PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[madmole]

Yes, all automatic reloading should be taken out. It wouldn't be so bad except for 2 things: The movement penalty for reloading and fact that you can't change weapons while reloading. The bow is less noticeable as it take way less time to reload, but still should be taken out.
I like the crossbow as a weapon and for my current game I'm sticking with it. I can totally see why people don't like it anymore though. In A16 it seemed like everyone and their mom was using it. Now is a different story.

I agree though, it's a blast to use, love those exploding bolts:fat:

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I used the plains biome to make my massive building projects, it just seemed perfect for that kind of thing. I guess we can do that everywhere though. To me it was a "builders" biome.

That is what shovels are for
The auto reload is a tricky one. Its great for bows, sucks for crossbows and blunderbuss. I'd prefer an option in the menu, and potentially a radial menu to disable it on a per case basis. Maybe I want 8 blunderbusses on my belt and I'll reload them all after I kill everyone.

 

[madmole]

I have loved every alpha in its own way including A17. I play the heck out of them, work around the bugs and just enjoy the game. That being said, I think I’m way more excited about A18 then any other version. Thanks for many hours of entertainment and many more to come.

Thanks! I'm excited too.

 

[Roland]

I don't know. I mean if you have it so that not more than one biome can touch another biome, you could use a lot of biomes as a way to transition with little notice. Example... Desert Mesas -> Desert Plains -> Plains -> Forest -> Burnt Forest -> Deep Forest -> Snow Forest -> Snow Plains -> Snow Mountains

If that is how you are defining different biomes then I agree but the sense I get from most posts is that people want Jungle, Swamp, Mooshroom,...etc and that most of them would call Snow Forest, Snow Plains, and Snow Mountains all "snow".

They'd probably scream foul if Joel tried to say "We have two new biomes coming in A18....presenting Sparse Forest and Deep Forest!"

 

[madmole]

Doesn't a good solid RWG equal one with compelling visuals and variety, not seeing the same assets/pois over and over again? I know the plains in A16 were not that great, but having more biomes at your disposal only creates a better RWG, not a worse one, it all boils down on how you use them. In A16 they were not used that well at all and then instead of doing something to make it better A17 made it worse by removing them, fixing the world into a small square. Now you want to be able to have more control over sub-biomes to get back that variety, but you could already accomplish that and far more by adding in new biomes. You could have 10 forest biomes, one dense, one more pine, one more grassy etc and have those make up the same one biome you use now for that. You will get a visually more compelling world and do not even need to re-invent the wheel. All it would is some different ground textures and some variety in plants/grasses and maybe some other props like varied broken trees/stumps to make the world even more compelling..

That would be one hell of a mess of XML, no thanks. Sorry but flat plains do not warrant their own biome, they might return when we get the right tools. Biomes has nothing to do with RWG. We've solved the repetitive POI problem and can allow only 1 within one township so no duplicates any more.

 

[Roland]

Maybe I want 8 blunderbusses on my belt and I'll reload them all after I kill everyone.

8 Spears on my belt is more like it...

 

[Haidrgna]

I think that is true only if the biomes are large enough. 5-8 different biomes all next to each other would look horrible. But if they were large enough so they couldn't all be seen at once then that would be fine. The question is how big can they be on the maps the game is able to render?


Genius idea. Having 8 biomes and each map only selects randomly from that amount would be really cool-- especially since as Guppy stated the only real difference between them is temperature. The first 20 -30 hours of playtime would be generating seeds trying to get the mix of biomes you like... lol

Again, biomes do not need to visibly vary that much, just because the only remaining biomes are visibly completely different does not mean all of them have to be. Take a forest biome as base, one has only pine trees, the other only has oaks, another has only small clusters of trees and no boulders/rocks, the next has a lot more grass and trash littering it with some burned patches and buildings. You get the drift, it is not to hard to come up with biomes that are distinct enough to notice but not enough to 'not fit in' so to say.

Sub-biomes could accomplish this same thing as well, but would always be tied to a master biome. There are only so much of them you can cram into a biome before it becomes weird too, though maybe better control helps. I just would not limit this to sub-biomes only and make more variations with the same building blocks.

Example of multiple biomes together: (3 in the screenshot)

 

[Weazelsun]

No. There is new purified water, recipes to unlock food, ghillie suit, no new armor no new workstations. We're happy with the amount of content in these areas. I would like to do a bit of alchemy yet and maybe a few more recipes that leverage cannned foods into better foods, and do some balance and special benefits to different foods but overall its close to where it needs to be.

I think folks would rather have the ability to make canned versions of stew and shiz. But, yes definitely the canned food needs more use. For reference:

- Canned salmon is used in Fish Tacos

- Canned chili is used in chili dog

- Can of dog food is used in Grandpa's Lern' Elixur

And I think that's it. Canned sham is just canned sham it's not used in anything. Perhaps, remove that recipe and instead have canned sham to be ued in the hobo stew instead. Since they both require rotten meat, rotten meat to make can of sham and the hobo stew.

 

[Odetta]

That is what shovels are for
The auto reload is a tricky one. Its great for bows, sucks for crossbows and blunderbuss. I'd prefer an option in the menu, and potentially a radial menu to disable it on a per case basis. Maybe I want 8 blunderbusses on my belt and I'll reload them all after I kill everyone.

That sounds awesome, like those over the top action movies where the guy has 30 guns on him and never reloads, just throws the guns away lol. An menu toggle for auto reload would be the best solution imo.

 

[AtomicUs5000]

If that is how you are defining different biomes then I agree but the sense I get from most posts is that people want Jungle, Swamp, Mooshroom,...etc and that most of them would call Snow Forest, Snow Plains, and Snow Mountains all "snow".
They'd probably scream foul if Joel tried to say "We have two new biomes coming in A18....presenting Sparse Forest and Deep Forest!"

Well, call them all snow, fine. But behind the scenes, they are providing transition.

 

[Odetta]

8 Spears on my belt is more like it...

Most apocalyptoes take ears or noses, but you do you man....

 

[Roland]

Most apocalyptoes take ears or noses, but you do you man....

Nobody takes noses. That's just weird.

 

[madmole]

Fewer biomes make the game look crappier, not more biomes. Sorry, but you're wrong.
Each biome used to serve a purpose, but now the only real differences are body temperature buffs.

I know it's a moot argument, you're hell bent on optimization so extras have to go, AND it's mostly moddable, but saying it visually sucks and nobody cares is incorrect.

I'm saying in context to the bigger problems nobody cares. The first step is fixing RWG then we can improve it to support larger sub biomes. Everyone wants a good RWG and nobody is dropping neg reviews saying thumbs down only having 5 biomes is BS. A whole biome of flat boring grass is just too much. A few acres though? Awesome. Everyone needs to take a breather and let the master plan unfold FFS.

 

[AtomicUs5000]

 

[madmole]

I'm really enjoying Damocles' NitroGen RWG. I've got it set up with the Compopack POI's and have made some really interesting maps with it. I've tweaked the settings to my play-style - removed water, tweaked the trader locations, added back wasteland and burnt forest (which are just small areas), adjusted the size of the cities and so on. I don't think the game needs tons of biomes as long as variety/interest is there in other ways.

Wasteland and burnt forest are in vanilla. I'm confused.

 

[Roland]

Again, biomes do not need to visibly vary that much, just because the only remaining biomes are visibly completely different does not mean all of them have to be.

Well, call them all snow, fine. But behind the scenes, they are providing transition.

Agreed. Better transitioning would be more visually appealing and I agree with you that there could be more biomes that are not so distinct from what we have now. I just think that the community in general wouldn't see it as the different biomes they were hoping for and it would leave them sour. Calling them transitioning biomes would be good but there would still be an outcry for jungles, lava, swamp, etc. Many wouldn't see those additions as "real" biome variety.

 

[madmole]

If that is how you are defining different biomes then I agree but the sense I get from most posts is that people want Jungle, Swamp, Mooshroom,...etc and that most of them would call Snow Forest, Snow Plains, and Snow Mountains all "snow".
They'd probably scream foul if Joel tried to say "We have two new biomes coming in A18....presenting Sparse Forest and Deep Forest!"

Once we get the adjustable sub biome size we'll have at least 988773324 new biomes coming.

 

[Guppycur]

If the whole issue is the ground texture then just have your three ground textures... Biomes are so much more than the ground. Spectrums, foliage, pois, weather, resources, animals...

Anyway, let's see what sub biomes can do once Robert is finished working his magic.

In the meantime please unlock the max biome count for those of us that do like variety.

 

[Odetta]

Once we get the adjustable sub biome size we'll have at least 988773324 new biomes coming.

That's what I'm talking about:fat:

 

[Guppycur]

Once we get the adjustable sub biome size we'll have at least 988773324 new biomes coming.

Awesome.

 

[Haidrgna]

That would be one hell of a mess of XML, no thanks. Sorry but flat plains do not warrant their own biome, they might return when we get the right tools. Biomes has nothing to do with RWG. We've solved the repetitive POI problem and can allow only 1 within one township so no duplicates any more.

The messy XML part is only because of all the copy pasting of those sub-biomes for ore and decorations. If the biomes.xml file would support some extending it could quickly become a really clean and readable xml file. Biomes has everything to do with RWG, it is the soul of it if you ask me, empowering it. POIs are the icing on the cake though, together they can make great things happen. I am looking forward to what solution you guys come with though, since there are many routes to take to make the random world into a wonder. I am already happy that RWG is in scope for A18 as core feature