PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Gareee]

regarding the farm plot changing. Is that just the farm plot already exist in the world not going to drop when you dig them or the one you make too? I tend to upgrade my base and move them around if needed. It cost a hell lot of resource to make and it would be suck if you destroy them instead of getting them back.

Nope, Madmole confirmed you cannot move them, period, even with a lcb.

(Im guessing thats to prevent people cheesing obtaining them by placing a lcb in pois using them for deco.)

 

[madmole]

The suggestion was not to make model/parts, just random name. So instead of saying Pistol in title bar it can say, "Gazz's Pistol", or "Mole in Hole pistol"..since they are not stacked item it can save extra few string attach to each such item. And yes, it is useless fun thing. Makes no difference in game play. But it denote the Randomize characteristics better.

Legendary weapons will have a name.

 

[Armor9]

Hey thanks man! I normally turn on "take me home country road" Pandora station as it all fits the game very well
- - - Updated - - -

1. Use paint to color them (limited)

2. Make wood signs 1x1 and place them on and or above the box.

Those are the top 2 IMO to label

Another way would be (if you got time/mats), to make rooms. I have a kitchen, chem lab etc and use decor blocks to store it. Need place for meds? Make a med cabinet in furniture

I like the paint option, didn't think about that.

Regarding the 1x1 signs, are there symbols like the red cross, ammo picture, etc., available?

 

[SnowDog1942]

Legendary weapons will have a name.

Can one be called “Snowdogs love gun”

It would be a sawed off pistol.......

 

[Adam the Waster]

Can one be called “Snowdogs love gun”

It would be a sawed off pistol.......

a stun baton called "the law"

 

[Gareee]

There's an interesting topic in "General Discussion", I want to link it here for visibility. Looting vs Crafting
Cliffs :

- the game has shifted from crafting everything to actually crafting nothing (in terms of tools & weapons)

- main problems are not being able to "keep up" with the pace of looting (especially in stuff you don't specialize in), and even if you keep up with the pace (in terms of crafting quality vs looting quality), you'll probably lack parts and find the desired quality before you get enough parts to craft it

- this makes a whole segment of the game (tool & weapon crafting) basically useless even though it has a lot of potential, and most stuff you find isn't even worth to scrap for parts given you'll have no use for them

This is kind of what I was talking about the other day. On day 53 in my sp game, I haven't considered crafting a weapon at all. I KNOW I can only find the best ones while looting, so why bother?

Now if we could use parts to randomly increase existing weapon stats, that might be interesting to make looking at weapon crafting. (Honestly I don't even know what parts or perks I'd need to even make a pistol now.)

The same problem extends to tools... day 53, and I haven't found anywhere near enough parts to craft a steel tool, chainsaw or auger. I got a level 5 chainsaw in a quest reward, but all my weapons and tools are strictly looted now, and crafting has been mostly duct tape, orged iron, cobblestone and concrete for repair kits and base building.

Somehow we lost a huge portion of required crafting gameplay.

I'm just getting the hang of cooking properly now, so maybe hand holding in game is needed for cooking quality foods?

@Madmole:

I'm thinking we need some helper quests in early/mid game to teach proper cooking quality foods, weapon/tool crafting, the more complex balanced things.

If I don't see them by day 50, odds are new players might never see them. I only know about them from forum chatter.

Maybe for gold under the notebook there should be a source glossary, so you could look up say, forged steel, and see all the potential ways to obtain it? Without the reading the patch notes, people would never know you could harvest steel from telephone poles and safes.

 

[madmole]

There's an interesting topic in "General Discussion", I want to link it here for visibility. Looting vs Crafting
Cliffs :

- the game has shifted from crafting everything to actually crafting nothing (in terms of tools & weapons)

- main problems are not being able to "keep up" with the pace of looting (especially in stuff you don't specialize in), and even if you keep up with the pace (in terms of crafting quality vs looting quality), you'll probably lack parts and find the desired quality before you get enough parts to craft it

- this makes a whole segment of the game (tool & weapon crafting) basically useless even though it has a lot of potential, and most stuff you find isn't even worth to scrap for parts given you'll have no use for them

Some ideas:

- buff the quality bonus by 1 for all the ranks, i.e. instead of crafting Q1 items with the first point, actually craft Q2 (rank 5 should still not enable Q6 crafting). Right now you need 3 points to craft level 2 stuff, it's simply not sustainable and worth it unless you plan on specializing in the item

- find more stacks of parts (3-6) and a bit less complete items

- make crafted gear have randomized stats, in the 25%-75% range, effectively making a crafting item "never a bad roll but never top gear either"

- maybe adding book series that effectively increase your crafting quality by 1 for a specific item type could alleviate the uselessness of parts for items you don't plan to specialize in

We're talking about something close to this.

 

[Armor9]

So I just looked and it appears there are my symbols for the signs. But there is the "Old Beer" sign. I wonder is there can be ammo, red cross, etc., made like the Old Beer sign so it can be selected as well.

 

[Silver Werewolf]

Uma texture quality is still bugged? still tanks the performance?

 

[Gareee]

Yeah my dynamic music was off for some reason. I had to enable.

IMHO, that should be turned on by default.

 

[MajorMunchy]

I like the paint option, didn't think about that.
Regarding the 1x1 signs, are there symbols like the red cross, ammo picture, etc., available?

no but maybe pain the sign a color and just type the symbol>?

 

[Gareee]

Anyone else have this problem on their rented server? I set the drop on death to 2...backpack only.. in the xml. However when someone dies, you drop your toolbelt. Any explanation or fix..

I think RAT has the same issue..maybe they are using it? drop the setting down by one numeric value is the setting fix, I think.

 

[madmole]

Nope. If you die on a slope the backpack can dissapear forever and not even god mode can find it. Not ever. I reported this bug along with possible reproduce steps back in b139 and received no answer nor confirmation.Maybe has something to do with the backpack dissapearing when rolling down a sloped surface like stags did back in the day.

Please fix.

Reproduce steps:Go to the big nordic skyrim-like POI with a big triangular highly angular roof that covers it . Die on top of the roof/ in a side of it/ close to the border.

Maybe you can die a few times and can still retrieve the backpack, but if it is not stuck to the roof and the backpack falls there's a good chance you will never find it due to

1- the backpack icon doesn't take into account the rolling and signals the first known position of said backpack upon death.

2- the backpack is nowhere to be found because we don't know the projected rolling trajectory. But I did search for it the 3 times that happened and cleared every grass and block and god mode and still didn't find it.

Conclusion: backpack dissapears when rolling down a slope long enough is the only logical explanation.

Hey Blake, we could repro this, thanks for the info!

 

[Zaroff]

There's an interesting topic in "General Discussion", I want to link it here for visibility. Looting vs Crafting
Cliffs :

- the game has shifted from crafting everything to actually crafting nothing (in terms of tools & weapons)

- main problems are not being able to "keep up" with the pace of looting (especially in stuff you don't specialize in), and even if you keep up with the pace (in terms of crafting quality vs looting quality), you'll probably lack parts and find the desired quality before you get enough parts to craft it

- this makes a whole segment of the game (tool & weapon crafting) basically useless even though it has a lot of potential, and most stuff you find isn't even worth to scrap for parts given you'll have no use for them

Some ideas:

- buff the quality bonus by 1 for all the ranks, i.e. instead of crafting Q1 items with the first point, actually craft Q2 (rank 5 should still not enable Q6 crafting). Right now you need 3 points to craft level 2 stuff, it's simply not sustainable and worth it unless you plan on specializing in the item

- find more stacks of parts (3-6) and a bit less complete items

- make crafted gear have randomized stats, in the 25%-75% range, effectively making a crafting item "never a bad roll but never top gear either"

- maybe adding book series that effectively increase your crafting quality by 1 for a specific item type could alleviate the uselessness of parts for items you don't plan to specialize in

The problem I am seeing currently is the fact that i am not crafting anything..... I just keep looting and scraping all the guns, tools, and other weapons. then I take them to the trader and sell all the parts for ALOT of money. I then use that money to buy T6 Items. with the abundance of traders on maps which is nice and all and the fact you can just sell all the parts for easy money I find myself buying T6. I believe that T6 crafting should be in the game but you got to have all 7 books of a particular series just to unlock it (e.g. all 7 books of the batter up book enables T6 crafting of Baseball Bats) and then when crafting, have random rolls on the stats to make it extremely rare to get a T6 with perfect stats.

If T6 crafting worked like this I would be saving my parts to make T6s and the carrot of keeping me wanting to craft multiple of them to "hopefully" get perfect rolls, would keep me engaged on the crafting tools & weapons part of the game.

Currently there is no incentive to craft Tools & Weapons. Also PLEASE Nerf the value of selling parts to the trader its pretty ridiculous.

 

[madmole]

It might be more time of day but a lot of times it is just simply as easy as opening a chest to eat & drink, there she is again kind of thing.I'm only on day 3 & don't like prefab 03, gonna try 02 & I will track her spawns next game.

This is not a new complaint of mine, I have mentioned this from the day she was put into the game.

I honestly don't think she was needed, she took the Spiders job as a scout for the Wandering Horde.

I would like to see more Wandering Hordes with a scout than this screaming witch. Why is a screaming witch in a Z game anyway.

I am the 1st to criticize turning off a Z in a Z game but she isn't really a Z now is she...

Burn her at the Pointy Stick...

She is not game breaking for me but again it's the annoyance of being bothered by her all the time.

What do I do when a game annoys me? I stop playing it as do others.

She isn't a scout or a witch, she is a loud annoying zombie, like some of the forum members

What you say simply is impossible. Opening a chest makes zero heat. The only things that attract her are running workstations and torches. Pounding doesn't even do anything nor does trees falling any more like I thought they did. You are either placing boatloads of torches or running multiple workstations day and night.

You can build an off site forging base and watch the screamers go over there and poke around but probably do nothing, or put your torches out during the day and stuff, and limit your cooking. It cools down every second so you have to out work it to trigger the event and the only way to out work it is to have more than one workstation going unless you have a jillion torches.

 

[madmole]

Notice anything wrong with this picture?

Spoiler

Large Version: https://ibb.co/gv3G17v

It was also impossible to complete. Even went into DM mode and checked from top to bottom for the chest and nothing. Earlier I had a chest spawn under a road next to a house, kinda seems unintended maybe?

Known bug A19 hopefully we can fix.

 

[MechanicalLens]

She isn't a scout or a witch, she is a loud annoying zombie, like some of the forum members
What you say simply is impossible. Opening a chest makes zero heat. The only things that attract her are running workstations and torches. Pounding doesn't even do anything nor does trees falling any more like I thought they did. You are either placing boatloads of torches or running multiple workstations day and night.

You can build an off site forging base and watch the screamers go over there and poke around but probably do nothing, or put your torches out during the day and stuff, and limit your cooking. It cools down every second so you have to out work it to trigger the event and the only way to out work it is to have more than one workstation going unless you have a jillion torches.

I'm a little Screamer short and stout

You all hate me, that I will not doubt

When I see you hear me shout

I am The Fun Pimp's little scout

 

[fragtzack]

Here is the output log for when my bicycle flew
Looking through it it looks like my bike went from X:45 to X:168 in about 2 seconds. So 123 blocks straight up.

Experienced this same exact bug, but on a minibike. Middle of road, sounded like a hit a little rock.

 

[canadianbluebeer]

Same here, even after using god mod, but the backpack is still no where to be found. Backpack icon still on compass..

try the LE command in the console. see if it's in orbit.

My last A17 server game, I had one motorcycle that at last count, was over 1 million meters up. It kept going up and up and up!

(yes, the same one with the 120k dukes in it)

 

[madmole]

You and I must be playing different games. Ive seen you put several times that screamers dont pop up often. But we have at MOST 4 forges running at a time, no torches cause headlamp accessory OP! If everything if running 4 forges we get at least one screamer every 5 minutes. Ran out to the desert with an Aug to mine up some sand and got about 5 of them to spawn in the 15 minutes I was there.

4 forges is a lot. Torches cause very little heat but it all adds up. Its easily managed with an off site forge, or set it all up and leave looting for the day, chunks that aren't loaded can't spawn stuff. You'll come home to smelted/crafted stuff, the fire probably out by then and no heat map.