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
    3
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I am saying that a quest that reduces gamestage does not give the impression that you are winning back territory from zombie infection since the number of zombies stays the same.
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I was thinking about this and what I thought of was a quest that sends you to a random POI and starts a timer leading up to a massive attack wave of zombies-- like a bloodmoon horde. You have the initial time to prepare and barricade the POI as best you can. Then you have to stay in the area and kill a specific number of zombies and survive until you do. If you complete the quest then the heat map reduces to zero everywhere and remains at zero for a day or two before building up again.

Reducing the heat map doesn't affect gamestages but would give a sense of reducing local zombie presence.

 
I was thinking about this and what I thought of was a quest that sends you to a random POI and starts a timer leading up to a massive attack wave of zombies-- like a bloodmoon horde. You have the initial time to prepare and barricade the POI as best you can. Then you have to stay in the area and kill a specific number of zombies and survive until you do. If you complete the quest then the heat map reduces to zero everywhere and remains at zero for a day or two before building up again.
Reducing the heat map doesn't affect gamestages but would give a sense of reducing local zombie presence.
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I really like this idea. It sounds super fun!

 
People should like this one:
Added changing the held item during weapon reload cancels reload (anim speed x30, no ammo change).

Animals got some attention this week:

Changed: Improved boss Grace (AI aggressive to players, destroy area, territorial. Slightly smaller. Moves slower. Longer range and more damage)

Changed: Decreased wolf attack delay, range and damage

Changed: Increased dire wolf attack delay, range and damage

Changed: Decreased bear attack range/sphere values

Changed: Reduced bear, boar, canine and vulture hit check delays

Fixed: Mountain Lion ragdoll NRE

Fixed: Mountain Lion neck snap from death anim or ragdoll

Added: Animal leap ability

Changed: Improved Mountain Lion (moves faster, leaps, 3 part jump anim, shorter zombie aggro range)

Changed: Improved AI RunawayFromEntity

Fixed: AI RunawayWhenHurt never triggering with default values

Changed: Timid animals run from hostile animals

Changed: Improved Coyote (attacks chickens and rabbits, short chase times, mostly retreats when taking moderate damage)
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Hell yeah!

 
Animals got some attention this week:
Changed: Improved boss Grace (AI aggressive to players, destroy area, territorial. Slightly smaller. Moves slower. Longer range and more damage)

Changed: Decreased wolf attack delay, range and damage

Changed: Increased dire wolf attack delay, range and damage

Changed: Decreased bear attack range/sphere values

Changed: Reduced bear, boar, canine and vulture hit check delays

Fixed: Mountain Lion ragdoll NRE

Fixed: Mountain Lion neck snap from death anim or ragdoll

Added: Animal leap ability

Changed: Improved Mountain Lion (moves faster, leaps, 3 part jump anim, shorter zombie aggro range)

Changed: Improved AI RunawayFromEntity

Fixed: AI RunawayWhenHurt never triggering with default values

Changed: Timid animals run from hostile animals

Changed: Improved Coyote (attacks chickens and rabbits, short chase times, mostly retreats when taking moderate damage)
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Now you need packs (and only when in a pack) of wolves/dire wolves to go after deer.

 
I've written A* from scratch before. I'm currently using a layered variation to path over an utterly ridiculous amount of kilometres. I know its strengths and weaknesses intimately. With a general understanding of how the algorithm works it shouldn't be too hard to work out that there _will_ be issues under the current system. :-)
In pure A* the weight is just a single floating point variable which indicates the difficulty of traversing between block A and block B. Why anyone would change the fundamental principle of how the algorithm works to something as esoteric as block health is beyond me. By all means adjust the basic system with whatever variables and modifiers you want but changing how the algorithm works on a fundamental level and expecting it to "just work" is somewhat optimistic.

Why anyone would use a 2D pathing algorithm in a dynamic 3D voxel world also causes me much discombobulation.
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faatal can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe there is any fundamental change to the algorithm, nor was one proposed. It just happens that the edge costs are defined entirely by the block hit points (except for special cases like doors). If you want to say that doesn't count as block HP forming the basis of path weighting then fine, whatever, semantics.

 
faatal can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe there is any fundamental change to the algorithm, nor was one proposed. It just happens that the edge costs are defined entirely by the block hit points (except for special cases like doors). If you want to say that doesn't count as block HP forming the basis of path weighting then fine, whatever, semantics.
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I'm saying that basing the path weight on block HP _is_ the problem. It leads to far too many edge cases and oddities when you're trying to use shapes other than a cube. Compound that with the difficulties of using a 2d algorithm in a 3d voxel environment and I'm quite surprised it works at all.

It's clunky and slow but it's good enough for the job... as long as you're satisfied with only good enough.

 
I was thinking about this and what I thought of was a quest that sends you to a random POI and starts a timer leading up to a massive attack wave of zombies-- like a bloodmoon horde. You have the initial time to prepare and barricade the POI as best you can. Then you have to stay in the area and kill a specific number of zombies and survive until you do. If you complete the quest then the heat map reduces to zero everywhere and remains at zero for a day or two before building up again.
Reducing the heat map doesn't affect gamestages but would give a sense of reducing local zombie presence.
Click to expand...
Another option would be that by doing some sort of hard quest like this, you could prevent the next Blood Moon horde from spawning (just one). Compared to paying off the trader for the same benefit, this would be a more proactive and action-oriented alternative to the Blood Moon horde.

 
Its an ongoing effort to remove loopholes. Gas has been nerfed significantly but I need to get a vehicle on a long term save and see how it feels.
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Gasoline nerfed? In what way?

How much you can find/make or how fast you burn though it?

 
I'm saying that basing the path weight on block HP _is_ the problem. It leads to far too many edge cases and oddities when you're trying to use shapes other than a cube. Compound that with the difficulties of using a 2d algorithm in a 3d voxel environment and I'm quite surprised it works at all.
It's clunky and slow but it's good enough for the job... as long as you're satisfied with only good enough.
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The heuristic function has to be something. I hear you that you don't like A* for this in the first place, but I can think of no better heuristic than block HP.

 
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Some good ideas being written here Madmole. Also look at Rust for good ideas or peoples mods like that guy just posted. Can’t wait for a18. Haven’t been playing but plan to soon as a18 hits the streets. Bye Madmole.

 
Remember this was back in the 70's when farting, swirlies, wedgies, hurtz donuts, charlie horses, wet willies, dunking and kill the man were politically correct behaviour.
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I had better tell my kids to grow up then....

 
@Devs

Was the "Glancing Blow" system implemented at the time of the streams? If not can you showcase it in your next video?

 
Animals got some attention this week:
Changed: Improved boss Grace (AI aggressive to players, destroy area, territorial. Slightly smaller. Moves slower. Longer range and more damage)

Changed: Decreased wolf attack delay, range and damage

Changed: Increased dire wolf attack delay, range and damage

Changed: Decreased bear attack range/sphere values

Changed: Reduced bear, boar, canine and vulture hit check delays

Fixed: Mountain Lion ragdoll NRE

Fixed: Mountain Lion neck snap from death anim or ragdoll

Added: Animal leap ability

Changed: Improved Mountain Lion (moves faster, leaps, 3 part jump anim, shorter zombie aggro range)

Changed: Improved AI RunawayFromEntity

Fixed: AI RunawayWhenHurt never triggering with default values

Changed: Timid animals run from hostile animals

Changed: Improved Coyote (attacks chickens and rabbits, short chase times, mostly retreats when taking moderate damage)
Click to expand...
Im harder than chinese algebra.

 
Animals got some attention this week:
Changed: Improved boss Grace (AI aggressive to players, destroy area, territorial. Slightly smaller. Moves slower. Longer range and more damage)

Changed: Decreased wolf attack delay, range and damage

Changed: Increased dire wolf attack delay, range and damage

Changed: Decreased bear attack range/sphere values

Changed: Reduced bear, boar, canine and vulture hit check delays

Fixed: Mountain Lion ragdoll NRE

Fixed: Mountain Lion neck snap from death anim or ragdoll

Added: Animal leap ability

Changed: Improved Mountain Lion (moves faster, leaps, 3 part jump anim, shorter zombie aggro range)

Changed: Improved AI RunawayFromEntity

Fixed: AI RunawayWhenHurt never triggering with default values

Changed: Timid animals run from hostile animals

Changed: Improved Coyote (attacks chickens and rabbits, short chase times, mostly retreats when taking moderate damage)
Click to expand...
nice, a reason to carry the AK around now when exploring/looting. -1 inventory space.

 
How long you are alive is considered, so what you are asking for is already implemented.
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Yes, but it is capped on player level and reduced quite a lot by deaths. The current formula always keeps the player within a safe threshold, no matter what, and for that reason there is not much of a sense of urgency/time as a resource.

It probably is true that there are only a relatively few players who sense that the world progression is tied to what they do and are bothered by it. The advantage is having a world that operates independently of the player which feels more alive and less controllable.
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I don't know how many are bothered by it, but you can easily sense it. Would be great if the formula had global time as a factor, even if that factor was 1/10 compared to the other factors and was more loose/less rigid with the GS caps and less "patronizing" with deaths. Difficulty changes little as it just magnifies it (and is unfortunately tied to zombie hp). Difficulty could instead change that formula to a more unforgiving, time-sensitive version.

 
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Yes, but it is capped on player level and reduced quite a lot by deaths. The current formula always keeps the player within a safe threshold, no matter what, and for that reason there is not much of a sense of urgency/time as a resource.


I don't know how many are bothered by it, but you can easily sense it. Would be great if the formula had global time as a factor, even if that factor was 1/10 compared to the other factors and was more loose/less rigid with the GS caps and less "patronizing" with deaths. Difficulty changes little as it just magnifies it (and is unfortunately tied to zombie hp).
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Yeah, I currently go out of my way to not kill zombies because of the unnatural GS.

Yes, loot quality is tied to GS but not the all important ammo or basic mods and weapons. So I always head for my best guess where the loot boxes are.

I'm too old to deliberately inflict more trouble on myself than is absolutely necessary. :)

 
I'm too old to deliberately inflict more trouble on myself than is absolutely necessary. :)
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Oh come on, you will start liking it after a while... :p

But seriously you shouldn't have to deliberately avoid zombies in order to not increase the GS. This is probably mostly due to how the GS scales itself and the groups that appear in each GS level. I wouldn't object to a smoother GS scaling - on the contrary anything that makes the scaling less obvious would be great.

 
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