PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Zombie_Jam]

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.

Well, nothing about that sounds OP

 

[CannedSmeef]

Madmole, how long would you say it took you to acquire the needed supplies/blueprints for things like workbenches/vehicles without specing into INT? I'm assuming it would take more time to find everything overall.

 

[DarlingCows]

@Kage848. They are discussing the demolishes more. If you do hit it’s sweet spot for example it’ll still blow up but won’t do nearly as much damage as if it did it on its own.

 

[Odetta]

Wouldn’t this idea make stealthing harder and further limit choices? Also, I’m not a fan of bullet sponge solutions. No offence.

Loc

Not at all, you'd just sneak past the boss, or if your skills are high enough, you could one shot or 2 shot him. Early game would be no-go cause your sneaky skills aren't high enough. So it's still balanced. If you can sneak around a normal Z then you could sneak around a boss. Early game you'd probably need to clear the Poi with sneak shots so it should even out.

Just think how heart-pounding it would be to try and sneak around a boss to get the loot.

I'd say it enhances sneak play.

 

[BlashaKente]

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?

Check joel’s video talking about the int tree if you haven’t already:

Crafted quality was said to be middle stats always, keep in mind weapon crafting is governed by its attribute, not always int. Not sure what tier you get from a weapon schematic.

If you love base building and making traps, vehicles and mods then int seems most efficient long term. If ur really lucky, you could find trap/vehicle/mod schematics early, Joel was not lucky after 80+ days and needed to learn some base defense schematics.

Edit: forgot to mention traps give xp now, huge benefit for passive bases since xp is the biggest tangible benefit to horde night afaik. So investing in traps early is much more worth it in the long run

 

[AtomicUs5000]

The initial idea was you shoot his flashing light and it blows him up doing massive damage to entities near him, but after playing it I think block damage will be a better design. The issue is, is there no way to minimize massive destruction? So maybe shooting it can half the damage or 1/4 it or something, but if it goes off on his own it does a lot. I'll have to chat with the team to come up with a plan. This was my very first look.

Would it possible to direct the damage? For instance, if you shoot the target, there is a little damage within a radius, but if he explodes on his own, there is an additional directional damage, like a cone in front of him... so that it smashes a wall or other obstacle that he is facing?

 

[FA_Q2]

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.

Does that not make building a fort rather pointless then? There were a ton of demolishers on your video - if there is no way to stop them blowing massive holes in your base then is the only method of dealing with them to not be in your base?

 

[madmole]

I did not say that zombies should only try to bite players, but thanks for bending the context.
You surely did not outsell every "generic" zombie game, also 7 Days to Die has been in alpha for years now where an update follows every year or so.

So having zombies crawl out of the ground is what you consider cheap? So what kind of rating goes to spawning zombies right in front of your face where you can actually see it happen? Because that is bloody cheap, same applies to activating Quests where I can see the whole POI respawn where I just cleared every zombie.

Also pushing the sales of a game has exactly zero meaning to its quality, please don't mix them. I stick to my argument that good game design is where the player can believe the world he is in, it does not have to be realistic as long its consistent and has some sort of background to the mechanics which this game does not deliver at all.

Yes zombies coming out of the ground is stupid and too cheap. The things you talk about are bugs we have or will solve eventually.
We've outsold nearly every zombie game on the planet, left for dead has been on fire sales for .99 cents or something, so big deal. That game held my attention for less than an hour and I realized it was just doom 2 reskinned. A nice tech demo for damage decals is all, but nothing I'd ever waste time playing when there were open world games with freedom and choice to play.

We deliver a special experience, but deliver it painfully. We're trying to deliver it smooth and bug free, only then will this game take off and see its true potential. A18 is the first breath of that freedom and there is a lot to come. We're not going to ruin it with cheesy zombies busting out of the ground. People already hate the monster closets, think how poorly that would be received. Just like the bug zombies spawning out of thin air is, but at least that is a bug, not a poor design.

 

[Jarod_Silverstar]

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.

Hmmm - I know you are trying to make it challenging for the hard core players but this sounds like it is pretty much guaranteeing that most of your base will be destroyed on horde nights for everybody else. I am already in the habit of building two bases, one is my normal storage/crafting base the second is designed around pure horde management/killing. That way if the horde base is lost, hopefully much of my supplies will not be impacted since very little is kept at the horde base. Now I am thinking I will need a backup horde base in case I cannot repair the first one in the days between hordes. Because silly me, I like going to the POIs looking for loot rather than spending days digging up stone and iron for the concrete and steel to build with...

 

[madmole]

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.

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*.

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?

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.

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.

Do you guys ever even read or listen to anything we say? There are over 70 new remnant house POIS with no path, no loot room, just basic easy shelter with 0-4 zombies. A fixer upper or quick stop for some basics maybe a hidden gem in a few. Not sure why all the crying, its a wip game. I don't see the problem but I'm playing A18. I like the dungeons but there are lots of ruins to explore too.

 

[madmole]

Why more of old? Well, imo, and I know I’ll probably get the same “fun trumps realism” go-to reply, but why would someone barricade their home with a single direct path to where they would essentially be hiding? And why would so many people do the same thing?
It would make more sense to have more variety in the overall interior designs. For example some that have no barricades, some that have very little barricades, and some that are a cluster to get through with no pathway. Change it up a bit so it’s not as linear. Not every civilian has a forklift to place pallets of boxes throughout their homes... just saying.

Loc

The end of times would have people stockpiling supplies and putting them anywhere they have room in a hurry. They would also rig traps against looters and walkers. I don't find any of it immersion breaking at all. As a landlord I had guys who carried pallets of crap to the basement and moved out and left it. Like 500 bags of dog food or something. Luckily it was something of value I could give away, just come get it.

 

[madmole]

I was expecting more from the Demolisher, is not doing any dmg to block s from what i can see in the video.

Yep he's shy about 5k damage on his explosion. We'll fix it.

 

[MechanicalLens]

Yep he's shy about 5k damage on his explosion. We'll fix it.

Will he deal 5k damage regardless, or will shooting his sweet spot cause him to deal less block damage when he explodes?

Also, will his block damage effect terrain at all? (Stone, forest ground, etc.) If he does, that's fine, but it would be somewhat unfortunate to have to deal with a bunch of "Creeper holes" (if you get the reference) after every late gamestage horde.

 

[beerfly]

Yep he's shy about 5k damage on his explosion. We'll fix it.

The moment where one of them exploded in your storage/crafting room was brilliant, we all expected destroyed room, if they do it for real, would be another reason to shake in horde night.

You are doing great so far guys, can`t complain, but just say thanks, a lot !

 

[madmole]

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.

Some things we will try but not committed to are:

Head and eye tracking

Stumbling into doorways when they finally breach the door.

Crawling in and out of 1 meter holes at floor level, eye level, 1 above eye level.

Remastered art

Landing animations from jumps, bosses land more controlled, other zeds face plant and ragdoll

Whats in and new:

They fall and ragdoll sometimes

They walk off higher ledges now

rage when injured and speed up their walk/jog randomly

probably more, I forget.

 

[madmole]

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?

Taser and Junk Turret, XP for traps. Guaranteed recipe unlocks, best with medicine.

 

[madmole]

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?

Shoot the illuminated box. The best way depends where he is, shoot the box if he's a ways from your base, if your concerned about that damage lure him away.

 

[Locusta]

The end of times would have people stockpiling supplies and putting them anywhere they have room in a hurry. They would also rig traps against looters and walkers. I don't find any of it immersion breaking at all. As a landlord I had guys who carried pallets of crap to the basement and moved out and left it. Like 500 bags of dog food or something. Luckily it was something of value I could give away, just come get it.

Thanks for the reply. I’m hoping the 70 POIs you mentioned will eliminate my concerns. That combined with not seeing the same POI twice and randomizing trader quests would definitely put things in the right direction. I guess I won’t know until A18 is in my hands

Loc

 

[madmole]

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.

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.

Well I can't guarantee it, but right now the code spawns duplicates. I think once all the duplicates stop spawning it will be much better. At least not the same house in the same town or two poopy pants day cares next to each other like now. There are a LOT of pois.

 

[Kage848]

Shoot the illuminated box. The best way depends where he is, shoot the box if he's a ways from your base, if your concerned about that damage lure him away.

I'm excited to see what you guys settle on. With that said an enemy that requires you to leave your base doesn't sound very fun in a base defense game. Just my 2c