PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[madmole]

As far as the look of the minerals, I like em, gamey or not. I'm playing a game, so I'm fine with them. I like they really look unique and easy to tell the difference between.
As far as the stream, I'm less interested in watching a team completely spoil a new poi, and more interested in the back end, where they just show the new additions, the demolisher, burning fuses, and the landscape. We've heard a lot about the new rwg engine, but have only seen a handful of stills and seen it in the background in videos like last night.

It WAS good to see how the spear works, but going through a large poi was probably not a great playthrough choice. I'd rather have seen each player go in a different direction towards a city, so we could see the diversity, and what they encounter.

As far as color choices, 5 years ago everything was just grays and browns. SO many games did that there was a player backlash wanted more color diversity again, and that brought us great things like Horizon Zero Dawn's color palette.

Post apocalyptic doesn't have to look unpleasant.

I tried to tell them that it would have been better if they all went separate ways in different biomes but maybe they thought the social dynamics are better teamed up.

 

[madmole]

Galena lead ore does look like the model theyre using. Trust me on my rocks

Exactly. I did my research over multiple alphas on this. People complain and they are just uneducated. We don't just slap random things in, I put a lot of work into researching things before we add them to the game and try to ground everything in reality as much as possible, and only break those rules when it doesn't serve the gameplay god, which is always king.

 

[Trankitas]

First hands on new death penalty:
Last night was day 41 pretty early. I took a T5 from the trader and jumped on my minibike and ended up at shotgun messiah factory. I'd never done it before so I didn't know how long it would take. I only had about 3-4 pain killers and no medicated bandages. I have 4 ranks in healing factor so I regenerate very fast. I thought I can probably handle this, the only thing I was concerned with was ammo so I went through it my heavy armored level 45 ish green iron armored fort build. I had roughly 300 726 and my awesome AK that does 70 damage.

So the whole day goes by, and I'm punching my way through this beast of a POI. By sundown I'm out of pain killers and thought well how much further can it be? I'm close to one of the first roofs or whatever. So I kept going. I made it to morning and thought, damn its horde night. But I can't give up now. I only had 70 bullets left. I trudged on and rested to heal since I was clean out of meds. I was infected too, but not suffering sides yet.

So I make it to what appears to be the final tower and I have no ammo left where there are sleeping radiated and ferals everwhere on this roof. I'm standing on the ladder. I thought maybe I can cheese them from this ladder and punch their knees/heads out one by one. I start fighting and was doing ok for about 20 seconds until somehow they got respositioned to where it wasn't 1v1 any more, it was 3-4 vs 1. I jump down the short ladder and I'm running and punching but no stamina and 30-40 health remaining. I thought maybe I can survive this fall and get out of here. I fall and die.

Then it hits me, my XP bar was red. I got to thinking, wow I wasted 300 bullets and have less XP than when I started. I definitely ♥♥♥♥ed up. It hit me, all I had to do was go 50 yards to my base when I took the quest and grabbed a couple more ammo bundles. I thought oh I'll be ok. It sucked, but at the same time, it instantly tough me a tough lesson of respect for the game. I won't be making any more hasty decisions, and I love the new penalty for this reason. I have a new respect for death in this game I've never had before.

It's cool to see you're hooked by your game once again. In my eyes it means you really put your heart and soul in A18.

 

[madmole]

I wonder, will a18 fix zombies being able to hear sounds like there are no blocks there? As I am personally tired of hitting a safe, and zombies 30 blocks outside of the poi somehow hear this and all start coming in. Its even more annoying when it does this and your many floors up.

Go pickaxe your neighbors car outside for a bit. I'm pretty sure a lot of bipeds will come to investigate. That said you can pick the lock now and be nice and quiet about it. You might try crouching too, it reduces noise.

 

[agrastiOs]

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.

Sounds good, would be much better if the POI reset when you take the quest.

By the way, will skin color ever change first person hands?

 

[Trankitas]

Are you sure?

LOL!!! Btw i was taunting Roland a little bit.

 

[Viktoriusiii]

Books aren't needed, so there is zero frustration unless you have OCD about completing things. I wouldn't expect to complete any book sets unless you spend 500 hours or have all the traders located. To me the books are just a bonus, not a requirement so they are never a source of frustration. 50 XP for one click is more than you get for a lot of things. We could up it to 500 and it wouldn't break anything. 5k is too much for what it is though.

Since I don't quite know how skills and books intertwine I can not tell you an exact response so I will make a two parter:

Possibility 1:

you can buy perkbooktalents with skillpoints:

the books are not needed and 500xp is allright (still less than most zombies) since finding them is just a bonus.

Possibility 2:

skills and "book bonuses" are seperate and you can only unlock those perks (like 10% more damage with fireaxes against wood) by finding them.

Now the books are essential. While their bonus is not that great, it is a character improvement. Especially huge things like beeing able to craft lockpicks. If I am missing one book to finally be able to craft them, this is HUGE and my frustration of finding the other books over and over and only getting 50xp for it will be insane. "YES BOOK! Oh god just another waste... YES BO-... f***... FINALLY A BOO... FK THIS ♥♥♥♥! IMMA JUST CHEAT THAT STUPID PERK!!!!"

But if there is like a 2000xp reward for finding a book twice I can go: "well... its not the right one again, but at least it is worth the xp"

I am sorry that I do not know this but it has me confused for a while now, with perks like fireaxe doing more damage in the burnt biome beeing more or less useless and I would never buy it with perks, but others like beeing able to craft your own lockpick beeing such a hardrequirement for any stealthbuild, that it would be close to the first things I would buy.

If you could elaborate what you can buy with perkpoints, that would be great (or show that in your next video)

 

[MechanicalLens]

If you want the books giving you 2,000+ XP, mod that in yourself. Whatever TFP devise, I'm sure it will be balanced from the get-go, and if not, tweaked later on. However, even 500 XP would be asking for too much, in my opinion. I'm sure the majority of the playerbase will be fine selling them, re-reading them, or scrapping them.

Just saying, I think TFP have made up their minds, and if you don't like it, then deal with it.

- Sage

Post edit: If I want 50 XP, I would theoretically go and punch 5 cotton; but if I want XP, I kill a zombie, I mine, I do whatever. 50 bonus XP is just that, a bonus.

 

[Gazz]

Oooh. I'm familiar with that square from my underground dungeons in medieval mod. Yes, this means I can have NON obvious pitfalls using terrain block traps into a dungeon below...

These terrainfillers only create "biome blocks", not make special trap blocks, but that goes a long way.

Instead of a square you can blend a round / jagged "flat surface" into the overall terrain now. Pretty useful tool although it has barely been used, yet, in A18. =)

 

[Viktoriusiii]

If you want the books giving you 2,000+ XP, mod that in yourself. Whatever TFP devise, I'm sure it will be balanced from the get-go, and if not, tweaked later on. However, even 500 XP would be asking for too much, in my opinion. I'm sure the majority of the playerbase will be fine selling them, re-reading them, or scrapping them. (Although, on a side note, may I suggest more than one piece of paper for scrapping them? If not, that's perfectly cool.)
Just saying, I think TFP have made up their minds, and if you don't like it, then deal with it.

- Sage

That is what EA is all about. I think they didn't QUITE think that through. And yes they might change it afterwards... but why wait when they get told before releasing it? Yes they fixed quite a bit in A17.3 but 5 months of <50% approval rating on steam couldnt have boosted their sales *edit* dont want to sound condescending, but ppl have told them 90% of the changes they implemented in the early experimental release.

And selling them for ~100 dukes is not worth the space in your inventory. 500 xp is ~ 1 1/2 basic zombies but have a lootdropchance of what? 10% per bookcase? How many zombies are there? How many bookcases?

If I wanna level I just go kill zombies or hit up my auger. 2500 xp is about 1-2 molotovs. How is that gamebreaking at that level of rarity?

 

[MechanicalLens]

If I want XP, I don't want to obtain obscene amounts just by pressing a button. I'd rather get my fists into the action. By your logic, we should be getting 100 XP for every crop we punch, since we harvest them only once every three days; but that would be highly unbalanced. I'll summarize my thoughts with this simple sentence: It's fine the way it is. Again, if TFP choose to change it in the future, that's their prerogative. You can suggest, but not spam.

 

[Zombiepoptard]

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.

The cracks IMO need to be a little more subtle.

You can still maintain the atmosphere with just ease back on the grim on the texters. I don't think the players want to feel depressed they just want enough dinge so that it fits and it looks good at the same time. We make bases and homes out of these pois.

I know I start these rants frustrated because I'm looking at the footage and just thinking to myself do people not see a problem with this.

I come to the conclusion that voxel games are hard to look at as it is. Having textures that have a lot of visual noise and being multiplied in copied can distract from the more detailed decoration. Stop making the excuse that it's the apocalypse that's why everything looks so gray and a lot of the walls have no contrast to the floors and ceilings.

One block texture has 4 paint chips and looks like it's made out of concrete. Just make a simple subtle drywall texter that has a little bit of grim on so it doesn't pop out like an eyesore. Please

 

[Viktoriusiii]

If I want XP, I don't want to obtain obscene amounts just by pressing a button. I'd rather get my fists into the action. By your logic, we should be getting 100 XP for every crop we punch, since we harvest them only once every three days; but that would be highly unbalanced. I'll summarize my thoughts with this simple sentence: It's fine the way it is. Again, if TFP choose to change it in the future, that's their prerogative. You can suggest, but not spam.

books are there to learn.

books are super rare and nonplantable

books ARE "getting into action" how do you think you get to those bookshelves? Do they just fly by your house or something?

and those 2500xp are balanced around crops and zombies. (funny that you took the example of the lowest xp, think of mining ore or getting wood and farming zombies)

One small field of potatoes is ~400-800xp one zombie (super early) gives 350 (late) 1400.

How is getting 2500 xp "too much"? You have to: Find it once (for the initial reward) and then again. With such a low droprate that only happens at bookshelves, with normal pois only having what 1-5 shelves?

2500 xp sounds like a lot... but those books aren't just laying around, based on MMs description. Even if he had 40 books at day 40 (which was incredibly lucky) half of those are probably doubles, which means 50.000 xp over 40 days AT MOST.

That is half a hordenight. With the right perks and luck.

 

[Quantum Blue]

If I want XP, I don't want to obtain obscene amounts just by pressing a button. I'd rather get my fists into the action. By your logic, we should be getting 100 XP for every crop we punch, since we harvest them only once every three days; but that would be highly unbalanced. I'll summarize my thoughts with this simple sentence: It's fine the way it is. Again, if TFP choose to change it in the future, that's their prerogative. You can suggest, but not spam.

Agreed.

 

[Odetta]

67 MF's this morning.

If Madmole was a Cop...

 

[Quantum Blue]

Happy Birthday to me! (August 19th...) Bestest birthday present ever! Now I just need a couple weeks off from work...

 

[Haidrgna]

These terrainfillers only create "biome blocks", not make special trap blocks, but that goes a long way.
Instead of a square you can blend a round / jagged "flat surface" into the overall terrain now. Pretty useful tool although it has barely been used, yet, in A18. =)

Why did it need to be just one placeholder and not do it for all terrain blocks in a POI? Is it resource intensive or something else I am not aware of? Curious to why it would not work for any block classified as terrain..?

 

[Quantum Blue]

Deleted

 

[Laz Man]

hmmm maybe... i will submit a suggestion to the pimps to change all vending machines in game to randomly do the following... take money and give nothing, take money and give wrong item(s) or just give money back without the item(s) or even just take money and apply poison gas killing nearby player(s).
seems to me to be a gambling experience...

Spoiler

i am kidding btw.

If the game ever needed a money sink, you could implement a purchase option for random loot type on the trader. For example, trader has recently scavenged an unidentified armor type and has it up for sell.

 

[madmole]

It's cool to see you're hooked by your game once again. In my eyes it means you really put your heart and soul in A18.

I have. I'm deeply invested into A18. A17 was a tech demo compared to this.