PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[andrough]

So just to be clear, you're saying a food/water display on the HUD is superfluous clutter in a survival game? Can you name a survival game aside from this one that doesn't display it on your HUD somewhere? It seems like a pretty standard feature of the genre to me, and it certainly isn't useless clutter. It's an important piece of information that people should be able to easily reference and understand. Maybe showing the penalty thresholds is too much, I can understand why you'd think that, but it's hardly a "fighter jet HUD," that's a pretty extreme exaggeration.And while I understand that you're very proud of being diligent about reading the journal entries, most people aren't. Typically in games "journal entries" are lore and background information, not necessary to understand the UI, which should be intuitive. Plus, as I pointed out before, even being aware of how the current display works doesn't solve the problem of needing to check the menu to see your actual food/water levels.

'Very proud', huh. I wanted to point out to him that statements like "everybody does..." or "nobody does..." do not work. Because nobody is everybody and vice versa. I think this applies to your generalizations of games, too. Why should it be only lore and background info? Why do all games have to show you everything because some do?

I don't really want to research games to tell you how other games work to somehow justify my opinion, but I think it's good for immersion to not have a bunch arbitrary values for everything in my face all the time.

The only penalty there ever was to over-eating was waste, and TFP were generous enough to allow over-filling so I don't really understand the need for precision in the first place.

I like to pant when I'm thirsty or out of stamina and rumble when I'm hungry. I never check the menu for those values and I never starve. I drink when the yellow icon comes up and it's no big deal at all to spend an inventory slot on a stack of liquid or to keep some in a vehicle. But that is just me and I'm not gonna assume others prescribe to the ways I like to play. Thankfully, tfp have made all the info accessible AND have allowed us to mod what we want into the game.

 

[Roland]

Haha...touche!

I’m more than a little curious what this was in reference to.

 

[Roland]

Yeah that's the next best thing. At least that way you wouldn't have to stop what you're doing in order to check. Not my personal ideal, but better than what we have now.


So just to be clear, you're saying a food/water display on the HUD is superfluous clutter in a survival game? Can you name a survival game aside from this one that doesn't display it on your HUD somewhere? It seems like a pretty standard feature of the genre to me, and it certainly isn't useless clutter. It's an important piece of information that people should be able to easily reference and understand. Maybe showing the penalty thresholds is too much, I can understand why you'd think that, but it's hardly a "fighter jet HUD," that's a pretty extreme exaggeration.

And while I understand that you're very proud of being diligent about reading the journal entries, most people aren't. Typically in games "journal entries" are lore and background information, not necessary to understand the UI, which should be intuitive. Plus, as I pointed out before, even being aware of how the current display works doesn't solve the problem of needing to check the menu to see your actual food/water levels.

Look, none of this is super important, it's just a minor QoL thing, and the current system is fine for people who aren't hyper vigilant about avoiding hunger/thirst penalties. People like me will live pressing B every so often, or downloading a mod. The rest can just eat and drink whenever the icon appears, or their max stamina dips, or however they see fit to handle it.

Apologies if this topic has derailed the thread, I didn't think a hunger/thirst display on the hud of a survival game would be controversial. Anyway, I've said my piece and I'm just going to let it go now.

Back to A18 hype everyone!

Lol...this might go on all weekend at this point. If so, you can take credit for the next dev diary purge.

I don’t believe there is a single survival game that doesn’t display hunger or thirst—including this one...

Hunger is right there in blue. Thirst is right there in how quickly the blue refills

 

[Phoenixshade35]

I will admit, at first when i began playing this game i thought it was weird that those values were not on the screen, but back in a15 it would always ping on screen when it dropped by 25%, that was cool and easy to work with, now it has changed to a water icon that is yellow as well as the stamina bar not being at max, so your hungry by a certain degree, i like it how it is, easy to work with, though i think the water shows up a little early if you as me, like when it says i should drink im still at 80% lol, nothing major but hey, it works well.

 

[RestInPieces]

[...]

I don’t believe there is a single survival game that doesn’t display hunger or thirst—including this one...

Hunger is right there in blue. Thirst is right there in how quickly the blue refills

Only saw that image, didn't have time to read and I agree with the concept. It's not that you will starve if you don't look at the menu but *sometimes* you are compelled to open the menu to look at the values and that doesn't have to happen.

They could replace the lines with discrete, transparent icons of stomachs/faces/whatever that indicate the point of the change, or change the tint of the blue to indicate thirst stages for example. The art of UI is showing as much information as possible in an intuitive way without clutter. They don't have to add 999 bars to do it, like they claim they have to, just find minimal ways to convey the information.

 

[Roland]

The only penalty of thirst (until it reaches zero at any rate) is that it slows the rate at which stamina refills. If you don’t really notice that your stamina is refilling slowly and you’re not having any problems with doing stamina related actions then you don’t need to drink. When the orange teardrop appears it isn’t critical to drink especially if you didn’t really notice a slowing of the refill rate.

Thirst really is a simple and non threatening status unless you ignore it way past the orange teardrop icon.

Hunger affects how much stamina you have to work with. I’d say you can still be pretty effective with only 90% max stamina and it is very apparent that your max is lower at that point which is still before any orange warning icon appears. Having 150 fullness carries no added benefit over 100 fullness other than the amount of time you’ll have the tru maximum amount of stamina available for your actions.

 

[Callum123456789]

Keeping cans non-craftable is a much better idea. When players have the ability to have everything without going out and searching for items kills pvp. Not being able to craft cans makes players get out and search for cans to make repair kits which are heavily relied on to break in bases with. My recommendation would be make more items such as guns, anything valuable including augers non-craftable. Btw i have 13500+ hours playing this game so please dont tell me "valuable items should be craftable." Ive seen first hand from thousands of players though out the last few years to know that is not the case.
thanks

I mean if we can make wheels guns and rocket launchers doesn't it make sense to create something such as a simple empty can?

I really do understand where you are coming from but I think it would make much more sense because remember you will have to dig for a while for the oil shales and with all the things we can craft lately I think if we can create like steel and iron we should be able to mold our materials to make a can remember though to make all the resources it isn't just the oil you need things like duct tape mechanical parts scrap polymers etc.

 

[Guppycur]

If you have to explain a status bar and how and what it shows, it has already failed.

 

[ecv]

This info isn't correct. You can connect two power sources in A17 and surrounding a base with an electric fence is trivial.

You can not connect two power sources. Unless you count the battery bank as a power source because you can draw power from it :') it's still just a consumer though

 

[Roland]

If you have to explain a status bar and how and what it shows, it has already failed.

I really like the interplay between hunger and stamina and thirst and recovery rate and wounds that heal naturally but more serious wounds that require medical attention. Once the status bars are understood they very elegantly convey all of that.

They are a bit more complex than simple separate bars would be and I hope they don’t get dumbed down....

 

[Laz Man]

I’m more than a little curious what this was in reference to.

Pille's comment about the ingame quest marker...

- - - Updated - - -

I really like the interplay between hunger and stamina and thirst and recovery rate and wounds that heal naturally but more serious wounds that require medical attention. Once the status bars are understood they very elegantly convey all of that.
They are a bit more complex than simple separate bars would be and I hope they don’t get dumbed down....

How about something like this?

Seems to work for the medical field lol...

 

[Mechanimal]

If you have to explain a status bar and how and what it shows, it has already failed.

Yeah, must agree that is true, and the most important point. Having to dig through menu tabs to get such a basic and relevant stat is a design flaw, or just a bad decision that they refuse to change. Every single mod I have ever played adds them both. Every. Single. One. I recently played a MP game in A17 vanilla with a bunch of noobs, after a few times trying to explain it, they never quite understood, I just told them to deal with it the way I do and constantly over eat and over drink.

I thought this topic had been beaten to death already, remember it came up in a big way in the A17 dev blog last year. I just gave up and gave in on it due to exhaustion myself. I've adapted, and will deal if it stays the way it is. But it's still hard to shake the feeling that you're just burying a flaw every time so you can go back to enjoying the game.

 

[Guppycur]

I really like the interplay between hunger and stamina and thirst and recovery rate and wounds that heal naturally but more serious wounds that require medical attention. Once the status bars are understood they very elegantly convey all of that.
They are a bit more complex than simple separate bars would be and I hope they don’t get dumbed down....

A better example of "dumbed down" is combining two completely seperate stats.

(C+ for effort though)

 

[madmole]

Strafe does not equal lean.
Minimizing ones visibility by only exposing their head/upper torso vs whole body should be part of the stealth if its not already, especially for PVP.

I know. You can't lean in Rust, the best selling Pvp game on steam, so I don't think we need it. Hide in the ghillie suit if you want to be a creep in pvp.

 

[madmole]

I just got done watching the video where Joel shows off the reorganized perks, and while this might be old news to most, I have to say I'm pretty excited for the new perk structure. I think it's a vast improvement over the current system. Instead of feeling like you have to spread your points between the different stats, you'll really feel like you can deeply specialize in one particular tree, enhancing the feeling of playing a particular role, being a particular character, and filling a particular need in the group.
The one and only concern I have about it is armor.

I feel like most people will want to use armor of some kind, and that it's a little limiting to have it only in fortitude and agility. Sure, you can dump a few points into them in order to get 2-3 points in one of the armor perks so it's not completely useless to you, but it still seems to me like those perks ought to be available to multiple trees. Maybe heavy armor could be a "shared" perk between strength and fortitude, and light armor for perception and agility.

What I mean by shared is that you can level the perk in either tree, but progress and prereqs are shared for both. This way you wouldn't be able to put a point in from strength and another from fortitude to get 2 points worth of effect out of it, instead once you put 1 point into it in either tree, it's now listed as having 1 point in both trees, but you only get the effect of 1 perk level, and you'd have to increase either strength OR fortitude in order to unlock the next point.

This way you prevent double dipping, but still allow multiple "classes" access to armor perks.

I don't think this is necessary or anything, I'm just trying to think in terms of the stated design goals, and I think the way it is now will result in most players feeling like they need to dip into fort/agi for armor perks.

I don't know if this additional functionality would be difficult to program, or if it would even solve the problem, or if TFP even considers it a problem. I'm no game programmer, I'm just a humble paper pusher irl, but that's my 2 cents anyway!

Its by design to use 2-3 attributes and have them maxed out and all the perks you want under them maxed out. Its convenient to specialize in one, but armor is pretty good without any perks at all, and going unarmored is totally doable as well.

 

[Mechanimal]

Yeah, lean is not necessary in this game, agree. In R6 Siege for example it is super important, but that game has a very different feel and purpose to it. Plus the usual buttons for it, Q and E, are not really available, E surely isn't, and I would not want to use any other keys for it than those.

 

[andrough]

If you have to explain a status bar and how and what it shows, it has already failed.

I'm pretty sure I disagree a little here. Not because I don't agree that UI's can and should be elegant and intuitive. I mostly agree there. But intuitive assumes some common sense and prerequisite knowledge of other games/UI's. When I developed training regimens for another job, I found it best to assume there is no such thing as common sense/prereqs other than the hiring criteria. It's not a fault on someone if they don't have some piece of "common sense" and doesn't always mean they are some sort of idiot that can't learn- maybe they just have unique thought processes or it's just something completely new to them. Providing the information doesn't mean everyone will need it to function or that those that do need it have failed somehow.

How do you introduce a mechanic never seen before? Hunger and hydration being tied to stamina is new to me in a game and I like it a lot because being hungry and thirsty affecting my stamina is intuitive. Is it fair to use common aspects of ui design and assume people should just get it right away? I probably wouldn't play any video games any more if it wasn't for how much I enjoy this one.

As far as elegance, I think it may happen organically throughout the development and we still have a bit to go before gold. If I was developing a new mechanic, I would work out details and testing as much as possible before setting out on presentation.

I really like the interplay between hunger and stamina and thirst and recovery rate and wounds that heal naturally but more serious wounds that require medical attention. Once the status bars are understood they very elegantly convey all of that.
They are a bit more complex than simple separate bars would be and I hope they don’t get dumbed down....

Speaking of elegant, I should have waited to see this reply as you have elegantly stated the point about the interplay that I like.

 

[madmole]

Keeping cans non-craftable is a much better idea. When players have the ability to have everything without going out and searching for items kills pvp. Not being able to craft cans makes players get out and search for cans to make repair kits which are heavily relied on to break in bases with. My recommendation would be make more items such as guns, anything valuable including augers non-craftable. Btw i have 13500+ hours playing this game so please dont tell me "valuable items should be craftable." Ive seen first hand from thousands of players though out the last few years to know that is not the case.
thanks

There are a million reasons to go looting in A18.

 

[Callum123456789]

MADMOLE there was someone who said they should remain uncraftable do you agree because if we can craft guns I questioned why we couldn't craft empty cans

I had also stated that if we could craft advanced materials why couldn't we craft a simple can?

 

[unlike them]

I like the idea about displaying the number of MF bugs in the poll. This way we get us our 'release date' and MM doesn't get the blame when the 'promised' date is delayed.

Roland, I'm writing a steam review right now, so do your part.