PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[madmole]

but sometimes is not cool be like "other game" come on Fun pimps! IK you can Do better! you sometimes gotta think outside the box!!

but its your game so its up to you guys!

Some wheels aren't worth reinventing.

 

[madmole]

Assuming the mining mods will just add damage at that point?

Yeah and get the specific damage bonus like wood splitter can help you bash a secure crate open faster.

 

[madmole]

Nope...I was sneaking back trying to get my backpack...next thing I know, I'm being hunted down like a dog just like it used to be. I'm wondering if that's bugged if you are in mp and a party member is still fighting?
Regardless, while it was far from our best horde night, it was fun....the whole point of playing anyway.

If they see you, its on again, after a 30 second grace period.

 

[madmole]

That sounds like a good plan, so we have a reason to look at crafting gear.
I honestly haven't looked at crafting armor or weapons at all... Just mods, and basics needed as well as vehicles.

Yeah we want crafting to be more relevant. The only way to do that is slow down the loot stage a bit and let players have a crack at a good random stat. Should be fun late game too using all those parts to roll something better. Can sell it for a pretty penny if it doesn't roll well.

 

[madmole]

Maybe I just need more time playing but looks like I can no longer easily do my stealth build anymore in A18 without having to drops tons of points in just about every category. I hope another a branch is made for stealth builds. =( *shruggs*

Did you put customized fittings in your LIGHT armor?

 

[hollipl]

When I break a block, I have strange particles that appear. I feel that it dates from the last update. I modified some settings but it doesn't change anything. Nvidia 1060 6go. Did anyone else notice that ?

Same thing for glass :

I have the same problem, all the smoke and particle effect in my game look just like that.

 

[madmole]

Well, first of all, I think the price should vary between tiers. A Legendary Pistol should cost less than a Legendary SMG, for instance. My vote: 25k for a legendary T1/T2 weapon, and 30k for a T3 Legendary Weapon.
I believe it should be these prices (or somewhere along these lines) because it's relatively easy to get a decent amount of money once you get T4/T5 Fetch quests. (Get in, find the level the supplies are on (usually by the aid of a pre-built stairwell), get the supplies, get out, and get paid.)

Suggestion: Maybe there could be an extremely rare, highly coveted loot container that has a higher chance (say, 5%) of containing a Legendary Weapon. They would only exist within a few, unique POI's where the final loot chamber (which houses this special loot container) is inaccessible - due to indestructible blocks - outside of a special key, or code, which is inserted into the final door/control panel. The trader, or a rare map/paper you find, will give you this code/key, and then, and only then, will you be able to enter this loot room. (Perhaps the trader could also give this key/code as a T5 quest reward, or or maybe even part of a special type of T5 quest.)

We're talking about codes hidden in the houses to unlock the super chest, or on a boss, so crash landing cheese or nerd polers can't get the best loot without doing at least half the POI to find the code first.

 

[MechanicalLens]

The end result.

Went through about 600 normal 7.62 ammo, 1 frag grenade, 8 contact grenades, and 5 molotovs. The horde consisted mostly of normal zombies, ferals, spider zombies, several cops, and several wights. No vultures or dogs. 1 irradiated showed up: an irradiated spider zombie. At the start of the horde, my gamestage was 102. Now, it's 103. Leveled up once.

Spoiler

 

[madmole]

Does this mean you’re doing away with the possibility of raiding rad zones with the right equipment?

Loc

Talking about the edge of the map. Using radiation there will only confuse players when real playable radiation is implemented. Its better to make an invisible wall and not let you get in there at all than to use "super radiation" because if I have rad gear I would expect to be able to go in there with it. I want players getting a feel for radiation in the wasteland and in some pois, not use it as a barrier. So yes rad zones with equipment is planned, edge of map should be an invisible wall saying "You cannot go that way".

 

[madmole]

Thats still pretty low amount of hp even if you double it. Making a bloodbag makes you more hungry and egg and meat with just 1 point into cooking and you already have bacon and eggs, so you'd have to regain quite a bit of stamina to make it worth the bloodbag food loss + bacon and egg loss. Already another skill to help with food poisoning. Sounds like an incredibly complex way to pretty much get back where you started with just having cooking and getting more HP and hunger back even if you dont have a bonus to meat harvest

I was spitballing. We're not changing any perks right now, we're aimed at being stable soon.

 

[FileMachete]

Unless you have a 2030 cpu it will take longer than 10 minutes to do properly. I have a really fast pc and it takes 15
minutes I think to cook an 8k world, if it goes faster you got the bug. Post your system specs please.

Or just generate it with a dedi, it takes longer but doesn't screw up. Or play pregen01 or 2.

For curiosity sake I just tried to gen a RW, display driver crashed. Windowed or full, streaming textures off or on, all crashed.

Previous build, 139? I had genned a couple different 8k maps and they took ~17 1/2 minutes. Looked ok in general on login, one was in desert, but couldn't play due to graphic issue so no idea if either/both had the ridge bug or not. All those files are gone due to trying to track down the graphic bug

i5-2500k, 16 GB ram, OS/Game on SSD, 1gb AMD gpu

Since it only took 17% longer on an 8 year old CPU I'm guessing there's either a lot of room for optimization or they had ridge bug?

 

[wolfbain5]

See my previous post and if you don't change your mind you aren't thinking clearly.

honestly, you should also have a statless tree for things everyone would use, and not pigeon hole them up stats with the exception of combat types.

every build needs cooking

every build needs tools

every build needs mining, period so motherload should be statless but miner69 is block damage, which should remain str because it is straight up block damage, breaking doors, walls, furniture

these should be statless. the rest belong where they are for the most part because they fit in with their stat, and each stat has its combat type. and this is thinking clearly

 

[madmole]

day 25 lucky looter 3 found level 5 pump shotty, and level 6 M60 (was wearing loot goggles)i got a level 6 side by side shotty on day 18 from a secret stash.

@MadMole your team did an amazing job on this alpha, i am having SO much fun looting again, happy to see a rare crack-a-book now.

playing singe player in a 8x map started in the Desert on the divide of desert/badlands had to make a temporary home in the desert. about day 22 (after second horde night) i found a forest biome finally after making a bike (from found parts) and riding out for a day in each direction. loot a couple PoI's along the way bring home the loot. on day 28 horde night i had just made the motorcycle from looted and bought parts. and just faught the horde in the streets hopping on and off the bike as necessary. after horde night was finished i packed up everything i had onto me and in my bike and took off to my new base location in the forest biome. (gonna miss the old army station 7 i was living in but weather there was horrible!) anyway, at my new place now and getting it a bit fortified. i wanted to make my own driveway, but apparently i can't make asphalt, but i can make gravel and stone. so i decided on stone since we don't have asphalt. "Yet"

Thanks glad you are loving it.

 

[Syrex]

Yes those will come in the future and be loot or buy only for sure. 20 or 30k? What do you guys think a legendary should cost at a trader?

Legendary, imo, should be find only with an ultra low find percentage. I mean how pumped would you feel if the RNG gods provided a legendary out of the blue totally "unexpected" vs telling your crew after someone exclaims "i got one" and you feel like saying "yea i got that one already" when your toolbelt is filled with most if not all slots.

If decision is at the trader also, it should have a hellacious cost. I mean a 4x4 is 60k, so this price or higher definitely, i mean the item IS legendary.

 

[ZombieSurvivor]

Did you put customized fittings in your LIGHT armor?

No i have not tried that yet.

 

[madmole]

@madmole, any chance the armor parts will get the same treatment that weapons did? Given that you've got to collect the military fiber recipe AND Military Armor recipe, AND scrap multiple pieces of military armor gear, getting it is rather rough. I'm okay with tough, but when it barely shows up in loot (maybe a gamestage too low issue?) it's frustrating. I'd imagine steel armor is similar for heavy.

Steel armor is easier tbh. I think we should remove military fiber its like having to find a second set of parts just to craft light armor. Its one of those moving targets that is hard to nail. Maybe when bandits get in the game they drop armor and then we're swimming in it.

 

[wolfbain5]

We'll check it out.

check here in loot xml

<lootqualitytemplates>

<lootqualitytemplate name="qualPlus1Template">

<qualitytemplate level="250,259" default_quality="1">

only goes to gs 259 where regular loot goes to

<qualitytemplate level="1,999999" default_quality="1">

because gs can go past 259, it defaults all loot quality to 1 which is faulty.

 

[madmole]

sounds great. crafting is fun. looting is fun. design & balance should indeed allow enough time and usefulness for both.
by day 10 i found 2x T2 Q4 weapons and 2x T3 Q1 steel tools. while its fun to get lucky and loot a T2/3 item early, i prefer it`s quality is a bit lowered early game, so at least you get punished by having to fix a lot which is now expensive and keeps u busy.

i like that trade-off. either constantly fix that crap powerful item, or buy the perks and craft a potentially weaker item with better quality. or wait until u can loot a better quality item later on. that is good gameplay.

Yes the goal is to push the loot out a bit players get too much good stuff too soon, then crafting will be more relevant mid game as you have like 4 ranks of something and could craft blue at that point at a fairly low level if you specialize. Later I would just keep looting probably unless I found a lot of brown weapons to scrap then I'd craft roll the dice to see what purple I could get.

 

[madmole]

Really depends on how much better they are than the base and how hard they are to find. a 4x4 is what? 60k base? And they arent that hard to either buy or get the parts for. Are they going to be harder to find and more unique that a 4x4? If so, more than 60k! If more unique or hard to find than a gyro I dont see people caring about dumping 100k+ either. In short, hard to give a value to something unique without more info

I feel like the current purples are too cheap at like 8k, but balancing weapon prices is tough because the more pricey I make them the higher you can sell the other ones for.

 

[Lonestarcanuck]

like father like son maybe? stop teaching them bad habits.

if I can put a drum mag on an M60 I should be able to put it on the Pistol