PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[madmole]

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

You can always search and replace the demolisher with trader Jens and have her do a dance

IMO build some more walls, get creative and play the damn game. This talk of changing it before you even try to beat it sickens me. If he blows up he died, the threat is over. Is your base design so fragile that one hole is game over for you? Maybe I'm misreading you and you want to make everyone blow up, lol. Anyhow if its horrible we'll change it. I'm sure everyone will be watching my next video to see if I get destroyed lol.

 

[madmole]

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)

I'm all for innovation and thinking outside the box on how to deal with the game, that is what makes it fun.

 

[madmole]

Acknowledging that Dying Light's animations were planned from the onset, it's nice to know the interactive animations are on you and the other TFPs radar. I appreciate the amount of work that goes into such animations. The feedback payoff makes for awesomely engaging combat. For example, Doom's glory kills.
In 7 Days, besides building and looting, the other activity players do a ton of is killing zeds. With A18, building and looting (especially looting) is getting even more engaging. It would be great to see some interactive animations added (in future alphas) to whatever degree possible to similarly increase engagement of moment to moment combat.

I think the upcoming raging zombies is a step in that direction. The past addition of persistent arrows and dismemberment are also appreciated.

The animation team is growing and we're excited to see things get polished. A18 is just the tip of the spear I expect to see a lot more cool stuff moving forward but A18 feels better than any previous build in terms of combat animations, sounds, feeling, glancing blows etc.

 

[madmole]

@madmole
Love your last video. Congrats for staying alive! Although I must say, you choose hardcore tactic with opening and closing doors while reloading a gun. I think demolisher should do a bit more damage though. It was like 3 or 4 of them that explode in your base, next to the chem station, and chem station was still staying there. It should be gone imho, and your crates at least should get strong damage, or be gone as well (the closest one). I know you already lost gyro, but imho if we allow demolisher (or 2 of them) to explode inside our base, we should bare the consequense of it

Yes we increased block damage from 200 to 5000, so if one gets in my crafting room again, it will all be gone.

 

[Aldranon]

Milk Drinker...

Damn milk drinkers!

View attachment 29037

Get off you lazy ass and chop me some wood!

 

[Lukeirot]

If you want to be an INT guy be one. You don't need a damn thing from any other attribute to be awesome at killing zeds with the two weapons it governs.

You assume the people who have been point dumping into int the last 2 builds do it because they want to be so super good at killing zombies. I did it so I could be the crafting guy in MP so others didn't need points in int. You have removed the crafter as a player option and replaced it with another combat roll. That isn't what I and probably many other people wanted from int. For us we were just told to our face, "♥♥♥♥ you, you are a combat guy now no ifs ands or butts and if you don't it well suck it" I stand by A16 have the better mix between crafting and looting. It took so long to get better stuf and there were more levels of quality between items if you had found a 600 item it felt like substantial upgrade and because it took so long to get crafting up both looting and crafting felt worth it.

honestly at this point if you don't want people crafting things just remove crafting and don't ♥♥♥♥ us around, it's just rude at that point.

 

[Dark_Corvid]

The animation team is growing and we're excited to see things get polished. A18 is just the tip of the spear I expect to see a lot more cool stuff moving forward but A18 feels better than any previous build in terms of combat animations, sounds, feeling, glancing blows etc.

Ah yes, the glancing blows! I forgot about that. Very much looking forward to 18 and beyond in terms of immersive combat.

 

[wolfbain5]

I didn't go that long with my agility guy his save game got rekt, but his magnum was brutal, the last shot did double damage and with AP rounds he could do some nice damage. He gets the SMG which is now a tier 3 weapon and not a piece of crap. So when things get nasty he can do pretty well with it. Also he has access to exploding arrows/bolts so I think he would do ok. Obviously horde night is not his strength, but the rest of the week he's a ghost silently wrecking everything.

so bow/crossbow may not be a viable long term build then unless we avoid horde nights. doesn't sound promising. I know people were complaining about things like brass being against gun bunnies, but this may slant things too far the other direction. but I will have to reserve my opinion until I give it a good run.

crossbow is covered by agility?

is archery perks getting love or a book series? like quick draw, rapid reload, or multishot? using old d&d terms

 

[wolfbain5]

I was tired of not being able to find mines, I dug for 3 hours and no ore, in multiple locations (3 hours each). Rage-redesigned mining, now it works great. What you see on the surface is what you get. Brass is in abundance in POIS and more abundant with special perks. Yes its a prefect combination to support guys who want to use guns a lot more. I still conserve ammo because of my 16 zombie at night setitng for hordes, you normal players won't need half the ammo I blow through.

that was 16 alive, I currently play 32 or 64. perhaps I will need to scale back a wee bit

 

[rdunham3]

Yes we increased block damage from 200 to 5000, so if one gets in my crafting room again, it will all be gone.

I feel like it's right up there with the Zombieland rules...don't fight where you craft.

 

[meganoth]

You assume the people who have been point dumping into int the last 2 builds do it because they want to be so super good at killing zombies. I did it so I could be the crafting guy in MP so others didn't need points in int. You have removed the crafter as a player option and replaced it with another combat roll. That isn't what I and probably many other people wanted from int. For us we were just told to our face, "♥♥♥♥ you, you are a combat guy now no ifs ands or butts and if you don't it well suck it" I stand by A16 have the better mix between crafting and looting. It took so long to get better stuf and there were more levels of quality between items if you had found a 600 item it felt like substantial upgrade and because it took so long to get crafting up both looting and crafting felt worth it.
honestly at this point if you don't want people crafting things just remove crafting and don't ♥♥♥♥ us around, it's just rude at that point.

It seems he assumes that the guy he directly responded to does not like to be third-rate in combat all the time.

If combat means nothing to you, don't put points into the turret/baton combo and you will have 10 points more for traps, electricity, vehicles, workstations and medicine (giving you roughly a 2 week lead over a combat int guy). You are right that only doing crafting won't fill your hours in A18, but did they ever? Wasn't the crafter of a group also builder, miner and/or farmer. In A18 you śhould still be able to do that.

 

[DaVegaNL]

Same, I've said everything I wanted to say, now I'm lurking and waiting for the big boom.

But you havent said anything to me yet

 

[AtomicUs5000]

Milk Drinker...

I drink it like a man. In a jar. With the lid still on.

 

[Amanitasec]

Yes we increased block damage from 200 to 5000, so if one gets in my crafting room again, it will all be gone.

Holy cow :eek2: sound dangerous! Love it!

 

[Locusta]

I didn't go that long with my agility guy his save game got rekt, but his magnum was brutal, the last shot did double damage and with AP rounds he could do some nice damage. He gets the SMG which is now a tier 3 weapon and not a piece of crap. So when things get nasty he can do pretty well with it. Also he has access to exploding arrows/bolts so I think he would do ok. Obviously horde night is not his strength, but the rest of the week he's a ghost silently wrecking everything.

So as a mostly single player guy, the agility class doesn’t sound that appealing as you just stated that they are not great on horde nights. Shouldn’t the balance be that all classes are able to handle hordes in some fashion? Especially because the entire game revolves around horde night.

I’m all for a challenge and what not, but I’d hate to see so much work being put into a class that not a lot of players use because it’s inferior to other classes.

Loc

 

[Ti2xGr]

Nothing prevents you from going back to a stealth mode once you kill/lose the current aggressors.

I believe you are misreading my request. Instead of just one path up a skyscraper, having a choose route A: slaughterfest (red light clues) with more rush type scenario vs. route B: stealth (white light) route. Right now, all POI dungeons have just one specific path to the top/end. With a skyscraper, there should be no reason why we might not have enough room for two or even three different paths to the top with a bit of variety of challenge depending on the path we take. I tend to stealth by default (love sneaking around with my silenced pistol), but in a group scenario, we tend to go a bit more aggressive as we are able to flank etc. If one path had waves of zombies vs. another path with a trickle of zombies as we wind around corners, etc..

I apologize if I wasn't clear on my first explanation. I'm not sure how else to describe it. Does that make sense?

 

[DanLW]

Looking forward to the horde night video with the 5k demolishers. 5k seems a bit high, but well see how you fare. If your base is a hole in the ground by morning, perhaps dial it back a bit...

Will irradiated demolishers do more damage on detonation?

Do you think it is possible for the game stage to get so high that the game becomes impossibly difficult?

 

[MajorMunchy]

So as a mostly single player guy, the agility class doesn’t sound that appealing as you just stated that they are not great on horde nights. Shouldn’t the balance be that all classes are able to handle hordes in some fashion? Especially because the entire game revolves around horde night.
I’m all for a challenge and what not, but I’d hate to see so much work being put into a class that not a lot of players use because it’s inferior to other classes.

Loc

stealth gets explosive right? horde night. If your atleast good enough you can go with a bow for a while in horde nights. steel ammo and have a xbow with xplode bolts for groups.

 

[madmole]

Lol, are you having a debate with yourself? As you stated, if full INT builds could craft the best wpns/armor/items then every other builds would be potentially second rate. What is should happen is each build should have skills/crafted items/abilities that are unique to them to keep them mostly balanced.

This is what we've done. To craft nice shotguns you buy the shotgun perk rank 5. Its still inferior to the best looted ones. To craft good light armor you spec into light armor. INT still unlocks more crafting than any other perk tree but its not like it used to be. Int is no longer the guy who crafts the best everything except for junk turrets and batons, and the ones in loot are better. The int build excels at medicine, bartering, and can basically craft all the vehicles, workstations etc without finding schematics. He gets crafting speed bonuses. Its a decent new play style, but its not like it used to be, where it was needed and all the other ones were optional.

 

[Ti2xGr]

This is what we've done. To craft nice shotguns you buy the shotgun perk rank 5. Its still inferior to the best looted ones. To craft good light armor you spec into light armor. INT still unlocks more crafting than any other perk tree but its not like it used to be. Int is no longer the guy who crafts the best everything except for junk turrets and batons, and the ones in loot are better. The int build excels at medicine, bartering, and can basically craft all the vehicles, workstations etc without finding schematics. He gets crafting speed bonuses. Its a decent new play style, but its not like it used to be, where it was needed and all the other ones were optional.

I'm quite sure you've already answered this, but am I correct that there is still the Lucky Looter perk which will still affect the quality of the weapons (in general) that we find in the world, no matter what upgrade path we take, right?