PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

  • A18 Stable is Out!

    Votes: 2 66.7%

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    Votes: 1 33.3%
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Madmole, are you planning on overhauling the weapon mods in a future alpha? What we have so far is a nice first pass, but I would like to see more min-maxing with them. Ideally, Here's what I would like.

-Remove flat damage increase from mods.

-Mods can come in quality from grey to purple.

-As the mods increase in quality they get stats like accuracy, crit chance, dismemberment chance...etc.

 
The double barrel shotgun is just so fantastic.
ESPECIALLY once you find the "20% more damage to targets with full health" perk book.

"Hold until you see the whites of their eyes!" all day, every day.

I'm playing on always sprint @ nightmare speed, and I JUST encountered a biker zombie who saw me from across a field and ran full sprint toward me:

Hold... hold... HOLD...... *POW!* *POW!*
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A bear and I had a similar experience last night. I was a bit concerned what if the 2nd blast didn't drop it. It did. Best thing an early character can find.

 
Yea, melting the money down feels kinda OP. Do you run around trying to wrench every car and AC you can find...or do one L5 mission, sell the loot and have enough to make 2k casings per run ;/
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I haven't got that far yet, maybe it needs to be 2 dukes per casing or 3, etc.

 
Alright base builders, I need some help! I want to get a ramp to drive a 4x4 up, but using the ramp blocks whenever I drive up them, it does damage to the blocks from the 4x4 hitting them. Its a tiny amount and I can do it over and over and over before repairing, but on concrete it shows really early and it makes my brain hurt looking at them not look all nice and pretty. Anybody have any solutions for a ramp that doesnt take damage driving a vehicle up it?
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Terrain.

 
There a new ramps ingame, but only in the creative menu - it is 1 height difference splitted on 4 blocks - dont know why they arent in the normal block selector.
View attachment 29999

Search for "narrow wedge".
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A boatload of work making each one upgrade to the next tier, block entries, etc. We have a plan to reduce blocks to one block entry per shape and then do a material override on texture and hit points so we don't have to do so much work. Or something completely different, I don't know the details but when that happens we won't have to write tons of xml for various blocks.

 
somebody suggested a perk that reduces screamers when you are mining. please don't. the zeds really break up the monotony, if enough players actually want this maybe implement it as a visible noise level like the sneak so those players can back off to avoid screamers and other player can BRING OUT A 2ND AUGGGUEERR!!!
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Dual wield pickaxes. Mine like an auger without the heat of the augs

- - - Updated - - -

I haven't got that far yet, maybe it needs to be 2 dukes per casing or 3, etc.
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It is currently 2 dukes per casing. each gives one brass, casing takes 2

 
What about that level five perk for each weapon and tool? It used to grant tier 6 crafting but no more. What if now it grants normal repair to full for that item? Without that perk all weapons degrade in durability by 20% with each repair.
Could also open up a possibility for a new book series. Each volume could reduce repair degradation by 10% for a different class of weapons or tools. The bonus for finding all the books could be the ability to repair destroyed workstations.
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Sounds like a great mod. The current repair and degradation system is shippable.

 
I started playing a serious game of A18 finally. Dead is dead. Amazing Alpha!!! Orgasmic even!!!, just got past first BM.

Regular sledge swings still have no follow thru, no back into it... half swings that abruptly stop. Feels weird still but the power attack is perfect!!!

The schematic and magazine looting makes me want to play one handed and crank one out!!

Make this $hit stable I wanna wack to the A19 thread!! — Or whatever is next.

 
A boatload of work making each one upgrade to the next tier, block entries, etc. We have a plan to reduce blocks to one block entry per shape and then do a material override on texture and hit points so we don't have to do so much work. Or something completely different, I don't know the details but when that happens we won't have to write tons of xml for various blocks.
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I will be happy if you reach that stage then - every shape can be selected. The Block tool selecting shapes itself is a very nice addition! :smile-new:

Now only all block types have to be included in the lists...

 
Yeahhh first time I saw the sun go down I thought wohhh that a blood moon incoming ?? But if no thunder no blood moon so I put it towards sand/red and bloom. :)
I love the sunsets and general skydome so much. If only the clouds etc. where 4K say then it be perfect. There a little banding going on at times I noticed.
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The desert sunsets need to be toned down a bit, I think. I'm also seeing that haze going on other have mentioned. its not raining but everything looks washed out like when there is fog or rain, and auto windows have that oddball black thing going on where they ignore the fog faded effect.

I've also seen it now for two consecutive days, around day 30 I think.

@Madmole:

Love the addition of the pumpkins, but two thinks about them:

The seem kind of small....like half the size of carving pumpkins.

Since you make a jack o lantern combining them with a candle, shouldn't they light up at night? I was REALLY looking forward to that!

On my second playthrough now that I have my a18 legs, things are progressing faster. I had a motorcycle by day 26, and have found 4 traders, two the same distance from my base.

I found a level 1 auger, and they DO attract the screamers in a short period of time, even when pretty deep underground. (I popped up from about 30 blocks underground, ran around the corner at night, and was suddenly surrounded and wrecked by dogs and night runners (nomad mode)

I spent the rest of the night driving over them with my motorcycle trying to clear enough space to get my backpack. I thoughgt I did, and as soon as I got to it, three of the dogs came barreling out of the house, and I had no time to react.

Even though I can make steel, it looks like I still can't make steel arrows... it looks like they only unlock with a schematic.

 
You should try hanging from the pullup bar for a couple of minutes each day to help heal your shoulders. Might need to work your way up to it, but from what I've heard it's supposed to be a good way to restore mobility and strength.
Also, something to possibly try as an alternative to working to failure is to do whatever the same total weight is but spread it out over a much longer period of time. Your muscles are still moving the same weight but you're giving them time to recover so you have a reduced chance of injury and your form will be better since you're not at failure, so you get a better workout. (So instead of 435x12 you'd do 435x6 and wait 10 to 15 minutes before doing the rest.)

Only downside is your whole workout routine takes much longer, but if you've already had injuries it can help prevent future ones.

Heard all this from Joe Rogan recently, but I used to work at a gym and heard similar things over the years from people with good results.
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My shoulders are healed up fine. I do a few specific stretches that are great. I hang from the bar as well. I did 25 chin ups and 16 pullups I think a couple years ago when I was doing some gynmastics kind of stuff in between weight days before I got my ultimate home gym.

I like training to failure and leaving nothing left on the table. I even do partial reps. There is no risk going to failure if your form is perfect and the exercise is suited for a safe exit, like on most machines. Joe Rogan might know some things, but you have to try stuff and keep a journal and know what works for you. What works wonders on one guy is trash for the next. Everyone is unique.

The main thing is to listen to your body. I was high on strength gains last year and pushed through pain and ended up with chronic elbow and shoulder pain, and had to lift 0 pounds and go up in 2.5 pound increments for over a year. I'm still not as strong as I was, but my joints feel good so I'm happy about that.

 
I haven't got that far yet, maybe it needs to be 2 dukes per casing or 3, etc.
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I think its probably not even so much the melting down dukes into ammo as the ability to do non stop quests thats more the problem. I know you plan to add in being able to select the tier of quest you want, maybe adding in some cooldowns based on tier would help a bit. If tier 1's were always available, but you had to wait x amount of in game hours based on tiers then people would actually have to go out and explore between quests, rather than constant infinite high end POI's respawning for lots of loot and dukes. Would also make the perks where you get more rewards or dukes from doing quests feel more impactful.

Also maybe touch up the rewards a bit. I did one level into the perk where you get an extra reward choice. I did a tier 3 quest and my choices were: Q2 leather gloves, 17 shotgun shells, or....a Q4 rocket launcher...wonder what I should pick...

 
Faatal
No, what i meant is that if the blood moon is associated

with day 7 that's for a standard bloodmoonhorde. Then at

12:01 midnight it becomes day 8. Depending on how well I dispense

the horde, after midnight it will often slow and stop. This

would then require the reset log on/off tactic to restart it.

I was asking if the bloodmoon can be set up as a subroutine,

the only thing dependent on the date/time would be the activation

of the Bloodmoon routine. Once it begins at 10pm what ever day

it is set to start, a simple countdown timer could be set for

6000 ticks, that is the amount of time in ticks from 10pm to 4am.

1000 ticks per hour. This way during that time the Bloodmoon spawner

would continue to produce spawns matching maxAlive for a continuous

6 hours gametime.

Example: gamestage 69, has maxalive 23. As long as the countdown timer

was greater than 0 the Bloodmoon spawner would keep a continuous stream

of 23 TotalAlive. no matter how fast or slow they are neutralized. Then at 4am

6000 ticks it would shut off the spawner.

This is similar to setting the biome spawner to .006. This makes it feel like a

constant flood, but stays within the limitations of the engine and pc combo. It

also matches gametime to real world time reactions when I play sweep and clear

before entering POI's for scavenging.

I play 120 min days, so mathematically I reset the spawn timing, Below I set it

to form aprogressive cascade, until it ends.

.006 = 43 seconds

.02 = 144 seconds or 2 min 24 seconds game day minutes times seconds times decimal equals seconds to respawn.

.05 = 360 seconds or 6 minutes

My logic areamasters/biome spawners cover 80 block meters. as long as you stay in that perimeter

you are regulated to that spawn rule. If you just keep running about it will grow to the hard

coded limit of 60 fluctuating above and below this point.

desert biome spawner

&lt;spawn respawndelay=".05" time="Any" TotalAlive="10" entitygroup="Dangerdesert" /&gt;

&lt;spawn respawndelay=".02" time="Any" TotalAlive="10" entitygroup="Dangerdesert" /&gt;

&lt;spawn maxcount="4" respawndelay=".006" time="Any" TotalAlive="10" entitygroup="Dangerdesert" /&gt;
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I don't want it being a simple timer system. BMs are driven by XML. There is a regular stream, but with some variation in intervals and I think there can be pauses between waves. When a BM stops before dawn, it is because all the spawners for a given gamestage were finished.

This is gamestage 7:

&lt;gamestage stage="7"&gt;&lt;spawn group="feralHordeStageGS7" num="10" maxAlive="5" duration="1"/&gt;&lt;/gamestage&gt;

You get 10 zombies and done, which is appropriate for a new player early in the game. They don't need a constant stream of zombies for 6 hours. They would die and it would suck.

Later in the game you might get 600 zombies on a higher gamestage. The highest gamestages have 1500 zombies. You kill them all before 4am and it is done. We could just push those numbers up until no one could ever kill them all before 6 hours is up, but I'd rather see more thought put into it and we have other things to address right now.

 
Has anyone been experiencing any input lag in the inventory/crafting menus? It’s been most apparent in the chem lab. I can’t split a stack of wood in my inventory and have to hold left click to drag the wood into the chem lab’s output to split it. I also have to hold left click for .2-.5 seconds before the drag animation starts. I’ve also noticed this input lag to a lesser extent when moving items between my toolbar and inventory.

 
What about that level five perk for each weapon and tool? It used to grant tier 6 crafting but no more. What if now it grants normal repair to full for that item? Without that perk all weapons degrade in durability by 20% with each repair.
Could also open up a possibility for a new book series. Each volume could reduce repair degradation by 10% for a different class of weapons or tools. The bonus for finding all the books could be the ability to repair destroyed workstations.
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Or you could stop punishing players for playing the game. Not even Dark Souls has item degradation. Listen, you people are far too concerned with how other people play your game. Eliminating OP loopholes is one thing. Purposefully making the game play punitive and passing it off as difficulty is another. No one needs T6 items anyway. Why not make an elaborate quest line where you need to do a string of favors for various NPCs/Traders in order to achieve the ability to craft T6 items. Players will be presented with the quest once they have achieved the ability to craft T5 items.

Example:

Making trader workstations RNG broken is punitive and not fun. The outcome is set. If they are broken there is nothing you can do about it.

Making all the trader workstations broken by default until you do a specific quest for the trader is value added game play that presents the player with a choice.

Currently, the only kind of quests in the game are Bethesda style radiant quests. When there is nothing left in a Bethesda game but radiant quests, the game is over.

 
I was actually thinking of adjusting my time settings up as well, maybe to 90min instead of 60min. I feel as though with all the schematics now in A18 I’m making it very hard on myself to progress with such little time to loot. Most of my day goes to building up for next horde.
Aw man that sounds pretty intense, are you making a base/horde base out of berserker bills or you just got caught there right before BM?
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We had a nasty storm in my area early Monday morning and then power went out at 9 am until around 9 pm, but internet was out until this morning. I had to use a generator to get my PC working so I could at least do some work. I felt crippled without the internet and our cell phones were horrible, probably because of all the people using them. Skype on my phone was taking minutes to send a single message. All good today!

I tend to play games as a min/maxer and don't care about cosmetics, so I always look to use what is around me to my advantage. Existing buildings are your friend, so I look to find the best one in the area and make it home. Berserker Bills is sturdy and my best choice at the time.

 
I haven't seen this mentioned, but is anyone else seeing REALLY red desert sunsets, almost like a horde night? The forest biome seems fine, but the desert sunsets are way too overbearing.
(I never saw desert in my first playthough so I don't know if its been like this in all a18 or not.

I love the smooth transitions from day to night, and the sun coming up and the moving shadows when the load starts up.
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Yes to super saturated sunsets that almost feel like horde night. I think they need toned down just a bit; the color and effect is beautiful, just a litttle too much.

 
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