PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

  • A18 Stable is Out!

    Votes: 2 66.7%

  • <img alt=":)" data-src="" src="___base_url___/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" />

    Votes: 1 33.3%
  • Total voters
    3
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Looks awesome!

Although if the bayonet serves no purpose does it need to be there? Or is this just some kind of placeholder?

I gotta be honest, not sure why’d you’d put a bayonet on the model if you have no intentions to make it functional. Seems like a tease.

 
I am rewording perks at the moment as we have more space for long descriptions. While doing it I'm improving some perks. If there are some farm related perk ideas I'm game. I don't want to change how you plant or harvest though in this conversation.
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In that case, I would suggest a perk that makes it so you don't have to keep replanting every time you harvest.

 
Actually I have to click on it, then press A. Two clicks compared to holding shift and clicking once. It makes a difference. Really does. Play Empyrion, try it out. Clicking for hours upon hours, every click makes a difference. Anyways, thanks for the response at least, I'll take it as a no. Everyone would appreciate it though, that's all I'm saying. I didn't know I would until I tried it. It's like holding shift and left clicking to transfer items. You could just click and drag, but with so much of that throughout the game, you appreciate any shortcuts. Maybe I can work out a macro setup or something.
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You have to select the item then press A. If you hold shift and select the item, you could use it as you select it. And that would be half the work.
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I like the way it is now. Both are two steps. The way you want it is you hold a use button then select what item to use, which seems to open up more room for errors like eating broken glass. The way it is now you select the item and then you use it, if you eat broken glass then, well you had a chance to change your decision but you didn't. Your way is not any quicker or smoother just riskier.

 
For one thing, it's adding an entirely new mechanic - the "alternate attack within range X" mechanic. I doubt TFP are willing to do that this close to gold.
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This is still probably overdesign, but another way the bayonet could be done is if every weapon has a passive defense value that reduces the amount of damage that zombies do to you, and the bayonet increases that defense value by a lot compared to other guns. Maybe there could be some thorns damage associated too.

Getting the math and balance right on that though, it's not trivial.

 
I like the way it is now. Both are two steps. The way you want it is you hold a use button then select what item to use, which seems to open up more room for errors like eating broken glass. The way it is now you select the item and then you use it, if you eat broken glass then, well you had a chance to change your decision but you didn't. Your way is not any quicker or smoother just riskier.
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ok, I'm not arguing that it is for everybody, I'm more just relating my experience with that as preferred. And requesting it as an option. But to me that is more of an issue of: why was the option to eat glass included in the first place? You could as easily mistake which button you are clicking to use an item (A) and scrap it(S), which I have done. There's no difference there. I'm saying if to transfer items you had to drag each or even if you had to click to select it, then press a button to transfer it as a two part transfer, believe me you would appreciate being able to do it the way it is now by holding shift and clicking. It's an option that is already in the game for transferring, I'm just saying it would be nice to have for using items too. It could be both that you could press A or hold shift and right click. Or if it was that I could hover over the item and press A to use or hold A and click on an item to use, any of those would be an improvement. Not a game breaking thing to have missing, but very nice in Empyrion which is very similar in nature to 7DTD, and would be very nice in this game.

 
Also it is quicker and smoother. If you want to eat several potatoes and drink a couple jars of water and a beer all at once, just hold shift and click on each one while holding shift. To do it the way it is now you have to click on it and release, then click A and release, then click on the next one and release, then click on A and release....etc. Two click and release cycles, where as what I'm speaking of, you hold shift throughout and just click on what you want to use. If the Devs are taking things from other games that work and are good ideas, this is one. That's my statement. Only reposted because it seemed my post was overlooked due to no response. I just wanted them to hear the idea and say yea or nay.

 
PVP, but we might end up buffing your stealth skill a bit too for SP.
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How will you combat the pvp players turning off shadows, low grass, etc etc that they do? Thinking the suit will stand out quite a bit, unless maybe those graphics will go down too?

 
That would be possible with no code, so ideas like that are more plausible. I've been thinking about some fictional alchemy for the game. Boost stats, damage resistance, zombie juice so they can't smell you, etc. To me expanding farming is what we should do, not reinvent the wheel with clunky irrigation systems. Maybe what you make c4 from is gp and a rare plant to make plastic explosives.
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* A carnivorous plant: A plant that is like a spike trap hitting anyone for 20 damage and turning back into a crop (equivalent to what happens with harvesting normal plants). Then it has to grow back to carnivorous plant. It would need graphics design work, but the rest should be possible in XML.

* A variation would be a "thicket" type plant that slows zombies minimally (like a weak barbed wire, but without degradation)

* A poisoned dagger weapon mod (for the dagger naturally) with a plant as ingredient.

* Fruits that smell to zombies like human flesh. Throw it at a zombie and other zombies near it are more likely to attack this one (this needs changes to the AI code but zombies already do that if other zombies are in the way, maybe a relatively easy change).

 
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In that case, I would suggest a perk that makes it so you don't have to keep replanting every time you harvest.
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Wait, what? You trolling, or just never played A17?

Moving on...

Some farming perk thoughts:

Tier 1: can harvest 1 seed from 4 produce, can till dirt

Tier 2: can harvest 1 seed from 2 produce, can till dirt faster

Tier 3: can harvest 1 mutated seed from 4 mutated produce, can harvest 2 produce from crop

Tier 4: can harvest 1 produce from late stage "growing" crop, can harvest 1 seed from 1 produce, can harvest 1 mutated seed from 2 mutated produce

Tier 5: can harvest 1 produce from early stage "growing" crop, 2 produce from late stage "growing" crop, 4 produce from full grown crop.

Book Bonus Ideas: 5% chance to harvest mutated seeds from normal produce, 10% chance to harvest 2 mutated produce from mutated crop

Slight QOL adjustment to planting/harvesting: make it so you can't punch a newly planted seed, instead make it so you have to use a shovel or hoe to dig up the seed. This will make it so accidental double-taps don't dig up a seed you just planted or from a crop you just harvested. Punching a growing seed should reset the grow timer (and maybe trigger a perk/book bonus as noted above).

 
In all seriousness for farming perks I would like to see a return to the game’s roots and make it so that crops will only grow if adjacent to a water block. It was like that in Alpha 6.
THEN there could be a perk called Irrigation that would allow you to plant without the need for an adjacent water block. Also, the growing lights recipe for interior farms would be great as Chikorina pointed out.

Any noob coming from Minecraft would EXPECT crops having to be planted near water blocks so it would be intuitive as well for new players.
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See, I'm mixed on this. Yes, it is intuitive to expect crops to be planted near water. But at the same it is tedious. I like how it right now where all we have to do is get a hoe and till then plant. Or at the very least @madmole, perhaps one revert could be that we can plant crops on untilled land like it was back in A15 and A16.4.

Some perks I do want to see:

  • Crafting more mutated seeds for all the crops in-game


  • Learning the secret of harvesting and growing snowberries. Could tie this into a biome-specific perk of being only able to grow it successfully in the snow biome.


  • Magic fertilizer, now we can craft fertilizer again! But just don't ask how or why it looks to have brown clumps in it. Applying fertilizer to untilled or tilled land decreases the time it takes for a crop to grow to adulthood. I'm thinking 1/2 the grow time, this could be OP though.


  • As for harvesting, a perk that gives a chance of getting an abnormally large version of a crop, like for example getting one big-ass potato. This is mostly for people like me that need things to sell at a trader. However, the abnormally large crop can be used in making recipes but it counts as two!

 
Looks awesome! Although if the bayonet serves no purpose does it need to be there? Or is this just some kind of placeholder?

I gotta be honest, not sure why’d you’d put a bayonet on the model if you have no intentions to make it functional. Seems like a tease.
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Agree. We have hunting knife already. Might there be a plan for later to be an attachment. We`ll see.

 
Re farming and water:

Players can only plant dead seeds.

Players must hold a water bucket to pour (hit) the dead plant with.

Dead plant transforms into live plant.

...all doable via XML...

 
&lt;snipped for space&gt;
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Is there such thing as an AOE requirement? In the sense that whatever is required must be within a certain amount of blocks.

That would allow the plants to check if there was a water source nearby.

A great place to test the water physics engine... if I had one! :-)

 
I second that, the notion is ridiculous. We're focused on the 20-30 hour player right now, (and actually adding many T3 items you can find late game) and later we can focus on the 100 hour+ experience, because we'll have you all by then anyway. We don't like 2 hour players slipping through our fingers over an ARK like experience that I had is all. So if we make the first 30 hours play great, and easy to understand they might get to all the late game content. But if they are stonewalled at 1 hour and rage quit, its just cutting us off at the kneecaps, and that will affect our ability to add more late game content. So like it or not, the Johnny Newcomes are paying the bills to move forward.
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What. You’re focusing on the 20-30 hr player and later you’ll focus on the 100+ hr player?? What about the 31-99 hr player, MadMole?.

JK!

I’m really in favour of the 20-30 hr focus as I (and my mates) play “dead is dead” and I see those early hours quite a lot... well I did in A17. But there seem to be a lot of good noises about A18 and maybe I won’t have to see them quite as much, next alpha :)

 
M60...iron sight/bayonet...
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Isn't an M60 a fairly hefty weapon? I would expect so anyway, and so the premise of swinging it around as a melee weapon seems impractical...as does the thought of iron sighting unless it was mounted on a base wall or a vehicle, or when lying prone and utilizing a bi-pod.

I could see a sprinting zombie impaling itself on that blade though :)

 
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