PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Onarr]

Sorry, I could've been more specific.
For the first 30 minutes in the video, you're standing still going through all the perks. We the viewers appreciate you talking us through everything, but I meant in terms of gameplay, you weren't doing anything during that time. To my ears, the way the game switched between different music tracks and silence felt inconsistent, given how consistent the (in)action on the screen was (fine for a first pass though).

Now you might be thinking, big deal, you're not going to sit around like this in a real game, and the music can't be expected to make doing nothing feel exciting. But when I think about what actually consumes my time in the game, there's a lot of mining and farming and organizing inventory and figuring out what to buy where I am idle or nearly so for long periods of time. So combat music and spooky dungeon crawling music may be givens, but your music guy might also want to think in terms of music to mine by, music to build by, music to farm by, etc. - even if the game isn't programmed to play separate tracks for those cases - because they are big use cases, all the same.

Ill add my two cents to the music. Honestly, I dont think that dungeon crawling should have any music at all, but instead play some ambient sounds that increase the atmosphere - pipe screeching, wood crackung, shuffles, if it rains than sounds of drops drumming on the roof and windows. When you are in PoI you need to focus and music is way distracting imho. Combat music I am not sure about either, because its like 7th sense, that zombie spoted you. The situations, where one unknowlingly shuffles right behind you would be gonne, and that would decrease tension. I would focus most tracks to situations, where the player is outside, mining, crafting etc. Thats when it has value.

 

[The Gronk]

No, company: https://continuum.graphics/store
But sure, modders can do it as well. Bottom line is, all of that is great but wasn't made by the developers so it's a bit unfair to use it as comparison and then ask TFP when they'll implement ray tracing.

Okay, I'll play this game.

Micro-voxels and octrees unless I'm very much mistaken. Implemented as a fundamental part of the voxel engine.

 

[Onarr]

Its not meant to justify, we feel the best design is ladders with freedom and no food spoilage. Adding this garbage is taking away from time to do things we KNOW people do want, like bandits, factions, more npcs, more quests, main story, bugs fixed, optimizations and a gold version.

I kinda agree that spoilage might be more of a mod thing, for more niche players. To make it so it works for majority of playerbase would be quite difficult.

 

[Damocles]

Okay, I'll play this game.
Micro-voxels and octrees unless I'm very much mistaken. Implemented as a fundamental part of the voxel engine.

That looks more like "substracting" models, that cut away on the geometry. (where those explosion spheres are, they create new polygons at the intersection-surface to the static volumes)

 

[Shineblossom]

I kinda agree that spoilage might be more of a mod thing, for more niche players. To make it so it works for majority of playerbase would be quite difficult.

On-off button in map settings, but i don't think many people would use it so it would be extra pretty much pointless work for TFP

 

[The Gronk]

That looks more like "substracting" models, that cut away on the geometry. (where those explosion spheres are, they create new polygons at the intersection-surface to the static volumes)

Definitely micro-voxels, it was the octrees that were in question

Taking this any further would likely get me shouted at for advertising other peoples work. Google the product, they've done pretty well.

 

[RestInPieces]

It will solve it from our standpoint. Its NOT our goal to make food a constant thorn in your side or make starvation a thing. Its an early game problem as it should be. At a certain point in progression players want to quest and travel to find new locations, why should they be tied to a farm and hunting/scavenging constantly? I'd rather be after that legendary Q6 special weapon and finding more books, doing quests and buying that shiny gyro at the trader for 100k than be chasing meat for hours every play session.

I do agree that the player shouldn't spend the same time to get food in early game as in the mid or late game - it's just that this problem could be solved more gradually through early-mid-late game instead of being a problem in the first few days and then abruptly solved - in my eyes it seems like wasted potential. The usual trope in survival games is the player having to deal with basic problems in the early game (like food acquisition), and gradually improve his QOL making these activities automated/easier, having to spend less and less time on them.

For example if spoilage was a thing, the player would still be able to make his life easier and spend less time to get food with farming ("mid game") and eventually be able to forget about spoilage by maintaining fridges with electricity in the "end game", where the need to get/maintain food would be a thing of the past. Same with water - that book recipe for purified water that would give players more QOL could be attached to a device requiring electricity, also giving you a chance to create more "chase items" like water filters etc.

TLDR: My 2c - squeeze anything you can out of it with a more gradual approach while also adding more incentives for the player to progress technologically and things to look forward to, that would include higher survival QOL and not so much "moar damage".

 

[Matyese]

@madmole or anyone at the dev team: please tell me that different icon means different model; tell me that now an iron axe looks different than a steel axe!!! QoL

 

[Slingblade2040]

so many people complaining about food spoilage and other nonsense like being able to carry a lot of stone or other things why don't you players mod the game? it's not like this game is crazy difficult to mod or if you don't want to learn how to mod the game maybe don't complain about things that the devs have given you an answer to.

lots of games from skyrim to ark and mine craft have mods because the vanilla game has feature's the devs haven't or don't want to put into it their game. there is a reason why this game is so easy to mod and that's for us players to change incase we want to add in stuff the devs have said no to.

 

[The Gronk]

Perhaps we're looking at this the wrong way. If there were a secondary use for food instead of just keeping the player alive it would help reduce the stockpiles.

The real life secondary uses for spare food are usually animal feed, fertilizer, or other types of food (fruit to jam being an example of the latter).

 

[SeaL]

so many people complaining about food spoilage and other nonsense like being able to carry a lot of stone or other things why don't you players mod the game? it's not like this game is crazy difficult to mod or if you don't want to learn how to mod the game maybe don't complain about things that the devs have given you an answer to.

I wonder that too. I think those people are either lazy or ignorant maybe both. It's like they want everyone to play the way they want and I also don't understand their urgent of making things overcomplicated(the recent example of that I saw was suggested by someone is the restriction of using tools/weapons while climbing the ladder and things like that).

 

[Tete1805]

Maybe when NPC are implemented, you'll be able to trade food for something else. (Ammo, concrete, mods, clothes...)

 

[Gamida]

Did I see that tools level up with Miner 69'er now.

Yes tool crafting quality and damage are governed by miner 69'r.

Like the change that Tool crafting quality is now pegged to Miner 69'er now. But how is the scaling between Miner 69'er and Mother Lode? I think there was an ongoing issue in A17 whereby Miner 69'er was causing less yield from mining (especially boulders) if we were to spec more points into it. Hence the general consensus was to just max points in Mother Lode but to not max out Miner 69'er.

Exactly what I was wondering. The whole reason I asked the question. Since A17 I hadn't put any points into Miner 69'er because it seemed I lost resources because the boulders were harvested faster. Now to level up weapons I would have no choice. I am hoping they had a look at it for A18.

 

[Gareee]

Right now its a structure with some really nice tracks considered exploration music. We have combat music too but it will be disabled so we can focus on volume, frequency and fine tune the rules for when combat music should play. We can decide other activities that might warrant different music but those are the two categories we have now. Settlement/base music might make sense, we'll have to think about other situations yet.

@MM: Dusk, dawn, and horde night music also makes sense.

We use the music ques in minecraft to know when to sleep ay night. (on hard or hardcore, a zombie mod can wreck your game.)

Speaking of minecraft, Thats why we miss caverns in 7 days.. we used to describe 7 days as "adult minecraft".. with the number of copies of minecraft sold, thats not a bad thing to aspire to, and thats partially why we miss them.

MM...You were asking what to look at on minecraft.. I'd suggest watching 1.14 youtube videos rather than playing.. you'll pick up the gist quicker.

Topics to watch are 1.13 aquatic update, 1.14 villager trading and levelling system, and you NEED to watching something with optifine and shaders.

With optifine, you get 10x the performance, and its written by ONE GUY! It also enabled shaders that make minecraft look gorgeous with parallax texture displacement.

 

[RestInPieces]

so many people complaining about food spoilage and other nonsense like being able to carry a lot of stone or other things why don't you players mod the game? it's not like this game is crazy difficult to mod or if you don't want to learn how to mod the game maybe don't complain about things that the devs have given you an answer to.
lots of games from skyrim to ark and mine craft have mods because the vanilla game has feature's the devs haven't or don't want to put into it their game. there is a reason why this game is so easy to mod and that's for us players to change incase we want to add in stuff the devs have said no to.

I wonder that too. I think those people are either lazy or ignorant maybe both. It's like they want everyone to play the way they want and I also don't understand their urgent of making things overcomplicated(the recent example of that I saw was suggested by someone is the restriction of using tools/weapons while climbing the ladder and things like that).

It's really cool that you have an opinion about the people who have an opinion about the game, but there's nothing wrong with feedback/discussion, as long as you actually have something to add (which you apparently don't).

 

[The Gronk]

Maybe when NPC are implemented, you'll be able to trade food for something else. (Ammo, concrete, mods, clothes...)

The trader limits seem a little harsh. I understand that it's a way to limit spamming the trader with resources but it does kind of rule out the simple life of a miner or weaponsmith.

The trader should probably give you a lot less for stacks of the same thing but outright refusing to buy the resource is quite limiting.

As far I know even after the traders inventory has reset they'll still refuse to buy any more bulk materials of that type.

 

[RestInPieces]

The trader limits seem a little harsh. I understand that it's a way to limit spamming the trader with resources but it does kind of rule out the simple life of a miner or weaponsmith.
The trader should probably give you a lot less for stacks of the same thing but outright refusing to buy the resource is quite limiting.

As far I know even after the traders inventory has reset they'll still refuse to buy any more bulk materials of that type.

I think that perceiving this as "any role should be viable at any situation" is damaging for the game, because it ends up being completely unbalanced as a holistic experience. Balancing for arbitrary individual roles/activities someone might be doing, will change how someone who plays the game holistically acts, remove incentives and eventually drive them to play the game "modularly".

For example, I think that the feedback about zombie xp was pretty obvious. In an effort to e.g. try and make the arbitrary role of the "fighter/scavenger/nomad" viable in both survival/progression, you can end up removing incentives for players to build bases, defenses, use other ways to progress etc.

I think the game should enforce a variety of actions, instead of giving players the "freedom" to ruin their own experience by grinding/repeating something that is viable in a "stand-alone" sense.

 

[The Gronk]

I think the game should enforce a variety of actions, instead of giving players the "freedom" to ruin their own experience by grinding/repeating something that is viable in a "stand-alone" sense.

I wasn't even grinding, the excess resources mostly came from demolishing a ruined building to make way for the entrance to my base.

The miners are still forced to deal with the other mechanics of the game. This would just allow them to make a consistent living from their chosen character build. Miners rarely, if ever, grow their own food. If I was a miner I'd be trying to exchange the resources I dug up for food.

 

[SeaL]

as long as you actually have something to add (which you apparently don't).

Combat and animation overhaul.

The rest is fine and just needs some balancing and polishing.

 

[RestInPieces]

I wasn't even grinding, the excess resources mostly came from demolishing a ruined building to make way for the entrance to my base.
The miners are still forced to deal with the other mechanics of the game. This would just allow them to make a consistent living from their chosen character build. Miners rarely, if ever, grow their own food. If I was a miner I'd be trying to exchange the resources I dug up for food.

Yeah, just making some observations in general. In this game there are no rigid roles/classes - the miners are forced to deal with any other mechanic but are also able to use any other mechanic in the game, so there isn't really a strict role such as a "miner", just some perks which you may have invested towards that activity. Surely, it's great to be able to RP a specific role, but balancing the game for a role which is not really confined in any way is like building a castle on the sand.

Combat and animation overhaul. The rest is fine and just needs some balancing and polishing.

Much better - if I am not mistaken they hired Doom 4's animator and we will probably soon see some smooth animation goodness.

Edit: Also hopefully they will add something that will make combat more interesting - perhaps making normal zombies more unpredictable with their animations, combat behavior or speed (but with visual cues which will give players a chance to deal with them).