PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

  • A18 Stable is Out!

    Votes: 2 66.7%

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    Votes: 1 33.3%
  • Total voters
    3
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Played so far up to 18:00 on day 7...got up at 4:30 am to play before work ... Damn it @madmole I need sleep. Why is a18 so addictive? Can't wait to get home and try my first horde. Everything so far runs buttery smooth and looks great.👍
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I did my job :) 500 hours playing 18 before release balancing stuff non stop helped too :)

 
a19? 😅
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it might have some performance issues so we need to carefully consider it, or at least get the game running good first then throw more at it. It might be fine they can batch if they are 300 tris or less.

 
I know for me melee has been a bit interesting. I'm sticking with spears because they have range. I haven't got that far in yet, but I've also tried the club, stun batons, and iron reinforced club. I'm hosting a server for my friend and I to play on. I've noticed that other than the spear, the other weapons have shorter range than zombie melee, which to me makes no sense. Many times I could have a zombie in my face, swing, the crosshair on the zombie the whole time, and it doesn't hit, not even a glancing hit. Even sneaking up on sleeper zombies, I can get within like a foot of a zombie, swing while they are sleeping, and not hit either. Only thing I don't have issues with is the spear. I probably won't even try to use any other melee because of this. I have not tried to play a solo game yet, so it may be because of the server, but I never had this issue prior a18.
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So this is playing on a dedi? Can you test a solo game to see if it feels the same? I haven't had any problems hitting things, but I do sprint attacks and pretty much press against the zombie to hit them.

 
A quick question, when you plan for the next unstable release of A18?
Not sarcastic, neither a joke.

The game is AWESOME from a gamplay mechanics perspective, but from a graphical perspective, i can only play at 40-50fps only if i play in low screen resolution(1.2k:780 rez) and gfx dt and some tweaks in biome.xml.

Can you guys release a hotfix for fps lag issue? Was it identified from where it comes? :D

Thanks,

Chris
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Maybe today or tomorrow will have some hotfixes.

 
For me everything still FEELS like a half swing. I’m not saying melee is harder or easier, not talking about rage at all, it’s just feeling like my guy takes a half assed swing at everything , the sledge amplifies it. Maybe i will get used to it at some point but it feels like he is putting no strength into regular attacks and/or power attacks.
It’s not horrible to me, it’s just off. Or like I said I need to get used to it.
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We're experimenting with full swings, but it might be OP af with glancing blows allowing you to bowl over 3+ guys with a sloppy attack.

 
what're people's thoughts on the new xp changes? I can see them being good for solo players (since you have to do everything), but my friend and I are seeing major differences now with a18. I enjoy hunting/looter and my friend builder/gatherer. I agree that my "profession" had way too much xp gains prior a18, but now, he is easily out-leveling me. It doesn't take long to chop some trees, make wooden frames, and upgrade those to make rooms, like 10mins for about 100 at his rate with a stone axe. That xp rate is crazy high, can only imagine later. But for me to loot a house now, there are either minimal zombies or so many you can't really kill them safely (due to my earlier issue on melee and the fact it takes so many arrows to kill anything now). With the half xp for zombies and the 2-3x longer it takes to kill them, the rate is so slowed. I feel like I'm going to be forced to spam building frames and upgrading those just to keep up with perks to stay viable. Granted, we just have played a few hours, maybe it changes a bit later on? But whereas I used to be able to get 2-3 lvls a day from killing zombies and him about 1-2 lvls a day from building, he is now more 2 lvls/day compared to me struggling to even get 1 lvl/day now. Anyone else seeming to have this issue? Maybe it's just me, but even my friend noticed that and he even said he's never been even 1 lvl ahead of me, let alone almost double my lvl when he doesn't kill anything ever.
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Once you get better gear and perk into weapons, you will kill/clear much faster. We put in scaling to reduce xp for miners/builders later game so they don't go off the charts any more. It is balanced nice in our opinion but it depends on what stage you are at and how you are playing the game. Once you have better gear and combat perks you can gain levels much faster for a while.

 
All of you at the Fun Pimps should be very proud of this update to the game got that feeling of glee with Alpha 18 like I had the first time I played this game in Alpha 10 . Thanks
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Yes we're super proud of it. Once we get performance out of the way I think its going to be a big milestone for the game.

 
Observations from last night:
Tried killing two boars using primitive bow and spear. First one took over a dozen spear stabs after the initial arrow and kept coming, and coming...eventually killed me despite all the face-stabs. Second boar took almost a dozen spear stabs all to the face before being decapitated by the spear. I don't think this is working as intended.

Dysentery and food poisoning happening to me at a ridiculously frequent rate. Maybe 10% and 30% respectively over 3 hours of game play. Doesn't feel like charred meat should have that high a chance. Stats on the item don't say it. RNG is RNG but this is silly. Gone through a couple weeks' worth of food as a result. The little piles of food in kitchens are all that's keeping me going.

Frame rate didn't change much but the nasty lag upon turning was less noticeable last night compared to Monday. I did update Geforce driver before playing yesterday but not sure if that's it or that we started up a game on prefab01 rather than continue Monday's. Not helpful, I know.

The 3 or 4 groups of 3 or 4 zombies during the night is much nicer than a17's very large wandering horde. Seems slightly easier to not aggro them if you stop doing anything the moment you first hear their wandering movement sounds.

Prefab01's desert hills with plateaus and gullies was freakin' awesome to see. Perfectly nailed that terrain. Kudos.

Buried treasure too predictable in location. As others have noted it's nearly always within a block or two of the center of the area, pays very well and was our main source of food Monday. Will work for food, heh. It is a nice alternative to the clear-a-POI quest types.
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Boars are challenging on day 1, but I found an iron sledgehammer and power attacked one point blank and took his head clean off. Might have been a lucky decapitation though.

Food poisoning is fine, it rarely happens and just puts a small dent in your supply. It is random and you could have been extremely unlucky. Eat canned foods, or take vitamins to prevent it all in the first place, or buy iron gut perk.

 
There are no more repeat radio towers all over the place in a18. My storyline of a new experimental 5G signal causing the zombie outbreak is ruined, immersion broken.

 
To troll the guy you raid and place a bunch of open cupboards lol. Making doors have animations would decrease framerate by adding bones and animations to every lootable.
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Ah, well yeah I imagine adding bones/animations is a tall order, especially since it would be for every lootable. Maybe try a different approach: just swap the models. Imagine they're both loaded well enough, would that not work, seems worth a try.

It's rather silly that I can't just close the door of an open cabinet, plus one should be able to make use of it regardless of door status. I get why you guys added the open stuff in the first place, it sure saves time while looting to just see that and skip'm.

The idea of raiding someone (which is not a thing in games I play, even MP games, but I get it) and doing that sounds fun, but would be a rare occurrence at best. Having the wherewithal to plan what that takes ahead of time is some next level trolling, the time/effort to craft open cabinets and dedicate a precious inventory slot, and so on. Thing is, if you got the models to simply swap, or whatever ended up working, you could still get that effect by simply emptying the cabinets. It would sure occur far more often regarding raids, as it would be a natural result.

Challenge for someone at TFP: try it. Try the straight model swap and see how it feels.

It would be super neat imho, in the situation you described and more. Especially in MP games where multliple people are looting. You could peer in a room and immediately tell if in has been looted yet or not, at least with the cabinets and other lootables with open versions. It would also be another time saver in SP games, making it obvious what you'd already looted, as it is now, in both situations, a looted cabinet(etc) looks the same even when it is empty.

 
Boars are challenging on day 1, but I found an iron sledgehammer and power attacked one point blank and took his head clean off. Might have been a lucky decapitation though.
Food poisoning is fine, it rarely happens and just puts a small dent in your supply. It is random and you could have been extremely unlucky. Eat canned foods, or take vitamins to prevent it all in the first place, or buy iron gut perk.
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NO KIDDING! put a buncha arrows into it, and I still got rekt! Ded!

(well done!)

:)

 
Message received. Everyone in my Discord has actually had nice things to say about this Alpha, but ill just stay there from now on.
Im sorry if my post came off looking like a condemnation. Was actually intending it to cut through the noise and present that this Experimental is a success in my opinion since so many are working together to try and help with stuff.

I get it, I have worn out my welcome. Hopefully you got to see my 2 subsequent positive posts.
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I already saw and responded, and I appreciate what you said. I just don't want a giant streamer/experimental gate right now, we're scrambling to fix the framerate and want to focus on that. Normally we can talk about whatever and you know that. Glad you love A18.

 
You’re giving me the new pc itch so I’m gonna have to get a new one soon. The one I have now I assembled over 5 years ago when the 970s came out and almost immediately went on sale due to inaccurate claims that they were 4GB. Most of past builds have been governed by when the next DOOM comes out... so I’ll just use that as justification. Gonna try to keep it under 3k though. It sounds like you got a couple extras in that build.
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Yeah I should have got a 2 tb ssd I only got 1, and a 3tb sata for storage. Its liquid cooled with razer case and stuff, very nice. I always get Intel cpu and 64gb ram.

 
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