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%
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This problem has also affected Space Engineers for years which uses an entirely different game engine, havok for physics and vrage2 for graphics to be precise. The problem isn't with unity but with lighting advanced voxel engines in general.
Reason for edit: Not enough coffee :-)
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Interesting... Perhaps all voxel based engine architectures, inherited this from the first iteration?

In any case, I see this bug report/complaint/topic on other voxel game forums aswell...

Maybe it's difficult to get around, or maybe it's just not very high on the list... Who knows...

 
Interesting... Perhaps all voxel based engine architectures, inherited this from the first iteration?
In any case, I see this bug report/complaint/topic on other voxel game forums aswell...

Maybe it's difficult to get around, or maybe it's just not very high on the list... Who knows...
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I do :-)

It's very difficult to fix. The root cause is calculating lighting probes in a voxel environment. Three dimensional objects in a computer are just a shell, they have no internal structure. This leads to light leakage between adjacent, seemingly solid objects.

This problem also affects static worlds and game lighting in general if they're not set up correctly but is most noticeable in voxel engines as they exacerbate the problem.

 
We have random agro speeds now, so this effectively does the random/walk/run speed request. ZOmbies no longer walk at you in sync, you'll see the one you hit take the lead.
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Oh joy. Randomised zombie movement straight from the tin. Was always something I modded straight away. Else a lot of the time I was fighting extra's from a Micheal Jackson music video.

The agro movements also come as a pleasant addition.

But can you also randomise the zombie animations please ?

 
All a matter of priorities. If you don't want to go deep into Intellect - don't. Just keep in mind that there are well over 200 readable things to find so it will take a while to find All The Things.
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Yeah, but you just know that the RNG will troll you by waiting till you've given up searching for a particular book and bought the perk before giving you three copies of it on your very next looting trip...

 
Yeah, but you just know that the RNG will troll you by waiting till you've given up searching for a particular book and bought the perk before giving you three copies of it on your very next looting trip...
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Free money to buy the books you do not have perks of :)

 
Yeah, but you just know that the RNG will troll you by waiting till you've given up searching for a particular book and bought the perk before giving you three copies of it on your very next looting trip...
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Of course. It was written to do exactly that.

 
Yeah, but you just know that the RNG will troll you by waiting till you've given up searching for a particular book and bought the perk before giving you three copies of it on your very next looting trip...
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Of course. It was written to do exactly that.
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Trolling RNG in A18 confirmed

 
Trolling RNG in A18 confirmed
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That's been a feature for years now. At one point I thought tap-and-die sets had been removed from the game but the icon was accidentally left in the forge. The less said about me never having seen a machete for several games the better.

As a caveat, I was playing a lot of dead-is-dead at the time so the odds were against me. :-)

 
I wouldn't be surprised if, in practice, most melee swings for most players result in "glancing blows."
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There is audio and visual feedback when you score a hit. So if you see that you often miss the headshot a sensible person normally would change to body hits as the more reliable hit location. I often do this when I can't afford to get hit myself because of low HP. And hitting the body is easy, except for the reach. And with that an arc-based mechanism doesn't help at all.

That would be so cool! Think about it. Bullets penetrate iron bars already. So you can hang back in relative safety and pick them off through the bars. Melee through iron bars would be more dangerous, more get-off-your-ass, than what we have now, especially if the zombies can reach through.
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This is already possible with poles or quarter blocks, just with the small drawback that you have to avoid hitting the pole/quarter block itself.

 
The Romero fans among the players will not like that. The zombies in Romero movies are slow and have no emotions. Accordingly, they can't get angry.--- --- ---

One question I ask myself is how it behaves with the zombies waiting up in the ceiling and falling down when you enter the room. They get little damage because they fall from the ceiling. Do they get angry and run faster towards you ?
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:confused: I'm a Fan of Romero, and I am pretty happy with how TFP zombies are being portrayed so far.

Even Fan enough to know that "Romero Zombies", showed problem solving skills, varying emotions, and also anger in the later films ;)

As far as Zombies being able to run, or jog, I just look at it like in "Return of the Living Dead", but you are able to kill them easier.

I think people forget, that in every zombie related film that Romero did, He always had at least 1 zombie, who was brighter then the rest.

Night of the living dead: Little zombie girl who died in the basement, killed her father with a brick-trowel.

Bub showed a wide range of emotions, even Sadness, Frustration, Anger, and problem solving skills.

Big Daddy: Showed anger, frustration, leadership, and problem solving skills.

To your question. I hope so :evil:

 
We have random agro speeds now, so this effectively does the random/walk/run speed request. ZOmbies no longer walk at you in sync, you'll see the one you hit take the lead.
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That's very good news. The biggest issue with zombies right now is that their speed is both too slow and too predictable while their numbers too small to represent any meaningful threat unless taken by surprise with no stamina / stunlocked. I tried modding the zombies by giving them a speed range instead of a static value but that didn't work unfortunately, a NRE would pop everytime a zombie spawned in the world.

Any news regarding the numbers / toughness of zombies in cities ? The same problem still applies as of 17.4, i.e. that the best strategy Day 1 is to setup right in the middle of a big city because it isn't any more difficult than setting up anywhere in the wild. I think the feeling of progression would be way better if you couldn't just settle for the best spot early on, but had to gradually power up by looting small POIs, random trailer parks etc. before you're actually able to scavenge the most juicy cities.

I remember my first game ever, A11 it was, where I randomly walked into the 0,0 city... oh boy, the amount of cops and dogs was unreal and it felt just right... a big ol' NOPE, try again later when you're stacked junior !

 
But can you also randomize the zombie animations please ?
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THIS please. It adds a ton of variation with zero overhead. I know there is a mod to do it (Stompy?), but it should be a vanilla thing.

I wouldn't mind a random speed variation as well.. maybe plus or minus 10%. Instead of those conga lines dancing in sync, we'd see different walk styles and speeds breaking them up a bit.

 
That's very good news. The biggest issue with zombies right now is that their speed is both too slow and too predictable while their numbers too small to represent any meaningful threat unless taken by surprise with no stamina / stunlocked. I tried modding the zombies by giving them a speed range instead of a static value but that didn't work unfortunately, a NRE would pop everytime a zombie spawned in the world.
Any news regarding the numbers / toughness of zombies in cities ? The same problem still applies as of 17.4, i.e. that the best strategy Day 1 is to setup right in the middle of a big city because it isn't any more difficult than setting up anywhere in the wild. I think the feeling of progression would be way better if you couldn't just settle for the best spot early on, but had to gradually power up by looting small POIs, random trailer parks etc. before you're actually able to scavenge the most juicy cities.

I remember my first game ever, A11 it was, where I randomly walked into the 0,0 city... oh boy, the amount of cops and dogs was unreal and it felt just right... a big ol' NOPE, try again later when you're stacked junior !
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Loved that feeling! Or when i first showed this game to a friend, we played together, ventured to a city a while before night.. We ended up running upstairs in a.. language barrier.... big house with many flats inside, trying to barricade stairs below us, hearing the dozens of zombies coming for our juice flesh. When we made it to the top, we were hiding in one of the appartments that we cleared, in bathroom, with one 9mm that had one clip, hoping it will be dawn before zombies come &lt;3

 
Loved that feeling! Or when i first showed this game to a friend, we played together, ventured to a city a while before night.. We ended up running upstairs in a.. language barrier.... big house with many flats inside, trying to barricade stairs below us, hearing the dozens of zombies coming for our juice flesh. When we made it to the top, we were hiding in one of the appartments that we cleared, in bathroom, with one 9mm that had one clip, hoping it will be dawn before zombies come &lt;3
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yes I remember those days when the night and even cities were to be feared. When zombies could sense you in the night and would come for you.

 
I would’ve game staged the number of sleepers in POIs (in fact I did for ComSenMod). But be that as it may, I just hope there are enough of these remnants that the Day 1 player isn’t stuck trying to take on a Day 10/Day 100/Day 1000 number of sleepers, when all they want is to find shelter before night comes. That was a problem in A17.
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There are remnants everywhere that shouldn't be a problem.

 
Hey MadMole You mentioned vehicle mods for A19. Would this including more than 2 passengers? It woudl greatly help with groups to not have to roll out in a convoy, esp if zombies are attracted to sound (or will be?).
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Possibly, I think that's pretty easy to do.

 
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