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FAQ from Discord
This is a page of frequently asked questions (FAQs) from the Discord Development server and their answers. Most of the questions are focused on player concerns, but the answers often involve either developer insight into the logic of the game, or the development history as to why a certain feature is the way it is.
See also the Frequently Made Suggestions, which have some overlap with these questions.
- Question: What's with all the CDDA themed Discord servers? Which ones are official and how do they differ?
- (by Kevin Granade, project lead)
- The first "CDDA discord" was not affiliated with the project in any way, and was only tenuously CDDA oriented, it was more of a random social club type chat server that happened to have some CDDA themed channels. Over time it became steadily less friendly to the project, culminating in a bizarre incident where one of the mods screwed with the role settings for the CDDA developers for no apparent reason. At that point we made the "Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead" development server and development talk moved there.
- A bit later there was a bizarre incident where an apparently random member was muted on the server for being a jerk, then appealed to the server owner (who was almost completely absent from the server), who bizarrely made the random guy the new head mod and removed the moderation powers of most of the existing mods.
- Those mods promptly left and formed a new fan/chat oriented discord somewhat more centered on dda, the "Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead Community" server.
- The new head mod for the old discord server is a notorious troll in the roguelike community, and because of that pretty much everyone immediately cut ties with the server. That server has steadily gone downhill under the moderation ideal of, "say anything that won't get our server dissolved by the discord admins, as long as a mod doesn't dislike what you have to say".
- Question: What's with the 'CDDA Game Launcher' not working?
- Some people, playing on Windows, use a launcher called the 'CDDA Game Launcher' to update CDDA and mods and to start this game. This launcher is not maintained by the CleverRaven team (the senior developers for CDDA and authors of this FAQ) and is generally not used by them. So there's not much that the senior developers can say about it.
- If you're using the 'CDDA Game Launcher' and it's generating errors (which it often does), your best recourse is report the bugs and request technical assistance at https://github.com/remyroy/CDDA-Game-Launcher/issues.
- Question: What's with my anti-virus program saying that the 'CDDA Game Launcher' is a virus or trojan?
- Some Windows anti-virus programs will incorrectly report the launcher as a virus or trojan. As far as the senior developers can tell, those reports are completely incorrect and it's safe to run the launcher.
- Question: I used the launcher to update my mods, but now I'm getting errors when I run the game and people are telling me it's because my mods aren't up to date. What gives?
- You really should complain at https://github.com/remyroy/CDDA-Game-Launcher/issues. I don't use the launcher. But as I understand it, the launcher keeps a cache of 3rd-party mods that is irregularly updated at best. When you update your 3rd-party mods with the launcher, it grabs the updates from that cache, even if the mod's author has updated it more recently.
- Question: So if the launcher isn't well supported, how can I update my game without using it?
- To manually update your game while preserving saves and settings, download and install the latest experimental version, then copy your saves and settings folders to the new directory. If you have mods installed, also copy (without overwriting) your mods folder.
- Question: Is there any mod you recommend from Kenan's mod-pack?
- (by Uplifted Mom Bun and Crow)
- The popular ‘modpacks’ in CDDA have issues. Their original purpose of having many 3rd party mods hosted in the same place, to be easily accessed and archived, and to be at least partially maintained to the point they can at least load was a great idea! Having stuff preserved is always good, and the above reasoning is sound. But issues arose:
- ‘Modpack’ itself is misleading. They are repositories of mods you can pick from, but the way they’re advertised encourages visitors to enable everything and mod their game to death. That's fine if that’s what they want to do, but ‘to death’ is not an exaggeration here and encouraging people to mod the game to instability isn’t great practice. Some mods are flatly incompatible with another mod, and putting both of them in a modpack and implying that they should both be loaded at the same time only causes problems.
- The ‘maintenance’ provided is minimal, just to the point they don’t cause boot errors on load. This is fine since you can’t expect one person to keep that many things up to date, but as systems change it falls apart. E.g. Kenan’s pack advertises having an ‘up to date’ version of Blaze Mod. But the ttuff in that one that isn’t in the new, in-repo, Blaze Industries version of the mod was cut for a reason — primarily stability, but also for using hacky workarounds, or trying to implement stuff that doesn’t even work. Several mods are like this and have received no updates outside of band-aids for the launch errors. Attached to this, the packs ‘save’ a lot of old mods without any curation. Again, you can appreciate them saving things for legacy’s sake but those mods don’t work. Some of these mods are old versions of packaged mods, or obsolete Locations mods that have since been merged with core. Using a lot of these mods actively damages your game, by overwriting the clean core content with it’s buggier or incomplete older versions. For instance, the old Boats mod was merged in the game before 0.D released, and the design and implementation of vehicle engines has changed dramatically since 0.D. Using the old Boats mod with the old version of oars creates canoes that cannot move because their engine power is much too low.
- The repositories are fine, from a data perspective. But recommending new players to blindly jump into them as Modpacks ends up diluting, damaging, and generally worsening the New Player Experience of CDDA.
- Question: Why are some mods included with the game and others not? Why aren't there more mods that just add vanilla content? Which should I use?
- (from Maddremor)
- The thing with mods in CDDA that differs from most other (commercial) games is that there is no clear distinction between the developers and the community. If a modder were to make a good piece of content, there is no reason to not just include it into the base game. That's why there aren't really any mod that adds more vanilla style content.
- Mods usually fall into three categories:
- Mods that clash with the theme of CDDA (Magiclysm, My Sweet Cataclysm)
- Mods that are of poor quality or otherwise half baked
- Mods where the author does not want to have their content in the game for some reason. This is often because the mod author doesn't want to go through the normal submission process, but sometimes because the mod author has been banned from contributing, and are rarely because the mod content wouldn't be accepted in the game.
- This is why I (as an otherwise avid mod user) recommend that new players don't overload their games by installing all the mods available, and thus essentially getting an incoherent mess of a game. There are two mods included with the default game (Rural Only Mapgen and Desert Mapgen) that are basically incompatible: the first limits map locations to rural cabins and farms, and the second prevents the map from generating the fields and forests necessary for rural cabins and farms. But people will blindly enable every mod and end up with a game world that doesn't generate any legal starting locations.
- This does not mean that you should never mod your game, but that you should know what you are looking for when modding. A decent way of finding out how the game plays, and what you would like to tweak or add, is to play the vanilla CDDA for a bit.
- Question: Why does this FAQ use "your avatar" to refer to my player character/toon/survivor?
- CDDA (and the gaming industry generally) doesn't have a great set of terms for the in game entity representing the person playing the game. The CDDA code base was really bad about this, with a `Character` class representing all human/mutant things in the game, a `player` class that was supposed to be the in game entity representing the person playing the game but in practice was just an enhanced `Character`, and an `NPC` class that was an enhanced `player` for game entities controlled by the computer's AI. This confusion of classes and terms meant it was possible to say things like "the player can't control `player` here because the keyboard is locked" and that was bad.
- There is an ongoing effort to redefine the terms and classes:
- player is the person actually playing the game by interacting with the computer running the game
- `Character` contains all vaguely human creatures in the game. `Character`s are more complex than `monster`s in terms of memory foot print and game interactions.
- `avatar` is the in-game representation of the player. It's an enhanced `Character` with user interface information.
- `NPC` is a computer controlled `Character`. It has AI routines instead of UI routines.
- Question: How do ticks work? What does it mean to have 123 speed and a weapon with an attack cost of 167 ticks? How does this interact with monsters?
- You get +100 (or whatever your speed is, but the default is 100) ticks at the start of each game turn (1 second). When you perform an action, you lose ticks equal to the move cost of the action. When your available ticks are 0 or less, your turn stops and monsters and NPCs can act. You get a turn again when your available ticks are positive, which may not be for several seconds if you perform an action costing several hundred ticks. I don't believe you can ever have more than your initial speed in ticks, so waiting on one turn does not let you build up a reserve of ticks so you can act twice as fast on a future turn. Also, waiting sets your available ticks to 0 and you refresh to your initial ticks on the next turn.
- So if you're using a murdersaw with 180 move cost, and fighting a zombie that attacks at 100 moves per attack and has speed 70, it looks something like:
Turn | Your Ticks Start | End | Monster Ticks Start | End | Activity |
1 | 100 | -80 | 70 | -30 | You swing; zombie swings |
2 | 20 | -160 | 40 | -60 | You swing; zombie swings |
3 | -60 | -60 | 10 | -90 | Zombie swings |
4 | 40 | -140 | -20 | -20 | You swing |
5 | -40 | -40 | 50 | -50 | Zombie swings |
6 | 60 | -120 | 20 | -80 | You swing; zombie swings |
7 | -20 | -20 | -10 | -10 | None |
8 | 80 | -100 | 60 | -40 | You swing; zombie swings |
9 | 0 | 0 | 30 | -70 | Zombie swings |
10 | 100 | -80 | 0 | 0 | You swing |
- Question: My mutant has wings. Why can't he fly?
- Lots of animals (such as ostriches) have wings, but do not have the limb strength and wing span to generate sufficient aerodynamic lift to get their weight above ground. The largest flying birds weigh maybe 40 lbs and have huge wings. Your mutant weighs at least 3 times as much and does not have have enormously huge wings, so you can't fly.
- Separately, Kevin has not been satisfied with the proposed user interface for personal flight, and doesn't like the proposed costs for personal flight. Being able to fly, in the current game, gives a mutant an amazing ability to avoid obstacles. Until Kevin is satisfied with the UI and trade-offs and challenges of being able to fly, mutants will not be allowed to fly.
- Question: Why was CBM power storage capped at 2,300 battery charges?
- The new code limit for CBM power storage is influenced by a few things:
- We want mJ accuracy on CBM power usage because a lot of CBMs would draw mW of power
- We don't want to invoke 64-bit arithmetic unnecessarily, because CDDA does run on some 32-bit machines that are slow to start and get slower when they have to do 64-bit arithmetic.
- 32-bit MAX_INT is 2^31-1, and MAX_INT mJ is ~2.2 kJ
- 2.2 kJ is a reasonable approximation of the power you could store if you did stick reasonably efficient batteries just about everywhere in your body
- Items #
- Bows and Arrows ###
- Question**: Why do bows and arrows suck so much? Everyone knows a bow can propel an arrow through steel plate and kill a buffalo!
- Answers**
Now at this point, something like half the player community doesn't like the arrow solution that Kevin came up with. But telling the rest of the senior devs isn't helpful. You need to review Kevin's research and convince him that things need to changed. Otherwise, "[Kevin] will take great pleasure in only ever changing minor issues around the periphery of those complaints." (that's a direct quote from a DM discussing this FAQ answer.)
Furthermore, the senior developers have talked to people who are obsessives on the subject of historical armor and done some research. Actual English war bows with 150+ lb draw weights and 150+ Joules of delivered energy couldn't reliably pierce military grade chain mail armor, much less actual steel plate. A hobbyist bow made from random pieces of unseasoned wood and drawn out to maybe 80 lbs is going to do worse. The way that arrows completely fail in the presence of even mild amounts of armor is intentional. It may be possible to convince the developers that they're wrong about this, but it's going to be difficult and require a lot of research and reliable sources.
- Question**: Why does it take so much strength to use the good bows? Historical English archers could not have been Olympic bodybuilders!
- Answers**
Long term, Kevin would be willing to add some archery proficiencies that would lower the strength requirements of bows slightly. But it historically took a decade or more of strength training for someone to be able to use an English warbow, so high end bow strength requirements are going to move from "Olympic weighlifter" to "Olympic athlete with a lot of training."
- Question**: Why does the compound greatbow do less damage than the modern compound hunting bow? The greatbow has a strength requirement of 15, the hunting bow only requires 11!
- Answers**
If your avatar could make a compound greatbow out of fiberglass using modern engineering and manufacturing, it'd be a portable cannon. But the compound greatbow is made out of wood in a shack in the middle of swamp, and it's just not that impressive.
- Question**: Why do crossbows suck so much? They should be putting bolts through steel plate, and they're outperformed by modern hunting bows!
- Answers**
- Books ###
- Question**: What do the book colors mean?
- Answers** (by LaSagnyanFerret)
- Red = You haven't read it at all.
- Blue = You can read to increase your skills from it (or learn & level spells in the case of Magiclysm spellbooks).
- Pink = You do not have the necessary skills to read to increase your skills from it.
- Yellow = The book cannot be read to increase your skills, but has unlearned recipes.
- Grey = You cannot read to increase skills (or spells for Magiclysm spellbooks), and no unmemorized recipes(or spells) remain.
- Brown = You do not have the primary skill requirement to craft that item using the book.
- Grey = You can craft the item using the book. The book must be close by or in your inventory to do this.
- White = You already know the recipe, and do not need the book to craft it.
- Guns ###
- Question**: What do the gun colors mean?
- Answers** (by XygenSS_)
- Green = the gun has available loose ammo, or a filled external magazine, in your avatar's inventory
- Red = the gun doesn't have a filled external magazine at hand, but there is a compatible empty magazine in your avatar's inventory
- Gray = the gun has no compatible ammo or magazine in your inventory
- green = there is a compatible gun and compatible ammo in your avatar's inventory
- red = there is a compatible gun but no matching ammo, or compatible ammo but no matching gun, in your avatar's inventory
- gray = no compatible gun or ammo is in your avatar's inventory
- green = there is a compatible gun in your avatar's inventory
- red = there is a compatible magazine, but no matching gun, in your avatar's inventory
- gray = no compatible gun or magazine is in your avatar's inventory
- Maps and the Reality Bubble #
- Map Terms ###
- Question**: What's an overmap terrain tile and overmap buffer?
- Answers**
- The Reality Bubble ###
- Question**: What's the reality bubble? How big is it? How can I make it bigger?
- Answers**
- Z-levels ###
- Question**: What's a z-level? Why did the option to disable z-levels get removed?
- Answers**
In versions 0.E and earlier, it was possible to disable z-levels. With z-levels disabled, the reality bubble only included the z-level the avatar was currently at - things on different levels ceased to exist. It was literally possible to escape zombies by running up or down a set of stairs. Disabling z-levels was a popular option for players on low performance computers, since the computer might have to only simulate a few monsters and NPCs on the current z-level instead of many more spread across 21 z-levels. This option was removed for the 0.F release.
A new feature for 0.F is ground vehicle ramps, which allow ground vehicles to move from one z-level to another by driving up or down a ramp. The design of ground vehicle ramps requires that z-levels be enabled, and does or is going to enable other gameplay changes like boats that can pass under ramps, vehicles with 2 z-levels such as double-decker busses, and elevated terrain such as hills. Extensive performance tuning was done by expert developers before the release of 0.F, and in general 0.F should perform faster with z-levels enabled than 0.E does without z-levels.
- Zombie Hordes ###
- Question**: What is the wandering hordes setting and how does it work? What happened to the "wander spawns" setting?
- Answers** (from esoterist)
Hordes are the things that show up in the overmap overlays as a z or Z, with lowercase indicating a small number of zombies (between 3 and 6), and a big Z meaning more than 6 (up to potentially hundreds). Hordes smaller than 3 zombies do not show up on the overmap, but still exist.
Hordes can form either when zombies leave the reality bubble, or spontaneously during turns. Hordes can pull zombies from an unloaded overmap tile into themselves while on that overmap tile, although it will mostly only pull zombies in exterior areas (and a much smaller percentage of zombies in interior areas). Hordes exist and move outside of the reality bubble.
Over time, hordes can combine and split. They can move according to two primary algorithms, selected when the horde forms (including when hordes combine or split). They have no concept of obstacles, and will move through and into any overmap tile, including water or buildings. Hordes can be slowed by terrain (e.g. forests), but not stopped. The two primary horde behaviors are "navigate towards closest city center" (effectively, city nameplates) and "randomly wander".
Hordes can be attracted to sound, but sound only impacts hordes very briefly before they go back to their previous behaviors, so getting a nearby horde to chase you generally requires constant sound. Also over time, hordes can drop zombies into the reality bubble when positioned appropriately, generally when the horde is on a nearby overmap tile to the player.
Note: This is not how the senior devs want hordes to work, it's just an old legacy 'works for now' system. The plan is for something more nuanced that does in fact properly understand obstacles, barriers, and sometimes does things that can be mistaken for active intelligence. The gap in desired behavior vs current behavior (and the fact zombies will happily teleport through walls in the current incarnation) is why the setting defaults to "off".
- Question**: Do zombie masters have any effect on how hordes move?
- Answers**
- Monsters #
- Zombie Evolution ###
- Question**: How does zombie evolution work?
- Answers**
If you're playing at the default evolution rate of 4, half of the skeletons will become skeletal brutes within 60 days, but it's a linear chance within that range. So of a population of 100 skeletons on day 1, you'd expect to see maybe 1 skeletal brute, but you could get 0 or 3. But zombies and tough zombies have a half-life of 14, and would get 50% evolution within 56 days, and zombie firemen don't evolve at all.
As a further example of how monster evolution works, say there are 4 types of monsters: squires, knights, lords, and paladins. (These are hypothetical monsters for this example and don't exist in game.) Squires upgrade into knights on a 28 day halflife, and knights involve lords on a 42 day halflife or paladins on a 42 day halflife with a 14 day spacer. This is the population density of the various types over time:
|Day | squires | knights | lords | paladins | | --- | :---: | :---: | :---: | :---: | |0 | 100.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | |14 | 75.45% | 24.55% | 0.0% | 0.0% | |28 | 50.85% | 49.15% | 0.0% | 0.0% | |42 | 37.82% | 62.18% | 0.0% | 0.0% | |56 | 24.67% | 73.78% | 1.55% | 0.0% | |70 | 18.59% | 74.22% | 6.95% | 0.24% | |84 | 12.74% | 70.43% | 15.88% | 0.95% | |98 | 9.45% | 61.81% | 26.83% | 1.91% | |112 | 6.28% | 52.62% | 37.68% | 3.42% | |126 | 4.66% | 42.78% | 47.92% | 4.64% | |140 | 3.09% | 34.79% | 56.25% | 5.87% | |154 | 3.09% | 26.96% | 63.06% | 6.89% | |168 | 3.09% | 20.33% | 68.9% | 7.68% | |182 | 3.09% | 14.82% | 73.64% | 8.45% | |196 | 3.09% | 10.92% | 77.07% | 8.92% | |210 | 3.09% | 7.87% | 79.7% | 9.34% | |224 | 3.09% | 5.92% | 81.34% | 9.65% | |238 | 3.09% | 4.78% | 82.29% | 9.84% | |252 | 3.09% | 3.92% | 82.98% | 10.01% | |266 | 3.09% | 3.44% | 83.42% | 10.05% | |280 | 3.09% | 3.14% | 83.67% | 10.1% |
This assumes no deaths, of course.
As an example of how evolution works in the game, these are the monsters I saw after spawning on a new world with default evolution (4), advancing time by 200 days, and then teleporting into a random city block:
- basic zombie types: 1 zombie child, 3 zombies, 1 skeleton, 1 tough zombie, 2 crawling zombies
- evolved zombie types: 1 hulking horror, 4 zombie hunters, 1 slavering biter, 1 shady zombie, 1 smoker zombie, 2 grappler zombies, 1 kevlar zombie, 1 shriekling, 1 corrosive zombies, 2 listener zombies, 1 skull zombie, 1 bloated zombie, 1 incandescent husk
- Buildings #
- Powered Buildings ###
- Question**": Why doesn't CDDA have powered buildings like Bright Nights does?
- Answers**
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This is not great and something the senior developers would like to avoid. Bright Night's solution doesn't solve this problem and has other limitations, so the senior developers want a better solution.
Vehicles, unlike buildings, are entirely loaded into the reality bubble when any map square of the vehicle is in the reality bubble. There is a long term plan to use the same logic to create powered buildings, but this is going to require a substantial overhaul of the map code and the vehicle code so it probably won't happen soon.
- Vehicles #
- Fuel Consumption ###
- Question**: How does vehicle fuel consumption work? What does "drain" mean and what units is it measured in?
- Answers**
An engine's base fuel consumption is fixed, based on the engine size and the combustion efficiency of the engine style: electric motors are 90% efficiency, steam engines are 50%, diesel are around 40%, gasoline combustion are 35%, and gas turbines are 25%. For a given amount of engine power, divide the engine power by efficiency to determine the amount of power that needs to be supplied. Different fuels produce different amounts of energy per unit of fuel consumed, but around 30,000 J per mL is typical.
So a 50,000 W gas combustion engine (which is like a v2 twin) burns about 150,000 W of gasoline if it were going all out, which it doesn't.
Determining the amount of motive power an engine requires to do some action is tricky. For a vehicle driving at a steady speed, you divide drag deceleration (due to wind and vehicle weight) by the vehicle's acceleration at that speed to get a load, and multiple the load by the engine's maximum fuel consumption. At safe speed, a gasoline engine is at around 60% load, so that 50,000 W v2 would be consuming 90,000 W of gasoline. Which is also 90,000 J/s, and gasoline produces ~34,000 J/mL, or about 3 mL of gasoline per second.
Alternators consume a fixed power: 750 W for motorcycle alternators, 1,500 W for car alternators, and 2,250 W for truck alternators. Divide total alternator power by engine power to get engine load, as above, which can't be below 1% of the engine load - so running a motorcycle alternator on a 150,000 W 4-cylinder engine is inefficient. Otherwise, you can put all 3 normal alternators on a 0.4L lawnmower engine and those plus a 7.5 kW generator on a large 1-cylinder engine.
- Vehicle collisions ###
- Question**: How do vehicles take damage in collision? How should I design a vehicle to minimize damage in collisions?
- Answers**
The original damage is then converted to "shock damage", which can affect every other square of the vehicle. Shock damage is divided by the distance in squares from the collision square to the relevant vehicle square. Most armor does not protect against shock damage, but shock absorbers do, but only for the vehicle square with the shock absorber (not including the frame itself). Shock damage is applied equally to every part on a square, reduced for that part by the part's damage resistance. Shock damage that continues past a shock absorber is not reduced for the later tiles: shock absorbers protect only the vehicle square they are mounted on, and no other vehicle squares.
In testing, a shock absorber completely prevented damage to fragile components 1 square away from an impact at a low speed (20 mph) and didn't reduce the damage enough at a moderate speed (40 mph). So they help, but you still need to collide carefully.
Some vehicle parts such as rams, spikes, and shredders do extra damage to the thing the vehicle collides with if they're at the point of impact, and ram plates count as armor during the initial collision, though not for shock damage. Ram plates are easier to install than armor plating of the same type and are slightly tougher, so they're a good idea if you plan to slam into things a lot. However, repeated high speed collisions are going to damage your vehicle, no matter how tough it is. Lower speed collisions help reduce the damage.
- Flight training and building aircraft ###
- Question**: Since my survivor can build an armored vehicle from scrap metal and learn to hack military computers in a few months, why can't my survivor learn to fly a helicopter without any instruction or build a new helicopter from scrap metal?
- Answers** (by mlangsdorf, the current vehicles maintainer)
I tried to get a private pilot's license as a teenager, and I'm familiar with the requirements and challenges of flying a small plane. My brother was also a Power and Airframes licensed helicopter mechanic for 20 years, and *would not shut up about it*, so I know a little about the mechanic side of maintaining helicopters. Finally, as part of researching the topic of untrained experimenters building aircraft, I've read up on the experiences of the early aircraft pioneers like the Wright brothers, Sikorsky, Voight, etc. They all crashed, a lot, often for extremely surprising reasons, while learning to fly and learning to design and build their own aircraft.
- Alternators and Foot Pedals ###
- Question**: I was reading a guide and it said my avatar could put a truck alternator, a car alternator, and a motorbike alternator on a stationary bike and pedal while crafting and generate plenty of electrical power for my base. But I tried that and my avatar can't do that at all! What's going on?
- Answers** (by mlangsdorf, the current vehicles maintainer)
- On current (0.E+) experimentals and in 0.F or later stable versions, alternators draw 75 W, 746 W, 1492 W, 2238 W, or 10444 W, with draw increasing in size from bicycle alternator to 7.5 kW generator.
- Foot pedals provide 360 W + 60 W per point of strength over 8.
If you're playing on 0.E, I think it's still possible to use foot pedals to power a car alternator, but since humans obviously don't produce 2 HP on bicycle pedals, I went and fixed that for 0.F.
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