That Random Touch

Miloch · 2013-02-04T15:00:06.000Z

I like the map generators so far. I think one thing they could use is that random touch.
That touch where you are driving down the road and all of a sudden you see a random store. What is it doing way out here? How does that make sense? But it happens in real life. Things are sometimes in odd places. Same way with loot. Right now you NEVER find a gun in a house. (also on corpses ammo and gun spawns should be linked, aka get ammo for the gun) Those random touched help make things interesting. Shouldn’t be common, but still. Also how about caches or finding the random corpse of someone who’d been looting when the zeds got him? Find the corpse of a guy wearing cargo pants and a sweatshirt with a nailbat. He has some food a few other odds and ends on him. This probably planned already, but oh well. Just to make sure.

kevin.granade · 2013-02-04T16:04:20.000Z

We like adding these little flourishes too, and these are some good suggestions, thanks.

n9103 · 2013-02-04T17:14:55.000Z

The way I look at current ammo/gun combos on zombies is that they either never found matching ammo before they got nom’d, or they ran out and that’s why they got nom’d.

The_Darkling_Wolf · 2013-02-04T17:19:56.000Z

Actually there’s an entire category of house for gun nuts, which are generally better than gun stores. As they always have matching ammo and usually at least one silencer.

jimy · 2013-02-04T20:33:00.000Z

So many windows broken, so many doors pryed and I still haven’t found a gun nuts house yet.

n9103 · 2013-02-04T22:15:18.000Z

Be sure to explore any possible basements.
Pretty sure the gun nut’s place has a basement with lockers of guns and ammo. (or maybe I found the special gun nut’s place that was a prepper’s house? :P)

The_Darkling_Wolf · 2013-02-04T22:17:21.000Z

Basements are separate, guns are laying around the bedroom.

Vorpal · 2013-02-05T01:49:44.000Z

Yeah I’ve found some nice guns, ammo, and mods in gun nut’s houses. Quite often some shell casings, primer, etc too.

system · 2013-02-05T02:11:29.000Z

Thread de-railed. You guys did my job and saved me some effort.

Miloch · 2013-02-05T03:19:11.000Z

Yeah, but I’m refering to things that may not exactly have to do with a house. Find the corpse of a dead survivor in the bathroom with his revolver with the last spent shell in it.

Vorpal · 2013-02-05T09:52:04.000Z

Miloch:

Yeah, but I’m refering to things that may not exactly have to do with a house. Find the corpse of a dead survivor in the bathroom with his revolver with the last spent shell in it.

Love it. Maybe with a dead dog too, or a live one eating his corpse.

Miloch · 2013-02-06T12:31:05.000Z

A simple way to add this would be to add something like this would be to add a very low chance that any spawn anywhere be any random object from the game. So I’m rummaging through a house and find a single lone shell casing. Immediately I start to think of what could have happened here. Did a lone survivor fire a single shot as he fled from a horde of zombies. I stop and look around cautiously. Peer out the windows without showing myself…
Simple things can add a lot to a game without ever requiring a lot of effort. There is no guarantee that the random spawn item would even be all that useful. Like my above example, a single shell casing. Could a single item spawn link to something else? A small function that creates a small spread of shell casings? I know, not high on the list of things that are needed. But my simple implementation idea I thought would work. Good day!

kevin.granade · 2013-02-08T16:02:31.000Z

We need more clutter in general, might want a “trash” spawn list that has things like empty bottles, shell casings, paper wrappers, etc scattered around at random.

The_Darkling_Wolf · 2013-02-08T16:07:19.000Z

I thought we had one of those already

That does remind me, we need more map clutter too, not just items. There should be trashcans and signposts and whatnot scattered around the place.

Oddzball · 2013-02-08T18:06:57.000Z

Kevin Granade:

We need more clutter in general, might want a “trash” spawn list that has things like empty bottles, shell casings, paper wrappers, etc scattered around at random.

I was actually working on this last night.

Oddzball · 2013-02-08T18:18:22.000Z

Take a look at this right here…

void map::post_process(game *g, unsigned zones) { std::string junk; if (zones & mfb(OMZONE_CITY)) { if (!one_in(10)) { // 90% chance of smashing stuff up for (int x = 0; x < 24; x++) { for (int y = 0; y < 24; y++) bash(x, y, 20, junk); } } if (one_in(5)) { // 10% chance of corpses //Oddzball-20% of finding corpses int num_corpses = rng(1, 8); for (int i = 0; i < num_corpses; i++) { int x = rng(0, 23), y = rng(0, 23); if (move_cost(x, y) > 0) add_corpse(g, this, x, y); } } }

You can insert something there to spawn trash inside a city zone.

Miloch · 2013-02-12T04:58:03.000Z

I still say there needs to be more random crap. A car crashed into a building. Burned out husks of buildings. Random trash and paper scattered here and there. Tipped over trash cans. Really need that there multi level system to things right. But the coders definitely have their hands full.

The_Darkling_Wolf · 2013-02-12T13:31:11.000Z

Those things are all planned Even right now Kevingranade’s working on adding various types of road block to cities. And traffic jams full of crashed cars are planned.

Miloch · 2013-02-12T13:46:27.000Z

Well then, sir, your team is simply awesome.

Binky · 2013-02-12T15:49:49.000Z

I like the idea of more ‘random’ stuff as long as it’s fitting (as mentioned, sometimes you do get random shops/bars in the middle of no where). I’d also love some more ‘themed’ houses (like with the pot growers house) as I think they’re excellent to stumble across.

However, There was a huge debate/issue with DC:SS which raged for a while over ‘trash’/duplicate items. They were eventually mostly/all deleted as any items that don’t have uses end up confusing new players (with a lot of forum requests/annoyance) and they’re just ignored by veterans (or it also annoys them).

I know in a survival game there is a lot more scope for random items laying around, and we have a lot of similar clothing items which are fine/add flavour, but I think complete ‘trash’ like boxes of tissues or fridge magnets (unless they actually had a use!??!?) may quickly become an issue.