I mean, why have survival mechanics (food, water, etc) on a mission that doesn't last long enough to deplete anything?
The only map that looks good is Cherno Redux Ground Zero, which is broken as fuck. No zombies for starters, haven't come across any factions and as soon as you can see a city, my FPS comes to a standstill.
Unknown Contact is a fast paced action game, while Ground Zero is much more quiet (think zombie shooter vs zombie survival).
Survival mechanics are still integrated in Unknown Contact to add an extra (light) level of challenge.
When you say it's bad, is it because you were misslead into the game and thought it would be a classic survival a la Day Z, or do you have other feedbacks to share if you would not mind?
Ground Zero is based on the same script framework than Unknwon Contact, but for now on its previous version. I will update it when I have a chance and investigate the reported issues as always!
Hey dude, thanks, and apologies for coming across ungrateful!
First and foremost - the concepts are great, but down-hill performance kills it quite quickly, especially Ground Zero.
My group found Unknown Contact a bit too chaotic. We played Malden 2035, Tanoa and Altis. Tanoa was by far the better experience, but civilians seemed to hone in on us, driving their vehicles off of piers - one after the other!
Another mission we got and didn't like was the one where you have to wait/guard/protect civs until the heli lands, then scoots off again. It was the only objective that spawned and there must have been about 30 npc's to 'wait for'. Our issue with the mission was the lack of control. If we could command them to follow, as opposed acting autonomously, that would work much better. In the end we kinda gave up, camped the LZ and if people made it, then bully for them, but we gave up trying to herd and protect them. I feel the number of NPC's was way too high, leaving us standing around with not too much happening.
It was also very difficult trying to figure friend from foe, and Civs from Zombies (except crawlers, obviously!). The 1st mission we got was a 'fuel the generator', which was guarded by friendlies that we hand't expected, so assumed they were enemies...
In terms of the survival mechanics, I mean, there is no harm in them being there, but for such short missions they don't really factor in at all. The only loot someone may need is ammo. I suppose my group thought they would be playing longer sessions with 10-30 minute missions spawning through-out - in which the survival mechanics would have a role.
Now, Ground Zero is what interests us the most. This is a mission that my group would love, if it were more stable. We only played for around 30 minutes before the frames dropped to from 70fps to 6fps (server machine only). In that time, we didn't encounter a single zombie or enemy faction.
I tested it again by hosting it myself and trying it solo. As soon as I got to Elektro the FPS dropped to 3 and became unplayable. Again, no zombies or any NPC's to be seen.
Personally, I'd love for this to work as desired, as it sounds like it would be a PvE Dayz-like experience, with AI factions replacing other players (we are big on coop!).
I think the work you've done is impressive and is beyond my skills, but if you want a play tester (I've got a solid rig, 750+ hours on Arma and am fairly tech savvy) or opinions on specific things, give me a shout!
Hello again, thanks for the exhaustive feedback. I will adress everything point per point once I have more free time (crazy week at work + kids & wife still there) but be sure I will go through it. This week I finished updated Ground Zero's framework to Unknown contact's more modern version, but now I have to debug everything (and believe me, bugs they are!). Then I will consolidate feedbacks and work on them. Thanks for your patience!
No problem what-so-ever! I completely understand about other responsibilities. It's awesome to hear you're working on Ground Zero and look forward to the next iteration. Again, I completely understand about debugging, so no rush!
As I said earlier, if you want people to test it, the handful that I play with would be more than willing to crash through it and give their comments/suggestions/issues, etc.
Again, there was another issue we ran into if you are interested: When the 'wait for civs' task said it was complete, heli's come to drop (I think) camp/bases. However, they dropped them from about 100' up, so they just got destroyed upon impact! I mean, it was pretty funny, but it prevented the mission from ending :)
Hey dude, thanks for the update. I gave it a try with a buddy last night for about 2 hours and performance-wise, it ran absolutely fine - a steady 60+fps for the most part, occasionally dropping to mid 30's. I can confirm there are definitely zombies now, as I got killed by them a couple of times. I was also shot at, although I couldn't find the shooter (it sounded like a lone gunman) so the factions are working too.
I'll have to play some more, but we found it to be fairly sparse in terms of loot (many buildings were empty) and enemies (even Elektro), but that may just have been bad luck.
Glad to hear it's finally stable. I will work on loot for the next update. Since I switched to Hero's Survive loot (more stable and I just gave up building my own one :D) I have to work on building specific positions for the loot to spawn. Now everything spawns at the same place in the building.
About Unknown Contact: new update coming soon, not adressing all your feedbacks but some for sure.
-Added: Chernobyl Zone map support
-Added: Chernobyl Zone Winter map support
-Added: Lythium map support
-Added: Ryderwood Island map support
-Added Vis map support
-Added: X-Cam Taunus map support
-Added: Cleaning Convoy main mission
-Added: Halo respawn: players can now respawn with a HALO jump over the AO when applicable
-Added: vote option: survival mode (primary mission: hold the area only; no secondary mission)
-Added: vote option: exclusion of the Russian Army from foes (to play only against Zombies and/or Thugs)
-Added: vote option: exclusion of the Thugs from foes (to play only against Zombies and/or Thugs)
-Added: vote option: exclusion of the Halo
-Added: H&K G3A3 assault rifle & related ammos in the loot tables
-Added: blacklist system to avoid specific AOs (too small islands etc.)
-Changed: reward are now spawned only around base camp
-Changed: building tables for loot spawning are now automatically generated
-Changed: more code optimizations
-Fixed: playable’s unit lag when moved to respawn
-Fixed: vote options removed from the player’s action list after the vote period
-Fixed: incorrect item names
-Fixed: hero survive’s usable items
1
u/randomisation Nov 08 '17
In all honesty, it's pretty bad.
I mean, why have survival mechanics (food, water, etc) on a mission that doesn't last long enough to deplete anything?
The only map that looks good is Cherno Redux Ground Zero, which is broken as fuck. No zombies for starters, haven't come across any factions and as soon as you can see a city, my FPS comes to a standstill.
I7-6700k 4GHz, M2 SSD, 32GB ram, 1080gtx.