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%
  • Total voters
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I'm level 50 with no crucible. It is what it is, I just have to scrounge/buy more steel or do without.
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I was spending points like crazy to get the crucible because no one had it. I was 2 points away from getting enough Int for it and BAM, someone finds the schematic.. I felt so lame. ;) However, the points I had in it were still helpful so it wasn't a loss, but sure did take the wind out of my sails for a bit.

As to random encounter system, yes please! Right now, we're around day 150 and its kind of a bore fest. Mostly because all you do during the week is mine enough crap to replace the walls and such that got blown up when 10ish demolishers/14 irradiated (3 of us) everything show up at the same time on the bloodmoon. Rinse, repeat.

 
Its more of a predicted movement setup. I'm traveling down this road, lets spawn a wandering merchant or damsel in distress. I'm going to a POI in the wasteland, lets spawn a group of guys outside his POI before he gets there so he has to deal with that. Oh an air drop, lets make some bandits go there too. If the player doesn't go there, it despawns, no big deal.
However you don't get to clear anything, ever. Its a zombie apocalypse. Maybe a naked guy will come to your front door begging to be let in who led a horde right to your base. Its not even meant to replace biome spawners, its meant to make you forget about them because they were so lame.
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Huh? You say that you need those ups and downs but in the same breath you’re saying we don’t get to clear anything ever? There needs to be clearing progression otherwise it’ll feel gamey and unrealistic.

Also how are you going to predict where people go? I always forget stuff at my base, so are we going back when we would get those laggy spawn glitches every time we go somewhere to spawn these encounters?

Maybe we’re aren’t on the same page just yet lol.

Loc

 
I don't know if I like the sound of the encounter system compared to actual region-based spawning. It sounds to me like this encounter system is just going to spawn things on you no matter where you are or what you're doing. If I carefully scout a town and see that it's clear to move in, but then the game randomly decides to start spawning crap on me while i'm trying to break in a a POI - that's not even close to the same as how it was before.
Or if you're out in the wilderness away from any POIs and in a place you've cleared completely of zombies just hours before, it would make no sense to have the encounter system suddenly decide to spawn something on top of you. Again, it would be nothing like before where the respawn delay was 4 or 5 days or whatever it was in wilderness.

The encounter system sounds like it could just end up like the sleeper system is now - which is highly predictable and gamey.
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I agree partly. The ecounter system as a minimum has to know whether you are in a city and whether you are probably in a POI to be effective. And that is possible, the RWG needs to record whereever it sets down a poi. And isn't that already in the game, there is the POI list, with coordinates? From there a "city heat" map is not far away.

Higher tier buildings would produce more heat, as would buildings together if the heat radius is big enough. The lonely tier1 in the wilderness would never have sufficient heat to produce a "city horde"

 
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A18 is magic! Thank you TFP, I’m really enjoying the game!

I have a request… maybe someone talked about it in the past and I didn’t see the response. Anyway, saw some people talking about difficulty, putting the zombies’ speed nightmare even on day time etc. Well, it’s not my playstyle, but I like a more dangerous game. I don’t like bullet sponge zombies either, so I was thinking if it is possible to divide the difficult settings, so players can adjust the damage zombies do to them without messing with zombies’ HP.

That would make the game more dangerous for those who like and would value that one good shot strait to the head.

One more time, thank you, guys! A18 rocks!

 
Torches do not warm you up anymore is that right ?

Camp fire still does though.

Also Mineral water which looks like it comes from a plastic bottle, sometimes gives you empty glass jars.

 
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Could be a low res 1-byte map (1/16 th) of the world.Areas like the center of a larger town raise the thread level, also certain POIs with are considered "harder" like military bases and skyscrapers. (biomes also.)

Visualizing that to the player could be a triangle with an exclamation mark when entering a more dangerous area (grey, yellow, red)

Players can then - depending on the situation - try to avoid it (safety), or look for it (better loot).

(I could generate a prototype for a random gen world relatively quickly .. but would still need an implementation in the games code to apply it then)
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Why visualizing this? You have eyes. Isn't a city or a skyscraper enough hint?

 
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Madmole, if you want to increase build diversity and encourage hybrid builds the main attributes should offer generic boosts rather than tied to a specific weapon.

Intellect -increased headshot damage for all ranged weapons.

Perception- faster reload speed and increased accuracy.

Strength- increased melee damage for all melee weapons.

Agility- inceeased melee attack speed.

Fortitude- increased melee dismemberment chance.

 
I'm just saying if we somehow added a lot of zombies people won't like it. Some might, but most people would find it annoying if there were too many, everywhere, all the time.
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To those who promote this, the problem is that, in a typical zombie apocalypse, you avoid the big groups. I know there needs to be some challenge some times (especially if, say, you are in desperate need of meds and the pharmacy is surrounded), but not all the time. The encounter system definitely seems like a better option.

I think the encounter system will work fine. Pacing is what matters. We'll monitor a player's stats and roll dice and decide its time for him to get something. Pull from the grab bag of tricks and throw it out there and let the fun begin. But constantly dealing with thick mobs of undead isn't fun, its tedious. But showing up to do a simple fetch quest but there happens to be a random horde mulling around where you need to be could be a lot of fun... do you kill them? Lead them to the edge of town or off a cliff? Abort? Either way its a decision, and it cuts into your ever burning daylight. That kind of stuff is fun, not a wall of zeds everywhere (tedious and slow fps)
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Now, the only problem with "random" is that sometimes the dice will keep rolling against you (or constantly not roll anything interesting). I mean, I say "problem" because people will complain. RNG is RNG, and I don't mind. I'm just prepared for the backlash.

I don't know if I like the sound of the encounter system compared to actual region-based spawning. It sounds to me like this encounter system is just going to spawn things on you no matter where you are or what you're doing. If I carefully scout a town and see that it's clear to move in, but then the game randomly decides to start spawning crap on me while i'm trying to break in a a POI - that's not even close to the same as how it was before.
Or if you're out in the wilderness away from any POIs and in a place you've cleared completely of zombies just hours before, it would make no sense to have the encounter system suddenly decide to spawn something on top of you. Again, it would be nothing like before where the respawn delay was 4 or 5 days or whatever it was in wilderness.
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I always point back to season 2 of TWD. Why did all of those zombies show up on the farm in the middle of nowhere? The helicopter originally led them in that direction, and it happened to lead them to the farm. It's pretty creative and shows the unpredictability of the zombie apocalypse.

 
I'm just saying if we somehow added a lot of zombies people won't like it. Some might, but most people would find it annoying if there were too many, everywhere, all the time. Looting a POI would turns into a chore like looting old corpses and cleaning up gore blocks was, because you would have to clear a whole block before you could do your task, or we'd need to make these outside guys deaf once you snuck past them and got inside. I think the sweet spot would be somewhere in between and the random encounter system could handle it. Rather than just fill the town with zombies, we know where you are going, spawn a group near the POI one out of 4 times or something. Do a wandering group walk once in a while. Same thing, to the player there is something to overcome, without 500 zeds in memory constantly. Maybe we could expose a random encounter slider so if you like more action you see more of these.
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A combination of short attention span, crippled pathing ability, and reluctance to breaking blocks for the town/biome roamers should do the trick for keeping the worst aspects of sandwiching out.

 
I'm level 50 with no crucible. It is what it is, I just have to scrounge/buy more steel or do without.
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I'm close to lvl 10 int but been hoping for some nerd glasses so I can save from having to spend the skill points for it...😂

 
I was spending points like crazy to get the crucible because no one had it. I was 2 points away from getting enough Int for it and BAM, someone finds the schematic.. I felt so lame. ;) However, the points I had in it were still helpful so it wasn't a loss, but sure did take the wind out of my sails for a bit.
As to random encounter system, yes please! Right now, we're around day 150 and its kind of a bore fest. Mostly because all you do during the week is mine enough crap to replace the walls and such that got blown up when 10ish demolishers/14 irradiated (3 of us) everything show up at the same time on the bloodmoon. Rinse, repeat.
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At least there is forgetting elixir to reset your points if you want a do over....hopefully the elixir will also help you forgetting the bad experience...😂

 
A combination of short attention span, crippled pathing ability, and reluctance to breaking blocks for the town/biome roamers should do the trick for keeping the worst aspects of sandwiching out.
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That still doesnt address the resource consumption of zeds just existing for "immersion" reasons while people are inside POIs...

 
Just a quick post to thank you a lot madmole. The way you guys interract with the community is the reason this game feels special. We get to see behind the curtain a bit and discuss what it could or couldn't become in the near future. I don't remember ever buying a product and following its development as closely, the time spent on the forums was worth the money alone by far haha

 
Just a quick post to thank you a lot madmole. The way you guys interract with the community is the reason this game feels special. We get to see behind the curtain a bit and discuss what it could or couldn't become in the near future. I don't remember ever buying a product and following its development as closely, the time spent on the forums was worth the money alone by far haha
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I don't have any friends so you guys will have to do :) Kidding aside it's good to play the game and get in the trenches with the players to hear about exploits, adventures, bugs, fort designs, etc.

 
Can u currently get a concrete mixer schematic from a concrete mixer?

Would it be worth adding a crucible schematic to the broken forge loot list? Instead of 20 percent chance for a forge schematic, maybe 10 percent forge schematic and 10 percent crucible??

 
That still doesnt address the resource consumption of zeds just existing for "immersion" reasons while people are inside POIs...
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It doesn't.

This suggests dungeon POIs shouldn't be in the same towns as roamers.

A town exclusively consisting of remnants however should preform fine.

 
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