PC A20 Developer Diary Discussions

What are the chances of solar panels ever showing up? Or potentially the ones we find on top of buildings being able to be hooked up and functional?
The chance is very good if you go all in with the "better barter" perk and look into the secret stash of the trader. AFAIK this is also the only way to get working solar panels.

 
The chance is very good if you go all in with the "better barter" perk and look into the secret stash of the trader. AFAIK this is also the only way to get working solar panels.
Might you happen to know what gamestage is minimum for the solar panels?

 
Khalagar said:
Can any of the devs comment on what ever happened to the "spawn next to each other when starting a game" thing that was mentioned ...
That's doable now.  Create the world, go into the world's folder (gamefolder/data/worlds), set the spawnpoints in spawnpoints.xml, enjoy friendship.  I'm guessing eventually we will get some generation settings so that this will be in the UI.

...and no roland,that's not modding. 😃

 
thats cuz i find them first and post them. or someone else does. Madmole ill wait for my paycheck (dukes only)

Daddy needed a New Bicycle!
Madmole quickly noticed that if he posted screenshots here first he would also still have to post them on twitter but if he posted them on twitter first they would get posted here usually even before he had a chance to do so. It seems pretty natural that he would shift to the method that required less effort. He very much appreciates the fans who repost the images and does not favor twitter over the forums. It just emerged as a simpler method for him.

 
I can answer this: no, because the map file is huge and always growing... too much for a cloud save.
Cloud save

I tought the map is generated at the creation. It have borders, since i can set the parameters. File size isnt "huge"

Thats why its weird (to me) to not have a cloud save.   Compared to something else, it could be a thing easily, since its not and endless map.

Since its alpha, i understand that they dont want to spend dev time to this.

I rather think they aware of some bugs and causing some players save corrupted. Just by logic.   but your "file would be too huge" idea is still can be true somehow.

 
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Blake_ said:
@faatal the day lenght is cool and all, yet we are missing fractions on the top of the spectrum. Meaning for less than default we get 10min, 20min, 30, 40 AND 50 minute days, yet above default we just get 90 and 120 mins. 

So we can't get a huge day and a huge night with that option alone and have to tweak the other two options (daylight lenght and horde frequency), BUT horde frequency doesn't make the day longer and daylight lenght can only make it smaller and the night has a lenght limit too. Also horde frequency forces you to change the 7 day frequency if you try to compensate the plain day lenght option and in the end you just get more days and not the desired 2 hour night (exaggerated example, but I think the point is mostly clear).

Any chance we get 180, 240 and 480 min day options ?

 I gather 240mins will be quite popular for "leasure" plays, and by leasure I mean more day time at the cost of brutal nights and infinite hordes.


Not sure what the day length is, but if you go into DM mode and press Esc, you'll see a day speed slider on the right hand side. The default is 4 I believe; switch it to 1 and enjoy the long days and nights. :)

 
Cloud save

I tought the map is generated at the creation. It have borders, since i can set the parameters. File size isnt "huge"

Thats why its weird (to me) to not have a cloud save.   Compared to something else, it could be a thing easily, since its not and endless map.

Since its alpha, i understand that they dont want to spend dev time to this.

I rather think they aware of some bugs and causing some players save corrupted. Just by logic.   but your "file would be too huge" idea is still can be true somehow.
What is the comparative speed of cloud saving to HDD saving? The game saves every few seconds. If cloud saving is slower than HD saving it might cause more hitching. SSD are faster than HDD and there is a noticeable difference of less hitching. I'd be curious whether cloud saving is more or less speedy and disruptive.

 
Not sure what the day length is, but if you go into DM mode and press Esc, you'll see a day speed slider on the right hand side. The default is 4 I believe; switch it to 1 and enjoy the long days and nights. :)
I prefer using DM and hitting Q. Far more efficient. CM for sundays and giveselfxp for when my back itches.

 
I prefer using DM and hitting Q. Far more efficient. CM for sundays and giveselfxp for when my back itches.


You like Q, I prefer Flight + No Collision. 😜

You do have a fair point though and one that I agree with. I only play on 90 minute days because it gives me time to enjoy the experience and take things a little slower**. Just saying, anyone who plays on 120 minute days and above are basically cheating. You're playing 14 Days To Die, especially if you're using every moment of your time efficiently as you can.

**Baking a baked potato, cooking up some cornbread, brewing up a coffee and watching the sunrise is time I would dare not waste on a 60 minute day cycle. 90 minute days however? Sure, sure.

 
What is the comparative speed of cloud saving to HDD saving? The game saves every few seconds. If cloud saving is slower than HD saving it might cause more hitching. SSD are faster than HDD and there is a noticeable difference of less hitching. I'd be curious whether cloud saving is more or less speedy and disruptive.
I think (and I am no expert) if they were to implement a cloud save feature for the game, they would have to code it in to only do when the game is closed and shutdown.  Since the game world is constantly updating and requiring saving it every few seconds, I don't think you want to do a cloud save for each "update" of the world.  I have also been seeing issues with Steam's cloud saving services lately and a lot of times I been getting communication errors / fault outs to the Steam cloud even though I have no other issues online.  With the hard drive always being available, the only issue you might have if you let your free available space get too low and it can't save the file anymore.  Again, I am no expert and I could just simply be talking out of my butt.

 
Not sure what the day length is, but if you go into DM mode and press Esc, you'll see a day speed slider on the right hand side. The default is 4 I believe; switch it to 1 and enjoy the long days and nights. :)
4 is default if you chose 90 minute days.  It is higher if you choose shorter days or lower if you chose longer days.  I hate to admit this but I have gone in DM mode in my early nights of playthroughs just so I don't have to sit there doing nothing the entire night.  So a 4 becomes an 8 (or however close I can get it with the slider) so I don't get bored watching my character hide in the shadows on the roof of a building.  Eventually once I get to mid-game, I got a whole list of chores to do at night that I can't get done, even with the setting still at 4.  I don't mind that as I am actually doing work (sorting, organizing, crafting, etc) rather than hiding in a corner.

 
4 is default if you chose 90 minute days.  It is higher if you choose shorter days or lower if you chose longer days.  I hate to admit this but I have gone in DM mode in my early nights of playthroughs just so I don't have to sit there doing nothing the entire night.  So a 4 becomes an 8 (or however close I can get it with the slider) so I don't get bored watching my character hide in the shadows on the roof of a building.  Eventually once I get to mid-game, I got a whole list of chores to do at night that I can't get done, even with the setting still at 4.  I don't mind that as I am actually doing work (sorting, organizing, crafting, etc) rather than hiding in a corner.


For the first new nights I just crouch in darkness and tab out of the game to watch a video or listen to some music or whatever. No point in watching paint dry.

 
In alpha 20 will there be 1 biome of each per RWG seed by default? Will there be options to customize this further? (1 biome worlds perhaps, or 80% desert and 20% other.) Is the plan to have randomly generated worlds using a set of algorithms and generation rules or will there simply be a selection of a handful of templates the game could choose from?

 
That would be cool to have more variety in randomization, however I was focused more on importing a static height map with specific city and town locations (the rest could be randomly generated of course).  I think there are a lot of modders that would greatly appreciate that sort of functionality. 

 
Blake_ said:
@faatal the day lenght is cool and all, yet we are missing fractions on the top of the spectrum. Meaning for less than default we get 10min, 20min, 30, 40 AND 50 minute days, yet above default we just get 90 and 120 mins. 

So we can't get a huge day and a huge night with that option alone and have to tweak the other two options (daylight lenght and horde frequency), BUT horde frequency doesn't make the day longer and daylight lenght can only make it smaller and the night has a lenght limit too. Also horde frequency forces you to change the 7 day frequency if you try to compensate the plain day lenght option and in the end you just get more days and not the desired 2 hour night (exaggerated example, but I think the point is mostly clear).

Any chance we get 180, 240 and 480 min day options ?

 I gather 240mins will be quite popular for "leasure" plays, and by leasure I mean more day time at the cost of brutal nights and infinite hordes.
I've got over 10500 hrs in this game and I always play with 240 minute days. Used to be able to set that in a SP game but it disappeared somewhere around A12-A13. I tried playing with 120 minute days but I can't really get into it. When they took that setting away I started renting a server and have rented one ever since. I'd love for that setting to come back. I don't really care if it's balanced or not because I usually change the settings on my server anyway. 

 
I've got over 10500 hrs in this game and I always play with 240 minute days. Used to be able to set that in a SP game but it disappeared somewhere around A12-A13. I tried playing with 120 minute days but I can't really get into it. When they took that setting away I started renting a server and have rented one ever since. I'd love for that setting to come back. I don't really care if it's balanced or not because I usually change the settings on my server anyway. 


Balance wouldn't really be a question, at least in regards to horde nights. The player could easily change the hordes to occur once every 30 days, or they could roll back the time. But yes, a less artificial option would be nice. (As would the option to change the difficulty depending on if it's nighttime or daytime.)

 
I've got over 10500 hrs in this game and I always play with 240 minute days. Used to be able to set that in a SP game but it disappeared somewhere around A12-A13. I tried playing with 120 minute days but I can't really get into it. When they took that setting away I started renting a server and have rented one ever since. I'd love for that setting to come back. I don't really care if it's balanced or not because I usually change the settings on my server anyway. 
If you are comfortable editing an xml file you can do it fairly easy. I would suggest using notepad+ though as I am not sure how well it would work in regular notepad

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Sorry Mod/Devs. Forgot I was in the dev diary channel

 
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