PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[madmole]

do i dig in the direction of the arrow? ... because some of mine are pointing in n,e,w,s positions and not down or up..
i am so confused now.

also, when i see an arrow in a poi, is that a cue for something?

sorry... i couldnt resist... i'll go hide in my cave now.

i simply loved the day 84 video... was worth staying up to see it.

It was a ton of fun. I love this game now, and its really weird starting to feel like a fanboy of your own game.

 

[Roland]

Oh you're mistaken; I'm not arguing that the old poi's were better, I'm arguing that their design is better to have as a majority. I don't need "Good loot" in every poi, so I'm happy to go into a normal house that has some standard day 1 junk (clothes, few cans of food, maybe a cooking pot) and call it a day.
That's in fact what I want.

Which is in fact exactly what you get when you only do a partial clearing of one of those POI's which is exactly what I explained and then got mocked for wanting to find cooking pots over and over again for the whole game.

I would *love* the dungeon poi's to have special loot I can't get anywhere else, to make them worth the effort, but do you know what I find when I go through those poi's? Clothes, some cans of food, and a cooking pot. Oh yeh and the occasional pile of goodies, certainly nothing I *need*.

That's because you just follow the path..lol. Break open some of those nasty pallets people are complaining about to go your own way and you'll soon have a stack of cement, cobblestones, and parts (mech, electrical, plastic).

And that finite selection of poi's? With the new dynamic block system, it doesn't have to be that way. They could literally have the interior of every building different, if they designed it from a different point of view. Why does a desk have to be limited to open vs closed? Why can't it be a nightstand, a bookcase, a trap, or even a wall?

They like them designed by their team. Not sure whether they have looked into this level of randomizing interior decorations and loot containers.

More to the point though, why does EVERY house have dozens of these pallets inside of them? They're like onions in chinese food... they're cheap, and they fill up the plate.

But tasty. Those pallets get me into flagstone blocks a lot sooner than through digging clay and breaking stone.

There are just too many valid arguments against the amount of dungeon poi's. Thankfully TFP agrees with me on this one, and is adding more "generic" ones to the mix.

This will be interesting to see how thankful and agreeable you are going to be on this point once you get to playing A18. I don't think more "remnants and ruins" mean what you are expecting in the way of classic POI's to explore...

 

[Jarod_Silverstar]

What regular POI takes half a day to clear out?
A major issue in MP is many people nerdpole straight to where the good loot is, whether it's on the roof or in an attic space, so when you go through the POI you get to the end just to find out the good stuff is already gone. Any fixes on that? Maybe spread the loot out a bit more evenly throughout the POI?

The payoff at the end was a good idea, but people circumvented that right off the bat.

Maybe have 2-3 checkpoints in the house that need to be cleared before the main loot cache is spawned? Or some type of percentage modifier that if you clear 10% of the house the loot is reduced to 10% of normal? They already have some of that code in Trader quests that you have the clear the POI before the quest is complete...

 

[Roland]

I can agree that unbarricaded houses could maybe be boring or too easy, but I think the game needs a bit of that so not everything is a chore. Obviously the loot could reflect the amount of effort? Take the Shotgun Messiah factory for example, it’s absolutely massive. The downside is it takes two in game days to get through and you get almost the same loot as anywhere else. I mean, it’s a gun factory! It should be a goldmine for weapons and a pain to get through. Right now, to me, it’s just a time-sink.
Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE this game. Over 1500 hours played. Still playing a no crafting challenge mode atm. Have never modded.

Loc

There seem to be more loot specific containers that are placed in specific POI's. It may not quite be where it needs to be but I think they are moving in the direction of not having generic loot that can be found anywhere being found everywhere not matter what POI it is.

 

[Locusta]

There seem to be more loot specific containers that are placed in specific POI's. It may not quite be where it needs to be but I think they are moving in the direction of not having generic loot that can be found anywhere being found everywhere not matter what POI it is.

I hope that is the case. I think that alone would definitely help. Thanks for the responses Roland. \m/

Loc

 

[madmole]

A little worried by this statement. As someone who would dump into INT and be the crafting base-building guy a mixture of your statements over the development for A18 has me worried you are making crafting a pointless endeavor. If stats on found items are almost always better than crafted ones, why bother. If much of the crafting is being shifted to other skills what is left in intelligence. If you are more interested in promoting active defense options rather than passive ones, what will be left for people that like to improve their wall, trap layout and layers of defense. I am worried that you see the videos of people abuseing the AI and assume everyone is doing that and trying to balance against that.
I'm worried even more by the Demolisher and what I saw in your video with it. compared to the concrete citadels I tend to create they would break a few blocks of concrete at most; I was hoping the Demolisher would be some Helms deep kind of wall blasting scenario, he just seemed like a cop with a timer on him.

Can you allay any of these worries?

First of all INT is the guaranteed way to craft all things science, medicines, be effective with them, vehicles, etc. The guy out looting is stuck in the minibikes for dumb♥♥♥♥s era and is at the will of the random gods. The int guy gets trap XP, the non int players don't. The int guy gets pretty good junk turrets, making scrap iron into ammo? Without the perks the junk turret is well, junk. Perked up they are pretty amazing for shooting scrap iron. He is guaranteed all the workstations, the scrounger is again, at the will of the gods. He is guaranteed all the electric and trap crafting. We'll probably embellish the intellect guy with some discounted recipes or something if needed, I haven't played that build yet so no idea yet.

The demolisher is being changed to do about 5k hit points of block damage on explode. So if you don't want mass destruction in your base, you will have to jump off your tower, lure him somewhere, then shoot his sweet spot to kill him, OR use 500 rounds to his head to kill him without an explosion. So he will basically pummel a hole to you quickly with his fists unless you kill him with a ton of ammo, if you shoot his box he blows up in a few seconds and will do a ton of damage to your base, destroying all but steel.

 

[Zombie_Jam]

b******. Nothing was removed.
Or do you want to claim that looting POIs was removed because since A16 there are zombies in the POIs ?

I actually think this sentence is pure genius. I imagine you sitting in your chair and having a big smile on your face for this audacious trolling (meant in a positive way, nearly on par with some of Rolands best trolling attempts. Naturally nothing can reach his masterpiece, the wrenchable mine) :cocksure:

PS: If it really wasn't trolling: Stealth is the solution to your pacifist leanings, up on the surface as well as underground. Underground you should also think about having a second exit, always.

You have bizzarely managed to both miss my point and prove my point within the same reply.

Adding 'zombie digging' removed safe underground building for those wishing to avoid the bloodmoon hordes and surface zombies. That's the first point.

Underground pacifism has it's own limitations and punishments, those being whoever chooses to sit underground all night is losing experience and the ability to bag loot. This is the point you missed.

There is an argument of a bunker with a barred ceiling for bottom up kills with impunity, but the same applies to top down killing from a raised platform.

By the way, there's a delicious irony in your assumption of me trolling.

As for the point of mine which you proved?

'Underground you should also think about having a second exit, always.'

There's the tyrrany I talked about. You are part of the problem, not the solution. You don't get to decide how I, or any fellow 7 Days players play our games. The same applies vice versa, I do not get to decide how you should play.

I just wish the devs would see this, and if they have, and care, and take the time, simply give everyone the option to slide some sliders and, therein, bestow upon us the ability to truly make our experiences unique.

As I said, please everyone, favour no-one.

(Note to anyone shouting .xml - XML editing isn't a viable option for everyone, nor is modding for anyone who appreciates the hard work of the developers and who like the taste of vanilla.)

 

[madmole]

Madmole.I think it was before your first BM Video, where you said that you increased the Zombies so that they come in masses from 22:00 till 4:00 and not only until Midnight.

Is this a general change? Or did you tweak your personal XMLs? If so, could you please eloborate wich ones, or make it a Server Config?

I only began to fiddle around with XMLs but kept my hands away from Spawn or Gamestage stuff

Thanks a lot.

Nope I didn't say that at all. What we did was increase the total number that can spawn. I imagine horde night will still be over on 11 pm for most experienced players on day 7, but at some point along the way its going to last until 4am now, where I was day 70 and (before the change) was finished by 1 or 2 am, and I thought at this point, I want it to last longer so we upped the counts. I run with 16 alive so I burn through more zeds that default setting players do.

 

[madmole]

I second these questions, particularly regarding intelligence, crafting, and the random stats.
And I sincerely hope they aren't moving away from crafting, that's one of the things I love most about 7D

Crafting produces a middle of the road item. Not a piece of crap but not the best either. The best is found in loot.

 

[madmole]

I think you guys are missing the point completely......he said these things concerning the build he made, not the game in general. You want to craft? Then perk into a craft build. You want to perk into electricity and intelligence? Make an intelligence build. You can no longer max everything in the same time period as you could in A17 and before. Since leveling is much much slower, you have to choose perks carefully. For his current build, spending points in intelligence was a bad move. Crafting will always be a major aspect of the game.

It wasn't a bad move, but had all the schematics been there in loot from day 1 I might not have had to buy those 3 ranks of engineering, and fort could have been 10 by now. I'll get there today though I think, so I can finally get the max perks for my build, then everything else is gravy after that.

 

[madmole]

PS: If it really wasn't trolling: Stealth is the solution to your pacifist leanings, up on the surface as well as underground. Underground you should also think about having a second exit, always.

As soon as fear is removed, or uncertainty, the game loses its appeal. I'm finally in love with this game again since about A11. Not knowing a sure fire way to be safe is good. Wondering and thinking how to improve my base for the next horde night is a great feeling, because we all want to be in control. Wondering what the next horde might bring has me wanting to play in anticipation of that next great horde night.

 

[MechanicalLens]

The practicality of chopping your way through is diminished enough that although boring and obvious, it's easier to follow the path. CAN we sit there all day chopping away at a steel bar in higashi to circumvent a parkour jump? Sure. Will we? No. The game deters us enough by design, to force us through the desired path.
That's the gripe of dungeon pois. They're cute, they're great fun the first or second time around, but then you start to see the patterns, can recognize the trap, and it becomes tiresome.

Maybe, and I'm not arguing against your statement here, but by that same logic, many non-dungeon POI's should fall under this fate as well, but for many players (including myself), they don't. I'm not talking about the bog standard A16 house, but rather I'm referring to non-dungeons such as the Poopy Pants Daycare, military bases, Meaty Burgers, the Clunky Oil, etc. - POI's that are vastly different from each other and are very interesting (maybe not as engaging as dungeons, but interesting nonetheless) in design that they seem to blend in perfectly with standard dungeons, imo. Just saying.

 

[RestInPieces]

Please clarify your question in your next reply, I'm not digging through old posts to see what that was all about.

Reposting the question with the rest of the post below:

Do you ever plan on focusing on improving normal zombie behavior?

Mostly talking about randomization and perhaps adding a few simple animations. Little things that will not only make zombies feel more organic and movie-like, but also make them less predictable and more threatening. Things like randomized slight walking speed fluctuations, stumbling/tripping forward randomly towards the player or just randomly stumbling in place "losing balance" momentarily, a "reaching out" animation, the biting animation (which already exists and activates only when the zombie has no hands) mixed with normal attacks with a different hit cast etc.

Even something that seems insignificant, such as, for example, the player *not* knowing exactly when the zombie he is kiting or the zombie in the other side of the store will reach him, would change the threat/surprise level of normal zombies dramatically.

As for specials, I think that while some specials are great for gameplay, overusing them or not giving them careful thematic consideration, will end up making the game's combat the same cliche experience you find in pretty much every game. Ranged enemies, flying enemies, bomber enemies - not saying it doesn't work for the time being, but I think that you have already proven to be able to think out of the box and humbly believe that you can do better in this department.

 

[Zombie_Jam]

Crafting produces a middle of the road item. Not a piece of crap but not the best either. The best is found in loot.

Hey MadMole, thanks for the reply.

In this instance, what's the point of a full intelligence build? And how does a full intelligence build affect the quality of items if the best you can do is medium quality re: stats?

 

[Jarod_Silverstar]

So if you playing to your builds strengths is important. Its not the one character build game anymore, its an RPG with important choices now. I'll never be able to craft gyro's because I'm not willing to play 300 hours to unlock that. I murdered 500 guys last night and gained one level basically. So you can see how slow it is to level at a high level, IMO level 80 is going to be the average guy's attention span before rolling a new build for ♥♥♥♥s and giggles. That will be 100+ hours in at this rate unless you change the xp slider. Even so unlocking everything is a thing of the past unless you just play one build for months or 8 hours a day or something.

If I were a different build I'd be playing different and my base would be different.

MM, I am a little concerned about this. Of course it makes sense to have people specialize in MP so you encourage folks to work together. But if you are a player that is more of a SP type, either by choice or other time restrictions (like a variable work schedule that limits the time I can play with friends), it feels like this is a major nerf to that play style.

So my question is this: Assuming you put in 200 hours/200 levels in a game, how far can you get up the various perk trees? 90% in one, 50% in a second and 10% in the rest? Or can you get to around 50% on all them and only be able to max one or two?

I think there would be positive to having a different 'cap' on playing SP vs MP. With SP having the higher leveling limits so while not a super 'good at everything' character, at least they can do well in all areas to survive on their own. Key it to some variable on map creation/startup that is fixed so people cannot game up in SP and switch to a MP map/game later with the same character.

 

[madmole]

I'd be fine if it looks like Silent Hill 2 but It looked like silent hill 2 in a16. I get that some textures were looking out of sync in alpha 16 and I was on board at the time when you said that but I just think you overshot it. There was a green wallpaper texture that got removed in alpha 17. It was the green wallpaper texture used for almost every house in Dyersville. Can you improve the quality of that texture and put it back in please?

I quit doing art. The game is fun because my focus is now on design and balance. Being a jack of all trades is ok when your a 3 man shop but at some point you have to focus and become awesome at one thing the one that matters the most to you. SOrry not the answer you wanted. I'll see if we can get some back in.

 

[madmole]

The practicality of chopping your way through is diminished enough that although boring and obvious, it's easier to follow the path. CAN we sit there all day chopping away at a steel bar in higashi to circumvent a parkour jump? Sure. Will we? No. The game deters us enough by design, to force us through the desired path.
That's the gripe of dungeon pois. They're cute, they're great fun the first or second time around, but then you start to see the patterns, can recognize the trap, and it becomes tiresome.

When we're done there will never be the same POI repeated in the game, (or very rarely) so how can it be tiresome?

The issue now is the trader sends you to the same 5 buildings all the time and we're not spawning unique buildings when we could.

 

[Zombie_Jam]

Trimmed

+1

Nothing another slider with an experience multiplier wouldnt fix

 

[Kage848]

First of all INT is the guaranteed way to craft all things science, medicines, be effective with them, vehicles, etc. The guy out looting is stuck in the minibikes for dumb♥♥♥♥s era and is at the will of the random gods. The int guy gets trap XP, the non int players don't. The int guy gets pretty good junk turrets, making scrap iron into ammo? Without the perks the junk turret is well, junk. Perked up they are pretty amazing for shooting scrap iron. He is guaranteed all the workstations, the scrounger is again, at the will of the gods. He is guaranteed all the electric and trap crafting. We'll probably embellish the intellect guy with some discounted recipes or something if needed, I haven't played that build yet so no idea yet.
The demolisher is being changed to do about 5k hit points of block damage on explode. So if you don't want mass destruction in your base, you will have to jump off your tower, lure him somewhere, then shoot his sweet spot to kill him, OR use 500 rounds to his head to kill him without an explosion. So he will basically pummel a hole to you quickly with his fists unless you kill him with a ton of ammo, if you shoot his box he blows up in a few seconds and will do a ton of damage to your base, destroying all but steel.

Havent been on the forums in a bit, new work schedule. What is the demolishers sweet spot if not his head?

And if we kill him he blows up a chunk of our base anyway? So the best way to deal with him is to jump off our base and lead him away?

 

[FA_Q2]

Any two story house is going to eat half your day with all the winding blocked off pathways, especially early game with stone axe and a crude melee weapon and limited ammo bare bones perks.
Any stealth player will spend much longer creeping through a POI.

We have no solution in A18 for nerdpolling loot grabs, we're talking about some solutions for 19.

The solution that was bantered around here awhile back that I think is the best would be to make multiple copies of each major POI. Not totally reworking the POI itself but rather placing the goddie room in a different place in 3 different versions of the POI, i.e., One in the basement, one on the top floor and maybe one in the middle. That way you never actually know where the final room is and to locate it may require going through most of the POI anyway. you would not know which of version of the POI spawned without actually exploring it. This would also take some of the familiarity with looting the 10th paper mill or warehouse as there would be differences in the crawl.

Such should not be to difficult to accomplish as the POIs would not be all that different - just the path that takes you through it. I don't know how that would work with the tier 5 POI that we currently have though, they are pretty complex in path atm, or the specialty ones like the bear den. The rest of them are much simpler though.

Any changes to stop nerdpolling directly just end up creating another way to nerdpole in a fully distructable and craftable world like this one. I think the only way to mitigate opening the goddie room without any challenge is to make the room location somewhat random.

When we're done there will never be the same POI repeated in the game, (or very rarely) so how can it be tiresome?
The issue now is the trader sends you to the same 5 buildings all the time and we're not spawning unique buildings when we could.

Should have read the rest of the thread. Are you really going to make THAT many POIs? That is a crap ton but it would be fantastic.