Oddities. Bugs?

[Aardvark Ratnick]

I play rifles almost exclusively. I have noticed somethings that I have been wondering about. Perhaps they are bugs perhaps just me.

My first shot on any Special (Gasman, Anarchist...etc) almost always misses, like in the high 90th percentile. I guess it misses. There is no reaction from the zombie or the client. Now I am not some super good player who can definitively say that he almost never misses but I feel that I am good enough to say that something ain't right here.

I have witnessed all the zombies, not just the witch, from time to time teleport. By that I mean one second they are 10 15 feet away from you and then next your dead while they are 5 feet behind where you are standing. I am not exaggerating with the times here. This is a Lag issue. The Zombie bots don't experience lag issues. They are always moving.

Zombies have a incredible reach almost to the point of being absurd. But I don't think this is a reach issue on the zombies. I think it is the hit box not matching up to the model. I also think that the when running forward or backwards your hit box elongates. I can't prove it because I have no clue how to even show the hit boxes. Same goes for stationary objects what we see doesn't match up to what the computer sees. I don't suppose this can be tightened up some.

Speed adjustment between Zombies should be considered. The Witch is supposed to be the fastest and the UNG the slowest but all the specials, excepting the UNG, run at the same speed as the Witch.

Wraith is able to shoot his beam weapon through team mates to get at an opposing play. It should be he is able to use his beam weapon in a clear line of sight. Meaning nothing in the way of his beam.

Friendly Fire only seems to affect Human players. The Zombie bots seem immune to each others weapons but not to their own.

[Dog]

Rifles - weird. Never noticed and I was shooting them like crazy last night. It might be that they have way more health than regular zombies?

Teleporting - other than the witch. Occasionally the buggers get stuck and will teleport if no-one can see them.

Yes - the hit boxes have been an issue since day 1. Not a lot we can do since the hit boxes are part of the game of DoDS. Intriguingly, if you stand still, the Zombies miss you....weirdness.

Will check the speed code. The zombies are 0.9 of regular speed (humans are 1.0), witches are 1.5, UNGs are 0.7. I know what it is - the Zombies are holding down the Shift key and sprinting without losing Stamina (except for the UNG). I could turn off their ability to sprint...or make the witch faster

Will see if I can do something about the Wraith.

There's a big update coming on October 31 so I want to get all that code working first before fixing other stuff. I'm nearly done with the new stuff and it seems to be working quite nicely.

[<eVa> + Sarge +]

Can't wait Dog

[Aardvark Ratnick]

Rifles and Specials: Could be that they have more health. But why does it say Aardvark Ratnick killed such and such with 1 hit for xxx? If I had to hit them twice wouldn't it say that I hit them twice instead of once? I think this is a source issue related to Cone of Fire, aiming and movement maybe? Maybe client server communication issue?

Teleporting: So it is not mini mini lag issues? Like half a second communication failure from the client to the server?

Hitboxes: Damn. I was hoping this was something that you could do something about.

Speed: I know you have said this before about zombie speed. But I swear to you the Gas Man and Anarchist (Prime guilty parties here) both have outraced me at a full sprint several times. I know at one time there was some discussion concerning different speeds for the classes. Not here but at the forums at www.dayofdefeat.com. (Hell I don't even know if that site is even up any more let alone monitored by the original programmers for source and dod.) Maybe it is just that my class is slow. You kidding about zombie stamina, right?

Wraith: I thought that this is what you meant when you first described him. If you feel his fine the way he is then I will learn how to avoid him better and fight him better.

Big update sounds exciting. Very curious to see what it does.

I guess I sound pretty arrogant in these post about perceived bugs or oddities. I sound as if I am ordering you to make changes. Like I am the first to point out these things. I am not. This is your game. You designed it, wrote it, and implemented it. I just play it. I shouldn't sound like I am ordering you to do anything. Being away from Source for a long time I just assumed that the developers had straightened out most if not all the kinks and all these things I am seeing are new. Sorry but I enjoy the game a lot and want it to be perfect in every way. Not a realistic view, I know.

[south]

I don't know about the other issues, but I would like to comment on the speed issue.

I sure hope you don't remove the sprinting from zombies. It's an important compensation to their health being so low. It's not like I can just hold it down and go murdering. You can't really control it enough, and you also can't use a weapon while sprinting anyway. It just makes it much easier to get from A to B without catching the single round that usually ends it.

Plus, it helps highlight human zombies and also, you can get away from a group of bot zombies so you don't get your sight blocked or get blowed up in a group by the homing rockets that you #@&*'s are so fond of.

Sure hope that does not get changed, fun factor would be dramatically affected. My $0.02. Thanks.

P.S. It's also a tad bit more zombie-realistic (such as it is).

[George]

I don't know. I was trying to help a fellow ally out and the witch teleported onto him, hacked, disappeared, reappeared behind him and hacked again. Finally, she disappeared and reappeared to his other side for a final hack. It was hard to shoot as an onlooker, can you imagine what he went through? Usually I don't survive one witch hack without pills so she doesn't pop three times around me but instantly to the next victim. Didn't she used to be limited as far as instantly teleporting again?

We call her the Ninja Zombie around here. Dead before you even know she is there.

[Dog]

@south: The sprint key will not be taken away. Instead the Witch is subject to stamina loss when sprinting. You won't notice any difference in playing her except now you can go faster for a few seconds.

@George: human witch or bot Witch?

[Dr. Bob]

@George: human witch or bot Witch?

It's the bot witch that's so ruthless in her teleporting. If she gets in a group of allies, she can't decide who to go after, so she just teleports from player to player with mere moments in between. Never seen a problem with the human witch

As for specials damage, I'm not sure what it is, but I notice it the most with the UNG. I've run him full across the map just emptying round after round into him (and I'm sure they're hitting the mark because the bullet wound animations work fine during this time) and when he finally sticks me somewhere and kills me, console says I haven't done him any damage or I've done one hit for 100. It's never annoys me too much, because he's slow and, with a buddy, he's usually easy to take down.

As for the teleporting zombies, it's mainly the infected one. I was on Anzio the other night, camping above the well because with two players it was two man caps on every flag. In waltzes the Infected and immediately goes invisible. Roughly two seconds later, he was up in the room behind me, slaughtering me with one shot.

Which is another thing I'm not sure is a bug. All the zombies are 1 hitting 105 damage? You almost need to buy pills if you plan on being in close quarters, and even then, it's not going to afford you time to crack off more than another shot or two.

Zombies are also spawning on flags. I know their old spawn points were on the flags, but it's been a while since that was true. And, while the shield kills them, that instant is all they need to block the cap and waste your shield.

[Dog]

I should mention that I am bypassing the game damage info.
The damage information never reaches the entity so this is why you won't ever get the correct damage reported on any Zombie.
People complain about pumping so much damage into one bot because it says so in the console but the fact is that my code messes with that. So as far as the UNG is concerned, just keep filling him full of lead and ignore the console.


I'll check the Witch code.

The Infected *does* teleport behind. This is by design. He goes invisible so it makes sense to think he would be behind you when he reappears. I will look at this code too.

I'm going to have to rethink the whole Zombie respawn thing.

[Aardvark Ratnick]

Ok. I am experiencing more of the same problems before only more so.

In extreme close quarters it will take as many as 5 or 6 shots to kill zombies, often it appears the first two are missing. Bad assumption on my part since I can't prove it. Anarchist, Gasman and now the Witch are very bad about getting right in your face with the barrel of your rifle sticking out their back. It is worse on COOP then the other servers. Don't suppose we change Iron Sights to Butt Smack for rifles? Or Bayonet? Probably something hard code into the source engine, huh?

At one time I thought I read that the wraith was supposed to get more visible as he gets healthier. From my perspective it appears the opposite. The more you shoot him the more visible he is. The Infected is the same way.

I can't see the invisible infected any more unless he is right in front of me with the flash light on him. I used to able to see him run by in his invisibility mode. I still can see human zombies in their invisibility mode when the run by me. Can't catch them but I can see them.

It appears that the Gasman and Anarchist can lob grenades while shoveling you at the same time. Makes for many Pyrrhic victories. Wraith can shovel you at the same time while zapping you with his life suck ray. Is it true that he gets health from shoveling you? I mean just hitting you without killing you?

Also it appears that while Zombies (bots) are totally unaffected by lag they are also totally unaffected by each others weapons (on FF servers) and anything to do with the physics of the game. Grenades, TNT and Airstrikes all effect my shooting but they seem to have no effect on the Bots abilities. Don't suppose we could turn off the physics engine for the game? Maybe fine tune it? Another source thing more then likely.

I need a way to document mini lag spikes. I believe some of the missing shots I am experiencing might be related to client server communication issues. I have tried playing with Rate and Interpolate cmds but I am just blindly changing settings. I did notice that everything improved quite a bit when the gravity was reduced. But I only played this way once. So it could all be in my imagination.

[v.o.c]

i to have noticed the close quarters problem, when the witch teleports right on you, i have to empty more of the clip to kill her like aardvark says it as if the first few shots do not register, 3 or 4 shots used to be enough now its 8 or 9.

[Aardvark Ratnick]

V.O.C,

Forgive me if you knew this already.

When she is top of your head you have no chance of a head shot or a chest shot. You are basically shooting her legs. Leg shots require more bullets to do the same amount of damage as a chest or head shot. When she teleports right in front of you, the barrel of you weapon (especial weapons that have a long barrel) goes right through her. So your shots are exiting past her hit boxes. It takes the client and server sometime, I guess, to correct for that. I believe I was told this was a Source bug and couldn't be altogether corrected. I thought Dog said he had developed a work around for this.

[Dr. Bob]

At one time I thought I read that the wraith was supposed to get more visible as he gets healthier. From my perspective it appears the opposite. The more you shoot him the more visible he is. The Infected is the same way.

I think the Infected is supposed to become visible for a moment after you hit him, which is good, because when I'm on my desktop, I can't see shadows.
The Wraith, however, I think becomes less visible, but the blood splatter after you hit him certainly makes it easier to see the shade image you would usually

[v.o.c]

V.O.C,

Forgive me if you knew this already.

When she is top of your head you have no chance of a head shot or a chest shot. You are basically shooting her legs. Leg shots require more bullets to do the same amount of damage as a chest or head shot. When she teleports right in front of you, the barrel of you weapon (especial weapons that have a long barrel) goes right through her. So your shots are exiting past her hit boxes. It takes the client and server sometime, I guess, to correct for that. I believe I was told this was a Source bug and couldn't be altogether corrected. I thought Dog said he had developed a work around for this.

by on top i mean within striking distance, not actually on top, and not touching distance either. eg. she teleports behind you, you spin around and open fire all the time running backwards. She could be a few paces behind you, yet it takes a few more shots than it used to.

[Dog]

Will look into it.