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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With the nerf to ammo, no more steel ammo, some of us were upset because brass is not common enough. Madmoles answer, at least one of them, was to wrench cars and get all brass at a poi, then reset it for a quest.
They seem to balancing the game around this mechanic. It should stay. You still have to work to clear it, what's the big deal? If I clear a poi, then reset it for a quest, or loot the house next door then do the quest what's the difference?

Immersion I guess. It's a good point. But I'll take fun balanced gameplay over immersion anyday.
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Not a very good idea to balance brass availability around this kind of mechanic. In my opinion the default gameplay should not have any renewing resources that not could grow back. So plants and trees and other natural things regrowing (such as nests), animals respawning etc would be ok, but sealed pre-apocalyptic loot boxes, cars or doorknobs should not in any way. This includes loot respawn by the way. On servers some of these mechanics could exist because of the limited world size, but for single player any given world (4, 8 or 16k) is big enough to play for a long time and have all the resources needed without the need to balance around stuff magically appearing in the world again.

But it probably will not be done...

 
I've only recently noticed that there are no cosmetic gloves in the game (as in, ones that only provide heat/cold resist), only gloves that count as armor (and plant fiber gloves)... O.o :p
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Somewhere I have a leather glove skin I could hook up but at the time felt it was useless as there is leather armored gloves. I could call them farming gloves or something. Its just a texture swap for the UMA hand.

 
ty for the answer. all true, yet its hard for me to be immersed in the Apocalypse when a whole POI magically get fixed, and filled with goodies and zombies in-front of me during my SP experience. ;)
and when the game goes gold i hope that if i ever encounter a huge yellow "!" in-game its some zombie in a football mascot suit that i can shoot in the face. :angel:
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We might go with a faction flags for the quest marker, players are really stupid so we chose something super obvious for the first version.

 
This isn't confirmed, but brass radiators may be also obtained by wrenching air conditioning units in A18.

- - - Updated - - -

Hey, some of us want 1000+ steel within one in-game day because we leave everything to the last minute. XD (Yes, I crafted 20 forges recently and had them all burning. XD

 
Feedback on spears

After watching last night's steam on Alpha-18: https://t.co/YPTdwRfRz4?amp=1 I wanted to add my comments on the new spears.

It just seems weird to see someone throw a spear, only to pull it out of a target and throw it again. I could see it used to take something out at a distance, but not something in melee range. I mean you can but why would you want to?

It may be better to make there thrust more powerful than thrown. Think about it, when you throw a spear, you use one arm and it has to fly to a target, losing energy.

Once it hits, all the kinetic energy is used up.

A thrusted spear on the other hand, the player may use both arms, which would add more power.

Plus the person thrusting would be pushing forward, adding there body weight and forward motion to follow through on the thrust.

That right there would add a lot of power over something thrown, even knock them back.

 
So my take on the stream: A18 seems waaaay more polished and fleshed out than a17, which is good.
Ore deposits (especially the borg ship lead deposit) is really toooooo gamey. At laest sink them into the ground (had two independent people suggest that in conversations, and it sounds like a good idea) halfway, or cover them up with grass, something to make them not stick out like a giant red quest marker.

...but if that's my ONLY complaint based on what I saw? Damn good job pimps. Damn good.
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Na, you are wrong. Lead looks like that IRL, and they are WAY too abundant right now. Once we thin them out you will thank me that they stick out, otherwise it could be another stone boulder off in the distance.

 
Na, you are wrong. Lead looks like that IRL, and they are WAY too abundant right now. Once we thin them out you will thank me that they stick out, otherwise it could be another stone boulder off in the distance.
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It may look like that when it is mined out of the rock, but it is not yet mined out right (or did this one fall of a mining transport truck?). Just add a -0.25 Yoffset to it and maybe have some stone underneath instead. You might thank me later.

 
I'm kinda worried about how washed out and ugly this game is starting to look. I know you are trying to theme the game but can you add a little bit of color to the pois and stop trying to make things deppressing with a washed out color pallets. The clouds look grey like you have sunglasses on. turn up the vibrancy for god sake.
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You should look at the screens I've posted, the sky is very vibrant. Not that it matters, its all going to change a lot when we switch to linear color space in A19.

We're going for a dusty, cracked apocalyptic depressing theme. Always have been. The game palette looks the same as it did 6 years ago if you squint your eyes.

Its still got plenty of color: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D_I1QIWUIAA2MZR?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

We did recently change the reflection probe so this might be making things look a little blown out at times. The gamma lighting definitely makes things look blown out and removes some saturation.

 
We might go with a faction flags for the quest marker, players are really stupid so we chose something super obvious for the first version.
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...going to love watching the overreaction from the haters on this post...

Re lead deposits: they're cubes. Borg ships. Lead may look like that material (it does) but definitely not that shape. Just saying, it's pretty weird. Dollar says y'all change it. :)

 
Look at the Walking Dead, sunshine and nice weather, post-apocalypse, a virus doesn't change weather, end of story.
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Unless you are being sarcastic, you are so wrong its not even funny. They deliberately choose desaturated dirty old clothing for the zombies so they are clearly undead. On top of that they post process it with a sepia toned filter to make it look desaturated, depressing and ominous.

https://www.tvinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/FTWD_506_RG_0211_0459_RT-1-1014x570.jpg

https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/cb05dcb21fb7203e67813c7c64b9b346014bc48d/c=0-185-3600-2219/local/-/media/2016/02/15/USATODAY/USATODAY/635910975427054576-The-Walking-Dead-zombies.jpg?width=3200&height=1680&fit=crop

https://www.thewrap.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/the-walking-dead-twd-talking-zombies-whisperers-jesus.jpg

https://imagesvc.timeincapp.com/v3/fan/image?url=https://undeadwalking.com/files/2017/07/FTWD_501_RG_1212_0435_RT.jpg&c=sc&w=850&h=560

 
Re colors: Yeh I thought the colors were fine. (Shrug)

Besides, it's not just post apocalyptic it's also post-nuclear.

 
With the nerf to ammo, no more steel ammo, some of us were upset because brass is not common enough. Madmoles answer, at least one of them, was to wrench cars and get all brass at a poi, then reset it for a quest.
They seem to balancing the game around this mechanic. It should stay. You still have to work to clear it, what's the big deal? If I clear a poi, then reset it for a quest, or loot the house next door then do the quest what's the difference?

Immersion I guess. It's a good point. But I'll take fun balanced gameplay over immersion anyday.
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We will always reset the POI when you take the quest. Probably just not in front of your face like now. So in theory you could clear that house before its given to you as a quest, then clear it again after you got the quest, just not like you can now twice straight in a row right in front of your eyes.

 
Since you're up:

Do spears have a chance of breaking like arrows?

Are there any new hooks in the quest XML?

Have y'all considered modifying the retrieval rate for spears, appears it is too quick? They were grabbing them sometimes even before the spears actually hit the zombies, and the hit registered...

 
Farmer's gloves could be a grand addition! (:

Just a suggestion, but biker's gloves could be an interesting addition. ^^ Having gloves that are cosmetic/offer weather protection aren't necessary of course, it's just one of those "quirks" I noticed (the lack of them outside of armor-based ones, and plant fiber gloves). :p

Edit: If you're going for set bonuses for attire in A18 like it is rumored (but I may be incorrect on this one), maybe with the biker's gloves (complete with a biker's set?) could be increased damage reduction when riding a bike, for example. (Damage would be taken when zombies swing at a player while they, the player, is mounted on a vehicle.) Or they could just be standalone like the High Performance Running Shoes or whatever they are called. Again, just tossing ideas. :3

 
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So I am currently watching the streams you guys did... and MM said that you get 50xp for a book (if you have already read it). But you didnt really lower the xp.

So 50xp is laughable. Books should be valuable. They shouldnt be one time items. Make them 5000xp ... if that is too much 2500. But it needs to give more than a small group of zombies. It is so rare, it would be so sad to find a book you already have, because you need the other ones.

If it is 2500 you can at least go "oh yeah xp!" instead of "oh cman already got this! SCRAP!" 50xp is nothing. That is 5 fists on cotton or 5 seconds with an auger/chainsaw. Even if you found 20 up to day 40 every time it would be a super rare item (on par with weapons, probably still rarer). And it should be rewarding. So if you have 7/20 books you do not feel like "ugh gotta go search for these books even though i probably only scrap them".

To explain further:

first find: permanent bonus that stays with you and is worth skillpoints.

second+ find: 5 seconds of hitting cotton

2500+ xp (depending on rarity even up to 10000 just to really reward you for wasting oyur time looting bookshelves when you already have a majority of books)
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Dude drop it. Books already rain you in super powers they don't need to give you a ton of XP on top of it.

 
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