PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

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faatal said:
Players will probably never be able to do that.

As of last week, zombies can crouch down and crawl based on head clearance. Pathing still works on 2m heights, so we are not fully 1m yet, but crawling fixes bugs with zombies getting stuck in tight places.
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that's cool. well this mean dogs will  "focus" on making hole under wall?

 
Will crouching mean that zombies will also be able to get into the trader posts with the wooden X-beam walls (Joel's and Hugh's, I believe), the way dogs currently do?

 
I’m glad to hear the new gear progression is going well, i’m really looking forward to it! Also curious what other system changes might come with it, like if the perks and weapon stats are getting tweaked or something.

 
faatal said:
As of last week, zombies can crouch down and crawl based on head clearance. Pathing still works on 2m heights, so we are not fully 1m yet, but crawling fixes bugs with zombies getting stuck in tight places.
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Shaking that base design up! Zombies just crouch walking through your intended kill boxes will catch a lot of people off guard for sure.

One zombie issue I've been struggling with is the vulture change to make them move 900 mph towards vehicles. It makes it basically pointless to even go near a wasteland biome because your gyrocopter will get taken out by a flock and you can barely land in time to kill them before they shred you. Hopefully one of the new vehicle mods is some kind of shock defense for the bird spam! There could be a work around for horde nights so it doesn't let you do the old "drive all night" tactic, but currently . . . screw the Wasteland biome

 
bloodmoth13 said:
I like the cowboy but damn does he look out of place in most areas.

I think they should replace him with a fur trapper/frontiersman, a guy in a racoon hat with a bear trap stuck on his leg and a busted up rifle on his back. Would work great for any place where animals live out in the wilderness, hunting shops or even shanty town.
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Although would look interesting. Sounds too niche (e.g. like the football player) and maybe moreso then the current cowboy.  There are alot of people in the U.S. who actually wear the cowboy look so he fits the general population bucket imo.

 
faatal said:
Zombies crouching and dogs digging holes have NOTHING to do with each other.
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Okay that's good :)

Laz Man said:
Although would look interesting. Sounds too niche (e.g. like the football player) and maybe moreso then the current cowboy.  There are alot of people in the U.S. who actually wear the cowboy look so he fits the general population bucket imo.
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Well or are goth . well goth zombie sound good

 
Fatal, my diamond viper video card is having trouble playing the game.  Will your optimizations help?

While your at it, my sound blaster doesn't play the sounds, I'm thinking of upgrading to a gravis ultrasound, what are your thoughts?

And when can we expect space orb support? 

 
Guppycur said:
Fatal, my diamond viper video card is having trouble playing the game.  Will your optimizations help?

While your at it, my sound blaster doesn't play the sounds, I'm thinking of upgrading to a gravis ultrasound, what are your thoughts?

And when can we expect space orb support? 
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1 No

2 Sorry

3 The end of time

 
faatal said:
Players will probably never be able to do that.

As of last week, zombies can crouch down and crawl based on head clearance. Pathing still works on 2m heights, so we are not fully 1m yet, but crawling fixes bugs with zombies getting stuck in tight places.
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May I ask why players won't be able to do this?  We used to have it and it makes sense since the player is either breaking in or trying to get away from zombie's. 

 
madmole said:
Less than .01% chance to see someone in a football uniform or cheerleading outfit seems like a pretty shallow argument.
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Well, it'd only be "less than .01% chance to see someone in a football uniform or cheerleading outfit" if you literally only saw one person.

We know from past discussions that the math is a bit more complicated if we look at multiple instances of some percentage chance, but here we're drawing from a finite pool (your chances of rolling a cheerleader increase a bit each time you fail to roll one).

To the point of my argument though...it's more shallow than that since I'm mostly only having fun with the math and the surprising revelation that there are a lot of friggan cheerleaders in the US!

Having "weird" zombies is a tradition in zombie films as it drives home the horror of say...juxtaposing a woman in a wedding dress with her new zombie-status or the clergy zombie (cheerleaders outnumber them by 8:1, though they'd be much more likely to be seen wearing their work-clothing). There are way fewer MC-style bikers out there than cheerleaders too. Should we be worried?  ;)

Surely having a Nurse, Cheerleader, Cowboy, Stripper and Biker, Construction Worker was too much specialization, but consider keeping one or two such odd zombie of the basic types. This suggestion is mostly for fun rather than hardcore immersion or maximizing the mileage from texture use.

In the most general sense I like almost everything you're doing with the game (except for that reduction of slots thing, my only real "concern").

-Morloc (endorsed by 4 million cheerleaders)

 
QUESTION: can we expect that in 20 Alpha the transport will not slow down so quickly after the gas button is not pressed?

I'm currently playing Days Gone and the transport feels much more logical there. After gaining a decent speed and letting go of the gas, you can travel quite a long distance, and even more on an incline.

So the management of transport would become much more interesting, since the player would be able to control fuel consumption, and not drive with the gas button constantly pressed.

I tried to do this in xml by increasing the torque, but in this case the sound of the wheels scrolling appears when driving.
Now you can drive a little more distance with the SHIFT button held down after releasing the throttle button, but it still looks not so good.

 
Can we expect the soldier zombie to be remodeled at some point in the future as well? :)  No mention about him, or about the farmer with the blue overalls.

 
@faatal1. Should we expect the same serious optimization in A20 as in A19. 5? 2. Why do you usually respond in the forum? Have you been assigned this task, or do the others simply not have the time/desire?)

 
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Kirill_226RUS said:
@faatal1. Should we expect the same serious optimization in A20 as in A19. 5? 2. Why do you answer mostly on the forum? Is there no time for the rest, or are you just assigned "responsibility" for the answers?)
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There are some optimizations in A20 that were not moved to 19.5, so there are more, but have not counted the amounts or how big they are.

No assignment. I just like to talk and as programming lead, know a lot about what we are doing. Most devs just do their jobs and don't visit their company forums.

MechanicalLens said:
Can we expect the soldier zombie to be remodeled at some point in the future as well? :)  No mention about him, or about the farmer with the blue overalls.
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I saw the preview rendering of it two days ago, so it is coming along.

 
sillls said:
May I ask why players won't be able to do this?  We used to have it and it makes sense since the player is either breaking in or trying to get away from zombie's. 
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Sillls, as someone who was here at the time you should know this answer already. The answer was no because it unbalanced and ruined POI design and they refused to go through and redesign all the POI's to take account of 1 block egress. It is exactly the same reason why locked doors will not be pickable.

Seeing as how they've designed another 200+ POI's since that time, none of which were balanced for 1-block egress, it is extremely doubtful they will suddenly decide to do an even bigger overhaul now that they weren't willing to do back then. It is a design decision and that's that.

The good news is that once zombies have the ability perhaps it can be modded onto players. That is really the only hope at this point.

 
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