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 is a pretty good idea, actually. It might even be easier to make available to modders.
On the subject of food "spoilage" (however that is implemented) - I'm certainly not going to be upset if it isn't in the game, but I've been thinking it over, and I'm getting more on board with it.

The thing is, most people want it to make the game more difficult or "survival-y" but I'm coming at it from the perspective of cooking variety. Right now there's not much reason to cook anything except bacon and eggs at lower levels, or meat stew at higher levels. It would be nice to be motivated to cook other things.

IRL, the major reason, besides taste, is food spoilage. Take pemmican - you look at, and how much goes into preparing it, and ask yourself why the hell anyone would ever make that. Then you realize that pemmican can keep for over a year at room temperature.

So, making things like jams or smoked meats would actually make sense in-game. Starvation mod (I think?) had this, and though they didn't really do it the way I'd like, it was still a neat idea.

One other thing I'd love to see is per-biome food diversity. Like, certain crops would die outside of certain temperatures, so you couldn't e.g. grow yucca in the snow biome. It leads to each biome being "specialized" in recipes.

I'm not expecting vanilla to have much of this (if any of it), but just adding the ability to control some kind of "spoilage" via XML would allow modders to really go nuts with this.
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Imho, the best incentive to increase diversity within cooking would be to introduce nutrients to the game, you would then have to eat(and as a result cook) more diverse to manage the levels.

Say they introduce a nutrient system based around Fat, Carbs and Protein, and judging from past comments this is something Madmole knows a lot about, then balancing it around different courses/food types so that you can maintain it all while having a buff system that controls the outcome. You would always have a "diet" buff active, if you manage to eat diverse and normally you would have a "Well Balanced" buff which could give no negatives but some positives in regards to stamina use. Then you have diversity which could mean you get the buff morphed into more negatives or positives depending on diet.

Could even add Vitamins to the mix which could be used to manipulate to buff to some extent...or even Calories so that you must manage the amount you eat and not just eat whatever until the values are filled.

Sounds more and more like a mini game but designed, executed and balanced correctly I think it could work nicely.

 
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Great idea for a mod but a little too micro-management for vanilla. There's a skyrim mod that does something very similar and instead of adding depth to the gameplay it just gets in the way and ends up really annoying. Who wants to try and stop their character getting rickets, scurvy, and beriberi on a daily basis?

I'm normally all for attention to detail but this is taking things a bit far even for me.

 
Imho, the best incentive to increase diversity within cooking would be to introduce nutrients to the game, you would then have to eat(and as a result cook) more diverse to manage the levels.
Say they introduce a nutrient system based around Fat, Carbs and Protein, and judging from past comments this is something Madmole knows a lot about, then balancing it around different courses/food types so that you can maintain it all while having a buff system that controls the outcome. You would always have a "diet" buff active, if you manage to eat diverse and normally you would have a "Well Balanced" buff which could give no negatives but some positives in regards to stamina use. Then you have diversity which could mean you get the buff morphed into more negatives or positives depending on diet.

Could even add Vitamins to the mix which could be used to manipulate to buff to some extent...or even Calories so that you must manage the amount you eat and not just eat whatever until the values are filled.

Sounds more and more like a mini game but designed, executed and balanced correctly I think it could work nicely.
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Great idea for a mod but a little too micro-management for vanilla. There's a skyrim mod that does something very similar and instead of adding depth to the gameplay it just gets in the way and ends up really annoying. Who wants to try and stop their character getting rickets, scurvy, and beriberi on a daily basis?
I'm normally all for attention to detail but this is taking things a bit far even for me.
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I agree, it sounds like a micromanaging nightmare but it doesn't have to be like that - depends on the implementation. If the time period and food variety is lenient enough and the player doesn't have to monitor nutrients but just have to eat 2-3 different recipes within say a week, with better recipes eliminating that need (since they should contain a variety of nutrients themselves), they would intuitively learn to do it without having to monitor anything at all.

 
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If there's no need to monitor it what's the point in adding it?

You'll end up with a lot of people raging that their character cannot get to full health despite eating a hundred bowls of noodles*. Never underestimate the stupidity of the average player.

*Based on the true story of a student who worked out he could survive on nothing but noodles and ended up with scurvy.

 
If there's no need to monitor it what's the point in adding it?
You'll end up with a lot of people raging that their character cannot get to full health despite eating a hundred bowls of noodles*. Never underestimate the stupidity of the average player.

*Based on the true story of a student who worked out he could survive on nothing but noodles and ended up with scurvy.
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The point isn't for the player to have to monitor stuff, but giving value to higher level recipes that include a wider variety of materials and consequently the player doing the activities needed to procure them, having to find different seeds etc. Full health should be feasible anyway - what one would get by doing this is a well-fed buff (or a slight debuff when malnourished) which would add some QOL.

 
If there's no need to monitor it what's the point in adding it?
You'll end up with a lot of people raging that their character cannot get to full health despite eating a hundred bowls of noodles*. Never underestimate the stupidity of the average player.

*Based on the true story of a student who worked out he could survive on nothing but noodles and ended up with scurvy.
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He did not have enough light energy. Its all you need as nutrition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inedia

 
Use electricity like a normal human being! But seriously, unlike food and even if I would personally enjoy torches degrading I wouldn't be in favor of a decoration element being subject to these kinds of rules, much less one that will, perhaps, become annoying to replace.
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That would need a few fixes first. Like being able to connect multiple solar panels to one place so i can use all the power on one cord. Also, the batteries need to be charged even when noone is in the base.

 
No worse than a fresh spawn, are you crying about things when you spawn? No you are all excited to start your game. Change your attitude about debuff, its a minor hiccup in the journey and 99% of the time you are stronger than when you spawned so I don't see the issue other than people want to complain. Dang I'm as strong as I was 2 hours ago that sucks. Really? Its not like we flatline you from 10 to -10.
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Not really crying about that. More like "i barely can get to my bag on time before it despawns and i will probably freeze to death on the way" :)

 
No the fireaxe no longer gets any benefits from deep cuts. It ok at melee but not what it was, but it does work ok. Its badass at cutting wood though. I've currently skipped sledgehammers and clubs in my strength build and only use a fireaxe. I've already got rank 5 so its damage is max until I find a steel schematic or steel one in loot that is better than my crafted blue one. Its not bad, but again its not super OP like it used to be in 17. A fair trade since you get it with mining perks. If you want to be a cut guy use a machete or knife.
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That's nice. I hated the fact the Fireaxe was the go-to choice in a lot of situations because it just does everything so well. Should be a tool and an okay-ish weapon like you just described. By the way did you make the machete great again ?

 
I agree, it sounds like a micromanaging nightmare but it doesn't have to be like that - depends on the implementation. If the time period and food variety is lenient enough and the player doesn't have to monitor nutrients but just have to eat 2-3 different recipes within say a week, with better recipes eliminating that need (since they should contain a variety of nutrients themselves), they would intuitively learn to do it without having to monitor anything at all.
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I think you were inspired by SCUM.

The difference is that the survival mechanic of SCUM is build around the food system with its differenet nutrients. It's one of the core features of this game. Implementing it into a game like 7DTD would do nothing but cause frustration. Expecially if the only purpose is beeing a subitem in a checklist for getting a full health/stamina bar.

 
Interesting video about simple bows and stone-tip arrows:

So basically, they can shoot clean through a deer (50 pound hunting-bow). A stronger bow could easily shoot through a (no armored) zombie...

 
Interesting video about simple bows and stone-tip arrows:

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Yes and when you shoot from sniper rifle, the bullet won't drop to the ground after 100 meters. Not everything can be realistic. And there has to be balance.

 
Yes our new animator is polishing everything up.
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Madmole, is it possible to wait in 18 Alpha for a fix shotgun charging with a separate charging animation for each shell?

Is your animator polishing this up?

 
No perks can be found as books. Books are their own thing. There are schematics for everything perks unlock so you aren't forced into buying that perk unless you really want the perk parts of it, like damage bonuses etc.
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So what you're saying is we dont need a list of what perks can be unlocked by looting schematics because every single perk has a schematic that can be found?

Man, looting just got HYPED again!

Great change.

 
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So what you're saying is we dont need a list of what perks can be unlocked by looting schematics because every single perk has a schematic that can be found?
Man, looting just got HYPED again!

Great change.
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From what I understood only the crafting perks will have a counterpart schematic to unlock the same recipe. However buying said perks will give you a passive bonus TBD that you wouldn't get by reading the schematics.

Furthermore there are some perks only unlocked by reading books.

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Madmole, is it possible to wait in 18 Alpha for a fix shotgun charging with a separate charging animation for each shell?
Is your animator polishing this up?
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+1 I would love this.

 
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I think you were inspired by SCUM.The difference is that the survival mechanic of SCUM is build around the food system with its differenet nutrients. It's one of the core features of this game. Implementing it into a game like 7DTD would do nothing but cause frustration. Expecially if the only purpose is beeing a subitem in a checklist for getting a full health/stamina bar.
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Wasn't the one who suggested it and I explained what that would offer and how it wouldn't actually be frustrating in a couple of posts above:

The point isn't for the player to have to monitor stuff, but giving value to higher level recipes that include a wider variety of materials and consequently the player doing the activities needed to procure them, having to find different seeds etc. Full health should be feasible anyway - what one would get by doing this is a well-fed buff (or a slight debuff when malnourished) which would add some QOL.
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Imagine if the game didn't have hunger at all and the devs wanted to implement it. God, can you imagine the frustration that would cause?

 
From what I understood only the crafting perks will have a schematic. However buying said perks will give you a passive bonus TBD that you would get by reading the schematics.Furthermore there are some perks only unlocked by reading books.
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From what I understand, there are books, that give special bonuses.

When you find one, you get a bonus, if you find the entire collection, you get something special.

Then there are schematics, that unlock recipes.

Perks give you bonuses, unrelated to books and they also unlock recipes.

So if you want to craft something, you can buy the perk or try to find the schematic (recipe), but the perk is still relevant as an investment because of the bonus it gives.

 
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