PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[madmole]

In my opinion,
I'm sure there's XP balance that needs to be done.

But I love the way you guys balanced out looting, killing, upgrading/building and mining XP.

So, so much better than A18. Feel like I can do anything without feeling like I'm missing out on XP

I'd even drink a Samuel Adams to that!

 

[madmole]

Hey madmole the current plan is to adjust loot probabilities to make it less likely to find higher quality stuff early game right?

That was implemented in the last patch.

 

[madmole]

@the fun pimps staff when bandits come to the game and if they do you have an idea of where they would be? like in the open and some pois maybe?

im just guessing here

At a PC near you.

 

[Locusta]

Its already done, see my previous posts on this matter. The goal is to find more browns and oranges early game so you have incentive to craft something much better with all those parts, not to let you craft the most amazing gear in the game from garbage. Blues are outright awesome players crafting purples is just a poor design. What happens in Skyrim when you max enchanting/smithing and craft the best gear in the game? You quit playing.

What if instead of scrapping guns to there respective parts, you scrapped them to items that let you modify the stats of other guns? You could have items that let you roll only damage stats, ones that roll quality, etc. Maybe they could be called "upgrade kits" or something like that.

So then if I find a crappy M80 but have a bunch of these upgrade kits, I could "craft it" taking my chances on making it better or worse until I run out of the different upgrade kits.

Loc

- - - Updated - - -

The idea is to get him on a mic so he's more clear. We've also suggested blue yetis.

Blue Yeti is amazing for the price!

Loc

 

[faatal]

You guys should fix the 25% loot abundance feature. It should give you 25% less of whatever's in the container; Instead of 4 lockpicks you get 1, instead of 2 duct tape you get 1, instead of 3 bottles of water you get 1. In the console version you rarely find nothing in a container, you instead find a lot less of whatever would originally be in it on 100% abundance, which provides a sense of post-apocalyptic scarcity; 20 feathers in a nest becomes 5, for example. It should never round down the contents of a container to zero, like it currently does on PC. Anybody can play the game on 100% loot abundance and spray zombies with infinite bullets and think the game's just fine, but I like to challenge myself on 25% loot abundance, and right now, it ain't treatin' me too well on PC. Ever since alpha 17 I've heard a lot of people say it's broken, just want to make sure you guys at TFP recognize it as an issue that needs fixin'.

I fixed that in A17 by adding a percent chance for fraction amounts. I even made a unit test for it.

Looks fine. Current results:

RandomSpawnCount 0 to 2 (average 1), abundance 0.25 = average 0.250249

#0, count 749751, 74.98%

#1, count 250249, 25.02%

#2, count 000000, 00.00%

RandomSpawnCount 2 to 5 (average 3.5), abundance 0.25 = average 0.81327

#0, count 248569, 24.86%

#1, count 689592, 68.96%

#2, count 061839, 06.18%

Those counts are out of a millions calls to the function.

 

[Guppycur]

It was my go to as a kid. I have a battery tester now.

...amps are getting a little high on laptop adapters, so when I have to "test" those, I cringe a bit beforehand.

 

[Tetrameth]

Can someone clarify the mechanics of how the lucky looter books actually work ?

Do they:

a. Add to any existing you loot I would usually find without the book. ie: If I would usually get a piece of cloth and 2 tin cans from said loot container, would I still get these items but on top of that have a % chance to get additional items I would never have been offered without the book.

b. Replace existing loot I would find in a container by increasing the % chance of a specific loot type due to reading the book. ie: If I would usually get a piece of cloth and 2 tin cans from said loot container, would reading the book replace 2 tin cans with lead (lead being the example from reading lucky looter vol4)

hopefully I have been clear in my explanation

 

[faatal]

@faatal
I seen you say you do not recall your GTX 960 dipping in FPS....I have a GTX 960 4GB please do not think this card is ok its not. I would love to visit the snow biome some time but its unplayable at the moment.

Frame rates in all biomes have a look see, forgot to take a snapshot of wasteland.

Spoiler

My 960 has 2 GB VRAM, so AF will be off. Your 4 GB will still have AF on, so can you try "gfx af 0" and let me know?

An AF video option is probably coming, but I'm still evaluating.

 

[madmole]

VERY bad move here. MANY streamers love tier 5's and do them as groups. Its almost the ONLY thing you have that is considered end game content. People literally GEAR UP to do these, and look forward to them. I know things grow boring for you around Day 80-ish but you DO have a large audience even outside of this forum that continues well past that day.
I get its not your bag of tricks. Turrets arent mine. But Streamers, Modders, Multiplayer everyone loves these. I dont see the benefit at all to just abandon them.

I thought we were getting T6 quests eventually? Is that no longer on the table?

Just expressing my opinion. They are bad for framerate, chunk building speed and at most 10% of players use them. I'd rather see more tier 2,s 3's and 4's, those huge ones take way too long to play and too long for us to develop. If we could develop teleport tech and make them dungeons I'd be all for them, but big framerate hogs in the middle of limited town real estate is a bad choice. Its a neat novelty then after you've done it its a waste of space because nobody in their right mind will want to do it again. We could make 5 tier 2s, 4 tier 3s and 2 teir 4's in the same time it takes to make one tier 5. Now which one adds value?

I say let the modders do that, we have bugs to fix, and pois to overhaul yet and a severe lack of tier 3's IMO. I'm not doing level design any more but I think the average player wants more unique tier 3's and 4's. I'd be ok with smaller tier 5's but no more giant ass factories that take 2+ real hours to clear out that only large groups can do. There is enough of them for now, maybe add more when we get everything polished up, there are still lots of crappy POIs that were blocked out 3 years ago that need that professional overhaul.

 

[meganoth]

I really like the bicycle in the game. I have been using it for awhile now and it's a lot of fun. Plus it's great for getting around.

But in Alpha 18, both the horn and basket have been removed. While the horn didn't really do anything (sadly). You can't carry any additional loot other than what's on your person.

Drove around with the bicycle just yesterday and the basket was still there. There is a row of about 10 slots.

Can someone clarify the mechanics of how the lucky looter books actually work ?

I just adds to gamestage. It is as if you jumped into the future (by a week or two), looted the box and jumped back.

 

[madmole]

Um... where does it say that? I read the updates pages.
But I guess that's a given with experimental.

Speaking of institutions. When were you (or somebody) going to update the STEAM page?

It could use an update or three.

We don't need to advertise experimental. People treat it like a stable release as it is.

 

[madmole]

Hallelujah!
My latest b149 game had 2x purple M60's in it on day 1. Each time I see stuff like this I lose another piece of faith in the traders ability to provide quality gameplay options.

We do that to tease you because we know you can't raise the money.

 

[faatal]

Turning off AF on my machine only boosted FPS around 5-10 fps for me, though I can see how it would hurt performance for lower end cards. There is a bottleneck somewhere, because I get little to no CPU load nor do I get GPU load. Have you guys tested on Ryzen CPUs or Threadrippers? What about with top of the line GPUs? The absolute most top notch performance I get is under Linux and Vulkan, but the game causes a hard freeze after a bit. I usually play via proton and DirectX 11 or under Windows (though I get better performance on Linux, so I usually play there).
To anyone else, is anyone with a Zen 1 or Zen+ CPU getting 60+ FPS with everything maxed out (on either Windows or Linux, I have the same issue with both)? It's weird that my system is barely breaking a sweat, but I get low FPS. Alpha 17 actually performed better for me. I'm running a Threadripper 1950X, 32 GB RAM, GTX 1080ti, Samsung 970 EVO 2 TB for Linux and Samsung 960 EVO 1 TB for Windows.

I've been using this PC for a few years. Ryzen 7 1800X, 16 GB RAM, RTX 2070.

I play at 1440p on High settings with no DOF and no motion blur.

Are you trying to play at 4k?

 

[madmole]

Minding my own business, was just falling through the floor of an old house, attacked by 3 zombies and a dire wolf!Unacceptable tension.

I think there is a condemned sign in the front yard.

 

[wolfbain5]

But I suck because I don't use cheese ramps and exploits.

we have watched you use the tunnel cheese.

 

[Star69]

The bicycle, the good and bad
I really like the bicycle in the game. I have been using it for awhile now and it's a lot of fun. Plus it's great for getting around.

But in Alpha 18, both the horn and basket have been removed. While the horn didn't really do anything (sadly). You can't carry any additional loot other than what's on your person.

I have been told that it will be added to mods latter, (hopefully soon).

Hunting with the bicycle hasn't changed much. You can damage enemy's again but now predators attack you, if they can.

The one thing that I learned is that when playing chicken with them, the bicycle wins every time. But that doesn't mean that you don't get hurt, it happens, sometimes. This occurs with both predators and zombies

But the bad thing about running over target is that you won't get any experience points when you kill it. So it's best to dismount and finish it off.

It can be a great help with really tough things like boars. It's hilarious watching the rag-doll animation to. But try not to get too fixed on it or you might just run into something. A good tactic is to hit the zombie with the bicycle. Then quickly dismount and attack it when it's down.

Also the bicycle is still much faster than on foot especially if you are carrying a full load of gear and loot.

Again the bicycle is surprisingly durable, even when off road and can handle really rough terrain.

I would really like to see the horn make a comeback and to have a use in the game. Please! I want to use it to annoy zombies.

There must be an issue on your end or maybe my end because on our dedicated vanilla server, the 5 of us have bicycles with horns and storage, exactly as A17.

 

[madmole]

I agree with this. T5 are not neccssarily for single players, but 4 co-op players (and I assume with 8 players it is even worse) need breathing room. And there needs to be some more variety in that class.

Ultimately I'd like options in RWG where we can pick a % of POIS from buckets. Tier 1's, 2,'s, ruins houses, etc. Then I wouldn't have to look at a town full of teir 5 factories and not one book store. I had two shamways next to each other and a shotgun messiah and the water plant thingy eating up a whole town prior to release and it was disappointing. I cleared them, but it was nuts plus there are bugs where it collapses every time and is a cheap death trap.

Like something 60% as big full of bandits with chaos shootouts would be a lot more fun IMO.

 

[wolfbain5]

Lol, I think snowdog is having low fps. We can't count on him right now, faatal will fix him soon enough.

so you are saying snowdog is shooting blanks and Faatal is fixing him up?

 

[madmole]

The bicycle, the good and bad
I really like the bicycle in the game. I have been using it for awhile now and it's a lot of fun. Plus it's great for getting around.

But in Alpha 18, both the horn and basket have been removed. While the horn didn't really do anything (sadly). You can't carry any additional loot other than what's on your person.

It has an inventory just like every other vehicle.

 

[madmole]

What if instead of scrapping guns to there respective parts, you scrapped them to items that let you modify the stats of other guns? You could have items that let you roll only damage stats, ones that roll quality, etc. Maybe they could be called "upgrade kits" or something like that.
So then if I find a crappy M80 but have a bunch of these upgrade kits, I could "craft it" taking my chances on making it better or worse until I run out of the different upgrade kits.

Loc

- - - Updated - - -

Blue Yeti is amazing for the price!

Loc

We're not reinventing an already amazing system. Its done aside from tiny balance tweaks.