What kind of "director" would KF be able to simulate?

[xdiesp]

For a long time I've been accostumed to say that KF excels at developing players, not just doing the perfect run. To say it to those describing it as the poor man's L4D.

But I know that a director is missing nevertheless and bottlenecking zeds ever in the same places is repetitive (not that you can't cheat like that in L4D, yet in the micromanagement...).

So what player behaviour could KF recognize, or events randomize to make runs different? I look at the whitelisted mods and it beats me why sometimes the game couldn't kick me in the balls with just a wave of flesh pounds.

If anything, it could recognize players being at a certain level: going CS style, everyone starts at 1 and buys levels at the trader, and the waves change accordingly.

 

[Deleted member 24443]

Yeah with some extensive trigger work I suppose you could do some awesome things, like when standing in a place for a matter of time, increase spawning rates, higher Big Bugs spawning rate and the like, or could change spawn rate values of different ZED Zones. Would need two things of which at least one is not existant right now: triggerable ZED zones and changeable spawning rates of specific ZEDs. I think you could go by the last problem with ZED Zones with only one or two allowed ZED types, could also become a problem if the game only allows a certain number of specific ZEDs per wave, though...

So from a technical point of view I think it bogs down to either triggers and / or distances to ZED Zones.

 

[͡ °๏Rɐnɐ-Sɐmɐ๏͡°]

bottlenecking zeds ever in the same places is repetitive

this is why i dont chill in the tunnel of love on manor... That aside, even when everyone stays in their happy little box the party is crashed when a meat beater pops around a tight corner or a group of rage-instilling sirens.

 

[Undedd Jester]

LoL in some ways I already feel KF does this to a degree. It just seems to know when a weakness has popped up in the teams defence and starts flooding the squad with the right combination of specimens at exactly the wrong time. Almost like there is a higher power controlling it all

But in seriousness, aye sounds like something that would be interesting to see. Especially if the game were to recognise a certain team setup (such as all zerk or all supp) and the game reacted accordingly.

+1

 

[O-cactus]

I don't know how many times I've been the last one left and rounded a corner to find 3 sirens.

If that's not "director" work, I don't know what is

 

[ro_sauce]

unreal is a fairly static engine. its mostly meant to have stuff stay in one place and look pretty.

if you wanted a "director" (i'm still not sure what this is, i've never played l4d) it would require extensive re-coding of the volume spawn system, which i am not sure how to do yet.

but it would be nice to mix it up a bit.

so far the spawn system is based on if someone is look at a volume's pivot point, then dont spawn stuff, and there are variables inside each spawn volume that says "it is ok to spawn zeds this X distance away from player", so those crawler's coming from ceiling has a spwn dist of 0, to be able to spawn right on top of ppl's heads.

you could spawn by trigger system (like Fel's maps) but that is even more static (and buggy), cause the mapper decides what to spawn and where and how many.

 

[SMIFF]

if you wanted a "director" (i'm still not sure what this is, i've never played l4d)

It's basically just a glorified version of a "KFRandomItemSpawn"

 

[Falidell]

i think it's more along the lines of creating dynamic Path Weights, to calculated the path a zed would take. so if say your bottlenecking the zeds the PathCorrector(for simpliciy we'll call it that) will alter the paths in the area where the humans are and line-to the zeds, then change the weights of the paths along the way thus making the zeds perfer a longer or alternate route..

 

[aaSpider]

I think it would be good if the director had more control over the ratios of different zeds. It would then be able to identify certain situations and spawn more of a paticular zed to combat that. Or maybe just randomly spawn an excessive amount of a paticular zed the fun of it.

But this would work better if instead of having a set number of zeds per wave the director instead had a set number of points. Different zeds would be worth different points depending on their strength. For example, a Clot would be worth 1 point whereas a Fleshpound would be worth say 20. This way if the director did decide to slam you with a wave of Fleshpounds you would not have to kill over 100 of them.

 

[HaTeMe]

L4D is poor mans Killing Floor

It's basically just a glorified version of a "KFRandomItemSpawn"

Thanks for clearing that up, I had NO idea what this guy was talking about until I saw this.

EDIT: Actually I still have no idea what hes talking about.

 

[bogospawn]

L4D is poor mans Killing Floor



Thanks for clearing that up, I had NO idea what this guy was talking about until I saw this.

EDIT: Actually I still have no idea what hes talking about.

He wants a director for KF who directs gameplay like a movie:

Team camping to much? Spawn a FP.
Randomly scattered items.
Map layout changed every time you play a certain map(more/different paths open for you)

Now that i think about it,this will make a use of all those locked doors on Biotics lab and West London.

 

[CandleJack]

For a long time i've been accustomed to saying L4D is a dumb man's KF...

For a long time i've been accustomed to saying L4D is a dumb man's KF...

Forget the director, what we need is a wave-by-wave map randomiser.

Don't get it? I'll explain:

Obviously this would mean a total rework of all maps in KF, but that's less of an issue, since it can be a "special game mode" or similar to circumvent this issue

You get a large map, think Candlesmoke in size, but not linear, or less linear.
Every wave a few sections get locked down remotely/randomly, say 10%/25%/40%/50%/75% of the map, and these portions are randomly selected; but selected in a way that allows the team access to the unlocked areas. (so they don't get stuck in 1 area that's locked down)

This means that you cannot get your favourite camping spot wave after wave, and you have to learn to play the whole map. You may get access to good spots wave after wave, or you may just have to kite that wave.


Oh, and maybe have KF drop-punt you in the sack every now and again when you're going well

 

[HuNteR-]

Killing floor has the potential to be fine tuned in the coding it has, we just dont have anyone who really wants to bother with it or can actually do it.

L4D for me was a milestone in directing, L4D2 blew balls, but thats not the point.

Poor mans L4D, mmm, although I see the link, they are two different concepts in games, you can't really compare them.

To the topic, you're looking more towards Call Of Duty Nazi Zombies as a base director for KF, it has the same base as KF, wave after wave with a randomised wave of hellhounds appearing.

Most mods, mine included have tried to work with what KF has to offer in regards to spawning random sub bosses, for all intensive purposes the random trigger goes off without a hitch and you get one of many big *** sub bosses to tee off against adding some variation and fresh runs to the game.

The major problem mods have to face is the "Official" rating, at the end of the day, they're mods, they're not official, therefore not many people play them and actually get that new experience.

A director may not be needed, someone needs to make a major mod that randomises some big bad bosses throughout to add that extra edge of variation.

But guaranteed, even then, you'll still come back and say I'm bored now, same old same old, its all to do with new content in the long run, once its value wears off, you want something else thats new.

This is where I think Tripwire tripped up, instead of adding something new, they simply manipulated old content to make it look new, but really, it was the same old same old and the value wore off in the click of a mouse button.

Variation mods need to be made official content, meaning you can still gain XP from them, that will open the door to a longer gaming life.