PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Laz Man]

I think I've watched enough general streamer footage at this point and pleased with everything that i watched.

Since MM was kind enough to share several horde videos already, I dont feel I need to watch much more.

So far these are my biggest takeaways from watching.

1) rage mode = love it

Adds more depth to combat. (altho alittle weird when a zombie goes nuts when they damage themselves on cactus lol)

2) new weapons = love it

Lots of viable weapon choices now. The swing animations seem nice and glancing blows adds more depth to melee combat. Sledges seem like they could benefit more from the new swing path mechanic if they could be swung in an arc versus ending the swing at the center of the screen.

The new junk turret and stun batton adds alot more utility especially.

3) new/updated pois = love it

The new remnant POIs look great and the sleeper levels seem good. Tons of new decoration blocks really makes the world feel even more lived in. The quality of loot looks on point for nomad (i.e. enough ammo) but not sure with lucky looter. Havent watched anyone specced into that yet.

Edit:

4) random gen and new/updated textures and light.

Looked so beautiful. I bet alot of work went into it.

 

[Blake_]

Canned food is expensive. Iron gut removes the chance for it 100% except for rotten flesh and nasty stuff, but all the cooked meals will have 0% chance with iron gut maxed out. I eat that crap all the time with no iron gut and never throw up. Needs bumped up if anything but we need to see how it plays out. No matter how much we raise it, iron gut will offset it, we'll raise it to keep up.
The better meals already have a lower chance because you eat less. Even if everything is 4%, If you eat 10 5 calories meals its overall a higher chance than eating 1 50 calorie meals, because you are rolling the dice more frequently.

I see. Thanks for the clarification! . I also heard about vitamins so no problem. I'm starting to find it difficult to whine about something. Everything looks so nice in the videos.

It's difficult to find bugs nowadays. I watched 15 hours of feedback combined from Kage, Kickz, Grumbel and a few others and all I could find was a hard to reproduce bow blocked bent arrow animation bug, the opened rolling garage doors exploit and Sleepers suddendly standing up if killed/headexploded in a fetal / lay down position, which is a also a 17.4 thing.

Grumbel is very cheerful and entertaining, cheesy corny tv show level stuff! Sunday hype train then?

 

[altcon]

Why do we have to wait till the streamers are done playing before we the paying members get to use A18? I see no benefit to having them have it first.
Streamers are for those who don't have the game, those of us who have 4 copies of 7DTD or even 1 copy don't really care to watch someone else play - we just want to play!

So lets get it Today/Sunday please.

I watched a couple of different people for a few minutes or so. I swear they didn't even have a clue how to play the game, far less know what the changes are. That phrase "all advertising is good advertising" is bull...

 

[CannedSmeef]

I'm confused, are we going to potentially see A18 drop for us sunday night or mid monday?

 

[JaxTeller718]

Canned food is expensive. Iron gut removes the chance for it 100% except for rotten flesh and nasty stuff, but all the cooked meals will have 0% chance with iron gut maxed out. I eat that crap all the time with no iron gut and never throw up. Needs bumped up if anything but we need to see how it plays out. No matter how much we raise it, iron gut will offset it, we'll raise it to keep up.
The better meals already have a lower chance because you eat less. Even if everything is 4%, If you eat 10 5 calories meals its overall a higher chance than eating 1 50 calorie meals, because you are rolling the dice more frequently.

This. It is important for everyone (myself included) to give things a chance. You cant damn an entire mechanic because you have seen it in action for 7 in game days.

People constantly forget about perks etc. The one complaint I always hear (i know we arent supposed to talk mods here but im using this to back you MM) is that something feels really underwhelming. "Dude arrows suck" or "Damn the club is an awful weapon" So i ask them what they specced into and usually they say guns.

Well yeah. You're not making the perks work for YOU. So many people forget that this game is now perk dependent. Just looking at a bow is no longer enough. You have to look at it with the mindset of the perk bonuses as well.

- - - Updated - - -

I watched a couple of different people for a few minutes or so. I swear they didn't even have a clue how to play the game, far less know what the changes are. That phrase "all advertising is good advertising" is bull...

You have to stick with the ones who have passion. I personally 100 percent endorse Grumbul. His personality and his enthusiasm for the game is infectious and he never ever cheats or cheeses or anything. He makes it a point to do pois the way they were designed etc.

He really sells the game well. And hes always very complimentary. Even things he does not like he is never rude or crass but explains himself very well.

 

[faatal]

Oh geez thats cheesy. There's always going to be some exploit you can pull off and exploit with but thats pretty funny.

We made a task to look at AI vs garage doors.

 

[Gareee]

I'm confused, are we going to potentially see A18 drop for us sunday night or mid monday?

It might be depend on how irritable forum members are.

I can see both sides... TFP Busted butt for months to deliver their A game, and are weary. They kept hoping for releases, and kept running into issues they had to overcome.

Many of us were disappointed by a17, and told we would have a quick a18. We stopped playing in Feb expecting a April release... Which slide to May, June, July, August, September, and then October. That pissed a lot of people off, regardless of the game improvements.

So of course watching streamers is rubbing a bit of salt into that wound.

In the larger scheme of things, I don't really think the streamer weekend is serving anyone well. TFP have internal pressure to fix some minor bugs before public release, and I don't think viewer numbers were high enough to make much marketimg buzz. ( I only saw 1000 consecutive, a drop in the bucket compared to 7 days existing sales numbers, or compared even to things like Minecraft.

And it didn't serve players much because they are rabidly worn from the wait.

Odds are they could pull the trigger right now and still release an update during the coming week, but if people treat them poorly, there isn't any reason to push harder for them.

If we get it tomorrow, great. I'll love it early. If we have to wait till Mon., I'm fine with that as well.

I DO know I'll only watch the streamers again if another alpha has another streamer weekend. I forgot I even subbed to some of them the last streamer weekend, because I hadn't been on twitch since then.

I've seen enough to wet my whistle, but I'd rather play than watch others.

(And that said, I think we either a actively watched it had someone on in the background for 7 hours or more.)

(And we is my wife (Teamhair) and myself.)

Either way, looking forward to A18 washing a17 out of my mouth...lol!

 

[faatal]

Did you guys change project settings to include Vulkan shaders finally? Or are Linux users being hanged out to dry again? Luckily the game, at least for the moment, works great with Proton with relatively few bugs. Faster than Windows too!

Yes, but it was not a project setting. All the shaders needed vulkan added. Now on Windows, Vulkan enabled crashes the game within seconds, probably due to Unity 2019.1 bugs. I don't know if Vulkan will also crash on Linux.

 

[Xeen]

I've only been playing since alpha 15 so I haven't been around very long in the grand scheme of things but after going through the wait of the alpha 17 development cycle of over a year it makes the 6 month wait for alpha 18 feel like nothing in comparison.

I am looking forward to checking out all the new toys, game/graphics engine changes/tweaks, and rebalancing of the game play.

 

[archergod]

Wishing if you guys forward your clock and release now so we can play on sunday

 

[NukemDed]

its late sunday afternoon here if that helps....

 

[Slingblade2040]

rage quit on rlcraft. do we have a snow balls chance of getting a Sunday alpha 18 or is Monday still set in stone?

 

[NukemDed]

i just checked my achievements. 7 to go.

i got 0 player kills so will never get any of the 4 kill other player jobs

i hate dying so i am 84/100 for one of those, and hope to never get the other which is 500 deaths.

there is one hidden one i havent got yet, refuse to google it too.

are there any new achievements with a18?

 

[Aldranon]

except time

Interesting point.

For me, it's both early game (Week 1) and late game, I measure in time.

Edit: Not counting hoard nights

 

[MechanicalLens]

I'm not sure we want to flood nothing but brown Guppy likes his random loot. He might have just got fairly lucky. Its only t2 items he found and yellow, nothing too great.

True, true. I'm seeing quite a few yellow items though (Kage, Games4Kickz, etc.) so maybe something needs to be tweaked there, or not. Maybe everything is working as intended, or they all got very luck. At the end of the day, it's your design after all; I'm just giving you my personal assessment.

 

[faatal]

In the larger scheme of things, I don't really think the streamer weekend is serving anyone well.

It is serving me well. The streamers are in essence an extension of our testers. I've spent hours watching new players of A18, in SP and MP, deal with all the changes. I get to see their reactions, play styles and difficulties. I get to see how they handle the current AI and make BM bases. This is different feedback than I get from our testers, since I can't mindwipe them and see first reactions.

Other devs are also getting valuable feedback and we are discussing and making changes. This will help make it smoother for us and the players, when thousands of people start playing on Monday.

 

[archergod]

It is serving me well. The streamers are in essence an extension of our testers. I've spent hours watching new players of A18, in SP and MP, deal with all the changes. I get to see their reactions, play styles and difficulties. I get to see how they handle the current AI and make BM bases. This is different feedback than I get from our testers, since I can't mindwipe them and see first reactions.
Other devs are also getting valuable feedback and we are discussing and making changes. This will help make it smoother for us and the players, when thousands of people start playing on Monday.

But if you don't do streamer weekend, and release an experimental for all, the streamer will still streamer and you get feedback, you can limit your access to just those. And we normal guys without youtube channel can enjoy as well. The only difference is we put our feedback on forum 3 days late. Streamer are often distracted with recording, voicing the game. Where as we guys were just enjoying and raging about anything we don't like. Frankly our feedback is more valuable then those. Yes they make game more popular. But from developer view point end client's feedback is more important than marketing team's.

 

[MechanicalLens]

We made a task to look at AI vs garage doors.

Maybe change the SI of the garage doors so that they require supporting blocks along the sides? If one decided to cheese the zombies by standing on top of the garage, the zombies could simply target the walls holding the garage door in place and send it tumbling down.

Edit: Nevermind, I didn't take into consideration the "open" state of the garage door. (Classic me.) But regardless, seeing a floating garage door is a little bit... odd.

 

[MechanicalLens]

@madmole I heard somewhere that the skyscrapers won't be spawning in A18 RWG (although I'm taking this info with a pinch of salt of course, hence why I'm getting it straight from the horses mouth). Can you confirm what T5 POI's won't be spawning in RWG? (The factories, Dishong, the Book Tower, etc.)

 

[faatal]

But if you don't do streamer weekend, and release an experimental for all, the streamer will still streamer and you get feedback, you can limit your access to just those. And we normal guys without youtube channel can enjoy as well. The only difference is we put our feedback on forum 3 days late. Streamer are often distracted with recording, voicing the game. Where as we guys were just enjoying and raging about anything we don't like. Frankly our feedback is more valuable then those. Yes they make game more popular. But from developer view point end client's feedback is more important than marketing team's.

Sorry, but I disagree. I don't need or want that much feedback at that point in development. I don't need each bug reported 50 times or 100 videos of a day 7 or 14 BM. Information overload.

Since b134 that the streamers are playing, we have committed 19 changes to the game and we have more to come. We know you want the game, but we don't feel it is ready to give you yet.