Is there any real point to fortifying a house?

Game Talk The Bunker
21

I’m not saying let’s go totally unrealistic, but there’s no harm in stretching the truth/facts a little in video games, especially one which already stretches it like this does. Why more people call for realism always baffles me, I mean if they want realism they only have to walk out the door.

Oh wait, that’s why were here, we prefer games to reality because a game isn’t like reality. :stuck_out_tongue:

[quote=“CylonOven, post:20, topic:5756”]Is your save world using dynamic spawn or static?

After noticing that I wasn’t getting attacked at any bases I made I shifted to a nomadic lifestyle. That was only in static maps though.[/quote]

Static, however according to some people wildlife (including Zombears and Zombie Dogs) are not affected by this and still use the Dynamic spawn system. Wait around for as long as I have in a shelter, make some noise as you work on your car or what not, go fishing maybe, hunt a creature or two, you’ll notice a gradual increase from the odd wandering dog to Zombear hordes.

22

I’m not saying let’s go totally unrealistic, but there’s no harm in stretching the truth/facts a little in video games, especially one which already stretches it like this does. Why more people call for realism always baffles me, I mean if they want realism they only have to walk out the door.

Oh wait, that’s why were here, we prefer games to reality because a game isn’t like reality. :stuck_out_tongue:

[quote=“CylonOven, post:20, topic:5756”]Is your save world using dynamic spawn or static?

After noticing that I wasn’t getting attacked at any bases I made I shifted to a nomadic lifestyle. That was only in static maps though.[/quote]

Static, however according to some people wildlife (including Zombears and Zombie Dogs) are not affected by this and still use the Dynamic spawn system. Wait around for as long as I have in a shelter, make some noise as you work on your car or what not, go fishing maybe, hunt a creature or two, you’ll notice a gradual increase from the odd wandering dog to Zombear hordes.[/quote]
Eh the way i worded that sounded rather cynical, I didn’t mean to come off that way.

23

You missed the point. The game doesn’t provide the player with a good reason to stay in one place permanently. Over time you’ll exhaust the area of supplies and enemies, you’ll be traveling so far afield to find anything of interest that returning to your base will become a burden, and you’ll be left with nothing to do but move on or hang around watching the occasional zombified wildlife splash against your defenses.

Dynamic spawn is not infinite, it just works differently. I started playing dynamic spawn about a year ago expecting a constant challenge, but that’s not what happened. Instead my playstyle went from systematically moving through a town killing all the zombies to standing in one area, making a bunch of noise, and wiping out the entire spawn as it came to me. Eventually the zombies ran out and I was left with a massive pile of dead zombies and an otherwise empty town.

24

You missed the point. The game doesn’t provide the player with a good reason to stay in one place permanently. Over time you’ll exhaust the area of supplies and enemies, you’ll be traveling so far afield to find anything of interest that returning to your base will become a burden, and you’ll be left with nothing to do but move on or hang around watching the occasional zombified wildlife splash against your defenses.[/quote]

And some people are perfectly content with that. Holed up in a fortified fortress watching the zomanimals throw themselves into turret fire, ocasinally bust out to look for more supplies/building material. Sure, compare to wandering endlessly on your death-mobile, the “staying in one place” approach could use more interesting gameplay elements to stir things up but as Umbra said, defending your base from zombies is a valid choice (with actual consequences and gameplay).

And staying one place does not necessary mean you will run short on supplies, with appropriate mutations you can actually sustain yourself from the zombies or surrounding terrain.

25

I didn’t say that staying in one place is a losing proposition survival wise; surviving isn’t very challenging in this game no matter what you do. Settling in one area is just extremely boring and limited.

26

I really don’t know why people don’t like having a main base. It makes me feel good when I setup little outpost/bases in other towns and travel between them.

27

I like base building. But I don’t like the empty feeling I get from building a base in a game where it ultimately doesn’t matter.

28

hey, hi, do wait a sec. this caught my eye cause i can take my base’s map and make it travel to another world by just copying around a few files and restarting once or twice. its pretending to be a tardis. and fortifications matter there. ultimately ')

so what about fortifications? i built metal doors all around the starting shelter. leave 3 space and they’ll travel with you. that took disassembling a lot of car frames but i was done with it and more at the end of the first year. ok, being a bit of a base-builder right now, just trying to say that its a good topic to think about.

i mean, how do you even get started, for me its mostly about visibility, so reducing my exposure to the outside is important. and re(up)using what i have. before any crazy outdoor building projects you have to do some prep. so i built walls and smacked them down inside to make room for a 5x1 solar plant and a 3x5 farm in the lower half of my shelter. plus i built a well inside, next to the door. its fortification in reverse. so is making at least one 2 wide transporter that you can park inside. i think these are really key to having a pleasant experience in the wild. (and with my new outer wall, in any city tooo)

but if you were to fortify, how would you do it? is there a good way to get these fancy turrets palisaded outside? does everyone build a 2nd row of 4 doors inside so they only have to tank a single enemy? (indoors needs only be wood, zombies dont force their way next to you if something is already there) …

so, yes there is a point! have fun!

29

It does.

So you’re saying that it’s not physically possible to have precipitation that is physically harmful to humans? that seems unlikely.

[quote=“Belteshazzar, post:14, topic:5756”]To note, if you ‘were’ experiencing vast rains of acid anything like the game you are NOT going to survive. Most plant and insect life (excepting oddball extremophiles like Sphagnum moss, certain fungi and alga species) will simply die from pH imbalances causing a food chain collapse.

Not even considering the effect of breathing clouds of acidic steam wafting around as the landscape broils away in exothermic reactions. Our nervous system is heavily reliant on calcium ions so, while you wouldn’t melt per-say, you would die an excruciatingly painful death as the calcium is leached from your blood and your neurons begin misfiring like mad.[/quote]
This is precisely why I nixed the acid puddles that melted stuff, and am working on recasting it as not actually acid. If you had rain that burned when it hit you, what do you think it’d be called, regardless of it’s pH?

No, the default is realism, there needs to be a pressing reason for it to be non-realistic. This is a principle the game is built around, and it’s not changing anytime soon.

Working on it.

Yes, there is harm in it. The game is built as a gritty survival game at its core, and for me at least that’s the primary attraction. I’m pretty sure it’s the same for a lot of others as well. If we start adding core mechanics that are unrealistic “because there’s already unrealistic things in the game”, it’s all to easy to lose any sense of verisimilitude. If anything I’m continuing to make it more realistic, because grossly unrealistic things like having “acid rain” produce large amounts of acid, which if you know anything about biology means EVERYTHING would be dead in short order bugs the hell out of me. Yea, I’m the kind of guy that gets pissed at EVERY MOVIE EVER about getting all the science wrong, I don’t want to commit the same transgressions in my game, thankyouverymuch.

FYI, decaying corpses is going in tonight-ish, so there’s that.

30

Well realism is all fine, but when it removes from gameplay why have it? Why not just add in showering? Athlete’s foot? Tetanus? Clipping your nails? Cutting your hair? Shitting? Pissing? For fucks sake why not even add in picking the fucking beans out of your teeth after you eat them? This is not about hardcore realism, it seems to be a game, which creates explanations for cool ideas. Having a set HP is unrealistic as fuck, but guess what, it makes the game fun.

31

And you need to calm down.

Going for realism does not mean going for Real Life simulation, yes realism abuse will hamper gameplay, but your examples was going for the hyperbole. From what I understand, Kevin is against adding mechanic that is unrealistic with little gain in term of gameplay (not worth the sacrifice of realism), hp bars are fine because while unrealistic it offers an integral part of gameplay, clipping your nails isn’t offer much gameplay.

32

False dilemma. Lack of realism is a reason to avoid a particular solution to a problem, not to avoid solving the problem. e.g. not having nonsensical “acid rain” doesn’t imply simply removing the feature, instead the plan is to replace it with something with similar gameplay value AND realism.

And strawman, you certainly know your fallacies.

Begging the question, fallacy bingo! I have no idea what you’re saying in the second half though.

Guess what, HP is on my hitlist.

33

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:29, topic:5756”]No, the default is realism, there needs to be a pressing reason for it to be non-realistic. This is a principle the game is built around, and it’s not changing anytime soon.

Yes, there is harm in it. The game is built as a gritty survival game at its core, and for me at least that’s the primary attraction. I’m pretty sure it’s the same for a lot of others as well. If we start adding core mechanics that are unrealistic “because there’s already unrealistic things in the game”, it’s all to easy to lose any sense of verisimilitude. If anything I’m continuing to make it more realistic, because grossly unrealistic things like having “acid rain” produce large amounts of acid, which if you know anything about biology means EVERYTHING would be dead in short order bugs the hell out of me. Yea, I’m the kind of guy that gets pissed at EVERY MOVIE EVER about getting all the science wrong, I don’t want to commit the same transgressions in my game, thankyouverymuch.

FYI, decaying corpses is going in tonight-ish, so there’s that.[/quote]

I’m not saying to add totally unrealistic elements to the game, just because it’s a game. If that were the case I’d be suggesting a very rare encounter during Winter with Santa, flying down in his armoured sleigh and mechanical reindeer whilst killing Zombies with cheesy lines like “You’ve all been very, VERY naughty.” or “Here’s your present.” then throws a grenade or something. He’d then, if you get to him, he gifts you a weapon with ammunition.

Once again, can’t stress this enough, I’m not suggesting it because it would be entirely unrealistic and more ‘game’ like, I understand this is meant to be a gritty realistic survival game, however the word ‘game’ is still implemented and it will naturally stretch the truth, if not a lot, but a little. It’s these tiny stretches which make the game more enjoyable, heck I would cry if you removed mutations and bionics due to their unrealism.

All in all I’m just saying that if there’s a problem, and there are two options to deal with this, one being mildly (and only mildly) unrealistic, the other being more realistic, you shouldn’t just rule out the mildly unrealistic one just because of it, what matters in the end that it’s found to be enjoyable, not a chore. I mean dear lord if you implement needing to wash, more base bodily functions, sweeping inside your base due to dust, all the little things that would make it more realistic, we might as well change the name to “Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - The Sims Edition”

34

it just puts pressure on gear. once you wear the right stuff you can sleep outside in the acid rain without a tent. thus its fine as is. the only thing wrong with acid rain is that it doesn’t yet slowly degrade the items and pelts and furs and bones littering the outside. (i know its going to do corpses) just imo, and hi!

35

I’m going to note I’ve been playing the game for 4-5 hours a day for a few weeks now and never realized that we have hitpoints. I mean, I know there’s an advantage claiming to show you them, but in the actual gameplay, I always died when it really seemed right that I -should- die, so I never really thought about them. I’m also going to note that I think the ultra-realism enhances the game…because the horror of post-apoc, the real horror, comes from reality…its not actually the zombies…its the horror of life and humanity and survival. Of course, I have a physics degree, so I’m big on reality.

Also, getting back to the original topic: I think fortifying a house in the wilderness is a good idea. There are also good reasons to fortify a house, as others have demonstrated to us, elsewhere, but not if your only going to be in the house a few nights.

36

Erm… I bet those green bars on the side didn’t mean anything huh?

37

I just assumed it was limb health. I never got them low enough without dying to really see - I never broke a leg or anything - but I assumed that if head got too far down, I’d be knocked out, if arm got too far down, I’d break an arm (or loose it) and so on. That was just what I assumed. Sure, in retrospect “hitpoints” - but at least in how it appears, its not unrealistic. Or wasn’t, to me.

Though it is wierd I never broke a leg or sprained an ankle.

38

Spraining stuff in game isn’t really in yet, but would add a nice dynamic.

Though it would be annoying.

39

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:29, topic:5756”][/quote]
Yes, there is harm in it. The game is built as a gritty survival game at its core, and for me at least that’s the primary attraction. I’m pretty sure it’s the same for a lot of others as well. If we start adding core mechanics that are unrealistic “because there’s already unrealistic things in the game”, it’s all to easy to lose any sense of verisimilitude. If anything I’m continuing to make it more realistic, because grossly unrealistic things like having “acid rain” produce large amounts of acid, which if you know anything about biology means EVERYTHING would be dead in short order bugs the hell out of me. Yea, I’m the kind of guy that gets pissed at EVERY MOVIE EVER about getting all the science wrong, I don’t want to commit the same transgressions in my game, thankyouverymuch.

FYI, decaying corpses is going in tonight-ish, so there’s that.
[/quote]

I agree, and with movies, i drive my wife up the wall every time i see something that isn’t correct and i’m like…That would never happen in a million years… She always responds with “its a movie Michael, made in Hollywood, No one cares.” But its one of those agitating things about movies and some games, when realism is broken often times it messes with your mind and breaks your immersion from the story, or in this case the game.

40

That kind of thing is actually less bad, you set the expectations of “hey, we’re taking a break from reality for a minute and being silly”, on the other hand some people disagree, and I keep meaning to have a “Crazy Cataclysm” option (or I gues mod now) to enable this kind of silliness without ruining people’s games.

Full stop right there, you’re begging the question that “game” implies “unrealistic”. You have that opinion, and it is typical in the games industry, but it is not remotely the case. In addition you’re arguing that since some departures exist, there should be more, which is also an invalid argument.

In that case you’re saying nothing. The things I really tend to raise a stink about aren’t “mildly” unrealistic, they tend to be absurdly, mind-bogglingly unrealistic. I also NEVER said that unrealistic things can’t be in the game at all, I said the default is realism, and departures should be justified.

Great, this crap strawman again. I’m getting really sick of people comparing me objecting to physically impossible game mechanics to inane crap that I have publicly argued against many times. Future notice, if you want me to ignore what you have to say, imply that I’m in favor of adding bodily functions to the game or compare dda to the sims.