PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[pregnable]

Switching needs to be easier or faster or we need to drop the blunderbuss, move the Double barrel to T1 the pump to T2 and put in a proper semi-auto combat shotgun for t3.

I love my blunderbuss. Would rather lose the double barrel, lel.

 

[Seraphimus]

I love my blunderbuss. Would rather lose the double barrel, lel.

TBH I'd be okay with that too, there just kinda needs to be a higher tier shotty than the Pump. I was super confused about why they put a new shotgun in the middle When the Pump was already having trouble keeping up with the AK 47 and the SMG. and now with perk books the SMG is better and the new machine gun is amazing but the pump is still struggling to keep up with the AK.

 

[Jay_ombie]

left click. that's it. While you are on your bike just click and it'll toggle back and forth

OMG..... after all this time....

Thanks.

 

[pregnable]

TBH I'd be okay with that too, there just kinda needs to be a higher tier shotty than the Pump. I was super confused about why they put a new shotgun in the middle When the Pump was already having trouble keeping up with the AK 47 and the SMG. and now with perk books the SMG is better and the new machine gun is amazing but the pump is still struggling to keep up with the AK.

Just bug them until they add in an auto shotty lel... AA-12?

 

[Jugginator]

Just bug them until they add in an auto shotty lel... AA-12?

Yeah AA-12, SPAS or something like the MAG-7 from CSGO would be nice. Mag-7 is a clip-fed semi that packs a punch and good at medium range, stronger than the pump. I like the double barrel, it melts anything up close, but the pump definitely isn't end-tier quality.

On another note, my min-daytime 10-min 24 hour cycle, Insane 16-spawning horde night every night finally ended in spectacular fashion. I lasted about 14 days doing this @ 2996 kills and gamestage 395. Started running low on ammo, so I saved 1 clip for the MG and 2 for the AK, and took my trusty Q5 Junk Turret that's been with me since day 3 and went into the main core of my base and left the ladder hatch open for the zombies, shut and vault door and put wood bars around it, then had a last meal of 4 Sham chowders, 2 fish tacos, 30 beers, 10 coffees, 75 raw meat and 30 pumpkins. Lasted a night, throwing grenades through the door and the next horde night started with last night's zombies still there, until all my ammo was depleated. Junk turret triggered the explosive on a Demo which thankfully it survived but died after it shot a few more bullets (RIP Junk Turret, no time to repair).

I ran out of arrows which weren't doing anything anyway, was swarmed in my base knocking heads with the sledge. I saw my Fortbites buff ticking by the second, so I took out my last contact grenade and took them all with me.

Then I did what any sane person would do and blew my entire base (what was left of it) up with 200 dynamite sticks.

Was a fun ride, but now time for a clean world for the latest build!

 

[Laz Man]

The damage shown on a shotgun is really Damagex8? one for each pellet? I never knew that.

And that is one reason people have the perception that the shotgun sucks...

 

[Laz Man]

It is doable for sure hard to line up though and when you're fighting tougher zombies spreading your damage out like that across multiple targets doesn't pay off a lot of the time. and a lot of people say "Use slugs for those hard targets" which is valid, Slugs are great for those tougher zombies, but they are too costly to use as a primary ammo type and the switching interface is kinda clunky and hard to swap on the fly in a panic situation. also I kinda feel that if I wanted a hrd hitting single target weapon I'd use a marksmans rifle anyways


The double barrel is good for that, I'm not even tryin to say it's bad or weak. It's problem is that it's bad and weak for a Tier 2 weapon. Compared to basically any other t2 it just doesn't hold up. But it would be real solid for a tier 1 weapon. Just like the pump feels bad and weak for a t3 weapon but is a really solid t2. The problem with shotguns is I always wind up feeling like I am playing Catch up with everyone else. Always a weapon tier behind. Especially on horde night When a weapon with splash like the shotty should shine.

And TBH the T2 bow either *SHOULD* be craftable without parts or be a more common drop. there are currently technically 5 bows (3 bows 2 crossbows assuming I haven't just not found a primitive crossbow equivalent) and two other full sets of agility weapons (3 knives and 3? Handguns. does the magnum count as a handgun?) and that makes it really hard to find/buy/loot a decent bow at any game stage because it's competing with so many other weapons. Especially if you sit in "Likes bows but not crossbows" or "likes crossbows but not bows"

As someone who has found this info and used shotguns almost exclusively for a while now, I can still say it would be nice if there was a way to display this info in the weapon tool-tip. Especially for newer players who may not realize the ammo has separate but still relevant info about their damage. I mean I've been playing since late A15 and only just found the place in my stats section that shows my perk modified damage with a weapon. I always thought I had to figure that out myself.

Birds for me. It's always the birds I miss with it, or if there are more than one I'll hit one miss the other and get "bleeding/infection" and even with raw damage per bullet it fails beyond ~3-5 blocks range if you don't use a choke because most of those pellets will miss/hit another zombie. Which is okay early but the moment you run into ferals and irradiated zombies it means none of them take enough damage to matter.

Wait what? Theres a section that shows only modifier stats? I've always looked at the what stats changed after adding each mod...

 

[JCrook1028]

The only thing I hate about this game right now from the bottom of my heart is that quests don't have a warning for the player leaving the quest area and just pop failed.
It's a common mistake for players to do Fetch and Clear Multiplayer quests and forget the Fetch part and screw your 3 hours clearing it without fair warning.

NEGATIVE REVIEW INCOMING :strawberry:

Look in the upper right of the screen. There IS a warning. Where it says "Stay Within" (maybe wrong exact words). The check will turn from green to yellow to red.

 

[Laz Man]

I'm not angry about negative reviews. I'm angry that steams system lets the same 10 disgruntled guys "thumbs up" a bad review so it gets anchored at the top of our store page. All I suggested was people if they wanted could thumbs up some good reviews to balance it.
We have to be careful what we allow players to craft because some models are expensive and will bring FPS to a crawl, so sorry we're not handing a loaded gun to a baby. Its all on hold because my mind was focused on making the game great again, but we will come back around to building. Building is better than ever overall IMO with new shape menus. I'm always fighting for you guys and your small things you like btw, but some things just have to go, like design inconsistencies and whatnot.

I'm playing long games and adding little things as I go.

You have a really bad habit of taking one thing out of context and labeling me with it forever. Obviously I love paint, and I pushed for the paint system. If you watch my video I painted my entire base a nice stucco az theme. But do we want to clutter precious inventory space with paint cans? We took it out of loot for that reason, and it found its way back through scrapping.

Scrapping is meant to condense space not clutter inventory with cosmetic stuff. Survival is first and foremost and adding barbie doll playing house recipes and cosmetics is something I personally like but can make the game cluttered, menus lag, and be overwhelming to noobs, so we have to handle things that aren't needed for survival very carefully and on a lower priority.

So while it might be fun for some guys to get into landscaping simulator, we can't justify having a very ugly terrain shader to maintain that feature that was never planned, gazz just went wild and added recipes for everything without team moderation when we first hired him. It sounded harmless at the time, but everything has a cost so we're reviewing stuff and finding out the use case, and trying to figure it all out.

Thanks for the insight, makes total sense to me. As long as you share some of the builder designs in mind as you go along, hopefully all of the hardcore creative/builders will understand the direction.

 

[JCrook1028]

Firstly, I'm okay with paint being gone *if* we can still paint things. I mean as is since A15 the brush doesn't actually seem to consume paint on use anwyays, and I see no harm in letting that just be the norm.
Second, To answer your question from way back, I'd personally probably prefer asphalt over gravel.

And third, I get it, It's hard to balance making a good game and having all the things everyone wants. FWIW The shape menus got me into base-building for the first time ever. Always been the looter/quester/miner but it's so much more intuitive now that it's actually fun. ( I just wish there was a way to hide wires but I can live without that one)

Lol, turn off creative then tell me the brush doesn't use paint...

 

[madmole]

Mr. Mole.Cant compete with your scale, but i too consider a home gym, or at least one piece of Equipment in my Apartment.

Since im more of a Cardio guy im torn apart between a Crosstrainer or Treadmill.

Went to the gym occasionally for years but had to stop because unrelated health issues. Never like that crowdy, smelly place anyway.

At home it might be better

I'd get a long treadmill, if you have long legs or get behind a little bit you don't want to fall off the back. I do interval sprinting which is really good for burning fat and less draining from muscle building goals, and overall better for metabolism etc. After a layoff or to mix things up I'll do incline walking. I don't care for elipticals, crosstrainers etc because its too easy to slack, or difficult mentally to push yourself to actually do more tangible work. Put the treadmill on 7 mph for x amount of time and you can't cheat that workout. Go longer or go 7.1 mph, etc you can at least know you are working harder for sure.

You can't go wrong with a squat rack with safety bars, an olympic weight set an armless bench that inclines you can then do squats, bench press, dead lifts, shoulder press, incline press, barbell curls, narrow grip bench press (triceps), forearm curls, rev forearms curls, bent over rows, etc.

 

[madmole]

yeah, The issue with iron bars RN is that (At least on higher difficulties) a single demolisher going off will just vaporize any iron bars in range. would be nice to get something that's even just a bit stronger to survive that so you have a chance to repair.

Even at 3500 it would be toast. Best bet is to consider multiple layers and an airlock so you can fall back.

 

[madmole]

Madmole, would you please test this
I use my junk turret when hunting. it kills the chicken, pig, coyote, and wolf. placed it near a rabbit. it expended 2 full loads of ammo, and missed every single time. that is 124 shots at less than 5 paces

Its machinery that has a chance for error, it is not 100% accurate. Rabbits are so small and move fast so I think that is expected behavior. Mine got the job done before, but it is random. I don't bother with rabbits ever unless I can run them over driving.

 

[madmole]

How does the bloodmoon horde work with multiple people in the game in different areas? We had a few of us in one area, and another newer guy off on his own somewhere else. Horde seemed a bit weak on our end to begin, but then he died and it stopped. Then he left the game and we got a full ass horde right after. He wasnt in our party, but may have been allied to somebody in our party, not sure if that has anything to do with anything? Playing on stable, so not sure if somethings been changed past that into exp.

You get your own blood moon but if max alive is met, you are going to get watered down weak sauce blood moons.

 

[madmole]

Almost 40,000 people online this weekend. TFP have been completely redeemed from valid whiners.Is the game imperfect and in need of more options for the largest players base possible? Sure. But they are on the right track for sure, as well.

Dora from Neebs Gaming was having a blast on their first playthrough of A18 and from him, being happy is high praise.

Awesome. It feels good to have the train back on the rails.

 

[Laz Man]

1 healthpoint more then what the demolisher can do is "fine".

Bahahaha....nice...

 

[madmole]

MadMoleis it possible to make trigger plates modular. 1 and 5 are nice, but say I want it to cover a 1x3 area? I cant hook those up to the same dart trap tho. It would be nice to make it so we can somehow customize the size of the area covered.

We'd have to make more sizes, but where does it stop?

 

[AdmiralFuzzybutts]

TBH I'd be okay with that too, there just kinda needs to be a higher tier shotty than the Pump. I was super confused about why they put a new shotgun in the middle When the Pump was already having trouble keeping up with the AK 47 and the SMG. and now with perk books the SMG is better and the new machine gun is amazing but the pump is still struggling to keep up with the AK.

Personally I'd really like to see either a semi-automatic shotgun with 8-10 rounds for base capacity (Such as an M4 Semi-Automatic) or even a magazine-fed automatic shotgun (such as a USAS-12.) This would allow for 10 rounds in a magazine, which could be further expanded with a drum magazine. It would make for a great end game weapon for people who like to specialize in shotguns, and a good alternative to, say, the M-60, the trade-off of course being that they are more meant for close combat and become less and less useful at a distance. That, and the fact that such a level of firepower would encourage spraying ammo, which depending on the situation could be either really good, or really bad if you're playing on higher difficulties and looking to conserve your resources (or trying to avoid drastically raising the heatmap, for that matter.) The double barrel shotgun is cool and all, but in my limited use of it I find it to be a bit of a nuisance when you have several enemies charging at you. It's a good starter though, since at least in my experience it seems to spawn in gun safes rather frequently, giving easy access early game.

On a side note, I feel like the pistol tiers could use some work as well. The jump from the basic pistol to the magnum is nice and all, but its basically a side-grade due to the lower fire rate and the smaller ammo capacity. It would be nice to see maybe, say, a Desert Eagle which would give you a higher fire rate, and significantly increased base damage, making it more desirable for an endgame weapon, the trade-off being a very scarce ammo type and also expensive to craft, resource-wise, as well as significant recoil and heatmap advancement.

 

[madmole]

Lol, turn off creative then tell me the brush doesn't use paint...

I smirk at the obvious cheating all the time lol. One who knows, knows.

 

[Haidrgna]

Yeah unfortunately after 6 months of developing splat map terrain I get handed a problem, we can only let players add 3 blocks, which ones shall it be? So we went with adaptive, dirt and gravel. We could swap gravel for asphalt perhaps if people would rather make asphalt roads (I know I do).

Well you got duped, since only gravel actually works. Dirt and Adaptive do not, as in adaptive and dirt turn to asphalt when placed on a road.

I have seen that is possible to bring back the old distant terrain and turn off the Microsplat, for massive performance gains (like completely unplayable to playable for some). Why do we not at least get some graphic option for this, so people can choose fps vs better looking terrain? Then people liking world building could also use this to create their own worlds.