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Magusdl

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About Magusdl

  • Birthday 10/26/1983

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    Programming, AI development.

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  1. You just nailed on the head why NPC's being a low priority is a huge issue. When this game started it's main goal was to create a proper Romero zombie apocalypse (the focus pretty much shifted to a survival simulator). That means zombies are NOT meant to be the main threat, humans are. A unknown "disease" start to turn even your most loved one into a mortal enemy. This goes much beyond a simple creature to kill, it breaks trust in other people, it creates life-or-death situations when someone wants to "kill" that person who is dear to you (but is not really that person anymore). The fall of society without a common enemy is the core, unknown people might be very helpful or something to avoid. Everyone will have a new code of ethics based on their life's experience. TWD creator understood this perfectly, and even added the "we are all infected" to evolve Romero's vision (making it more possible for the fall of society to actually occur). Now if you pay close attention, zombie's bites being a insta-turn was Romero's idea back then (waaay back) to make the "The Fall" possible, zombies need to replicate somehow. TWD evolved the idea and it's no longer a mandatory rule to make the "zombies = fall of society as we know" happen (this is the one rule we can't change without changing his vision). In "Land of the Dead" Romero made his own update, a zombie that starts to think and see himself and the others as a new race. Some might think this is way off the zombie lore, but the core of his concept is there. Other people chose to make the zombies run (or "special" zombies), both are not proper Romero because then the main threat are the zombies. Story generation is created by the players, it doesn't need death to be a story, you can simply start a new game and pretend your character was rescued (and the story is what he did before being rescued). Every new feature that will be applied to the NPC's (including amputation, cars, nutrition), makes it harder to make the NPC's behave kinda like a person would. Without NPC's, you can't judge difficulty. That is, assuming making a Romero zombie apocalypse is still the main goal.
  2. That's exactly what's happening. That and cheesing the zombies so you never get hit. Now you add multiplayer, and this whole recipe will never work. I agree with how infection works for SP but it will never be viable in MP. I think the idea where it leads to a brutal infection that can be treated (making medics more needed) is alot more MP friendly. With guaranteed death infections you have: - Normal servers (including coop), people who die come back with same knowledge being the same person, just lose his skills. The "suicidal rampage" or a buddy killing him is more likely than anything. With a chance to live it would require a change of gameplay (chill and rest) to adapt to the new situation. That is, considering you could make skills harder to lvl because characters would be less expendable. - RP servers, you are kind forced to be someone else, but depending on server limitations (population) you'll have to get your old profession, and people will know anyway what kind of people you are (won't backstab). You can build up a story for the dead person but trying to save (and worry for) a sick living person would be much more exciting. And if we consider "MP friendly" might be "NPC friendly" down the road, this is something that should be thought of again.
  3. Thank you nasKo, this means alot, I really shouldn't let people put me down. But it didn't turn me off from my goals, just made me wary of exposing myself again. @Kurruk Thanks for the encouraging words too. I think harakka meant they will only be put in when lone survivors and groups are working properly (or at least well enough). The issue with putting in NPC's in a crude state, is that they can potentially break your game (used to happen, NPC entering your safehouse and blowing your head up after telling you to go away). I remember them saying that you can become the leader of a group, and give them orders (like going out on looting missions, patrol the safehouse, etc). They will probably have a very hard time surviving anyway, since the game has to be unforgiving and some of them are there just to give a dynamic story to the places you go. Like finding a safehouse barricated that got overwhelmed (and you know it could have been avoided, if you were there before it happened). I doubt there will be any magical resource showing up or anything, they will always get it from somewhere (well, spawning with basic items sounds reasonable and needed). If you are the leader of the group, you'll be able to tell them to stay safe while you take risks (or bring someone with you when going for looting missions). But if you are not the leader... well, people make mistakes, so it would actually be realistic if a "dumb" leader made poor decisions that got everyone killed. Even you could make the group starve if trying to keep everyone too safe. There will be personalities (like aggressive, friendly, suspicious) which will be the core of their decisions, so we can be pretty sure it will be logical decisions based on "how they think". Then there is the "states" (like angry, scared, seeking refuge, protecting safehouse). An aggressive NPC could be "scared" and "seeking refuge" (maybe his group of raiders died, he's out of weapons) and willing to join up with others, only to be an asshole and disrupt your group's unity when he has those needs satisfied. A friendly NPC might be hostile if you get too near his safehouse, as a safety measure. Even in it's crude form, they had personalities and would act according to them (telling you to "fuck off!" and going for the kill if you didn't listen, others would be willing to join you, often forgetting to tell you they were bitten). Anyway, like I said, there used to be some complaints about NPC's ruining games randomly (there was very little interaction with them), so I believe they are trying to avoid that now (with alot more players, could result in alot more complaints). And as much as I would love to see them in even if with a very simple AI, I think they should be careful with their brand above all. TIS is the real deal, they are honest, they truly listen to the community, they don't plan on making a half-baked game to sell DLC's later on. We have to trust them and be patient when they are being cautious, because that's the right approach, I believe. @Realmkeeper I understand your passion and reaction, I agree it would have been a waste of time if Lemmy came here to explain step-by-step what he is doing. I don't hold any grudge, I was just really surprised because I never expected this in PZ forums, and thought I overestimated the friendliness (and changed my mind about discussing it here). I'm looking forward to sharing ideas with you in the future, as I learn more about AI development. I'm not so clueless as it seems when it comes to AI dev, but I did rushed out assumptions and theories without proper information on the meta-game. Surely we could make a proper thread about this, I would certainly appreciate.
  4. First, I'm not an expert on AI, my job is not even game-related (well, some kinect interactions *could* be considered a game, but a very very simple one when it comes to game mechanics), I'm just an enthusiast who has done alot of experimenting on AI programming and found it extremely fun (albeit frustrating sometimes). Suomiboi had graciously pointed out I was way off track with my assumptions. I realized I had to do a in-depth research on techniques used for dealing with un-streamed cells, as I would end up making a bad system with horrible performance. Indeed I should have done so before starting a thread to ask for information, the last thing I want is to consume time from devs without being able to really help. Well, to update the thread, I'm studying the subject to make a new testbed so I can try to replicate the current situation here. I have been away for too long so I also have to dig more what the devs said about this since then. Never tried this kind of AI dev so I need to get it working first, before going for a complex project like PZ has become, sorry for confusing people. I'll see if I can have a go at the zombie's AI first, since I should be able to try it ingame already (didn't really see if it's modable or hardcoded). RealmKeeper, if you are in a bad mood, please take it out somewhere else. If you believe my thread is counter-productive there are many ways of saying so, without mocking anyone. Anyway, it's your opinion and I understand why you thought it was not a productive thread (or a toxic thread, as it seems). This thread can be closed as I completely lost the desire to discuss this here (I'm worried to post my findings, or experimental code, until I get it working), never ocurred to me people could be that aggressive in these forums (step-by-step mocking, comparison with a child who can't get his toy to work and is trying to force it dumbly). I'll find an appropriate place for this that won't bother anyone. Thanks to everyone who support my "quest", specially Suomiboi for his friendly and instructive post, thanks again for your time.
  5. @Suomiboi Thanks for your time, I really appreciate it, broadened my view on the subject, I have to think more about it as a purely "virtual" world. Good paint skills too, I liked the lil map.
  6. I'm not sure they are recording player behaviour, probably not at this stage. Increasing the map wouldn't screw NPC development, it's a matter of finding the best way to make them deal with this never-stop-growing map. Imagine a square, the top left is coordinate 0,0 (x,y), then he goes left and now is on another cell, at coordinate 500,0 (making up a cell size of 500), he has changed his cell, so the coordinates can't be applied to the previous cell. Scale it up (like, traveling 10 cells) and things get more complicated. You have to find a "generic" way of dealing with this, since you don't know how big the map is gonna be (from the programmers view, who's not involved with map creation). But that is just guessing cell pathfinding is an issue, it might be some more specific issue like a Java issue or something, that's why I'm asking for clarification.
  7. Keep in mind this is not a suggestion thread, it's an attempt to finally be able to "play" (for me, it's fun) with the NPC's AI. Yeah, basically the idea behind a neural network is that the AI "learns" from their experience, it can even learn from players since they (usually) know what they are doing. It's like they analize the surroundings to know what is a wall, then remember that so they don't have to do it everytime (save the path they should go when near that place, if stuck re-analize). You can also get frequently used routes by players, and make NPC's do the same, since players usually avoid dangerous spots. But it was a guess, I'm actually trying to find out what technique they are going for. PZ used to have a single cell (a map square, the map in the video), then they implemented a map "streaming" where the cells are loaded as you get closer to them (this is usually used in MMO's). It allowed a HUGE map increase (scary huge, can be infinite in theory), but also screwed up any sense of continous path (coordinates-wise, X, Y). Now you have a bunch of cells grouped together, and it's MUCH harder to make NPC's make their traveling around. But the main issue (just guessing, I'm not involved) is the metagame, which is basically what happens when no player is around, and that cell is not loaded. This is used to control zombie migration (they don't show up out of nowhere just because you made noise, like in State of Decay), and what NPC's do when nobody is nowhere near (interaction with each other, looting missions, zombie encounters).
  8. First, just to make clear, I'm not asking for NPC's, I want their brain. I just read again Lemmy's explanation on why NPC's aren't being fully worked on, and being a programmer, I fully understand him. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsL_7xQnCSA (very old PZ AI video) Ever since I watched this video, back in 2011 (2012?), I have been itching to play with their code. I go back to that video every now and then, it's just so awesome, I could watch it all day. @Lemmy Now, I would like to know what exactly is the issue with the current NPC progress, I remember reading something about the pathfind on the streamed cells, which (understandably) made things ALOT harder. The sledgehammer, carpentry and modding don't help at all in setting up manual waypoints (if that's the way your heading), so I thought you could be trying a neural network so they could kind of build it themselves. In Quake 2, a bot (not sure the name, I think it was Eraser Bot) would use the players positioning to "know" if a place was good, after some gameplays, the bots would start going after the unusual item spawns players liked to pick, and in CTF they would defend the most used routes. Maybe the issue is making the NPC's AI work well with the other metagame events. I'm totally lost to what is happening behind the curtain. There is anywhere I could get more information on what approach you are using? With code it would be even better. I would surely like to help think on solutions for these issues, maybe even find a different approach that could work with the metagame system. I just want to play with their brains (not AI, meh, boring word ) for so many years now, that it's urging me to post this, so sorry if it sounds like any sort of distrust.
  9. Well, I live in south Brazil (my state even borders Argentina). I bought the game on Desura with PayPal (before steam release) and got a Steam key latter on. You can be sure Cat, it's not the distance, or the place you bought it. PZ has performance issues on some machines, some versions are much faster than others. Try the steam version and see how it goes. On the anti-virus note, I also use Avast Free, and "disable until restart" when playing PZ, or any game.
  10. Could you add the chat hotkeys to the options? It's currently locked to T and Y, it seems.
  11. Maybe make zombies drop some of the loot too, even to the point of having a backpack with supplies. It could be a survivor who met his demise, or someone who rushed to gather stuff for a runaway.
  12. Damn RJ, you are such a find, from amazing modder to loved dev, keep it up! ... and that's why he's a great character, had a strong personality and polemic aproaches, loved it.
  13. I want to play with NPC's AI... O.O'

  14. I think one thing should be clear, the admins don't want people leaving their server, that's the issue. So let's avoid long-term thinking (like hard-to-implement features, specially NPC's). The thing is, creating a safehouse with people, gathering loot, killing zombies together, these are the new stuff people want to try out for a long time (some more than others). Running around an empty town is easily achieved by disabling zombies in SP. Now to reliably create a good experience for most players, I think a reset is required in this build. I think 2 days is better, since timezones can easily make it unplayable for some. Even the unlooted food will end up rotting when power goes out (it happened on the second day on my 2-man LAN server), water went out the same day. Farming requires quite a bit of items, hunting not a high priority feature (can't be counted on soon). If people die too often simply running around trying to quench their first thirst/hunger, death becomes too casual. Now, server wipes would need the players to delete their saves too, and that's quite a hassle. In my tests, if they don't delete theirs, they will get random disconnections, while still able to navigate locally on all previously loaded cells. They can pick up items, and if they logout then login again, alot of dupe items will show up (on server console) and then will be deleted on server restart (not delete-restart, just closing and opening again). Well, at least if put in the same container, we didn't test this further. And while I haven't tried it, I'm sure it's pretty easy to backup a fully-loaded character to start on a new server (what would be an issue, for many reasons). For devs: I think a "new player kit" should not be hard to implement, so server admins could choose what items new players would receive (maybe farming essentials, water catchers). That way they could actively supply new players with the minimum required to give them a satisfactory experience, even change it over time as a specific supply is completely out, without the need to reset or manually give away items. It could even be a reason for stablished groups to take new people in. Just give the admins an option to set what items new players start with, I think most will know how to get the best out of it by analyzing their server situation. This would be useful even on the final build. While it won't solve the lack of loot, and consequently exploration, it would help to have more stablished groups, trading (or raiding) among them would become the end-game loot. Erm, and obviously, the horde migrations simulation from out-of-map towns. (sorry, had to say or people might think I overlooked this issue).
  15. Awesome, I planned on playing on PvE servers only because i'm really fed up with the "shoot on sight" mentality that ruined all survival MMO's, now this update makes PvP servers more interesting. Great thinking guys, I like the direction your heading here.
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