable/disable when all the different freak types unlock and start spawning in the game, the required variable to add the various radio skills to characters (along with parsing out the general code structure that'd help for making your own special characters with unique traits), how to start a game in "drifter" (IE: No home base selected, need to join an enclave first to get the usual breakdown facility/community gameplay.) mode, controls for tweaking the max amount of resources obtained from outposts (Meaning you can now get fuel.), finer controls for zombie spawning, and what appears to be alternate spawning controls for when night falls.

Which reminds me. Apparently when night falls spawning in terms of zombie density is handled differently. Apparently the variables aren't that different, but it could be used to make scavenging at night extremely dangerous if you wanted to turn the game into a hardcore zombie sim affair.

I never would have found this out unless I methodically read down this huge file. The problem is that this thing isn't formatted in any way that's not a huge run on list of events, so it takes patience to get through it. I'm maybe 1/18th of the way through it currently too.

Edit: Another fun fact. The game has lots of features most people will never see. Case in point, what happens if you start trying to horde too many vehicles in the same area? It gets relocated with a message that one of your survivors took it out for a joy ride. Apparently your survivor pals are dicks that prefer having fun over living. :argh:

I also found what appears to be "losing conditions" for longer games. Maybe it's just a vanilla thing, but there's a variable that handles the maximum amount of infestations that can occur. Apparently there's also a late game variant that ups the ante and can result in the valley getting overrun if they aren't cleared out.

I also found evidence of hostile survivors, and this, which is confusingly named, but hilarious.

quote:

Action PauseWhenOffline="" OutputDelayTime="0.0" ExecuteTimeStandard="0.0" ActionType="Action.Passive" ActionId="SetUnlock_Asshole"

Not bothering to manually format that one, but yeah. Not even sure what enemy type assholes are supposed to be in this context.

Edit: Also I think I found some of the unimplemented generator code. Not really detailed enough to be sure, but it appears to reference blackouts occurring. Would need to track down the rest of it to be sure.

Did this game have Xbox avatar rewards too?

quote:

-<Outputs>-<AvatarAsset><AvatarAsset Id="6" Name="ZOMBIEMASK"/></AvatarAsset><Console_Command Command="LOG: ZOMBIEMASK avatar award"/></Outputs>

I also just found the RTS events handling the daily payout of items. Turns out ammo is a thing, only it's randomized. ~~If I can find the randomized portion of the event I can tweak it a bit.~~ Never mind, I found it.

I won't post all of the code here, since the extended code includes reams of code determining what each chance of proccing ammo gets you, but here's the odds of getting an ammo payout each day. Each AltOdds is basically the chance per ammo type that you get more ammo in your supply cache.

code:

<Alt AltOdds="12.5" AltId="Ammo22"/>

<Alt AltOdds="14.28" AltId="Ammo40"/>

<Alt AltOdds="14.28" AltId="Ammo40"/>

<Alt AltOdds="16.7" AltId="Ammo44"/>

<Alt AltOdds="20.0" AltId="Ammo45"/>

<Alt AltOdds="20.0" AltId="Ammo50"/>

<Alt AltOdds="25.0" AltId="Ammo9"/>

<Alt AltOdds="33.3" AltId="Ammo556"/>

<Alt AltOdds="50.0" AltId="Ammo762"/>

<Alt AltOdds="100.0" AltId="AmmoShotgun"/>

Hilariously enough, you have a 100 percent chance to get shotgun shells from the daily cache payout. This probably is to offset how lovely they are without specializing in them. Nowhere in the game did I see a tip that pointed that out to the player, which lead me to assume that shotguns were more of a joke weapon than anything else.

That actually can potentially make them really goddamn useful for longer term high difficulty/low resource games, provided you train someone up to use them.

Kind of curious that .22 caliber bullets are such a rare chance too. Especially since they're not really assigned to any spectacular guns (Mostly dinky pistols.). But maybe that's offset by the loot drop chance they have from scavenging in the game world. I'd have to find that code first to tell.

There's actually a lot of stuff I see there that i've never seen in game that comes from various resource bonuses. Like getting a daily supply of suppressor's for materials. Though maybe my play style means I miss it.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 01:43 on Dec 10, 2013

# ¿ Dec 10, 2013 01:00

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

lunatikfringe posted:

There is a lot of game logic like this that gets misunderstood I feel. It makes sense that a mechanic would be able to turn it into a machine shop, but an electrician wouldn't. Another is the use of ranged weapons by the AI. Ranged should be a last resort due to scarcity of ammo and threat of attracting more zombies with gunfire.

The problem with the latter thing is that they just don't fire most of the time.

You can test the shooting thing out yourself, in fact. Edit the radioptions.xml file to make it so you can summon SWAT backup at any time. Watch as they ignore 95 percent of all zombies and only occasionally pop off a snap shot.

Their NPC name in the code is listed as mercenary by the way, if you want to look up the code handling how they shoot. There's a bunch of rules for handling shooting/firing types commented out as well. I need to track all of that stuff down to see if it can be re-enabled. If so that could probably fix that particular issue.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Dec 10, 2013

# ¿ Dec 10, 2013 18:00

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Fewd posted:

Those are pretty annoying but not too bad once you stop trying to hit first. Just evade the second you see them flinch.

I'm up to breakdown 5 now and the zombie difficulty feels it's getting about right, but the lack of vehicles and resources makes it pretty annoying. Guess I should just mod more of those into bd 5 and I'm set. I started this level up in the area where the fair is and didn't find a "single" car, medicine, ammo or material resource from the town area on the other side of the river. Even fair parking lot was empty, but I finally found one car near it anyway. Shortage of everything like that is dumb.

Also the high end unlockable heroes are a bit disappointing in everything but looks. Especially that mercenary guy. Dude looks cool as hell but he's about as average as they get. Nothing special about him except higher starting shooting and fighting, which are easy to raise anyway.

Alternatively, just get close enough to execute the stealth attack first.

The higher heroes are neat, really.

The mercenary starts with a loadout that basically makes him loving Rambo in the middle of a bad wartime era flashback. He can basically launch his own Vietnam War against the zombies since he starts with a LMG with a ridiculous amount of ammo in it and a poo poo-ton of mines. Creeping about, planting mines in key strategic areas to eliminate hordes, and then cackling as I burst out of cover and mow down an entire neighborhood of undead that show up to investigate never really gets old. Plus it makes the area safer! :v:

The scientist is loaded down with like 9 or so thermite, a high end sub-machine gun. and the somewhat rare ability that enables making high end items in the chemical lab. He's also the only character that's completely immune to bloater and screamer attacks, which makes him invaluable as they get more common. He's less batshit crazy to play as (The Mercenary starts out encumbered by the sheer weight of all the explosives and munition's he's carrying.) but he could be much more useful in certain situations.

No clue what the ninja is, but since they've apparently thrown realism out the door with a few of the upper tier characters I imagine it's actually a ninja.

As a side note, the scientist does not get a rucksack on his back when he picks things up. Which confirms my theory that it ought to be possible to do some neat stuff with handling rucksacks with a bit of prep work.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 15:52 on Dec 12, 2013

# ¿ Dec 12, 2013 15:47

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Spakstik posted:

Sad but true. All of the story threads either go nowhere (the Grange, the Wilkersons, Ray Santos) or peter out in the lamest way possible (the Courthouse). At least two of those were pretty clearly supposed to lead to some human-on-human fighting, so it's a shame they never actually reached that point.

There's actually code supporting hostile humans present in the XML files.

Do the military or other survivors ever attack you in story mode? Because there's two NPC factions outside of the player, NPC enclaves, and zombies that are defined. Both are hostile to the player and their enclave from what I can tell. One is "grunts" (I'm assuming the military.), and the other is "rogues" (I'm assuming these are enclaves that are hostile.).

I'm assuming these were meant to be the basis for some sort of factions that would harass the player and their HQ.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 00:28 on Dec 16, 2013

# ¿ Dec 16, 2013 00:22

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Kasonic posted:

I dunno, even if it is in the name of realism, it just overall makes the game easier. I can't really complain as I can't mod worth poo poo.

My desires to see the resource system drain/transport rebalanced is probably too much.

I really want to get a decent gameplay mod out, but I have my hands full with other stuff. It's one of the things I want to mess with too. Just not sure if the best way is to rebalance the drain or change the rate the drain occurs at.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2013 23:34

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 23:41

Archonex: May 2, 2012; MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Zyla posted:

yeah, after all this time, I've learned that you don't gently caress with Lily.

She spent most of her time at the warehouse safehouse out in the courtyard beating zombies to death. It's a bug due to some underlying issue with that place, but it's still hilarious to drive by and see her out front bare knuckle boxing with the locals.

I really need to get the free time to finish my mod pack for this. I had a ton of stuff done but totally dropped it due to work and 7 Days to Die stealing my attention. It doesn't help that there's so much poo poo to fix, too. :stonk:

# ¿ Jan 28, 2014 05:38

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