PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

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What do you call the secondary weapon perks like perceptions demolition expert and strengths sledge hammer perk(I forget the name :)) I notice that fortidue and intellect don't have one, is there any plans to fill those out? Fortidue could have like a riot shield with spikes on it, that you bash zs with and it's secondary action could be similar to how the bow drains your stamina while you have an arrow drawn, but when you hold up the shield it blocks damage (while draining stamina). Not sure about intellect, I know it techically does have a secondary weapon option, making traps etc. Could maybe use a early game ranged weapon skill, like a sling shot that you craft different 'projectiles' like posion/chemical/acid shots or explosives or shrapnel shots.

I also wondered if it would be feasible to add a repair item currently selected in toolbelt hotkey? maybe with a modifier to prevent unintentional repairs like shift+Y or somthing. 

 
Noctoras said:
Tx for the feedback - if only blade traps work without trigger, it limits automated base support systems to one design for later stages, though, so personally I still see room for improvement there. Alas, I haven't had the time to get that far in testing these Alpha yet, so that's all I can say on it. I very much hope regular base building with a variety in designs gets feasible again.
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Blade traps don't trigger demolishers anymore is the point.

 
MechanicalLens said:
Blade traps don't trigger demolishers anymore is the point.
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yes, but if other automated systems (junk turrets, smg turrets, dart traps) still do, it limits automated base design to dart traps. But since I didnt get this far in this alpha yet, I haven't tested it yet.  

 
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MechanicalLens said:
Alright, my mistake, I misinterpreted the "if" part of his message as him misunderstanding. Carry on.
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Yeah, didn't mean that in a condescending way... 🙂

Noctoras said:
yes, but if other automated systems (junk turrets, smg turrets, dart traps) still do, it limits automated base design to dart traps. But since I didnt get this far in this alpha yet, I haven't tested it yet.  
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You could place your turrets farther away from your main base so that they can shoot/trigger dems and have them explode way before they reach your walls maybe.

 
wolfbain5 said:
good, too many are closeted pervs who are too pc to be fun
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@madmole Hello! Ok lets go.

I have complained very much about this game, I know, I am annoying sometimes. But after these 2 last update, A-19 178b and 180b, I feel obliged to come here and give my greetings to you and all your staff. CONGRATULATIONS! The work you did and the modifications you made to all weapons are AMAZING. Finally is worth use double barrel shot gun and magnun, the new firing animations is perfect. Please, tell to your staff it was trully a great work!

And thank you very much for changed the food prices at player and rented vending machines, I have reported this "issue" and wow, you really worked on that. I am very happy I have helped in some way, even in a minor one.

But if you permit me, I have a little suggestion about shotguns, the ranged is very, very short, I saw many friends complaining about that, specially during bloodmoon cause sometimes they cant shot in the zombies running around our cage. I have talked with my friend (he has a lot of knowleged about firearms) and he told me the range of this weapon in this game is trully very short, I even have studied about these weapons in the internet and have to agree with him. I suggest you change the ranged and increase it to 10 or 15 meters.

Thats all, and again, congratulations and keep the good work.

 
Demandred1957 said:
Nah, Steve Irwin there took a swing at it and did some damage. Spawn in 20-30 higher lvl zoms and try it again.

They will bump themselves around enough to get to the corners I bet.
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You couldn't have made a better argument to show that this is really an exploit. If a 4 block wood structure needs 20-30 higher lvl zoms to remove it, it is past OP, it is !!OP!!

Biscoitoso said:
@madmole Hello! Ok lets go.

I have complained very much about this game, I know, I am annoying sometimes. But after these 2 last update, A-19 178b and 180b, I feel obliged to come here and give my greetings to you and all your staff. CONGRATULATIONS! The work you did and the modifications you made to all weapons are AMAZING. Finally is worth use double barrel shot gun and magnun, the new firing animations is perfect. Please, tell to your staff it was trully a great work!

And thank you very much for changed the food prices at player and rented vending machines, I have reported this "issue" and wow, you really worked on that. I am very happy I have helped in some way, even in a minor one.

But if you permit me, I have a little suggestion about shotguns, the ranged is very, very short, I saw many friends complaining about that, specially during bloodmoon cause sometimes they cant shot in the zombies running around our cage. I have talked with my friend (he has a lot of knowleged about firearms) and he told me the range of this weapon in this game is trully very short, I even have studied about these weapons in the internet and have to agree with him. I suggest you change the ranged and increase it to 10 or 15 meters.

Thats all, and again, congratulations and keep the good work.
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Shotguns deliver by far the highest damage per bullet, the balance is that it is only at close range. Forget realism, this is about balance and balance trumps realism. IMHO shotgun is still too good.

 
2 Questions for the devs:

Pretty much everybody knows by now that traders and their secret stashes aren't in line with the new progression concept.

Will that be rectified until stable A19?

Also regarding "better barter":

Solar cells are still exclusively obtainable through "better barter".

Seems out of line with how every other piece of equipment or item works - obtainable by more than one means.

Why can't they be part of the general loot table? (At high game stages of course) Or even craftable?

Would be a perfect item to find in the new electronics stores!

 
Hi @faatal I've been testing a bit. First of all, good job on the kynematic body issue. I couldn't find it anymore, resulting in smoother combat and hunting . 

FEEDBACK A19 B180 full wipe (AppData, profiles, steamapps, everything) , new map:

The two previously reported issues (loading and unloading of elements and simultaneous spawns & sleeper spawns) are still the main problems for performance. 

VRAM seems to be better and better the more you guys look at it. LODs of decoration seem to work better overall. Graphics performance is OK for the moment until more content is added. Memory still fills up too much over time and doesn't restore as well as it should, but it definitely increases slower than before.

Freezes? still a lot because of said problems. Less than a19 b169+ ? Yes, definitely. I can play for up to half a minute running through a town without freezes. 

The problem with these freezes is that I cannot catch a screenshot in which you see the drop, because if my PC is freezed I can't take the screenshot in the exact moment and steam detects it just when the fps restore, so you would always see, both in console (on INF messages loading/unloading) and in game 60 frames after it happens.

Here's a new one. You might already know it, but I've never reported it with screenshot:

"WRN Spawn class xxxxxxxxx can't walk on block sleeperidle with wal Type 4."

20200814134015_1.jpg
This freeze happened while several sleeper volumes were also loading. so it is difficult to say if the main cause is the sleeper issue or the bug that resulted in that warning.

I can confirm that this warning was sometimes there when the "spawn freeze" was happening. At least 1 in 5 times, according to my testing data. 

Next issue is a known one. DECO stuff is generating warnings like crazy and freezes the game like there's no tomorrow. Instead of unloading properly, it generates hickups to a point that freezes the game on lower systems. This madness seems like Unity colliding with genious programming.  I don't know if the chunk saving and the INF lines after the warnings (INF [DECO] WRITTEN 0) are somewhat helpful to the problem.  The RSS memory feed surpassing the 4 gb line and generating bumps is also a reason for concern.

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Notice that the game ramps up the memory usage too fast 

I had to change the resolution to 720p to continue testing, but only 5 minutes into the game with one 720p to 1080p resolution adjustement and the RSS feed on the console went from 3500Mb to 4200+Mb with no resets (from higher res to lower and the memory keeps ramping up too fast, THAT is a problem). While RSS might be no reliable indicator of memory usage, if it goes up too fast that means that stuff happens and garbage hurts .

Good news is, it NEVER started in 3500+ Mb. EVER. So things are improving. Before it was 3890 Mb minimum at the very start.

I hope that within this post you find something that is remotely helpful.

Cheers! 

 
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PoloPoPo said:
Dart traps don't trigger demolisher bombs?
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No, they won't trigger the explosion. In A18 they were the only electrical traps that could be used against the demolishers without triggering the explosion. In A19, you can also use the blade traps. But you have to keep repairing them during the horde or they get destroyed.

 
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Kam R. said:
2 Questions for the devs:

Pretty much everybody knows by now that traders and their secret stashes aren't in line with the new progression concept.

Will that be rectified until stable A19?

Also regarding "better barter":

Solar cells are still exclusively obtainable through "better barter".

Seems out of line with how every other piece of equipment or item works - obtainable by more than one means.

Why can't they be part of the general loot table? (At high game stages of course) Or even craftable?

Would be a perfect item to find in the new electronics stores!
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A20

I believe you have a slim chance to salvage them and the solar bank.

 
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meganoth said:
Shotguns deliver by far the highest damage per bullet, the balance is that it is only at close range. Forget realism, this is about balance and balance trumps realism. IMHO shotgun is still too good.
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You forgot the massive amount of block damage they do and the auto destroy wood blocks after reading the full set. 15m range??? Great way to collapse a poi on your head.

 
NukemDed said:
i think i have found a bit of an exploit. 

if you have a quest marker on a poi that you have previously cleared, activate the quest marker to reload/refresh ready tfor the quest. and quit and come back in.

the poi is still refreshed and the quest marker is back.

clear poi, reactivate quest marker, clear poi again. 3 clears for 1 poi.

nice when its crack a book 🙂

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thanks for heads up, i reprod it in sp, i am currently testing this in mp as well

:)
QA Tester-unholyjoe
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I dunno....exploit might be too harsh a word. You have to do the work of clearing that POI every time and it’s exactly as if there were five crack-a-books right next to each other. I mean if you don’t want to do that then don’t that.....

/s

 
RipClaw said:
No, they won't trigger the explosion. In A18 they were the only electrical traps that could be used against the demolishers without triggering the explosion. 
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Didn't know that. Awesome. Will definitely reinforce my horde base with tons of dart traps now 😄

 
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