Classic Mode Update

Game Talk The Drawing Board
21

I’m seeing more and more of my ideas suggested as general C:DDA improvementslol here. That was not my intention but I may have strayed from the general idea. The reason for the lore change suggestion was simply due to the
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trans-dimensional “goo” that was reanimating dead corpses. While that could still work for the classic zombies mode, a simple its the same as original DDA but without specials just doesn’t sit right with me. If we explain the zombies with the goo, we’re also explaining portals and migos and flaming eyes. They can be separate but along the same lines, maybe the goo only affects humans and the portals didn’t open across the landscape, but I personally don’t like that frame of mind for a classic mode.
Just my opinion though.

Edit: The goo does work however for most parts. It can spread through bites: believable. Goo gathers around the central nervous system (spine and brains) so head shots=deadly: believable.

22

I definitely agree with what you’re saying, we’ll need to be careful that the lore doesn’t come across too strongly in classic mode (for instance if we get readable books on lore, we’ll need to make sure they don’t get included). I think the main thing is that classic mode can be zombies for the sake of zombies (like most films and things) - we don’t need to explain them explicitly, just make sure we avoid references to goo and aliens and whatever.

The reason why I’ve suggested your ideas become general DDA improvements is because I think that they’d be useful for everyone, they are things I’ve thought about and will hopefully try to implement, but for this topic I’m mainly wanting to try to gauge what peoples view on ‘hardcore’ is - is it more of ‘every day is a struggle to survive’ or ‘surviving is fine as long as you don’t run head first into zombies’

23

First “realism” thought I have is that to effectively hunt you’d have to get out in the woods and sit nice and quiet and wait on animals to approach you, because I could never chase down a rabbit or deer on foot in real life :> Improvised hunting is a pretty desperate affair in reality, as most live unprocessed meat is highly alert and fast as lightning :slight_smile: It’d add a lot of value to the snares/hunting traps as well…

I’d like to see some kind of buffing action with regular Classic after a certain amount of time passed :> And I’d love to see a totally separate realism mode (though quite a few people value realism in Cata and would want lots of it merged into main anyway :> )…

24

+1. Stealth and elaborate trapping are what I’m looking forward here, among many others.

25

[quote=“moist_zombie, post:23, topic:4605”]First “realism” thought I have is that to effectively hunt you’d have to get out in the woods and sit nice and quiet and wait on animals to approach you, because I could never chase down a rabbit or deer on foot in real life :> Improvised hunting is a pretty desperate affair in reality, as most live unprocessed meat is highly alert and fast as lightning :slight_smile: It’d add a lot of value to the snares/hunting traps as well…

I’d like to see some kind of buffing action with regular Classic after a certain amount of time passed :> And I’d love to see a totally separate realism mode (though quite a few people value realism in Cata and would want lots of it merged into main anyway :> )…[/quote]

First point: I definitely agree that hunting needs to be changed around. I think my first thing will be to drastically cut down on squirrel and rabbit spawns, as that’s the leading cause of being able to catch enough meat in a few minutes. Hunting deers and everything else is a lot harder, as most stuff is dangerous or fast. I think the whole trapping/snaring animals thing is quite a big undertaking and an honestly unsure how to go about that but It definitely needs doing.

I’m not sure what you mean about "I’d like to see some kind of buffing action with regular Classic after a certain amount of time passed "? If you mean that it should get more difficult over time I definitely agree. I’m hoping to do a small change by making non-perishable food a lot less common (at the sake of some realism, but we can pass it off as being because most of that was taken with people/looted) as well as any other smaller ones. However, other changes I’d like to do (such as polluted water over time, higher re-spawning rates over time) will probably be pretty big additions which will require the work of some of the main devs really.

26

Classic mode should not be a vanilla option.

27

I’m not sure what you mean by this?

28

I’m not sure what you mean by this?[/quote]

I mean that classic mode should be a mod, or should not exist.

The changes that could be made to classic mode are endless. It’s not practical for vanilla devs to spend a lot of time on an expanded classic mode. Players who don’t use classic don’t benefit, and since it’s not the default, they’re probably the majority.

It’s also likely that vanilla developers don’t work on classic mode because most don’t play classic mode, which is entirely reasonable. If so, it would be best to axe the half-hearted option, and dispel the illusion of support.

If classic mode warrants this degree of attention, it should be a separate mod with dedicated developers. This would absolve vanilla devs of the obligation to support classic, and would make it clearer who’s willing to work on it.

29

I kinda thought Binky had started this thread because he intended to work on it, or at least to gather ideas for anyone who was interested in working on it. I don’t think anyone here is expecting the main branch to be neglected to work on this, but it very well could be if the individual devs decided they like classic better. And yeah, should be a mod, but since the options already there it no sense in deleting it until the mod manager is finished.

Anyways more ideas for hardcore survival. I was thinking, I live in a little neighborhood but I’m still surrounded by civilization.
The hardest part of my escape plan involves… well escaping.
I’m not out in the woods, in a bunker with all the time in the world to collect food and set up defenses and build weapons, I have to grab something quick and hope everything goes smooth between here and the safe spot.

So basically starting in different places… sounded better all elaborate but there it is.

30

[quote=“ted, post:28, topic:4605”]I mean that classic mode should be a mod, or should not exist.

The changes that could be made to classic mode are endless. It’s not practical for vanilla devs to spend a lot of time on an expanded classic mode. Players who don’t use classic don’t benefit, and since it’s not the default, they’re probably the majority.

It’s also likely that vanilla developers don’t work on classic mode because most don’t play classic mode, which is entirely reasonable. If so, it would be best to axe the half-hearted option, and dispel the illusion of support.

If classic mode warrants this degree of attention, it should be a separate mod with dedicated developers. This would absolve vanilla devs of the obligation to support classic, and would make it clearer who’s willing to work on it.[/quote]

As Deadmerits has said, none of the vanilla devs are going to put their time into this at the expense of the vanilla game (unless they want too) - it’s just me (and any one else who wants to help!). Any of the bigger changes (if I get around to them) would be easily pulled into the main branch so it’s not like we’d be developing for this and not vanilla or vice-versa.

I’ve asked for peoples ideas as I want it to be something that is suitable for an option, rather than a mod, because a lot of people DO seem to prefer it (out of all the people I’ve mentioned it to, they’ve all preferred classic) and because the mod manager isn’t at all ready yet. I’m sure when it does, the game will become a lot more modularised and it can get put into a mod if that’s appropriate, but it doesn’t do any harm to work on it now.

Deadmerits: Starting in a different place is a great idea! I’ve not looked at the code (Happy Christmas everyone!) but I’ll give it a shot - If I can’t easily move starting position, I can probably get rid of the shelter building around where the player starts, so they just start in a field, which would at least make it a bit more interesting as they don’t have a ‘safe spot’ from wildlife and the elements.

31

I’m not sure what you mean by this?[/quote]

I mean that classic mode should be a mod, or should not exist.

The changes that could be made to classic mode are endless. It’s not practical for vanilla devs to spend a lot of time on an expanded classic mode. Players who don’t use classic don’t benefit, and since it’s not the default, they’re probably the majority.

It’s also likely that vanilla developers don’t work on classic mode because most don’t play classic mode, which is entirely reasonable. If so, it would be best to axe the half-hearted option, and dispel the illusion of support.

If classic mode warrants this degree of attention, it should be a separate mod with dedicated developers. This would absolve vanilla devs of the obligation to support classic, and would make it clearer who’s willing to work on it.[/quote]
If I understand you correctly, what you mean by “mod” is a fork, as in a seperate codebase that diverges from the main game. If so I can’t disagree with you more, the whole point is to keep the codebase the same so that we can leverage development of both sub-games. This is even more critical considering how rapidly development is proceeding, quite a lot of development occurs in the areas of vehicles, map generation, player abilities, rendering, etc, in fact the amount of code that is NOT shared between vanilla and classic mode is extremely small.
For a month or so Oddzball was maintaining classic mode as a seperate mod, and it added a huge amount of overhead to sharing improvements in both directions.

32

Not sure what you mean by buff in all areas, you mean HP, attack accuracy, dodge, attack damage?
HP in particular could be quite simple to just multiply their HP if you’re in classic mode, the others are a bit more problematic if you’re talking about finely tweaking them at all. One thing we’re doing is adding some more varieties of zombies that qualify as classic to fill out the danger a bit.

I’ve been thinking about doing this, one holdup is there has been a good bit of disagreement about what a grab attack should do. (the current free attack thingy is pretty lame).

The dog got removed from classic, but I believe there’s a faster zombie that was added.

You can do both of these with options.

33

Thanks very much for your input Kevin!

Buffs: Yeah, HP, attack accuracy, dodge, and damage - pretty much everything except speed - I’ll start with multiplying their HP, I think 100 would work (which is the same as a current zombie soldier).

Spawning: I definitely agree that a variety is needed, it’s just keeping them within the ‘classic’ boundary as I feel many people want ‘shambling hordes’ rather than a big mixture. I feel that a fast mover of some sort is needed to stop being able to just pick them off via range.

Grabbing: It’s a difficult one, the only thing I can think of is dropping player dodge and speed upon grab - but I’m unsure how well that will work.

Options: I was thinking of changing the default values upon choosing classic - I know it’s not particularly needed, but getting to a good balance point with that could endear people who don’t want to fiddle about with setting it right.

I’d also like to implement some sort of boost once you got near (which seems to happen often in zombie movies and gives a bit more tension when they’re on top of you) but I’m unsure how to do that really and it’d possibly just force players to use ranged attacks.

34

For grabbing, I was thinking just having them inflict a “grabbed” condition on the player that inflicted a few status ailments, like lowered dodge, attack, possibly a hit to speed, and possibly a large penalty to movement cost (to reflect the difficulty of shaking them off). The condition would stack, and if you got surrounded, well you’d be in a bit of trouble.

Interesting idea about using the game mode to shift the option defaults, have to think about that. There’s already a mechanic for this in the game, when the game decides to “spawn 10 zombies”, a regular zombie counts for 1, and shockers count for e.g. 5. So if you have a lot of specials, it will suppress the total number spawned, so classic mode will tend to have more zzombies spawned since they’re more vanilla.

When you say a “boost when near”, so you mean something like the zombie lunging at you, e.g. a move immediately followed by an attack? That would certainly interfere with the excessive kiting we seem to be suffering from, a little unpredictability might be a good thing.

35

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:34, topic:4605”]For grabbing, I was thinking just having them inflict a “grabbed” condition on the player that inflicted a few status ailments, like lowered dodge, attack, possibly a hit to speed, and possibly a large penalty to movement cost (to reflect the difficulty of shaking them off). The condition would stack, and if you got surrounded, well you’d be in a bit of trouble.

Interesting idea about using the game mode to shift the option defaults, have to think about that. There’s already a mechanic for this in the game, when the game decides to “spawn 10 zombies”, a regular zombie counts for 1, and shockers count for e.g. 5. So if you have a lot of specials, it will suppress the total number spawned, so classic mode will tend to have more zzombies spawned since they’re more vanilla.

When you say a “boost when near”, so you mean something like the zombie lunging at you, e.g. a move immediately followed by an attack? That would certainly interfere with the excessive kiting we seem to be suffering from, a little unpredictability might be a good thing.[/quote]

Grabbing: Yeah, that sounds like the best idea. Not to palm it off onto you, but I think you/someone else more familiar with the code base might be better at implementing that than me!

Defaults: I was mainly thinking that as classic mode is by definition (even with buffs probably) easier, it might make sense for it to have a default lowered item spawn and on my play tests, it certainly plays a lot ‘better’ (in terms of difficulty) with a reduced item spawn.

‘boost when near’ = Pretty much, either a special (but not guaranteed) attack like a lunge, or just a general ‘bloodlust boost’ where they get a bit of extra speed when in close proximity. This would allow players to decide whether to engage or not more easily, but once they did engage it wasn’t as easy to escape. Unsure on this mechanic though.

36

Keeping with the general cannon fodder role of zombies, even if they couldn’t keep up, just getting close and getting an attack in occasionally would be good enough.

37

I kinda’ feel like having all regular zombies grab, and “grabbers” just scrapped even makes some sense. I mean, in most zombie movies they don’t run up as a pack and individually punch you as much as swarm and try and drag you down to eat you.

… or maybe make all regular zombies grab and then alter the current grabber zombies (not even sure if they’re in classic or not right now so this might just be more regular game talk) to actively “move” you if they get a successful roll-of-the-dice. Like they grab you and pull you in a direction (either random, or they step backwards and pull you with them), or a “knock you off balance” and you sometimes wobble into a different square.

It’d potentially yank people out of windows (omg noooooo, the horror of that tactic not being 100% effective anymore!) or at least veer you off course if you’re trying to run. They’d be a lot more dangerous than they are now - currently they’re just regular zombies with a seemingly worthless special move.

Defaults: I was mainly thinking that as classic mode is by definition (even with buffs probably) easier, it might make sense for it to have a default lowered item spawn and on my play tests, it certainly plays a lot 'better' (in terms of difficulty) with a reduced item spawn.
'boost when near' = Pretty much, either a special (but not guaranteed) attack like a lunge, or just a general 'bloodlust boost' where they get a bit of extra speed when in close proximity. This would allow players to decide whether to engage or not more easily, but once they did engage it wasn't as easy to escape. Unsure on this mechanic though.

You might get blow-back re: the frenzy-when-near situation along the lines of “that punishes melee more than ranged!” I play pretty much 100% melee characters and I think its a good idea though. I mean, they’re supposed to be scary up close, and its supposed to be safer to kill them at a distance.

38

I really like your ideas Dominae, on grabs. Especially the pulling back a tile, and the situation you described being pulled out a window/ back into a hoard. *This also hurts melee more then ranged ; )

But yeah better then my idea, all I had was a successful grab resulting in a definite deep bite. But I’d rather be dragged now.

39

Getting pulled out of windows is annoying, but I’d prefer that way more than definite deep bites, which can be a death sentence early on.

40

Really good points - I like the idea of all zombies having a chance to sort of move you/pull you whilst ‘grabbers’ could grab and hold you in one place - whether these are separate zombies of it this is a rare attack can be sorted out later. As Dominae says, zombies shouldn’t really be just like boxers with a bite.

However, I do sympathise with inadequate’s point that attacks which involuntarily move the player can be frustrating (similarly to paralysis) so I’d suggest that all zombies have a chance of slowing you down occasionally (as Kevin says ‘just getting close and getting an attack in occasionally would be good enough.’) if they get close to you, with a (very) small chance of dragging you backwards from the direction you came. I’m not sure how to code this, but I’ll have a look.

I think zombies already have a chance of pushing you out of the way of a window which could be raised if it’s already in (if not, it should be), as I think getting rid of the terrain exploitation should definitely be cut down for any sort of classic mode, where you don’t have special zombies that can counter such tactics.