PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Odetta]

The junk turret is not a fixed installation.It's more comparable to Roland's turret in Borderlands.

So you can toss it like a poke'ball?

 

[Odetta]

Is it a lot of work to be able to change the order in our crafting queues? So instead of having to cancel and then re-crafting we can just push a button to move it to the front of the queue.

Example: I'm currently crafting 200 stone arrows but need to repair my stone axe to continue cutting down a tree. I press "repair" to add it to the queue then hover over it to get an option to move it to the front or up one space.

Just a QoL thing.

 

[RestInPieces]

I've often heard from players that they don't farm at all because they have no problems getting meat and eggs and only feed on bacon and eggs. So how is it that farming is responsible that there is an oversupply of food in the game?
If farming is targeted but hunting is completely ignored then restrictions in farming are a punishment. I have a box full of meat and I'm not even actively hunting. And every 3 days a box comes sailing from the sky with lots of cans. As you yourself have already noticed, the probability of getting food poisoning is very low.

On that I definitely agree - that's why spoilage is needed on top of everything. Farming still just needs an additional small cost to it, but without spoilage nothing is solved. I don't see another way to balance supply VS demand like one could do in a currency-driven economy, because in the case of food supply must always be greater than demand. And if supply is greater than demand the player's food surplus will always keep getting bigger.

I think you're confusing 7 Days to die with another game. Hunger has never been relevant longer than 2 days. The main part has always been the horde that shows up every 7 days.

I know, and all this content related to food is criminally underused. Farming, hunting, a large part of the loot when scavenging - all of that go to waste when food stops being relevant. And that is also one of the reasons for the popular "zombie grind" complaint, if many other activities become obsolete that early in the game.

 

[Zaroff]

No thats crazy. Rule # 1 with spears, don't throw your only weapon. Throwing will be more powerful as it is a power attack. But I'd save it for there is only one zombie on screen and he's running at me kind of thing.

and when you go to pick it up there should be a 1 second "cast timer" not just instantly pick up. this is to demonstrating the fact you have to rip it out of the flesh and or dislodging it from the ground or environment.

Thanks my opinion for making it realistic.

- - - Updated - - -

This could be cool:
"GPS Mod"

Shows the location of this item on your map/compass

Of course, the only use would be the spear. Losing your gun isn't a thing AFAIK.

no..... talk about immersion breaking. please don't let that be.

 

[mr.natural]

I'm not sure food should be hard to find, it punishes new players who don't know what they are doing, and later game its kind of just an annoyance, players move on and want higher level challenges. Like I feel that scrounging for food early game has its place, but as you progress it shouldn't be an issue, but bigger newer challenges, such as bandits.

What about tying the availability/quantity of food to game difficulty settings?

 

[Survager]

This is a reality if you play MP. Good luck finding anything to loot on a busy server thats been running a while. Food spoiling in cans feels really weird. Lets get it balanced and then talk spoilage. Its not really on my radar, but can be for A19. I hope to do some nice balancing for 18's release though.

Joel, if you say that you are not against food spoilage, and the whole question is in balance, here are some of my ideas))

Raw meat could be stored for 1 day without a refrigerator, 3 days in a refrigerator box, or 5 days in an electric refrigerator.

Roasted and boiled meat could be stored for 2 days without a refrigerator, 5 days in a refrigerator box, or 7 days in an electric box.

You can add a salty meat recipe that can be stored for a very long time, but using it would add a strong thirst debuff for a few hours, and the character would have to drink water very often.

The eggs that we find in the nests could be fresh or spoiled 50/50 and so on.

Canned food could be stored indefinitely, and they could be found on any server with any term of life.

Canned food could always be bought from a traider, in a vending machine or other player in his vending machine.

The price of canned food could be very high due to the long shelf life and complexity of production. Canned food could completely saturate the character.

Making canned food can be very difficult and expensive, but it would allow to make stocks in the later stages of the game.

 

[Zaroff]

I don't think we're too far off. Take your numbers in half maybe on the stew, and 10 bandages is fine, 5 medicated (nerfed in half already) and maybe 2 large med kits (also nerfed in half). These are rough numbers, I need to think about it more and try some things.

I like how we're finally talking about properly balancing stack sizes. balance all depends on how much MM wants his game to be realistic or just fun. Because if you were to go full realistic mode then we would be only able to carry 20-50 small stones and 10-25 raw iron chunks before you could not carry anymore let alone carry a 4x4 jeep in your pocket. I myself fully understand that I can't in real life that is carry 20 stacks of 6000 small rocks lol. 7D2D is a survival game that tries to have alot of common sense elements to challenge your character to survive. from my experience of the game it is not an inventory management game, its a game where you are suppose to loot, build, fight, defend and above all survive. If you die your char should lose something permanently that you have to then redo or reattain (another topic but Death needs to be punishing)

If you go the full realistic mode for loot stack sizes then you severely diminish the core function of the game and would have to change subtitle to the game. from "The Survival Horde Crafting Game" to "The Survival Inventory Management Game"

For example all building materials like rocks, iron, cement, wet cement, gas, lead, brass, and any other raw materials the stack size should all be set at 3k IMO this is to make it uniform while at the same time reduce the amount of material a person could carry as it would demonstrate a "sense of realism" without killing the crafting theme of the game. Also maybe have it to where when you put those items into a storage container the stack size is doubled or tripled? IDK? some other games do this like Empryion and to me that makes perfect sense.

this is just an example of just the raw materials. have them at 3k on the person but 6k or 12k even when put in a container

hope this is somewhat helpful or insightful. Overall 17.3 is amazing great work TFP!!!

 

[Roland]

I am for spoilage as much as anyone but Madmole has confirmed that it is not going to happen in Alpha 18. Please continue to discuss it in General Discussions if you wish.

This is a reality if you play MP. Good luck finding anything to loot on a busy server thats been running a while. Food spoiling in cans feels really weird. Lets get it balanced and then talk spoilage. Its not really on my radar, but can be for A19. I hope to do some nice balancing for 18's release though.

 

[faatal]

That's true, but we have a lot of items, like cowboy hats, for players to wear. Are those separate meshes? If we ignore for a moment that the artists may say they don't look good together, would it be easy to stick the player cowboy hat on a zombie that doesn't wear a hat?

There is a separate cowboy hat model, but that is not what the old timer uses. AFAIK all zombies are a single skinned mesh. The oldtimer definitely is.

Players are really going to appreciate an increased range on their lights! My understanding has been that, for a given volume to achieve a given level of illumination, a low number of long-range dynamic lights are more performant than a high number of short-range dynamic lights, because calculating multiple lights per vertex or face is intensive. In other words - and correct me if I'm wrong - players won't need to use as many lights, which is more convenient and better for frame rates. :high5:

Sorry, that is not a change to light range, but to the distance the player can see the light. Past that distance the light is disabled. That probably broke in A17 due to the addition of light types (flicker, pulse), so distant player lights are adding overhead to the game.

In deferred rendering, each light does render into a shadow map. Less lights, but of a longer range does make sense, but they will be even more intense close up, which design may not like.

 

[faatal]

gfx pp enable 0 works only in 17.3? I was trying that in 17.2 and the command was unknown.

Yes, I added in 17.3.

 

[Dark_Corvid]

I'm not sure about that, but block tags are in, and you can increase damage with a perk or buff to a specific block containing a tag. This is my placeholder code to test it:
<passive_effect name="BlockDamage" operation="perc_add" value="200" tags="ironore,stoneore,nitrateore,leadore,shaleore"/>

Then on the blocks I add the <property name="Tags" value="stoneore"/>

It should be really awesome.

Awesome! This is very exciting.

 

[faatal]

Madmole have you guys ever thought about giving the "interaction point" (i don't know how is it called) a bigger size, less precision and close range? (Polish it)
Let me explain in my poor and primitive english:

When you are trying to open a door, you have to aim directly to it, if your crosshair is 1mm off the door, you can't open it.

Another example: If you stand beside a wall, like 3 meters away from a door, you can open it as long as 1 pixel of the door is in your crosshair

And another one(dj khaled reference): When someone drops a tiny item on the floor, you can pick it up only if your crosshair is exactly aiming to that said item. (I think holding E doesn't add it to your inventory no more, it only gets it closer to you)

I don't know if I explained myself correctly, but I think that little change could enhance interactions in-game.

Trankitas.

That is done by raycasts against block/item colliders. You make them bigger and they start to overlap and then you can't tell which one will get hit, which would be annoying trying to interact with what you are looking at and it hits something else.

 

[madmole]

Perks in the STR tree to get more healing out of the same food would make sense and serve the same purpose wouldn't it?

Yeah, or faster healing so its not to OP.

 

[madmole]

@Madmole
In the new A 18

* Will we have a Stir homemade gun? that we could make without a prescription? shoot only handcrafted ammunition?

-If we can throw spears

* Can we throw axes?

* Is it a possibility to add the javelin?

* Is it a possibility to add throwing knife (feel like ninjas)

It's a zombie game we need all this to live

We talked about adding some make shift pistols and flintlock rifles so players can specialize on day 1. Not happening yet though, we have a lot of new guns to handle right now. There is a blunderbuss you can craft right away, but players usually find weapons before that.

THrowing knives would mean no power attack. Mods can provide these I'm sure on day 1 of A18's release.

 

[madmole]

You must really, really like cornbread.
Now, if it was 5000 steaks.....

I get encornbered from too much cornbread lol.

 

[faatal]

There really isn't a lot of interaction in the game. We don't have micro loot to pick up like Fallout and Skyrim. THere is a little of that going on now but its still not that small.

For item pickup that makes more sense, which we kind of do with the suck it into you thing when pressing E. I was thinking along the lines of opening doors, using things, like vehicles and hitting stuff, which is a different use case.

 

[madmole]

Hey, I’m down with that. Just expect the inevitable complaint ‘I threw my modded purple spear and it totally disappeared. Fix this crap!’

We'll see.

 

[madmole]

This could be cool:
"GPS Mod"

Shows the location of this item on your map/compass

Of course, the only use would be the spear. Losing your gun isn't a thing AFAIK.

Until bandits can disarm you

 

[madmole]

Those kind of numbers work for me. Workable, and diminished sizes but for more gain and/or practicality/rp whatever.
Honestly I only mod up things that are just too low (weap damage, but that had hilarious unintended side effects, so I keep it).

We do need some drinks that give more hydration/stamina. I don't think anything is currently over 34 (yucca juice), I'd have to check.

So if I need to drink severa jars of water, yeah, I'll want a decent sized stack. Or gimme a recipe to make something better so I only need one or two to get back to max (from a reasonable point. If I let it drop to 50 and am trying to get to 200, well, DUH! I'm gonna need to drink a lake.)

ps: I just may make steaks to stacks of 5000 just in your honor. Getting 25,000 meat though, and the time to cook it all...

ok, gonna need a lot of beer for that bbq!

We're adding purified water that will be the best drink in the game. Loot from water coolers and craft with a book you can find.

 

[madmole]

Is it a lot of work to be able to change the order in our crafting queues? So instead of having to cancel and then re-crafting we can just push a button to move it to the front of the queue.
Example: I'm currently crafting 200 stone arrows but need to repair my stone axe to continue cutting down a tree. I press "repair" to add it to the queue then hover over it to get an option to move it to the front or up one space.

Just a QoL thing.

Not sure. Sounds like we need to nerf feathers big time