PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Bubo]

a bit off topic but with the introduction of throwing spears there is a great potential of low level primitive survivor bandits. Imagine running into like 7 of them and they all have spears...

I really like that idea Ozzy.. imagine the possibilities!

 

[wolfbain5]

this run through, I think I will rebuild one of the towns, keep a horde base outside of the town. I wont have a base, the entire town will become the base.

It will mean no fetch quests. and I can keep container respawns from deleting my containers by replacing the busted cabinets with my own player made ones.

edit: If you rebuild it, the NPC's will come.

Madmole request: you know how photoshop has the eyedropper to select a color? can we get something similar for the paint brush to select a block texture?

 

[GingerBeard]

Very nice. I like the red brick interior. Reminds me a little of the Railroad HQ from FO4.

Yeah now that you mention it definitely does. I'm intentionally trying to make it look a little gritty and thrown together, but i'm still learning all the different pieces that are available and how I can use them. I found the scaffolding in the back (its a bit hard to see) works really nice with the theme I was going for, unfortunately you can't really place anything on it. Hopefully I find the lighting schematics soon, I would love to post another picture with it fully decorated/lit up, but thats my limiting factor atm.

 

[Laz Man]

Day 21 Horde Crushed *flex*. Ended around 1am and the undead didn't stand a chance. My upgraded base defenses worked flawlessly. Took no damage except for a small opps moment at the end ... lol ... The composition of this horde was still pretty tame, I suspect the next one will be more challenging. I recently unlocked shotgun turrets so things will get really interesting.

Video is uploading ~40 minutes.

 

[GingerBeard]

You can craft 1000's of paint for next to nothing.

I guess my problem is I don't have the schematic for oil, nor can I craft a chemistry station. Not doing an intelligence build so until I do find the schematics i'm stuck scraping all the dyes I can.

Would it be possible to show the amount of product a recipe would make? I can see the paint recipe calls for a single Chrysanthemum and oil, but will that make a single paint or a hundred? Maybe there is a way to tell already and I don't see it?

 

[Damocles]

A "Berserker Rage" for the brawler build would be cool.

Getting higher immunity, speed and damage when killing a certain amount of Z within a timeframe or getting low on HP.

 

[Aldranon]

Regarding screamers...My base is next to a POI that has 2 burning barrels outside. I see screamers all day long. Can I assume that non player placed fire plays into their spawning?

I cleared out a POI that had a lot of candles and some torches and took a few of each for later use...

For three days after that, a Screamer has appeared in the area and I shot it from a distance.

I'll see after hoard night if that resets something or if the Heat Map is badly broken.

 

[ZombieSurvivor]

Also, if it is the case that a HeatMapFrequency of 60 will never be reached, then the following are broken and not generating heat:Forge, campfire, chemistry station, cement mixer, workbench, candle wall light.

TESTING:

Placed a forge, started it up, heat went to 3% instantly.

It's been 20 real time minutes so far. Heat has not gone up.

EDIT:

It's been 30 minutes. Heat map still does not go up for forges, and probably most things.

EDIT:

It's been 40 minutes. Heat map still does not go up for forges, and probably most things.

But don't worry... a single torch will be enough heat to make up for all stations. Done testing this stuff.

Well done sir. I absolutely love seeing others dedicate so much time in testing something they believe to be broken. I would consider the group of players that actually take the time to do in depth testing to be very very small group of us players, welcome to the club brotha! I wish more would take the time as we do, out of normal players, to do in depth testing of the game.

This dedication and time taken to test always gets the devs to look a little closer at possible issues vs random people just saying its broke its broke. You're going to come across players that get real jealous and hate on you but pay no attention to them nor argue.

You have impressed me. I only use a nickname (boss) for those I greatly respect and admire, well done BOSS! I salute you, you've earned the up most respect from me out of everyone on here, besides the devs, moderators and unholyjoe of course. You will rarely, if ever get this so I want to say it, Thank you for your time and efforts, Good job boss.

 

[AtomicUs5000]

After cleaning up and logging AI chunk events and digging through the code, campfires and forges are using TileEntityWorkstation code to emit heat, which does not have the byte overflow problem, so they work with HeatMapWorldFrequency values above 25.
The current heat value shown using F8 key does not update unless a new event happens, so it will look stuck at a value, but since events are time stamped it works fine. Toggle a campfire or forge on and off and you will see the heat value update, which expires old events.

The problem I see, is BlockTorchHeatMap uses random tick to update, which is once per minute realtime, which does not match world time, so depending on how fast the world time passes (minutes per day) it can be too high or too low heat. Playing on 90 or 120 minutes days would have heat expire slower.

Changes:

Fixed BlockTorchHeatMap heat inaccuracy by scaling heat by world time speed.

Changed TorchHeatMap blocks to be seconds for HeatMapFrequency.

Those changes are nice. I wasn't about to bring up heat frequency relative to day length, but it was on my mind.

Anyway, I placed a torch along with a forge so that the torch would force heat updates in F8... which worked.

I can now see that heat for forges is going up. This is good, the problem is not as bad.

So, what I did was I placed 5 forges along with a torch and waited until the heat got over 70%, which didn't take long at all.

Then, I turned off all the forges. What I thought was that maybe dissipation was working too but just wasn't updating in F8 due to the lack of events, like you said. I was expecting it to go down even though the torch would add 1% per minute. This did not happen.

Right on cue, every minute on the minute, the heat just went up 1%.

I waited all the way through until heat reached 100% just in case dissipation occurs less often than heat increase (I waited somewhere around 30 minutes).

If heat dissipation is working, it is not working quickly enough before a single torch makes the heat reach the 100% screamer threshold after this point (70%+).

Checked again with more time (starting with heat around 30%). At some point (beyond 30 minutes) it dropped a few points.

Tested yet again with a single torch and waited over a half an hour. The torch stayed at 33% after reaching 33%. After about 15 minutes, it still was at 33%.

Placed a second torch. Heat started to go up again. Awaiting results. Will it stop around 66%?

EDIT:

Indeed, it did. Added a third torch, will it stop at 99%? I'll find out soon.

I'm guessing it will and I'm guessing anything more than 3 torches is going to cause a screamer loop.

4 torches will mean a screamer every 25 minutes.

So, dissipation works... it's just that for 4 or more torches, it can't keep up. Of course at some point it shouldn't, but the way this is doesn't align with the latest update notes that state we can now place 4 times the torches before worrying about screamers.

EDIT: I was wrong. It went over 99% and screamer spawned. Either 3 torches are already beyond the dissipation threshold, or there is some floating point or rounding thing going on that made it go to 100%. I do not know if dissipation is relative to game day length though. There could be different results. This was checked in 2 hour days.

 

[DaVegaNL]

The amount of positive reviews is rising! Up to 73% now.

Good job pimps!

 

[ZombieSurvivor]

The amount of positive reviews is rising! Up to 73% now.
Good job pimps!

its gone up even more. 77.56 positive and it keeps going up.

 

[jdizzy2010]

Vehicles appear to still have issues going up ramps. Anything I can use instead? Working on an underground garage.

 

[DaVegaNL]

its gone up even more. 77.56 positive and it keeps going up rabidly.

Ah yeah thanks! I meant the most recent reviews on steam, but that will work too

 

[Marinxar]

Vehicles appear to still have issues going up ramps. Anything I can use instead? Working on an underground garage.

You can use the wedge blocks to create a sloped ramp that goes up 1 block over length of 2 blocks. The 4x4 and the cool but impractical zombie musher in front still nicks a little, but not so much, and has no problem going up.

 

[Laz Man]

Day 21 Horde Video Up. Let me know what you think @MM et al

https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?131780-LazMan-vs-Day-21-Horde

 

[Haidrgna]

After cleaning up and logging AI chunk events and digging through the code, campfires and forges are using TileEntityWorkstation code to emit heat, which does not have the byte overflow problem, so they work with HeatMapWorldFrequency values above 25.
The current heat value shown using F8 key does not update unless a new event happens, so it will look stuck at a value, but since events are time stamped it works fine. Toggle a campfire or forge on and off and you will see the heat value update, which expires old events.

The problem I see, is BlockTorchHeatMap uses random tick to update, which is once per minute realtime, which does not match world time, so depending on how fast the world time passes (minutes per day) it can be too high or too low heat. Playing on 90 or 120 minutes days would have heat expire slower.

Changes:

Fixed BlockTorchHeatMap heat inaccuracy by scaling heat by world time speed.

Changed TorchHeatMap blocks to be seconds for HeatMapFrequency.

I am surprised this was not the expected behavior, its been working like this for as long as I have been modifying heat. So the two different classes will now add and dissipate heat in the same manner again?

Also I wonder if you checked the other non-fueled workstations while doing this, they have heat setup in xml but as far as I know do not generate any (since they are never turned on). I thus wonder if that is also not intended behavior, seeing comments that these stations (workbench, cementmixer, etc) are supposed to generate heat too.

I actually liked the scaling of heat on gametime, since people playing shorter days would not have as much heat problems as people playing longer days which I found a nice balance touch I could add for the increased daylight time.

 

[Laz Man]

Vehicles appear to still have issues going up ramps. Anything I can use instead? Working on an underground garage.

I think there is a new 4 block long ramp but it's only in the creative menu. Give that a shot.

 

[Zaroff]

Well done sir. I absolutely love seeing others dedicate so much time in testing something they believe to be broken. I would consider the group of players that actually take the time to do in depth testing to be very very small group of us players, welcome to the club brotha! I wish more would take the time as we do, out of normal players, to do in depth testing of the game.
This dedication and time taken to test always gets the devs to look a little closer at possible issues vs random people just saying its broke its broke. You're going to come across players that get real jealous and hate on you but pay no attention to them nor argue.

You have impressed me. I only use a nickname (boss) for those I greatly respect and admire, well done BOSS! I salute you, you've earned the up most respect from me out of everyone on here, besides the devs, moderators and unholyjoe of course. You will rarely, if ever get this so I want to say it, Thank you for your time and efforts, Good job boss.

Ummm idk one forge never gets a screamer. However once I turn on all four of my forges I get a screamer pretty quick. What’s ridiculous is how fast auger attracts a screamer. I mean within a minute or two. Boom screamer.

- - - Updated - - -

You can use the wedge blocks to create a sloped ramp that goes up 1 block over length of 2 blocks. The 4x4 and the cool but impractical zombie musher in front still nicks a little, but not so much, and has no problem going up.

This! 100%

 

[0ldman]

In the creative mod, to replace gravel with asphalt gravel is deposited. is synonymous with other soils.

 

[ZombieSurvivor]

Ummm idk one forge never gets a screamer. However once I turn on all four of my forges I get a screamer pretty quick. What’s ridiculous is how fast auger attracts a screamer. I mean within a minute or two. Boom screamer.

ummmm ok. when i was testing out some more of the heat sources like 4 or 5 days ago, I tried out the auger for a good 2 minutes, heat barely went up at all. Speak AtomicUs5000 as he is the one talking about this. I've done all the testing i need to do regarding heat and I have no intentions of going public with my findings as heat really does not interest me all that much as I had already reported directly to a tester a year ago regarding the broken heat during A17 or A17.1.