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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@faatal How feasible would it be to allow entities to sometimes 'lead' the player in 7dtd? When I say lead, I mean that if one entity is chasing another entity, and the chased entity is going in a straight line, then the chasing entity will also travel in a straight line, as opposed to the pursuit curve we have currently.
I can implement it in open areas with a few lines of code, but I can imagine it would be harder to integrate it with the A*-based pathing system.

I've heard fourm members say that it's too easy to outmanuever zombies outside, and, well, leading enemies are a lot harder to outmaneuver.
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We have that: June 6 - Added AI can attack while moving, independent attack and move range checks, and target motion estimation.

It is only a third of a second for basically the reason you said.

Say you looked ahead 5 seconds. That would often be on the other side of a an obstacle, which the target is not planning to go to or can't get to, so AI would be going off to the wrong location a lot. You could try to add a bunch of rules with target raycasts or path checking, but we have enough performance issue as is. At this point I'm trying to get us to more zombies, not smarter, but it may possibly be tweaked in the future as higher priority tasks are completed.

 
I just want RWG to be fixed as soon as possible. It just looks SO BAD that I rarely have the desire to go out and explore any more. Roads beside roads that seem to twist around one another with sudden 'ups and downs' for no reason. Also makes me want to NOT build anything more than a bicycle. Any new pics of rwg you could throw up in a post. As opposed to throw-up in a post... sorry, just read the last bit and the words 'throw up' jumped out.
Anyway, I know there are a lot of complaints on the forum lately (let's face it, there always is. Those who aren't complaining are actually playing the game), but I think things are going well. Obviously things can be tweaked to be better, but I still like it.
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The plan is to patch some of the new fixes to 17.3 RWG like the new road and town placement stuff. We can post some RWG stuff when the terrain overhaul is complete. We're doing PBR terrain textures and using height maps so they are more 3d and light correctly, fixed tangent normals which have been broken since smooth terrain came online, and will use splat maps so cliffs can have rocks showing on steep faces and less tiling etc.

So A18 will have the all new RWG but you guys will get some fixes for 17 soon.

 
The plan is to patch some of the new fixes to 17.3 RWG like the new road and town placement stuff. We can post some RWG stuff when the terrain overhaul is complete. We're doing PBR terrain textures and using height maps so they are more 3d and light correctly, fixed tangent normals which have been broken since smooth terrain came online, and will use splat maps so cliffs can have rocks showing on steep faces and less tiling etc.
So A18 will have the all new RWG but you guys will get some fixes for 17 soon.
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Thanks for the reply. That damn word... 'soon'. As Mad Magazine so aptly quoted... Blecch. But I guess it's the best I'm gonna get.

 
Garbage Collection
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Yep. We know about that. We do follow the Unity changes and watch their roadmap and sometimes even try a beta.

Incremental GC does add more overhead in total, just less per frame (and is still experimental in 2019.1), which is why the Unity 2018.3 change to allow disabling GC is more important to me, since we could use our own rules. Keep it off and run it manually while not in combat, when a memory threshold is reached and ideally during transitions where you won't notice it, like opening a full screen UI. That is the plan, but we are still on 2018.2.

Edit:

And incremental would be the fallback for when you have been in combat for a while and garbage mem use is getting high.

 
If they do its purely coincidence, I don't recall it. I know you can knock guys on their ass with some of the high end gun perks in it, but I don't recall anything letting you to knock guys over running into them.
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Yeah, in the case of Fallout the perk name was called "Pain Train" but it was only for those that chose to play as character with power armor. Sprinting into the enemies would set them flying and ragdolling. Personally, myself I honest don't care if you guys "copy" perks from other games. Every other game has some sort of similar perk in some name or mechanic. Honestly, I'd relish this if ended up with more fun perks. How about a perk that much like in previous Fallout games that just added some zany ♥♥♥♥? Like abnormally large vultures or when killing an enemy they pop out with more? lol

As for weapon mods that can knock down enemies. YES PLEASE! The sniper rifle does that somewhat naturally . How about a mod that freezes enemies in place? Not just stuns but actually freezes them.

 
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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 :)
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Indeed. I'm sick of seeing the "why you focus on x hour players" stuff. Adding a feature or change which might improve the early game does not mean we forgot about long term players or vice versa. The whole experience should be a balanced ramp up of fun and excitement from day 1 to day xx. The xx being a reasonable stopping point of content like every game has.

 
Perhaps that's why Eve player base is SO flat and 7DTD hit it's new all time highs in December and January? Yes, it dropped off a fair amount since then, but there are legit reasons for that that everyone recognises (and by the sounds of it... are being addressed). Just saying that 'being completely noob hostile' ain't doing the EVE devs any favors. So unless you were trying to prove a point to be less hostile to the noobs, your point fell flat.
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I thought about playing EVE a year or so ago and after researching the state of the game, the community, it just seemed such a chore, so nope.

 
Because lets say you are going to use 5 items in succession, you press shift ONCE and hold it down as you click each of the items. So to use 5 items it would be 6 total actions. With the current method it would be 10. He is right. I've played Empyrion and it is a nice feature. Not a must have but it makes doing certain things much less tedious feeling.
The shift click to loot items is pretty much the same thing and already in the game so the code to implement is possibly already there.
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You do have a point there. That is a more optimal use case.

 
Thanks for the reply. That damn word... 'soon'. As Mad Magazine so aptly quoted... Blecch. But I guess it's the best I'm gonna get.
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This week from my bug list for A17.3, I've fixed 7 with 2 remaining. Not to say I won't get more, but that should give you a clue. We are making progress.

 
I am rewording perks at the moment as we have more space for long descriptions.
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Any chance you'll add the requirements you need to unlock new skills? Hate to refer to Bethesda stuff but the Skyrim style visual skill tree is very nice. I'm struggling to know what to I need to buy to unlock what I want.

Example: as a noob, trying to unlock Hammer and Forge level 2 so I can craft some simple iron tools. it's greyed/locked. I have H&F Level 1, Level 5 in Intellect. Do I just keep putting points in Intellect? Is there another perk associated with it I haven't bought yet?

Right now I feel like I'm blindfolded and throwing darts at a dartboard trying to hit a bullseye.

Thanks!

 
How about that damn double swing bug?
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Yeah, I agree, the double swing bug has been minor but annoying and persistent nonetheless (one of my mates died to it as the extra swing made him hit an explosive barrel, lol). Also the arrow not firing from a bow until you right click to zoom in/out again.

 
Yeah, in the case of Fallout the perk name was called "Pain Train" but it was only for those that chose to play as character with power armor. Sprinting into the enemies would set them flying and ragdolling. Personally, myself I honest don't care if you guys "copy" perks from other games. Every other game has some sort of similar perk in some name or mechanic. Honestly, I'd relish this if ended up with more fun perks. How about a perk that much like in previous Fallout games that just added some zany ♥♥♥♥? Like abnormally large vultures or when killing an enemy they pop out with more? lol
As for weapon mods that can knock down enemies. YES PLEASE! The sniper rifle does that somewhat naturally . How about a mod that freezes enemies in place? Not just stuns but actually freezes them.
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Oh yeah, I always just got the one that caused ragdoll when you landed with power armor but sadly it damaged your friendly npcs when nearby, I think I killed the little grey kitty at Abernathy farm and was sad.

I think some of the books have stun and knockdown added to that type of firearm. By freeze you mean like cryo freeze? Ice form shout from skyrim?

 
Indeed. I'm sick of seeing the "why you focus on x hour players" stuff. Adding a feature or change which might improve the early game does not mean we forgot about long term players or vice versa. The whole experience should be a balanced ramp up of fun and excitement from day 1 to day xx. The xx being a reasonable stopping point of content like every game has.
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Exactly, people take a temporary focus as some new lifetime mantra lol. Down the road we might focus on late game content and then there will be a group saying we're abandoning the noobs.

 
@madmole Can you show us some more new assets in game? i love the art you guys make and i am really excited to get hand in A18 just to see how beatifoul the game will be!!

 
Yeah, I agree, the double swing bug has been minor but annoying and persistent nonetheless (one of my mates died to it as the extra swing made him hit an explosive barrel, lol). Also the arrow not firing from a bow until you right click to zoom in/out again.
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Today I see Kinyajuu submitted:

Fixed: SDTD-9292 - Double swing with melee weapons

So maybe that will do it.

 
Any chance you'll add the requirements you need to unlock new skills? Hate to refer to Bethesda stuff but the Skyrim style visual skill tree is very nice. I'm struggling to know what to I need to buy to unlock what I want.
Example: as a noob, trying to unlock Hammer and Forge level 2 so I can craft some simple iron tools. it's greyed/locked. I have H&F Level 1, Level 5 in Intellect. Do I just keep putting points in Intellect? Is there another perk associated with it I haven't bought yet?

Right now I feel like I'm blindfolded and throwing darts at a dartboard trying to hit a bullseye.

Thanks!
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If you hover the mouse over the lock icon it pops out text of what you need to buy it. We're removing level gates, so that should simplify it even more.

 
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