PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Sigil_Thane]

@MadMole any insights into the state of Vulkan implementation for A18?

The last review I saw ( granted, not on Unity...

) had it running at 2x the frame rate of OpenGL.

 

[madmole]

well this bug exists since LCB appeared so i can assume it will never be fixed and its known bug

What bug exactly? Dropping a vague hint that we will never do something is useless to both of us. Please say exactly what the bug is so something positive can happen.

 

[SxR]

Official 7 Days Coffee mugs! I'm so stoked about these!

It would've been special if you had the classic gore block (dead wight) on the bottom of it in the mug.

 

[madmole]

Will it increase your chances at getting better stats on weapons?

I don't think so. You'll get a better chance to get a "pink" but once it decides what color you get the RNG runs again and you get what you get.

 

[madmole]

hey Madmole you havent removed my strike, even though I was totally quiet.I will forgive you, but only if you implement a certain questtype:

Delivery - Devliver Item X (like the stash you find in the find item quests) to another trader within meter x seconds

Why?

1. because its a type variation and this game needs it

2. and more importantly, because this way we can find other traders that have managed to hide away.

Well "traders are easy to spot from high places" and you are right... and I am pretty good at finding all the traders withing 2km radius...

but sometimes I go 40 days without finding the second trader, either because there is no highpoint or because its too mountainy so they block the field of view.

This quest would give far less reward but is a Tier 1 quest (because lateron you probably dont need that anymore and it is riskfree with only time beeing the ressource you spend, since oyu are most likely on foot still)

Pretty please?

Yes we are planning some kind of quest that lets you find the other traders, most likely delivery or a trader needs assistance quest.

Roland can remove your infraction, I don't know how to do it

 

[madmole]

Finding another trader is part of the exploration "mini-game", one of the challenges. I don't think it should be trivial.
In the early game a second trader is sure nice, but only if he is in less than 2km radius around the first one. Otherwise you waste too much time traveling. Only after you have at least a minibike traders really become the OP source for everything plus quests.

With so much you want now, and the random purchase of a hundred thousand duke gyro, you tend to save money and only buy what you absolutely need now. A book, maybe some ammo before you can make your own, schematics, steel anything, meds, what ever you really need.

 

[madmole]

Watching the A18 TFP playtest - looks like the per zombie XP was lowered?

Lowered on some, raised on others (like radiated for late game XP). I think some code is crunching it too, its not what I put in XML. It was scaled because lowering zed xp was easier than changing something else to make it balanced. You should get good xp doing any major archtype now.

 

[madmole]

Sounds like me; I'm anti magical trader protection (hate lcb's too, suck it up)... If someone kills him then so be it. Their reputation drops and other trader's shoot on sight.

You know this will never work. All traders would get killed off and a big portion of the game would be broken just so a few jerks can try to be bandits.

We could make it work, but its probably not worth the effort. Basically the trader would insta gib you if you attack him and have auto turrets running and make the game a lot slower all a bunch of work just to let players try to kill him. THen if they did we'd need to resurrect him or make him defeated but not dead. We'll have bandit forts you can raid for that sort of thing, might as well leave traders alone, the end result would 99% of the time be the same as what we have now.

 

[madmole]

So trader gets killed and players can go raise a fund to bring back a trader like 10K dukes.

And everyone doing quests for that trader gets a "Mission failed" and rage quits. Its just a bad idea to let people raid/kill traders when we could be doing cool stuff like bandits, infiltration quests, blow up the building quests, etc.

 

[madmole]

So, this is my first post here... Love the game! We have a dedicated server running with 5 of us that play local lan almost every weekend...!(From ages 11 to 69!)

We each have a role in the game and it absolutely makes a huge difference in the outcome!

We always enjoy the progression and each time we start over it is never the same! Love that about this!

We are eagerly awaiting A18 and are really looking forward to the changes!

A couple of ideas we have for either A18 or in the future...

1) For the Gyro copter... (I apologize if this has been mentioned before) Could you add in a hotkey where it allows "autorun"? We do questing together and having to hold down "w" for 10 minutes at a time can get... Crampy! A couple of us have gaming mice to "fix" this, but we give a bunch of crap to them for having this luxury!

2) For the Gyro copter... If you were to add in the auto run or even not, could you make it so you can view your map/inventory/char. without losing momentum?

3) Maybe add in a mod/skill to upgrade the 4x4 to hold 4 players..? Again just thinking out loud...

Really looking forward to A18! Have been watching the Y/T vids and the forums for any update info... Keep up the great work!

Welcome aboard, and those things are certainly possible.

 

[beHypE]

If we go there (no discussions of it at all for years tbh) we'd do some kind of animal forge (chicken coop block) where you put a chicken in and the 3d model and ai disappear, you then add feed and it produces eggs and feathers.

Honestly that's a pretty good idea. It's by no means perfect but it's essentially a workstation with an ongoing clock that yields something, kind of a mix of smelting and crafting in a forge. You probably have all the framework bits you need to do this pretty easily, the only concern is art so that it doesn't look too cheesy, and balance (not being too easy to mass produce eggs & feathers with low maintenance costs).

The best part is that it would probably serve as a pretty good first brick for modders.

 

[madmole]

Can we have Arrow goes through broken Door, I mean we can visibly view against the broken door, but arrows cannot go through, seems little out. Or change the graphics of door to now show what is on other side of door until it is completely broken ?

Doors will *hopefully* get a new design. No more changing materials and switching blocks on destroy. In fact everything will destroy when broken. However we will display damage models at a certain % of health. No more grinding through a 7k block just to have another 7k block spawn in its place. One 14k door will do just fine, thank you.

 

[RipClaw]

Are you still arguing from a 17.2 perspective or have you tried 17.4 yet? There were a lot of adjustments to randomize behavior and make it so that zombies would abandon long pathways.

The behavior of the zombies in A17.4 is nevertheless quite uniform.

The zombies are still a group of conga dancers running behind each other instead of using the whole width of a passage. In addition, all zombies still hit the same block instead of spreading across the entire length of a wall.

I think it's these two points that bother the players the most.

The path of a single zombies should have a slight variation so that they use the whole width of a passage.

And they should also have a certain variation when it comes to which block they attack. If everyone concentrates on the block with the lowest HP then everyone will always hit the block that was first damaged.

 

[madmole]

Zombies might have better senses in terms of smelling where brains are and being able to see heat maps, but in the example, they had knowledge about the structure that they hadn't seen. Nothing to do with me as a player.
In my mind I don't think they really need to acquire the block knowledge at any point. The only knowledge they should have is that BRAAAAAINS are in that skull of the person they are looking at, and then they go for it. Like they did in previous alphas.

When A17 first hit, I saw a lot of angry posts about the 'structural engineer' zombies, but then they mostly quietened down when Roland said the new AI was just a baseline for the bandits, and would be be adjusted down for the zombies. It does not sound like that is your intention. It sounds like you are happy with how they behave. Am I correct in thinking that?

He's done some changes. There are "dumb" zombies that can path in a straight line now and some structural engineers. I made a larger fort and I'm now paying for it, running around like a chicken with my head cut off shooting everything from all angles of my base.

 

[SnowDog1942]

. No more changing materials and switching blocks on destroy. In fact everything will destroy when broken. However we will display damage models at a certain % of health. No more grinding through a 7k block just to have another 7k block spawn in its place

When is this planned for? A19?

 

[madmole]

Not to go back to this but I've been thinking about those wall textures a lot lol. I hope you're right Joel and I hope the art team makes the textures less grim not the other way around. Alpha 17 was great on deco and poi building as far as level design goes. So yes it does look better but I don't think it was the textures that did it. I'm sure the guys from id are doing an amazing job but can the pois feel relatively hospitable so that touring around them is slightly pleasant. What is the new rendering going to improve?

Its only going to get more depressing and grungier dude, so don't even get your hopes up. If you don't like the place, build your own base or paint it. We'll include a few newer/nicer looking paints at some point, but what you really need is a modded texture pack, because your preferences go against our game design.

We're switching to linear space lighting so it will light much better, and allow us to use shader graph and HDRP, so we're slowly getting rid of custom shaders that never work on odd platforms and using unity's latest greatest stuff.

 

[meganoth]

Its a bug,but I was at some old mine POI and the thing literally started collapsing and I was dodging falling blocks and zombies while trying to spam med kits and survive. Most games need months and months of work to achieve a bug that fantastic.

On that topic, a friend of mine who likes to do mining told me that it needs to be more hazardous again, i.e. less SI stable, more apt to collapse and more need to add supports.

It seems in early A17 desert sand was maybe too fragile (prompting a royal forum poster to voice his displeasure :cocksure: ) and maybe got balanced too much into the other direction. Making normal biomes digging too carefree(?)

 

[Guppycur]

You know this will never work. All traders would get killed off and a big portion of the game would be broken just so a few jerks can try to be bandits.
We could make it work, but its probably not worth the effort. Basically the trader would insta gib you if you attack him and have auto turrets running and make the game a lot slower all a bunch of work just to let players try to kill him. THen if they did we'd need to resurrect him or make him defeated but not dead. We'll have bandit forts you can raid for that sort of thing, might as well leave traders alone, the end result would 99% of the time be the same as what we have now.

I know this is an "agree to disagree" situation so at this point it's just discussion, but I don't use traders, like, at all, so I don't see it this way. If a18 on up requires the use of traders then I'd consider it a failing.

They should be a bonus not a requirement, so if ♥♥♥♥heads want to go around killing them, then it should be the non ♥♥♥♥heads responsibility to prevent them. That could be fun.

Besides, if the trader's relatives came to replace them with an even meaner demeanor and more defenses, you could still have your traders.

 

[madmole]

Honestly that's a pretty good idea. It's by no means perfect but it's essentially a workstation with an ongoing clock that yields something, kind of a mix of smelting and crafting in a forge. You probably have all the framework bits you need to do this pretty easily, the only concern is art so that it doesn't look too cheesy, and balance (not being too easy to mass produce eggs & feathers with low maintenance costs).
The best part is that it would probably serve as a pretty good first brick for modders.

It could even have a chicken or two in there enabled when you add one, that doesn't have ai, its just an animated thing that walks around for immersion.

 

[Guppycur]

And everyone doing quests for that trader gets a "Mission failed" and rage quits. Its just a bad idea to let people raid/kill traders when we could be doing cool stuff like bandits, infiltration quests, blow up the building quests, etc.

Naw, then the quest gets assigned to the nearest trader afterwards.

....there's says to make it cool.

- - - Updated - - -

He's done some changes. There are "dumb" zombies that can path in a straight line now and some structural engineers. I made a larger fort and I'm now paying for it, running around like a chicken with my head cut off shooting everything from all angles of my base.

Great news. The more ai packages we have, the better.

- - - Updated - - -

Doors will *hopefully* get a new design. No more changing materials and switching blocks on destroy. In fact everything will destroy when broken. However we will display damage models at a certain % of health. No more grinding through a 7k block just to have another 7k block spawn in its place. One 14k door will do just fine, thank you.

Also great news! Goodbye magic blocks!

- - - Updated - - -

It could even have a chicken or two in there enabled when you add one, that doesn't have ai, its just an animated thing that walks around for immersion.

Would only need to add an E to pick up entities, the rest is already just a new model (coup) and current XML technology.