PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

Status
Not open for further replies.
Would be interesting to know what the actual timeline should be.

Canned food can survive 5 years. But a lot of buildings have damages that look way older, and some are very pristine.

Is there some time-since-the-apocalypse that you aim for in the design?

 
Guppycur said:
C'mon gazz, finding hand made stone tools in a sealed crate is kinda dumb for both realism and gameplay.

...just remove the stone tools from the tables (the easy out) or remove the ability to infinitely repair tools (like you had in the past) so those iron/steel tools were only a temporary boon. 

Bonus, the latter would encourage looting /and/ increase excitement when finding more of the same.
Click to expand...
lets just wait. you never know how it will go!

 
madmole said:
Steel tools are completely unrealistic now though. All the top end guns are made from scrap parts and duct taped together. So finding those in a sealed box at a store doesn't make sense supposedly... but it does because gun stores deal in used/modded weapons, and anyone can take a crate and reuse it.

I don't think its unrealistic, you just have to be a landlord for a few months to see what people actually do IRL. I found 4 pallets of sealed wrapped with plastic dog food in the basement of a house I owned. Like the tenant literally put the pallet down there then carried all the dog food and stacked it nice and then wrapped it in plastic because there was no way in hell a loaded pallet would fit down those stairs. People re-use containers all the time. Maybe the Duke likes all the items organized and boxed up before it gets put in his warehouse so his bandits get things ready before loading the trucks, zombies come along... really people you just have to use your imagination, the apocalypse has probably been going on 5 years already when the player spawns.

Bow does 3.5x sneak damage with no perks. You just have to know how to use it.
Click to expand...
It is what it is.  But it was just my first reaction to it.

The stoneage stuff looted do seem to be an upgrade to what the player currently has so its not all bad.  Will just need taking getting use to.  You could replaace the texture on all the branded sealed crates with something more worn/cobbled together and it might be enough to maintain the immersion.  Not sure the work is worth it or not, just sharing with you my first impressions of it and a possible solution...

At the end of the day its a minor detail and A19 is still so much awesome. :)

 
Last edited by a moderator:
madmole said:
That would encourage a min maxing type of stupid strategy guide game play... "Oh don't open that loot container yet wait until you are a higher level" kind of crap. Honestly stone tools of high quality are kind of nice to find.

If the entire world knee jerks over stone tools, we can do something about it. This is a first pass at getting an actual primitive stage in the game.
Click to expand...
i 101% support the stone age.

for me it was so easy to go from using stone axe to Iron pick and everything else.

and also i saw that you can get arrows from ammo piles, do you think one day we can find other arrows or even arrow heads in ammo piles, like fire arrows!

now i don't know about the other black powder weapons, ill have to think and imagine it! but at the same time, it is kinda odd that there is just a blunderbuss! not anyother

 
madmole said:
That would encourage a min maxing type of stupid strategy guide game play... "Oh don't open that loot container yet wait until you are a higher level" kind of crap. Honestly stone tools of high quality are kind of nice to find.

If the entire world knee jerks over stone tools, we can do something about it. This is a first pass at getting an actual primitive stage in the game.
Click to expand...
...but the game already encourages that by using leveled loot instead of danger based loot.  "Hey StompyNZ, you have the highest GS and perks in lucky looter and are wearing the goggles, eat that magic candy and open this crate for us".

It's already happening.  You /sound/ like you don't like/want it to happen, so is that a sign that y'all are possibly thinking of changing it?

 
Guppycur said:
...but the game already encourages that by using leveled loot instead of danger based loot.  "Hey StompyNZ, you have the highest GS and perks in lucky looter and are wearing the goggles, eat that magic candy and open this crate for us".

It's already happening.  You /sound/ like you don't like/want it to happen, so is that a sign that y'all are possibly thinking of changing it?
Click to expand...
Anyone who's played for long enough already does the min/max strategy.  We all know what things we can do that make the game easier even if it's not realistic.  I prefer the danger strategy.  The reward should reflect the danger.  This is what game devs wrestle with all the time, balancing while players keep trying to find the shortest path to progressing.

 
Guppycur said:
...but the game already encourages that by using leveled loot instead of danger based loot.  "Hey StompyNZ, you have the highest GS and perks in lucky looter and are wearing the goggles, eat that magic candy and open this crate for us".

It's already happening.  You /sound/ like you don't like/want it to happen, so is that a sign that y'all are possibly thinking of changing it?
Click to expand...
I am afraid a change of that magnitude is probably too late at this stage in development even if they wanted to do it.  On a static map, they could sorta make certain biomes with harder difficulty with better loot but then they would need to rework all of the prefabs again and will need to rework their RWG generation as well.  Easier said the done probably.  Maybe for 7 days to die 2? *Shurgs*

There are probably other design issues with location based difficulty with open world maps as well.  In a linear closed world, its easy, you just dont allow the player to go the the higher difficulty location until they are close to being ready.  In MMORPG they actually tell the player what level range a zone or instance is for usability so players dont waste their time and get frustrated/wrecked.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Why not just change the nameplate on the crates then? 

idk, something like "Expedition Supplies", or "White River Exploratory Supplies", painted over top of the "Working Stiff" stencil?

At least then it tells the player "hey, you might not get the best loot in this crate, but it might be better than what you have".

Like it was from a past looting expedition that failed. Put a little note in it, something like: Supplies for expedition "blah blah".

Then as the players GS goes up, the new buildings you enter, have some of the original "Working Stiff" crates inside. 

 
Speaking of stone shovels.. anyone else noticed the player was using the shovel sideways? he's not gonna pick much dirt that way... x)
also, the stone axe handle is rotated backwards. the curve shoud be pointing to the sharp side, not to the user. 

 
@faatal, are you planning on doing a dev stream? I looked at the descriptions of 1 through 5 but didn't see you mentioned as a guest.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I didn't realize last night it was exclusively in 1080p and chewed through 2GB of my data plan in 15 minutes..,.. x(
I'm still waiting for the youtube version...

 
Damocles said:
Would be interesting to know what the actual timeline should be.

Canned food can survive 5 years. But a lot of buildings have damages that look way older, and some are very pristine.

Is there some time-since-the-apocalypse that you aim for in the design?
Click to expand...
Not really. No need to let the realism police over think things. Leaving it vague is best for design and game play freedom. Long enough for modified zombie killing melee weapons to be found in loot, weapons to all be rusty/bandaged, and for traders to open up make shift tree house businesses that have franchised, and for two main players (duke and noah) to have emerged as strong organized forces in the area with differing beliefs.

 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top