Obviously, we just need to ask LazyCat for help, he could have z-levels and NPC’s finished in like, a week.
Just gotta wait a few googleplexes
lol i love all these words of encouragement
the next update will come when they finish it
they barely just got done with 0.A
also… if the game simply doesnt support these features until more groundwork is laid…
well all im saying is dont blame the devs if they still have more work to do before npc’s/z-levels can be implemented as we have envisioned them if you dont know a lot about programming… well, its not magic, its real work, and sometimes something just isnt possible or is so impractical as to break or completely change the game
Obviously, living in your parent’s basement gives you a lot of free time to work on Cata
Sadly most of our devs have lives and jobs and RL stuff and they cant work 24/7 on the game
Obviously, living in your parent’s basement gives you a lot of free time to work on Cata
Sadly most of our devs have lives and jobs and RL stuff and they cant work 24/7 on the game[/quote]Pretty sure Beige was being sarcastic.
Obviously, living in your parent’s basement gives you a lot of free time to work on Cata
Sadly most of our devs have lives and jobs and RL stuff and they cant work 24/7 on the game[/quote]Pretty sure Beige was being sarcastic.[/quote]
Obviously
I hope.
does his z levels actually work like real z-levels? I never tried his game?
[quote=“i2amroy, post:6, topic:5349”][ol][li] Most developers do this because we want to, not because we are getting paid to do so or we have to do so.[/li]
[li] Not all developers are that great at coding the actual game. (I personally would rank most early stages of Z-level creation over the top of my head, and I know there are others out there who would feel the same).[/li]
[li] People like to do things that are fun. Going through the code and changing every single time the map is referenced to a 3D map type is not exactly something I would qualify as ‘fun’, though there are definitely others who might. Now that’s not to say that I won’t do things that aren’t fun, but I’m not going to embark on a months-long project of just doing stuff like that; I’ll burn out and then just stop helping C:DDA altogether first.[/li]
[li] Due to the fast pace of C:DDA’s development PR’s will start conflicting pretty quickly, triply so with something of this magnitude. Every time a PR conflicts, it increases the work you need to do; so a PR that works on z-levels or NPC’s will need to be finished as fast as possible to minimize conflicts.[/li]
[li]Most of the main "dev"s do very little actually coding on the game themselves. Kevin, for example, pretty much only merges things, and KA101 is in a very similar position IIRC. It’s gotten better as more devs have been given merge power (thus freeing up more time) but it’s still enough that much less PR’ing goes on from the main devs then you would think.[/li]
[li] Glyphgryph is currently working on a bounty system for z-level stuff right now, which will provide monetary rewards for finishing specific tasks (we already have a thread discussing the specific tasks over in the developers board). Once that is finished it should provide more focus for those tasks.[/li][/ol]
In short we can’t control people. People will do what they want, and most don’t find the idea of working on extremely big rewrites entertaining enough to prevent themselves from burning out. We are working on setting up a system which should provide money rewards and incentivize progress towards things like that, but for now we are doing all we can. We’ve already laid the base of most NPC fixes in the creature class, for example, so progress is there, but it’s not going to happen overnight and it’s largely at the whims of many devs, most of them not core ones.[/quote]
I was not attacking you or any of the developers. If you got that impression, I apologize. My point to this is that z-levels and npcs are alot of work. People are used to getting lots of new content, so if those are going to get done, odds are there will have to be less of the other stuff coming. I think people would have to understand that in order for this to get done.
I aloso thought that some form of content limitation may be necessary in order to do z-levels. If lots of things are changing and the core code needs to change to support z-levels, that may not work.
KEvin: I know you don’t give orders. I made this post because I think one concern is that people would complain if you guys focused on z-levels because other content would probably slow down. So I think people would need to understand that.
When I just started out my plan was to fix a lot of the NPC bugs. That kinda burned me out so much that I didn’t develop on cata for quite some time.
The NPC code was/is a mess.
For anybody interested here is my note/todo log from a while back (not all of it correct, as it is just random notes).
Give player a npc ID.
Attach player ID to missions.
On player death reset any missions with that player id.
Currently a mission can only be assigned once. Which is a bit silly.
Fix the npctalk.cpp line 1607 color coding stuff, it should remove the first char of the response. (And this should be documented).
Have all shelters start with an NPC, and the LMOE spawn with an agressive npc.
Add a variable to npcs that show them on the overmap or not.
Fix npcs stealing money by mugging.
omz is supposed to be the zlevel value. Make it check that
Overmap.cpp line 1333 legend boolean.
Make the kill list also keep the npc kills
newly spawned npcs have 999 999 targets which is odd
Markedfordeath npcs do not drop all their equip nor a corpse.
NPCS might be immune to explosions and traps.
Spawning a lot of debug npcs crashes. on talk iirc
Npcs move strangely between overmaps. Creating a global npc list would fix this.
Muggers do not notice you in a car. It should just attack instead.
USB (and perhaps other) missions only look for the north variants of buildings.
Make the ‘is this a safe place’ code better.
After accepting a mission, the final ‘a’ remark loops back to the ‘do you have a mission for me’ question. Which is strange.
There was a shelter npc, with a save with multiple character that allowed free training.
Check the way the shelter npc follows you underground.
Check if autosaving saves the npcs correctly. (Probably the shifting of the maps, should load them before the player has had a turn to move).
“DEBUG: NPC didn’t use its moves. Action 17. Turning on debug mode.” should mention debug messages not mode.
NPC trading, there is one specific char tree where you can return to the normal window after trading. But that has a display bug where some gui elements are not printed again.
Every time I tried fixing something with NPC’s I kept running into more and more bugs. (Most of the times touching a lot of other code: “Probably the shifting of the maps, should load them before the player has had a turn to move” for example, points to the old system which saved monsters and NPC’s strangely (it was pretty visible when teleporting around using the debug mode, stuff could be loaded from nowhere, next to you after a few turns).
It might seem like it is not going anywhere, but there just was a lot of groundwork that had to be done. (And remember that the codebase is large and getting larger every day, not all devs know everything).
That said, I do agree there is a lot of stuff added that is not that valuable, but don’t forget that keeps our motivation high. Stuff like this: https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/pull/6182 motivated me to do more work later. (I was actually grinning quite a lot IRL).
And like always, people who complain about stuff not being added. Could you help us? Please try and update the wiki more. There just is not enough time and motivation in each day to do everything. Or help out at the bug forum. Try to reproduce bugs people mention, suggest workarounds, provide savegames etc. (And yes, at times these savegames will not be used, and the effort is for nothing. Sorry about that).
not that it’s a bad thing… i dont mind being spoiled… just pointing it out, and that some people dont deal with the subsequent impatience as well as others. nor do they acknowledge this at all. most people think of themselves as pretty humble and modest (LOLOLOLOL)
on an unrelated note i really wish i had the time to figure all this JSON business out, and whatnot, so that i could contribute to the game and justify my generally snarky attitude towards peers (which transcends this forum)… maybe some day
EDIT: hmmm i would love to contribute to the wiki, now THAT is something i would gladly and easily do… ill look into it