PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

  • A18 Stable is Out!

    Votes: 2 66.7%

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    Votes: 1 33.3%
  • Total voters
    3
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For me, games are about the carrot and the stick. You need to have rewards for gameplay. Some people feel surviving is the reward. Others want not only to survive but thrive.
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I'm with you on that one. You need some kind of reward, and if it's just something as simple as a confirmation of what you've accomplished.

In A16, my base was covered with zombie corpses. This alone was already the confirmation of what you have accomplished. The following cleaning up and the repair work have strengthened this effect again. The loot was not so important. 99% of it were anyway only garbage. The rest I mostly sold to be able to buy new ammunition for the next horde.

I also think it's important that you are able to thrive in the long term. Without the perspective that things will get better, survival is meaningless.

 
Hey madmole

In one of your latest videos it was visible in the crafting menu that there was a thing craftable called "Advanced Bellows". I think it was in the "shape menu"-Video. Does this combine into something like an advanced forge?

Having the forgetime hardcoded to the material amount was the absolute major drawback I found when trying to mod the game - I would absolutely love something like an industrial forge in ARK which is stupidly expensive for SP but gives you the feeling of actually working towars that giant crazy end game machine helping your material production SO much.

Thats just way cooler than building 20 forges and fill them all up manually.

Tl:dr: will there be anything like an Advanced Forge/Industrial Forge/Blast Furnace/Whatever in A18?

Thanks for a reply and also thanks for the great work!

 
I'm with you on that one. You need some kind of reward, and if it's just something as simple as a confirmation of what you've accomplished.
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Do u guys want some little gold star stickers or some other participation trophy? Maybe an achievement!!! How cool is that!!!!

Kids these days.....

 
Do u guys want some little gold star stickers or some other participation trophy? Maybe an achievement!!! How cool is that!!!!
Kids these days.....
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Don't say it so derogatory. I've seen players grind for hours and hours just to get a weapon skin. Some players also proudly present their rarest achievements on Steam or whatever platform. So it means something to these players.

For me it would be enough if I didn't get the impression the next day that the base was attacked by an army of ghosts.

 
The problem he's describing is that you log in and realize that it's horde night right now. There is no time to go to the trader and rent a room.


Several possibilities are currently being discussed in parallel. Among others the EMP solution. Therefore the discussion is a bit confused in the forum.

By the way, the EMP solution was proposed directly by madmole. So it's not just a suggestion from a player.

The probability that the EMP solution will be the end of the process may not be very high but so far everything is still open.
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Not according to this:

Hey Madmole. I hope you address this issue with the (vehicle not starting during a blood moon) thing soon.
I know that you only said that it was one of many options but it seems like some people think it's a done deal.
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No it was just an old ideas, one of many. Its not happening for sure, and most likely we'll just create a more rewarding hazard like zeds spawning in front of you so its not impossible to drive on horde night, just riskier.
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I’ll be glad once people catch up to his responses and stop responding to the debate from the weekend.

 
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That game is so 2015. We're not catering weapons to anyone now, its an equal chance to drop insert weapon name here, so that each archtype can get his type of weapon he wants to use. Dropping one specific gun by a specific enemy would skew the balance in favor of those archtypes.
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Well, then the silver lining here is that at least by abandoning loot archetypes, the door opens somewhat more to abandoning visual archetypes, too. That is, the need to have a character distinguishable as THE one and only cowboy zombie is gone if they don't fill any particular role, like 'the zombie that drops cattle prods.' Still pining for mix-and-match visual variation among individual zombies here. :)

 
Do u guys want some little gold star stickers or some other participation trophy? Maybe an achievement!!! How cool is that!!!!
Kids these days.....
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Yea. Some people dont see the horde night gameplay as fun enough to justify the loss of ammo and repair costs.

Has now nothing to do with kids, participation trophies or anything of the sort. A participation trophy is givin to a player that lost, just for showing up. I dont think anyone is saying this. If you died then I agree you failed and get nothing. Maybe have loot bags despawn if the player dies? I dunno.

People simply want to get a reward for standing up to a challenge the game offered. Someone grinds all week for ammo and mats to build a cool base. They defeat the horde and have nothing to show for it and you think that's a good idea?

Some of us enjoy the horde night just for the horde night. Others dont. Dont they count too? Should TFP not at least try to make horde night fun for them too?

 
The problem he's describing is that you log in and realize that it's horde night right now. There is no time to go to the trader and rent a room.
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Generally people on a server could arrange that one of them stays in the hotel so that time forwards. If this didn't work out at some BM, that single player can hop on a bike and try to reach the trader, it will be more dangerous though (and it is a good reason to not remove biking on BM, but just make it more costly/dangerous). If he had been somewhere in a tower far from his bike, he would have a dangerous journey already. I also heard that some servers have extra safe zones for waiting out horde night.

A nice server option that TFP could provide would be that horde nights always advance time, even if no player is online. It would solve that problem independent of any other changes to the game.

Several possibilities are currently being discussed in parallel. Among others the EMP solution. Therefore the discussion is a bit confused in the forum.

By the way, the EMP solution was proposed directly by madmole. So it's not just a suggestion from a player.

The probability that the EMP solution will be the end of the process may not be very high but so far everything is still open.
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And even madmole didn't say exactly how the EMP solution would work (EMP could make driving impossible OR just difficult). And he afterwards mentioned multiple times he doesn't want to make driving on BM impossible.

Is it really necessary to warn against possibilites that are very unlikely and discuss them to death? The general consensus of forum users and TFP seems to be that driving should have a cost/difficulty, I don't see much confusion there.

 
I for one only did a single BM on a vehicle...
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Don't... don't say it like that. :p

I just think this exploit is weird, far more rare than those complaining about it realize. But if you did do something to make it more difficult, sure go ahead, we'll see how that works out, and likely debate it here in the forums, as usual. I just didn't realize this was all that much of a thing in the first place.
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Whether it's done frequently or not shouldn't be the important factor. Let me put it this way, using one of my favorite Penny Arcade comics.

https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/09/23/the-wisdom-of-solomon

There's a good reason the developers of Scribblenauts made this not work, even if not many players would do it.

 
I stlll think there could be some special BM POI that could only be activated during bloodmoon, with some nice loot reward at the end, which would despawn in the morning. To reminisce some good old times with L4D :tickled_pink:

 
Yea. Some people dont see the horde night gameplay as fun enough to justify the loss of ammo and repair costs.
Has now nothing to do with kids, participation trophies or anything of the sort. A participation trophy is givin to a player that lost, just for showing up. I dont think anyone is saying this. If you died then I agree you failed and get nothing. Maybe have loot bags despawn if the player dies? I dunno.

People simply want to get a reward for standing up to a challenge the game offered. Someone grinds all week for ammo and mats to build a cool base. They defeat the horde and have nothing to show for it and you think that's a good idea?

Some of us enjoy the horde night just for the horde night. Others dont. Dont they count too? Should TFP not at least try to make horde night fun for them too?
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Open your character screen and look at the 0 by death count. Is that a reward? Hell you can share the pic with friends!

 
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It'll be interesting to see how TFP handle the XP assignment issues that could come up in MP with this, eg, does the builder get the XP, does the placer get it, is it simply assigned to whomever was closest when the Zombie died, is it shared etc etc.
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Whoever placed it gets the xp. Shared xp goes to party members who are online and close to each other AFAIK.

 
Is it to much to ask for these kind of weapons, tools and armor to be added or re-added into the game later down the line of alpha 18 or maybe in 19 once you guys at FunPimps are ready for it?
1. Scrap Metal Tools (Axe, Pick, Shovel, Hammer, Wrench, and Garden Hoe)

2. New Scrap Metal Weapons (Knife and pipe guns of sort)

3. Animal Hide Clothes/Armor (To help with the snow biomes)

If you guys think this can work for future builds, please make it where you don't need a workbench. Modders have these things in there mods (except for the Animal Hide stuff) and i don't see how it can be an issue.
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We have no intent to make scrap tiered tools. We have adequate weather gear already.

 
That's actually an excellent idea!But it mustn't be only a players RP thing IMO.

It makes me think of an old RPG system called GURPS which used also negative traits or "habits" during character creation so that you could get some points to invest on other things you wanted more...

Here's a basic manual I found on-line so you can get an idea, it's very useful and can be adapted to ANY game:

http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/lite/3e/gurpslite.pdf

Here's the wiki page with more info:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GURPS

All this could be integrated into the game to some extent...
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Not a bad concept, but we feel like the system we have is now shippable outside of some more balance work.

 
Here is where you should be able to make ethanol(bio fuel) to make a flame trap or flame thrower .....better molotovs with a bigger range, etc.
Finding old scuba tanks or canisters to make a backpack for flamethrower.

Are underwater breathing apparatus every going to make it in? so we can swim in the larger lakes or the flooded parts of a POI?

Maybe a way to refill the old scuba tanks.

What about small windmills for power? Maybe a portable one to light up a small house ?
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I'm thinking more like stuff that effects the players abilities and attributes with alchemy. Extra health/stam regen for x seconds, boosts str for x seconds, run faster for x seconds etc., resistant to fire for x, etc.

 
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