PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[madmole]

Hey Joel spotted the 7D2D T-shirt at an event that "Neebs Gaming" was attending.Shirt being worn by Adahop from "Neebs Gaming" Adahop is the guy that edits their videos for their youtube channel. .

That's awesome.

 

[madmole]

Took me a while to get into it too but then, it took off. Have more hours in it than in 7D now, but 7D is catching up again. The more advanced building materials provide insulation...something you'll need in the North.
Love that auto-walk feature in Conan...

Oh cool. I'll keep playing and see if I can get into it more. I've got to the point where I can kill turtles pretty easy, but not the legendary ones or crocs yet.

 

[madmole]

Any previews of biomes.png in a18 we can look at? because the biome distribution in a17.3 is frigging terrible, its way to damned random, and makes no sense. Anyway you can show us a 8192 size generated maps biome layout? Just need the biomes.png file to see. So I have some hope a18 will be better in that aspect, as currently 17.3 is terrible for rwg in terms of biome placement, I do like that it is faster though. Options on the new game screen to generate a map to control chance of each biome would be nice, some sliders maybe that are linked since they can't get over 100%.

Its way better. No more tiny fragmented dots where the spectrum/sound/sky/fog change back and forth. Its a clean line.

 

[madmole]

Yeah, we play Exiles as well. One of the big problems we have with it is that if you do a peer-to-peer game you are tethered distance-wise to whomever is hosting the game. I love building, but I much prefer the building system in 7 Days.

Just like Ark then. That sucked in Ark. I'm playing on a private server with our testers.

 

[madmole]

Is there a chance we got infection back before A18 ?

Nope.

 

[madmole]

Thank goodness! From there it should be a hop, skip, and a jump to what I've always wanted: procedurally building what the zombies look like, at least in terms of clothes and texturing. I really hope you'll try to use this upcoming tech on the zombies, since they're the most numerous characters in the game and you've said they'll always be the number one antagonists.

It doesn't make sense for zombies, they don't need to wear armor, or seeing armored Arlene would be jarring.

 

[Weazelsun]

MaxHealth and Maxstamina tied to surviving horde nights and surviving a full day is what we're talking about now. Survive a full day and gain 1, survive a horde night from 10 to 4 and gain 2. Death removes 1. We could go with larger values too, just depends on how it plays out. Probably wouldn't go below 100, as there will still be many ways to go below 100 with debuffs so you need a little headroom.

That sounds nice. As for fortitude and stamina, I think it should stay as like an extra thing for those of us that want to feel like gods. Since the max hp is 200 as of now. Or, have a specific perk in that skill tree that helps with alleviating the damage done to hp cap and stamina cap.

 

[madmole]

Isn't this similar to the old UMA zombies, that were scrapped because of poor performance?

No UMA was using the UMA code. It dynamically adds parts to a mesh, and then regenerates a crappy skin on the fly which eats ram and cpu, the skin wastes tons of UV space, and UMA has its own crappy shader.

What we're doing is adding a variety of heads and armor pieces to one prefab, a few well designed uv'd textures (one for each head probably) and then in code, enable more pieces the higher the game stage, so one prefab could have quite a few variants and there is visual language that lets you think, oh this guy is armored to the teeth, no wonder he won't die versus the guy with no armor.

 

[Endy Gainer]

You are wrong or misunderstood. I was not suggesting the return of gamey Wellness.
Just +1 HP per level (min 100) Nothing else increases max hit points just leveling. Dying permanently removes some of that gain.

This would then mean fortitude could contain the buff perks for healing etc, but a stealth character would NOT have invest in to that attribute unless they so wished.

At present every character type has to invest in max heath as the game progress regardless of style, everything does more damage and gets faster/harder as GS advances with level. A vulture swoop can inflict a bleed and nearly kill a character so every character type needs those extra hit points and what ever Attribute it's linked too is a must have.

Except that IS Wellness, you just replace spamming food with spamming levels. If anything, it changes where the gameyness is and instills an artificial, meta compulsion to game the system for XP. The loss on death system is exactly the same, except harder to get back due to levels coming slower than wellness as you go. Mechanically speaking it isn't any different, it just caps the punishment early on. As I said, the whole point is that the game moved away from that system, and in my opinion for good reason.

EDIT: The main problems I have with it is that it can snowball, and gives diminishing returns even from the lowest point over time. I just read Madmole's suggested system and tying it to regular events knocks down the diminishing return problem, at least, and it removes the extra XP incentive. I could live with that.

 

[madmole]

@Madmole
Will bandits be something we can turn off?

As others mentioned, bandits may not add enjoyment for some of us. I try to use guns as little as possible in game. And I don't enjoy pvp in any game I play. If someone just randomly starts shooting me from some where that doesn't up my enjoyment in the game. It's more annoying than anything of course.

Optimize and add a crap tonne of zombies, I'm happy. Add someone shooting at me, not so happy.

Welcome to the apocalypse. I doubt bandits will be optional, they are a big part of the game. They will be game staged so early on might just have clubs and knives, and most encounters will be optional, like when doing quests.

 

[madmole]

Conan Exiles gets better and better as you go along actually. There is so much end game content, and it's achievable (not like Ark) but it's difficult. Have you experienced a 'purge' yet? It's the games tower defense aspect.

No it might not even be on? Isn't that a game server setting?

 

[madmole]

Except that IS Wellness, you just replace spamming food with spamming levels. If anything, it changes where the gameyness is and instills an artificial, meta compulsion to game the system for XP. The loss on death system is exactly the same, except harder to get back due to levels coming slower than wellness as you go. Mechanically speaking it isn't any different, it just caps the punishment early on. As I said, the whole point is that the game moved away from that system, and in my opinion for good reason.

We're talking about surviving hordes and a full day that starts when the sun rises and ends 24 game hours later. Nothing gamey there. About the worst exploit would be going AFK on a server, but who wants to leave their PC running a full hour for 1HP lol.

 

[Thecolours]

MaxHealth and Maxstamina tied to surviving horde nights and surviving a full day is what we're talking about now. Survive a full day and gain 1, survive a horde night from 10 to 4 and gain 2. Death removes 1. We could go with larger values too, just depends on how it plays out. Probably wouldn't go below 100, as there will still be many ways to go below 100 with debuffs so you need a little headroom.

I like this idea. My only concern is permanent removal of points from death. Maybe, the death debuff could be tied to difficulty levels. This way you could appease both players who want to be safe and build pretty bases and those who are into hardcore survival.

 

[n2n1]

the Wellness system didn't work perfectly.

But you replaced it with the same broken thing, plus - it is not yet interesting. If your designer nonsense continues - you will spoil the game.

 

[Darthjake]

Just like Ark then. That sucked in Ark. I'm playing on a private server with our testers.

We had that in the first Ark game someone hosted, then one of our friends dedicated a machine to hosting servers.

Private servers are the way to go, no tethering and no jerks, (except the ones we allow!)

I'm conflicted over the Conan vs 7D2D encumbrance system. Conan is more "realistic" but 7D allows for more control as you can easily see what is causing your encumbrance rather then guessing how much of a stack you need to drop or store. And ofc 7D allows for scrapping to condense stuff in your inventory.

I haven't played Conan in a while but I know our server got updated recently. I do like the sandstorms in Conan, and am glad that for the blizzards in 7D getting indoors mitigates the cold. I just wish the rain and light would stop leaking through our buildings.

Other then that, I am enjoying 7D again.

- - - Updated - - -

No it might not even be on? Isn't that a game server setting?

Yes, purge and PVP damage (friendly fire that is) if you are with friends is a server setting.

 

[KingSlayerGM]

Nope. We had them kind of working at one point but it was deemed this is a tower survival game, not a tower escape game.

MadMole please reconsider this.

Ziplines add so much to the construction and design aspect of this game. And they are a hell of a lot of fun to use, see The Forest for example. A player that escapes a horde with a zipline, still has to survive and face the situation on the other side. So it is not just a magic wand that magically skips the night. Moreover there are many other ways to avoid horde nights, for example using vehicles, or just running, or exploiting the ai, or logging of a server. Adding ziplines wouldn't be a problem, if anything, ziplines would enable creative players to design more interesting forts. The builders would love it.

 

[Blake_]

the Wellness system didn't work perfectly.But you replaced it with the same broken thing, plus - it is not yet interesting. If your designer nonsense continues - you will spoil the game.

Lol. Are you talking from experience? I totally agree. Wellness gets worse over the years and at some point we try to replace it with some broken thing and as of 2019 medicine isn't as good as to make it interesting. And we try and keep trying to talk nonsense and denial but at some point we realize that we are just that: spoiled.

 

[Haidrgna]

It doesn't make sense for zombies, they don't need to wear armor, or seeing armored Arlene would be jarring.

It would indeed not make sense if it would just be armor, but you said yourself it is also heads and other pieces. Armor is clothing, a dress is clothing. If you already are making a system to randomize parts of bandits then it would be a waste to not extend this functionality to zombies at some stage of development. I get it will not come to A18 or even A19, but can could you at least consider the fact that the game will be become so much more awesome if zombies are not the same or even worse where you enter a house and it is almost all the same zombie?

Even if you do not use this new system, the game already has a system to replace materials of entities on spawning (used now for the radiated skins of zombies). We modders use that system to add variety to the zombie skins, so could you. Having access to the source material it would be really easy to make a dozen per zombie and have the game select one at random.

I know it is not in scope for A18, I just hope that this aspect of the game at least comes in scope at some stage.

 

[Aurelius]

About the worst exploit would be going AFK on a server, but who wants to leave their PC running a full hour for 1HP lol.

I haven't turned my computer off for months now.

Besides, who cares how people play the game? Why are you so obsessed with trying to force people to play a certain way?

-A

 

[BioFringe]

Welcome to the apocalypse. I doubt bandits will be optional, they are a big part of the game. They will be game staged so early on might just have clubs and knives, and most encounters will be optional, like when doing quests.

Please, please, please reconsider in the future. I really liked that Last Person Standing vibe that this game used to have before Traders. and eventually Bandits, took that away. Yes, I can ignore them but it's not the same. I can't remember Bandits being mention in any of the official stuff that I read before I bought this awhile back but I could have missed it.

Personally, The Horde is a bigger part of the game and it's now optional. It would be nice for us to have the same control over our world creation in regards to Traders and Bandits alike. Please, please, please? I haven't asked for much and I've been really good over the years. Maybe?

In Pimps I Trust!