PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[MrSamuelAdam]

Trickle is boring. I'd rather see full on madness until 4am.

Then make it happen baby!

 

[Gareee]

@Madmole:

Something that seems way to easy at the start is not requiring the anvil in the forge to make iron arrowheads, pot and grill, and ammo. It makes sense you would need an anvil for those items, and it adds satisfaction it getting enough resources to make one or finding one.

It looks like right now the anvil only speeds up the forge, and thats what the advanced bellows are for.

I get you are trying to simplify crafting, but IMHO these were all easy to understand and made sense before.

There isn't much sense in even having stone arrows if on day one you already have iron arrows available with little or no effort.

If you are keeping this over simplification, you might as well just get rid of the anvil and stone arrows.

 

[SnowDog1942]

I find myself putting a point into the forge every game.... and I hate myself for it. It takes to look long to find the schematic for something I could get so early with 1 point. I have no good solution though, thoughts?

 

[Tetrameth]

Except when you go to an airdrop you are expecting to fill your inventory with items. For many years no player expects repairing his stuff on the go to fill his inventory.
It would be unnecessarily creating a situation that could lead to huge player frustration if the conditions were right. Which seems more like design fail than a player should git gud at preparing for a repair.

seriously, make a box and throw stuff in it for a few seconds if you cant bear the thought of dumping your items on the ground... hell, even find a bird nest... they are everywhere. Your problem is NOT 'game over'

 

[madmole]

Finally got around to taking those screen shots of my group's A18 base.
Outside 1 - Main building has a 12 x 12 footprint.

Spoiler

Outside 2 - Blade trap moat is 6 blocks wide for a total base footprint of 24 x 24.

Spoiler

Crafting (1st) Floor 1 - All crafting stations, one of each except for forges which we have two of. Basement hatch next to cooking station.

Spoiler

Crafting (1st) Floor 2 - Stairs hidden behind crafting stations. Four switches on one wall for blade trap pit: one for each quadrant.

Spoiler

Crafting (1st) Floor 3 - Storage containers all labeled.

Spoiler

Crafting (1st) Floor 4 - A few clever construction techniques used to maximize floor space for crafting floor.

Spoiler

Will post part 2/2 soon.

Thanks for posting that, can you show the stairs, is that a walk way above your crafting station? Do you turn the corner, then go on the walkway, or go up the stairs to the roof? Just kind of curious how that part flows. Very cool base design. I had to use plate blocks near the drawbridge to keep from damaging it, so hopefully that can get fixed.

EDIT: Never mind you posted the stairs, thanks!!

 

[Tetrameth]

It'll mean another gun type for each color.
I did like the suggestion that it's numbers go down each repair. That would work with the current state system. Loses 10% of stats each repair or something.

Perhaps tying slot numbers to quality is just not right. Why not just make every mod work, but its effectiveness is reduced by a certain percentage for its respective weapon quality instead

 

[Laz Man]

I find myself putting a point into the forge every game.... and I hate myself for it. It takes to look long to find the schematic for something I could get so early with 1 point. I have no good solution though, thoughts?

1) Find a working Forge

2) Focus on looting POIs with more books (I.E. crack a book)

3) Play a different build that doesnt rely on the Forge heavily.

 

[madmole]

Part 2/2
Crafting (1.5th) Floor 1 - Walkway above crafting stations leads to second floor.

Spoiler

Crafting (1.5th) Floor 2 - Ample drop-off chests for quick inventory dump.

Spoiler

Crafting (1st) Floor Safe - Group income is higher than expenses. Extra dukes get stored here.

Spoiler

Basement Floor - Generators/wires hidden beneath floor. Blocks primarily targeted by undead reinforced to steel. Plenty of sight lines for shooting/looting during bloodmoon.

Spoiler

Garden (2nd) Floor - Under construction garden on top floor.

Spoiler

House Husband - Yours truly.

Spoiler

Thanks, how does it hold up on blood moons? What game stage has it faced so far?

 

[Dadpool12a]

I find myself putting a point into the forge every game.... and I hate myself for it. It takes to look long to find the schematic for something I could get so early with 1 point. I have no good solution though, thoughts?

I have yet to put a single point into any crafting skill. I tend to find everything I need "not want" to survive the game. If I don't loot it, I will typically find what I need at the trader.

I place my land claim down so that I can move my crafting benches if I need to. So all I ever need to do is find the crafting bench, schematic, or buy from trader. I purposely played my game this way in order to see if it was viable and found it quit enjoyable.

 

[madmole]

It could have been raining, I wasn't paying much attention; I was working indoors most of the time. If it was raining, it was incredibly light. A thunderstorm did start shortly thereafter though. Again though, I was barely around to see it.
Thank you for eliminating fog. It was a cool, eldritch concept, but all it really did was wash out the colors.

EDIT: No, no it was fog. I remember, I was farming Screamers and I was commenting that everything looked so bright. And yes, I'm in the latest patch. Apparently fog can still roll in? I'll report to you if it ever happens again.

Seems to be happening to some people.

 

[Kahrkura]

Thanks for posting that, can you show the stairs, is that a walk way above your crafting station? Do you turn the corner, then go on the walkway, or go up the stairs to the roof? Just kind of curious how that part flows. Very cool base design. I had to use plate blocks near the drawbridge to keep from damaging it, so hopefully that can get fixed.
EDIT: Never mind you posted the stairs, thanks!!

Glad you like it~ We too are using plate blocks by the drawbridge. They're just the wooden ones, but painted to look like steel.

 

[madmole]

I would like to have the crafting benches for rent. Another idea is they are all broken and as you complete quests and build rep they become available.
But, I really like the idea of them being rented.

The easy way to do it would be to put them in a crafting room with auto close door, and you gain access by dialogue, because of coop and stuff.

 

[madmole]

@Madmole:
Something that seems way to easy at the start is not requiring the anvil in the forge to make iron arrowheads, pot and grill, and ammo. It makes sense you would need an anvil for those items, and it adds satisfaction it getting enough resources to make one or finding one.

It looks like right now the anvil only speeds up the forge, and thats what the advanced bellows are for.

I get you are trying to simplify crafting, but IMHO these were all easy to understand and made sense before.

There isn't much sense in even having stone arrows if on day one you already have iron arrows available with little or no effort.

If you are keeping this over simplification, you might as well just get rid of the anvil and stone arrows.

A forge is not little or no effort. The anvil is a mod. You can pound hot metal on the side of a forge or on a log, etc. We determined that it wasn't fun to unlock a forge, go to all the work of crafting it, just to see more gates keeping you from actually doing stuff. These are basic items. In a real apocalypse there would be 1-10 cooking pots per house and noone would ever EVER forge one. So its there in case you have crap luck is all. I've forged one in 13,000 hours.

Short story is multi gates aren't fun for super basic stuff.

 

[madmole]

I find myself putting a point into the forge every game.... and I hate myself for it. It takes to look long to find the schematic for something I could get so early with 1 point. I have no good solution though, thoughts?

20% chance to find forge schematic in every broken forge.

 

[Kahrkura]

Thanks, how does it hold up on blood moons? What game stage has it faced so far?

It took out the day 14 bloodmoon horde no problem, though I don't recall what gamestage we were at. There wasn't any damage to the walls and the blade traps only required some minor repairs. Loving that I no longer need to have all the various crafting parts in my inventory to repair them. Using only steel really simplifies repairs, in a good way.

Our day 21 bloodmoon is just around the corner. I'll be sure to check the gamestage and see how it holds up. Unless our evening session gets rescheduled I should have an update tonight.

 

[Dadpool12a]

The easy way to do it would be to put them in a crafting room with auto close door, and you gain access by dialogue, because of coop and stuff.

If you ever add the safe rooms for night and horde nights this would merge well with it.

 

[Hek Harris]

Care to elaborate? I meant that all facial hair of all the zombies look grey-ish in stead of black. I've only seen this after the latest patch though.

Set the reflection to zero, they will rejuvenate.

 

[4sheetzngeegles]

BMH question

MM

Is this possible, without having to change much code?

After the game gets day count and decides its day divisible by 7 "bloodmoon"

Then it gets Hour count and it is 22000 "10pm" Then set BloodMoonStart.

Start a bloodmoon tick counter.

Set this tick counter for 6000 ticks, to count down to =0

@0 get BloodMoonEnd routine.

This way every other day is still governed by midnight exclusively.

And BloodMoonHorde is changed from a day event, to a timed event consisting

of 6000 ticks. Then resume normal day hour counts.

 

[MechanicalLens]

20% chance to find forge schematic in every broken forge.

Good change, imo. I also noticed you've added [a beaker] to the loot table in broken chemistry stations.

 

[FileMachete]

Don't have to, you already failed. We're not going to abuse our players with poor designs. Usability is a huge factor in designs, so again huge design fail. The community would rage if repair ejected their mods (possibly having them roll down mountains) and they had to reinsert mods with every repair. It would take 30 seconds or more of real time to perform a repair with all that clicking. Repair is meant to cause a bit of grief and work to maintain, not be a massive hassle, and you don't make one system inconvenient just to shoe horn in and other idea, you work on the other idea until it fits in nice.
I'll make a half decent back seat game dev out of you guys yet

Just a thought, but -not- for this game, since the repair mechanic is already cemented.

-If- a Repair took a full minute &/or dismantling into parts, then Durability would be a much more important stat. And Secondary weapon as well.

Right now it's pretty easy to fall back enough to allow an in-fight Repair. If that wasn't possible it would change how folks prepped and played. Would also up consumption of repair kits.

Add in a RNG 'Breakage/Stoppage' mechanic, first requiring a Repair, second fixable with a Reload, and now you've added some spice to gunfights.