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%

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I saw some talk of clip vs magazine a few pages back and it reminds me of a similar issue regarding the machete. The model used for the machete more resembles a Khukuri, a curved blade used by the Gurkhas. Could we perhaps see an additional bladed weapon that's more true to form for the machete in the next alpha? I'm a expert nitpicker =)

 
I'd like to add my thoughts on food spoilage - don't do it or if you do, make it an option! I hate games that have food spoilage, such as Subnautica. Some of us just want to play the game without making it as close to real life as possible. Next thing you know, folks will be wanting to add the "feature" of you having to go stand in a bathroom for 5 minutes every day to take a dump or sleep every day! No thanks! The food system that A17 had was perfect, IMO. Early game we would struggle but by the later stages food wasn't a worry and I like it that way. Just my opinion.

 
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I'd like to add my thoughts on food spoilage - don't do it or if you do, make it an option! I hate games that have food spoilage, such as Subnautica. Some of us just want to play the game without making it as close to real life as possible. Next thing you know, folks will be wanting to add the "feature" of you having to go stand in a bathroom for 5 minutes every day to take a dump or sleep every day! No thanks! The food system that A17 had was perfect, IMO. Early game we would struggle but by the later stages food wasn't a worry and I like it that way. Just my opinion.
I completely agree with you on this front. Now, I would be fine with food spoilage if it was, again like you said, an option, or if it had a very slow timer by default. You know, 10 hours or something. At that point I would neither support it nor be against it, I would just accept it as is, but that's just my opinion.

 
So if I were to craft a bacon and eggs every day, I would have a new stack of food for each expiration date? How would you handle that?
Kind of makes sense not being able to stack meals like B & E's, or Chili Dogs, kind of an eat now food and not meant to spoil in your BP. Never made sense to carry a stack of B & E's but I did it all the time like everyone else.

For exploring it should be canned or Jerky's, We should be able to make some Jerky out of Meat.

We have elec. & we have Fridges so we should be able to store meals or how about...

Dehydrated Meals...

Oh Yea,


Release...



Kraken...


Etc., Etc., Etc.....


 
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Have boats at the fishing dock been fixed in Alpha-18?

Are you planning to add working refrigerators to the game and will storing food in a there lower the chances of getting food poisoning?

 
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Back when we had smell, I'd carry blueberry pies and cornbread, leaving the B & E and cooked meat at home.

Made quite a different game, finding a good spot to stash your raw meat and marking it so you could find it as you did the mad dash back to your base while smelling like fresh meat to the Z's.

 
Back when we had smell, I'd carry blueberry pies and cornbread, leaving the B & E and cooked meat at home.
Made quite a different game, finding a good spot to stash your raw meat and marking it so you could find it as you did the mad dash back to your base while smelling like fresh meat to the Z's.
It also gave you second thoughts about killing a deer if you were intending on looting a POI afterwards.

 
It also gave you second thoughts about killing a deer if you were intending on looting a POI afterwards.
And it wasn't that much of a big deal later on anyway, since you had the armor and the weapons to deal with any attracted zombies. But it did add some thought-provoking strategy in the early to mid game for sure. It's unfortunate it never worked as intended.

 
The game is already striving for realism and is full of such elements, spoilage won't suddenly make it "a real life sim" or anything. Only thing spoilage would do is making sure that an already elaborately implemented feature which is hunger/food etc, stops becoming irrelevant in the first few days.

Some of you may think that spoilage "will be a drag" but it will actually keep many of the activities the game is consisted of, alive, like hunting, foraging, farming, cooking and even trading to a degree, for more than a few days. Exploring and looting are also affected as a large part of the things you find, such as seeds, cans, food etc, are quickly perceived as trash because the player can stockpile food indefinitely. Then you suddenly run out of things to do and before you know it, ask for space rockets, underwater diving, boss zombies, legendary items and new guns, but they will never be enough as the novelty will quickly wear off.

Spoilage will also help to mix activities the player does in the game in a, say, weekly basis, which is very important too imo. Observed people mining for many days straight for example, or doing something until they burn out because there is nothing to draw their attention elsewhere or any emergent needs - they just click their fat stack of equipped food and carry on. It doesn't have to actually interrupt your activities every once in a while having strict timers, or make you look at a timer every now and then, as long as it lenient and simple enough, so that the player intuitively knows when to care for it after a while.

And no, I am not saying that the player should "constantly search for food" or struggle throughout the game, but atm food/water become irrelevant way too early and way too abruptly. Just that the time the player spends for needs should be lowered more progressively, increasing the player's QOL along with progression via electricity etc. Also, balancing the food income won't change anything, as long as it's always a net positive and can be stockpiled.

 
Managing hunger absolutely should get easy after a while.

At first, getting good tools/weapons.armor is hard, but it becomes easier as you progress.

At first, surviving packs of zombies/wolves/dogs is hard, but it becomes easier as you progress.

At first, clearing a POI for a quest is hard, but it becomes easier as you progress.

Etc.

Managing hunger is never irrelevant, it just becomes easier to manage as you progress.

Lots of other things get harder, like Blood Moon hordes and the constant need to prepare for them. Survival is still the main point of the game no matter how easy some of the subsystems get.

 
Managing hunger is never irrelevant, it just becomes easier to manage as you progress.
Being able to exponentially stockpile food, which you can start doing in the first few days, and having to click on it every now and then, is not "managing" in the first place.

 
Being able to exponentially stockpile food, which you can start doing in the first few days, and having to click on it every now and then, is not "managing" in the first place.
Of course it is. The food doesn't just magically appear in your damn chests. You have to go out and loot, hunt, cook, etc. If you don't do those things, food doesn't stockpile. If you want to spend all your time mining, you don't have time to gather and prepare food. If you want to spend all your time building a fort and the materials needed for the fort, you don't have time to gather and prepare food. You have to MANAGE.

 
1 I'm not sure what the fascination is with caves
Personally, I don't care if caves are added back in or not. The only way I might get excited about it is if it meant some new zombie came along with them. Otherwise, I just see them as a big hole where resources could have been instead.

 
Of course it is. The food doesn't just magically appear in your damn chests. You have to go out and loot, hunt, cook, etc. If you don't do those things, food doesn't stockpile. If you want to spend all your time mining, you don't have time to gather and prepare food. If you want to spend all your time building a fort and the materials needed for the fort, you don't have time to gather and prepare food. You have to MANAGE.
Personally, and I'll keep this short as I don't want to get into any confrontations here, in my opinion, food collection should be one of your primary concerns for the first week, but after you've got a substantial farm set up (day 14+) then food should being to progressively become a less of a worry to the player. The main issue here is when it comes to animal spawning, it's really a mixed bag of results. Either RNG is going to be kind to you and supply you with a dozen or more animals on day one, or you'll struggle to have enough food to comfortably stay alive for multiple days, and everywhere in between. Therefore, messing with animal spawn rates might be a no-go, but if this was done, increasing the amount of food you find within Shamway food containers could be used to balance it out. Again though, this is all hypothetical, and this is all my opinion.

 
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Don't do it if you don't like it. There will be gatherer quests so if you don't like gathering 100 corn and potatoes, or 5k wood, etc then don't do those either. We want to cater to every play style in quests, not just FPS players.
Hi MM. I made a suggestion a few days ago in relation to that discussion about Tier 4 & 5 building loot, but this can also be adapted to quests from the trader.

How about some PI type quests? So the trader asks you to gather some information for him or sends you on a quest to gather evidence of (in the original example I gave) MM's first love?

I'll put the original mention below, but again, you can change this to suit trader quests:

The game is already rewarding with action, looting, leveling up, tasks, etc, but there's nothing that really satisfies a cerebral workout. What I'm imagining is: to turn off the turrets or whatever the trap is, you need to access a computer terminal where it asks you a quiz based on things around the building or maybe found in loot. Maybe even the questions can extend beyond the building, so for example "town to the North of here", which sends you on a trip to get that name.
So you get to the computer terminal and it asks you to login. You see the login name is Madmole so you have to find Madmole's desk or Madmole himself (corpse or zombie) to get his password off him.

Then the app to turn off the trap asks for another password, but this one you can get a hint for, and that hint is maybe 'the love of my life', in which you might have to find a photo or note in a locker/desk/corpse/zombie. Make it interesting by adding a bit of sleuthing and find multiple notes, and you have to sus out the right one.

Note 1: "Remember anniversary present for Mrs Madmole"

Note 2: "Madmole, Ms Wantsmadmole called 20 times to say she's looking forward to dinner tonight - receptionist"

Note 3: "Tonight's workout - ma glutes. Loves me ma glutes."

So based on certain factors you can find around the area, you find an expensive anniversary present = most likely it's his wife.

Find a ring (therefore it's off his finger) so it's Ms Wantsmadmole.

Find a Mr. Muscle magazine that Madmole has doodled love hearts in, then it's his glutes.

Maybe for 5th tier buildings it asks another few questions, but you get the idea.

Tier 3 buildings could have a computer terminal as well, but this one only requires you to find Madmole's access card, which is used to log in to his computer.
 
Of course it is. The food doesn't just magically appear in your damn chests. You have to go out and loot, hunt, cook, etc. If you don't do those things, food doesn't stockpile. If you want to spend all your time mining, you don't have time to gather and prepare food. If you want to spend all your time building a fort and the materials needed for the fort, you don't have time to gather and prepare food. You have to MANAGE.
Saying that you have to manage food beyond the early game is laughable, when you can easily stockpile food for a month and forget about it during that time. This can hardly be called "resource management" - just a periodic grind, after which, food becomes irrelevant for a large amount of time.

 
Kind Sir, there is no such thing as "too much Minecraft"Everything beneath 1k Hours in the game is a Tutorial.
Not trying to get into a debate there just isn't any reason to play it more than 2 hours to get the best gear and be set for life, unless you just like to play with tinker toys. Its a fun sandbox, but as a game its pretty lacking in goals, quests, reasons to survive, story, realism, immersion, etc. I enjoy it, and I don't know how many hours I had, but it doesn't have that Bethesda type appeal where you want to start a new character with a new story, new abilities, gear, npc friends etc which are the types of games I might get 1000's of hours in. I probably built my nice castle with rail mining system over the course of 100-200 hours max, but never felt compelled to play again after I'd done everything.

 
As far as I know the major issues with adding caves are SI and placement, feel free to correct me on that. Solve those two and you have an entirely unique biome to play with for relatively little extra work. This would also open the way for artificial underground systems such as sewers, something that has appeared in TWD as both a character crucible and a plot device. Even sketching out a working system will give the modders something to hook into and then the ever faithful cry of "just mod it" can be used.
Underground provides a different set of challenges when compared to an overground. Can't jump out of a window to save your arse in a mine. :-)

Has any thought been given to providing the SI system with the concept of an arch? Not the shape, the engineering principle. You can redirect a lot of force around an object or space with the correct use of arches. I know it'll make SI calculations a little slower but with a bit of forethought you can avoid a lot of the calculations where they're unneeded.
Performance, why is this simple scene laggy? (there is a complex sewer/cave network you can't even see rendering, adding to chunk building time, etc.)

 
Feature request:
Can random quests be given/accepted at random locations on the map? Example: In front of a laundromat lies a corpse with a quest note to be accepted or declined: “ I accidentally left a wad of cash in my trousers to be dry cleaned. Can you drop by laundromat and get it for me? -Dad”

Fact is, I love quests but hate the long travel. Stumbling across a quest during exploration is much more immersive.
Hey, that's a great idea.

+1 for this.

Thinking about all of these quests, I wonder if there are any plans on making some quests with it's own penalties, like in FallOut 3 with the city with the bomb? Option of disarming it or setting it off type options?

So do a quest 1 way = some otherwise ally hating you

Do it the other way = the different guy becomes your ally

???

 
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Madmole I read your reply about mobile quests and hope you can do it for the future releases.

Reading your posts it looks like you are taking it to the next level of

"Full buildable/destructable environtment" finding realtime purpose for every ingame object.

One of the main compliments I've read on reviews is there is so much you can do and interact with.

For the quests, as an example, the destroyed benches and mixers. If they as an

object had a placeholder attached, and each slot was basically a mod.

"Mechanical parts, electrical parts, forged iron/steel or scrap, Wood, Nails,

engine, spring, engine. Basically the normal resources to build a full, Bench

or mixer. If these were in a randomized array, for part and quantity.

When highlighted or opened, it could display, the missing part and quantity.

This would be a quest of a sort, but with out dialog. So if you found one close

to a perm or temp camp location. You could find or use looted resources, to

temporarily repair them. Set a degradation of those resources at higher rate. Then

again randomize what it needs to function again. Would an additonal placeholder file

be needed for this to work? Would this create excessive calculations on cpu?

I ask about this because once a forge, bench, mixer are built presently, they seem

to have a permanent lifespan.
Its a bunch of work just to go into the next POI and find a perfectly good working one. You can find functioning workstations if you look for them. However the quest reset can reset the POI into a broken version, so it already kind of does what you are suggesting, without a ton of new work.

We have to be super careful about new tasks or we'll be in alpha another 3 years. A18 is playing great, none of this stuff is needed.

 
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