Do you use them?
How?
Have you ever tried to survive in them?
Have you ever raiding inter-city with them?
Have you ever made your home in them?
Why isnt there a ‘teenage mutant ninja turtles’ meme in the game yet?
Dont answer that, Ill fix that.
What functionality do they provide to you?
Did you know you can find randomly spawned stuff down there, especially with PKs_Rebalancing?
What can we do to the (reasonably) to make them better?
I don’t use sewers or subways.
They’re too hard to move around in. You can’t easily take a cart into them (yes, you can build a folding cart but it’s not easy to transfer a lot of stuff that way) and you’d need to build an entire vehicle underground before it would be fast to move through them to raid distant cities.
Basically, in my experience, they’re a big hassle for no benefit.
I rode bike in sewer. The wheels createde a trail of land.
Once I found a line of lava in subway. A sewer ran in parallel with the subway. There were corriders connecting them, with metal door on each end. It was a very good place to live.
Once I tunneled through rock between subway, cathedral basement, and a house basement. Zombies ventured into the underground labyrinth and lost their way in darkness, one by one pierced by a silent spear.
Subways are supremely boring because they have no features in them. We’d need someone to design a subway station mapgen type for them not to suck.
I’m not sure if it’s doable with current mapgen. If not, someone would need to chalk up some simple example of how should it look like from the json side so that I could design the interface.
As for sewers: they’re claustrophobic and boring. The only real way to make them better would be to have something spawn by them.
Sewer specials? I think it’s doable, so if someone offered to design the features for it, I could implement the interface to plug them in.
We need sewer gators in core. You could mainline them from PK. Would probably need some minor adjustments, but I wouldn’t expect them to be so off the core difficulty that they’d need a redesign/overhaul.
Sewer gators would be neat. Maybe a nest of them that can spawn in sewers, with eggs to steal.
I have gators. no eggs. Mostly due to concerns about overmap special spawning limits.
The thing about any of my own additions is that I can always override anything I don’t explicitly like. So thats relatively moot. Alot of it is misunderstanding the mechanics, such as the case with how bite worked.
I always had the impression that bite worked by dealing the base critter damage, for instance.
JUVENILE TWISTED TORTOISE MEN
{
“id”: “mon_donatello”,
“type”: “MONSTER”,
“name”: “turtle man”,
“description”: “A large green humanoid with bloated-looking skin and a hardened brown shell surrounding its midrift. Though muscular and agile, both skin and carapace shimmer with a sickening sheen. It wears a crude purple blindfold with large hole to allow vision.”,
“default_faction”: “mutant”,
“species”: [ “REPTILE” ],
“diff”: 28,
“size”: “MEDIUM”,
“hp”: 160,
“speed”: 110,
“material”: [ “flesh” ],
“symbol”: “T”,
“color”: “ltgreen_green”,
“aggression”: -5,
“morale”: 70,
“melee_skill”: 7,
“melee_dice”: 1,
“melee_dice_sides”: 16,
“melee_cut”: 0,
“dodge”: 6,
“armor_bash”: 6,
“armor_stab”: 8,
“armor_cut”: 14,
“armor_acid”: 5,
“armor_fire”: 8,
“vision_day”: 40,
“vision_night”: 15,
“special_attacks”: [
[ “SMASH”, 45 ],
[ “BIO_OP_TAKEDOWN”, 15 ],
[ “SCIENCE”, 30 ],
{
“type”: “gun”,
“cooldown”: 20,
“move_cost”: 225,
“gun_type”: “tihar”,
“ammo_type”: “pebble”,
“fake_skills”: [ [ “gun”, 6 ], [ “rifle”, 3 ] ],
“fake_str”: 14,
“fake_dex”: 16,
“fake_per”: 10,
“max_ammo”: 1000,
“ranges”: [ [ 1, 3, “AUTO” ] ],
“targeting_cost”: 125,
“require_targeting_player”: false,
“require_targeting_npc”: false,
“require_targeting_monster”: false,
“description”: “The purple turtle jabs forth with lightning speed!”,
“no_ammo_sound”: “kallibunga!”
}
],
“starting_ammo”: { “bearing”: 500 },
“death_drops”: “mon_zombie_hulk_death_drops”,
“death_function”: [ “NORMAL” ],
“flags”: [ “SEES”, “HEARS”, “SMELLS”, “BASHES”, “GROUP_BASH”, “HUMAN”, “BLEED”, “BONES”, “REGEN_MORALE”, “PATH_AVOID_DANGER_2”, “PRIORITIZE_TARGETS” ],
“anger_triggers”: [ “FRIEND_ATTACKED”, “FRIEND_DIED”, “FIRE” ],
“fear_triggers”: [ “HURT”, “PLAYER_WEAK” ]
}
{
“id”: “mon_leonardo”,
“type”: “MONSTER”,
“name”: “turtle man”,
“description”: “A large green humanoid with bloated-looking skin and a hardened brown shell surrounding its midrift. Though muscular and agile, both skin and carapace shimmer with a sickening sheen. It wears a crude blue blindfold with large hole to allow vision.”,
“default_faction”: “mutant”,
“species”: [ “REPTILE” ],
“diff”: 28,
“size”: “MEDIUM”,
“hp”: 180,
“speed”: 115,
“material”: [ “flesh” ],
“symbol”: “T”,
“color”: “ltgreen_green”,
“aggression”: 0,
“morale”: 90,
“melee_skill”: 7,
“melee_dice”: 2,
“melee_dice_sides”: 3,
“melee_cut”: 19,
“dodge”: 6,
“armor_bash”: 6,
“armor_stab”: 8,
“armor_cut”: 14,
“armor_acid”: 5,
“armor_fire”: 8,
“vision_day”: 40,
“vision_night”: 15,
“special_attacks”: [
[ “BIO_OP_TAKEDOWN”, 60 ],
[ “LONGSWIPE”, 45 ],
[ “SLASH”, 30 ],
[ “GRAB”, 10 ]
{
“type”: “leap”,
“cooldown”: 10,
“max_range”: 3
},
{
“type”: “gun”,
“cooldown”: 20,
“move_cost”: 250,
“gun_type”: “flaregun”,
“ammo_type”: “signal_flare”,
“fake_str”: 14,
“fake_dex”: 16,
“fake_per”: 10,
“max_ammo”: 1000,
“ranges”: [ [ 5 , 20, “DEFAULT” ] ],
“targeting_cost”: 200,
“require_targeting_player”: false,
“require_targeting_npc”: false,
“require_targeting_monster”: false,
“description”: “The blue turtle ignites the darkness!”
}
],
“starting_ammo”: { “signal_flare”: 2 },
“death_drops”: “mon_zombie_hulk_death_drops”,
“death_function”: [ “NORMAL” ],
“flags”: [ “SEES”, “HEARS”, “SMELLS”, “BASHES”, “GROUP_BASH”, “HUMAN”, “BLEED”, “BONES”, “REGEN_MORALE”, “PATH_AVOID_DANGER_2”, “PRIORITIZE_TARGETS” ],
“anger_triggers”: [ “FRIEND_ATTACKED”, “FRIEND_DIED”, “HURT” ],
“placate_triggers”: [ “PLAYER_WEAK” ]
}
{
“id”: “mon_michelangelo”,
“type”: “MONSTER”,
“name”: “turtle man”,
“description”: “A large green humanoid with bloated-looking skin and a hardened brown shell surrounding its midrift. Though muscular and agile, both skin and carapace shimmer with a sickening sheen. It wears a crude orange blindfold with large hole to allow vision.”,
“default_faction”: “mutant”,
“species”: [ “REPTILE” ],
“diff”: 28,
“size”: “MEDIUM”,
“hp”: 160,
“speed”: 120,
“material”: [ “flesh” ],
“symbol”: “T”,
“color”: “ltgreen_green”,
“aggression”: -5,
“morale”: 80,
“melee_skill”: 6,
“melee_dice”: 3,
“melee_dice_sides”: 8,
“melee_cut”: 2,
“dodge”: 7,
“armor_bash”: 8,
“armor_cut”: 16,
“armor_acid”: 5,
“armor_fire”: 8,
“vision_day”: 40,
“vision_night”: 15,
“special_attacks”: [
[ “GRAB_PULL”, 10 ],
[ “DANCE”, 5 ],
{
“type”: “leap”,
“cooldown”: 15,
“max_range”: 2
},
],
“attack_effs”: [
{
“id”: “stunned”,
“duration”: 20
}
],
“death_drops”: “mon_zombie_hulk_death_drops”,
“death_function”: [ “NORMAL” ],
“flags”: [ “SEES”, “HEARS”, “SMELLS”, “BASHES”, “GROUP_BASH”, “HUMAN”, “BLEED”, “BONES”, “REGEN_MORALE”, “PATH_AVOID_DANGER_2” ],
“anger_triggers”: [ “FRIEND_ATTACKED”, “FRIEND_DIED” ],
“placate_triggers”: [ “FIRE” ]
}
{
“id”: “mon_raphael”,
“type”: “MONSTER”,
“name”: “turtle man”,
“description”: “A large green humanoid with bloated-looking skin and a hardened brown shell surrounding its midrift. Though muscular and agile, both skin and carapace shimmer with a sickening sheen. It wears a crude red blindfold with large hole to allow vision.”,
“default_faction”: “mutant”,
“species”: [ “REPTILE” ],
“diff”: 28,
“size”: “MEDIUM”,
“hp”: 200,
“speed”: 125,
“material”: [ “flesh” ],
“symbol”: “T”,
“color”: “ltgreen_green”,
“aggression”: 2,
“morale”: 90,
“melee_skill”: 7,
“melee_dice”: 3,
“melee_dice_sides”: 4,
“melee_cut”: 6,
“melee_damage”: [
{
“damage_type”: “stab”,
“amount”: 12
}
],
“dodge”: 5,
“armor_bash”: 6,
“armor_stab”: 6,
“armor_cut”: 12,
“armor_acid”: 5,
“armor_fire”: 8,
“vision_day”: 40,
“vision_night”: 15,
“special_attacks”: [
[ “SLASH”, 15 ],
[ “LUNGE”, 20 ]
],
“death_drops”: “mon_zombie_hulk_death_drops”,
“death_function”: [ “NORMAL” ],
“flags”: [ “SEES”, “HEARS”, “SMELLS”, “BASHES”, “GROUP_BASH”, “HUMAN”, “BLEED”, “BONES”, “REGEN_MORALE”, “PATH_AVOID_DANGER_1”, “HIT_AND_RUN” ],
“anger_triggers”: [ “FRIEND_ATTACKED”, “FRIEND_DIED”, “PLAYER_CLOSE” ],
“placate_triggers”: [ “FIRE”, “HURT” ]
}
This wasn’t all that well communicated, but I’d expect it to be more obvious from the results. I didn’t see much of your mod, but I’d expect it to have tons of high-coverage armor with armor values above 8.
It’s partly a problem of hardcoded defaults: they are not too visible on the outside. Inherited jsons are more readable, but they weren’t available when I defined bite first so I needed some defaults that make sense.
Most of the stuff is rather well readable from C++ side. You only really need to localize the file where things are defined, where they are loaded and where they are used. For many attacks/functions/actors, it’s just 2 files - one with definitions, other with load and use.
If the defaults are meaningful (ie. not 0, not -1, not “null”, not empty), they most likely are used as-is and not acquired from the monster/item that uses them.
JUVENILE TWISTED TORTOISE MEN
You should define them using the copy-from, like hacks in data/json/monsters/drones.json. That way you’d avoid repeating most of the common data a lot.
Anyway, I always wanted to generate a world where it’s basically just a massive city, and I’d have the survivor live at the subway during the day and come out at night to scavenge for stuff. 'course, I keep saying that, but always got distracted to actually try.
The fish mutation line could be useful for a run like that.
Current incarnation wouldn’t, because player can’t swim in sewage.
At the moment fish is just a set of good mutations (was horrible, but I buffed it) with a very vague deep one theme.
I tend to use the subways in high horde density cities in order to escape groups baring down on my position or to slip by dangerous areas that the subway lines run beneath. I’ve also considered stacking a whole bunch of heavy, long burning materials into a subway line and light it on fire to see if if collapses the areas above it.
Used to use them for the first night raids when playing 10+ city sizes. But now that they are choked to the brim with sewehanas the sewers are more dangerous than the surface during the early game. I still use them to hide from hordes occasionally.
I wouldn’t know what to do to make them more interesting. Maybe add underground public infrastructure, say power substations, water pumps and service tunnels running parallel to the sewers and subway
I think things like underground cult hideouts in subway tunnels and drug labs hidden in sewers could make them somewhat more interesting. Weird little flavor locations, y’know? Loot, a fight or two, stuff like that. Like trekking through the woods to find a cabin or LMOE shelter.
Personally, I head down into them once in a while to hunt rats and sewer snakes. If I’m playing a cannibal character and am reasonably equipped, I go ahead and hunt a few mutants for dinner and skin too.
I agree with the others that the underground areas in subway stations and sewers could use more locations. It’s pretty much a barren place down there, so there’s not much to explore but tunnels and more tunnels.
I mostly just use them as a sort of semi-safe inter city travel, allowing me to get to small areas of a huge city without running into too much trouble.
Also I use sewers as a food source when times are lean during the winter.
Sewers became far less interesting when the pirhannas in them got amped up to 11, so to speak. Before that I’d continuously try to live in them because it makes sense for the theme. The warmest place in the winter of a lot of northeastern U.S. cities, if you can’t stay in the buildings (for whatever reason) - is going to be the sewers. Honestly, we should probably have more NPCs spawning in them, some cities have homeless people living in them ALREADY - and it seems like a low hanging fruit, so to speak.
I mean, just me, but I’d find a group of survivors in the sewers much more realistic then the ultra-tricked out survivors bases we have right now.
Subways are long, boring ways to get close to starvation. I expect both to get more love at some point, probably if they ever get a min/max setting for cities in worldgen.
THAT BEING SAID - I’ve had some AWESOME fun in the sewers in old versions. By — FAR — my favorite was when one intersected lab on a lab run. It was sealed off by metal grates, and I sawed through them somehow, drawing monsters from the other side (which was appropriate). I then ended up using it as an entrance to the lab and setting up an underground camping site. It was loads of fun.
Most of my sewer runs historically came from starting in the middle of a city/town, or getting stuck in one, and then fleeing into them. Same with the subways.
The most obvious way to make subways more interesting is to add more maintenance rooms and electrical closets.
then we can also make more intersections, or at least ensure that there are paths that go out to other cities or major stops. Ive tried to make the run to the mall, for instance.
The sewers could stand for some dry land somewhere. Trope or not, we need somewhere for the people to walk/camp on. We could do with old pipelines that serve as dead-ends, we could make them purposely the shortest route to high traffic areas. Make them intentionally a good way to avoid the zeds above.
But, Ill tell everyone a little secret about New england right now. We dont have a single subway outside of like boston. And the sewers, while many drainage pipe can fit a man crawling or perhaps crouched down uncomfortably, most cannot house a chud
