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
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NONONO NOT HAYMAKER. Don't destroy me if it's not much to ask.



Now we're talking. This is much better in terms of not disturbing your "ironsight experience".

I don't know if you have played or tried Apex Legends, but the tripletake or the peacekeeper with choke have a pretty good and similar aiming system to what you have in mind, check it out if you want.
No I wouldn't destroy you, your icon is too cute. I had a baby deer in my front yard today I got about 10' to it. Super cute, maybe 2' tall. I thought it was a runaway wiener dog or something at first glance out the window and couldn't believe a fawn was in my yard. It was like chocolate brown with little white dots, the grown deer we see all the time are tan.

No I only play open world rpgs and open world survival games. (generally speaking).

 
@madmoleare you guys gonna fix the lighting underground? Right now, if you have a base underground with lamps/torches and it's day outside, it's so bright my eyes bleed. You have to basically turn them off or remove torches, to see normally and still be able to see everything without any sources of lights...
Maybe, I've been told switching to linear space lighting and reworking our reflections would help a ton, but its not that easy, half the art looks rekt when you switch to linear.

 
This already happens. Zombies from outside sandwich me in POIs all the time. If you make enough heat a screamer will come.
This only happens with guns, though. With a bow (or even a crossbow), you can basically kill things from afar very safely and quietly, without having to worry about them suddenly increasing their speed - or at least not worry as much as you would if you were melee. In other words, you have a very large margin of error, and the only "con" is that you may be limited on ammo, if you haven't been farming.

Am I wrong?

Assuming that I am not, why would I choose melee over ranged, aside from situations where I have literally no other choice? I mean, based on what you have said, melee has gotten a lot more dangerous. To me, it sounds like ranged combat also needs its dangers or drawbacks (maybe zombies should stumble around more, to make headshots a lot more difficult, since currently, once you memorize each zombie's gait, you can land headshots easily).

 
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This only happens with guns, though. With a bow (or even a crossbow), you can basically kill things from afar very safely and quietly, without having to worry about them suddenly increasing their speed - or at least not worry as much as you would if you were melee. In other words, you have a very large margin of error, and the only "con" is that you may be limited on ammo, if you haven't been farming.
Am I wrong?

Assuming that I am not, why would I choose melee over ranged, aside from situations where I have literally no other choice? I mean, based on what you have said, melee has gotten a lot more dangerous. To me, it sounds like ranged combat also needs its dangers or drawbacks (maybe zombies should stumble around more, to make headshots a lot more difficult, since currently, once you memorize each zombie's gait, you can land headshots easily).
There are plenty of reasons. You are out of bullets, saving bullets for the horde, your a freaking tank with a sledgehammer, so you don't care, to be more quiet, to role play, because your gun broke and you don't have a repair kit, etc.

 
Maybe, I've been told switching to linear space lighting and reworking our reflections would help a ton, but its not that easy, half the art looks rekt when you switch to linear.
Definitely, as well as the other gains.

Reworking the art isnt that bad in the bigger picture.

 
Your assuming that you need all the perks to be an efficient builder, which is not the case. If you want maximum harvesting then sure, but you can get adequate resources with a tiny investment into strength. You can buy materials and harvest materials at pois. Its also quite easy to spec into two attributes which accommodates what you want.
The only problem with the design is if you are some weirdo min maxer who just can't sleep at night without 5 ranks of miner69r and motherlode.

TBH I'm swimming in resources with 3 ranks of miner 69r and a blue iron pickaxe. I can get 1000's of iron in one night, why would you need more than that, unless you are a min maxer freak. And I still am nowhere near the ceiling with mining tools and I have hardly any mining books which also give you special benefits, like the one shot perk that adds a 20% per swing chance to one shot any ore block, meaning you really chew through stuff. The auger and chainsaw allow for non miners to get loads of resources too, with no perks, the harvest is faster and superior than the best pickaxe.

Mining has to be somewhere, otherwise, we lose like two whole attributes. I mean we could ungate it, and just let tools do all the work, but why, because it doesn't fit your idea? Its best suited under strength and the requirements are super low. I think you need 3 strength to be able to buy 3 ranks of miner69r and lode, so a whopping 9 points gets you 60% of a top miner. Might as well grab some pack mule why you are there.

So with the free 4 points you can be kicking ass at mining by level 5 and be 60% as good as the best. That is not some game breaking unbalanced thing you make it out to be. Its trivial. You have the rest of your game to buy whatever you want.
No. It has nothing to do with minmax and everything to do with lumping non combat perks with a specific combat style. And no, mother lode does not make any sense in strength - swinging harder is not going to result in more usable resource - realistically it will likely yield less. Mother lode would belong in perception if we are going for putting it 'where it belongs.' Of course, that would be a terrible decision in game play terms - splitting up the mining perks in 2 categories.

The question I posed was ignored because there is not a good answer to it - what gain to character progression is achieved by unifying one combat style with building and mining?

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Go shooting a 60lb draw recurve bow all day and see how your arms and shoulders feel!
I definitely would like it to drain stamina
I think this is what most players expect - I know it is what I expected.

I was rather shocked when drawing and aiming my bow turned out to cost nothing in stamina BUT aiming my crossbow drains stamina.

Seems backward tbh.

 
I don't see where the combat system is counter-intuitive right now. Care to explain? EDIT: Nevermind, I guess you mean that you can miss so easy in melee although swinging a weapon (except the spear for example) is almost guaranteed to hit.
Aiming at the head must be more difficult, otherwise everyone would ONLY target the head. Risk&lt;-&gt;Reward. You could argue that it was too difficult to hit the head atm (which I wouldn't agree with but that is highly subjective). But aiming at the head shouldn't be always the best option. If the zombie is down, pinned or just slow, aiming for the head is good. If he is actively dancing before you or you are moving yourself, trying for the head should be a risky move.

Just to be clear, I think the glancing blow feature is a very nice feature, especially as a counter-weight to the enraging zombies.
It's not about how often you miss, at least not directly. It's probably best to show rather than just tell.

7E228B73F5913B89BF8A6F0C9D5A7F500CB6FF9F


The sledgehammer's power attack animation in first person is a pretty straight swing from the right edge of the screen to the left. I submit that the swing shown in this screenshot should hit, based on intuitively tracking the motion of the sledgehammer and the zombie's head with your eyes.* In reality, the motion of the sledgehammer doesn't matter. Even though it appears you've got several pounds of metal flying straight towards the zombie's head, all that matters is that the zombie's head isn't under the crosshairs.

* It may look like the sledgehammer isn't close enough, but that's down to perspective and FOV and whatnot... it definitely did hit at this distance when the crosshairs were aligned (as did the zombie's hand attack).

Now, I don't know how these glancing blows will be implemented. But if I had to guess, they take all the colliders on a zombie and expand them to calculate if a glancing blow registers. Which could mean this swing registers as a glancing blow. But really, this should count as a full hit, not a partial hit.

17FA09BF8BFC2894DA53C5496A2551006912E85A


Meanwhile, I submit this swing shouldn't hit. The sledgehammer never crosses paths with the zombie's head, because it's aimed too high. But if the glancing blow is implemented the way I suspect it is, this would count as a glancing blow. And all this highlights the advantage of a system that would actually track the arc of the swing animation, instead of being tied to the crosshairs. It's not about making it more or less forgiving per se. It's about making it more accurate to what you see.

 
I also think the spear would work well that way. No perks means you can throw it into their face if you’re really close, full perks means you can launch it into their head from across a small field like an Olympic javelin thrower.
Missing due to the weapon's built-in inaccuracy basically means RNG decides whether you succeed or fail. Yeah, games do it all the time, but more for regular projectiles you don’t have to retrieve. I think it’d be cooler if the spear were a decent melee weapon without perks, and then you get a perk that enables spear throwing. To put it differently, I like 'chunky' perks that change how you play in more fundamental ways, more than granular perks that increment stats.

 
This only happens with guns, though. With a bow (or even a crossbow), you can basically kill things from afar very safely and quietly, without having to worry about them suddenly increasing their speed - or at least not worry as much as you would if you were melee. In other words, you have a very large margin of error, and the only "con" is that you may be limited on ammo, if you haven't been farming.
Am I wrong?

Assuming that I am not, why would I choose melee over ranged, aside from situations where I have literally no other choice? I mean, based on what you have said, melee has gotten a lot more dangerous. To me, it sounds like ranged combat also needs its dangers or drawbacks (maybe zombies should stumble around more, to make headshots a lot more difficult, since currently, once you memorize each zombie's gait, you can land headshots easily).
Still rarely if EVER...use guns in 7DtD...just like most games , just like real life...I prefer unarmed or melee...working as a private security/bodyguard for 23 almost 24 years...just retired in April at the ripe old age of 45...almost all of my incident reports were with my bare hands or some type of melee weapon...Just a preference . Even though , as in game...I have a ♥♥♥♥ ton of guns! which I enjoy shooting...I just don't count on them...

 
Right the former is not appealing at all, and the latter adds a possibly unneeded complexity. You can go back to stone age if you want something basic.
Point taken. I was thinking more about firearms... I guess I’ll have to get used to thinking of the 9 mm pistol as the ‘stone age’ sidearm. :)

But the master crafter is making a higher quality item, that means he has to be more picky about the materials, so it takes more materials to be sure you have enough of the higher quality materials.
And that’s fine... we can have a philosophical debate about whether the master crafter is a 'snob' that demands the very best for raw materials, or whether the master crafter is a 'visionary' that sees how to work with even the most basic materials and turn them into refined works of art. What I'd want to avoid is more like, the master chef’s pantry is nearly empty, but he can’t make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches anymore for some reason.

 
They drop a bit of iron and stone now, with a low chance to drop nitrate, coal, lead.
I would love to see separate iron boulders, lead boulders, coal boulders, etc., where they all have stone but each one only drops one other mineral. I feel getting a trace of iron AND nitrate AND coal AND lead from every boulder just clutters the inventory with small quantities that aren’t useful for what you were mining the boulder for in the first place.

 
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@madmole

Did you all have a finalized version of how the infection is going to work? If so, how is it going to work? or is it going to be a wait and see thing?

 
No. It has nothing to do with minmax and everything to do with lumping non combat perks with a specific combat style. And no, mother lode does not make any sense in strength - swinging harder is not going to result in more usable resource - realistically it will likely yield less. Mother lode would belong in perception if we are going for putting it 'where it belongs.' Of course, that would be a terrible decision in game play terms - splitting up the mining perks in 2 categories.
The question I posed was ignored because there is not a good answer to it - what gain to character progression is achieved by unifying one combat style with building and mining?
It has to go somewhere, and strength makes the most sense because pickaxes and augers take a lot of strength to wield IRL. Most of the perks have nothing to do with combat so what makes mining a special snowflake that doesn't fit? 999% of players will just buy strength and accept it and not think another thing about it. You can't be weak and mine IRL.

What do we have to gain? A system that is unified and easy to understand. Not random setups on mining.

 
Any plans to add spoilage mechanics to food? Perhaps with some sort of craftable fridge to reduce spoilage rate?

Maybe a rudimentary icebox/cooler that uses snow as "fuel", and a more advanced one that uses electricity.

Another thing about food: IMO there should be some sort of penalty for eating the same food over and over. Currently I make like 50 bacon and eggs on week 2, and after that food stops being a concern altogether. There should be something that encourages variety (beyond just the stat bonuses that better foods give).

 
I would love to see separate iron boulders, lead boulders, coal boulders, etc., where they all have stone but each one only drops one other mineral. I feel getting a trace of iron AND nitrate AND coal AND lead from every boulder just clutters the inventory with small quantities that aren’t useful for what you were mining the boulder for in the first place.
Its random, has been for a while. Texture space was at a premium so we might be able to do that at some point, but now that mining is great, its kinda pointless.

 
@madmoleDid you all have a finalized version of how the infection is going to work? If so, how is it going to work? or is it going to be a wait and see thing?
I posted the general idea a ways back but need to shop it around to the guys and finalize a design yet.

 
Any plans to add spoilage mechanics to food? Perhaps with some sort of craftable fridge to reduce spoilage rate?
Maybe a rudimentary icebox/cooler that uses snow as "fuel", and a more advanced one that uses electricity.

Another thing about food: IMO there should be some sort of penalty for eating the same food over and over. Currently I make like 50 bacon and eggs on week 2, and after that food stops being a concern altogether. There should be something that encourages variety (beyond just the stat bonuses that better foods give).
We could diminish effectiveness probably pretty easy, but why should food be complicated. Its just food, people have better things to do like build forts, gather mats, mine, do quests, loot, trade, etc.

Balance will solve the problem, as discussed ad infinitum a month ago.

 
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