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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I feel you brotha, you Q&A Testers do a great job! You guys and gal shall always have my respect for the work you put in. :) ;)
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They're okay... The yank with the beard who likes Dr Pepper is a bit of weirdo though.

 
Hey, at least we won't be mining for half a day to get a couple day's worth of gas. I knew that you'd be touching shale at some point (I'd often walk out with 20,000 shale; translate that into gas), but this seems very reasonable. (: You know, I've never truly delved into electricity in 7D2D; looks like this will be the time to do it. (A18.)
Is natural progression slower, on average? If so, I greatly support that; reaching end-game by day 28-something was one of my small nitpicky criticisms about 7D2D in the past, unless I artificially made myself slow down by a significant amount.
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Yes, I level fast compared and I'm level 51 on day 57 so much slower leveling. It was needed since we removed level gates, we didn't want people reaching int 10 in 2 days. I wore nerd glasses most of the play through and started using learn'n elixer on horde night to level faster. I imagine some folks will be level 30 by day 56 and some a bit higher level.

To me its finally playing how I've wanted it to for the longest time, 18 is a major accomplishment. There is more to do but this feels like a great milestone game play wise.

The Day 56 horde was pretty intense. Its my fault for making a mansion, the zombies spread out everywhere and spiders jumped my walls, I'll probably build a horde tower separate from my base. Grenades are amazing, its like fire in the hole and bodies go flying, they work really nice. New sounds on some items too, its a nice touch.

 
Yes, I level fast compared and I'm level 51 on day 57 so much slower leveling. It was needed since we removed level gates, we didn't want people reaching int 10 in 2 days. I wore nerd glasses most of the play through and started using learn'n elixer on horde night to level faster. I imagine some folks will be level 30 by day 56 and some a bit higher level.
To me its finally playing how I've wanted it to for the longest time, 18 is a major accomplishment. There is more to do but this feels like a great milestone game play wise.

The Day 56 horde was pretty intense. Its my fault for making a mansion, the zombies spread out everywhere and spiders jumped my walls, I'll probably build a horde tower separate from my base. Grenades are amazing, its like fire in the hole and bodies go flying, they work really nice. New sounds on some items too, its a nice touch.
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A18 sounds incredible already! And it's great to hear the elixirs will finally be given some love! Most of the time, I just didn't bother, as I literally had no purpose for using most/any of them. But now, it seems they are quite the treat to have.

May I suggest the usage of dart traps? If they haven't been modified since A17, then I can tell you that they are quite devastating, especially if the zombies are all funneled up, or at the very least, grouped up. (Molotovs excel when the latter is in play.)

What I always do personally is make my main base separate from my horde base; that way, I can beautify the base I live in all I want while having the freedom (maybe not the time, but certainly the ability) to create a durable, hopefully horde-worthy structure without worrying of making it look pretty. (Or livable, I guess I should say.)

Edit: I didn't catch that properly, seems like you have the above plan in mind. ;)

With the removal of level gates, the reintroduction of some loot-based progression (with options outside of the foreboding power of RN-Gesus! examples include schematics, books, etc.), and of course, all the new content, I can definitely see A18 being one of the greats. ^^ Great work to you all (ie from you all)!

 
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I just unlocked electricity. Nerd glasses are awesome for getting perks you don't want to waste attribute points on. I still need gas can schematic (put it in today) so I can get endless supplies of fuel. I nerfed that too, it was insane, 12 pieces of shale for 1000 gas or something. Now its 50 per 100, so about 500 processed shale will fill a 4x4 up. You an get 500 in a minute of mining probably.
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If shale deposits and gas usage is basically the same as A17 then I'm glad you did that.

In A17, I don't understand why people don't drive motor vehicles all the time.

Keep up the great work, looking forward to playing an A18 agility or strength build... soon! :D

 
It is time I began designing the eventual finished design of my horde base for A18. I'll suspect that mid to late September will be A18's arrival, at the earliest.

Edit: Rough Draft 1 for A18 Horde Base: The main structure on the outside will be a large tower, which will be connected to the ground on all four corners, as well as some additional "legs" if need be. Going underneath and on all four sides of the tower will be four wide ramps, which drop down an 11x11 pit, or even larger. The pit will extend down to bedrock (to greatly assist in countering the Demolisher's explosive ability, the floor will be bedrock). The walls at the bottom of the pit will be multiple layers thick, and at the very back, aiming inside the pit, will be a singular row of dart traps going all the way around the perimeter, at body height of the zombies. If the Demolisher does explode, hopefully the dart traps will survive. Any zombies that choose to dig into the walls will have darts shot at them during the duration of their digging, killing them.

Halfway down the pit will be a small iron bar compartment, many blocks above bedrock level. The compartment, housing me, will be support on all four sides by four elongated pillars connecting to the walls of the shoot. From inside, I can shoot downwards and throw down grenades. Atop the cage will be another row of bars, and on top of that, a small pyramid (the shape should assist in causing the zombies to slide down). Atop the pyramid will be a blade trap, with a couple turrets alongside the walls facing ahead towards the pyramid, in case in stragglers land on top.

At the ends of the support poles of the cage will be a series of four vault doors, each leading to staircases that go down behind the walls of the pit and down towards the dart traps themselves, for restocking purposes.

 
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So far the sewing books seem to be the least desired. If you didn't drastically nerf clothes in loot, I'm gonna have them found long before I expect to find the books. Even the bonus skill (about military clothes), which I expect to obtain in the very late game. Only pockets skill seems useful. Does clothes also have random stats?

Other book series are very desired though.

 
I heard Joel's brother in the last stream video say that bandits were coming into alpha 19? Could have been just a mistake since he said it in passing. If so that is big news.

 
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.
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Nice, perhaps that will free up some block space for other things? 🤔

 
Watching the last gameplay stream. There seems to be still quite a lot of issues with the object culling. (popping in and vanishing furniture specifically).

It that resolved already?

 
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.
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MM does have a point about it being a bummer to lose your quest giver because some asshat wanted to kill him.

However, making traders killable at some point could down the line could add some interesting gameplay.

Here's an idea, maybe quest NPCs can spawn randomly so not all quest stem from traders AND also implement quests that dont require a turn in back to the quest giver to complete.

 
Question:

From A16 to 17 there were changes about how Blocks worked and Prefabs from Players needed a Converter to work again.

Due to the Blockshape Menu, are we getting Problems again? Are A17 Buildings of Players compatible with A18?

Thanks

 
Since this is a discussion (pretty clear about that from the beginning) I'd counter by saying you just named features, not bug reports.
...and trader "respawns" would only happen once the chunk is cleared and otherwise work like quest poi respawns, except they'd call the next poi in the list (the more fortified version).

It's not shuffling papers around because it would be adding new features.

Agree to disagree? Sure. I know this won't even go in on vanilla, but it would be fun, and it would work (what's to stop people from building a wall around trader area now and lcb'ing them) because the cases you mention are edge cases, and you can't (and should not) account for those now.
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All sounds good when it all works as it should but the ROI does seem low based on the amount of work needed. Definitely seems like a lower priority to me.

 
No bridges in 18 Rwg according to mm.
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Bridges can be a tricky thing to place. They need to area (streets, terrain and water) to be prepared carefully to fit.

I can have a look at that when A18 experimental comes out. Specifically what changed with the world files and how suitable the bridge POIs are for placing them in a generated world.

 
I just unlocked electricity. Nerd glasses are awesome for getting perks you don't want to waste attribute points on. I still need gas can schematic (put it in today) so I can get endless supplies of fuel. I nerfed that too, it was insane, 12 pieces of shale for 1000 gas or something. Now its 50 per 100, so about 500 processed shale will fill a 4x4 up. You an get 500 in a minute of mining probably.
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With gas finally beeing a finite and non endless ressource... could you look into making a fueltank in A19?

Like a chest for fuel that automaticially refuels the generator and car if its in a specific spot?

BC at 400 output, refilling generators daily is quite annoying and tbh not really viable on servers. (yes I haven't optimized it yet, but still mostly the wame with 100 output)

 
The problem is that most of them don't understand the issue. I kid you not, most of them I've talked to (well, ranted on) didn't know who Telltale is, they thought that TFP would update console after PC... We have so much knowledge at our fingertips, but most are too stupid to know how to access it. XD I guess that's the cost?
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and yet its tfp' game and their responsibility. and no forum warriors will change anything bout dat. :)

 
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