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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Don't forget you can effectively halve the number of rows needed if you stack the spikes on top of each other. :smile-new:

 
People would STILL do four rows even though they were more powerful and we would still have bases with four rows of spikes but way OP compared to now.
The way to discourage crafting spikes on the fly to kill pursuing zombies is to make them be a single post that does no damage and then using an upgrade tool you have to stand there and upgrade them to wood spikes that do the damage.
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I mean, sure, if people want to go overboard and spend hundreds of thousands of wood and iron into making however many rows of spikes make them feel safe, you can't stop them. But you can deter them from doing so. There should be such a thing as overkill (i.e. when putting more spikes will not help you any further). This is usually handled in games by having some specific enemies that have certain abilities that make them ignore whatever type of defense you are pointlessly spamming (vultures... vultures dropping zombies... demolishers blowing them up when they get killed by them...).

Point being, they can already go overkill on them. Sure, they'd still be able to go overkill with this change. But at least a sufficient amount of spikes wouldn't look silly.

 
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Yes, its a bite, not a full hamburger which is 5 meat. We needed to make everything granular so it could scale.
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Wouldn't it make more sense to have the hunting perk give increments of +100% and recipes use 1 meat to maintain granularity? As it is now, it's awfully un-intuitive for a new player to have 3 meat and not be able to cook it.

 
Weird question, but is this principle going to apply to the new sub biomes? Like you're lucky find a place that has few zombies, rich resources, nice temperture, good farm-ability, and lots of animals all at the same time?
--EDIT--

Never mind, a clearer way to ask the question would be whether the sub-biome types are handcrafted or procedurally generated, and I'm pretty sure it still handcrafted.
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No its only an item property. Sub biomes are procedurally generated in Nav and RWG.

 
On this subject, while I totally agree with you that spikes aren't useless, don't you think that a base with 4 rows of spikes (to start, might get to 10!) looks a bit silly?
I think you could achieve the same balance by making each individual spike costlier (in materials and in time) than they are now, but also more durable. That way, you spend the same materials for a single row of spikes than you do now for four of them, but they are just as effective as the four rows and you don't have a base that ends up looking like a huge sea of spikes.

This would also discourage crafting spikes on the fly as a means to kill pursuing zombies, since each spike would cost more materials and take more time to make.
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But then it feels like a grind. I feel its balanced how we want. Placing a spike to deter a pursuing enemy is using the tools we give to play the game. I don't see a problem. We can always add a steel spike, but its not intended to build a few rows of spikes and go fishing. They slow them down, weaken them and kill some. For it to be your solution to hordes you might have to craft 80 deep, I don't know. If FPS rendering spikes was an issue I'd go for your idea, but that isn't really a bottleneck.

 
People would STILL do four rows even though they were more powerful and we would still have bases with four rows of spikes but way OP compared to now.
The way to discourage crafting spikes on the fly to kill pursuing zombies is to make them be a single post that does no damage and then using an upgrade tool you have to stand there and upgrade them to wood spikes that do the damage.
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I don't have any intention for that. If you choose to be "unarmed" guy who am I to say you are wrong? If you are more of an engineer build, whats wrong with spikes? If I'm desperate I do it, and sometimes take spikes to POIs to prevent ferals flooding into the room I just jumped down into and have no idea what I might face.

 
Don't forget you can effectively halve the number of rows needed if you stack the spikes on top of each other. :smile-new:
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That is what I do, so I can repair them. Let them walk on the spikes to break the spikes at 1 meter high that are in their face lol.

 
Will it be possible in future alphas or when this game goes gold to add in a mechanics station so we can modify the looks of our vehicles?
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Not likely, we're a small team not Rockstar and vehicles are just a sub feature, not the central feature. We're planning mods. Maybe we can do some tinting at some point.

 
Wouldn't it make more sense to have the hunting perk give increments of +100% and recipes use 1 meat to maintain granularity? As it is now, it's awfully un-intuitive for a new player to have 3 meat and not be able to cook it.
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No different than 1 piece of wood and can't hit someone with it. Increments of 100%? How is that not OP. It maxes out at one perk with that math. The only way its going back to the way it was is if we kill harvest bonus on crops and animals and you get what you get. Its not like its hard to see a quantity. I could do a meatball recipe maybe, you get 1hp per meatball.

 
To add in more variety for animals , hunting...along with fishing...

you could just do like Conan and other games have done...add in a fish trap , you place in the water and you catch a certain amount of fish over time until you empty it , up to a set maximum number...you could do the same with an animal snare...place it down , go back after a certain amount of time and have it "catch" one single animal...could even have random different animals that do not actually appear in game like squirrels , skunks etc. along with rabbits . Same with the fish , Rainbow Trout , Small Mouth Bass , Catfish , Carp , Bluegill...Would give the illusion of more animals living in the world , without actually adding them into it...

Now , while I would absolutely love a full on fishing system...doing it the above way would be a nice start and compromise

As far as how much resources that would take in this game , I can not say , but it would definitely require FAR less then actually adding in a fishing system and other animals...Maybe someone could mod that in? But would be a nice in game feature...maybe the next game?

 
No its only an item property. Sub biomes are procedurally generated in Nav and RWG.
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By that do you mean the properties charaterisitc of the sub biome are procedurally generated(e.g precipitation, tree density), or that the placement of predefined sub biomes (e.g clearing, burnt forest) is random?

 
You should mention lockpicking in the OP madmole.

Also, will the spikes still be bloody when crafted in A18?

BTW, thank you for communicating so much and the work on the game. I'm playing A17.4 with a friend, and it was great fun already, and fixed some issues of A17; A18 looks great, can't wait for it.

 
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I don't have any intention for that. If you choose to be "unarmed" guy who am I to say you are wrong? If you are more of an engineer build, whats wrong with spikes? If I'm desperate I do it, and sometimes take spikes to POIs to prevent ferals flooding into the room I just jumped down into and have no idea what I might face.
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Hey, I like casting that spell as well.... ;)

 
plant targeting

Then you couldn't smash harvest stuff as you run to POIs with your weapon. I pop the goldenrod and red tea plants everywhere I go with my melee weapon.
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I agree, but the downfall is in the situation where a Feral Wight is down on the ground and you absolutely need to bludgeon its head NOW and the game assumes that you are probably just trying to harvest plant fibers. This is very immersion breaking and frustrating (a sledgehammer power attack especially so).

It would be ideal if the engine could somehow determine the likely intended target from the enemy proximity or something like that.

 
To add in more variety for animals , hunting...along with fishing...
you could just do like Conan and other games have done...add in a fish trap , you place in the water and you catch a certain amount of fish over time until you empty it , up to a set maximum number...you could do the same with an animal snare...place it down , go back after a certain amount of time and have it "catch" one single animal...could even have random different animals that do not actually appear in game like squirrels , skunks etc. along with rabbits . Same with the fish , Rainbow Trout , Small Mouth Bass , Catfish , Carp , Bluegill...Would give the illusion of more animals living in the world , without actually adding them into it...

Now , while I would absolutely love a full on fishing system...doing it the above way would be a nice start and compromise

As far as how much resources that would take in this game , I can not say , but it would definitely require FAR less then actually adding in a fishing system and other animals...Maybe someone could mod that in? But would be a nice in game feature...maybe the next game?
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Why? You can go kill deer and wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, snakes, bunnies and bears. This is adding features to do what you can already do and make the game too easy. If you want easy food start a farm. Everyone complains there is too much food as it is. Why make it even easier? Right now at least meat or scavenging is required for the best recipes if you can farm meat then the whole benefit of hunting is destroyed. I'd rather focus on new features for late game than add fluff slow lateral choices for players.

The only useful thing might be a chicken coop to farm feathers, otherwise none of that stuff has a single game play use, its just more fluff food. Want fish? Go find a can of tuna or Salmon. Sorry but I think most players would be interested in horizontal moves, not lateral moves. A new trap. Bandits. Elevators. New quest types. All of that is 100X more exciting than fish traps. I don't mean to sound grouchy but I know I do. But adding fluff doesn't help late game. Maybe in a year we can think about some stuff like that, right now we still have holes in late game.

 
By that do you mean the properties charaterisitc of the sub biome are procedurally generated(e.g precipitation, tree density), or that the placement of predefined sub biomes (e.g clearing, burnt forest) is random?
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I've been talking about items the entire time. Sub Biomes have always been random deco and random distribution.

 
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