PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Genosis]

I'm curious, and sorry if it's posted already:
Are they adding a ray trace swing for weapons or we still going to be stuck with the gun shot one pixel is all you'll hit with a melee weapon swing?

Thus still hitting the wall, or air, or nothing despite the swing clearly should have hit something as the swing flows through the zombie.

This is the last word I heard about it:

Ray tracing is about 2% of the final image there. Most of what you see is just pbr textures. Ray tracing is coming to games, but its another feature that might destroy the framerate we would shy away from for a while until we get performance in a good place.

So... maybe? Sounds like something they will look at once they have performance down and major changes, perhaps in late alpha or beta.

 

[sillls]

You know, we could use this as a distraction/attactor in the game.

 

[Trankitas]

This is the last word I heard about it:


So... maybe? Sounds like something they will look at once they have performance down and major changes, perhaps in late alpha or beta.

He's not talking about raytracing.

The answer is YES Kinyajuu have mention that he was working on (or already finished) the ray trace swing for melee weapons.

Look at this:

Edit: It felt like i'm an ass, sorry about that Genosis.

 

[maleitch]

Concerning the reported FPS drop with solar array. I think this just happened to me and may explain why it seems to be hit or miss. Or it may be totally unrelated. I am not in front of my game so forgive some the fuzzy details:

These are on the same multiplayer server and I have not played on anything else for the past year.

Before issue:

Consistent 40-80 FPS in game.

Textures with writing such as Shotgun Messiah were smugged and unreadable due to my video settings.

Never experienced a noticeable drop in FPS

Inside a large custom base which includes one solar array

Don't remember other custom video settings unfortunately but most were set to mid/high and long view distance

After Issue:

Tried to fix smudge text issue by changing texture setting, and it did fix.

Game ran fine. Went on top of base and holy hell what is going on.

FPS in most of base was 60-80 fps, but when I would look?/move? in this one area it would drop to 14-20

I attributed it to my video changes which actually increased my FPS everywhere else and have not tried to fix, but just realized one of my teammates did put in an array at the top of the base.

It could be totally coincidental and unrelated, but maybe the issue only shows up on multiplayer/certain video setting type of combinations?

My same teammates on this same server in this same location DO NOT experience this FPS drop.

I know that is vague and not very helpful but maybe it can help some.

 

[rucky]

Gear Changes:Quality now influences damage output on tools, firearms and melee weapons. Quality influences armor protection values.

All items with quality now have random stats in loot. Players craft with static stats in the middle of the range. It is possible that a brown pistol is superior to a yellow one, but not likely. Check the stats of every thing you find.

Thank you that you liked my Additions in my Mod BorderlandZ

This way, as that is also done on GunMods, BorderlandZ has some Bazillions of Weapon combinations ;-)

Spoiler

QSR - 255 Quality Stats Randomizer
This SDX*)/Modlet increases Quality levels and Tiers from the default 1-6 to 1-255, changes near all available Stats on Weapons and -Modifiers to depend on Quality level and optional semi-randomize them via additional XML attribute!

What does this mean?

Vanilla Weapons (and Tools) are only available in 6 different Quality levels (which are the same as tiers here).

These Weapons do only differ in available Mod slots and max Degradation, but if you have a Quality 2 Pistol or a Quality 4 Pistol both do not differ otherwise!

This mod does

1. increase Quality diversity to 255 levels / tiers
   
2. change near all stats on (ranged) Weapons to a linear progression between Quality 1 and 255 (all Ranged Guns besides Rocket Launcher und Crossbows done, others not yet)
   
3. add the optional Semi-Randomizing Feature to any passive_effect ²) and sets them for the above mentioned Weapons
   

²) Example:

<passive_effect name="MaxRange" operation="perc_add" value="0.0,0.25" tier="1,255" [color="#FFFF00"]rand="0.2"[/color]/>

this means the Stat MaxRange will increase between Quality 1 and 255 from 0.0 to 0.25(=25%) with a semi random factor of 20% (that is up/down max 10% each)

 

[Trankitas]

Thank you that you liked my Additions in my Mod BorderlandZ This way, as that is also done on GunMods, BorderlandZ has some Bazillions of Weapon combinations ;-)

Good stuff dude

 

[Ti2xGr]

Madmole - Will there be any adjustment to the max size of the maps in RWG in Alpha18? I'm currently running a 10K map on our Dedicated Server and would like to push to a 15K map for my users.

Related - Will roads and cities reach more areas of the map in A18?

 

[Telly G]

I can't stand games that try to do this. Don't tell me the mental state of my character, I will decide that in my role play. Its like forced role playing which nobody would enjoy. Its ok if your drunk, to have a visual, or sick but I don't want a character who's scared I'll just kill him myself he has no place in the apocalypse.
If the game scares the player great, but lets not pretend to scare the avatar.

Well in Dont Starve sanity is a literal resource that actually has benefits to savvy players for temporarily going insane (the shadows that you start seeing as sanity ticks down become real and attack you and drop a rare resource called nightmare fuel if you kill them) 7 days to die isnt dont starve, but managing sanity has been done right in games before.

Theres various ways to restore sanity, sleeping, eating crockpot foods, picking flowers, wearing certain equipment. Theres also ways to force yourself to go insane like the fashion melon where you wear a busted open watermelon on your head. Its one of the various things you need to juggle in the game like light or a monster named Charlie will eat you in the darkness within like 5~ seconds.

Also rabbits actually become beard hair covered monsters when you go insane which allows you to build extra life effigies as characters that arent the guy that grows a beard.

 

[Crater Creator]

If you really want this as a role play then the character also shouldn't know anything about the world itself. A whole new world would have to be created to make sure that he can't use that knowledge.

Yes, that's exactly what I meant later in the same post when I said "Either the world is reset, or even better you play a different seed, so you can't even apply prior knowledge you learned as your first character about the natural terrain and where buildings are."

 

[Crater Creator]

Think he was referring MP servers. Kinda hard to delete the world because one person dies.

My thing is on a straight pvp vs pvp these ideas work great. I don't know to many servers where everyone is against everyone. Pretty funny someone said this isn't Gvp it is pvp .... if you are solo then sure but if you belong to a group then the stuff you build shouldn't go away because you die.

Now we all know what should happen and what really happens. If you die only those who are dedicated with how they play or ones that are into RP servers will follow forgetting everything mind set. Everyone else would just run right back. So make it to where if you die you spawn back on the other side of the map and not so close. I mean all your skills and levels and items are gone. You really goin to make it back to your things in time? Or if you do what the odds of surviving if they have all the guns and such? So if someone dies just have the spawn settings far away from land claim block. Then when you die that block goes away so you no longer own that spot. Also if you no longer own the location someone else can claim it so it wouldn't be so easy to get back into the base u less you have a hidden storage.

I don't have a clear picture for what Dead is Dead would mean in multiplayer. What you describe sounds more like 'Dead is still alive, if you try hard enough.' And so long as your base and your stuff is there, there's going to be a strong incentive to get back and pick things up where you left off, no matter how hard it is.

I think it's fair to say that for most players, other than their experience points, losing their base and all their stuff is the worst thing that could happen to them in the game. Which means if the game makes it at all possible to recover those things, players will do almost anything to save them and not have to start from scratch. Hence why for a faithful 'Dead is Dead' implementation, you'd want remove that incentive.

For multiplayer PvE, that would seem to require not playing on that server anymore until the world is reset, and ideally not until it uses a new world seed. You can't force the player not to build (literally or figuratively) on the progress made by their previous character, unless that progress is erased, which you can't really separate out with a communal base and communal supplies.

For PvP, I guess the concern is that the dead player's opponents deserve the opportunity to enjoy the spoils of a successful raid. In this case, perhaps offer a temporary 'restraining order'. The player can't come within a kilometer of where they died for fifteen minutes or however long it typically takes to strip all the good stuff out of an opponent's base. It's similar to your idea to spawn far away, but it doesn't give the player false hope that they can still recover if only they can get back fast enough.

 

[Crater Creator]

I see what you mean. Yes you would know were everything is but you would be locked out. It would be like raiding a POI.
I just had a thought. What if the old player's base was seeded with sleepers??? What do you think about that?

That way it would be more like raiding a POI. I mean yeah you would know were your old base was but you would have to deal with the sleepers and such.

It did occur to me, in catching up on posts, that bandits could 'fill the void' after the player dies. They would act like stand-ins for PvP raiders (though would you really take over an opponent's base in PvP anyway, or would you just loot it and leave?). But adding bandits or sleepers in a player's base gets back to an old problem, which sounds like a wise guy question but isn't:

What's a base?

Objectively defining the extent of a base in a way that works for all cases is something TFP has wisely avoided. Normally you have level designers manually specify volumes where sleepers can spawn. If you try to auto-generate them, you're probably going to see sleepers in wonky places, because the player didn't design their base to accommodate enemy spawn locations. Worse, if you tried, players would likely actively design their bases to circumvent your efforts to infest them with bandits or sleepers.

 

[toores]

@Faatal

Some melee ideas:

 

[RipClaw]

I don't have a clear picture for what Dead is Dead would mean in multiplayer. What you describe sounds more like 'Dead is still alive, if you try hard enough.' And so long as your base and your stuff is there, there's going to be a strong incentive to get back and pick things up where you left off, no matter how hard it is.

For multiplayers it would be a difference whether you play with others in a group or alone on a multiplayer server.

In a group you could see it this way that the old character has died and the group is taking in a new character to replace him. The character can be equipped by the group with weapons, tools and food but has no own skills. The character has to develop his skills first. Your party can recover the old character's equipment but you don't have access to it.

If you play alone on a multiplayer server you would be a new character and would not have access to your old weapons, tools, vehicles and base. In addition, all skills would be reset. The game could even make the character spawn as far away from his old base as possible, so it would take some time for him to get back to his old base. And then he has to get access to that base first.

Also possible would be a ban from the server for players playing on servers alone.

In any case, these different scenarios show that the Dead is Dead option has to be subdivided to cover everything.

 

[crazywildfire]

Also possible would be a ban from the server for players playing on servers alone.

Actually not a bad thing for multiplayer servers. But not a permanent ban just a cool down. Like 15 min or 30 min before you can bring in a new character and even when you come back in you are spawned far away.

Edit: to add this was just referring in general multiplayer not just playing alone.

Getting it to work for single player is going to be a lot easier vs getting it to work good on multiplayer. Of course if you are solo on a multiplayer server things would work just the same as single player. But in a group it can become tricky. A lot of it will have to come down to the players choice in the long run. Maybe it just wouldn't be an option for multiplayer idk. But I just don't think it would be right if you are in a group and one person dies and all the items placed down by that person goes away. It just end up causing a big mess that nobody running multiplayer pvp servers would turn the option on in my opinion.

I myself and lots of others I play with don't just ju.p servers. Got half a group I play with that play with subs and friends. Then the other group that does role play server. Granted the group that does role play will be more dedicated to keeping to not returning because it wouldn't be in character to do so. Just feel got to be a way to make it work for multiplayer. Just my thoughts anyway.

 

[RipClaw]

But I just don't think it would be right if you are in a group and one person dies and all the items placed down by that person goes away. It just end up causing a big mess that nobody running multiplayer pvp servers would turn the option on in my opinion.

It would be ideal if group ownership were possible. Then it wouldn't matter who of a group has placed something.

 

[Nikhar]

Ill pitch in just because I was actually contemplating this yesterday. I like to explore new ideas.
I feel, that the wellnes system that was implemented before perks - you would increase it by eating high quality food, lose on death - was pretty good. Death had serious consequences. However, biggest problem was, that you could end up with 50hp 50stam, which for people that died a lot was big deterrence. I would reintroduce this mechanic, but after death, you would never go under 100/100. You could still gradually increase your wellness up to 200/200.

There are now two caps to stamina and health - soft cap and hard cap:

Soft stamina cap - works like in alpha 17. You mine, run etc, it decreases. You eat - it increases.

Soft health cap - works like in alpha 17. You bleed, get hit, break limbs etc, it decreases. You heal with bandage, splint, med kit - it increases.

Hard cap is increased only via wellness and is no longer governed by agility/fortitude.

Currently, killing animals is way too easy. I can just walk right to a pig and one shot him with stealth bonus. Same with deer. I would implement it, so there would be high chance to spawn vultures and/or dogs on animal kill- depending on gamestage. Boars are more agressive and will charge player (which I mean charge as run really really fast) if they get close. Deers are more shy, and will register player from further distance, and run away. Without using stealth, or sniper rifle, you cannot get close to deer. Bear is much less likely to attack, but his speed is increased, so player can never outrun him. His hit poins are increased. You can only kill bear with some serious firepower.

Sealed shamway boxes ALWAYS contain canned food.

Vending machines use prewar cash and do not respawn food every day.

Removing living of the land perk. Harvesting plant always produce two items. Seeds are crafted from single food item instead of four. Time to grow crop is much longer.

*this part would apply only if spoilage was introduced*

Meat needs to be preserved. Four stages:

Salted meat - downside - cooked meals dehydratate

Smoked meat - downside - cooked meals increase wellness less (needs building smoker)

Refridgirated meat - no downsides, but the food still spoils, but slower.

Frozen meat - meat can ve stored indefinitely, but largely increase the cook time. (Cannot be crafted, must be either bought, or find in some high lvl PoI)

Canned meat - lasts indefinitely, but decrease wellness gained from food. (canning station can be found at the end of tier 5 PoI shamway factory)

salted, smoked and refrigirated can be combined for longer even slower spoilage, but negatives stack too.

Quality of prepared dish depends on crafting station used. 3 tiers:

1.campfire

2.stove - perk: does not consume wood, only power.

3.crockpot - perk: much better wellness gained, but takes a lot of time to cook.

Recipes that require meat can use ration cans (beef, chicken, lamb), so you dont really need to hunt and bother with spoilage, if you dont want. However, those cans are more rare, than getting meat from animal.

Cooked meal now spoil within one ingame day. The wellness and health from them decrease down to half.

Cooked meals do not stack.

Microwave can be used once to push back the decay by fixed ammount.

There is limit to how much wellness you can get in a day.

All cooked meal now give various long term buffs - around 30 minutes long. They are also the only way (aside from vitamins) that increase wellness.

Various canned foods can give food better properties or buffs. - increased stats, bigger block damage, bigger damage, better aim, bigger luck looting etc. For example, you put in meat, potato and fat. That would give you steak and potatoes. Say that would increase your STR by 1 for 1 hour. But you add there a can of peaches and Boom! +10%movements speed to add to that. important is, that the buffs are meaningful and impactful enough, that you FEEL more powerful, than when without them. All this hassle needs to be WELL worth it.

You can only have on meal buff. (steak and potatoes, vegetable stew etc.)

You can only have one desert buff. (blueberry pie, tyramisu, cake(is a lie))

You can only have one drink buff. (coffe, tea, yucca juice)

So once you exit your home the next day, you are all buffed up and ready to kick ass.

Personally I have been thinking along the same lines here. Onarr has put some very valuable thought into this post. Now I know that it is not possible to just go and redesign the entire game's mechanics and logic, but I also strongly believe that there are more people out there who would like to see things like this added to add a slight new polish on top of what the game has to offer. Yes I know this game has it's flaws but that's just how the world works when designing a video game. Yes sometimes I feel like it needs more to it and the majority (Keyword: "Majority") of people complain that it's been forever in development and not much new additions have surfaced, I agree to some extent. What I'm saying is that Onarr has come up with very humble and doable ideas that even I would love to see implemented. But you know what, even if it takes forever, I'm fine with it because I'm a loyal supporter of this game and it just keeps getting better! Always put your best opinion forward and it might end up in the game! ...OK enough of my rant, I'm grabbing some pizza and it's time to start a new world and politely greet some zombies with the trusty wooden club!

 

[Pendral]

...……...Personally I have been thinking along the same lines here...…..

I've been playing from 2014 so I've seen a lot of postings over the years (and posted some myself) on HOW to improve the game. I'm still amazed that TFPS actually DO consider peoples suggestions and they have this GREAT ability to switch directions on a game function quite radically... which is a good thing.

I've seen some amazing cheering sections in the forums that actually influence things. (ie: PIGS -> BOARS = Awesome change )

I'm all in for Onarr's post too. As long as people are taking the time to explain things they'd tweek… and doing so in a respectful manner, this Style of Post has some "clout" over time.

 

[Telly G]

I've been playing from 2014 so I've seen a lot of postings over the years (and posted some myself) on HOW to improve the game. I'm still amazed that TFPS actually DO consider peoples suggestions and they have this GREAT ability to switch directions on a game function quite radically... which is a good thing. I've seen some amazing cheering sections in the forums that actually influence things. (ie: PIGS -> BOARS = Awesome change )

I'm all in for Onarr's post too. As long as people are taking the time to explain things they'd tweek… and doing so in a respectful manner, this Style of Post has some "clout" over time.

at this point tightening up mechanics and more weapons which there seems to be an about right amount, though a lever action that fires .44 mag should be a Perception weapon unless they got that up their sleeve. It being like the midwestest of the midwest, the fact there hasnt been leverguns in the game is astonishing, honestly. That and more npc stuff though that was arleady planned. But better animations and more weapons goes a LONG way.

 

[Onarr]

Personally I have been thinking along the same lines here. Onarr has put some very valuable thought into this post. Now I know that it is not possible to just go and redesign the entire game's mechanics and logic, but I also strongly believe that there are more people out there who would like to see things like this added to add a slight new polish on top of what the game has to offer. Yes I know this game has it's flaws but that's just how the world works when designing a video game. Yes sometimes I feel like it needs more to it and the majority (Keyword: "Majority") of people complain that it's been forever in development and not much new additions have surfaced, I agree to some extent. What I'm saying is that Onarr has come up with very humble and doable ideas that even I would love to see implemented. But you know what, even if it takes forever, I'm fine with it because I'm a loyal supporter of this game and it just keeps getting better! Always put your best opinion forward and it might end up in the game! ...OK enough of my rant, I'm grabbing some pizza and it's time to start a new world and politely greet some zombies with the trusty wooden club!

Hey, thanks. I appreciate it

 

[sandpaper600]

I posted this in the "Alpha 17.4 commentary & not-bugs" & the "Alpha 17.4 Stable bug reporting thread", but they are pretty dead and nobody responded. So, I thought I'd bring it over here to see if I can get any love on this. (I hope I'm not outta line here. )

"I haven't been able to find any info about this anywhere. I was under the impression that 2 people would be able to ride in the 4x4 truck. I just crafted one and it would only let 1 person ride. When I "open" the truck, the info shows that it has one seat.

Is there a setting or edit I have to change or did the two people thing not make it into 17.4?"