PC V2.0 Storms Brewing Dev Diary

[khzmusik]

There were a bunch of code changes to fix a variety of bugs where switching items or reloading could get stuck. One of our programmers and testers hammered on it and got it solid, but it does have different timings.

My particular issue doesn't have anything to do with switching items or reloading, it's with harvesting resources. If you hit a large rock with a stone axe and it gives you a stone, then by the time the sound is played (and the XP pops up and the stone is transferred to your inventory), the stone axe is already well into the next swing.

If you have quick tools or weapons that also harvest (like a knife), and you get perks that speed up attack speed, then the harvesting sound comes after the next hit.

I find it completely unbearable.

If this can't be fixed, then could you at least make the "harvest" sound configurable to a different sound than the "pickup" sound? (Picking up items does not have this issue.) At least then I could mod it out so it makes no sound at all, which is definitely preferable to the current behavior.

 

[faatal]

It's a survival game. I think we can figure out how to get across a river without a preexisting bridge.

That would be for the roads, not you. I don't want highways and wilderness roads all isolated from each other.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 4:04 PM

do you know about the swapping active slot exploit?
starting an attack with one item that has a fast attack speed, then swapping to the sledgehammer for instant hit, at the damage of the sledgehammer.

No, but I just sent than info to Matt, the programmer who had been working on toolbelt issues.

Thanks

 

[faatal]

I hope some of these path errors are corrected.

Pathing was already improved and that is part of the issues that remain. More improvements will happen as time permits.

 

[Javabean867]

It's a survival game. I think we can figure out how to get across a river without a preexisting bridge.

Oh there was a massive demand for bridges. An insane amount if demand lol. I always liked building my own bridges honestly. So I'd rather have longer rivers and bridges.

 

[faatal]

It was a tier 2 in the burnt forest. I had no idea poi level impacted hordes. I think it was mostly surprising because of the sheer amount. The most ferals I'd seen at that point were 1-2 in tier 2-3 poi's. It went from that to pretty much most of the horde being ferals, or mutated zombies. I think the difficulty makes some sense given my gamestage, but it seems strange to me there isn't any kind of cap per horde day. If you're well equipped and leveled, I thought that would make the horde easier, not just scale them to be harder.

In my current game, playing agility on default difficulty, day 14 horde was pretty basic with me just using a bow while standing on bars. I don't remember the GS, but was much less than yours.

POIs should probably not effect horde GS, but they appear to be doing that currently.

 

[faatal]

My particular issue doesn't have anything to do with switching items or reloading, it's with harvesting resources. If you hit a large rock with a stone axe and it gives you a stone, then by the time the sound is played (and the XP pops up and the stone is transferred to your inventory), the stone axe is already well into the next swing.

If you have quick tools or weapons that also harvest (like a knife), and you get perks that speed up attack speed, then the harvesting sound comes after the next hit.

I find it completely unbearable.

If this can't be fixed, then could you at least make the "harvest" sound configurable to a different sound than the "pickup" sound? (Picking up items does not have this issue.) At least then I could mod it out so it makes no sound at all, which is definitely preferable to the current behavior.

I just gave your info to Matt. Unfortunately that code is old, complicated, messy and I think every programmer who originated it is no longer at TFP, so he has been having real fun trying to fix a variety of issues with how it works. Changing complex code also tends to make new bugs, which you then fix and make more bugs until hopefully, someday, all the know bugs are gone.

 

[Khalagar]

Faatal the goat, hardworking dev. how do we get Faatal added to the game as a zombie to reward his effort

 

[User]

In my current game, playing agility on default difficulty, day 14 horde was pretty basic with me just using a bow while standing on bars. I don't remember the GS, but was much less than yours.

POIs should probably not effect horde GS, but they appear to be doing that currently.

This was my character, just for reference. I was doing a perception build. Loving 2.0 so far! Was just very surprised as it felt like a mid-lategame horde pretty early on.

 

[n2n1]

so what version of Unity should i use for modding in V2?
was this announced somewhere?

 

[Adam the Waster]

That is how it works currently. I would like to add a visual way to see a storm in the adjacent biome when near it, but I don't know when I can get to it as new code is needed and our particle artist may need to come up with different distant particles and we need to make it performant.

At least it's a idea that the devs have that makes me happy to hopefully see it.

That or just a global weather event

 

[KirillWright]

will there be new poi in the patch???

 

[Uncle Al]

I'm afraid I'm going to continue to harp on about the heavy armour perk, but I just did a respec so got to make a direct comparison.

With only 2/4 customised fittings and wearing full heavy armour:

With 4 points in heavy armour (costing 8 perk points) : 8.42 stamina/s and 83% mobility

With 0 points in heavy armour: 7.52 stamina/s and 76% mobility

That difference is never going to be worth 8 perk points...

Another two customised fittings is just going to close that gap even further, making the perk even worse. I already have a vehicle and Urban Combat volume 6, so mobility is kind of irrelevant anyway. Not to mention that because nearly all melee weapons have a 'refill stamina on kill' book or perk line, the stamina penalty isn't very impactful either from mid-game onwards. Perking creating a significant difference in mobility and regen would still be a major improvement though.

I'm hopeful @faatal's comment on light armour, that spending perk points just to get a durability increase isn't worth it, carries over to heavy armour. The durability bonus is pretty much irrelevant for the heavy armour perk, too. To be worth the cost, the perk needs to actually make a perked heavy armour wearer significantly less penalised by their armour than someone who isn't perked at all.

 

[bdubyah]

so what version of Unity should i use for modding in V2?
was this announced somewhere?

2022.3.54f1 is what 2.0 is on currently. Can always check the top of your log file to check.

 

[zztong]

It's a survival game. I think we can figure out how to get across a river without a preexisting bridge.

Sure, but before the apocalypse, folks weren't into swimming to work. It would ruin their latte.

 

[Kosmic Kerman]

I've noticed that if I trigger an item on the belt such as water or food, you have to "stick" with it for a second or two or risk cancelling the action by switching to another item (I use both mouse wheel and hotkeys to switch).

e.g. Crap! 15% health, better use that bandage quick!...select and click to activate the bandage, quickly switch to club...ooops!...too quickly. Never actually used the bandage (even though the animation had started)! ...and now I die.

I don't recall this being the case previously. Is this similar to the bug you're describing?

It seems like you can animation cancel certain actions. So if you don't let the bandage animation complete you won't get the healing. This isn't entirely a bad thing because it prevents you from getting animation locked if you need to switch to a weapon. The downside is that you have to pay a little attention to make sure you get the heal, etc.

 

[khzmusik]

I just gave your info to Matt. Unfortunately that code is old, complicated, messy and I think every programmer who originated it is no longer at TFP, so he has been having real fun trying to fix a variety of issues with how it works. Changing complex code also tends to make new bugs, which you then fix and make more bugs until hopefully, someday, all the know bugs are gone.

As someone whose day job involves working with code that was originally written in the late 90's, I feel that pain.

I kind of suspected it was something along those lines. Unfortunate, but understandable. I'll mod out the sounds until things are a bit more manageable.

 

[Darthjake]

Faatal the goat, hardworking dev. how do we get Faatal added to the game as a zombie to reward his effort

But then the game would be OP and we'd all die when he showed up.

 

[Wheesel]

As someone whose day job involves working with code that was originally written in the late 90's, I feel that pain.

I kind of suspected it was something along those lines. Unfortunate, but understandable. I'll mod out the sounds until things are a bit more manageable.

Myself and maybe others would like to make the same change. Can you post which .xml doc you are editing and which line of code you are changing to help us that are less good at finding such things?

 

[khzmusik]

Myself and maybe others would like to make the same change. Can you post which .xml doc you are editing and which line of code you are changing to help us that are less good at finding such things?

The sound itself is called "item_pickup", but it is also the sound that plays when you pick up items instead of harvesting them. (Think of picking up rocks or chairs, retrieving arrows from dead zombies, etc.)

So, if you get rid of the "harvesting" sound then you'll also get rid of those.

The only way to get rid of one and not the other is through a Harmony/C# mod. I put it on my todo list, but I'm going to wait to see if TFP fix it before 2.0 goes stable.

If you are OK without the "pickup" sounds, then you can just remove the "AudioClip" node from the "item_pickup" sound in sounds.xml.

Here's the XPath if you want to put it in a mod:

<remove xpath="//SoundDataNode[@name='item_pickup']/AudioClip" />

(Hope it's the appropriate place to put this - if not, a forum moderator may move this to the "Discussions and Requests" part of the "Mods" forum.)

 

[Riamus]

And yet... Evil Bethesda does it. There are DLCs that add perks, not sure if for better or for worse, and they do not conflict with the experience. I ask... Why not? Unpopular opinion: I shall want to pay for a perk dlc as long as the DLC is good. How many hours do we have already logged for the price of this game? Are you telling me that you are unwilling to pay for a self-contained DLC no matter the content it adds because it might conflict with your principles? Not a great deal, in my opinion.

It just comes down to what they think and what their principles as devs are. For me, as long as the final result of game+dlcs is good, then I'll "pay" to "play" new content, being perks or a naked giant zombie mole in slippers. By that measure I can say the clothes in my local store are "pay to wear". Outrageous.

Clearly that was my opinion for this game. Pay to win is a horrible option (again, my opinion, though there are a LOT of people who have said the same). People should be allowed to be a game fully without having to pay extra. You should not have to spend a lot of money to be at the same ability as someone who wants to spend a lot of money.

Hello, could you please tell me how to submit a bug report without providing logs?
My issue is the following: the first level of the "Power Mastery" skill seems to be working incorrectly. When you hold a tool in your hand, the timer visually decreases, but the problem is that this effect is only visual. In reality, each second of cooldown with the skill takes the same amount of time as without the skill.

It is strongly recommended to always include logs, even if you think they aren't needed. A report that does not have logs will likely get put at the back of the line because the devs will be more likely to focus on bugs where they can easily see what happened in the logs. This is why the field is not optional.

I was headed to the desert to start working toward the desert badge when there was a storm in the burnt biome. Cool, I'll just slip into journey's end and loot it until it's over. Afterwards, I make it to the border in a few minutes and lo and behold... desert storm. Pop back into the burnt biome. How will i know when the storm dies? I keep crossing the border for the next few minutes until it's over. Firstly, would be nice if storms were not that close together, even if they operate on different schedules per biome. Secondly, is it expected that we run back and forth between the biomes until the storm dies to know that it's over or is there some other way i don't know about?

I think the expectation is that you'd just hang out in a POI rather than run to a different biome. But as faatal said, they'd like to make it possible to see if a storm is in a nearby biome.

will there be new poi in the patch???

There are 140 new POI in 2.0. 25 of which can be quested.