PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

  • A18 Stable is Out!

    Votes: 2 66.7%

  • <img alt=":)" data-src="" src="___base_url___/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" />

    Votes: 1 33.3%
  • Total voters
    3
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Whatever happened to 'dead is dead' mode?

I really enjoy the suspense of playing a game where everything is lost if you mess up once. At the moment I just quit/delete the save and restart, but it'd be awesome if the game just facepalmed you instantly back into the main menu without having to manually do it after being forced to wait out the whole respawn thing.

 
@Faatal

The new commands - I am thrilled to report after playing until 3AM thinking it was midnight - helped tremendously. I have not been in a desert biome yet in my playthrough, but I can say the burnt forest biome is still taxing. But, I get between 28 - 35 FPS when mountains are in view in the burnt areas, and up to 50 when it's just flat ground in my view. I am now in the ~60 range indoors, 50 - 60(holy mackerel!) in outdoor snow biomes, and 40 in grassland/forest areas outdoors. Granted, again, potato settings, but man the game looks great even on those settings lol.

For reference: I used gfx st budget ; gfx af / dt / pp set to 0 ; and I played with gfx st at 450 -- not sure if that did anything or not.

For fun note, I almost bit the dust that night. I just got done looting a poi and was taking my heavy armor off to get running and heard a dog, then 2. I spun around with my spear to see many dogs. I threw my spear into the gut of one of them then saw two zombie bears behind them. I pulled out my smg and noped out anyway spinting my ass off. Luckily, one of the zombie dogs must have been a good boy in the previous life, for he found me with my level 5 modded spear sticking out his side haha. Got it back. Good times.

BTW @Madmole , I think high performance running shoes needs to be mildly nerfed, at 2 ranks of Cadio and the shoes on my stamina doesn't drain, at all. But, they may be rare to get so who knows. I get lucky sometimes.

 
Day 14 Blood Moon was a blast. My first play it was a bit boring but this one was great. It lasted til about 3am which is the longest one yet. Dogs and all. Here is my horde base for it.

A18.0_2019-10-12_16-18-42.jpg

The most primitive ♥♥♥♥ ever i know but I dont ever build anything cheese. I build as if it were reality because that is the challenge for me. Going to start building up and upgrading it now, with a tower. The machine gun is BEAST though. Used up all the rounds but it was amazing. Going to start perking into it now.

I know I am usually on the negative side, but I had to let you know my experience with horde night. Ive been disappointed with it, but this one was damn fun and exciting. A18 keeps surprising me.

Moving on to b143 now and wiping. Look forward to an all new experience.

 
And some people want 16k maps. Thats great and all, but I wouldn't mess with that, my time IRL is more important than walking 2 real time hours to get out of one biome.
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That why smaller biomes are better.

 
Been lurking here a long time; I’d like to share my thoughts on A18.
(TL;DR - Great alpha, please add more customisable game options rather than needing to go to xml, such as starting gamestage)

I think in terms of gameplay the game has never been better. Looting is a lot of fun, (though a little overpowered early game) combat is more diverse, building bases is a whole lot smarter and optimisation really came through (pending on incoming performance patch). There is a lot of good to come out of A18 so congratulations FP and thank you for an awesome game.

I’ve been reading through what others have said and some things I find myself agreeing on.

Firstly I’ll say for new players or players who aren’t that great at the game, the gamestaging is great and well balanced, early game is very forgiving and rewarding, while the real challenge lies many hours ahead giving ample time to prepare.

For your veteran fans or people who are more skilled at the game, this challenge (I feel) comes a little too late. @madmole I’ve seen you mention around day 42 things will reallly pick up and get harder. I’m sure that figure may fluctuate depending on the player and GS but let’s use that figure for now. I assume most people play 1 hour days. That’s obviously 42 hours of gameplay until you are going to be challenged. That’s a pretty big time commitment to put in in my opinion and possibly why I’ve seen many finding it too easy and getting bored.

You may say crank up the difficulty, and I hear you. I can see in the xml it accelerates gamestage, but it also makes zombies tanks, and pumping 10 headshots with a nicely stated ak is a cheap way of making the game more difficult and less fun.

In conclusion: there is not ever one type of player. What I’d really like to see and believe it would solve a lot of problems regarding difficulty is to add more customisable options in the game setup itself. Perhaps an option to start on a specific gamestage (default 0, 10, 25, 50). Yeah we can change in the xml but it’s a lot easier and simpler if it had the option directly in the game.

I have a few more thoughts but this post is already too long, maybe I’ll share another time.

Thank you again FP for the work you all have put in, I am enjoying more than any other alpha so far.
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Wouldn't turning up the frequency of the bloodmoons solve the problem for you? It would make it more challenging sooner.

 
And one more thing: how are zombies supposed to know, there is a hole on the opposite side of the building? way out of their line of sitght...
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The individual zombie doesn't know but they tend to herd together so when the zombies ahead of him start moving, he follows. It's like that in most zombie shows I've watched.

 
The individual zombie doesn't know but they tend to herd together so when the zombies ahead of him start moving, he follows. It's like that in most zombie shows I've watched.
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one thing.

the zombies in this game are smarter then me

 
Day 14 Blood Moon was a blast. My first play it was a bit boring but this one was great. It lasted til about 3am which is the longest one yet. Dogs and all. Here is my horde base for it.
View attachment 29656

The most primitive ♥♥♥♥ ever i know but I dont ever build anything cheese. I build as if it were reality because that is the challenge for me. Going to start building up and upgrading it now, with a tower. The machine gun is BEAST though. Used up all the rounds but it was amazing. Going to start perking into it now.

I know I am usually on the negative side, but I had to let you know my experience with horde night. Ive been disappointed with it, but this one was damn fun and exciting. A18 keeps surprising me.

Moving on to b143 now and wiping. Look forward to an all new experience.
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I love it, less is more!!! That is probably too open for my current build but perhaps I will give that a go in a future play through. 😁

 
Since the b143 update I have weapon parts replaced with "scrappable item parts" where the icon is a question mark. Not sure what these are?
I did read notes and searched but apologies if this is documented.
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Yeah, same here.

 
Maybe the knife could have a slash power attack.
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@Madmole.. if the machete could use the slash power attack as well.

Man, I used to live for a machete... now I have so much more fun toys to play with I haven;t even bothered considering one.

(Oh, and wouldn't you know it, looted a crucible right after the update that had some steel drops added.)

Day 46 horde night was GREAT! I'm going to have to add either blade or dart trap defenses though to thin the herd.

I read farm boxes can't be gotten with the shovel anymore.. can we still move them within our land claim? (I was thinking for rearranging farm beds once you have a decent amount.

 
Madmole, is healing others working? I just used 2 bandages on my wife and it didn't raise her max health at all. (gave me XP tho)
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Nice! I usually just give money to my wife. Or flowers. Or rocks. I have the strange feeling she doesnt really appreciate those though.

 
I'm naked when I start the game.. by the time I finish playing I'm still naked. More skid marks on this chair than at the Indy 500
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xD dude.. i can't even.. xD

- - - Updated - - -

That just left a horrible visual in my mind.
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I think it left a horrible visual somewhere else as well..

 
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