PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!
- Thread starter madmole
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No need to make a game of it, Don't Starve does that awesomely, but it's a completely different game, … but: yeah, a nod in that direction would be great.
What in the game couldn't be described as "a few more clicks and scavenging"?
The find, acquire, defend loop is one of the central game loops, but it's not everything. I'm a reasonably big fan of the home-decoration loop too, that's separate, but I mention it because nods in different directions add to the game, there's a right ballpark for everything. Slap-a-texture-on-a-face is at least in the right ballpark for decoration in this game, you want something you feel's worth defending. Construction, combat, storage, everything's a clicky-click stand-in for a real-world system, you can ignore quite a lot outright, some things you have to put some initial work into before you can ignore them.
Make food with wet surfaces convert in a week, ordinary dry-ish food/meals convert in a month, some prepared foods last a year (or forever). Then people who don't want to worry about food can make jerky or hardtack or whatever, add a drying rack to the game and you're done.
ZombieHorde
New member
True, however I feel there's a balance between the game actively trying to kill you at every turn and it being a challenge. I did find A17.1 (the last Alpha I played before my screen was damaged and now I'm typing this on half of it) very hard and at night found myself too scared to do anything. I open a container after 10pm and I'm dead in minutes. I dig a hole and I'm dead. So basically the only way for me to stay alive was to wait and wait and wait until dawn. Not very fun, even though I kinda loved the realism and scariness of it.
Still, the zombies were far too sensitive to sounds that I was making.
I love the idea of food scarceness and being forced to eat bad food at certain times of the game, forcing you to build up a collection of meds to counteract the bad food, find different herbs, have better hygiene and fridges.
This is also why I think an added 'morale' meter would be great to add to the game (I know, maybe version 2 of the game). Bad food or always the same food can lower it (to a certain level). Too much of any one task can lower it (digging all day doesn't sound fun). So it's not just trying to survive, it's trying to survive in as human way as possible.
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"Choices are always good" - Yeah, exactly. Love it!
Viktoriusiii
New member
@madmole:
with all the talk about death penalty, there is ONE thing you need to fix first before the deathpenalty can be harder/playing with lives:
hordenight. If you die in your defenses, because they breached within an hour, the only thing you can do is spawn randomly and run.
You cant get into your house bc zombies are there/would be a deathtrap, so no backpack.
So all you can do is run. Its not fun. Its frustrating.
Especially if you implement one of the great ideas of the community (toxic rain on hordenight) this becomes even more of an issue.
Once you die (or all of your party) the horde should end/pause.
Because otherwise its just a running/dying simulator.
with all the talk about death penalty, there is ONE thing you need to fix first before the deathpenalty can be harder/playing with lives:
hordenight. If you die in your defenses, because they breached within an hour, the only thing you can do is spawn randomly and run.
You cant get into your house bc zombies are there/would be a deathtrap, so no backpack.
So all you can do is run. Its not fun. Its frustrating.
Especially if you implement one of the great ideas of the community (toxic rain on hordenight) this becomes even more of an issue.
Once you die (or all of your party) the horde should end/pause.
Because otherwise its just a running/dying simulator.
OzHawkeye
Community Moderator
I have to say I disagree with this.
I always build a "oh crap I died" outpost somewhere. Not too close to my base, but not too far away from it either. In this little outpost I keep a small supply of basic "re-stocking" materials, that I add to as my game progresses. At first, it might only be a few cans of food, bandages and a club/axe etc, but as I progress, it's stocked with an increasingly good supply or "rebuild materials".
Players should, I think, have to think about dying during the horde, and plan for that contingency accordingly.
AtomicUs5000
New member
Same. Thinking ahead is good in many situations in this game. If SP, I like to make these little stashes of items that I might need in a bind throughout the world, coupled with a small beacon so I can spot them better in the dark. A lot of things that you might scrap, sell, or simply trash because you don't want to deal with them, are useful when you have nothing.
mr.natural
New member
yep, lots of players have a different horde base, me too.
Scyris
New member
Honestly, I feel players should only be able to craft up to tier 3 (of 6) items max, this way there is always a reason to go out looting at least till you got a full set of tier 6 everything, which when you cannot craft it, will take a while. It'll be even more important as didn't I hear that higher tier items will finally have higher base stats as well?
Scyris
New member
I agree, but this is why the player has to plan escape routes, I always make sure my base has several exits, one easy one that zombies will swarm in from, then the rest are a small drop down. Zombies won't come up into those ones, but I can surely jump down from them to get away. I get what your saying though, if you were to make a house your base and your spawn point is inside and you die, your pretty much screwed as you'll just be spawn camped. They do have the spawn near bed option but thats a crapshoot as you never know where that'll drop you, I had it drop me right back into the middle of a horde before.
Crater Creator
Community Moderator
Me too, and infection in A17 seemed exactly the same way. By (primarily) slowly weakening the player instead of just directly depleting their health, the best way to deal with infection seemed to be to stand still (even going AFK) and wait it out. Realistic or not, I didn't think this was fun gameplay, because it took the player out of the game in the same way you're describing the sandstorms in Conan.
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I build two bases.
One base, if you want to call it that, is just a 6x6 platform of wood frames where I do my crafting and such. Amazingly, zombies never seem to bother it. Once I get a generator, I put up some remote turrets to zap screamers and the random roamers.
The second base is the horde night base and that is its only purpose. If I survive, cool, if I don't, oh well, no biggie. I lose a little time cleaning up, rebuilding, and trying to make it tougher for the next horde night.
The system works well mostly because I don't have to worry about the horde getting in and wrecking all my storage containers.
- P
One base, if you want to call it that, is just a 6x6 platform of wood frames where I do my crafting and such. Amazingly, zombies never seem to bother it. Once I get a generator, I put up some remote turrets to zap screamers and the random roamers.
The second base is the horde night base and that is its only purpose. If I survive, cool, if I don't, oh well, no biggie. I lose a little time cleaning up, rebuilding, and trying to make it tougher for the next horde night.
The system works well mostly because I don't have to worry about the horde getting in and wrecking all my storage containers.
- P
Crater Creator
Community Moderator
Regarding average consumers, remember that even the 10 hour player is going to see lots and lots of zombies, whereas they may not even see bandits at all. But, fair enough. You have to worry about rework, the art pipeline that's already in place, and other production concerns.
I really do hope you'll at least try it with some zombies, though, because I think you'll find it's a more efficient approach than what you've done so far. If it works out, then maybe your next game can take full advantage of this from the start.
Crater Creator
Community Moderator
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but if there’s only one recipe shown in the UI, how does the player know what the alternative ingredients are? The last thing we want is to further hide how to do things.
Scyris
New member
I'd like some color variations at least for clothes/skin color. Pretty jarring when you are in a pop'n'pills store open the bathroom door to find 4 of the exact same identical clone of each other zombie in there as the sleepers. Happened in 2 pop'n' pill stores in a row. Both times it was the skaterpunk zombie.Regarding average consumers, remember that even the 10 hour player is going to see lots and lots of zombies, whereas they may not even see bandits at all. But, fair enough. You have to worry about rework, the art pipeline that's already in place, and other production concerns.
I really do hope you'll at least try it with some zombies, though, because I think you'll find it's a more efficient approach than what you've done so far. If it works out, then maybe your next game can take full advantage of this from the start.
I also feel the SI calcs need to be simplified, when zombies hit anything it causes massive lag especally if your inside the structure they are hitting, because its checking the SI seemingly on every hit they do, Insted, the SI routine should only fire if its the last block holding up something. It won't look as pretty, but it'll free up a ton of performance. As long as there is at least 1 block supporting it, it won't topple over. Again doesn't look the best, but performance wise? yeah.
Then again the game being voxels is probally a part of the issue, thats a ton of calculations it has to do in real time, even moreso if its with 3d objects and not just 2d ones. Might be part of the reason why no other studio has tried to copy 7dtd's voxel nature for a simmlar game.
Scyris
New member
Honestly I don't even want bandits, when they hit, it'll prob be something i'll mod out after giving them a chance, once you add shooting enemies to a zombie game like this wheter it be other players in pvp or npcs in pve, it kinda ruins a lot of the aspect of zombies as a threat. I mean i'd never worry about zombies, when I got run toting bandits that can shoot me at anytime. I will give bandits a chance, but I can see me modding them out, depending how prevalient the gun using ones are and how much damage per shot they do, Average zombie hits for 10-20 dmg between normal and fatties on nomad, so bandits using guns should use that as a baseline. Hopefully it'll be like fallout 4 npcs, where they usually call out before they attack so you know its about to come to give you a chance to get into cover.Regarding average consumers, remember that even the 10 hour player is going to see lots and lots of zombies, whereas they may not even see bandits at all. But, fair enough. You have to worry about rework, the art pipeline that's already in place, and other production concerns.
I really do hope you'll at least try it with some zombies, though, because I think you'll find it's a more efficient approach than what you've done so far. If it works out, then maybe your next game can take full advantage of this from the start.
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