PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[ozzysfang]

I'll say the Jackolaterns' light is...underwhelming

 

[Jedo]

I'm not sure if this ever has been mentioned before: It would be cool if you knew in which direction the quests were. I would be more willing to take the 1.5km quest if I knew it was back in the direction of my base. (Ideally, I would love to be able to view them on a map so that you could see their relative positions, but that might be asking too much.)

 

[khzmusik]

Is it normal, that higher terrain is rendered like this ?I can see this effect coming with higher altitude, visible best in the snow biome, but also occuring in other biomes.

It happens around 140-150 altitude and gets worse in higher regions.

Happens with a custom map based on a TGA. Will test now if the random generated ones show the same too.

Or is that a bad setup of my GPU ? (AMD RX590 8GB)

View attachment 29904

That's a weird one, and no, it's not normal. My guess is that it has something to do with draw distance? In any case, I would alert TFP about it in the bug reporting forum.

 

[Sullen Skulls]

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.

Yes, I know that you can compare any weapon with any other, and equip any item with any of its respective ammo's. My example was that my current equipped and unmodded level 4 wooden bow (which was using Steel arrows), when compared with a level 6 compound bow was telling me that the compound bow did -6 damage compared with the wooden bow. And that I never managed to craft/spawn in with a cheat menu (for testing purposes) a level 5/6 wooden or compound bow that managed to be better than -8 for level 5, or -5 for level 6, in over 20 attempts for each.

However, this was only because of the Steel arrows I was currently using.

To make them compare the bows directly I would have had to craft a Stone arrow, re-equip it to my current bow, and then compare them to see how the damage differed between the two, because the newly looted/crafted bow was using Stone arrow stats instead of Steel arrow ones.

Before figuring this out, I had just assumed that my current bow had just been super lucky with RNG on its stats, hence why I tested it using the cheat menu, to see how long it would take to spawn a better bow, and never managed to.

I get that in the grand scheme of things, this is probably about as trivial an issue as its possible to get, but with random stats on items being a thing (which I love btw), being able to more easily see stat comparisons between items without having to actually craft something first would be a tad more user-friendly IMO.

 

[MrSamuelAdam]

No, it gets stuck. Like pressing RMB wont aim occasionally, standing perfectly still. And the fact that it locks you into ADS mode every time you take one shot is super annoying. Takes away control of the flow of battle if you are doing anything besides sniping z's from a safe spot.
But ya it is different than canceling your aim by running, it just fails at aiming sometimes.

Think a HOLD to ADS option would fix this.

 

[madmole]

After playing A18 for a while now, I have been wishing for a special slot in my toolbar to be fists only. The only thing allowed in it would be knuckles. I know that essentially keeping one spot open is the same thing, but for some reason I keep thinking this would be easier. I believe this strikes my mind most when it's early game and you are using basically any weapon you can get your hands on and you keep your tool bar loaded with these plus your bandages. Some things you can use to gather, but with a lot of things now you can't... for example spears and clubs (both things you would have on your first days) do not harvest much. Oddly you can harvest aloe and yucca, but not grass and plants like cotton, goldenrod, chrysanthemum and other things. I actually reported that as a bug since madmole said we should be able to harvest with these things, but the response was that the devs say it's an intended feature now.

I dunno... just wishing for a fists only slot.

Put some knuckles there?

 

[gcomerfo]

The best part of a18 is clearly the new wrench sound! Thanks for helping me not go nuts from the old horrible wrench sound!

 

[Trankitas]

Maybe how you worded it sounded bad? Sometimes things sound bad at first but you warm up to them once your objections are calmed. Sometimes you just have to try stuff with a proof of concept too, but usually we can settle on a nice design on paper.

Yes it's true, and being English not my first language sometimes I don't state my questions/ideas correctly. Anyway I'm really glad you came around that idea! I think it could add a really nice mechanic to the game, with a little bit of polish of course.

 

[madmole]

Just want to say, I've been keeping up with the alphas (just started the latest), and TFP are definitely on the right track. If you haven't updated yet, you should. It's night and day at this point.
TFP don't get enough love in this forum, and I think they deserve it now. A18, once it's out of alpha, will be epic.

Spread the good word on steam and reddit I think you are preaching to the choir here.

 

[JaxTeller718]

We've talked about doing multiple quests in the same poi, first one is clear, then later settlers moved in and you have to protect them from a horde, then later bandits killed them and you go kill the bandits, then it restarts the cycle as the dead bandits become zombies or zombies came there to eat the dead bandits, etc.

Ok. If this happens you can HAVE the Tier 5 Quests. Ill gladly take this over a tier 5!

 

[madmole]

Brings a tear to my eye that this good game is bringing so much glee and fun my way and the updates are like icing on the cake.
Brilliant to see more tweaks and bugs being stomped on.

This game has timed it so well for

Halloween as well this year.

Probably one of my best games for a horror theme this, as well as being first most a survival.

Thanks for the kind words, I think we can keep dropping new content now from time to time in between larger updates now.

 

[DaVegaNL]

Yes it's true, and being English not my first language sometimes I don't state my questions/ideas correctly. Anyway I'm really glad you came around that idea! I think it could add a really nice mechanic to the game, with a little bit of polish of course.

Que? No hablo inglés!

 

[madmole]

This is hilarious. We had someone log into our a18 Server, and the 12th Crate she looted contained a Level 6 Steel Sledgehammer.... and you think Crafting trivializes the feeling of finding Purple loot? Fifteen minutes into the game and you have the best Sledge you're gonna get.

Lets not take this out of context. Tell me how many more purples she found the rest of the week, next week, and the week after that. When loot is balanced so purples are properly rare you guys will feel gratitude we let you craft blues.

 

[madmole]

Yeah, 100 arrows on day 2 is not difficult, even on 50% loot drop. Don't change the ratio of feathers otherwise we will have stupid sized stacks much too fast. It's already bad enough by day 7.
4 hits with the axe and the nests give you those few extras which makes all the difference in the first few days.

I didn't bother with that.

 

[madmole]

Sexual tyrannosaurus requires only level 3 in the strength attribute to reach rank 3 in it, I call that a "minimal-investment perk". All attributes other than strength and perception completely lack minimal-investment perks, so you guys should balance attributes more to give every other attribute (agility, fortitude and intellect) at least 2 minimal-investment perks each. A player has to invest a total of 12 perk points into Fortitude and Iron Gut just so they can eat a piece of grilled meat safely, yet, it only takes 5 perk points to get sexual tyrannosaurus to level 3, along with many other perks under the strength attribute. It's pretty self-explanatory how problematic that is, I don't need to try to convince you. You already know it, and I suspect you're already working on it, but I just wanted to make sure. I'll make the following suggestions: For Intellect, Better Barter and The Daring Adventurer; Or, alternatively, move Master Chef from Strength back over to Intellect, and make it minimal-investment. For Fortitude, I strongly recommend Iron Gut and Cardio. For Agility, I recommend Flurry of Blows and Parkour. The beauty of this idea is, all the above perks benefit every play style; So even if you only dabble in other attributes, you'll be supplementing your playstyle significantly ^_^\m/

Do I have deja vu or are you posting the same thing multiple times?

 

[madmole]

The loot should have cutoff-levels for the player level. Such that really high quality items only spawn later in the game, based on gamestage or whatever metric is useful here. Since the loot only "spawns" in when a player accesses a container first, this works well even in MP.
I found a level 3 Auger at the second day. After looting 2 POIs... This is really overpowered in terms of progression.

Its fun, but too much candy is not good either.

That is guppy's baby. IF everyone can axe murder his idea we'll get that out of the game once and for all and be in a good spot balance wise.

Its probably a good design, if there is 0% chance to get good loot early game people will feel compelled to power level until the magic colors start dropping. Its just a matter of balance to where the high quality stuff is super rare early game.

Nothing but a few hundred hours further testing will solve this. We adjusted it more, but maybe it needs more. I have 2 hours into it so I have no idea how it feels yet.

 

[madmole]

No stamina to keep banging? Stun locked by a fatty and it was over before you could do anything? You, sir, are no Snowdog.

I'm just not as pubic about it.

 

[Gareee]

Hey, so, would it be too hard to implement a menu where you can check which recipes you have unlocked and which others you haven't? Sometimes while I loot I find so many recipes I forget I've unlocked them later on.
You can't really keep tabs on it in the crafting menu, since it never shows you all the unlockable recipes at once.

The white icon on them is a closed book if unread, or an open book if read.

 

[madmole]

would be nice if 9mm and 7.62 rounds would differentiate a little more than just dmg/range.
like give 9mm rounds a little dmg boost or flinching/dismemberment chance against flesh targets

and 7.62 dmg boost/penetration against armor and maybe a tiny chance per bullet 2 penetrate flesh.

would help making the smg not just a poor man's ak

There is a book that ignores armor point blank with 9mm weapons.

 

[madmole]

that makes the whole weather system a lil redundant, no?
couldnt u die from severe heat strokes/freezing in previous alphas?

See what happens when you run out of food in the cold or water in the desert.

At least its not completely annoying like 17, it may or may not be done.