PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary

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Jost Amman said:
If you notice anything that is not accurate (or even simply wrong!), please feel free to correct me, and I will fix it, thanks. :)  
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There's a typo in your list

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Of course you wanted to say "dives"...I mean "lives"...I mean "wives" ...I mean "hives" ...I mean "jives" ...I mean.........I'm a trowl. Don't feed me.

On a serious side note:

Thank you very much for your effort,

I'm never able to participate the streams, so this is very helpful!

 
Riamus said:
It doesn't blow up.  You can't really do anything with it once it's at 0%.  It'll act just like it does when out of gas.  It will barely move.  But other than the lack of movement and the burning animation, it will just sit there at 0% until you repair it.
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Oh, it will blow up, it just does not do it at 0 health. There is extra negative health and after that it becomes a random chance on each hit.

 
faatal said:
Oh, it will blow up, it just does not do it at 0 health. There is extra negative health and after that it becomes a random chance on each hit.
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I didn't like this 'till I read that. Now...I like it.

-Arch Necromancer Morloc 💀

 
I get why the bike smokes when broke, it's easier to just use the same effects on all vehicles. Less work and keeps things consistent. 

However it really sticks out like a sore thumb, unless you hook up that bottom bracket to the engine of a car and rev the shiz out of it, there is no possible way for the bearings in that bike to spin so fast they ignite and smoke. 

Do we now make hand tools like the pickaxe and fireaxe erupt in smoke and flames when their durability hits 0? Course not ( I'd hope) because that would be silly and not make any rational sence. 

There are more believable with minimal dev time ways to communicate to the player the bike has broken. You could use sound effects like a tire popping or gears jamming, you could make the wheel animations hitch to make it look like somthing has broken/bent/warped preventing them spinning smoothly. 

Simply copy pasting the fx for the other vehicles on to a bicycle is a very "it's 16:59 on Friday" solution 🤣

 
Naz said:
I get why the bike smokes when broke, it's easier to just use the same effects on all vehicles. Less work and keeps things consistent. 

However it really sticks out like a sore thumb, unless you hook up that bottom bracket to the engine of a car and rev the shiz out of it, there is no possible way for the bearings in that bike to spin so fast they ignite and smoke. 

Do we now make hand tools like the pickaxe and fireaxe erupt in smoke and flames when their durability hits 0? Course not ( I'd hope) because that would be silly and not make any rational sence. 

There are more believable with minimal dev time ways to communicate to the player the bike has broken. You could use sound effects like a tire popping or gears jamming, you could make the wheel animations hitch to make it look like somthing has broken/bent/warped preventing them spinning smoothly. 

Simply copy pasting the fx for the other vehicles on to a bicycle is a very "it's 16:59 on Friday" solution 🤣
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Chain flapping around, flat tires, hissing noise...

 
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I got some questions about navesgane in alpha 21:

- are some/most of the new pois added to the navesgane map?

- are the towns in navesgane in the same style (downtown area) with new streets and so on like the random gen ones or do the towns still look like they did some alphas ago?

Just curious since i liked the navesgane map a lot but the lack of pois and the cosmetic changes to the random gen world made navesgane look like an outdated map for me

 
Quick Question. With Spears now having a power attack instead of a throw, what will Spear Hunter 4 and 6 do? Also the final bonus?

4 Used to be increased range and projectile speed, 6 used to be slows targets when hit by thrown spears.

And the final was fhrown spears do more damage to downed zombies. This probably just was changed to power attacks but asking just in case.

 
unholyjoe said:
hmmmm who said nothing happens? :)

i just tested it again in a21 current build and indeed... zombies who are attacking the vehicle (with you in it and the hp of the vehicle is spent) will cause serious health problems for you if you sit in it expecting nothing to happen. :)

but feel free to test it when a21 experimental drops for yourself... and then come back with your findings.

oh and make sure your doctor is on alert status. :)

btw when it is at 0% it is broke and doesnt move so just confirming that much as well.
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I didn't mean you wouldn't get hurt.  I was just referring to the vehicle.  And the vehicles do move without gas and, in the dev stream, Lathan moved after it was broken.  It is just extremely slow.  I wouldn't call it drivable, but it does seem to move in the stream.

faatal said:
Oh, it will blow up, it just does not do it at 0 health. There is extra negative health and after that it becomes a random chance on each hit.
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If that is the case, then this has changed from maybe something to mod out to something that must be modded out for me.  It will be the only thing that I feel the need to change.  I don't feel there is any value to destroying something that is expensive to make and potentially has a ton of loot in it.  It is nothing more than an annoyance that will generate anger when it happens and that isn't why I play games.

It isn't even realistic.  You can say the increased damage is to be more realistic, but not exploding vehicles.  Even the strongest person alive couldn't hit a vehicle with their bare hands and cause it to explode unless there was extreme luck in causing a spark (unlikely with bare hands) that just happens to ignite gas fumes and that couldn't happen on a bicycle at all.  So it is a completely unrealistic thing that will likely cause rage quits... And for what value?

Increased damage is already getting to be a pain from what we see.  You went from one extreme (not enough damage) to the other extreme (too much damage).  Wiping out a 4x4 after only 5-6 full speed crashes might be closer to reality (reality being one hit) but it doesn't exactly make the game more fun to have to either drive very slowly and carefully, especially in the wasteland, or to constantly repair the vehicle.

If it was 5% damage per major hit instead of 15-20% per major hit, then I could live with even the exploding vehicle thing as keeping it away from low durability wouldn't be difficult.  But at such high damage, it drops to zero far too easily and if you aren't paying closer enough attention, it just gets blown up.  I mean, I've come out of the trader or POIs and seen a zombie hammering at my vehicle because they couldn't find a way around it.  I don't want to see it getting destroyed for no reason.

 
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faatal said:
Oh, it will blow up, it just does not do it at 0 health. There is extra negative health and after that it becomes a random chance on each hit.
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Nope, don't like this. Don't want to have to lose items and rebuild a vehicle due to bad luck. Vehicle damage is already going to be too high in A21, with no sign of vehicle armor mods to reduce that.

 
I cant remember if I asked this previous but don't suppose @faatal or one of the other programmers managed to fix the issue with zombies lower-halves disappearing below the surface when they die?

 
Hi @faatal ! loved the stream. Sick moves on the dance and song btw. I noticed that Lathan's fps didn't drop on the city, it was a demanding but very stable experience (crazy "exploding blocks" testing aside).

One of the things I wanted to ask.... now that you have AI throttling, will you increase the blood moon entity limit for a21? 64 is nice, I don't know if you guys talked about it. I believe CPUs can handle a bit more in the very close future though. Current top of the line rigs are doing 200+ screamer battles without much of a slideshow.

The not so good part (be aware, I know Robert did many other things in this alpha, but RWG.....): @Kinyajuu work on RWG was not a huge hit for me, due to most of the features (like preview quality options and biome sliders) already being in a20.6/.7 (except for better POI sorting and better road smoothing). 

More on the art side, RWG is also EXTREMELY lacking in stamps, like cracks, lakes, rivers, etc. The single river stamp is awful, without an organic point of origin/end and there is a huge lack of variety in terrain features governed by those options (always the same crater, canyon, lake, river...etc)

The terrain tool is just the best thing that happened to this game ever. Will we ever see randomly generated "cave stamps" aside from just "cave POIs" ,I wonder? 

All in all, the programmer stream is always a blast to see. A bit technical, but their features are solid and always make the game better.

 
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