PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[madmole]

DO YOU HAVE TO TURN MUSIC ON? NEVER HAVE I HEARD IT YET @ DAY 13caps lock sorry work programs need items entered in caps...welcome to program of the early 2000s

It only works if you change your avatar to not use my copyrighted images.

 

[madmole]

@MadmoleThere might be an exception to this ... Is the heat map also adding the heat from a biome? In my burning land playthrough, two forges have been able to bring a screamer in about 5 minutes going back to probably day 30.

If this is intended, it makes having your forges in a snow biome beneficial to reduce the chance, but burning land forge smelting will see them more often.

I could go either way, honestly.

Btw, another play started on our personal server with the wife. Still haven't seen either the snow biome or the desert now since the a18 drop, and 60 days played through now between both games.

Slightly smaller biomes might be worth considering, as new players could encounter the same experience.

No heat maps are a term for "activity" not actual temperature. It doesn't matter what biome you are in. You guys must not travel much the biomes are there I assure you. Every rwg game uses the same biome map, just rotated and flipped.

 

[beerfly]

@madmole,

Are there gonna be any sets with legendary items? Correct me if I use the wrong word, I reference Sacred 2`s legendary item`s system, where when we collect all items of a set, it gives +1 agility or a 10%less noise around, or anything you guys can think of. Would be cool.

 

[madmole]

I been watching alot of streams and even generated some 4k and 8k RWG maps using different seeds and I have yet to get any thing with a river. I have seen some lakes and alot of the 8k maps seem to be one giant "island" which is nice to show where the world ends. there are no "repeated" POIs in towns and roads are alot better although i see some funky roads from time to time. It is the best I have ever seen! No more poka dot Biomes! That's really good! Has anyone gotten any rivers in A18 map yet? Also what about bridges in RWG?

I don't think we ended up with rivers. There can be little pounds and narrow lakes but not a full on proper river.

 

[madmole]

My comment regarding the screamers
-They attack me the same with only one forge and a single torch, on day 4 I was already attacked by a screamer, fortify my walls and the skewers do their job, then install another 2 more forges and one more torch, in total I had 3 forges and two torches, I was attacked by 2 screamers on day 5 they appear twice in a game day, they don't bother me at all, they are already pleasing me! (zombies = + exp)

If your base is spiked they are a non issue.

 

[madmole]

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.

I think the perception perk could show what harvests you get when holding a wrench over an object somehow. But that takes the fun out of experimenting.

 

[madmole]

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.

Those are all in the paint brush menu.

 

[Adam the Waster]

No heat maps are a term for "activity" not actual temperature. It doesn't matter what biome you are in. You guys must not travel much the biomes are there I assure you. Every rwg game uses the same biome map, just rotated and flipped.

so is it like sound that they investigate? and over time it gets more attention?

 

[cmicroc]

Vehicle shots straight up into the air

Rare bug. No dev/tester has been able to reproduce. There is logging for when that happens. Can you post your log file?

Happens once in a blue moon, if someone can figure out the repro case it would be great.

This has happened to me twice.

On each occasion it was immediately after the game had chosen to "move" its origin.

I suspect there is a race condition in the code so it:

• checks the vehicle position against the terrain with new origin, but old vehicle offset relative to the origin
  
• finds a mountain so, logs the message saying vehicle underground, lifts the vehicle in the air
  
• then it fixes the vehicle offset relative to the new origin
  
• finds no mountain, so the vehicle drops...
  

Hope that helps, I can log a proper bug report with the output logs if you need it.

Note:

This was with me running as a client attached to a dedicated server - in case it makes a difference to trying to reproduce it

 

[MechanicalLens]

so is it like sound that they investigate? and over time it gets more attention?

Think of it as an activity meter. The more activity you do in a loaded area (burning forges, campfires, torches, etc.), the higher this "activity meter" rises. The more forges/torches/chem stations/campfires/shooting guns/etc. you have burning at once, the higher and faster the "activity meter" will rise; once it gets to 100, then a screamer spawns. Having one forge burning will rarely, if ever, call in a Screamer, but if you have 4 forges burning for instance, expect Screamers every so often.

 

[beerfly]

so is it like sound that they investigate? and over time it gets more attention?

As much activity including campfires, forges, chemical stations, torches, sounds, yeah, it attracts attention and spawns a screamy angry sleepy kid.

Forgot shooting gunpowder powered weapons, but you already know that

 

[GrapeDrink]

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.

Right, I dont have an issue with them myself, they give me something to do while waiting on the forges Its just you said you run 2 forges+ and it takes 12 hours (30 mins) for one to show up. Running 4 puts it around 2 hours (5 mins) for me. Others also saying with only two or even less they're getting them a lot more than 30 mins. If its intended that's all good by me

 

[Kalex]

I wanted to see if people liked the various hat mods I added, if you guys like them it would be easy to make gothic boot mods so we can get some good insulation to our feet that look cool.

Yeah that would be cool.

 

[madmole]

@madmole, Are there gonna be any sets with legendary items? Correct me if I use the wrong word, I reference Sacred 2`s legendary item`s system, where when we collect all items of a set, it gives +1 agility or a 10%less noise around, or anything you guys can think of. Would be cool.

We're planning a few rare items linked to quests, like the fates motel could drop a a psycho knife, wig and gown or something when all worn do some massive back stab damage.

 

[madmole]

I checked and was wrong, sounds do add to the heat map like opening chests, hitting stuff etc. Not much though.

 

[Adam the Waster]

it attracts attention and spawns a screamy angry sleepy kid.

sounds like me when i wake up!

- - - Updated - - -

We're planning a few rare items linked to quests, like the fates motel could drop a a psycho knife, wig and gown or something when all worn do some massive back stab damage.

weeb katana! lol

also will there be more weapon classes like swords , tomahawks and shields?

 

[MechanicalLens]

I checked and was wrong, sounds do add to the heat map like opening chests, hitting stuff etc. Not much though.

If that's the case, and there would be no reason why a player would do this, but theoretically if a player opened and closed a loot container continuously over a long period of time, it could spawn in a Screamer? If so, that is very interesting...

 

[meganoth]

Here is what you replied to:
"One, with two people starting out on nomad, the difficulty difference between adventurer and it is amazingly high.

With under double digit kills for two players and the first clear quest, we ran into feral military guys and wights! That was day two, again under 10 kills each. Either nomad needs to be turned down a notch or two, or there needs to be another difficulty between nomad and adventurer."

Now on day two, with only 6-8 kills each doing our first tier 1 trader quest, with that information I quoted above, what do you logically think our gamestage was?

It was virtually a new game with almost no kills at all to raise gamestage.

I know exactly what you wrote. But people in this forum exaggerate, forget about stuff they did (config options etc.) or are not aware of stuff (your friend might have given himself some XP in creative menue). There might be a bug that increases your gamestage. There might be other bugs. You might have visited a poi that is supposed to have ferals and wights.

Nobody knows and because you left out quantifiable data you get an answer like the one madmole gave you. Did that help you in any way in explaining your observation?

Sorry if I "singled you out with it", it is a general problem and half the people here tend to forget that the less info they give the less help is available. It bugs me because I am in a similar situation, receiving lots of bug reports in my work, half of them unusable. And the worst part, sometimes I forget and make the same mistake when I report a bug.

 

[fragtzack]

Seen some posts about no items in the trader secret stash since the patch. Experienced this in my game also. Didn't find a solution in these posts, probably is one but failed to find it.

Anyone know of the secret stash missing items fix?

 

[beerfly]

We're planning a few rare items linked to quests, like the fates motel could drop a a psycho knife, wig and gown or something when all worn do some massive back stab damage.

That sounds neat, bring it on.