PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

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There's stuff from that old system that are valuable and sorely missed. It's not merely nostalgia. The roads system from A16 inspired exploration. The current one ignores giant swaths of the map and feels so cookie cutter that it doesn't feel like there's any point in seeing what else is out there. Let's not forget the removal of biomes (one of which was on the kickstarter promises, which means that promise will go unfulfilled) that removed a ton of diversity. Removing the plains in my opinion was one of your biggest mistakes in terms of game aesthetic.

Was it perfect? No. POIs placed on cylindrical platforms were pretty fugly. Load times based on real time terrain generation were a drag. Wilderness POIs were a bit too sparse. Cars embedded into the ground were hilariously bad. Generation errors that led to sudden 30 block changes in elevation were a straight pain.

Looking at those together, you'll see a pattern. The positive things that are gone are things that set the tone of the game and promoted diversity. The negative things that are gone are mostly bug fixes.

It isn't nostalgia goggles that makes us wish we had the plains biome. Don't conflate the bugs with the things we love. They aren't a package. And for the record, the wasteland is at least 10x as useless as the plains ever was, yet that fugly abomination is still here to be avoided by 70% of players.
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The plains can be recreated as a sub biome down the road. There was nothing interesting about it. Go knock all the trees down and level the hills and you can make your own plains biome lol.

 
This is completely untrue. The quest system completely negates turning off lot respawn. At best, it'll eventually put a stop to running a quest POI twice in quick succession at some point (clear fresh POI, pop quest, clear again).
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So you are incapable of ignoring the trader jobs? Are you letting efficiency dictate your role play for you? Tell the trader to F off and go for a walk.

 
The plains can be recreated as a sub biome down the road. There was nothing interesting about it. Go knock all the trees down and level the hills and you can make your own plains biome lol.
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Your currently use of Microsplat says something different, no sub-biomes with a different soil is possible unless you change it (please do), hell no new biomes can be added without first disabling it.

 
Your currently use of Microsplat says something different, no sub-biomes with a different soil is possible unless you change it (please do), hell no new biomes can be added without first disabling it.
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i think it would be cool if there were sub biomes (mostly in Random Gen)

Like Snowy desert , Cold burnt forest , Frozen Wasteland, Desert wasteland, Dry forest (aka Plains), Overgrown Desert, Overgrown Wasteland, Overgrown Burnt forest , Marsh Forest, Burnt Marsh etc

or i may be Crazy *whispers in my head*

 
i think it would be cool if there were sub biomes (mostly in Random Gen)

Like Snowy desert , Cold burnt forest , Frozen Wasteland, Desert wasteland, Dry forest (aka Plains), Overgrown Desert, Overgrown Wasteland, Overgrown Burnt forest , Marsh Forest, Burnt Marsh etc

or i may be Crazy *whispers in my head*
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Unfortunately there is no map in the world files that defines the biomes in more details.

If the biomes map would define sub biomes (using the biome assets in varying densities), I could make some nice things with that.

Currently the biome decoration is procedurally placed according to the xml and code rules. (not in the world files)

 
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It isn't nostalgia goggles that makes us wish we had the plains biome. Don't conflate the bugs with the things we love. They aren't a package. And for the record, the wasteland is at least 10x as useless as the plains ever was, yet that fugly abomination is still here to be avoided by 70% of players.
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It is not that I specifically want the plains biome back.. I just want more outside diversity than what we currently have.

The different forest biomes were consolidated into one look, so we lost those differences. Other biomes were just yanked out completely without anything replacing them. Perlin caves were replaced with a few poi versions that are few and far between. (IF they even spawn on a map.) We lost rivers, random water bodies, and bridges from RWG. Then we also lost the capability of planting different ground types to add to our base building options.

Thats around 10 RWG variables we lost that added outdoor diversity, which is a LOT to loose.

Inside pois are great now, but outside we have only 4 biome types with random hills. It could almost be argued that even though the older alphas didn't look near as nice, they were more realistic and interesting to explore than what we have now. (Minecraft realized this value and has like 17 biomes now.)

Nitrogen can at least restore river generation, but modders are locked out of adding additional biomes. (Not having it hard coded would at least give them the capability of putting back some of what we lost.)

As far as avoiding wasteland, we do a bit until we get significant weapons and vehicles do deal with it, and then mostly use it for vulture baiting for the meat and feathers and car scavenging.

I'd LOVE to see someone in TFP working on getting our biome diversity and feature list back to what we used to have. It wasn't perfect by any means, but it was a lot more interesting to explore.

 
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I read something Faatal did that sounds like vultures will just shred your vehicle on horde night.
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That a new change or an old one? I think vultures already harass players when in vehicles...

 
That a new change or an old one? I think vultures already harass players when in vehicles...
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Those are new changes I made last week. Vultures got an upgrade. They will attack blocks to get to you. On blood moons they were not seeing you like the other zombies can. On blood moons they will specifically spawn and swarm vehicles. It will be fun to watch.

 
Those are new changes I made last week. Vultures got an upgrade. They will attack blocks to get to you. On blood moons they were not seeing you like the other zombies can. On blood moons they will specifically spawn and swarm vehicles. It will be fun to watch.
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Since an a18 tactic our group wound up using on blood moons was, once you were low or out of ammo and most of the spikes had been destroyed, get on your bike and run over all the zombies...this is good.

 
Those are new changes I made last week. Vultures got an upgrade. They will attack blocks to get to you. On blood moons they were not seeing you like the other zombies can. On blood moons they will specifically spawn and swarm vehicles. It will be fun to watch.
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Okay so if there are no vehicles in play, this'll just use up the maxAlive and lower the overall zed count right?

 
Your currently use of Microsplat says something different, no sub-biomes with a different soil is possible unless you change it (please do), hell no new biomes can be added without first disabling it.
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A sub biome has a different decoration set is all. By allowing larger sub biomes and being able to assign a stamp set to it, plains could be achieved by flattening an area and changing the grass textures IMO.

 
Okay so if there are no vehicles in play, this'll just use up the maxAlive and lower the overall zed count right?
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You can use vehicles, just be prepared to jump out and fight, then drive some more and repeat.

It appeared that max alive was spawned to anyway, but those zombies spawned for you were just stuck in the distance while you drove around. Now they randomly teleport or despawn/respawn nearby, which is what allows vulture replacements to happen.

 
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