PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[madmole]

In A17.4, RWG towns are in a grid-like pattern, usually with one in the center and with other towns along perfect paths along the edges. I'm just curious if RWG town placement in A18 will follow similar patterns (or patterns in general), or if their locations will be randomized? No specifics are needed in an answer, I'm just wondering. It would be nice to just pick a direction again and not knowing if you'll find a town/another town or not.

I think it still uses the socket system. Towns appear to be grids often square, in random locations, sometimes even subdividing two biomes.

 

[madmole]

Isn't that what occlusion is for?
- - - Updated - - -

I see you answered, can you explain why it would slow a computer down?

Because some pc's are cpu/gpu bound and the calculations end up costing more than removal of the geometry, afaik, Faatal wrote it so he can explain. Bottom line is it helps some pcs, makes it worse on others. If you have a good rig you will probably love it, if you have a potato, well your still up a creek. You'll have to try it and see.

Regardless we've done a lot of optimizing, I'd say everyone should have a faster game in A18 than 17, but occlusion is like icing on the cake for fast pcs, but its no magic bullet to introduce 1000's of zombies, caves or to be careless designing heavy POIs.

 

[unholyjoe]

Because some pc's are cpu/gpu bound and the calculations end up costing more than removal of the geometry, afaik, Faatal wrote it so he can explain. Bottom line is it helps some pcs, makes it worse on others. If you have a good rig you will probably love it, if you have a potato, well your still up a creek. You'll have to try it and see.
Regardless we've done a lot of optimizing, I'd say everyone should have a faster game in A18 than 17, but occlusion is like icing on the cake for fast pcs, but its no magic bullet to introduce 1000's of zombies, caves or to be careless designing heavy POIs.

i would like to add that i have 2-4k 27" monitors. rtx2080 ryzen 2700x @4GHz.. my video settings are at medium to some high... game looks damn good... dont need to have everything at ultra anymore... and now can play at 1080p without losing picture quality.. so i dont need to run at 3840p anymore.

 

[madmole]

Just tried an Analogy with 7 Days, thats all im getting close to 3k hours on 7 days and i aint see it stopping.

I might have 300 or 400 hours in minecraft, but as you yourself stated: starting over with a new character (and for me new rwg map ) is all the fun and replay value i need.

I did a break of 3 months recently from 7 Days ( A17 just didnt "do" it for me) and now im back, preparing my server for A18 and having real fun and anticipation for your game. Something i never had with Minecraft

Awesome, I feel like most people who didn't like 17, we will make happy. Even if we didn't address an issue there is enough cool things going on you can set that aside and enjoy the future of the game. Kind of like some disgruntled Morrowind players might complain, but as a whole liked Oblivion a lot too, then some disgruntled Oblivion players complained about Skyrim, but you know, as a whole, even though they removed your favorite thing about the game, was still a better game.

Like a18 won't have LBD, but has hundreds of books and schematics which are learn to do stuff by doing (finding them), we won't have stocks, barrels, recievers, but we do have specific gun parts, and random stats, so the gun guys should be pacified and every gun is different now stat wise. So much looting now, anyone who didn't like buying all the perks from a menu will be happy, there are looting ways to do most things now. People who got poor performance should see much better performance. We've addressed stamina and early game feeling too grindy. Level gates are gone, but as a result we slowed leveling, but the game feels way better that way.

 

[Callum123456789]

a18 seems like the alpha I will play the most

 

[Rassilon]

Awesome, I feel like most people who didn't like 17, we will make happy. Even if we didn't address an issue there is enough cool things going on you can set that aside and enjoy the future of the game. Kind of like some disgruntled Morrowind players might complain, but as a whole liked Oblivion a lot too, then some disgruntled Oblivion players complained about Skyrim, but you know, as a whole, even though they removed your favorite thing about the game, was still a better game.
Like a18 won't have LBD, but has hundreds of books and schematics which are learn to do stuff by doing (finding them), we won't have stocks, barrels, recievers, but we do have specific gun parts, and random stats, so the gun guys should be pacified and every gun is different now stat wise. So much looting now, anyone who didn't like buying all the perks from a menu will be happy, there are looting ways to do most things now. People who got poor performance should see much better performance. We've addressed stamina and early game feeling too grindy. Level gates are gone, but as a result we slowed leveling, but the game feels way better that way.

And i can allready feel that alone from your videos, and frequent Forum Visits. Every Information you (and Staff) share increases the anticipation for A18. My current favourite to come features are the random Stats on Guns, the new Textures/Landscapes ( especially Desert ) and dont get me started with the Books... Its jawdropping.

With A17 dont get me wrong. I appriciate the Framework changes/work you did but besides the quests and new POIs it didnt have to offer much for my !personal! Style of Playing, thats all.

I have no doubt that A18 will change that drasticial! I keep fingers crossed, in two weeks i got vacation. Maybe destiny works in my favour this time.

 

[Callum123456789]

And i can allready feel that alone from your videos, and frequent Forum Visits. Every Information you (and Staff) share increases the anticipation for A18. My current favourite to come features are the random Stats on Guns, the new Textures/Landscapes ( especially Desert ) and dont get me started with the Books... Its jawdropping.
With A17 dont get me wrong. I appriciate the Framework changes/work you did but besides the quests and new POIs it didnt have to offer much for my !personal! Style of Playing, thats all.

I have no doubt that A18 will change that drasticial! I keep fingers crossed, in two weeks i got vacation. Maybe destiny works in my favour this time.

I know a17 wasn't everyones cup of tea but I still loved it and it is the foundation of which alpha 18 will build upon and shine in all its glory

 

[Blake_]

Its a bunch of work just to go into the next POI and find a perfectly good working one. You can find functioning workstations if you look for them. However the quest reset can reset the POI into a broken version, so it already kind of does what you are suggesting, without a ton of new work.
We have to be super careful about new tasks or we'll be in alpha another 3 years. A18 is playing great, none of this stuff is needed.

I wish for you guys to stay in alpha for 3 more years. I really do. Because this game is nothing compared to the rest on steam. There is at least 2 years to go until gold stable patched but we don't care much. And there's a lot of us that expect dlcs. Big fat ones.

You are naive if you think your game is not one of the best. I have been playing for 20 years now, many genres, but I've never come across such a jewel. Your team has become the Spiderman of videogames. A great game comes with great resposability.

Yours is to not stop in gold.

that said where's the MF a18 kraken?

 

[Thecolours]

Madmole, have you taken on the demolisher yet?

 

[madmole]

Will there be more skyscrapers in RWG in A18 ? I had some 8k maps created in A17.4 and always had a maximum of 3 skyscrapers and that was mostly the construction site.

I haven't seen any in my world.

 

[Tin]

I haven't seen any in my world.

So ahhh.. Let me see the file and I'll fix it for you Ill make them show up layful:

 

[madmole]

Haven't you just given the solution after the problem?
Even a simple built-in system that can be expanded by modders would be better than never having an underground at all.

Lol, there is nothing about procedural underground caves that is simple. Minecraft doesn't have stability nor more than a cube every meter for detail, and the whole thing is about mining, hence the name. This isn't 7 days to mine or explore caves. Arizona has a total of 11 caves in the entire state, so its not like we're not accurately portraying the region. We have a few man made caves we place randomly, that is good enough to ship.

As cool as it would be, after already investing several alphas into this idea we've concluded that its not worth the man hours to chase this feature. We can always add some more man made ones that are randomly placed.

 

[madmole]

is the stealth class still good like in a18 because when I play a stealth class I use my bow and arrow to kill zombies and I think the class is good because you can cause massive damage with a bow and not really need to use a melee weapon so if you only use a bow and silenced weapons you wont use much food or stamina compared to just swinging away with a weapon and using lots of stamina and I like it that way really

Yes its still good or better than ever.

 

[kareed]

Honestly its fustrating waiting for A18, A17 slows my gamers laptop that has never had a problem playing any game to the point I can't even play it. So its been a long time, hoping the new optimizations makes the game playable again.

 

[madmole]

It's obvious you don't know Minecraft enough. I bet you don't even know what the best gear is, and of course it would be impossible for you to get it in 2 hours.

Diamond tools and armor, can be obtained in no time, it spawns 10-14 from bedrock IIRC. I've been to the ender, I enchanted all my stuff, made a farm, electricity, pistons, railroad to bedrock, I know a lot about the game, but its not a 1000 hour game to me and never will be. I know you are a fanboy, I enjoyed it for a bit, but to me it has zero replay value because it lacks story, npcs and the graphics leave everything to be desired.

 

[madmole]

And i can allready feel that alone from your videos, and frequent Forum Visits. Every Information you (and Staff) share increases the anticipation for A18. My current favourite to come features are the random Stats on Guns, the new Textures/Landscapes ( especially Desert ) and dont get me started with the Books... Its jawdropping.
With A17 dont get me wrong. I appriciate the Framework changes/work you did but besides the quests and new POIs it didnt have to offer much for my !personal! Style of Playing, thats all.

I have no doubt that A18 will change that drasticial! I keep fingers crossed, in two weeks i got vacation. Maybe destiny works in my favour this time.

It should, but we'll see.

 

[Rassilon]

Lol, there is nothing about procedural underground caves that is simple. Minecraft doesn't have stability nor more than a cube every meter for detail, and the whole thing is about mining, hence the name. This isn't 7 days to mine or explore caves. Arizona has a total of 11 caves in the entire state, so its not like we're not accurately portraying the region. We have a few man made caves we place randomly, that is good enough to ship.
As cool as it would be, after already investing several alphas into this idea we've concluded that its not worth the man hours to chase this feature. We can always add some more man made ones that are randomly placed.

i think indeed that this would be a waste of ressources ( procederal generation ) Maybe do within the next Alpha 1 or 2 Manmade Mines ( like a Corporation Mining Side ) with the same passion you did with the recent POIs and i think even the doubters would be happy.

Im now allready. As you stated: Minecraft for mining, 7 Days to Die for dying.

 

[wolfbain5]

The game is already striving for realism and is full of such elements, spoilage won't suddenly make it "a real life sim" or anything. Only thing spoilage would do is making sure that an already elaborately implemented feature which is hunger/food etc, stops becoming irrelevant in the first few days.
Some of you may think that spoilage "will be a drag" but it will actually keep many of the activities the game is consisted of, alive, like hunting, foraging, farming, cooking and even trading to a degree, for more than a few days. Exploring and looting are also affected as a large part of the things you find, such as seeds, cans, food etc, are quickly perceived as trash because the player can stockpile food indefinitely. Then you suddenly run out of things to do and before you know it, ask for space rockets, underwater diving, boss zombies, legendary items and new guns, but they will never be enough as the novelty will quickly wear off.

Spoilage will also help to mix activities the player does in the game in a, say, weekly basis, which is very important too imo. Observed people mining for many days straight for example, or doing something until they burn out because there is nothing to draw their attention elsewhere or any emergent needs - they just click their fat stack of equipped food and carry on. It doesn't have to actually interrupt your activities every once in a while having strict timers, or make you look at a timer every now and then, as long as it lenient and simple enough, so that the player intuitively knows when to care for it after a while.

And no, I am not saying that the player should "constantly search for food" or struggle throughout the game, but atm food/water become irrelevant way too early and way too abruptly. Just that the time the player spends for needs should be lowered more progressively, increasing the player's QOL along with progression via electricity etc. Also, balancing the food income won't change anything, as long as it's always a net positive and can be stockpiled.

food spoilage would require a timer. which like a durability bar would make each thing stack separately. then you wouldnt have space for each bit of food would be its own stack of one. This would make for very poor gameplay.

so, no spoilage for now.

 

[sillls]

Intro:

So are you all planning to do an introduction of the game? A lot of cool games start you all with this short story at the start of a new game.

Subnautica has a short intro while games like Skyrim have longer interactive introductions to the game.

This could even incorporate the short tutorial that is already in the game. So they work together instead of the tutorial being a distraction to veteran players.

 

[wolfbain5]

Diamond tools and armor, can be obtained in no time, it spawns 10-14 from bedrock IIRC. I've been to the ender, I enchanted all my stuff, made a farm, electricity, pistons, railroad to bedrock, I know a lot about the game, but its not a 1000 hour game to me and never will be. I know you are a fanboy, I enjoyed it for a bit, but to me it has zero replay value because it lacks story, npcs and the graphics leave everything to be desired.

ah, you play vanilla mc. mod packs from ftb extend gameplay immensely. diamond gear becomes so low class. I play it more to explore, especially with dungeon modpacks tossed in.