PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

Status
Not open for further replies.
Laz Man said:
After watching all 3 dev streams so far to me this is the "Immersion" update.  The changes in lighting, HD textures and addition of more deco blocks make for a more immersive experience that rival many AA/AAA titles. 

Sprinkled in is also more content, polish and bug fixes.  It also looks like many of the changes yield same or better performance.

I hate to echo MM but this looks to be the best Alpha yet...😂

It's also nice to see the work that is going on for A20+ features.
Click to expand...
How about those big yellow sprites? What's your opinion on them?

 
MechanicalLens said:
I would probably still use traders to sell gear I find in loot, since I couldn't bear to throw away a T5 pump shotgun or a duplicate but worse T6 M60. Lol

Anyhoo, I'm comfortable with the stipulations and settings I've set for myself. No double looting from quests, no breaking into the loot rooms of POI's for cheeky loot, no Lucky Looter, no curing infection with honey, 90 minute days, 50% XP gain, no using vending machines after an in-game week (plus it saves on the dukes), no loot respawn, no air drops, permadeath.

Once A19 hits, I'll be limiting myself to just two quests a week maximum. (Maybe T1 buried supplies aside.)
Click to expand...
Thats the why I love this game,

Do you want to loot or not

Quests or no Quests

Be the builder

Never build a base

What ever your play style you can do it.

 
DaVegaNL said:
How about those big yellow sprites? What's your opinion on them?
Click to expand...
Theres a fine line between immersion and usability.  Is immersiveness as important when trying to find a bicycle left in a field of grass?  Or how about when digging in the side of a mountain of stone terrain blocks for what seems like forever?  Guess the thresold will vary from person to person.  Good thing its moddable via xml so it can be configured to the way people like it.

Edit: I sure hope they add the nav icon for the junk turret as god knows how many times I forgot it at a POI and had to double back to find it again lol.  I probably would configure my nav beacons to only be visible within a short distance not to clutter my compass.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Laz Man said:
Theres a fine line between immersion and usability.  Is immersiveness as important when trying to find a bicycle left in a field of grass?  Or how about when digging in the side of a mountain of stone terrain blocks for what seems like forever?  Guess the thresold will vary from person to person.  Good thing its moddable via xml so it can be configured to the way people like it.

Edit: I sure hope they add the nav icon for the junk turret as god knows how many times I forgot it at a POI and had to double back to find it again lol.  I probably would configure my nav beacons to only be visible within a short distance not to clutter my compass.
Click to expand...
I do that @%$*#! well, Leave it behind in the bowels of some POI :)

 
There are so many play styles which, I would add, includes many play intensities.

By "play intensity", the range would be from min-maxer (Try Hard) to being ultra casual (willfully incompetent).

Both are fun in their own ways, but being willfully incompetent requires a greater detachment from the game, so is actually more difficult for me.  I've started watching Anti-min-maxers on you tube and they are good for some laughs.  :)

 
Im all for different play styles, hell i do different each Alpha to try them out.

Im just looking for a balance to looting/crafting. Im happy with everything else ( that i know off ) . Even the changes to food/water drain while driving. When i bought a Alpha game, i understood that A14 wasn't how the game would be by gold. I think people may lose sight of that idk.

I'll be disappointed if they don't add a middle mouse attack with spiked knuckles to "Knuckle Rub" a Demo lol

 
There could also be point arrows above the bird nests. Would make them easier to find.

And in general have all containers and dropped items have a glow effect.

And special radar view, to see where the sleeper zombies are.

 
Yeah I don't like it either. But only because it's not possible to turn them off in-game. That's just.. Strange.

 
So I watched the dev stream.. New zombies look great, swimming zombies? That is just stupid, its bad enough they are structual engineers and can dig, now they can swim and faster than the player even? it makes NO sense, you need to let the player have SOME saftey somehow. Zombies still need some randomized skins with diff stats or something so were not fighting the same carbon copy zombie over and over. If the game was with monsters instead of humans turned zombie it'd be fine if they looked the same for the same monster, but this is a zombie game.

Autoshotgun looks nice, and will probably be one of my favorite guns in A19. The int stuff, Placeable junk turrets should never have existed and nor should the drone, they are too easly exploitable with their 10-14 meter activate distance for the turrets and I suspect the drone might be farther due to it being mobile. Lower junk turret/sledge turrets activation distance when placed to 1-2 meters (which is 1-2 blocks) This way they are useful for backup fire, but you can't sit on the floor above and drop it 2 floors below you to clear rooms out at 0 risk to the player. They have also become a crutch for players, many players now have gotten bad at the game when they lack a junk turret because they are too used to abusing them.

 
You can see that new and casual players are favored by the... less than completely immersive UI.  Along with some OP player equipment.

But its good business as causal players will tend to play without mods and more hardcore players will tend to use mods.

Also expert level players will sometimes include "willful incompetence" by not using OP things including turrets in some (all?) of their play through's. 

Of course having some options for the glaring UI issues would be great for everyone.

 
Scyris said:
So I watched the dev stream.. New zombies look great, swimming zombies? That is just stupid, its bad enough they are structual engineers and can dig, now they can swim and faster than the player even? it makes NO sense, you need to let the player have SOME saftey somehow. Zombies still need some randomized skins with diff stats or something so were not fighting the same carbon copy zombie over and over. If the game was with monsters instead of humans turned zombie it'd be fine if they looked the same for the same monster, but this is a zombie game.

Autoshotgun looks nice, and will probably be one of my favorite guns in A19. The int stuff, Placeable junk turrets should never have existed and nor should the drone, they are too easly exploitable with their 10-14 meter activate distance for the turrets and I suspect the drone might be farther due to it being mobile. Lower junk turret/sledge turrets activation distance when placed to 1-2 meters (which is 1-2 blocks) This way they are useful for backup fire, but you can't sit on the floor above and drop it 2 floors below you to clear rooms out at 0 risk to the player. They have also become a crutch for players, many players now have gotten bad at the game when they lack a junk turret because they are too used to abusing them.
Click to expand...
I am going to have to disagree with you a bit, the game is too easy currently.

With the like of floating bases, wedge exploits, arrow slit exploit, ramp exploit, driving away from hoards on hoard night, Building invulnerable water bases. 

I could go on but I think my point is made the game is to easy IMO, way to easy to survive without even using exploits.

Getting infected means nothing as I always have a cure on hand.

I am swimming in food.

If we were playing semi realism style game, you would have nothing but a wood log base as you cant make anything else and nothing could get through that as a rotting human hand would turn to mush against it.

To make cement you need limestone heated to very high temperatures to make cement and then how do you move multi tons of cement, 1 m3 of cement weighs 2.5 tons or 5000 pounds.

I agree with the Junk Turret needs tweaking, either decrease the activation range or increase the number of zombies in a POI as I have a level 4 one currently and it just murders everything with ease while exploring POI's and my game stage is over 120 already, So I just leave it at home.

 
Ive used the turret on 1 play through, agree it needs tweaking. Just scrap for ammo...... no gun powder. Yet Blunderbuss ammo needs more mats. Just my thoughts. 

 
Matt 1977 said:
Ive used the turret on 1 play through, agree it needs tweaking. Just scrap for ammo...... no gun powder. Yet Blunderbuss ammo needs more mats. Just my thoughts. 
Click to expand...
Hmmm maybe make it use scrap iron and gun powder to make a junk turret ammo cartridge or another possibility is that you have to wind it up for it to shoot.

 
Matt 1977 said:
Ive used the turret on 1 play through, agree it needs tweaking. Just scrap for ammo...... no gun powder. Yet Blunderbuss ammo needs more mats. Just my thoughts. 
Click to expand...
My issue is more the fact you can have to shoot at zombies in random poi's while your safe behind doors and such. IMO you should need both line of sight with the turret, and also have to be witnhin 1-2 blocks of it, or it don't fire. Would allow it to be used as backup damage but will fix the exploitability of it that it currently has. I mean i've seen players drop them 2-3 floors below them and they just mop everything out pretty fast at 0 risk to the player. I just do not understand it, they made zombies dig so underground players have a risk, they make them swim in a19 so you can't just hide on a lake at night or, the rotting zombies also somehow can swim faster than the player.. yeah figure that one out I can't, yet they allow placed junk turrets to fire at things while your half the Poi away completly safe.

I'm particlarly salty about the digging zombies myself, I used to make underground bases, not to hide from the horde, I usually fought them at ground level I like the challenge, but because everytime I build a base, I end up putting 1 block to many and it takes the entire base down due to the SI system, IMO if you place 1 block over the limit only THAT most recent block should fall, not have it cause a cascade that ends up taking down the entire structure. So I would build underground deep down as it just was easier since I didn't have to worry about SI that far down. Now? I am basically forced to fortify poi's because I am sick of going 1 block over the SI limit taking out my entire base. I like the brown church with no fence, take out back stairs and zombies usually always come in the front only, so you only have to defend 1 way on horde nights. Its pretty stable too, I base up near the cieling and it pretty much won't come down unless the zombies somehow blow out the entire 2 side walls.

 
Annihilatorza said:
I am going to have to disagree with you a bit, the game is too easy currently.

With the like of floating bases, wedge exploits, arrow slit exploit, ramp exploit, driving away from hoards on hoard night, Building invulnerable water bases. 

I could go on but I think my point is made the game is to easy IMO, way to easy to survive without even using exploits.

Getting infected means nothing as I always have a cure on hand.

I am swimming in food.

If we were playing semi realism style game, you would have nothing but a wood log base as you cant make anything else and nothing could get through that as a rotting human hand would turn to mush against it.

To make cement you need limestone heated to very high temperatures to make cement and then how do you move multi tons of cement, 1 m3 of cement weighs 2.5 tons or 5000 pounds.

I agree with the Junk Turret needs tweaking, either decrease the activation range or increase the number of zombies in a POI as I have a level 4 one currently and it just murders everything with ease while exploring POI's and my game stage is over 120 already, So I just leave it at home.
Click to expand...
Sure, bring up the Concrete thing and not the Black powder in modern guns thing.

 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top