PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Mechanimal]

LOL, and

It just ended up that way, I swear, I will however accept your judgmental rodent stare down. I deserve that.

 

[Lonestarcanuck]

Am I missing something or is there a better way to get parts. example I want to make Steel tools and need 15 parts per item. so far I can only find the parts by scraping other steel tools.

 

[Star69]

A big hats off to you Mechanical! Very impressive. I don’t understand how you have time to beautify your mines though. I’m so stressed trying to find the time to mine, get brass, get food & scavenge that everything is barren. I may be trying to convince my party members to agree to switch to 90 minute days. There just doesn’t seem to be enough time.

Three of us did Day 21 BM last night and it was 50% radiated, 25% cops. We lived but with that mixture of zombies, I’m really concerned about Day 28. Two of the three of us haven’t died yet so I’m sure our combined gamestage is pretty high though I honestly didn’t check...not enough time. We went thru all our ammo so I was punching the last of the horde at 4am. Loads of fun but lots to do the next 7 days.

 

[Bubo]

It just ended up that way, I swear, I will however accept your judgmental rodent stare down. I deserve that.

:lol:

 

[Mechanimal]

My best advice for mining is:

1: Make sure you have lots of wood on you for catwalks and logs.

2: Clear the sand from around the ore. Makes a HUGE difference visually.

That's it, crank out logs and catwalks as needed, place as you go, and you'll end up with some rly neat mines by default.

 

[Kalen]

(OP this is not aimed at you but at the perma degradation guys )There is a nasty horde coming, do you guys even play the game or do you just sit around and arm chair designer ideas all day that you think sound fun, but in reality there is so much to do and not enough time to do it, I feel it would be an injustice to most players to shaft them with some lengthy repair/degradation mini game. I just want to loot, mine, trade, build an epic base and do some quests, and try to solve the puzzle of not getting rekt by a horde. I don't want a complicated repair /degradation system we JUST streamlined it FFS.

Honestly, I'm not sure anyone really thinks item degradation would be fun. I think people are trying to find ways to make crafting relevant again. Because right now crafting has been drastically marginalized. I'm trying to keep an open mind on the subject, since so far you guys have nailed it with A18, I mean really, fantastic update so far... but I do hope crafting gets a little love.

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Am I missing something or is there a better way to get parts. example I want to make Steel tools and need 15 parts per item. so far I can only find the parts by scraping other steel tools.

Thats pretty much it. I've seen parts at the trader (though not steel tool parts yet)

 

[Mechanimal]

A big hats off to you Mechanical! Very impressive. I don’t understand how you have time to beautify your mines though. I’m so stressed trying to find the time to mine, get brass, get food & scavenge that everything is barren. I may be trying to convince my party members to agree to switch to 90 minute days. There just doesn’t seem to be enough time.
Three of us did Day 21 BM last night and it was 50% radiated, 25% cops. We lived but with that mixture of zombies, I’m really concerned about Day 28. Two of the three of us haven’t died yet so I’m sure our combined gamestage is pretty high though I honestly didn’t check...not enough time. We went thru all our ammo so I was punching the last of the horde at 4am. Loads of fun but lots to do the next 7 days.

Oh I do 120 minute days, F that short day noise, I can't play that way anymore. The days are just way too short and I don't have the time to enjoy building, which is my fav part of the game. I can deal otherwise if playing in MP though, those games are different than my SP games.

 

[Bubo]

^ Same.

 

[Trankitas]

Oh I do 120 minute days, F that short day noise, I can't play that way anymore. The days are just way too short and I don't have the time to enjoy building, which is my fav part of the game. I can deal otherwise if playing in MP though, those games are different than my SP games.

Yeah I feel the same way about 60 minutes day cycle, not enough time to build the classic little town that I build for me and my wife every time we start a new world. eep:

 

[Brian9824]

Honestly, I'm not sure anyone really thinks item degradation would be fun. I think people are trying to find ways to make crafting relevant again. Because right now crafting has been drastically marginalized. I'm trying to keep an open mind on the subject, since so far you guys have nailed it with A18, I mean really, fantastic update so far... but I do hope crafting gets a little love.
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Thats pretty much it. I've seen parts at the trader (though not steel tool parts yet)

That plus its just once you get your end game gear thats it. It lasts forevor and why loot when at most what you find is 1 point better then what you already have or worse?

Granted i'm waiting for next patch which hopefully balances the loot a bit more. That being said A18 is fantastic. The best alpha to date IMO and a TON of fun. It's just down to the polish and small stuff now which is hard because you have to balance it for the veterans and the new alike.

 

[Mechanimal]

Yeah I feel the same way about 60 minutes day cycle, not enough time to build the classic little town that I build for me and my wife every time we start a new world. eep:

Nice, sounds fun. Yeah I get it. Is hard to go back to 60 min days once you get used to twice that. I get to do like one thing a day and it gets dark, is just too fast.

 

[AtomicUs5000]

Am I missing something or is there a better way to get parts. example I want to make Steel tools and need 15 parts per item. so far I can only find the parts by scraping other steel tools.

Once in a while you might find parts in loot, but not many and they are usually along with other kinds of parts. You are more likely to find whole items to scrap. I prefer it this way because if the loot tables had more parts, it would mean less chances of whole items with good random stats.

 

[Mechanimal]

Well whatya know, dayum. So, I go back, start mining some shale, and looky looky...



Opened up a hole in the shale to reveal not one but two other nodes. Both Iron and nitrate. This may turn into my new fav mine...

 

[Trankitas]

Nice, sounds fun. Yeah I get it. Is hard to go back to 60 min days once you get used to twice that. I get to do like one thing a day and it gets dark, is just too fast.

Besides, it encourages you to go out at night, unless you want to stare a wall for 40 minutes.

 

[Laz Man]

Crafting has 1% to do with the perk. Anyone buying boomstick to craft an orange double barrel needs their head examined. The perk is all about damage, and you might need to craft one or two shotties eventually. I'm not sure why some people think complex degradation is even needed, it adds nothing to the experience you change items so often it would be a waste of engineering effort.
Look at it like this: Who does this affect? Um guys who have a purple late game. Noob? Nope, he throws away his primitive for a tier 2, and by the time that needs repaired he's already found a tier 3 or 4, repeat up until tier 6. Then he's still not affected because he just found a better tier 6. Now he has unlocked rank 5 of his weapon and can maintain it. So it only would affect a few people who found a great item early game and use it a lot, who probably don't even specialize but use whatever guns they have on horde night to use up all the ammo they found.

At the end of the day its just ass wiping. Do we really want to have to poop and wipe our asses in a video game? That is what it feels like, its just busy work that devalues finding that sweet purple item. The same reason we don't want purple crafting.

(OP this is not aimed at you but at the perma degradation guys )There is a nasty horde coming, do you guys even play the game or do you just sit around and arm chair designer ideas all day that you think sound fun, but in reality there is so much to do and not enough time to do it, I feel it would be an injustice to most players to shaft them with some lengthy repair/degradation mini game. I just want to loot, mine, trade, build an epic base and do some quests, and try to solve the puzzle of not getting rekt by a horde. I don't want a complicated repair /degradation system we JUST streamlined it FFS.

Amen!!! I barely have enough time in 60 minute days. Maybe something complex like this would be good for longer day settings but for the default it doesnt make sense...

Edit: honestly the current mod system already adds enough variation to weapon management PLUS it's fun to look for mods. If mods had random stats, I'd be over the moon. I'd rather be spending my time micro managing my mods then my repair durability which would be boring in comparison...

 

[Gareee]

I'm actually adjusting all the melee swings right now, a lot of them are a bit too slow, so some of the x% more damage should be more noticeable with more actual swings going on. Stamina use and damage will all scale to match the new speeds, but it should feel a little more exciting getting more hits. We're going to add random animations too so its not the same anim over and over.

@MadMole:

This sounds amazing...I'm all about more action! (You could probably mirror the animation for a simple right/left swing change up.)

You probably missed this earlier:

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

They seem kind of small....like half the size of normal carving pumpkins, and 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!

 

[Mechanimal]

Besides, it encourages you to go out at night, unless you want to stare a wall for 40 minutes.

Yeah the nights are long. I either spend it mining or organizing/building my base. Sometimes I venture out, but I do so much cranking on stuff, running forges, crafting, etc, that it takes up most of my nights. Sometimes I'll go to far away spots late in the day on purpose, then eat up night time on the drive time home instead of wasting precious day time travelling. I'll loot right up until it hits 22:00, sometimes further. I also have a nice huge garden I can farm at night now that I got my perimeter up, but that never takes long. I guess it's mainly because I tend to get into elaborate builds, between that and mining I barely have time to stare at walls.

 

[The-Walking-Dad]

Just survived my first A18 day 7 horde (on day 8). Used about two hundred 9mm (pistol), a molotov and about forty shotgun shells (sawn off). I'm at 64 alive on 60 minute days and living in one of the partially built garage prefabs. I'm a wimp (and play dead is dead) so the enemy is on lowest block damage.

Spent most of the night out on the scaffolding tempting zombies to climb the ladder and fight. They came up two at a time so abandoned the sledge early in favour of the pistol. Towards the end of the night the bulk of them came from the opposite direction so had to fight from inside through the wooden bars.

I feel that if I'd fought from inside from the start I wouldn't have survived. Planning a lot of mining/gathering to upgrade the walls from wood to cobble and install bars all the way around for maximum visibility. May do more scaffolding fighting platforms, but longer than the prefab one to make melee more viable.

Must find an m60! Love that thing!

 

[beerfly]

Starting third dead is dead on nightmare for the day..Random gen seeds, nomad of course. Brilliant so far.

It is back, the genuine fear of death is back for me. Bring us more Pimps

 

[Gazz]

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

One or two have random stats but that was only a test.

To do this properly mods need to have a stat display and since they are all % changes instead of absolute values I could not display that.

Certainly doable but... not right now. =P