Well there is a sandbox mode coming soon to both systems, so that's a way to make the gameplay last forever.

Originally posted by Warhead Killor:

Well there is a sandbox mode coming soon to both systems, so that's a way to make the gameplay last forever.

Actually no, sandbox-mode will be harder, and also you will still run out of recourses.
Also it's the same map.

I think a core way of making it last forever would be modular housing - kind of like how Diablo levels were modulated to always be different (albeit a bit wonky) - but it was cited to be too complicated due to path restructuring. I think that using a node/lock system would solve that if it is possible to make the 3D layouts of structures modular and pair them with an internal pathing layout for the structure being modulated.

Exempli gratia - a Zombie near a house wants to get a player inside, the house is modular. It sets an AI path for the player and finds an area marked for modular housing. It goes in a straight line to the edge of the marked surface on the topography then searches for the nearest node. The node for State of Decay would be something climbable, or a breakable window, as the noclip/noclimb surfaces are irrelevant.

It finds the node, jumps in the window or climbs the surface, then checks the internal pathing for the modular structure and lays out a line from that point to the player. I'd think this works best for modulation because each structure would have an internal pathing layout that would go along with it's modulation and the zombies would, therefore, only have to network with the specific path node and then check the internal layout that comes with the structure once it hits it - no requirement for being able to always understand a full path immediately.

Not sure if this is possible in the engine, but it seems an effective method.

Phacops I think that is a great idea, but would not fit in with the realism style, why would houses restock? People aren't going in and leaving supplies.

Guys there is already a concept that the developers have come up with for infinite gaming. The upcoming game mode is called Sandbox. Google it. You do not have to reinvent it, it is coming some time in the future.

I know, infinate Trumbell vallies, but this is how to do it in only one vally. (I know I probably mispelled half of that.)

Its not actually ongoing forever, its basacally restarting the game over and over again with the exeption you get to keep some of your survivors and recourses.
I do think there would be some people here that could come up with something better.

I don't mean the houses restocking supplies, I mean that the houses would be physically replaced - in their entirety - with different versions of the same lot size, when you restarted the map.

This would, at least, give you the same topgraphy but a different feel each time. The quantity of permutations based on just having a few different types within a small/medium/large setup would be great enough to supply you with a world that feels new.

And aye, citing back to the idea of sandbox; it is intended to roll on multiple times but the game won't be any different in the sense of the map, the zombies, the missions, so you would likely get bored semi-quickly.

The reason I brought up pathing is that I pitched this to the devs on the forum and it someone made a more basic version of what I said which was picked up by the devs in one of the Twitch sessions. The idea of modular housing was said to be an impossibility due to pathing issues for modular homes. I disagree and motion to my method, but acquiesce that they know far more about the engine capacities than I.

See the thread on the SoD forum here with some quickly souped drawings of what I meant - http://forums.undeadlabs.com/showthread.php?28702-Ask-Shaun-(Questions-for-the-stream-on-7-23)&p=242076&viewfull=1#post242076

Is sandbox mode going to have renewable resources?

Easiest thing I can think of would be to have the ability to call for supplies by airdrop on the radio, maybe also have missions to recover randomly created supply caches in fields and whatnot.

For the modular homes, do you mean modular as in randomly generating floorplans, based on modular rooms plugged together or taking the existing homes and shuffling the position of their lots? The first I would say is more trouble than it is worth, but you might be able to manage the second. If that is possible, it may also be viable to remap the streets, which is what you really need to do to make the map feel new.

I believe the whole point of Sandbox was that it would allow you to keep going because the map resources get depleted. Rather than using some method where your supplies get renewed - they reset the map, essentially. I guess that answers your question with a "yes and no" :)

I think the best bet, to minimize calculations - though offering less randomization - would be doing an entire floorplan as the module as opposed to the rooms. That would make the pathing easier and also make there be just one array as opposed to a multi-dimensional arrray. That is to say that you just say "Hey house lot, which of these 3 houses do you want on you?" as opposed to "Hey house lot, which of these 3 houses do you want on you? Okay, we chose which of the three, now choose room 1! Okay, you did that, now two! Okay, now what style of hallways? Cool, now room 3! Now room 4?" Et cetera.

If we were able to modulate floor plans then this would be a first step to the next point of multi-room changes, which would make so many combinations across the map that you'd never play the same game twice. The modulation of the entire house pretty much does that anyway, depending on how many permutations you do per lot, 3 seemed decent enough.

Heres an idea for refilling recourses.
Once you looted a building and took it all out instead of showing that icon on the map that tells you theres nothing left it goes unexplored again. so the unexplored houses might contain stuff or they might be empty, you dont know.

and every 1 or 2 days 1 or 2 depleted buildings get some loot again, but youll have to search for it.

Personally, I find it hard to rationalize any form of replenishment. Maybe - somewhat in line with what you were saying - you could have it that if a person with lower wits searched something then you'd get a diminished return from what you should have gotten, and could later go back and find the remnants under the pretense that they had missed them because they weren't searching effectively.

For me, a lot of the proposed methods I've seen around have felt very "fourth wall" breaking. I assume that was another reason that they settled for a map reset.

Though I do submit that you pretty immediately break the fourth wall when you start messing with the code and trying to mod things, haha.

Originally posted by Phacops:

Personally, I find it hard to rationalize any form of replenishment. Maybe - somewhat in line with what you were saying - you could have it that if a person with lower wits searched something then you'd get a diminished return from what you should have gotten, and could later go back and find the remnants under the pretense that they had missed them because they weren't searching effectively.

For me, a lot of the proposed methods I've seen around have felt very "fourth wall" breaking. I assume that was another reason that they settled for a map reset.

Though I do submit that you pretty immediately break the fourth wall when you start messing with the code and trying to mod things, haha.

ok how about if another survivor group gets wiped out that house has stuff in it, makes sense cause those little buggers been scavenging. (wish Steam had spellingcheck.)

Originally posted by Phacops:

Though I do submit that you pretty immediately break the fourth wall when you start messing with the code and trying to mod things, haha.

Or everytime you fix up an RV and drife off and you find the next town is an exact replica of the last xD
lol sure we're breaking a 4rth wall, but we're trying to break it a lil less then their solution.