PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[madmole]

The idea of not getting any rewards for horde night is a strange one for me.
On one hand i dont really care. I'd do horde night no matter what. No exp, loot, repairs, ammo, I dont care. The thing I love most about this game is the base defense part.

With that said there are alot of people skipping them, in one way or another. That's a flaw of game design in it's current state. Well all agree on this.

So group A says take out all exploits, give ZERO rewards, and no survival is not a reward. Fun gameplay is a reward. Some people dont see wasting ammo and repair resources worth the gameplay on horde night.

Group B says give the players incentive to want to do horde nights. Aka, rewards that equal fun gameplay for these people. Exp and loot mainly.

Groups A's solution is much easier to pull off. Why? No balance required. I dont have any issues with this option. I just think the group B option should be addressed as well.

For me, games are about the carrot and the stick. You need to have rewards for gameplay. Some people feel surviving is the reward. Others want not only to survive but thrive.

+100 to game staged loot on horde night would do it IMO. Lucky looter on steroids during the blood moon, and increase chance to drop.

 

[Crater Creator]

I know smell is not going to be put back in-- I cant remember if it was a programming issue or not. But I always had my most intense over night stays-early in the game where I could hear the z's outside and they would detect me a bit while I crouched in a corner in the dark. white knuckled, thinking they were going to bash through the wall to get me.

Is there going to be a mechanic introduced or enhanced that brings back the trepidation of hiding and hoping not to get caught by a Night time Z?

It’s tough to do, because most of that "mechanic" was just your inexperience of not knowing what to expect from the zombies.

I mean no offense. I remember that fear, too, when I first played the game. It was key to making the game memorable.

 

[madmole]

Hey madmole
In one of your latest videos it was visible in the crafting menu that there was a thing craftable called "Advanced Bellows". I think it was in the "shape menu"-Video. Does this combine into something like an advanced forge?

Having the forgetime hardcoded to the material amount was the absolute major drawback I found when trying to mod the game - I would absolutely love something like an industrial forge in ARK which is stupidly expensive for SP but gives you the feeling of actually working towars that giant crazy end game machine helping your material production SO much.

Thats just way cooler than building 20 forges and fill them all up manually.

Tl:dr: will there be anything like an Advanced Forge/Industrial Forge/Blast Furnace/Whatever in A18?

Thanks for a reply and also thanks for the great work!

Its a mod for the forge. We have mods that make smelt and craft faster.

 

[madmole]

MM Will there be a restriction in RWG so that Snow biome can't be beside or inside desert biome, and vice versa?

I'm not sure what the biome layout looks like, but I think snow is always opposite of desert.

 

[Ayrton]

Madmole, how are you? What's the team doing? Are you working on optimization or creating new things?

Can it be a video to show us new things?

We want to know what you are working on right now and if Faatal has new news? and Gazz?

 

[hotpoon]

It was never intended to have 300 levels its legacy crap. Eventually we'll put a level cap in probably and make people re-start to get every perk.

If you do that, I predict you are going to have a fair number of disgruntled players. Roland did a poll towards the beginning of A17...I can't remember the exact wording, but one of the poll questions was a choice between being able to learn all the perks by end game, and not. And the poll swung overwhelmingly towards people wanting to know everything rather than specialising.

I wish you guys would do more polls actually.

 

[madmole]

“Trader Jen has a deep voice.” Please, its time to fix it. Cannot stand deep voiced traders anymore.

We'll get to it.

 

[madmole]

As far as I know, it's fixed in Alpha 18.
I think it's a real pity. For me it was always hilarious to see how players react when they hear the deep voice for the first time.

No its not fixed.

 

[madmole]

I remember from one of your videos "bandits are coming to A15, so you better watch out!" Lol, time flies
Edit: found it

They looked ok standing there and then we got some performance and saw the crappy anims and AI and thought it would do more harm than good to release them in that state. Since then we stopped using UMA for NPCs.

I'm a slow learner. My enthusiasm gets us into trouble. They will come when they are ready.

 

[madmole]

I argue personally for me, my main issue is with crafting and not loot. My opinion is that loot is more abundant and this on a server with the default setting of 100%, and that's just due to the dungeon POI's and quests. I have all that loot but nothing to do with them other than scrap them into raw materials, sell them to a trader, sell them to NPC's via those rentable vending machines inside the trader settlement, or sell them to other players. Eventually, on my playthrough I have a stockpile of acid, what I exactly do I do with them now? Use them to craft a bunch of vehicles that I can't sell? Also, if you did have alternative crafting recipes for things like acid or raw material components. It would open playstyles for certain roles like those who decided on becoming the resource gathering, they could gather those materials in the previous quote, and decided whether they would rather take the risk of going out or spend time at their base crafting. I would find that as a survival challenge, you can choose to spend time waiting for something to craft but IF you go out and loot, you would find ammo, and other things necessary to survival.

I don't care how you try to rationalize it, trinkets will not be crafted. Go gather wood and coal for your team all you want. You still need to risk your neck finding the trinket in a zombie filled POI. We're not allowing people to go into a mine and craft the world.

 

[madmole]

They came to A15 but drove away on minibikes again when bloodmoon started. :cocksure:

And fell through the world, that is why they are gone.

 

[Ayrton]

They looked ok standing there and then we got some performance and saw the crappy anims and AI and thought it would do more harm than good to release them in that state. Since then we stopped using UMA for NPCs.
I'm a slow learner. My enthusiasm gets us into trouble. They will come when they are ready.

I have this video immortalized in my mind will not let me sleep several alphas later haha, I hope to see something in A20 the video is about 3 years old, I think it's time to work in the bandits that would totally change the game would add a lot of fun

 

[Miguel94]

Why complicate it to 1000 minerals? Thats just more icons taking space in your backpack.

It is not about 1000 minerals, but it would be more realistic and it would be more interesting to find more rare minerals and not always the same ones. In addition, realistically, some weapons, tools and other objects for crafting need those materials.

 

[Kalex]

MM Will there be a restriction in RWG so that Snow biome can't be beside or inside desert biome, and vice versa?

You do know it can snow in real life deserts right?

Here's one from this year in Arizona (where the game is set): https://mymodernmet.com/snow-in-arizona/

 

[Miguel94]

Madmole, could you tell me where I can learn to program with unity?

 

[Roland]

Madmole, could you tell me where I can learn to program with unity?

MadGoogle could tell you that pretty easily...

 

[Kalex]

“Trader Jen has a deep voice.” Please, its time to fix it. Cannot stand deep voiced traders anymore.

Why? Do you have a problem with trans people? Seriously though, there are cis-women who actually *do* have deep voices like that.

 

[Weazelsun]

If as you say you got stacks of acid you can't use for anything, why would you need a crafting recipe for acid?
For end game a few VERY expensive crafting recipes would be nice to have some use for all the stockpiles though. For example a blade trap with 40% more HPs but 4 times the cost of a normal one. Or a "golden gun turret" with 20% more damage but 4 times the build cost and a "platinum gun turret" with %40 more damage but 12 times the build cost, and so on. Nobody is forced to use them but they are what players would eventually build after they have everything else.

There, exactly, that what I was thinking, I just can't articulate things well.

 

[Weazelsun]

I don't care how you try to rationalize it, trinkets will not be crafted. Go gather wood and coal for your team all you want. You still need to risk your neck finding the trinket in a zombie filled POI. We're not allowing people to go into a mine and craft the world.

Legendary items incoming for A18. Confirmed. lol :strawberry:

 

[madmole]

but you AREN'T a "true rpg". You might be in alpha 25. But right now you are a sandbox survival with skillpoints. Nothing else has anything to do with and rpg. There is no story, there is no "interactive" world, you have no characteristics... nothing. And when di you play a sandbox and thought "huh... I just spent 200 hours building that awesome thing and gathering all those ressources with my hard work...

Lets just start from scratch and farm all that stuff again.

Please. If you have a story, npcs and a radient world, sure. Implement a skillcap.

But until then there is NO benefit in it, except that everyone is going to mod that skillcap out anyways.

AGAIN, AN RPG is about character progression and meaningful choice affecting the world or your character. Story can be a part of that but RPG is not exclusive to story elements. If we don't add a cap, then its not as much of an RPG, because everyone can become the same demi god over time.

We haven't even capped it yet. Its just an insanely high number, so again, lets quit these false alarm posts before we get another runaway thread I don't have time to read.

But posts like this make me want to cap it, just to prove I'm right and the game would be better for it. Which demi god is best would be a more interesting discussion, rather than all demi gods are the equal. With no cap they will all be the same one day if they grind, cheat or mod.

Right now our feeling is that most players will re-roll a new character as its more fun to have that new challenge than to play 2000 hours to reach level 300.