RS 'Still Alive'

[MP]

Aug 25, 2022 14:12:05 GMT laleksic said:

Hi,
I just cleared the underground army base and now I can't leave, since an NPC is standing on the tile above the stairs. I've been waiting for some time and he won't move. What can I do?

P.S. I discovered this game very recently and I'm enjoying it very much. Thank you for your work to update it and keep it alive .

Thanks laleksic. I'm glad to hear you're liking it.

The issue of enemies blocking the stairs has been mentioned a couple of times, and given that there's been quite a few other bugs reported recently, I think it's about time that I put out a bugfix release. My goal is to set aside this weekend to work on that.

[laleksic]

Aug 26, 2022 7:31:10 GMT MP said:

Aug 25, 2022 14:12:05 GMT laleksic said:

Hi,
I just cleared the underground army base and now I can't leave, since an NPC is standing on the tile above the stairs. I've been waiting for some time and he won't move. What can I do?

P.S. I discovered this game very recently and I'm enjoying it very much. Thank you for your work to update it and keep it alive .

Thanks laleksic. I'm glad to hear you're liking it.

The issue of enemies blocking the stairs has been mentioned a couple of times, and given that there's been quite a few other bugs reported recently, I think it's about time that I put out a bugfix release. My goal is to set aside this weekend to work on that.

Thank you! Looking forward to it and wish you luck.

Btw, zaimoni, meleeing upwards did not work, since the NPC wasn't hostile towards me, and making him an enemy wasn't possible since I can't actually see him.

[MP]

Aug 26, 2022 14:58:17 GMT laleksic said:

meleeing upwards did not work, since the NPC wasn't hostile towards me, and making him an enemy wasn't possible since I can't actually see him.

Thanks for following up on the comment, that's hugely helpful to know. For whatever reason I had assumed it was just a hostile undead, but this highlighted that any NPC could be blocking an exit. A broader fix is required here. I haven't played RS nor worked on the code in ages, so any extra clues are a big help in bug hunting.

I'm really rusty after 36 months since I last touched the code, and it's proving to be a headache to get back into. Saturday's progress hasn't delivered much more than fixing the oversight that shooting feral dogs marks the player as a murderer. I've been digging into the Sewers Thing invulnerability problem, but it's not going well, and I think I even stumbled into both an as-yet unreported bug with fences and a game freeze. Yikes. Hopefully news tomorrow will be better,

[laleksic]

No problem.

If melee upwards works for hostiles, then that shouldn't be a problem; the player can just melee them to death, annoying but not game breaking.

As for non-hostiles, the way I would handle it is to allow swap places with non-hostile non-follower livings and also vertically across stairs like melee. This would also solve any other cases where NPCs could block the player, not just across map exits.

I can see it being abused by players who want to manuever a neutral into a trap for example. But I assume this could be solved by allowing the AI to "resist" the swap in such cases.

I'm not familiar with the codebase at all, so I have no idea whether implementing that would be easy.

[zaimoni]

Aug 27, 2022 9:48:28 GMT laleksic said:

I can see it being abused by players who want to manuever a neutral into a trap for example. But I assume this could be solved by allowing the AI to "resist" the swap in such cases.

RS Revived allows NPCs to swap with non-hostile NPCs, with mutual consent (that is, if the swap helps the other NPC gets where he wants to go). The PC/NPC version is not built out.

This mainly addresses what had been truly awful traffic jams in CHAR Offices on Day 0/Day 1.

[MP]

I played with the idea of swapping, but in the end I settled for simply relocating the blocking NPC to a nearby square instead.

I'm about halfway through all the bugs that need to be fixed before I push out a new release (gitlab.com/RogueSurvivor-StillAlive/StillAlive/-/milestones/2#tab-issues)

[MP]

Release 7-5 is available for download. It's almost entirely just fixes, but includes fixes for some hard crashes. Also introduces a backup save (inspired by RS Revived).

STILL ALIVE 2.5.13.18 (aka Release 7-5, 17/9/2022) [Author: MP]
---------------------

Features:
-Each successful manual or auto save will create a backup save. Backup saves can also be loaded from the main menu.
-Only one backup save file will exist (in addition to the primary save file), but should always be known-good, even if the primary is corrupted.

Fixes:
-NPCs are now relocated if they're blocking the plater from using an exit (stairs, ladders, exits).
-Fixed item duplication when giving an item to a follower.
-Glowstick and flares boxes now give the correct items.
-Allowed players to build fortifications on exits (stairs, ladders).
-Items with batteries no longer recharge automatically when they run out.
-Fixed The Sewers Thing invincibility bug.
-Killing feral dogs no longer counts as murder.
-Fixed bugs relating to the calculation of fuel ammo.
-Changed the procedure for spawning the army helicopter, which will hopefully resolve related crashes.
-Lowered the cap on the max amount of dogs in a district.
-Inventory overflow when making molotovs now get placed on the ground rather than disappear.
-Fuel pump explosions are no longer centered on the player. They now explode where they should.
-Removed free battery recharge exploit.
-Some map objects in animal shelters were the wrong object type.
-Fuel cans are removed from inventory when their capacity reaches zero.
-Fixed crashes related to zombifying corpses.
-Fixed corpses not being removed if they were dragged to a different map.
-Can no longer spray tag when it's too dark to see.
-Can now drink beers and smoke cigarettes in the dark.
-Fixed small/transparent/short objects blocking line of fire
-Fixed not being able to target enemies when using only ambient light provided by glowsticks, flares and candles.
-Dropping a flare or glowstick no longer consumes two turns.
-Standing on the same spot as a flare or glowstick no longer blocks the light emitted from the item.
-Equipping flares and glowsticks no longer causes the game to crash.
-Odor suppressor status in player details no longer overlaps with inventory title.
-Popups when hovering the mouse should no longer be cut off by the bottom of the screen.

Misc:
-Swapped keybindings for City Info (map) and Info Mode.
-Update the Help file to include a warning about having no audio output device enabled on the system.

[Jess]

Hi! im new here, i just wanted to make a suggestion. Ive been playing this game for months and i love it, but ive seen that after day 14 its almost impossible to survive if you are a wanderer survivor or you start lacking food and need to leave your fortress, because "Those guys" are enemies that you really cant evade and shoot you before you can even see them, and i know theres a "Those guys" gps, but its batteries are drained really fast when enabled and cant be recharged. So i was wondering if you could add an option to enable or disable (or change the arrival chances like we can do with the national guard) "Those guys" arrival to the game. I would really appreciate that!

[MP]

Hi Plush. Thanks for the feedback. I think that's a reasonable change. I'll try to get an updated version out within the next 24 hours.

[Jess]

Oh that's great! I'll be waiting for it!
I wanted to share two ideas i had in mind, I hope it doesnt bother. 

Maybe for the future it could be added a system that removes from the map items that can't be used anymore such as empty sprays, and turn into dust items such as rotten food (something similar to what happen with rotting corpses), to avoid overpopulation and lag.

And the last, an infection system that could progress without the need of multiple zombie bites, progressing a little every hour after being bit and finally killing you. Just to make the infection system something more challenging and similar to what we've seen in movies.

Anyways, i really enjoy this game and i'm glad you are working on making it even better, i totally understand if these things can't be implemented though, i'm no programmer but i know that it's really hard and takes time. Have a nice day.

[zaimoni]

Dec 8, 2022 13:24:16 GMT Jess said:

... i know there's a "Those guys" gps, but its batteries are drained really fast when enabled and cant be recharged....

Right: if your fortress doesn't have an accessible generator, nothing battery-powered is going to be recharged. (I do not consider the hospital generators "accessible": ~10 hour round trip to use.)

[Jess]

What? i tried to recharge my "Those guys" gps with generators but it doesnt work, and yes, my fortress had a generator.

[MP]

I've uploaded a new version (v2.5.15.1) that contains the following changes:

-Added option to disable "Those guys" raids (reduces difficulty, reduces high score multiplier).
-Increased the battery life of trackers and police radios to 18 hours.
-Trackers, radios and phones can be recharged at power generators.
-Removed the following crossbow bolts features introduced in R2, now that flaming arrows are possible (and to reduce late-game lag):
|-chance for fired bolts to rip through an undead, ending up on the ground beside them.
|-chance for fired bolts to land around the target on a miss.
|-chance when a living is hit by a bolt that it may stick in them, and they may pull it out and drop it.


Jess I ran a longish game but never came across any discarded sprays that were empty, only ever partially used ones. There's code to delete empty spray cans and scent sprays when dropped by the player and NPCs. Are you certain you saw empty ones?

I would very much like to introduce a cleanup procedure if it's causing the game to lag the more time passes. Vanilla RS wasn't really designed to be more than a coffee break game. By adding regenerating food sources I've probably pushed the playtime beyond what the engine can handle. Some sort of pruning of discarded items needs to be implemented, but I'm struggling to find a good way to do it. Here's my brainstorming, more than happy to hear other people's ideas on this problem.

Idea	Pros	Cons
Delete certain random stuff at the start of each new day	Simplest to implement	Might delete stuff that a player has deliberately left there
Delete stuff that's been untouched for X amount of time	Less likely to affect the player's stash	CPU overhead not worth it? How to differentiate between spawned and dropped items?
Give the player a "destroy item" option	Least impactful method	The player isn't a cleaning maid. Who would want to sit there and tidy up for ages
Don't drop an item if there's already too many of those sitting around	Might be ok for unpopular items, like spray cans and planks	Not fun for the player if they miss out on something they needed/expected

[Jess]

Oh great! Thanks for adding the option i was asking for! I really appreciate the effort you are putting here keeping with the updates and making this little game that i love alive!

Dec 11, 2022 11:39:51 GMT MP said:

Don't drop an item if there's already too many of those sitting around

Might be ok for unpopular items, like spray cans and planks

Not fun for the player if they miss out on something they needed/expected

In my opinion:
- I think this is the best option, along with the destroy item button, planks and spray cans are easy to find and you can get them everywhere so making some of them dissapear after some time won't be much of a problem if you ask me.

And you are right, empty spray cans doesn't exist in this game, i think that what i saw was a spray can that was almost finished and it just confused me.

---

- Apart from this, I have some questions, does this game have any option that lets the player steal / pickpocket other npcs?

- If i keep upgrading my charisma, i will be able to tame feral dogs and making them companions?

-Is it possible to have something something like an advanced options menu that will allow us to modify the zombie behavior like: speed, fov, atk, dmg, infection chance, etc? (Something like in project zomboid where we decide our own zombie apocalyse)

[MP]

Does this game have any option that lets the player steal / pickpocket other npcs?

It might be fun to let the player steal from sleeping NPCs. Or give them the ability to restrain an NPC and then be able to rummage through their inventory, like you can do in DayZ. Unfortunately it doesn't have anything like this, but you can trade with NPCs, and if you get your charisma high enough they'll basically trade anything (accept junk in exchange for something valuable). I've added it as a feature request on the GitLab repo.

If i keep upgrading my charisma, i will be able to tame feral dogs and making them companions?

Dogs were partially developed in vanilla RS, but never made it into the game. I enabled it for Still Alive, though their code is pretty bare bones. Unlike humans, dogs only have code for wandering around, but it probably wouldn't be too hard to implement. I've added it as a feature request on the GitLab repo.

Is it possible to have something like an advanced options menu that will allow us to modify the zombie behavior like: speed, fov, atk, dmg, infection chance, etc? (Something like in project zomboid where we decide our own zombie apocalypse)

If you go into the <gamedir>/Resources/Data/ folder you'll find a bunch of csv files. One of those is Actors.csv, which houses the default stats for the various enemy classes and NPCs. You can tweak those to suit your taste. Just be aware of a few things:
1. Changes may have have adverse effects on the game (eg. don't set FOV to less than 1, setting negative values may break stuff, etc).
2. Each time I put out a new release these CSVs will be standard, so keep a backup if you do decide to tweak them.
3. New releases may change the structure of the CSV files, and thus may not be backwards compatible with CSVs from earlier versions.
4. The game won't account for any tweaked values when it comes to high scores. For example, you'll get the same score for killing 10 zombies whether they have 1 HP or 100 HP. (Way back in the day, there was a bit of competition on here regarding who could get the highest score, and tweaking these values would be considered cheating)