PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[madmole]

But... there are still loopholes, which circumvent your core gameplay loop. Treading water is one of them. It’s available to any player at any level for effectively no cost and nullifies virtually all gameplay threats. Boats may be fluff, but treading water is game breaking. So one can't consider the game gold without addressing it.
Sorry, I know that’s beyond A18 so we’re not supposed to talk about it anymore. But it’s worrisome to hear you make it sound like it’s just bandits and then polish, when it’s not. Fixing underground immunity took a lot more than polish to address, and unfortunately I suspect other loopholes will require similar effort.

I mean, there are solutions to appease the producer yelling at you to just get it done, like removing water blocks from the game. But even that means redesigning a significant part of Navezgane, and I don’t think anyone wants that.

That is an easy fix to make swimming require some stamina about like jogging does.

 

[SnowDog1942]

(camera adds 10 pounds Kage)

So does a few bags of salt and vinegar chips per week...mmmmmmm

 

[SnowDog1942]

Im trying to stay on topic here but it feels like all the known A18 info has been discussed to death. Dont get me wrong..I cant wait to play it. Is there any new info we can argue about next?

 

[madmole]

Okay, thanks for sharing your thought process on it. In other words, spikes are the run-of-the-mill 'Stone Age' traps that every player character can make, and unlike more advanced traps, nobody masters spikes.
But following that logic, why should you get XP for kills with a wooden club or wooden bow? These, too, are unspecialized Stone Age weapons. The game instructs every player to make them, and players don't master these, they master the more advanced weapons. Among primitive survivalists, hunting with weapons and hunting with traps are both valid strategies (not quite the same thing, but there are no zombie survivalists to consult ).

To be clear, I'm not trying to prove a point that spikes must earn XP. Rather, I’m trying to tease out if the underlying vision for what makes something worthy of earning XP is self-consistent.

There are perks for clubs. It takes some risk and skill to use them. Spikes are more of a passive defense that takes little effort to thin the herd. Its really a technical limit, your argument has some merit, I just have nightmares from the days when everyone crafted the log spikes and it was end game, I'd hate to see that return with xp on top of it.

 

[madmole]

fishing is very appealing. its something i look for in just about every survival type game. even fish traps would be cool. something you can craft. set in place and randomly catch fish. just dont know how that would work as a block in a voxel game though.

I made some in Conan. It felt like a waste of time and effort, then on top of that they degraded to nothing while I was offline. At the end of the day there's meat meat and more meat in that game, I saw no benefit to catching fish when there is meals on wheels coming at you constantly. Now compare it to 7 days, its literally the same, there are aggressive wolves, bears, mountain lions and bears trying to kill you, why would you fish when you have all this predator meat to eat? Until we get some specific food recipes that have x special effects regarding x meat ingredient I see it as fluff.

 

[meganoth]

Pretty sure you meant “easy”.Again, you are correct. Just like how any reasonable gamer who finds the game too easy would turn the difficulty up, one who finds it too hard would turn it down.

This is common sense... not seeing any issue at all.

Besides all that common sense there is one further fact though: There is a difficulty setting that is special, because it is the default. And this setting is surely the one almost every new player tries out first and then only changes if he is under- or overchallenged.

Therefore this setting should be balanced for the average new player. Depending on how much the developers want the overall difficulty of the game to be (minecraft has a different norm than Dark Souls, for example), this setting is relatively fixed.

And Kage848 is talking about this setting and you can really make statements like "too hard" or "too easy" about this setting. The same would be true for the lowest and hardest difficulty setting as well in a game with less config options and no moddability.

 

[SnowDog1942]

Until we get some specific food recipes that have x special effects regarding x meat ingredient I see it as fluff.

Dont look down on us fluffers. Its a valid career path.

I have a 12,000 dollar sofa.

 

[sillls]

I'd love to see boats, but the producers don't think we need them. Its a lot of work in a game that really has a lot of other things to do. LIke ok Ark has boats, and you can build a little mobile base, thats great. BUT, they don't have any meaningful POIS to explore. No cities, nothing really other than some caves and a few ruins that get old in 2 minutes. So for them where maybe they have more programmers than level designers it makes sense, we have more level heavy team so for us we focus on doing locations very well, no other survival game with random gen does it as well as we do IMO.
So its kind of a thing where we'd rather do what we do do really well than spread ourselves too thin and have another buggy ala carte feature added.

Will you be updating the water?

 

[sillls]

I think he was focused on boats. He knows water itself is currently not in a shippable state and they have a definite plan to address it before gold. They do want water they’ll be proud to put their name on.
Also I’m just waiting now for the conspiracy theorists to start talking about the mysterious “Producers”....

You mean besides the idea that they are from space?

But really, this is a first for me. The producers... Were did that come from?

Yes I know Madmole said it but still...

 

[The Gronk]

You mean besides the idea that they are from space?
But really, this is a first for me. The producers... Were did that come from?

Yes I know Madmole said it but still...

My guess would be Bialystock and Bloom

 

[Death2gnomes]

I made some in Conan. It felt like a waste of time and effort, then on top of that they degraded to nothing while I was offline. At the end of the day there's meat meat and more meat in that game, I saw no benefit to catching fish when there is meals on wheels coming at you constantly. Now compare it to 7 days, its literally the same, there are aggressive wolves, bears, mountain lions and bears trying to kill you, why would you fish when you have all this predator meat to eat? Until we get some specific food recipes that have x special effects regarding x meat ingredient I see it as fluff.

The conan server was set up as PVP so decay setting was on, which is why your stuff faded away when you stopped logging in. Fish was needed for oils in blacksmithing and armor crafting, maybe a couple other things, idk.

Crafting is so much simpler in 7d, it doesnt take away from the more important stuff, like killing zombies. :cocksure:

 

[betam4x]

There are perks for clubs. It takes some risk and skill to use them. Spikes are more of a passive defense that takes little effort to thin the herd. Its really a technical limit, your argument has some merit, I just have nightmares from the days when everyone crafted the log spikes and it was end game, I'd hate to see that return with xp on top of it.

The stick looking spikes were fun in the (really) old alphas. One wrong step and...SPLAT! (Not advocating anything here, just reminiscing. )

 

[betam4x]

I made some in Conan. It felt like a waste of time and effort, then on top of that they degraded to nothing while I was offline. At the end of the day there's meat meat and more meat in that game, I saw no benefit to catching fish when there is meals on wheels coming at you constantly. Now compare it to 7 days, its literally the same, there are aggressive wolves, bears, mountain lions and bears trying to kill you, why would you fish when you have all this predator meat to eat? Until we get some specific food recipes that have x special effects regarding x meat ingredient I see it as fluff.

Joel I think what you are seeing are the people that enjoy a more Minecraft type experience vs People who want a PvP or hardcore FPS. The issue that the you guys are having is that you are attempting to walk the line between both crowds, especially as they argue between each other on the forums.

Some of us like a more relaxed experience. Build a base, deal with a few zombies, scavenge for supplies, etc. Others want a constant arcade style in-your-face type experience. Maybe a good solution here is having a preset that pertains to each crowd. "Relaxed" and "Hardcore" or something. An "Advanced" button could be provided for those who want to tweak things. Relaxed would lower the amount of zombies, and make things more adventure/exploration focused. Sleepers could be cut by 50% or maybe more, and more emphasis placed on scavenging/survival. Hardcore would have the normal amount of zombies/sleepers/things that want to kill you, with less emphasis on scavenging/survival. Just a wild thought.

Other thoughts: I still would like to see XP for discovering new towns, and having other 'survivor' NPCs that are friendly that give out quests or general gossip would be pretty cool as well. Maybe incorporate traders/npcs into cities/towns along with zombies. They would just live inside barricaded buildings or something. Could also have bandits as well.

 

[madmole]

Cool, but I feel like a 'before' shot would really drive it home.

Imagine it black with the light behind the wall.

 

[vicflo]

I made some in Conan. It felt like a waste of time and effort, then on top of that they degraded to nothing while I was offline. At the end of the day there's meat meat and more meat in that game, I saw no benefit to catching fish when there is meals on wheels coming at you constantly. Now compare it to 7 days, its literally the same, there are aggressive wolves, bears, mountain lions and bears trying to kill you, why would you fish when you have all this predator meat to eat? Until we get some specific food recipes that have x special effects regarding x meat ingredient I see it as fluff.

I agree with all of the 100%. it is sort of a personal preference as a lot of my gaming buddies are outdoorsmen/fishermen. Its usually the only meat source you can become a hermit as you can just build a shelter over a body of water.

which is funny. because my group all play conan and 7 days together and game hop between major patches. 7days has longer playability

 

[madmole]

Hey guys, sorry if this was explained before.
When generating a new quest, how does the game know when a poi can be reset?

What if the poi chosen is someone's base? Does the game check for sleeping bags and claims? What if I have multiple bases and currently I have no active sleeping bag in that poi? What if I just use a poi to drop some valuable loot in a chest, and then the poi is reset?

If you don't have a bedroll or a land claim down then do not leave valuables in POIs. Its reset when you click the exclamation mark outside.

 

[madmole]

Sorry to be so horrible off topic but how can I tell my fat %?

Get a body fat scale on amazon, the one I have is "feelfit" and its 35 bucks. Or you can use calipers to pinch your fat in various locations and use online guides, but the scale is a no brainer, tracks muscle weight, water weight, fat weight, tracks it over time with graphs all on your iphone. It fluctuates a bit but over the long term is good enough.

 

[madmole]

this will be editable via xml or not?i already turn down to 75% the xp (and thinking to go down to 50%) because i level too fast, trap farming xp seems to me an easy way to level up

Leveling is way slower in A18 and there is an XP slider if you don't like the defaults.

 

[madmole]

Then we'd need rum.
"Why is the rum always gone? Oh! That's why"

Gazz drank it all. Thats the currency we pay him in.

 

[madmole]

So your saying your saying the Cats down in the garage with only 300 miles on it and already needs new tires? OMG

700 horses is a terrible thing for tires. TBH the anti traction keep it from burning too much rubber like the old mopars I had. It pretty much just shoves your head back into the seat and you go.