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[Darkmere]

To tell the truth, what I want is the same cataclysm from a year ago (or 3) but with all the little quality of life fixes, changes, and so on.  But none of the 'realistic' vehicle stuff (cranes and such), none of the realistic gun stuff, no filthy clothes stuff, etc.  But I'm just a lazy jerk who posts what he wants in a thread.

A good chunk of the community would agree with you. Fucks sake even many of the devs would agree.

Pretty much what I want. I completely lost interest when we went for masturbatory realism over immersiveness and fun.

[Blood_Librarian]

Yep, same here.

[Robsoie]

I think Cataclysm as a concept is a great game for both kind of players, the ones that thrive for ultra-realism gameplay before anything and the ones that thrive for nicely balanced and fun gameplay before any realistic consideration.
But if the current goal is full realism, it's obvious it will then leave behind one of the type of player as it did with some developers.

While i would prefer personnally if Cataclysm would focus on the 2nd type of gameplay, instead of going a fork way and so dividing the rare devs pool between 2 (or even more) projects or people just drifting away, there should be instead a possibility to have some kind of option , something like "realism on/off" if the changes that makes the current cdda ending into this problematic divides can't be solved just by mods.

I understand it would probably require a lot more coding and time to maintain both on/off side of a "realism" option as i suppose some of the mechanics would then work differently (the aiming that had led to that split by example), but in the end i think it would be a win/win situation as it would exclude no kind of player and devs not agreeing with one of the realism side would still be able to work on the other side of the option without having to fork everything or just leave.

[Random_Dragon]

Pretty much what I want. I completely lost interest when we went for masturbatory realism over immersiveness and fun.

I will, as usual, repeat something I stressed an awful lot back when I was a contributor: realism is fine so long as it enhances gameplay, not detracts from it.

At one point Coolthulhu and I had a discussion where that point came up. You know what he said? He expressed doubt about that concept about the idea of "you can have realism and fun" if I recall. The quote itself was essentially "I'm not so sure anymore" or something of that sort.

It's not just getting to be a problem for players, that's a hint that this is annoying the other devs at times.

[azmodean]

I see at the end of that back and forth about gun accuracy was that the alternative was mentioned as being able to be a mod.  Was that outright rejected, or would it just need to be proposed as a mod rather than a direct game update?

I'm fine with there being a mod that adjusts this stuff in mainline, there's one guy trying to add it, but he keeps trying to do it in really weird ways.

I mean, I get what you're saying, to a point.  The reality bubble is so small even a small handgun can hit easily at max range if you use real life stats.  That makes more accurate guns rather pointless. 

You get it exactly.  Please note two replies ago from me...

Hrm... I'll have to have a think on that, maybe we can just set everything to be IRL accurate and let the chips fall where they may.

I'm thinking about it and at this point strongly considering going in this direction.

To tell the truth, what I want is the same cataclysm from a year ago (or 3) but with all the little quality of life fixes, changes, and so on.  But none of the 'realistic' vehicle stuff (cranes and such), none of the realistic gun stuff, no filthy clothes stuff, etc.  But I'm just a lazy jerk who posts what he wants in a thread.

Perhaps that is what people want, there's a crazy person trying to clone dda into Python and then take it in a different direction, godspeed to him.  As far as I can tell if literally anyone except me makes a fork, it will be more game-like and less realistic.

I have absolutely no problem with hosting a total conversion mod that changes everything about the game as part of the dda repository (including the necessary alterations to the core game to make it flexible enough to do both things).  That's what BrightNights was going to be, but from what I can tell Coolthulu came down with a nasty case of having a job and suddenly had no free time to work on it.  The down side of course is that such a thing would be a huge amount of work, both in terms of creating the content in the first place and in keeping it in sync with changes to the rest of the game, but it's sure as hell less work than either starting from scratch or forking the entire game.

Bad news for you if BrightNights gets booted back up though, the current gun balance is precisely what Coolthulu asked for, so at this point I'm closer to what you're asking for than he is.  It's precisely the "realism over fun" argument that says to make guns *more* accurate, it's never as simple as one side vs another.

[Random_Dragon]

Hrm... I'll have to have a think on that, maybe we can just set everything to be IRL accurate and let the chips fall where they may.

I'm thinking about it and at this point strongly considering going in this direction.

> TFW you can't tell if Kevin is trolling or actually thinks "inject 100% pure realism directly into your eyeballs" is a good idea

[Greiger]

Other things aside, Kevin coming here to speak and share his side of things despite this forum trending very hostile to him has caused me to regain some faith in the project. 

There are still some things I don't fully agree with, but I honestly thought Kevin had written bay 12 off as a lost cause.  Coming here to defend his position would not be something he would do if he didn't at least feel he was doing the right thing.  I'll probably give the newest experimentals a try or two and try to be a bit less hostile in my posts.

[scriver]

I like the dirty clothes, because it took a head-rule I was already following (no clothes off of zombies, or off if human corpses unless they were full || or had belonged to other survivor NPCs) and made it an actual game mechanic.

[Damiac]

Cool, thanks for answering my questions and stuff.  Thanks for coming by here to explain what's going on from your point of view, always better than a third hand account.

And just to reiterate, while I definitely don't like all the changes, I know managing a project like this isn't easy, and I do appreciate Kevin's effort, as I've enjoyed the product of his and all the other dev's work.  As a person on a forum talking about games my default position is criticism, but I wouldn't bother to criticize a game that I don't like.  Thanks to all of you.

[zaimoni]

I understand it would probably require a lot more coding and time to maintain both on/off side of a "realism" option as i suppose some of the mechanics would then work differently ....

Testing time is the larger problem.  The main "advantage" of an option (either runtime or compile-time) is that implementing the option requires a sufficiently clean implementation of both to switch between the two.  Other than that it's pure downside for anything that's fundamental to gameplay (which this most definitely is).

[azmodean]

Testing time is the larger problem.

I agree, that's why I suggested a total conversion mod, not an option.  Automated tests (which I'm working on building more of) can test shared functionality and make sure it doesn't drift unexpectedly (i.e. by a code change adjusting the effective accuracy of a gun with particular stats), then each set of stats needs to be maintained separately, because if they have dependencies on each other, they also have opportunities to influence each other.  There are too many points of potential disagreement for a single flag to toggle between modes in a sensical fashion, for example:
Maximum range of individual weapons:
    Realism says ranges are very long, and weapon types aren't distinct, game logic says ranges are constrained by the game engine and weapon types have distinct ranges.
Scaling of hit rates compared to range.
    Realism says hit rates decay linearly with distance, game logic probably wants a shallow hit rate decay at first followed by a steep drop.
Impact of increasing stats vs skills vs weapon type vs weapon modifications.
    I.E. each of these contribute to accuracy, but probably in different proportions.
Handling of improvised firearms:
    Realism says they're very inaccurate compared to factory weapons, game logic says they're comparable.
Existence of weapons:
    I assume a more game-oriented fork would prune out a large number of weapons in the interests of simplification and reducing workload.  Likewise a game-oriented fork might add things like freely constructible firearms that are on par with factory built guns, they would simply not exist in dda.

Trying to pack all of these into a single option is a recipe for the system being buggy and poorly tested.  Some of these (e.g. hit rate decay with distance) would need to be toggled with a flag and implemented in the game engine, but others would need separate definitions for all supported weapons, and some weapons would be blacklisted or undefined instead.

[Soadreqm]

I like the dirty clothes, because it took a head-rule I was already following (no clothes off of zombies, or off if human corpses unless they were full || or had belonged to other survivor NPCs) and made it an actual game mechanic.

I like the concept too, but the implementation has some problems that make it not worth it for me. Even though it's supposedly meant to be more realistic, everything about it feels gamey. Dirtiness is a binary toggle that zombie clothes always have and other clothes never do. The only way to get rid of it is to find a semi-rare resource. The whole existence of the washboard feels like an ugly hack to get past needing to implement a proper interface for any of this. In an ideal world, I would be able to get some of the slime off my clothes just by scrubbing them in the river. Or boil them over a fire to get them reasonably clean without needing soap. It should be easier to clean items made entirely out of plastic and similar materials. If an item is fireproof, I should be able to burn it clean. And items would get dirtier over time, even when not worn by a dead person. And filthy items would be displayed using something less ugly than rendering the name in dark brown. I can't immerse myself in this.

I don't think it's really about finding a compromise between realism and fun, because right now, much of the game isn't either. Like the skill grind.

[Random_Dragon]

I like the concept too, but the implementation has some problems that make it not worth it for me. Even though it's supposedly meant to be more realistic, everything about it feels gamey.

Another point I've mentioned back on the old forums. It fails to be realistic, and it doesn't really serve its obstinate gameplay purpose.

[Gamerlord]

Searching the - frankly horrifying - new site I cannot find any modpacks. As I want to get back into playing Cataclysm, that kinda sucks. Is there anywhere I can find a bundle of mods with a recent version of the game? Preferably PKs Rebalancing, lots of content mods, etc. If any of you guys has a personal bundle it'd be great if you could upload it or something. I just cannot muster the strength to sort through and download, then check mods to see if they fit together, only to lose the effort in a couple of months when I need to update again. So if anyone can help that'd be great.

[azmodean]

It's not complete, but I've tagged a lot of the threads with mods here https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/tags/mod
For a more complete list, all mods are in the https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/c/game-talk/the-lab category.