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Author Topic: Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - A roaming horde appears on the horizon!  (Read 1880008 times)

Girlinhat

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Re: Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - Version 0.A "Kaufman" released!
« Reply #10560 on: March 07, 2014, 01:12:08 am »

Also let's be honest.  If it were JUST arm encumberance that hurt melee, then I could wear 3 dufel bags, 2 trench coats, and 2 backpacks and have like 500 storage with no penalty to melee.  It's as much a game balance as anything else!

Sean Mirrsen

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Re: Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - Version 0.A "Kaufman" released!
« Reply #10561 on: March 07, 2014, 01:44:31 am »

How about zero skill, low encumbrance, and a nailboard? A typical starting character of mine. He should be able to get hits in against children at least, and yet...
Ok a further check shows that you end up being nigh unable to hit a zombie child as a zero-skill, nailboard wielder when you have 3 torso ENC. Less than that and I took it down just fine. I'll take a look into potentially rebalancing this later, but for now it's not bad enough to make it to my immediate list (since that is sort of what ENC is supposed to do anyways, and you do have zero skills, meaning you are totally incompetent at hitting things in a fight).
I believe I found (part of) the problem. While skill rebalances by themselves would be good, right now encumbrance works in a weird way. Weight does not matter, for one - whether you are wearing two backpacks filled with half a ton of survival equipment or just two empty sacks the encumbrance for melee purposes is the same. And additionally, there is no fractional encumbrance. A piece of clothing either adds encumbrance or it doesn't, plus the weird implementation of encumbrance "by number of items worn" makes surprisingly little sense.

Perhaps it would be better to rebalance encumbrance, making it so that it accepts fractional values and just uses that? Why does wearing a purse give you the same encumbrance as wearing a backpack? Why the separate values, anyway?

Also, just tested a thing. A character, 7 strength 9 dexterity, 0 melee skill, wielding a tonfa (+2), wearing a jersey and a shirt under a backpack (2 encumbrance)... only survived facing off against a zombie child because of his mad dodging skills and blocking with the tonfa. I got about... 5 hits in, against roughly 12-14 misses. And that's with a tonfa.

I think the best thing to do for this, in the long run, is implementing an inventory system a-la Dwarf Fortress. So that you have containers actually filled with stuff instead of providing storage space, and you could have the total weight of the container actually influence your carrying capacity, in addition to the "movement restriction" thing from wearing clothing.


Also, also, I believe I should report a bug. The zombie children (and sometimes, rarely, other zombies) tend to do this very weird thing wherein they attack you and cause bleeding despite no combat log being made about any attack. Typically all you see is a flash of red on your character tile, and "You're bleeding!" in the log, and nothing else, not an attack or even any damage dealt to the bodypart that's now bleeding. And clothing damage goes past blocking with the weapon, but that might be partially intended.
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"Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe's problems are the world's problems, but the world's problems are not Europe's problems."
- Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs, India

Kaitol

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Re: Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - Version 0.A "Kaufman" released!
« Reply #10562 on: March 07, 2014, 02:44:49 am »

Also let's be honest.  If it were JUST arm encumberance that hurt melee, then I could wear 3 dufel bags, 2 trench coats, and 2 backpacks and have like 500 storage with no penalty to melee.  It's as much a game balance as anything else!
Yeah but your dodge skill would be still be tanked and it would take you forever to throw or swing anything.
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azmodean

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Re: Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - Version 0.9 "Ma" released!
« Reply #10563 on: March 07, 2014, 02:53:51 am »

I was assaulted in my base while reading by a jumping spider.  ...the tiny kind.  I kept getting warned that there was a monster nearby while reading, when I couldn't see anything and I wasn't taking any damage.  I eventually saw the little speck jumping around in my stockpiles and tried to kill it. But I couldn't melee it, not sure what to do I went back to my book.

It was listed as hostile and kept bouncing around me while I was reading, interrupting it.  I imagine it would occasionaly hop up into my book and make little spider noises at me and hop away before it could be squished.  I eventually got fed up and threw the book at it.

Big Book of First-Aid 1  Annoying little spider bastard 0.

Sometimes I love this game.

This MADE MY DAY.

The only problems are that you can't "forget" the map, you can't regenerate terrain from the map screen, you're stuck with whatever character the creator gives you, and it would take forever to make something interesting.
Look in the save folder, all the files with "seen" in the name record what parts of the map you've explored, delete them and it resets to nothing.
I don't understand, "regenerate terrain from the map screen", do you mean "turn this square into (for example) a house, that will be generated when the pc gets in range"?
It's not a very good UI for making maps fast, Maybe we can poke at it, but the list of features is never ending.
It's worth thinking about, though. If those things could be overcome and a custom starting spot could be placed, it'd be pretty nifty.
I need to hash out the details of selecting starting location, I have it half-working.
So, how do you utilize mouse-move and mouse-look?
Mouse-look is SDL only, when you move the mouse cursor around it pops up a window under the status display describing what you can see (as if you were using the "look around" command).
For mouse move (either SDL or curses) click on a tile and it will draw a path to it, click again and you'll auto-move to it (but stop if you spot something etc, same as for crafting etc.).
You can also target with it, which is the same as mouse-move but activates if you're wielding a ranged weapon and the target square has an enemy in it.

Building off of that, if the game should recognize when you've missed several times in a row and warn you about any penalties that may be screwing with your aim. This would solve the problem that people have been running into with unskilled characters by giving them feedback as to why they're not hitting, rather than leaving them to guess.

For example:

"You miss. Your clothing is getting in the way..."
"You miss. Your lack of skill makes using this weapon in close quarters difficult..."
"You miss. Your lack of skill makes using this weapon at long ranges difficult..."
"You miss. Chemicals are hampering your performance..."
"You miss. Your target is particularly hard to hit..."
"You miss. Nothing seems wrong... Maybe you're just unlucky?"
That's a really good idea, thanks.

Anyway, hi all. I've been very busy moving and starting a new job for the past months, even keeping up with DDA development has been a stretch, so unfortunately this thread fell by the wayside.  I'll try and be a bit more active now that I've settled in a bit.

And a heads up from development, there has been a bug for months (since before 0.9 release) that means that for the purposes of vehicle collisions, the game thought everything but monsters and other vehicles was a hallucination.  I fixed it, so vehicles will now go back to taking damage from collisions with walls, trees, and yes, shrubs (but at the post 0.8 *fixed* level of damage from shrubs).  So if you're in the habit of plowing through forests in your deathmobile, you might want to back of a bit.
« Last Edit: March 07, 2014, 02:57:33 am by azmodean »
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Girlinhat

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Re: Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - Version 0.A "Kaufman" released!
« Reply #10564 on: March 07, 2014, 02:59:23 am »

...shrubpocalypse 2014?

wer6

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Re: Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - Version 0.A "Kaufman" released!
« Reply #10565 on: March 07, 2014, 07:04:26 am »

...i just exploded, running over a tree :c
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Sean Mirrsen

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Re: Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - Version 0.A "Kaufman" released!
« Reply #10566 on: March 07, 2014, 07:35:41 am »

Quote
Also, just tested a thing. A character, 7 strength 9 dexterity, 0 melee skill, wielding a tonfa (+2), wearing a jersey and a shirt under a backpack (2 encumbrance)... only survived facing off against a zombie child because of his mad dodging skills and blocking with the tonfa. I got about... 5 hits in, against roughly 12-14 misses. And that's with a tonfa.

That sounds reasonable. Your character is weaker than average (so you do less damage), has no skill at melee, and is quite encumbered. You're more dextrous than average, but that only gives melee bonuses at every 2 points, so (AFAIK) 9 dexterity offers no more to-hit chance than 8 dexterity.
A jersey, a shirt, and a mostly empty backpack, are not in any way significant encumbrance. That's literally an everyday student's gear. If I were using something without a +2 bonus to hit, I would have been missing all the way, just because the enemy is smaller, not faster, than a regular zombie. It really needs some balancing - the defining factors in encumbrance should be weight and material rigidity, not merely potential carry space. For that it needs to use fractional encumbrance values, and mass encumbrance, and just straight up add the values together. To calculate how much an item with carry space will encumber you, your total weight of carried items must be divided by your total carry space, and then each limb is assigned some encumbrance mass depending on what containers are worn on it and how much space they provide.

So that if you have a backpack and cargo pants, and are carrying 30 kilograms of stuff, then by the system you end up with your torso weighed down by 23.077kg, and your legs by 6.923kg, in addition to however much either bodypart is restricted by the clothing itself. It'll need some work and rebalancing, but I think it'll work much better than the current system.
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Multiworld Madness Archive:
Game One, Discontinued at World 3.
Game Two, Discontinued at World 1.

"Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe's problems are the world's problems, but the world's problems are not Europe's problems."
- Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs, India

Robsoie

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Re: Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - Version 0.A "Kaufman" released!
« Reply #10567 on: March 07, 2014, 08:12:53 am »

I wonder if it's the melee skill that makes such a big difference as i don't experience that "can't hit anything" problem in melee , on my characters i always give a level or two (depending on how much points i have left) of melee skill, and i have not noticed problem in hitting in melee with a combat knife, i can miss still but the majority of my melee strikes are connecting.

Now in the same time i never fight anything in open space if it does a difference, i -always- move in a way that the enemy is in a bush/shrub during our battle (even better if i set the bush/shrub on fire with a lighter so the monster die much quicker) or is in a broken window, so even if i miss i can get multiple strikes on the target before the enemy can hit.
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notquitethere

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Re: Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - Version 0.9 "Ma" released!
« Reply #10568 on: March 07, 2014, 08:20:36 am »

Covenant
Being able to just drop your hugely overfilled backpack as soon as you sight a monster would be incredibly overpowered.
I think a 'drop pack' action would be reasonable. If you were lugging a whole load of crap around in real life, you'd throw it down to fight. The action could throw down a pack and a an amount of gear up to that pack's storage capacity, prioritising heavier stuff. You can essentially do this with the inventory management tool, but it's less elegant. It would encourage dumping your gear places, which has dramatic potential, as often points can be overwhelmed and possession temporarily abandoned.
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GlyphGryph

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Re: Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - Version 0.A "Kaufman" released!
« Reply #10569 on: March 07, 2014, 08:24:13 am »

Perhaps it would be better to rebalance encumbrance, making it so that it accepts fractional values and just uses that? Why does wearing a purse give you the same encumbrance as wearing a backpack? Why the separate values, anyway?
Just as a question, do you think a person would/should give more or less. Because it used to give more, and then it gave less, but personally it should obviously give significantly more.
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Akhier the Dragon hearted

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Re: Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - Version 0.A "Kaufman" released!
« Reply #10570 on: March 07, 2014, 08:31:03 am »

I wonder if it's the melee skill that makes such a big difference as i don't experience that "can't hit anything" problem in melee , on my characters i always give a level or two (depending on how much points i have left) of melee skill, and i have not noticed problem in hitting in melee with a combat knife, i can miss still but the majority of my melee strikes are connecting.
   It does affect it quite a bit as while encumbrance affects the number of sides on the dice you roll skill helps determine the number of dice that are being rolled. Basically 2 ranks of skill and 2 encumbrance compared to 0 ranks of skill and no encumbrance would be at a basic level like 3d8 compared to 1d10 though of course more goes into it than that.
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Ivan Issaccs

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Re: Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - Version 0.A "Kaufman" released!
« Reply #10571 on: March 07, 2014, 08:51:59 am »

As for torso encumbrance, put on a shirt and a big heavy coat and a backpack loaded with fifty pounds of gear then try and swing something. Your balance is off and its very tiring.
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Akhier the Dragon hearted

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Re: Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - Version 0.A "Kaufman" released!
« Reply #10572 on: March 07, 2014, 08:55:42 am »

   And even if the backpack is empty it still isn't home free for you. I would almost say an empty one is harder to fight in because at least when it has stuff in it the thing doesn't swing around too much. Empty and it would be constantly getting in your way.
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Join us. The crazy is at a perfect temperature today.
So it seems I accidentally put my canteen in my wheelbarrow and didn't notice... and then I got really thirsty... so right before going to sleep I go to take a swig from my canteen and... end up snorting a line of low-grade meth.

IronTomato

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Re: Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - Version 0.A "Kaufman" released!
« Reply #10573 on: March 07, 2014, 09:10:41 am »

Maybe there could be a special unarmed style which is solely based on carrying as much weight as possible and swinging yourself at people...
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BigD145

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Re: Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - Version 0.A "Kaufman" released!
« Reply #10574 on: March 07, 2014, 09:13:11 am »

Maybe there could be a special unarmed style which is solely based on carrying as much weight as possible and swinging yourself at people...

You mean drunken fighting?
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