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Operation Fix Late Game By Killing You Before You Get There


lemmy101

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Why not have each farming action work on the plant you click and every plant that's in a plot connected to it, but taking more time per tile?

 

not too bad, but wouldnt it look odd when my char is standing there for a while, whilst all connected corn-crops get watered from the distance?

 

Pathfinding should be quite easy to do in this situation... You'd just see the character wak to each crop and water them automatically.

 

 

that would be great, yes please. It would stop in the middle if you run out of water tho, right?

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That seems like it might be a fair bit of hassle. Instead of area of effect, why not just row of effect? You set your character up to perform the action you want, then it plays an animation of your character walking up and down the row performing that action. Rinse and repeat for every chore that needs doing on every row you have. It's going to be a bit of a slog either way, but having it as one big action on the player's end seems like it might reduce a substantial amount of the associated annoyance involved with clicking.

Map is a grid; walk adjacent tiles X deep. Shouldn't be very difficult to do. To affect an area of 5 x 5, it could even be as simple as getting the IsoGridSquare clicked on then subtracting/adding to the coordinate value, getting gridsquares at those coordinates.

Should be no different for a "row of effect."

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Yeah the difficulty in it should be about anticipating need and managing your resources and time correctly. Crops at present are more like a vending machine to be honest. And if it results in players cycling crops and when they are planted to provide a constant supply of food, I think that it should be possible, but that is only one way to play the game. And it should not be artificially limited since it is a game and players should be able to be free in it to do as they like. The level of involvement, planning, preparation and general oversight of such a system should just be sufficiently difficult to not result in monotony and boredom.

 

Give the player the ability to realistically preserve food (To allow other playstyles that don't have cyclic crops like mentioned above.), but make it an action that requires you to judge, anticipate, plan and gather resources to do. Like smoking meat would require you to gather up wood and create wood chips for instance. Salting meat would require finding large amounts of (extremely heavy.) salt from barns and fields to restaurants and kitchens. It shouldn't be *impossible* to survive, but it should take effort to plan and to prepare regardless of your playstyle. And playstyle is a key factor too since what you ideally want is to be *able* to settle into a style: "I am a hunter!" but then to be thrown a curveball when shit goes south (Which it absolutely MUST at one point or another.) and you must then adapt to the situation and you didn't necessarily have a contingency plan for it, resulting in hardship and general apocalypsenessness.

 

And every step of the way there should be an element of unexpectedness added, like the diseases plants get, or perhaps a smokehouse burning down because you lumped in too much wood at one time. Things to engage the player. Like a drying rack being raided by animals or zombies walking into your clean and freshly dried meat and smearing off blood and guts on it...

 

Essentially more things to do and engage the player while surviving. Because make no mistake, boredom of the player is a huge issue later in the game, and this seeks to address that (not so much the difficulty part of the equation.) although the two are interlinked. And then you sprinkle in enhanced difficulty from zombies and the environment and what have you to mix it up and keep it entertaining.

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Thing is, I have only survived little more than one month. That's mostly because I couldn't come up with a reason to continue. My safe house was fully barricaded and I'd built a wall enclosing a space from one side of the house. The game, who had been a blast to play up to this point, became boring the moment I realized that I don't need to build better defenses or safe guard the perimeter to survive.

 

I didn't farm because the house was full of canned food. And even if I had to farm, that's not really exiting enough to keep me on my toes, right?

 

So for me it all comes down to how the zombies behave. I want to be kept on my toes. I want to really –truly– appreciate relative safety because I know it won't last forever. And that last part is the key I think. We want to be able to build cool forts and all that, but what is the point if they doesn't get tested at some point?

 

All the other stuff the game models, like fatigue, depression, famine, is of course interesting and necessary to get the wanted realism and additional challenges.

 

I just want to say, I play this game a lot and love it! It can be very challenging in a good way, especially in the first few days or weeks!

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Why not a icon for farming. Basically you use the icon to turn on and off farming mode. When in farming mode, you click on a tile and drag your mouse to create a box on the number of tiles you want to farm. When you have desired number of tiles, a little message box pop up and let you know how long it going to take. You click yes to continue or no if you do not want to continue.

Depending on what you have in inventory may effect time it takes. Hoe, watering can, etc as examples. I imagine after a few days, a small area would only take a hour or 2 maintain.

When the harvest is finally ready you enter farming mode and collect. I do not know if this idea would work but it may reduce or make easier for game designers to implement.

Of course I'm personally in favor of removing farming and possibly fishing-trapping. But I try offer support ideas if it stays.

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I like the idea of crops taking longer to grow as long as the crops last longer before going rotten.  Potatoes in particular really last a long time if stored correctly.

 

 

The crop season is way too long also.  When I played through a winter (build 21 I believe) I was harvesting into December and was harvesting everything again by early March if my memory is correct. Unless you are growing in a greenhouse you are not going to be harvesting anything in March and April and probably not much in May.  

 

See the almanac -  http://www.almanac.com/gardening/planting-dates/KY/Louisville

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I don't know anything about farming, but if it would take longer to grow crops, wouldn't it be possible they could also make it so the plants could be "fully grown" in the garden for quite a while as well before harvesting?

Would be good to not need to harvest them all at the same time to avoid them from getting rotten too quick, but let's say you could go to your garden, pick 3 tomatoes to make sauce for your pasta and leave the rest of the tomatoes on the plant for a while longer?

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I just noticed that we are focusing this thread on Farming... when we should be looking for ways to die, don't we?  :D

 

Well right now farming is like a way to never starve since you wont need to go outside to get dem chips and chocolate bars, so you pretty much remove a big element of the game to loot for food, once you get the farming tools, i am sure you have food to survive till the corps are ready to harvest, like a week or so.

 

Pretty much removing the danger of going outside for food.

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The thread is more focused on the late game than any particular facet of survival I must say. But to just bring back the spirit of what the game was when hordes still roamed.

 

I remember very distinctly lemmy saying: "There are no safe places, only safer places" or something to that effect.

 

So yes the zombies are a huge problem in the current state, but let's not forget the different factors that are behind the scenes to create an engaging experience while you survive. Like lots of us have experienced, it is fun to survive when you have some objective in mind. It is for this reason that I feel farming is being discussed as it is in the thread.

 

Jumpscares also need a buffing if you ask me, the number of zombies inside buildings is a little sparse in my opinion, and the game should populate areas inside buildings with corpses too, among which there will be crawlers. Zombies should sometimes faux die when you attack them, only to 'wake up' later. Enhancing the threat having corpses around provides. I mean think about it, how would a zombie react to near fatal trauma to the skull, but that is insufficient to terminate the specimen. It stands to reason if shooting them can do this that hitting them can do this as well. But some of them need to lay still like this perhaps even for days before standing back up.

 

Just increase the unexpectedness of them I suppose is what I am getting at.

 

Another thing I'd add is making random buildings start the game with ovens on and things inside the ovens, to simulate the few houses that would have lost owners during food preparation, this would damage and destroy some buildings throughout the map in a somewhat random fashion, creating a little variation and adding to the starting feel of "Shit went down.". WIth the minimal boost to danger of having no guarantee a refuge is standing and the odd unexpected early-game fire this would mostly be for immersion.

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I know its been said many times, but I think canning should really be added. You would still need to go on a run to get the proper stuff (Pressure Cooker + Jars). That way there is less of a need to farm and you could add real time into crop growing. You would still need to be sustainable until you could get in your first harvest of crops and would need to plan ahead accordingly. Hunger could be adjusted as well at this point.

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On the subject of invincible fortifications: I'm not familiar with the Erosion mod, but if your walls tend to rot away over time (slowly if built on concrete, quickly if built on dirt), that would force the player to do patrols, temporary patches a la barricades, and eventually tear down and rebuild. Combine that with Spacejunk's suggestion that zombies tend to drift towards sound over time, and you have disaster awaiting anyone who thinks their defenses will protect them forever. :evil:

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I know its been said many times, but I think canning should really be added. You would still need to go on a run to get the proper stuff (Pressure Cooker + Jars). That way there is less of a need to farm and you could add real time into crop growing. You would still need to be sustainable until you could get in your first harvest of crops and would need to plan ahead accordingly. Hunger could be adjusted as well at this point.

I kinda figure that mason jars and possibly even the contents within will eventually end up being the currency of the game. They'd be so useful for the preservation of food.

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-snip-

 

I'll second the unexpectedness. I've long wanted to open a door and find 5-10 zombies inside and make me escape with brown trousers.

 

I also fully agree with the zombies false dying. I suggested a double tap system quite a while back and I think it would fit with something like this. It would create those movie type situations where you forgot to make sure to kill that one zombie is dead and once you've gone to your farming he'll come, sneaking behind you.

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On the subject of invincible fortifications: I'm not familiar with the Erosion mod, but if your walls tend to rot away over time (slowly if built on concrete, quickly if built on dirt), that would force the player to do patrols, temporary patches a la barricades, and eventually tear down and rebuild. Combine that with Spacejunk's suggestion that zombies tend to drift towards sound over time, and you have disaster awaiting anyone who thinks their defenses will protect them forever. :evil:

I think the spade would be a handy tool to combat erosion. Simply dig up all the grass tiles around your building, and when it creeps back around a month or two later repeat.

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Thing is, I have only survived little more than one month. That's mostly because I couldn't come up with a reason to continue. My safe house was fully barricaded and I'd built a wall enclosing a space from one side of the house. The game, who had been a blast to play up to this point, became boring the moment I realized that I don't need to build better defenses or safe guard the perimeter to survive.

 

This is what really needs to be changed.  Zombies should be able to break down walls.  Perhaps walls should only succumb when multiple zombies are attacking it.  This way, when a horde comes a-knockin, they will provide a real, actual challenge.

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On the subject of invincible fortifications: I'm not familiar with the Erosion mod, but if your walls tend to rot away over time (slowly if built on concrete, quickly if built on dirt), that would force the player to do patrols, temporary patches a la barricades, and eventually tear down and rebuild. Combine that with Spacejunk's suggestion that zombies tend to drift towards sound over time, and you have disaster awaiting anyone who thinks their defenses will protect them forever. :evil:

I think the spade would be a handy tool to combat erosion. Simply dig up all the grass tiles around your building, and when it creeps back around a month or two later repeat.

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This is what really needs to be changed.  Zombies should be able to break down walls.  Perhaps walls should only succumb when multiple zombies are attacking it.  This way, when a horde comes a-knockin, they will provide a real, actual challenge.

 

 

 

Yes! Or rather, they should succumb much faster when several zombies are knocking. Think about the original Night of the Living Dead. They barricaded that house quite well, and it could probably hold against one zombie for a while, but three, or god forbid eight? Not so much.

 

I don't know if there is an easy way of implementing this programming-wise, but what if the zombies "breakWallFactor" increased exponentially with each additional zombie. Unrealistic? Maybe. Exponentially might be to much, but I think it would serve both the gameplay and the realism well to increase the amount of "damage" to the wall quite much with each zombie. My guess is that, right now in the game, every zombie just cause their own separate damage against the wall/door/window every few seconds. If that's true the game doesn't take the zombies combined weight into account! 

 

By movie logic zombies can mow down just about everything when they come in heavy numbers!

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Wouldn't mind fruits/veges staying on the plant a bit longer as long as birds/animals would actively take them.

That's actually a great idea, I didnt think of it that far.

I can imagine planning the whole farming idea a month or so ahead, gather supplies and preparing traps.

Then after a few months or so when all is ready to harvest then there will be some vegetables lost to animals, maybe some is rotten if you didn't care for it enough.

I'd love for farming to be planned ahead and potentially screwed up so the output will be way less than expected, and I'd love for it to have a bigger impact on your gameplay if you fail.

If successful then food won't be a big issue for a couple months, if not then you're just gonna have to cope with it and go on dangerous scavenging runs, etc.

I'm sure this idea has it's flaws though (maybe we're expected to die earlier), but it sounds great in my head.

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