Swing State

[nasKo]

Happy Mondoid all. Here’s all the latest on all the stuff soon to come to PZ’s Kentucky heartlands.

NEW MAP STUFF

The two new map areas are pretty much done, and Mash is currently linking them up to the main map with some new roads. They’ll need a brief stay on an internal build for sanity checking, but afterwards will be packaged into one of RJ’s imminent-ish Build 35 IWBUMS beta releases. We want exploration-minded beta testers to discover them on their own terms, but here’s a clue.

(We should probably say that it isn’t Fort Knox, as that would presumably have a few of these!).

ANIMS

We had a quick chat about your/our frustration with anims not joining in with all the testing last week, and are still under the bonnet connecting gears and sprockets today.

At present the code PZ uses for the state machines (ie. what’s going on ‘right now!’ for characters – so a zombie could be in ‘bite state’, or a player could be in ‘swing state’) is being transplanted into the new animation state system.

We’re writing a hook system to allow the xml that defines the animations and states to call Java or lua functions that mimic the structure of the existing PZ state machine very closely. In this way it becomes far easier to transplant the masses of code found in the state system into a similar structure within the new version. We can remove all the code that relies on 2D animation frames (for example: ‘on the 12th frame of swing bat animation, connect the hit and apply damage and XP!’) and then we can take the appropriate chunks of code and transplant them fairly unchanged into the new status quo.

This will both minimize the amount of work in the process, and standardise the system for new gameplay additions and modding in the future.

VOIP

A test of General Arcade’s latest VOIP build last week revealed a few problems in terms of players whose microphones weren’t being picked up – which further analysis has revealed is connected to the sampling rate of the capture device. Popular ranges like 48000Hz and 16000Hz weren’t working, but now the bug has been worked out our industrious Russian friends are beavering away on a fresh build that (fix dependent) should be ready for a wider test.

BUILD 35 IWBUMS BETA

RJ has been on a roll with MP improvements for long-suffering admins and hosts in the current public beta, and as such didn’t want to break his momentum. To this end the 35.20 release will have a vastly improved Safehouse system, and easier clan/group management that we’ll be calling Factions just because it sounds a bit more apocalyptic-y. Over to RJ:

“I’ve been talking to some of the people who run PZ servers to find out how we can make MP a better place for players.  This has entailed a bunch of powerful new tools for Admin, and also new stuff for players themselves.”

“I’ve reworked the Safehouse system with a brand new UI. This will make a Safehouse owner’s life much more easy: you can quickly add people from a list, change Safehouse title, hand over ownership and players can now also remove themselves from the building’s list.”

“There’s also a new server option: ‘DisableSafehouseWhenPlayerConnected’. Basically, if set to ‘true’ by the admin, it’ll remove the safehouse’s anti-trepass and non-looting security if anyone tied to it is connected online, and also a little while after the last player of a safehouse disconnects to avoid ‘safety-quitting’. I’m playing around with the system to check for loopholes and hoping that this will encourage some cool faction wars, while also still keeping peoples’ loot safe when they’re not playing the game.”

“Something else going into 35.20, or maybe 35.21, is the ability to form a Faction and invite players to it. Once you have enough in your gang you can choose a tag, which will always be visible to your faction friends – but you can choose whether or not the strangers you meet can see it and identify your allegiance. Faction PvP will automatically mean that melee attacks won’t hurt your friends, but this can be turned off by players themselves should they want to put friends out of their misery – while firearms will always be deadly no matter what.”

“Something else that’ll be good for servers has also been added and tested too: a ‘No PvP Zone’ that Admins can drag out over the map.  Players within this zone will be invulnerable to attack, but also won’t be able to attack – even with firearms. This also comes with a brand new UI that allows for quick deletion, changing the zone’s name and teleportation to other zones that have been created.”

This week’s pin-up player is the thunderstruck Thundahstuck. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is now open for chat and hijinks too. A general overview of the content of PZ builds past, in testing and upcoming can now be found here.

[miked79]

Sweet,  Faction stuff and Safe house tweaks sound good!

 

Tho i do need to stop reading these mondoids, all they do is get my hopes up for a "certain" update, and I get a lil sad to see it is not quite ready yet!

 

Keep up the good works

[Zorak]

Great update, im so hyped about fractions. im just worried by this part

Quote

while firearms will always be deadly no matter what.”

If we are in fraction just make no pvp damage unless duble confirmed.

A fraction leader can declare war to other fraction and then you have pvp on (guns will hit enemy but not friends)

for other guys just keep it as it is now (its your own choise are you hostile or not)

 

and ofc a new gif as we still wait for animations

[Blasted_Taco]

30 minutes ago, Zorak said:

If we are in fraction just make no pvp damage unless duble confirmed.

A fraction leader can declare war to other fraction and then you have pvp on (guns will hit enemy but not friends)

for other guys just keep it as it is now (its your own choise are you hostile or not)

 

Maybe on PVE, but for PVP, it should stay like that where melee has no friendly fire and guns do.

[miked79]

agreed Blasted Taco

[miked79]

6 minutes ago, Blasted_Taco said:

 

Maybe on PVE, but for PVP, it should stay like that where melee has no friendly fire and guns do.

agreed

(((Sorry double post(((( , had some lag or something!

Edited October 24, 2016 by miked79

[Zorak]

20 minutes ago, Blasted_Taco said:

 

Maybe on PVE, but for PVP, it should stay like that where melee has no friendly fire and guns do.

But right now if you are frendly you wont hit anyone with guns. So when you join a fraction according to the info we have, you from now on will start hitting your friends. Aiming in PZ is messy to not use other words, I dont mind frendly fire in FPS but here it will cause a lot of whining. Beside if we turn frendly fire off for team mates it will make team fights more exciting.

 

I just remember the 1st multiplayer build (24) where there was no safety system, it was a mess thats why im against frendly fire.

The other solution is to add some indicator that a friend is close to your gun fire and there is a risk that you hit him

[Dusty Lens]

Firing on hostiles with impunity whilst your friends can close to melee range doesn't seem like a good balancing act. While knowing where you're aiming isn't always a perfect art in PZ it's generally fairly clear if something is between where you are and where you're aiming. The idea of accidental friendly fire at a 45* angle from your intended path of attack seems not entirely likely. 

 

There's something to be said for the idea of removing friendly fire within x tiles of a shooter, to simulate a kind of "firing over the shoulder" scenario rather than having your ally put their rifle in the middle of your back and going to town. But the removal of the strategic consideration of long range support through a tangle of allies to nail enemies without penalty? I'm not certain that's a good idea.

 

While I'm here I'll say that the ideas on the table appear to be good ones. While the development process for PZ has not been a short one it's worth noting that time has always been set aside to adjust issues encountered by playtesters, so I'm sure that if any real issues crop up as a result of these proposed starting points that adjustments will be forthcoming. So hopefully we can all keep the panic moodles to a minimum.

[Zorak]

17 minutes ago, Dusty Lens said:

There's something to be said for the idea of removing friendly fire within x tiles of a shooter, to simulate a kind of "firing over the shoulder" scenario rather than having your ally put their rifle in the middle of your back and going to town. But the removal of the strategic consideration of long range support through a tangle of allies to nail enemies without penalty? I'm not certain that's a good idea.

I like that part.

[tommysticks]

Zeds gonna be banned from the safe zone?

[Livio Persemprio]

I agree with Zorak, friendly fire will make combat way too frustrating. Why shouldn't we be allowed to charge at an enemy with friends shooting in order to cover us? It's fair to your opponent because they can do the same, or they can get behind good cover and shoot all the melee players down, or else. I dunno, I don't like PvP. All I know is that with this idea in its current state, I'm not allowed to carry a gun on myself with my faction because I'm too scared of accidentaly shooting them in the back, I'll be forced to play with PvP off on a PvP area, and so will my friends. Is there any way to prevent this without breaking any weird logic of "pro PvPing"?

I also second Tommystick's question

[Blasted_Taco]

I third Tommystick question.

 

Also the grip with friendly fire seems to be more of "you dont know where is the character aiming, thus you can shoot your friend".

 

My first friendly fire incident was back in the 24 build where i used a shotgun with dem rare shells and someone was in front of me and i shot him by mistake.

 

Instead of walking around the problem of friendly fire, they need to fix the way to precise aim, taking out friendly fire out of the equation of PVP makes everything more simpler in my opinion, you can do supressing fire, i seen it happen (with the guns mods, cant recall the name), you just need, like in real life, to make sure that the bullet wont hit your friend, but just aim in the direction of the people who are shooting at you.

 

Imagine a scenario where if there was no friendly fire, you can lay down suppressing fire while 3 of your friends run in front of you while carrying guns, if one of the opponents take a quick peek to shoot or see whats going on, he cant do shit because either the running guy with bullets behind him will shot him first or the suppressing fire will get him (seen this in red orchesta)

 

I agree that on PVE friendly fire is more than needed because if you friend gets in a very sticky sitaution, you can get him out without fear of the cone of death that the shotgun has.

 

However for PVP, you can pull off some dirty tactics around the fact that your friends cant hit you, we just need a way to aim at targets, not body parts, but targets.

[Kuren]

56 minutes ago, Blasted_Taco said:

Instead of walking around the problem of friendly fire, they need to fix the way to precise aim

This is more the issue here in my opinion. The aiming UI really needs a complete overhaul to give better feedback to the player and telling them where their shot might end up. Right now there's not a lot of feedback other than "hit" or "miss." You don't know where your miss went and you have no way of knowing what targets you might end up hitting.

Hopefully the animation update will bring some feedback to players with things like shaky characters with low/panicked aiming, more precise animations that show the exact direction your current primary target is in and bullet lines (for hits and misses) but we'll have to wait and see.

I personally wish you could choose your primary target more accurately with the mouse instead of it simply being based on the direction you're facing and chances to hit, but with more combat overhauls coming who knows how things will change
 

Edited October 25, 2016 by Kuren

[Lumbo]

Hype for the map addition, and the safehouse system sounds genious especially with the easy faction system!

[Zorak]

I cant wait for some huge fraction wars on redboid

Im 100% sure there was a video back in build 1.5 where devs were testing new aiming system (shrinking circle). Tbh that was good way of improving aiming system and information for players. I cant find that old video, probably it was removed :-/

 

I also hope that new map areas wont be that far from MU or WP. Distance from MU to WP is ok without a car but those who run from MU to new denver know that pain.

[Hicks]

You'll still need to block the zeds with walls from any non pvp zone if you want it to be a true "safe zone".

 

Edited October 25, 2016 by Hicks

[DresdenBBQ]

Lovin it

Though i will say I like friendly fire it adds a little bit of immersion but I do agree with what everyone is saying with your able to hit your friends pretty unrealistically but I dont think they need to change the entire shooting system I just don't believe we should be able to hit our friends with guns when they're standing right in front of us. Maybe if they were like 20 feet ahead though.

Edited October 25, 2016 by Queen Glory

[Unghin]

Map expantion, sweeet. Thank you!

[Blasted_Taco]

20 hours ago, Zorak said:

I cant wait for some huge fraction wars on redboid

Im 100% sure there was a video back in build 1.5 where devs were testing new aiming system (shrinking circle). Tbh that was good way of improving aiming system and information for players. I cant find that old video, probably it was removed :-/

 

I also hope that new map areas wont be that far from MU or WP. Distance from MU to WP is ok without a car but those who run from MU to new denver know that pain.

 

I recall that video, i kinda liked the idea, dunno why they never implemented that.

Maybe a small bullseye or something, just something to give feedback to the player and tell him "You are about to blow this motherfucker in front of you with the shotgun" and then miss the shot because you are panicking, haven't sleep in 3 days and you are weak because you didn't knew there was a nutrition system in place.

 

 

Edited October 26, 2016 by Blasted_Taco

[Necromatic_Corgi]

11 hours ago, Blasted_Taco said:

 

I recall that video, i kinda liked the idea, dunno why they never implemented that.

Maybe a small bullseye or something, just something to give feedback to the player and tell him "You are about to blow this motherfucker in front of you with the shotgun" and then miss the shot because you are panicking, haven't sleep in 3 days and you are weak because you didn't knew there was a nutrition system in place.

 

 

In my honest opinion I hate the current aiming system, The whole dice roll system leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Nothing like shooting into a horde and missing everything, Hopefully they would consider an updated system. Something more player friendly.

[Colin]

I agree with above ^ numerous times there have been hordes and with a pistol i have missed every shot.... even standing inches away from the zombie.... even the most useless of people could "accidently" shoot one of them... and at inches away is almost impossible to miss.....

Edited October 26, 2016 by Colin

[DresdenBBQ]

The aiming system will be changed in time hopefully in our near future but theres nothing we can do about it now so why whine about it. It sucks thats it.

[Necromatic_Corgi]

2 hours ago, Queen Glory said:

The aiming system will be changed in time hopefully in our near future but theres nothing we can do about it now so why whine about it. It sucks thats it.

We whine about it so that the devs can see that some of us don't enjoy it, How else would they know if we don't let them know?

[Dusty Lens]

For what it's worth I will agree that the current aiming system is very annoying. Firearms in general are unrewarding at the moment and, outside of having a grand old time emptying out a bucketload of shotgun shells the only real use I've found for unmodded guns is to serve as a nice portable noise source. Furthermore I'm not entirely certain that if someone were to actually choose to focus on firearms as a skill, lord help them, there would be sufficient ammo on the map to employ higher skill weapon types before their ammo was depleted from the map.

 

Guns hold a very strange place within PZ at the present. I'm not entirely certain if they're meant to have a role, which I feel must be the case based on the number of skills and trinkets associated with them, or if what we have at present is supposed to be a placeholder for a more robust vision that has yet to mature.

 

[Necromatic_Corgi]

40 minutes ago, Dusty Lens said:

For what it's worth I will agree that the current aiming system is very annoying. Firearms in general are unrewarding at the moment and, outside of having a grand old time emptying out a bucketload of shotgun shells the only real use I've found for unmodded guns is to serve as a nice portable noise source. Furthermore I'm not entirely certain that if someone were to actually choose to focus on firearms as a skill, lord help them, there would be sufficient ammo on the map to employ higher skill weapon types before their ammo was depleted from the map.

 

Guns hold a very strange place within PZ at the present. I'm not entirely certain if they're meant to have a role, which I feel must be the case based on the number of skills and trinkets associated with them, or if what we have at present is supposed to be a placeholder for a more robust vision that has yet to mature.

 

Well said.