PC A20 Developer Diary Discussions

[Roland]

How difficult should the LCB be to craft and how does that affect new players and games? When exactly should they be able to claim land? I think they're fine as is. You can only have one. If you want to discourage other players in a MP game then when they move theirs, go and put one down and claim their abandoned stuff.

His issue is that it makes a good part of a simple nerd pole to quickly escape wandering hordes that target you. He is exclusively talking about toughest difficulty with nightmare speed enemies. If you quickly nerdpole up three blocks with the LCB as the middle block you can kill the zombies while they beat on the LCB and because it has such a high HP you can kill them before they bring down your nerdpole. Then, you can just leave that LCB behind and simply craft a new one for the next encounter.

Technically, it is a request to improve a perceived flaw but the scope of that flaw is very small. It is only relied upon by exploiters during the early game (because later they have an arsenal and don't need it) and really only tempting to use when playing on the absolute toughest difficulty settings (because at lower difficulty the ability to escape and/or manage multiple enemies at once is easier). Honestly, it seems a bit silly for people to turn the difficulty all the way up and then just use exploits to survive. Why crank up the difficulty if you're just going to fudge things anyway?

I get wanting to close loopholes and easy exploits that defeat the design. I think doing so is admirable and I've made my own suggestions along those lines only to be shot down by the developers. They have stated to me that they are perfectly okay with such things remaining in the game for players who wish to use them. As the developers they choose to make those designs that they will. So vultures attack vehicles at supersonic speed during hordenight because the developers care about that but players who play insane and nightmare speed can go ahead and use the LCB as part of their nerdpole if they want because the devs don't care about that one. I brought up the ability to use the killall command during quests and still succeed at the quest and gain the trader reward and their response was that if players want to use commands in their game then that is their choice. They had no desire to block those or at least make them to cause a quest to fail.

They will pick and choose the exploits that matter to them.

 

[Urban Blackbear]

Sometimes it helps to view things in another's perspective but I'll take a pass on discussing anyone else's issues. 

 

[doughphunghus]

I feel the LCB would be “more fun and less exploitable” if it had just 1 hp.  The goal being it would be easy to craft, but only literally useful as a land claim to  do what it does today, and of course to be able to “claim” workstations and pick them up.  It’s mentioned before but I also feel that if you want a long term claim, you should have to protect the claim block by surrounding it with other blocks/traps, and this would be “it’s hit points” to get to it to destroy it. 
 

ive played in PvP and the claim block doesn’t do squiggly when I’m afk for hours and someone finds my base. High powered Players just mow my base and destroy everything, unless the server admin makes “land claims” indestructible, which they all seem to do now anyway.  Of course, if they’re going to set/mod that, they can also set/mod the hit points to be “whatever” so that’s likely why it’s a moot point, but I do  feel the vanilla settings would play better if the LCB were cut from a stone, fast to craft, but fragile as glass.

actually, it would be kinda neat if the LCB could be powered, and the more power you applied (to a limit) the more “block protection” you get.  This would require a constant expenditure of electric, and at night there’s no solar so you lose power unless you go on generator.... which makes noise. Might make PvP more fun at night, and zeds too if they were drawn to the generator noise. Unless it’s serious PvP where I don’t think anyone uses LCB unless it offers complete land claim immunity.

 

[MechanicalLens]

Thank you for your answer, but this is not the point, but the fact that the color scheme of the game is too bright, the plants are bright green, and the snow is like powdered sugar from old Disney cartoons. The color palette makes the game look sickly bright. But thank you for answer

And somebody tell me, is it possible to somehow return the old sounds of the environment by replacing the files? And is it possible to somehow increase the number of trees, otherwise the forests are empty in new versions. 

Turn down the brightness then?

Also, high density tree locations cause a horrendous amount of lag. Can you name one game that has trees placed every few feet or so? Answer: None do.

Trees are particularly taxing in any game, as are reflections, shadows, and water.

 

[Blake_]

So... @faatal , will 19.5 exp be released today or are you waiting to fix it a bit more for next week ?

faatal: Yes.

 

[faatal]

So... @faatal , will 19.5 exp be released today or are you waiting to fix it a bit more for next week ?

faatal: Yes.

Not this week, but I hear it is looking good, so sooooon.

 

[MechanicalLens]

Not this week, but I hear it is looking good, so sooooon.

So in about 3 months then?  :angel:

 

[Adam the Waster]

Anyone got picks?

i don't have time to go through the stream

 

[DUST2DEATH]

Turn down the brightness then?

Also, high density tree locations cause a horrendous amount of lag. Can you name one game that has trees placed every few feet or so? Answer: None do.

Trees are particularly taxing in any game, as are reflections, shadows, and water.

Is certainly possible to achieve....

 

[MechanicalLens]

Is certainly possible to achieve....

Just go ahead and plant about 400+ trees (spawned in from the creative menu) in one general area and check your FPS afterwards. Especially for lower end PC's, the results would be quite drastic.

Just because they can do it doesn't mean they should.

 

[DUST2DEATH]

Just go ahead and plant about 400+ trees (spawned in from the creative menu) in one general area and check your FPS afterwards. Especially for lower end PC's, the results would be quite drastic.

Just because they can do it doesn't mean they should.

That's because their trees are 7000 odd tri's, and their vision..

Certainly can be done. I did so for A18...

 

 

[Jora1337]

Will there be alpha 20 this summer in June / July? And will there be feral sence in 20 alpha? And how will the weather work? Is it just an optimization or have you improved the weather effects? 

 

[MechanicalLens]

Will there be alpha 20 this summer in June / July?

For various reasons TFP never give out approximate release dates anymore. It'll be done when it's done.

 

[Sirillion]

Can you name one game that has trees placed every few feet or so? Answer: None do.

Trees are particularly taxing in any game, as are reflections, shadows, and water.

Valheim

 

[MechanicalLens]

Valheim

Any fun games.

 

[Sirillion]

Any fun games.

…VALHEIM!

You haven’t played it have you?

 

[MechanicalLens]

…VALHEIM!

You haven’t played it have you?

Yes, until I realized that every time I would log on I would have to grind for multiple hours. I have not touched it since.

 

[Gazz]

I daresay most players use picks pretty early in the game.

 

[Jost Amman]

@faatal I know this is not exactly your department, yet I wanted to ask, do you know if road signs/paint, sidewalks, Street lights and stuff like that is going to be in RWG for a20 or is it just Navezgane at the moment?

According to the Twister post it IS in RWG already.  :biggrin1:

 

[Blake_]

According to the Twister post it IS in RWG already.  :biggrin1:

Idk. It says "a ton of updated and new environment art and a brand-new Random World Generation Algorithm". It doesn't specifically imply inclusion or exclusion of groins in the twister rules. I learned not to asume nor bend the bladder for such statements until properly confirmed.