PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Jacoviz]

Just expressing my opinion. They are bad for framerate, chunk building speed and at most 10% of players use them. I'd rather see more tier 2,s 3's and 4's, those huge ones take way too long to play and too long for us to develop. If we could develop teleport tech and make them dungeons I'd be all for them, but big framerate hogs in the middle of limited town real estate is a bad choice. Its a neat novelty then after you've done it its a waste of space because nobody in their right mind will want to do it again. We could make 5 tier 2s, 4 tier 3s and 2 teir 4's in the same time it takes to make one tier 5. Now which one adds value?
I say let the modders do that, we have bugs to fix, and pois to overhaul yet and a severe lack of tier 3's IMO. I'm not doing level design any more but I think the average player wants more unique tier 3's and 4's. I'd be ok with smaller tier 5's but no more giant ass factories that take 2+ real hours to clear out that only large groups can do. There is enough of them for now, maybe add more when we get everything polished up, there are still lots of crappy POIs that were blocked out 3 years ago that need that professional overhaul.

I really like the idea, take way too long to explore all of them. What about a chain of quests on the same POI? The trader gives you the quest to go clear a place then he gives you another quest where you need to fix up the place maybe for making an outpost. Then maybe he gives you another quest where you need to defend the place. These place can give you some resources in exchange but a really little for balancing reasons.

 

[Roland]

Aha! And you told me a couple of months ago that it was a bad idea.

You're code wasn't strong enough. Google told me the same thing a few months back when I had to change my email code.

 

[Lukeirot]

I call HS

not to let you craft the most amazing gear in the game from garbage. Blues are outright awesome players crafting purples is just a poor design. What happens in Skyrim when you max enchanting/smithing and craft the best gear in the game? You quit playing.

Making crafting damn near pointless is bad design as well, when you can find all The T6's you need before you even have an inclination about crafting them there is no point and, on top of that looting will still have a purpose seeing as you wont be spec-ed into crafting for every single item. I play thins game for the base defense not because "OOOOH I CAN CRAFT".

That's just one of the issues, with the removal of barbed wire we are down yet another trap; I wont say it was my favorite or most used trap, but it gave you an option for your base defense. It makes me wonder how long until the other traps are removed because I cant help but feel we are going to see the actual skill of making a well designed base with layers off varied traps lost, because god forbid a player decide he wants to put time and resources into the base for defense and not just 420000 rounds of ammo. I don't get why you are just so ♥♥♥♥ing against that style of play.

But hey you are just going to call me a hater and call it a day 0 discussion amiright.

 

[Crater Creator]

I was testing a new build today on my HD 5770 1 GB VRAM relic from 10 years ago and it looks fine at Half texture quality. It can manage 22+ FPS outside if I turn off distant terrain (gfx dt 0).

I'm on a Radeon HD 6970M with 2 GB VRAM. Would "looks fine" mean there's a fix for the grid of flickering jagged white lines on terrain?

Spoiler

 

[Alpacko]

Blue is level 5 and Purple is level 6. At some point there will be a level 7 (legendary)

i meant now that purple crafting is out the window, do we need lvl 6 perks again for blue item crafting, or is it still at perk lvl 5?

EDIT: there is no lvl 6 and blues are craftable at lvl 4

 

[Trankitas]

You're code wasn't strong enough. Google told me the same thing a few months back when I had to change my email code.

Damn! You should hire me for ideas-without-code.

Edit: Aahhh... what the hell? I'll do it for free

 

[mhunter]

Anyone else not able to launch an Alpha 18 dedicated server after patching tonight? I updated my server using steamcmd - app_update 294420 -beta latest_experimental (like ive done each time A18 gets patched). I tried on two machines and neither will launch dedicated server after applying the latest patch.

EDIT: I found the problem. I changed the game name and added an illegal character, which caused this issue.

 

[Gareee]

Starting a new rwg map, 16 alive on bm, nomad, air drops once every 7 days markers on, and nightmare run speed on every setting.

Ok, THAT playthrough I want video of!

 

[Lonestarcanuck]

@TFP @Alloc

I spoke with Blue Fang Solutions and we have found that the shutdown command does not work like it use to. in the past we could issue a shutdown command and the process would terminate and hosting companies like BFS could restart the process.

this is not happening for all the A18 EXP who host at BFS. They also filed a bug.

 

[Gareee]

Each terrain image type can have Diffuse, Normal, Height, Smoothness and AO textures. They each have at least 3 of those, while some like snow and stone have all 5. The more there are, the more texture look ups, the slower the pixel shader runs.
I can try some combinations of less textures on the GTX 960. See what the FPS does. If there is an issue we would have to come up with a way to remove some of those at run time.

I'm not sure if this trick would work here, but it might.

Height maps are usually gray tone, and they might be able to pull the darkness range from images even if they are color. (I used it creating Poser content to save memory) I combined the diffuse and height maps into one image, and used the for both color and height and used node math for the height to determine what its range was even though to the eye the tectures looked normal but with some baked in shadows.

Specifically for snow and desert that might be easy because there isn't much color variance.

Its worth a shot because if it works you are cutting the video ram in half for those ground textures that are always on half the screen when outdoors.

I think I just added the height layer in a upper layer in photoshop over the color layer and then used one of the darkening layer options at a percent, but its been 10 years since I did that trick.

 

[JaxTeller718]

Steel arrows/bolts are crafted from polymer, not wood

Thats some bold ♥♥♥♥, i love it!

 

[Gareee]

Ooff, a T5 quest? no thank you. I like those POIs, very thoughtfully designed mind you - I love them - but damn do they take foreeever to clear out. Honestly the loot at the end isn't even remotely worth it lmao. Just for the funs and exploring. Def something to do with a team, but forget that solo lol. Once is more than enough.

Thats what upped my death count enough on my first long a18 playthrough... the shotgun messiah factory.

Call me crazy, but I want to try it again and be more prepared this time. Its a fun personal challenge.

 

[dhlmaster]

@TFP @Alloc
I spoke with Blue Fang Solutions and we have found that the shutdown command does not work like it use to. in the past we could issue a shutdown command and the process would terminate and hosting companies like BFS could restart the process.

this is not happening for all the A18 EXP who host at BFS. They also filed a bug.

I've been seeing this too (also on Bluefang). I often have to manually restart the server after an automated reboot, which I have set up for every 6 hours. Not every time, but certainly more often so far in a18. It used to happen occasionally in previous versions.

 

[Gazz]

It was only after switching I realised that the tier 4 bows stats had been inflated the whole time because I was using Steel arrows, which it was not taking into account for all the other bows when comparing.
Any chance this is possible to fix, or just something that must be taken into account in future.

Fix how? You can compare any weapon. Melee vs bow vs pistol. Which ammo type you want to load is really up to you.

The journal on that even points that out.

 

[Roland]

The journal...

Is this new feature mentioned in the patch notes....?

 

[Guppycur]

I've been seeing this too (also on Bluefang). I often have to manually restart the server after an automated reboot, which I have set up for every 6 hours. Not every time, but certainly more often so far in a18. It used to happen occasionally in previous versions.

Y'all using any api mods?

 

[MrSamuelAdam]

Random question.

I know this has probably been thought about.

But for higher levels, say insane.

Would it ever be possible to not just give the zombies more HP to make them harder? Example their behavior, movement etc.

I do enjoy when the zombies hit harder and the increase in gamestage faster, I just hate the "bullet sponge" effect.

The way I've been combating this, is still playing on nomad or warrior, but going into the config and increasing the GS bonus from 1.7 for warrior to 2.5 to match insane. Works out nicely. I was just thinking of different ways to make insane harder without just making the zombies hit harder and take more hits. Maybe they can jump an extra block, default job during the day. IDK just ideas I guess.

Or....maybe default just have headshots do slightly more damage to really reward the headshots for insane? And leave bodyshots the way it is now. That's the other way I helped when using insane. Just use a mod to increase the headshot damage.

I know there's other stuff to worry about just spit ballin'

 

[dhlmaster]

Y'all using any api mods?

We're using alloc's and csmm with cpm. I couldn't honestly tell you if those are API mods

Edit: I just looked it up, CPM is an API mod.

 

[Gazz]

Just wondering, does any level of 'animal tracking' skill show bears ?
Skill description does not lead me to believe this (even though I imagine bear's are probably one of the easiest creatures to track, esp as compared to a snake/chicken)

You can track bears but... if you need the perk to see a bear you probably have other problems. =)

 

[Laz Man]

You can track bears but... if you need the perk to see a bear you probably have other problems. =)

With texture streaming on they look like brown resource boulders...