PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[madmole]

Doh, I hope that was sarcasm. That will be hell on a PvP server. If it's true that there will be an easy indicator, have the ability to turn it off?

Nope dead serious. Its not a sign, but an ore boulder that shows where to start mining. Not sure how this would be hell, mining actually works again.

 

[madmole]

Madmole You spoke of arc and trajectory earlier regarding weapons.

Will is it planned or does it exist with elevated running entities in A18.

I ask because, presently unless jump is activated, there is no fall arc associated with speed. My visual

example if im being chased

on a roof at higher level than neighboring building i and zombies are running. unless i jump and its a spider chasing me gravity is

almost instantaneous. To test so you can see, use a motorcycle and drive at turbo speed off elevated incline. the arc seems to brief.

Basically can we have a variable for gravitational arc added to xml. Future request.

That is faatals area.

 

[Guppycur]

The way I see it if your still playing by the time they spawn, we've already weeded out the whiners. It will take thick skin to make it to that game stage IMO.
We're going to address death with some changes. If you die on blood moon, the zombies will no longer GPS to you unless you engage them in combat. This will prevent death loop. SO if you get rekt, you can spawn in the wild or if your bed roll is in a secure room you can just crouch and it will basically not know where you are and normal stealth rules will apply, until you engage, then its on again. So if you die you can hide and not get in a death loop. If you want to keep fighting you can. It will be up to the player.

This will help reduce xp loss and aggravating death loops. Of course you can do this already by not pressing the spawn button until sunrise, but this will be a bit better IMO. You could sneak off to a mine and do something and not stare at a button. If your team mate is alive the zeds will keep gps to him.

Hopefully we get this into A18, but no promises.

Long story short this should reduce the whining IMO. Dying once on horde night is tolerable, but dying 5-10 times or whatever sucks.

I love this. Gives people choice. Nicely done.

 

[Aldranon]

Nope dead serious. Its not a sign, but an ore boulder that shows where to start mining. Not sure how this would be hell, mining actually works again.

Now I see! THAT'S how you get so much ammo!

So brass is now good in A18. I'm going to guess this is why a person wants to explore ALL of a POI. Its like you guys planned that!

Very clever MM.

 

[MechanicalLens]

Nope dead serious. Its not a sign, but an ore boulder that shows where to start mining. Not sure how this would be hell, mining actually works again.

Just curious, will we still be getting conglomerations of ore types underground in the same location every so often (ex. in A17, you might find a gravel patch that might direct you to an underground iron, coal, and lead deposit), or will the game in A18 only generate one type of ore per given area?

 

[Zombie_Jam]

Perhaps you could open up a "debate forum"? (But don't call it a debate thread, for obvious reasons.) Just a suggestion, and yes, I could see how this would be a problem. But then again, those can get out of hand pretty quickly, so idk. *Shrugs*

Things only get out of hand because of the corner of this forum that has nothing but contempt for options and player choice.

It's their way or the highway.

 

[MechanicalLens]

Things only get out of hand because of the corner of this forum that has nothing but contempt for options and player choice.
It's their way or the highway.

Makes sense, and fair enough.

 

[Zombie_Jam]

We're going to address death with some changes. If you die on blood moon, the zombies will no longer GPS to you unless you engage them in combat. This will prevent death loop. SO if you get rekt, you can spawn in the wild or if your bed roll is in a secure room you can just crouch and it will basically not know where you are and normal stealth rules will apply, until you engage, then its on again. So if you die you can hide and not get in a death loop. If you want to keep fighting you can. It will be up to the player.

This is fantastic

Do you think it would be possible, as an option, to extend this to the player not being targetted unless seen by default as the blood moon starts?

Even if not this is still a great change.

 

[Laz Man]

The way I see it if your still playing by the time they spawn, we've already weeded out the whiners. It will take thick skin to make it to that game stage IMO.
We're going to address death with some changes. If you die on blood moon, the zombies will no longer GPS to you unless you engage them in combat. This will prevent death loop. SO if you get rekt, you can spawn in the wild or if your bed roll is in a secure room you can just crouch and it will basically not know where you are and normal stealth rules will apply, until you engage, then its on again. So if you die you can hide and not get in a death loop. If you want to keep fighting you can. It will be up to the player.

This will help reduce xp loss and aggravating death loops. Of course you can do this already by not pressing the spawn button until sunrise, but this will be a bit better IMO. You could sneak off to a mine and do something and not stare at a button. If your team mate is alive the zeds will keep gps to him.

Hopefully we get this into A18, but no promises.

Long story short this should reduce the whining IMO. Dying once on horde night is tolerable, but dying 5-10 times or whatever sucks.

This will be interesting. A couple of thoughts come to mind.

1) Will there need to be something that teaches the player to know they don't have to run back into the fray or perhaps it will be intuitive enough....For example, "oh crap I died......let me sit still for a minute to collect my tears.....oh hey they are not coming after me again????"

2) What incentive will there be to re-engage the BM horde? Zombie XP probably won't be enough. Maybe introduce unique loot drops from blood moon spawns (i.e. collection quest item, faction rep. gain, higher chance of higher quality items, etc.). Otherwise, many players may choose to just sit it out and because there is more risk then reward.

 

[LionsDen]

Except I don't need to play it to know that, MadMole addressed me directly and stated that a full intelligence build allows player made items of middle of the road quality.
If I want better weapons that means I cannot play as I wish, which is basic looting, mining, and taking on zombies at my leisure with a heavy focus on crafting and farming, because I am going to need a decent enough str/def build even with basic melee weapons just to get the better defense loot.

From what I read and believe, When you craft an item it's quality is determined by the items main point. Each weapon item type is governed by some perk in the strength, intelligence, fortitude, agility or perception tree. For instance, the shock sticks are controlled by a perk in the intelligence tree and Bows are governed by a perk in the perception tree. Now, when you craft an item, it can only have a max quality of 5, to get a quality 6 item, you must find them. Also, items that are found have random stats like say 10 to 20 damage on them, while the crafted item of the same quality level will only have static stats like a damage of 15. If you want the best items, you must find them but you can still craft decent items that may be better than anything you have thus far found.

 

[Roland]

Except I don't need to play it to know that, MadMole addressed me directly and stated that a full intelligence build allows player made items of middle of the road quality.
If I want better weapons that means I cannot play as I wish, which is basic looting, mining, and taking on zombies at my leisure with a heavy focus on crafting and farming, because I am going to need a decent enough str/def build even with basic melee weapons just to get the better defense loot.

Which means more than basic looting. Which means looting POIs. Which restates my point.

All the while spending precious levelling points on some things that I do NOT want and all for the neccessity of getting where I do want to be. Which is INT. Which is now sounding like something I don't want because of the medium level weaponry at the top of the tier. Comprende?

Of course I will try it but from what information I've seen, I don't see this as a very good setup. And may I remind you - I play single player. I'm in favour of the previous posters adjustments between SP/MP to rid us of at least some of the tedium.

Dude, you don’t even know what values constitute average stats for each tier level. You’re going to find that average is plenty powerful enough to survive and do what you want to do by time you get to green and blue levels.

You have zero frame of reference for the stats of tools and weapons except for what you know of A17 and it has all been rebalanced and fundamentally changed. Higher quality does more damage without mods in A18 unlike A17 so it is completely different.

Madmole spoke directly to you and said “average stats for crafting”. So go ahead and tell me what exactly that means in terms of being able to play how you like. You can’t because you won’t know what the heck average stats are until you play the game— and I’m confident that you’ll see that all your worry was wasted energy.

Don’t get me wrong though— some adaptation for everyone will be required and some will likely refuse and probably put the game down just like every alpha update.

 

[DaVegaNL]

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.

Good news!

 

[Vedui]

Per Joel's request, demo explosion block damage has been increased from 200 to 5000.The detonation time delay has been reduced from 5 to 2 seconds, which is still long enough to do a melee hit and run away without dying.

Hi faatal!

Appreciate all your hard work (and all the devs) to give us this wonderful game!

Would it be possible, to have the "mandatory" explosion on death be an XML attribute in the demolisher entity definition?

The reason I ask, is that having a "non stoppable" explosion is a huge difference to game play and hordes, and one that I fear will have huge issues with base building. It might be just fine, but you can imagine having a few demolishers exploding in your base dealing 5k damage, where you'll see bases crumble, storage lost, and basically either way generate hours of cleanup. And this without a way to actually kill them such as through headshots and avoiding it.

A simple "explode on death" true/false would solve that, allowing the community to play around with this setting. Heck, I'd include that in the cop as well, so we could see how it'd affect cops always exploding regardless of fa(a)tal damage or not.

The same goes for the detonation time delay. Putting in XML would allow players and modders a hugely more effective way to make changes.

Maybe on a more advanced, even an attribute as to "explosion on death" property to specify "demolisher/cop" allowing us to easily mod other zombie entities to have the same explosion potential. But anyway, just an on/off for the mandatory explosion would be sufficient for a basic approach!

(This of course if he always explode on death as I understood, if not, and you can actually terminally damage him and prevent headshots then it's more like cops and it's fine

/Vedui

 

[FA_Q2]

And if one of the demolishers is next to one of the poles, and obliterates it? Now you're talking about multiple separate circuits.
For all we know, only projectiles trigger the demolisher's explosives. (Player fire, dart traps, turrets.)

bury it in dirt

 

[MechanicalLens]

bury it in dirt

That's an idea. We can just coat the outside of our walls in a layer or two of forest ground to minimize the explosion from the Demolisher. (madmole, if you're reading this, please move on; nothing to see here)

 

[Noctoras]

He doesn't have a ranged attack and is a tank to kill without the detonator, and he does 5x the block damage a cop does with melee, and has a mini nuclear explosion, so quite a bit of difference. He's faster too. We're still trying stuff out. Maybe he'll just be a suicide bomber that blows when he gets close and no melee at all.

Actually a suicide vest is an interesting PvP idea as well. Obviously hardly useful in single player, I can see some uses in a PvP setting

 

[Zombiepoptard]

Idea: What if we had a Stealth quest where we are trying to find an item while avoiding a nearly indestructible murderous psycho who will wreck the house trying to hunt us down. The house would only have the one wondering psycho in it. Scissorman Clock Tower style.

https://imgur.com/wuhJiTQ

https://imgur.com/YVtyW3a

Reasons why you would want to add this:

1. Opportunity to make for an iconic 7 days to Die character like Silent Hills Pyramid Head.

2. Easy way to add story and lore.

3. Show off the destructibility this game provides.

4. bring a different horror cat and mouse element to the game. You would not want to fight this enemy.

5. It would be so cool

Make these missions in mansions out in the middle of nowhere. Resident Evil 1 style.

 

[Zombiepoptard]

Another high tier mission will have you defeat the psycho as a boss. Making 2 mission ideas with one central enemy.

Stealth Mission: The lower-tier intro to the psycho.

Boss Fight Mission: The higher-tier defeat of said psycho. Psycho would have lower health making it possible to defeat him.

 

[crazywildfire]

Actually a suicide vest is an interesting PvP idea as well. Obviously hardly useful in single player, I can see some uses in a PvP setting

That is a prime example of people that don't value life. If this happens death penalty needs to be increased a bunch. But just my opinion.

 

[Sekhet]

That is a prime example of people that don't value life. If this happens death penalty needs to be increased a bunch. But just my opinion.

So, all they need to add then, is death penalty from suicide is x10 and Viola!