PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Katitof]

It's been 3 months, I didn't know 3 months = 1year

A17 was released in december.

Remind me, how many months ago that was?

 

[Blake_]

Food and light management mini games do not excite me. 1, Balance, 2, They produce some heat map so there is incentive to get rid of them. There is a mining book you find that lets you craft lanterns.

I see. While I somewhat like the concept of spoilage and torch degradation timers, I understand the amount of time that will be needed for such stuff to become good stuff and in reality they don't add BIG gameplay. It would also affect performance to have hundreds of timers everywhere and torchs already have the heatmap thingy.

I suggested it partly because of the amount of decorative items virtually focused on that (absent) spoilage task with no real value. I mean: do we really need ovens, fridges, coolers?, but then again, when NPCs are a thing, we DO need those things for the sake of cohesion/coherence/colagen/cohort/etc.

Thanks for the honest answer!

 

[Trankitas]

A17 was released in december.Remind me, how many months ago that was?

Calm down. 18 didn't really start full team until a few months ago most were fixing 17 bugs and doing optimizations. 18 has 10x the content 17 did in way less time. It won't be a year. If important things come up that need patching, we're going to patch. It would be irresponsible to not patch, no matter what the state of A18 was.

If A18 comes out after December 2019 then we'll talk.

 

[Kosmic Kerman]

Absolutely. July is not off the table yet either.

Narrator: July is totally off the table.

 

[Crater Creator]

...i find it much more pleasing to return to nice house with garden and thicc outer walls than to a stupid tower.

That spelling has a different connotation, unless you meant...

Oh.

Ohhhh.

 

[Blake_]

Narrator: July is totally off the table.

And when he woke up that morning he knew. He knew that they needed to implement ziplines ASAP.

 

[Star69]

I disagree. The process of looting is much more complex than just pressing E on a box and taking what's inside. You have to gain access to the container, and all of the attributes have associated perks that help you achive that goal more efficiently, safely and quickly.

If you would like to try again, I would be happy to oblige you. :fencing:

Where did complexity come from? Neither the post of yours that I responded to nor my post mentioned complexity. You said harvesting in STR prevented miners from diversifying. I said you can say the same thing wherever you put harvesting. I’m not arguing complexity, I’m arguing that your statement doesn’t hold water and it still doesn’t.

 

[SnowDog1942]

No, unmined surfaces are just a top mesh of triangles with nothing underneath. Occlusion is working now, and when you are deep enough in a mine you aren't rendering anything in the world above you now.

Occlusion is working? Is there decent gains with it?

 

[Dark_Corvid]

In before the LBD crowd think The Second Coming has started and Madmole just announced the Rapture....

Well, in Skryim with dual swords, you could do a really neat decapition in slow motion (scissor effect), so I wouldn't call that clunky.
NO, I don't want that kind of death cam thing for 7dtd. That's just an invitation for other zeds to eat you while you're oohing and aahhing over the pretty animation.

Bigger F'n Guns! That's what I want. (and yes, I mean a cannon!) heh.

Slomo death animations were a post-launch addition. For a while, it was a very odd experience to dual wield.

 

[Dark_Corvid]

In before the LBD crowd think The Second Coming has started and Madmole just announced the Rapture....

@ Madmole and People wanting off-hand torches
What about a lantern Item you were on your back? It can be crafted right from the start with a few caveats:

- It would take up your chest armor slot

- It would generate heat/heat (both kinds)

- Low light level, just enough to see about 4 feet in front of you

- Slow you down/stamina drain

Something like this -

At this point, why NOT just wait for a light to put in a helmet?

Madmole gave a definitive 'no' on the torch subject.

 

[madmole]

One of my favorite things about early A6 was salvaging blocks from one building to finish off another building in the wasteland city. Is your idea only for decorative blocks and we 'paint' the building type block or will there be some prefab blocks we just wont have access to without admin modes?

I can't say until we get a finished design but the idea was select deco that players can't craft would be collectable. Then we could even riff off of this and get random quests, from a trader where he says we have some settlements that are in dire need of some entertainment and need this list of supplies for a new settlement pub or whatever, and its a list randomly generated like:

10 barstools

2 pool tables

20 beer

Industrial coffee maker

Then you have to find/craft this list of stuff and turn it in.

 

[madmole]

@ Madmole and People wanting off-hand torches
What about a lantern Item you were on your back? It can be crafted right from the start with a few caveats:

- It would take up your chest armor slot

- It would generate heat/heat (both kinds)

- Low light level, just enough to see about 4 feet in front of you

- Slow you down/stamina drain

Something like this -

The intent is great, but as I mentioned we have helmet lights and gun flashlights, we don't need yet another interim upgrade added to the upgrade path to personal lighting.

 

[Star69]

One of my favorite things about early A6 was salvaging blocks from one building to finish off another building in the wasteland city. Is your idea only for decorative blocks and we 'paint' the building type block or will there be some prefab blocks we just wont have access to without admin modes?

I agree with you completely! I used to repair the partially destroyed buildings using blocks from other buildings, cut weeds, plant trees, add furniture & lights, just making the dead look alive. Loads of fun, many many hours of work but I think it was worth it.

 

[canadianbluebeer]

No that part was cool but would be difficult to do in a MP game. What was clunk about it was that lets say you have a dual wielding character and you hotkeyed your sword to 1 and a dagger to 2. If you press 1 your sword appears in your right hand, if you press 2 it was replaced by the dagger. So you have to manually grab the dagger to your left hand by rmb. Now great both are equipped and you can do some cool stuff. If you use a healing spell (hotkeyed to 5 etc) the left hand swaps dagger for heal spell and you heal, but when you press 2 to grab your dagger back, it replaces your sword with the dagger. So you couldn't really do it without a bunch of clunky menu use every time. What they should have done was remember what hand you had it bound to, but then they might need to make some unbind thing. I'm guessing someone hacked it in late in development and it was so cool they kept it, but couldn't overcome that one problem with it in time.
OOO for Oblivion mod (I worked with Jorge on one of my mods actually, cool dude works at Obsidian last I heard) made it so the torch would drop on the ground when you drew a dagger so at least you could see to fight. Something like that might make for a decent mod. Right now you can just right click it though and place it, so its kind of the same, it is a managable sitation IMO.

umm... They sorta fixed it. (could have been a mod..) press 1 when they are favorited, and the pair of them show up.

Swap to bow, and both are gone, bow in hand. press 1 again, and both swords show up.

Damn, I'm gonna have to play that again soon and check. (I really do like that scissor decap shot though)

Yes, the default menus sucked bigtime. Must have been a UI mod that fixed it (and the stupid menus)

Killcams in MP would be... well, no. Just no. (except yer own death, then so what? yer dead. watch it again)

Sometimes I think that company's UI is a great "how NOT to do it" guide. heh.

(Civ is another one lately) umf.

Back to the game that counts here, dual wielding would require a lot of code changes to make work.

Would it be worth it? IMHO, not at this time. Get gold first, then put it in the pie in the sky wishlist for a dlc kinda thing. maybe.

(take bribes. massive bribes.)

Just get 18 into our (my) hands.

if zeds ragdoll in 18, I wonder if a drop pit would work again? hrmm. only one way to find out!

 

[canadianbluebeer]

The intent is great, but as I mentioned we have helmet lights and gun flashlights, we don't need yet another interim upgrade added to the upgrade path to personal lighting.

Lantern onna stik would be hilarious. They forget about shadows though. (could be an amusing halloween gag at somepoint though)

snicker.

(although, could also do a mask with a rudolph nose that lights up in red. may annoy the zeds tho...)

lantern on a stik. chuckle. Zerg on a stick now... (got one stashed still)

 

[Slingblade2040]

Will flamethrower traps ever be a thing? I remember many moons ago a concept art thing being shown but it never working out for some reason. just curious if it will ever be made real or if it's just dead is dead

 

[Odetta]

Will flamethrower traps ever be a thing? I remember many moons ago a concept art thing being shown but it never working out for some reason. just curious if it will ever be made real or if it's just dead is dead

I believe they were having performance issues with it. So maybe when we get some more performance gains.

 

[Roland]

Guys! you have got to check out this: https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/realistic-male-body---max/817663
The animation is really good, especially the hands. Would love to see if this could be adapted into the game.

Oh Great! Now we won't hear from Snowdog for a good 3 months....

 

[DUST2DEATH]

You just ignored the bulk of my post and focused on "mods" for vehicles, which is confusing because it's the physical size of the 4x4 that causes it to not fit through the GARAGE door.

Meh. The garage door was in the game long before the 4x4 so...

Minor issue really. If they dont add a 5 wide door for the 4x4 a modder will eventually (if they havent already)

Also how does that change how they like to destroy ramp pieces like those on a bridge when driving over them, or how they stall out on the standard ramp?

Colliders have to cover parts of the vehicle that players expect to be able to hit zombies with, including the front bumper.

These same colliders are also part of the physics system and determine weight distribution of the vehicle.

You can do lots of cool things with vehicles and colliders

When said collider interact with blocks/terrain, they get destroyed. Its no different than you hitting terrain/object with a pickaxe/shotgun etc. Damage is damage.

The ideal solution is flat bridges, but will still not solve the ramp issue (for the 4x4) unless its a very shallow ramp.

Elevators seem like a better solution for underground bases and vehicles transition imo.

So for the 4x4 you can have it behave as you would expect with the front bumper cleaning up whatever it hits (as low as it is),

or they can raise the colliders some but then you will not get what most players expect from the object. (will just clip through zombies/terrain below said collider)

Which do you want?

 

[SnowDog1942]

Oh Great! Now we won't hear from Snowdog for a good 3 months....

omfg LOL.

I want that dude to be a bandit, wearing those same tighty whitey's.

hawt.