Compatibility: Officially released Steam v1.49.x (all versions .0 through .8) (and GoG/Epic Equivalent) Compatible ____________________________________________________
The Following - Released 2016, February 9
Unfortunately, I will not expand the mod for The Following Countryside map as the safe zones in that map are intricately tied to the story quest and other quests and actions in the map. ____________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________ PLEASE ACTUALLY READ THE README FILE AND MOD DESCRIPTION _______________________________________________________________________ Asking basic questions that are not only already answered, but PLASTERED all over the mod and its files wastes not just my time, but yours. On that note:
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As I am constantly needing to reply to questions on my mods with "As noted in the ReadMe...", and "As noted in the mod description...", if you do post a question that is already clearly answered on the mod page or in the mod ReadMe file(s): A) your question will be ignored B) your question will be removed C) you will be banned from access to all of my content
Repeated posts asking already-answered questions will likely also lead to removal of not just the question(s), but also of the ability for the poster to download or even see any of my mods on Nexus.
I already put the effort in to writing the information out clearly and in multiple locations. Being too lazy to bother reading any of them and going right to asking a question that is literally answered an inch above where the question is being written has no excuse. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ As I am used to re-writing information: To summarize: Anyone who asks a question/makes a statement/reports an issue that is already answered in the ReadMe file or clearly noted in the mod description will have their question ignored, outright deleted, and or simply blocked from even being able to see/download any of my mods. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Hope you like it if you do try it! If you mean map sources like uncompiled versions of the game's official maps, I don't think those have ever been made available for map makers to use. I believe all of the assets that exist in the game are available for use in the devtools for map makers to use in their own maps, but not the actual game's maps.
Repeatable missions seem possible now, maybe you can switch over the mod to use them (to both enable long term functionality after the 50 hardcoded missions and save much space), see https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1491991662
Could you possibly add a true random version? For example, have 1-4 safe-zones randomly go out if all zones are active in a section, and maybe even a low chance of an entire grid shut down.
i like this idea, but not the way its done. i would prefer a system where the zombies eventually break down the doors and reclaim random safe zones at random intervals. im not fond of the power consumtion one.
I would prefer a version like that too. Unfortunately the game does not really allow for anything like that to be possible as we can't manually cause infected to spawn at a specific place to then assault and overrun a safe zone. It would be great if Techland were to implement assault horde events that attack safe zones, or at least allow for enemies to be spawned at specific locations manually. If they did, then players could make their way to these safe zones after the NPCs make a call for help. They already have the system in place with their random NPC helping events, they would just need to create spawn places for hordes and larger enemies near safe zones that then assault the safe zone.
However, with the new game update the player's location seems to update constantly as your location gets saved so you load in right where you exited at in the countryside. This loading in where you exited at behavior doesn't extend to the Slums and Old Town due to how those areas are configured, but the player's location is still constantly updated. It may be possible to try and note coordinates using the player's location, and maybe try to find a way to manually enter these coordinates for a location to spawn a horde and trigger an event. It would be a lot of messing around with files and it may not even be possible, but this new constantly updating player coordinate behavior may make it possible as now we can know specific map coordinates.
I don't know if it will help you, but making safe zones "safe" is considered as an event, that can be done only once. Altering it causes them to revert back to unsafe, but also creates many problems... But since you are doing it with quests, I guess you don't need it.
I've dug through files and couldn't find any real relationship between safe zones and events outside of a select few quests that call on events to occur in a specific place, let alone anything of their actually being events instead of quests. I would love to know what you know about safe zones as events as that is one major hurdle holding me back from getting the assault hordes to spawn inside of the safe zones at the time of unsecuring. I've tried creating events and have them called from within the quest, but that did not work as well as I had hoped so I set that aside for the time being.
Would you consider pointing me in at least the general direction of safe zone securing being an event? I'd love to look at what can be done going at it from that angle, and perhaps combine the quests and events to see if some of those problems you mentioned could be overcome.
Thank you, as always, for continuing to inspire me and for being so ready to help out other modders!
edit: No luck so far but I'll keep looking. I wonder if it was Dead Island, but it didn't have safe houses and stuff, so it can't be that game. I started to think if I misread something or just imagined it...
Oh, that's quite alright. Thanks for taking the time to look for it again! I was driving myself nuts when I first started messing with safe zones after leinash suggested a re-securing mod. I had initially tried to get them to be as events so the unsecuring and re-securing could function under the random, repeating nature of the map events, but I thought the quest route was the only choice. The prospect of getting them to function as events after all got me kind of excited.
I still think there must be a way to tie map events and quests together for a more dynamic and easily repeatable way of triggering a safe zone disabling, as well as spawning the desired assault hordes within the specific safe zone areas. I've done some testing with the "GameEvent", "actiondirector_event_start" and "actiondirector_event_group_control", but I think I'm missing some key aspect of getting those to work right.
I've also done a little bit of testing with making them work as always-on auto-challenges so they could be infinitely repeatable and have more control over adding assault hordes. Still need to look more into that.
Thank you for looking again. Your comment of "Altering it causes them to revert back to unsafe, but also creates many problems" has made me remember something that happened during some of my testing. While trying to trigger custom assault hordes through event calls, I ran into an issue of securing the initial safe zone causing the quest reward to be granted 3 times. Upon reloading the save game I found that the safe zone was being reverting to the initial unsecured state again and with the initial zombies re-spawning as if I had not secured it previously. I didn't look closer into that, but it's possible that you are dead on with what you described. Either that or I was not thinking and didn't trigger the game to save after the securing so reloading the game was loading up before I secured it previously.
I get real wordy talking about stuff like this. Sorry.
I'll see if I can reproduce that scenario again to verify that messing with event calls from the quests can cause the quest to not be saved as being completed so safe zones could be repeatable upon every loading of a save game without the need for dozens of quests.
Thanks for getting me to think again about the relationship between safe zones and events.
About the problems I encountered, some of the safe zones didn't reset (actually I believe it is all of them) and you weren't able to resecure them.
If we could see a "daily quest" example (repeating example, so to speak), you won't have to use that many cycles (40-50 or so), as one would suffice. I don't know if events can call quests. Do the repeatable escort missions pop-up as quests? Can't recall.
It's ok to be talky, it's called brainstorming/idea exchanging
From what I can see about escort missions, and what I think I understand them to be so far, is that the escorts are both events and quests working together, though I do not understand how the events call the quests again after it has already been completed once, or if they even do. I'm still hazy on most of it.
It seems to work like this, or as far as I think I can tell from what I've looked at:
· A single quest spawns a single NPC onto the map that is used in the escort event. There is a quest for each NPC and all it looks to be doing is spawning them, enabling their chatter, and gives them a marker on your mini map when you are near them. ( data\quests\slums\slums_scripted_events_c_quest.xml Line 2103 on )
· Then the NPC looks like it is somehow activated via an 'AssistEvent' (or 'GenericAssistEvent' for the non-unique NPCs to escort). When the AssistEvent is triggered based on its timer, I think it simply looks for and activates the nearest escort NPC to your current position and activates them. ( data\scripts\common_events.scr Line 403 )
How that AssistEvent enables the NPC to be interacted with (speech and movie stuff) and then leaves them in a state of limbo before you accept to escort them I do not know. That is probably within the specific escort .dat files that I haven't looked into if they can be read yet. ( data\ai\human\human_data_custom_preset_enc_npc_nick.dat and the others )
Still a lot to look into on that.
_____ While looking into making a two-step throwable bomb so it could have a detonator remote, I looked into how the remote activators were called when near an electric fence trap. It doesn't look promising for the remotely detonated bomb idea, but it made me realize that the electric traps are infinitely repeatable and seem to work like an inverted safe zone for the most part, and even involves flipping a switch to re-activate the disabled gate. I'm digging into those files to see what I can learn about them.
Hey StinVec. Remember a file I was talking about? I finally found it. It is located under data/scripts/challenges/autosafezonecompletetion.scr or something like that. It has the list of all safe houses (I think), and it imports another scr. If you look at that other imported file, you can see these only occur once. Changing it to false didn't help me though. There is another "command", canstartinsafezones() or something similar to that, I added it as true, but still no luck. I think it might require a new save in order to work properly, I think since we complete those with the command canhappenonce(true), they are tagged forever.
I'll evaluate this mod to see if it is compatible with the newly released 1.6.0 game version as soon as I finish downloading the update. It's not likely, but possible, that their new DLC quests may utilize the previously unused quest trees that I adopted for use in this mod. They likely chose different tree names and there will not be an issue, but I will check to make sure and update if necessary.
No issues with v1.6.0 as they used quest trees 8, 9 and 10 for the stadium quests, whereas I used 4, 5 and 6. Even if they did use 4, 5 and 6, I do not think there would be an issue.
19 comments
____________________________________________________
The Following - Released 2016, February 9
Unfortunately, I will not expand the mod for The Following Countryside map as the safe zones in that map are intricately tied to the story quest and other quests and actions in the map.
____________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
PLEASE ACTUALLY READ THE README FILE AND MOD DESCRIPTION
_______________________________________________________________________
Asking basic questions that are not only already answered, but PLASTERED all over the mod and its files wastes not just my time, but yours.
On that note:
A) your question will be ignored
B) your question will be removed
C) you will be banned from access to all of my content
Repeated posts asking already-answered questions will likely also lead to removal of not just the question(s), but also of the ability for the poster to download or even see any of my mods on Nexus.
I already put the effort in to writing the information out clearly and in multiple locations. Being too lazy to bother reading any of them and going right to asking a question that is literally answered an inch above where the question is being written has no excuse.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
As I am used to re-writing information:
To summarize: Anyone who asks a question/makes a statement/reports an issue that is already answered in the ReadMe file or clearly noted in the mod description will have their question ignored, outright deleted, and or simply blocked from even being able to see/download any of my mods.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
However, with the new game update the player's location seems to update constantly as your location gets saved so you load in right where you exited at in the countryside. This loading in where you exited at behavior doesn't extend to the Slums and Old Town due to how those areas are configured, but the player's location is still constantly updated. It may be possible to try and note coordinates using the player's location, and maybe try to find a way to manually enter these coordinates for a location to spawn a horde and trigger an event. It would be a lot of messing around with files and it may not even be possible, but this new constantly updating player coordinate behavior may make it possible as now we can know specific map coordinates.
I don't know if it will help you, but making safe zones "safe" is considered as an event, that can be done only once. Altering it causes them to revert back to unsafe, but also creates many problems... But since you are doing it with quests, I guess you don't need it.
I've dug through files and couldn't find any real relationship between safe zones and events outside of a select few quests that call on events to occur in a specific place, let alone anything of their actually being events instead of quests. I would love to know what you know about safe zones as events as that is one major hurdle holding me back from getting the assault hordes to spawn inside of the safe zones at the time of unsecuring. I've tried creating events and have them called from within the quest, but that did not work as well as I had hoped so I set that aside for the time being.
Would you consider pointing me in at least the general direction of safe zone securing being an event? I'd love to look at what can be done going at it from that angle, and perhaps combine the quests and events to see if some of those problems you mentioned could be overcome.
Thank you, as always, for continuing to inspire me and for being so ready to help out other modders!
edit: No luck so far but I'll keep looking. I wonder if it was Dead Island, but it didn't have safe houses and stuff, so it can't be that game. I started to think if I misread something or just imagined it...
I still think there must be a way to tie map events and quests together for a more dynamic and easily repeatable way of triggering a safe zone disabling, as well as spawning the desired assault hordes within the specific safe zone areas. I've done some testing with the "GameEvent", "actiondirector_event_start" and "actiondirector_event_group_control", but I think I'm missing some key aspect of getting those to work right.
I've also done a little bit of testing with making them work as always-on auto-challenges so they could be infinitely repeatable and have more control over adding assault hordes. Still need to look more into that.
Thank you for looking again. Your comment of "Altering it causes them to revert back to unsafe, but also creates many problems" has made me remember something that happened during some of my testing. While trying to trigger custom assault hordes through event calls, I ran into an issue of securing the initial safe zone causing the quest reward to be granted 3 times. Upon reloading the save game I found that the safe zone was being reverting to the initial unsecured state again and with the initial zombies re-spawning as if I had not secured it previously. I didn't look closer into that, but it's possible that you are dead on with what you described. Either that or I was not thinking and didn't trigger the game to save after the securing so reloading the game was loading up before I secured it previously.
I get real wordy talking about stuff like this. Sorry.
I'll see if I can reproduce that scenario again to verify that messing with event calls from the quests can cause the quest to not be saved as being completed so safe zones could be repeatable upon every loading of a save game without the need for dozens of quests.
Thanks for getting me to think again about the relationship between safe zones and events.
If we could see a "daily quest" example (repeating example, so to speak), you won't have to use that many cycles (40-50 or so), as one would suffice. I don't know if events can call quests. Do the repeatable escort missions pop-up as quests? Can't recall.
It's ok to be talky, it's called brainstorming/idea exchanging
It seems to work like this, or as far as I think I can tell from what I've looked at:
· A single quest spawns a single NPC onto the map that is used in the escort event. There is a quest for each NPC and all it looks to be doing is spawning them, enabling their chatter, and gives them a marker on your mini map when you are near them.
( data\quests\slums\slums_scripted_events_c_quest.xml Line 2103 on )
· Then the NPC looks like it is somehow activated via an 'AssistEvent' (or 'GenericAssistEvent' for the non-unique NPCs to escort). When the AssistEvent is triggered based on its timer, I think it simply looks for and activates the nearest escort NPC to your current position and activates them.
( data\scripts\common_events.scr Line 403 )
How that AssistEvent enables the NPC to be interacted with (speech and movie stuff) and then leaves them in a state of limbo before you accept to escort them I do not know. That is probably within the specific escort .dat files that I haven't looked into if they can be read yet.
( data\ai\human\human_data_custom_preset_enc_npc_nick.dat and the others )
Still a lot to look into on that.
_____
While looking into making a two-step throwable bomb so it could have a detonator remote, I looked into how the remote activators were called when near an electric fence trap. It doesn't look promising for the remotely detonated bomb idea, but it made me realize that the electric traps are infinitely repeatable and seem to work like an inverted safe zone for the most part, and even involves flipping a switch to re-activate the disabled gate. I'm digging into those files to see what I can learn about them.
May help you. Have fun!
I'll evaluate this mod to see if it is compatible with the newly released 1.6.0 game version as soon as I finish downloading the update.It's not likely, but possible, that their new DLC quests may utilize the previously unused quest trees that I adopted for use in this mod.
They likely chose different tree names and there will not be an issue, but I will check to make sure and update if necessary.
No issues with v1.6.0 as they used quest trees 8, 9 and 10 for the stadium quests, whereas I used 4, 5 and 6. Even if they did use 4, 5 and 6, I do not think there would be an issue.