PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Viktoriusiii]

1. cant give u rep again but nice to see the trader quest thingy.

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.

Well since you only support 8 player coop, that shouldn't be a problem.

And on online PvP servers this is EXACTLY what I would want.

They risk dying, they risk not beeing able to trade, but they can start a trade empire by themselves with vendingmachines, upping prices and all that. (I love beeing a Playertrader... but why would anyone bother, if there are 5 traders within reach? Beeing able to kill the traders (indefinatly/respawn of 150 days) would give so much variety to the PvP element.

I would LOVE this. Make it a PvP only thing (maybe even with settings) and we are all golden!

You might not like it, but I can nearly garantuee nearly all PvP players would love this! (since PvP and PvE players have very different mindset)

A bit more creativity and less handholding in PvP is probably always welcomed

 

[kevinbailey25]

Its moving papers around on the desk and calling that an accomplishment. If you kill the trader, and another one respawns, why bother? For a simulation? There are 50 supportive tickets from this task you don't see because you aren't a game designer. This could set us back 6 months. Just to humor you I'll post a few:
*Removing land claim allows players to stay at traders on horde night

*Having a destroyable trader fort means players will box him in or land claim him themselves, destroy the stairs, dig a hole under him so he's at bedrock then pour concrete on his head.

*Giving trader defense systems adds more cpu to trader areas, auto turrets, traps, etc all add expense. He might need henchmen, so even more expense and slower FPS.

*If he respawns how does he reach the trader area if its destroyed or new base built there?

*Trader dies and quests are broken, assigning quests to a new ref has to be done.

*Trader kills player, they want to get their stuff back and are in a death loop because auto fire guys is on.

*Someone accidentally fires a gun, they are marked for death

I could go on and make 50-100 foreseeable issues and then we'd get 100's of bugs, all for a pointless simulation here because at the end of the day there is still a trader standing there selling stuff and giving out quests after all that work.

NO thanks, we'll stick to making games not simulations and random ideas that don't really add any value and take 1000's of man hours to pull off and get shippable. BTW, this requires good bandits anyway or "human combat AI", so it would have to wait until then for sure, but I can say we're never going to do it with 99% certainty. We're still a pretty small company so we have to pick our battles very carefully, and we like features that actually add value. This one is a ton of work for very little return other than immersion.

As a software developer I appreciate this post. So many times clients and users suggest features that'll end up being tons of man hours but add very little value (relative to the time spent to make). The goal is to get the most value for your time spent developing. I'm sure if you listed all the other features the community could get that equates to the amount of time to add that one feature, the community would pick having all of the other features.

P.S. So excited for the shape menu Madmole, probably one of my most favorite new features for A18.

 

[Jost Amman]

Chicken coop

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.

Now, what would be great is if you added some mechanics to the game were you have to go "fetch" real in-game chickens with a special "lazo" or "trap" of some sort. :whip:

Being how hard it is to find chickens in the world it would kind of balance the coop "OPness".

BTW/OP:

I found the perfect song for 7DTD, someone posted this on Steam...

:lalala:

 

[madmole]

The chicken 'forge' idea gave me another idea. I know this is may be 'too much' and therefore not worth it, but here it is:
For the chicken forge you have you place the block and it (maybe) takes up a 4x4 area and has a little chicken coop and a low fence. When you put your chickens into it, they spawn in the fenced area with very basic animations and 0 ai. Then you deposit food for the chickens and get back eggs and feathers.

What if you did a similar things with cows? Only instead of producing feathers and eggs it would produce hide and meat?

Just some thoughts. Rough drafting out loud really. Have a great day everyone.

No you can't have something that big where zombies might be attracted, the cows would need to be real entities so the zombies can chase them and eat them and having sustainable meat is a bad idea IMO. A few eggs and feathers might be ok, and its just a box with probably no chickens you can even see in it, so no big performance loss there.

 

[Trankitas]

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

This is for A18, or that are your plans for A19+ ?

 

[madmole]

As a software developer I appreciate this post. So many times clients and users suggest features that'll end up being tons of man hours but add very little value (relative to the time spent to make). The goal is to get the most value for your time spent developing. I'm sure if you listed all the other features the community could get that equates to the amount of time to add that one feature, the community would pick having all of the other features.
P.S. So excited for the shape menu Madmole, probably one of my most favorite new features for A18.

Yes, we could possibly do a "no traders" option, but all that other stuff is a mountain of work for very little return, and certainly something modders can do. Yes the shape menu is great, even in its infancy.

 

[Cazmyr]

No you can't have something that big where zombies might be attracted, the cows would need to be real entities so the zombies can chase them and eat them and having sustainable meat is a bad idea IMO. A few eggs and feathers might be ok, and its just a box with probably no chickens you can even see in it, so no big performance loss there.

Ahh yea, that is fair.

 

[meganoth]

We try not to do any one off designs that only work in one mode. SP and online mode should be identical except for other human survivors running around.

I would consider a trader-protection-option as a low hanging fruit of game adaption to player tastes. There are already other options that are useless in some modes (PlayerKillingMode in SP), that doesn't mean they are generally useless for the game.

Note the trader-protection off is the only thing needed. Automatic trader respawn and defenses are optional stuff modders could implement if they see a need for that in their mods

Also I'm playing MP online with friends on a private server, the dividing line is not SP<->MP. And if Guppycur is right, it might even be an option some open servers could be interested in.

 

[madmole]

This is for A18, or that are your plans for A19+ ?

No it is for A19+. You can find traders by driving down all the gravel roads easily enough. Took me an hour on a minibike to do it. (real life hour), both times.

 

[Thecolours]

How's work on the Demolisher zombie going?

 

[Survager]

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.

MM, whether iron and wood railings will be fixed in Alpha 18. Arrows do not fly through the railing now either.

 

[Callum123456789]

@madmole will there be daily quests from the trader in a18 so you don't have to wait till restock day?

 

[rdunham3]

No you can't have something that big where zombies might be attracted, the cows would need to be real entities so the zombies can chase them and eat them and having sustainable meat is a bad idea IMO. A few eggs and feathers might be ok, and its just a box with probably no chickens you can even see in it, so no big performance loss there.

While I agree on all points, in the game the kids and I most recently had going we had a few thousand extra meat that I was barely using (designated crafter/cook) as fast as we were finding new "sources" of...without an animal farm.

A chicken coop, even a very small one, should have more "heat" generation than a forge, from maybe 3 AM to dusk. Those suckers can be heard from blocks away and they don't shut up. The constant stream of screamers would probably counter the constant generation of feathers nicely...

 

[Lonestarcanuck]

so is there a hierarchy/system to the roads like in the USA? do all gravel roads lead to highways? are traders always on a certain type of road?

any roundabouts?

 

[rdunham3]

MM, whether iron and wood railings will be fixed in Alpha 18. Arrows do not fly through the railing now either.

This. Badly damaged doors with big holes in them, and railings that by all sanity should be as easy or easier to shoot through as the iron bars but somehow aren't currently, are highly annoying.

- - - Updated - - -

so is there a hierarchy/system to the roads like in the USA? do all gravel roads lead to highways? are traders always on a certain type of road?
any roundabouts?

In everything we EA players have had access to the traders are always on gravel roads. I've seen one less than two city blocks from an asphalt road, but he had a gravel "driveway" even then. I think the RWG can't place them adjacent to asphalt roads. Of course A18's RWG may be completely different...

 

[hotpoon]

It really helps when people having a conversation are speaking about the same things. I don't mean to pressure you into breaking your "vow of abstinence" but if you want to sound like you know what you are talking about from experience you really should play a few hours of 17.4 to experience the AI for yourself and then speak about current issues and not issues from two iterations past.

I'm not really trying to sound like anything. I'm just trying to get some answers. . A18 is around the corner though, so I'll give it another test then.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

YES. Knock down the only supporting pillars to my cat walks to get me, and the dumb ones which I was focused on allowed them to collapse it..... this and the other story MM said about the POI he was in and it collapses while dodging and medi-popping.

THIS RANDOM STUFF IS AWESOME...….

CANNOT WAIT for A18.

Off to buy a shirt and mug.

Semper Fi

 

[Ti2xGr]

I would love some more friendly Admin tools in A19 (Assume it's too late for A18) -

Built-in tools:

Be able to reset a chunk through a friendly map interface

Full chunk/map check

Friendly Admin ban/kick tool

Restore tools (be able to go back in time) - I have our servers backup every hour and can manually roll back but requires significant work. Most of this should/could be built-in to the admin tools. I have had several issues in the past where the main.ttw gets corrupted due to a power outage/other and the backup file is also corrupt for some reason (basically resets to a blank/clean file). It would be nice to have a "repair" tool that will roll back to the most recent working version.

Mind you, I'm not a programmer so I don't how much of this is possible but still on my wish list...Tell me to take a hike as needed please.

P.S. Was there a reason why the Drawbridge has been limited in regards to rotation or was that just temporary and you are planning full rotation (so we can use it as a door and not just a drawbridge)?

 

[Blake_]

Its moving papers around on the desk and calling that an accomplishment. If you kill the trader, and another one respawns, why bother? For a simulation? There are 50 supportive tickets from this task you don't see because you aren't a game designer. This could set us back 6 months. Just to humor you I'll post a few:
*Removing land claim allows players to stay at traders on horde night

*Having a destroyable trader fort means players will box him in or land claim him themselves, destroy the stairs, dig a hole under him so he's at bedrock then pour concrete on his head.

*Giving trader defense systems adds more cpu to trader areas, auto turrets, traps, etc all add expense. He might need henchmen, so even more expense and slower FPS.

*If he respawns how does he reach the trader area if its destroyed or new base built there?

*Trader dies and quests are broken, assigning quests to a new ref has to be done.

*Trader kills player, they want to get their stuff back and are in a death loop because auto fire guys is on.

*Someone accidentally fires a gun, they are marked for death

I could go on and make 50-100 foreseeable issues and then we'd get 100's of bugs, all for a pointless simulation here because at the end of the day there is still a trader standing there selling stuff and giving out quests after all that work.

NO thanks, we'll stick to making games not simulations and random ideas that don't really add any value and take 1000's of man hours to pull off and get shippable. BTW, this requires good bandits anyway or "human combat AI", so it would have to wait until then for sure, but I can say we're never going to do it with 99% certainty. We're still a pretty small company so we have to pick our battles very carefully, and we like features that actually add value. This one is a ton of work for very little return other than immersion.

I agree with Guppycur that traders need to be killable and the settlement needs to de destroyable. They can respawn or not, depending on how many wandering traders you plan to add.

Possible Problems:Solutions:

Can they be farmed? Not if their AI doesn't allow it. For example, if a player encases them in X range , they write a letter and kill themselves with a shiv end of story. Or they try and fight or break blocks or block their trading screen etc.

Do every player loses their quests? no. Quests are put on hold or relayed to a wandering trader or another quest giver or if everyone is dead then they respawn a guy with an excuse to make their quest completed. Anything that works.

Do they NEED to be destroyable ASAP in the development cycle of this game? Not yet. As you said MM, there are more important things yet, like bandits.

Why do we ever need that destroyable mechanic and killable mechanic in this game? Let me answer you with another question: ؟Do you plan to make a Story campaign so every settlement with story is completely non-destroyable and every important character non-killable or you rather design a system that surpases the crappy FO and Skyrim system of character immortality? Will you make every story building invulnerable?

THIS trader problem is an important one. And, after bandits, it is THE ONE to solve first. Are you making a fully FULLY destroyable world ?

Disclaimer: I am aware this system would take quite a few months to do and that priorities go first. Bandits can be done relatively easy. But storyline with destroyable and killable everything? Well, given your track record you only develop systems that are fun so I believe.

So tell us: Is this magic destroyable feature in you dreams only or you plan to do it eventually if time permits?

 

[madmole]

@madmole will there be daily quests from the trader in a18 so you don't have to wait till restock day?

I think those reset every day.