Needful things (simple additions to improve the game)

[Xfin]

[quote=“teldon, post:2539, topic:5570”]Well I’m new to the forums, but have been playing off and on for about six months now. One thing I find beyond annoying is starting in the same shelter as a character I just suicided. I tend to suicide my character because of what I consider to be bs spawns, such as a party of triffids engulfing half the shelter as soon as I open the door. Or a zombie master and crew roaming the edge of town making town raiding impossible. Or my favourite so far, the thing that made me rage quit tonight, and something I’ll talk about next, an anti material rifle turret saying hello as soon as I step outside from the starting evac shelter. So one suggestion I would like to make is an option to blacklist your starting shelter, and any shelter within 20 map tiles, provided you suicide on day 1. Going back to the anti-material rifle turret saying hello, please no turrets or similar event spawns within 10 map tiles your starting shelter. I can’t tell you how many characters I’ve wasted because those event spawns happening so close to spawn.[/quote] here had turrets right outside of the door, had a tank drone spawn outside of the door… and now just had a mall spawn outside of the door.
it far to early game to care if it screws over the char and can lead to having some !fun!..

[teldon]

[quote=“Xfin, post:2541, topic:5570”][quote=“teldon, post:2539, topic:5570”]Well I’m new to the forums, but have been playing off and on for about six months now. One thing I find beyond annoying is starting in the same shelter as a character I just suicided. I tend to suicide my character because of what I consider to be bs spawns, such as a party of triffids engulfing half the shelter as soon as I open the door. Or a zombie master and crew roaming the edge of town making town raiding impossible. Or my favourite so far, the thing that made me rage quit tonight, and something I’ll talk about next, an anti material rifle turret saying hello as soon as I step outside from the starting evac shelter. So one suggestion I would like to make is an option to blacklist your starting shelter, and any shelter within 20 map tiles, provided you suicide on day 1. Going back to the anti-material rifle turret saying hello, please no turrets or similar event spawns within 10 map tiles your starting shelter. I can’t tell you how many characters I’ve wasted because those event spawns happening so close to spawn.[/quote] here had turrets right outside of the door, had a tank drone spawn outside of the door… and now just had a mall spawn outside of the door.
it far to early game to care if it screws over the char and can lead to having some !fun!..[/quote]

It’s probably me being super pessimistic, but still I find that kind of !fun! very frustrating.

[Random_dragon]

It takes getting used to how to work around those things.

For example, opening the door to look outside that shelter…risky. Peeking out the curtains (e to examine, direction to selection the curtain) exposed you less.

[Catfoodbob]

[quote=“Random_dragon, post:2543, topic:5570”]It takes getting used to how to work around those things.

For example, opening the door to look outside that shelter…risky. Peeking out the curtains (e to examine, direction to selection the curtain) exposed you less.[/quote]
curtains tend to have a whole host of blindspots though

[Random_dragon]

Peek through all the curtains.

All of them.

[RAM]

Still, being able to blacklist a spawn would be nice, not just because of the above reasons, but also if you want to tar somewhere fresh and fight your way to your old hoard or something. Sounds like a good idea to me, and could probably be done cheap and nasty by having it subtract the number of blacklisted spawns from the number of known sites and regen every time it picks a blacklisted one. But cheap and nasty is a good way to make the code an unfathomable horror…

[Random_dragon]

Hmm. So a worldgen option to skip sites already chosen as spawn locations by previous characters, essentially?

Not exactly a simple change, but likely a useful one. Then again I tend to tie the source code into tangled knots whenever I so much as look at it, so I’m not a reliable source on how simple it is. XP

[Womble]

Construction options to make crude doors - essentially wood or stone slabs to be dragged into place. Aside from the realism, this serves two gameplay purposes. Firstly, it means that I don’t have to visit the city for nails in order to build a moose-proof abode, but it also support “lost world” worldgens with the city rate set to 0.

[Random_dragon]

Might be interesting, hmm…any other comparable options? Curtain doorways maybe… X3

[RAM]

A nailless door/draggable slab of obstruction makes sense, but I wouldn’t count on it to keep a vengeful moose at bay.

[Womble]

I’m just thinking of something to keep out a merely curious animal. If I have to fight a Moose, I’m going to want fire, not a doorway!

It would also be good to have a camp bed construction option using plant materials. (Withered plants or strings, I guess.)

[Random_dragon]

You can’t stop The Moosening.

And I was pondering adding extra ways to make straw beds…

[Noctifer]

How about info for the construction in the construction menu. Like a description saying what the specific construction does.
Example: Smoking rack - add charcoal and use to craft smoked meat or fish.

The reason is because there is so many constructions some people (…me…) don’t know what many if them do.

[RAM]

oN THE OTHER HAND, YOU COULD PROBABLY RIG UP SOME LEAVERS FOR A -caps lock button to stop it from existing… Or perhaps some levers on a large obstruction, something like a crate of sand-bags or hay-bail or something, to lever it in and out of place. You would only be able to push it away from yourself, so closing it from the desired side would be a bit arduous, and opening or closing it would take quite some time regardless, but if you had another access point that required crawling, and one of these for heavy loads that require dragging or wheeling or what have you, then it could be quite useful.
…
I guess the implementation of this would be a crafted furniture object that was unusually resistant to being moved, and a lever tool that would make pushing furniture away from you easier, and for all furniture movement times to be dependant upon weight.
For the wilderness set you could tie a bundle of sticks together with rope, with some guide-sticks to keep its form, you could probably get something vaguely cubic to resist rolling…
For the newspawned survivor, you could stack lockers on their sides and fill them with dirt, maybe ram a couple of pipes through them to stop them from sliding, that wouldn’t be moving in a hurry.
Getting a lever strong enough to move something that heavy instead of just breaking would probably be the real trick.

[Womble]

You don’t need to get that fancy. Before the advent of the hinge, people used to just carve their barriers out of logs or boulders and dragged them into place. (Think the Cyclops in the Odyssey, just scaled down to human size.) Once Z-levels are a go, the other pre-hinge solution to home security (roof entry) will be available.

[Random_dragon]

Pre-hinge roof entry, for when you feel like being a caveman ninja.

[Sehn_Knight]

Explosions need a stun effect or a knock down effect or a fling effect. Right now explosions have poor kill potential in open areas so giving explosives the ability to incapacitate large groups of enemies for a moment would be useful. Explosions also cause deafness only to the player, if explosions deafened monsters it would make sneaking easier in some situations.

[Catfoodbob]

why not just a cloth hood item perhaphs nerf the protection to 2 but still be pretty good

[Xfin]

[quote=“Xfin, post:2502, topic:5570”]and adding more tools to the item action menu (mp3 player, handheld game system, camura, e-ink pc, jackhammer, fishing rod,bullet puller)…
unless there some way to add to it by the json files? heres starting to love using tools by using tab-letter without having to dig past 2 pages of cards after realizing i forgot to set that tool a key this life…[/quote]

Seem that what item_action is for… and it seem my customization mod just gained another file…

[ { "type" : "item_action", "id" : "extended_firestarter", "name" : "Start a fire" },{ "type" : "item_action", "id" : "MEDITATE", "name" : "Meditate" },{ "type" : "item_action", "id" : "WEATHER_TOOL", "name" : "Check on the Weather" },{ "type" : "item_action", "id" : "BANDAGE", "name" : "Treat Wounds" },{ "type" : "item_action", "id" : "SMOKING", "name" : "Have a Smoke" },{ "type" : "item_action", "id" : "JACKHAMMER", "name" : "Demolish Wall" },{ "type" : "item_action", "id" : "MP3", "name" : "Turn on MP3 Player" },{ "type" : "item_action", "id" : "MP3_ON", "name" : "Turn off MP3 Player" },{ "type" : "item_action", "id" : "FISH_ROD", "name" : "Go fishing" },{ "type" : "item_action", "id" : "EINKTABLETPC", "name" : "Check Tablet PC" },{ "type" : "item_action", "id" : "CAMERA", "name" : "Use Camera" } ]

[Random_dragon]

Nice. Now I should test whether having an item_action defined in multiple mods breaks anything…

Meditate is given an item action in Arcana mod because a few religious-themed magic items can be used for contemplation in addition to their magic function. A current PR in More Survival Tools gives extended_firestarter, weather_tool, and manualnoise item actions due to the whistle multitool.