PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[agrastiOs]

MadMole,

Will the burnt forest be touched up in the future? Currently, it's pretty ugly. If smoke would be brought back, I think it would look good again.

 

[DemiurgeRedux]

I've noticed this lag, too. And I most notice it when I'm in my base and leaving the area seems to help, so I think the crafting theory is legitimate. I'm playing another world where we haven't gotten as far and I'm surprised at how silky smooth transferring items is.

It's most likely garbage collection. One of the pimps said a while back they were going to change it to run when you go into the menu when there are no zombies around.

 

[Thecolours]

They don't need quality because they do not degrade. They simply need random stats.

True true.

 

[Star69]

Because the zombie hands extend from the player hand master. so there is no range present on a lot of zombie hands as it just uses one overall range. animals have their own hands. The modlet adds the line needed to each zombie hand so it does not impact player hands. You can even look at the modlet and set your own Range if you like on each zombie hand but right now its just 2 overall changes for them.
If you want to add your own and edit the xml yourself just add this line to every zombie hand:

That is the default range right now in vanilla. My modlet sets it to 1.25 but you can try other variations like 1.45 or 1.15.

Sorry for the mod talk in here. Wont pursue this any further in this thread. Feel free to message me and I will help in private if anyone likes.

Thanks for the info, I may hit you up about that. The reach became very apparent with my fortitude build with iron knuckles. Speaking of which, burning shaft mod on iron knuckles is awesome! Knock their teeth out and set them on fire is very satisfying lol.

 

[Trankitas]

This sounds amazing. Hopefully, this is coming soonish?

I doubt it, unless Chris put some extra hours!

 

[Mechanimal]

Share some pictures please?

Here is my first one, under my base, and admittedly the least exciting of the bunch, but still neat. Made a 4 way hub in my basement, was only able to tunnel to one lead deposit, which are annoyingly common btw. Still ended up looking neat inside, and boy does that miners lantern help, if you find the schem for it.

Door on the right leads to it, also grow my shrooms down here, and bought a water cooler at trader just keep the purified water down here, because it's ended up being about as useful as mushrooms, lol. I only rly drink red tea, anyway, when I do need lead, or stone, this works fine from my home base. The others are remote...







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I demand pictures since you made it all sound so damn cool...

I will go get some, that lead mine is but a tease rly.

 

[Slingblade2040]

alright game stage 187, day 63 horde is gonna start. got over 3k rounds of 7.62 ammo. hopefully this will go as planned.

I will take screen shots during the action but I'm not sure if I can post them on here or not but they will be on steam atleast.

 

[Mechanimal]

Still night but my coal mine is nearby so I went and got some pics. Love this little thing, the mine underneath is huge, so much coal yet to mine...



Hard to rly capture the little space, is so tiny and cozy, then leads right down.



Even harder to rly see because it's coal, at night, lol...



Looking back up, is deep, and without those supports I'd be dead and buried by now...

 

[Kosmic Kerman]

I’ve never experienced workstation lag like was reported in A16 but with A18, the lag in chem stations is horrid at times. Like you, last night I was having a heck of a time splitting a wood stack to fuel a batch of gunpowder. I gave up and just put 1000 wood in. At first, I thought I was suffering internet lag but quickly figured out it was just the chem station.

Here’s a tip. There is no lag in the workstation output. So drag the wood to the output and you can freely split it there.

 

[Inmyh3ad]

I have a very unexpected new favorite hobby: building new mines.
I have 4 in my world now(SP, day 37, 120 min days, Navezgane) and each one is unique.

I seriously had so much fun building each one, the choose-a-block menu is such a huge QOL improvement for more than just the block shapes, heading into a new mine with a stack of catwalks and logs(support beams) gets me excited now. The walkways and supports I build along the way are both useful and super neat looking afterward, makes them all feel like legit mines.

And it's not just the awesome system building upgrade, it's also the way the new ores work. I've made a habit of clearing out the sand within a deposit first thing, once that is done the mines are so freakin neat looking I almost don't want to mine it out... almost End up with such cool looking caverns, the new ore textures are so well done.

And yes multi-mines rock. Took me forever to find a nitrate deposit in the forest biome, finally found one and immediately noticed I was in the rad zone, of course. But nearby I found not one but two nitrate rocks near each other, built a large mine between them, and now aside from being buried in nitrate I found an iron seam in it too that I've spent multiple nights pounding on and still have yet to diminish.

Made a super cool low profile mine entrance for my oil shale mine in the desert... nvm that I turned on CM for the first and only time in this game just to spawn a second tablesaw(always make my first legit) just so I could make the wood wedges I needed. Please, please add the wedge to the menu, spoiled an otherwise CM free game(which is a good thing overall for this alpha imho). Anyway that mine is super neat, walls of oil shale are so sweet looking, took some furniture helpers and made myself a sweet little home-away-from-home in a pocket of shale for the long nights I spend there.

My coal mine is the cutest tiniest little cabin made all out of logs on the surface snow that turns into an elaborate deep super mine below, so cool.

And I never, ever, mine the initial surface rock, usually surround it in bars to protect it, make my building/entrance around/down from there. Serves as a great entrance piece and obvious label for that deposit.

That's it, just a major shout out for Mining in A18. I had no idea I would be so impressed by these changes, it rly is one of my new fav things now. Kudos TFP.

Do you care to post some pictures from your mines? I'm also a huge fan of mining a,d can't stop either! I just connected my little triple minecabin to my base so I don't have to worry during the night.

 

[Kosmic Kerman]

It's most likely garbage collection. One of the pimps said a while back they were going to change it to run when you go into the menu when there are no zombies around.

That seems unlikely. If this were the case the lag should go away once the GC occurred. What I am experiencing is not the stutter from normal Unity GC but the input lag you would get in heavily modded games with tons of added crafting recipes. Its weird this lag is most pronounced in the chem station since it doesn’t seem to have many recipes.

 

[Mechanimal]

I actually forgot about this one, my first iron mine right outside Diersvill, because I depleted all teh iron already, but still has tons of lead.

Is a good example of how I leave the OG node though. But I didn't surround this one in bars like I did the coal, and others. That also makes a great spot to set your junk turret for watching the entrance...





And I made a cozy little spot within some lead here too, do some smelting whilst I mine, etc



Crazy place to just forget about, ended up neat, but again I got what I needed already.

 

[unlike them]

This is so awesome, Mechanimal, my mines are ugly compared to yours, I need to pay them some attention!

 

[quyxkh]

The perk book should unlock that track plays while mining.

Troll the world, make that the one and only paid DLC.

 

[madmole]

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.

Awesome.

 

[enragedcamel]

MM,

Should we expect a patch today? I'm about to reset my server, but I'll wait if there's a patch on the way.

 

[Inmyh3ad]

This is so awesome, Mechanimal, my mines are ugly compared to yours, I need to pay them some attention!

+1 Can't say more then this :smile-new:

 

[cork]

What variables does the game difficulty govern?

I like the fine tuning that can be done with zombie speeds and would love to see more granular options for zombie-to-player damage and player-to-zombie damage. Some people like zombie bullet sponges yet others like the hard-hitting zombies that still go down with a few well aimed headshots.

 

[madmole]

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.

Bethesda depends on quests a lot more than we do, we have the blood moon to keep players busy which created a very successful game long before we added quests.

 

[madmole]

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.

We increased global saturation so now I might need to nerf the sunsets a bit to compensate.