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 think you will like it. We're modeling really nice surface ore models which make it easy to find the underground ore mines. Underneath it is voxel ore (marching cubes). So even if someone mines the surface ore boulder the terrain voxel ore is visible (just harder to see). The in ground ore gives more than the fancy surface rock, so hopefully most players will dig it down and not just cob all the surface ore.
The old generic stones will probably just drop stone and a bit of iron. There will be ample deposits to find now. I'll show it once its ready, we just pulled the trigger on getting the surface ore today, the ore piles were still too hard to find. This will solve it once and for all.
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Oh wow:tickled_pink: Great reading things like this that make me look forward to the new alpha:applouse: Thank you!

 
not sure if rage also increases their rate of taking swings at you. A quick switch from spear to club might be helpful... though I also do not know how fast weapon switching will be either.
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For sure the new weapons and physics are involved.

Dunno either, raging is supposed to be not only walking few steps faster, but include the need for brains, too.

Its gonna be good i can bet.

 
As said many times before, the game engine can't stand a big number of entities, so that would mean the zombies would literally kill your fps. BM nights would just become veeeeery long/slow.So at the end, the many Zeds would kill the fun because of lack of performance.
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I understand that part and hence I suggest to alternative making game stage harder. Currently we have setitng of 4 or 8 or 12 zed on Horde night and we can make room by making those setting 3, 7, 11, 14 etc .. so making room for extra. One less for regular doesn't hurt him.. and with current setting it remain same.

Even as third alternative we can make Zed stronger instead of more count. So they do more block damage etc. like 200% more or proportion to how much you fail to kill.

If you don't like BM, they already have setting to remove it. But if you want BM, then in game it is good way to make it "forced upon player" on choice :) . IF you want to skip on night skip it, but then you cannot skip all nights.

 
I've played without a compass and it does force you to use the sun and landmarks more which is cool. Sometimes the way the terrain bends can get you turned around so that if you don't have a heading always in front of your eyes you can easily get off course.
I think it would be fun to have to wait to see the compass until we could find/craft one and equip it. I think that it is also a pretty common way to do it in other games. If not an item, a perception perk that enables it.

It is very easy to test for anyone interested. Just press F7 and start exploring.
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+1

Orientation IS big part of any survival situation and would be good to have it in a challanging way.

 
This effect shouldn't last to the next bloodmoon though
1) Players who barely manage to stave off a BM horde or get overwhelmed get an even bigger horde in the next BM while players who are already not challenged enough get even less zombies.

2) Players who skip building a base for the first bloodmoons get an especially hard horde on their first BM when their base might have still some unresolved design-problems.
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#1, the idea is to kill or get killed. Player might be under prepared on first night and hence it is his fault. He get more prepared. He change his style and come out of comfort zone. By making vehicle not starting and no way to runaway, is doing the same. But it is forcing to fight on every attempt, but this idea make it only on second.

#2 For player who don't get challenge enough, won't see difference, as they play now. they still get higher game stage and same game play for them.

#3 again if you are not prepare on first or second you are not prepare ever.. it is still better than forcing you to fight

 
Is your opinion based on something? Have you conducted a poll? Made a survey? Link? Or is it solely based on your personal bias?


This will hopefully breath some life into combat. But much more could be done to make zombies more organic. Small random default speed deviations, random stumbling, random getting up time, random animations using the bite animation as well, with a slightly different hitbox etc.
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I did suggest replacing the stock crawler zombies with non-crawlers that have suffered a dismemberment on spawning. Would add to variety with an easy implementation. Read it

here: https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?118578-Suggestion-maimed-zombies

 
Okay so a few of us have been playing with this mod or variants of this mod for a while...
...the net result is two fold.

First, the little speed increase when they're coming towards you adds a little challenge when trying for timing, but nothing you can't handle on 1v1.

Where it really shines is in wandering hordes.

You know how currently you can pick one off at a time after they conga line, and wandering hordes are ZERO challenge, no matter the count?

Well now, when you knock one down and move on to another, you have to be wary of the 1, 2, or even 3 that are gonna charge you from the middle of the pack.

It's epic gameplay, and like Tin said, get the mods to get a sneak peak preview.
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Isn't that only the case if you damage multiple zombies at the same time? It seems this speed-boost is triggered by that.. So if you pick off one zombie at a time, I don't think anything changes.

 
Why do you want boats when water is 2% of the map?
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Why do you need to have BloodMoon hordes when the time they show up is only 3.5% of the time in a week?

When playing with only a 7th day horde of course.. you get my point.

 
I agree. After the death scene where the zombies are shown EATING YOU, I cant pretend I got away from that! :)
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Just imagine it's like the movie Halloween, except directed by M. Night Shyamalan. So instead of Michael Myers being unkillable, the protagonist is. What a twist!

 
Why do you need to have BloodMoon hordes when the time they show up is only 3.5% of the time in a week?
When playing with only a 7th day horde of course.. you get my point.
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Not exactly a fair analogy now, is it? A blood moon is relevant to the game. It attacks you, damages your base, is actively your enemy, rewards you, etc. Water is... water. Sure, add boats, now make water be a 20% of the map, and then... what? You got water and you got a boat. Nothing more. They'd have to invest a lot just to add semi-decent water content. Not worth it, in my opinion. 7dtd is not a game geared for water biomes.

 
That's a quick fix but a better long term one would be finding a watch and a compass that would then add the UI elements. I'm not a UI guy so maybe it's doable via modding, but I doubt it because someone would have definitely done it.
Because it would be awesome.
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Makes no sense about the compass, press M and you know it all.

 
I agree. After the death scene where the zombies are shown EATING YOU, I cant pretend I got away from that! :)
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Just do it like most TV shows do. Pretend it was a nightmare. You barely escaped but left your backpack there. Everything else was only a bad dream :)

 
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Isn't that only the case if you damage multiple zombies at the same time? It seems this speed-boost is triggered by that.. So if you pick off one zombie at a time, I don't think anything changes.
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That's what I thought at first but apparently the rage can also be triggered when one zombie hits another.

The zombies have different speeds and sometimes it happens that some zombies push in front of each other. You can also observe this when several zombies break open a door. Sometimes it is so extreme that one zombie is pushed by the other through the closed door.

 
Not exactly a fair analogy now, is it? A blood moon is relevant to the game. It attacks you, damages your base, is actively your enemy, rewards you, etc. Water is... water. Sure, add boats, now make water be a 20% of the map, and then... what? You got water and you got a boat. Nothing more. They'd have to invest a lot just to add semi-decent water content. Not worth it, in my opinion. 7dtd is not a game geared for water biomes.
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Adding a simple boat/raft is an absurdly simple task, that could be done in a few hours. Let's make it a full day if you wanna test it extensively. So yes, very worth it.

 
Hmm. Well...
If this is a serious answer and not an excuse... if XP for spike kills are compatible with your design goals, and the problem really is only technical...

...Then you could give the 'shared XP' value to any player that's near a zombie when it dies. Period. Don't even track what killed the zombie. Ignore the block involved.

This sounds radical, and requires a change of thinking. "But what if a zombie dies from walking into a cactus? Or falling down a naturally occurring ravine? The player didn’t do anything to cause that and shouldn’t get credit for it."

But let's think about it. If the player steers or funnels or 'tricks' a zombie into hurting itself on something they didn't craft themselves... didn't the player still do the key part? Which part of that interaction is more worth rewarding: the wood-chopping, spike-crafting, block-placing part; or the 'finding a way to dispatch the zombie' part? You already get some XP for those first parts. There will be the occasional freebie where a zombie really does die through nothing a player did. But I would say 99 times out of 100, zombies die because of something the player did.

Even the exploits that would crop up would arguably not really be exploits. If you steer a zombie into the existing traps in an unmodified POI (which would only be unpowered), or even into your enemy's defenses in PvP... that's not exploiting. You're still reacting to and taking steps to counter the zombie problem, just in a more resourceful, Macaulay Culkin-type way than we're used to. And if killing zombies merits a pat on the back in the form of XP in the first place... you might as well do that in a way that doesn't pick and choose which ways are 'right'.
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I thought of this too when MM stated this. And it would be a valid way of doing it that would probably ease the serverload... but it would also take time to rewrite the code... :-/

 
@TFP

Currently there are keybinds that can't be duplicated for instance you can't have toggle flashlight under movement and toggle lights under vehicles bound to the same key so it makes using lights a pain in the ass. Would you fix it so you can use the same keybind for multiple similar functions under different circumstances so for instance the ability to use "O" to toggle both the flashlight while on foot and toggle the lights on a vehicle while using it that way you don't have to have more than one keybind to do the same similar function where you have "O" to toggle lights on foot and then "P" to toggle lights on vehicles.

Thanks

 
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Pressing O or P takes exactly the same amount of energy and time. How is that a "pain in the ass"? Having trouble remembering 2 diff keys (you can set yourself)?

Cheers

 
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