PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

  • A18 Stable is Out!

    Votes: 2 66.7%

  • <img alt=":)" data-src="" src="___base_url___/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" />

    Votes: 1 33.3%
  • Total voters
    3
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Hey we have an incoming visitor! Zombies, get up, get in position we have visitors.... We can spawn whatever we want whenever we want. Maybe we'll spawn a horde traveling through the town, or a settler will be getting his house broken into. You can help him or not help him. Will we mindlessly fill the town with 5000 zeds? No. But if I see stuff going on around me I'm interested and immersed at that moment. That should be a big improvement over what we have now. Maybe bandits drive by on motorcycles and hear you shooting and decide to see what is going on. I'm surprised you don't see the potential here.
I think we could still spawn more guys in towns with this system or make it feel more interesting in more creative ways. But we're not filling the entire world with zombies again like old days unless we can improve the performance some. The wasteland is highly populated at night if you want some nostalgia you can go there.
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The encounter system you are speaking of is one that brings great interest; in my view, the more dynamic mechanics, the better. :) Hey, this man needs help defending his home because he cannot afford to abandon his supplies (food, etc.) and asks you for assistance against a group of raiders or a small horde of zombies. Leave him to die or choose to save him, and who knows, he might stab you in the back after in an attempt to strip you of your gear. (What a foolish mistake that might be of his. ;) ) Or that woman who asks you to save her little girl from inside her house, which is infested with shambling undead corpses. Do you abandon them to their fate, or choose to exercise your morals?

I am curious though, are you planning for us to bump into these NPC's more than once, or will they be one-off encounters? Will a reputation system be raised if you go down the role of killer or hero? The more people you save, will bandit activity increase in the area? Just pitching questions out of my own hat here. :p

 
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The encounter system you are speaking of is one that brings great interest; in my view, the more dynamic mechanics, the better. :) Hey, this man needs help defending his home because he cannot afford to abandon his supplies (food, etc.) and asks you for assistance against a group of raiders or a small horde of zombies. Leave him to die or choose to save him, and who knows, he might stab you in the back after in an attempt to strip you of your gear. (What a foolish mistake that might be of his. ;) ) Or that woman who asks you to save her little girl from inside her house, which is infested with shambling undead corpses. Do you abandon them to their fate, or choose to exercise your morals?
I am curious though, are you planning for us to bump into these NPC's more than once, or will they be one-off encounters? Will a reputation system be raised if you go down the role of killer or hero? The more people you save, will bandit activity increase in the area? Just pitching questions out of my own hat here. :p
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God forbid I answer some questions, the creeps will quote me out of context or manipulate my grand vision into a piece of ♥♥♥♥. Time to go dark I think.

 
https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?111778-Alpha-18-Dev-Diary!!&p=1015234&viewfull=1#post1015234
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Come on Jax. That was back in September. I’m talking about what Madmole said today. The idea is still conceptual which means it’s evolving and the most recent posts of Madmole have been much more descriptive than that post. I guess if someone only read that one post a couple months back and nothing that he posted today I concede that it sounds like wandering hordes.

Here, I’ll also say that crafting in no way shape or form resembles Minecraft and you can do another gotcha on me by finding a post from 2014...

 
The new encounter system sounds fun.

Can you give hints on what kind of books you have designed already? I remember you mentioning that there were about 4 new series already designed. @madmole

 
This just means you're technically making players nothing more than just a walking spawner. There is nothing you can do to control the encounters. This is silly to me. You're just walking around and zombies randomly spawn on you without you being able to actually influence the situation at all.
Before, (I'm talking A9,10,11) more specifically - you would try to penetrate the wasteland and it was very hard to do on the first few days. There were dogs and cops everywhere - so to successfully get through and loot - you had to be careful, well-prepared, really good at the game or any combination - but you had control and a decision about whether or not to even take on that risk.

If you walked into a town - you'd see several dozen zombies all around the town preventing clear access to most of the POIs - so you'd try to clear the town by taking on a few at a time and trying not to alert too many at once. Again, a clear and controlled situation where you are making decisions and things are occuring as a result of how you make that choice (or not).

But, with this thing you're proposing? Everything is 'fake' - you're walking around trying to be careful and the game just randomly spawns a group on you without you having any control or not - it wasn't because of the area you were in - it wasn't because of how much noise you were making - it wasn't because you were carrying raw meat on your belt - nope - it's because the game randomly fired a script and started spawning crap in front of you. That's incredibly cheap to me and just makes it all gamey - especially if it does it at really akward times and places like in locations where you literally just removed threats from the area and then you turn around and that script fires and you've got a random horde all over you.
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One of my favourite early memories of the game was the first time I had a MASSIVE horde that spawned and moved through the forest all around me (cant remember exactly, perhaps somewhere around A9-10 though). I remember the feeling like it was yesterday though.

I was cutting wood in the forest when I heard what sounded like hundreds of rotten feet crunching through the undergrowth. Fear crawled up my spine as I turned around to witness countless zeds stumbling through the forest.

Quickly crouching behind the nearest tree, I sat there breathless in the still air, for some time. Horrified, but also appreciating with a somewhat sickly fascination, the obscene way in which the dappled sunbeams revealed their decrepit and ghastly features as they shambled past, powered by some unearthly force, towards a mindless destination.

That experience left me with a newfound respect for the powerful imagery a game such as this can wield.

 
God forbid I answer some questions, the creeps will quote me out of context or manipulate my grand vision into a piece of ♥♥♥♥. Time to go dark I think.
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One guy is going off the rails over a new system that hasn't even been written yet.

Just ignore him and write vehicle mods. ;)

 
Yes some events would be similar to a random horde, but they won't spawn in front of you and they would be customized for your game stage. Might be a group of stag, a pack of wolves, some wandering survivors. How is that to be taken negatively?
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Im all for it, i was just pointing out why some people may be confused at what it is in response to Roland. Cant wait to see what events will be included.

 
God forbid I answer some questions, the creeps will quote me out of context or manipulate my grand vision into a piece of ♥♥♥♥. Time to go dark I think.
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Oh, come on.... I even said it was my fault...

I didn't intentionally manipulate anything. I just made a mistake. Besides, if you got the confidence in your vision then just go for it. I'm just stating my opinion. You're the one with successful game, buddy.

I just remember this same thing when you started discussing the sleeper system before it came out..I even remember saying..it'll be cool if it's done right..but not if it's virtually every POI and they are all in predictable spots over and over..and you said..something along the lines of "nah, it's gonna be great it won't be like that at all" - well, to me the sleeper system is exactly like that..

Then when I came back in to offer feedback on it, I remember being told 'it's just the early stages of it, that's not how it's going to be' - yet even more POIs became dungeons after the fact and now they are virtually all that way.

Now, I just think the encounter system might be the same way...where it will be awesome at first - but then starts to become a little predictable.

I think both things are awesome ideas and like them in the game - I mean when I played A10, I wanted zombies inside of the houses, and would miss them if they were gone, but I just happened to be of an opinion that is concerned that it might be overdone and that it won't have any real effect on the biggest problem in cities which is so few zeds you can virtually loot and demolish everything outside, and so long as you don't get within 6 meters or so of a POI, you'll never even hear a peep.

Anyway, I've said enough.

 
Id rather see better framerates and less performance drops than complex spawning system etc. that could slow down entire game even further. My framerates dont go below 65 frames per second at 1080p with maxed out settings except for textures set to half and textures refresh rate set to low. Everything runs smooth so far on my rig - 16GB RAM 3200Mhz, R5 3600 4.2Ghz, RX Vega56 8GB, nothing to complain about so far. Its easy to state that the system or part of the gameplay becomes repetitive and predictable. I see no reason for more zeds spawned in the world personally. What players probably need is more content to keep them busy. Im curious about bandid faction(s) and what would it add to the gameplay at the end of the day.

 
Come on Jax. That was back in September. I’m talking about what Madmole said today. The idea is still conceptual which means it’s evolving and the most recent posts of Madmole have been much more descriptive than that post. I guess if someone only read that one post a couple months back and nothing that he posted today I concede that it sounds like wandering hordes.
Here, I’ll also say that crafting in no way shape or form resembles Minecraft and you can do another gotcha on me by finding a post from 2014...
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You asked for a quote and then try to dismiss it. Im not against the event system and Im clear on what it means and what it can bring.

But you asked, and that quote is most likely why people are misunderstanding what it is. Sometimes people can take days to catch up on the forum so that quote was the impression people had of it. Yes MM has cleared it up but he also said part of that system was already there as wandering hordes.

September was two months ago. Not 2014.

 
It'd be interesting if certain PoIs had a chance to be nests that spawn a large horde that burst out when you walk near them. Just walking down a town road and an abandoned building nearby suddenly starts pouring out zombies

 
Im all for it, i was just pointing out why some people may be confused at what it is in response to Roland. Cant wait to see what events will be included.
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Same :)

So long as it is additional to the biome spawn system (or an improved version eg masking etc) then fantastic.

I can have plenty of world zombies and events on top of that, sounds perfect to me.

 
God forbid I answer some questions, the creeps will quote me out of context or manipulate my grand vision into a piece of ♥♥♥♥. Time to go dark I think.
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Oh no, you all drove him to his little hole again. :peep:

 
One of my favourite early memories of the game was the first time I had a MASSIVE horde that spawned and moved through the forest all around me (cant remember exactly, perhaps somewhere around A9-10 though). I remember the feeling like it was yesterday though.
I was cutting wood in the forest when I heard what sounded like hundreds of rotten feet crunching through the undergrowth. Fear crawled up my spine as I turned around to witness countless zeds stumbling through the forest.

Quickly crouching behind the nearest tree, I sat there breathless in the still air, for some time. Horrified, but also appreciating with a somewhat sickly fascination, the obscene way in which the dappled sunbeams revealed their decrepit and ghastly features as they shambled past, powered by some unearthly force, towards a mindless destination.

That experience left me with a newfound respect for the powerful imagery a game such as this can wield.
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It happened to me once on my very first night in game during Alpha 11. I was far from any POI but there was a bridge (all the biomes were surrounded by rivers). It was close to run time when I heard the feet so I jumped under the bridge and surrounded myself with wood frames.

I sat there quietly in awe as tons of zombies and dogs ran by through the river just on the other side of my flimsy frames.

If the encounter system can replicate moments like that because there are no useless entities standing around in nearby chunks that I can’t even see then bring it on!

 
What I hope is part of the random encounters is some variation in the same encounter. For instance, the damsel in distress....one time you help her & she gives you a map to a treasure. Another time, same damsel but when go to help you get surprised by some bandits(she was bait). I can think of many variations. If the damsel was only associated with one outcome, players wouldn’t think ‘oh it’s the damsel & I don’t feel like dealing with bandits’. Multiple scenarios for each random encounter would really keep them from being predictable and boring. It’s all about RNG which would be awesome.

 
Man, I had a super neat/fun POI base happening on an MP server... had to abandoned the server because it had some rly weird terrain glitch that made travelling super weird and difficult. Was like a "fog of mountains" around me all the time, so weird and disorienting. But as you can see I spent most of my time underground anyway. Just put up signs and unlocked all my containers for the other players to scavenge. Was worth the time though, I love adapting POIs.
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Many of you will know this POI, the wall upstairs helped a ton with mitigating screamer problems. Installed a convenient ladder that made getting up/dwn super fluid. I had high hopes for it, but alas the terrain thing was drivin me nuts, had to go. Never encountered such weirdness and hope I don't again.

Also had a nice mine I could access via one of the vaults in the big room, and my plan was to convert the altar looking thing above into my BM tower. Best part was a Trader was right behind me, all I had to do was hop the wall. Now on to find another server... wee...
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If interested a few freinds and myself recently started a server. DM me if you'd like details on joining us. *thumbs up*

 
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