What is the great urge to remove options in the name of ‘balance’?
I mean the game is a rouge like, has no final unachivable goal, and it has no leaderboards. Who cares about the way you play the game other than yourself and if tweaking the game to easymode is fun for you, I truly believe you should be able to do it. And it is not only a matter of balance, as said before, being forced to see zombies revive (or other possible future options) negates a lot of roleplay and forces the audience to change their past or favorite conception of the game, which is not a good incentive to keep playing.
Plus have you tried to butcher all those zombies when you play with extra spawns?
Its time consuming, repetitive and very boring thing to do. (almost like day job)
Plus plus, the concept of balance is meaningless in a game where you can press Z and get or do anything you want.
^That is nice stuff atomic, perhaps you should make a pull request for it
Here’s a change, need to make revival based on a “revive” flag in the monster definiton rather than based on it being a “zombie” type monster. This is the correct way to implement it from a coding point of view, and makes it moddable.
Thank you one and all for ensuring that there will be fewer options added to the game in the future, since dealing with them is evidently toxic. The only solution to this seems to be to never introduce options unless we’re absolutely certain they should stick around forever.
I agree with the removal of the “zombies don’t revive option” with the introduction of the mod manager.
Because as Kevin says, the proper way to handle that is to let the mods you activate decide what does/doesn’t revive. It doesn’t make sense as an option, it makes sense as a property of the bits rolled in to your specific game.
Now, for example, you can get a “sci-fi” version of the game where most things don’t revive but one particular shapeshifting alien type does. Or you can run a “classic” mod where nothing revives. Or a game where EVERYTHING revives.
It shouldn’t be an “options” setting or even a “world gen” setting - it should be an emergent property of the particular world files being used.
…Differing opinions is a toxic, bad thing? So far I’ve seen alot of opinions on these options - and options in general - that differ, perhaps a pinch of snarkyness on my part, one low-medium grade flip-out, and an attempt to make both sides happy (which was ignored). All in all it seemed remarkably civil, for such Big Issue™ on the internet.
This right here. It should be a flag you can add/remove to monsters, not an option in a menu. Heck, if nobody else does it I’ll take a crack at making it this way tonight.
Dont know whats the big deal now, just open the monster definition json remove all the revive flags and copy the file into somewhere else. Then when you want to change the option just swap the original file for the one you changed and viceversa.
The json definitions ARE an advanced options interface, it’s just text-based instead of being a menu in the game. There are too many things you might want to fine-tune for us to break every one out into an option, but they’re all going to be there to be modified in the JSON.
If you don’t think zombies should be able to smell you, you’ll be able to pull that out of the definition, same with revival, or biting, or any other monster ability.
Play around with it, and if your way works really well, post it on the forums, now you’re a modder. Modifying monsters is a first step to making new monsters, and everybody wins then.
You can even do a challenge game with all fast zombies, or high HP zombies, or super slow zombies, etc.
I’m actually liking this idea more and more, so long as the Jsons are as simple as I’ve seen. Just pull up Notepad++ and you’ve got easy access to some pretty cool modding ideas.
I’m glad there’s a solution that works for (I think) everybody.
I’m totally comitted to everything about the game being super moddable, just not necessarally via the options menu.
I'm glad there's a solution that works for (I think) everybody.
I'm totally comitted to everything about the game being super moddable, just not necessarally via the options menu.
What is your criteria to decide, for example, “city size” should be an option, but “zombie revive” should not? Isn’t the whole point of World Builder and Mod Manager to actually have all that stuff easily accessible and modifiable as in-game options rather than having people manually edit the files?
Zombie revival is a thing that (should be) linked to individual monsters, thus it should be a flag. City size is linked to world generation, thus it should be an option (since worlds don’t have flags).
Keep in mind that once revival is linked to a flag instead of an option (as is planned) you will actually have more control over revival then before the option was removed since you will be able to control revival on a monster-by-monster basis instead of just a simple on/off.
In this case we are trading a slight amount of ease-of-access in return for a large amount of customizability, a trade that has been deemed “worth-it”.
I don’t see the logic behind that criteria. I don’t see what flag or not flag has to do with anything. Take for example a choice to select particular types of monsters, it’s linked to world generation, so it should be in-game option, but on the other hand it’s a flag linked to individual monsters, so it really shouldn’t. Which is it?
Keep in mind that once revival is linked to a flag instead of an option (as is planned) you will actually have [i]more[/i] control over revival then before the option was removed since you will be able to control revival on a [b]monster-by-monster[/b] basis instead of just a simple on/off.
Flags can be options too. It’s just the question what values can be managed from within the game and what values will require editing files.
In this case we are trading a slight amount of ease-of-access in return for a large amount of customizability, a trade that has been deemed "worth-it".
You don’t have to trade anything. You can import any and as many variables from JSON files and represent it to user as in-game options. If that was not planned to be a feature of Mod Manager then I don’t see the point of Mod Manager at all. If you expect user should be able to modify files to set their desired game parameters then they should also be able to copy those files to appropriate folder. But if you want to help them manage those mods you should help them with more tedious task of editing files, rather than helping them with more trivial task of simply putting those files in appropriate folder.
I think you are a little confused on what exactly flags are. Flags are a piece of data that holds either true/false and is linked to a specific monster/item/tile through either the JSON’s or the JSON like definitions (which will eventually be replaced with JSON’s). Options, on the other hand, are things that link to a specific world, and can store any number of values, either true/false, or integers, or decimal numbers, whatever they are configured to do. Because the zombie revival option will be linked to a monster, and not a world, and because it is true/false, it is inherently defined as a flag, and is or will be therefore defined in the JSON’s. Things like season length, on the other hand, are not true/false and are tied to a specific world, thus making them options that are stored in the options menu.
Things can’t be both an “option” and a “flag”, since the two definitions are inherently separate based on what they are linked too (and what type of data they store).
[quote=“hardcore, post:57, topic:2490”]
In this case we are trading a slight amount of ease-of-access in return for a large amount of customizability, a trade that has been deemed “worth-it”.
You don’t have to trade anything. You can import any and as many variables from JSON files and represent it to user as in-game options. If that was not planned to be a feature of Mod Manager then I don’t see the point of Mod Manager at all. If you expect user should be able to modify files to set their desired game parameters then they should also be able to copy those files to appropriate folder. But if you want to help them manage those mods you should help them with more tedious task of editing files, rather than helping them with more trivial task of simply putting those files in appropriate folder.[/quote]
The idea of the mod manager is to make it easier for people to edit/load different JSON files, exactly as you state. The current ease-of-access loss I was referring to was discussing the current dev version, which has not currently incorporated the mod manager.
I think you are a little confused on what exactly flags are. Flags are a piece of data that holds either true/false and is linked to a specific monster/item/tile through either the JSON's or the JSON like definitions (which will eventually be replaced with JSON's).
Whether a variable is boolean, integer or float is absolutely irrelevant.
Options, on the other hand, are things that link to a specific world, and can store any number of values, either true/false, or integers, or decimal numbers, whatever they are configured to do.
So you realize boolean values can be in-game options just as well, and therefore whether a variable is a boolean flag or not is absolutely irrelevant.
Because the zombie revival option will be linked to a monster, and not a world, and because it is true/false, it is inherently defined as a flag, and is or will be therefore defined in the JSON's. Things like season length, on the other hand, are not true/false and are tied to a specific world, thus making them options that are stored in the options menu.
And I asked, whether a choice to select which monster types will spawn should be an in-game option according to that criteria, or not?
Things can't be both an "option" and a "flag", since the two definitions are inherently separate based on what they are linked too (and what type of data they store).
Type of data is absolutely irrelevant. Whether variable is stored in JSON file or anywhere else is also irrelevant. What is preventing you to load any variable from JSON file and represent it to user as an option in some game menu?
The idea of the mod manager is to make it easier for people to edit/load different JSON files, exactly as you state. The current ease-of-access loss I was referring to was discussing the current dev version, which has not currently incorporated the mod manager.
If a variable stored in JSON file can be edited from within some game menu, then each such variable is in fact an in-game option. Are you sure the idea is to make it easier for people to edit JSON files, or is it just to load them?
The kinds of things that should be options are character generation, world generation, interface, queries, etc.
Once there is a mod manager it will be trivial to enable/disable revival, dinosaurs, terminators, aliens, cthulhu, whatever anybody decides to make, you’ll just have to go to said mod manager instead of using the in-game options.
Dramatically changing the contents of a game has almost always been the domain of mods.
