PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[Adam the Waster]

@TFP staff

Sense the zombies are getting a new look, are the Special zombies going to get a new look. and will any zeds get removed???

 

[Thadz]

Some quest ideas for future updates:
1) Kill 5-10 random zombies during the night.

Overall it would be interesting to add some bonuses for completing quests during the night (more experience + additional item)

2) Defend a POI.

When you activate the quest, a horde + 1 screamer would spawn. Higher tiers of quest would spawn more zombies. (optional): there could be a short time interval (countdown) before the spawn, so you can fortify the POI, place junk turrets, etc.

3) Demolish a POI / Clear the infestation.

Marked POI has become an infestation which needs to be cleared:

Option 1) There is a zombie count modifier x3 in the POI which means you have to defeat more zombies that the default count - influenced by your game stage

Option 2) You have to demolish at least 75% of the POI blocks (by explosives or other means) to clear the infestation.

* If not cleared Tier 1 infestation with spawn a small horde or a screamer near your base. If infestation tier 4 or 5 is not cleared in some time interval it would spawn a blood moon horde. This would add certain time pressure to the quest. Or extra challenge if you want it.

4) Defend a Trader

When the trader gives you the quest, there is a countdown when the horde will attack the trader (due to a trader's continuos activity and heatmap). When the horde spawns, the indestructible blocks turn destructible and zombies can damage the trader's base. When the horde attack is over, the blocks turn back to be indestructible but the trader will not be open until the base is fully repaired. This would take some time (a couple of days) and/or you could speed up the repairs if you give trader some building materials (stone, iron, forged iron, etc.)

If you didn't help to defend the base (accept the quest) it would take some default damage with every attack and would be destroyed after a couple of attacks. No more trader and trading post.

5) Salvage a military truck

The trader gives you a quest to salvage a military truck and to bring back a specific truck part. When activating the quest, fallen soldier zombies appear.


6) Find/create a full set of armor

A trader would like to get a whole set of armor (Army, Hazmat, Steel, etc.) You deliver it, you receive a high-level item.


7) Delivering packages from traders.

Take a package from one trader to another.

8) Weaken the roaming horde

The trader informs you about the big approaching horde. When you activate the quest, you have to kill at least 20 zombies from a horde to complete the quest.

9) Rebuild a specific POI

You have to rebuild/repair a specific industrial POI for a trader. This can include repairing a certain mechanical block with a certain amount of materials and intellect perk or building / placing some special blocks at designated spots at the POI.

10) Cook / find a special meal for a trader

Hobo/Meat/Vegetable stew etc.

When NPCs will be introduced

1) Find/produce a set of weapons

Bring a set of weapons to a settlement (example 2 bows, 2 pistols, spear, a shotgun, etc). This leads to an upgraded settlement that would provide some regulars provisions for you (food, ammo, etc). 1st settlement level up could also be a set of materials to strengthen the defenses.

2) Escort / defend a group of survivors traveling from one location to another.

Escort the group and fight several waves of attacking zombies.

3) Find a missing NPC survivor in a specific POI


4) Attack a bandit convoy/camp

5) Scout a specific region/town.

A trader sends you to scout for other people in the region. You have to drive to a specific spot and find settlement / POI with people (bandits or neutrals) living there.

That a realy nice quest list , if they can add the 1/3 of this list it could be really good way to keep the game entertaining at the end game realy appreciate this idea hope TFP will look at it

 

[Adam the Waster]

Hot bandits? New mutated things (is it a zombie or what?) for late game stages instead of simple green glowing reskins. I'm kind of thinking the radiated are not even zombies, but humans that survived and mutated. Their flesh is so disgusting even a zombie won't eat it so they walk among the dead. Perhaps they are no longer human, noone knows but they seem to be more intelligent as they wield crude melee weapons and are very hard to kill.

give it to me!

 

[Skippy5]

Well I know some mods disable all vehicles aside from bicycle on horde night. Although with A19 and the ability for vehicles to break down more readily it might be much more of a challenge
Honestly my thought with crops is there needs to be some sort of way to prevent infinite food generation. Whether its thru animals that attack the crops, zombies, diseased soil etc. It takes a trivial amount of time to set up a farm and then its infinite food

To me - I honestly think both food and infection are cool / more flavor mechanics than anything. Both are trivial after the very beginning of the game. I like it this way as hell they are not the focus in my games, I like to quest/build/explore/etc not spend all my time trying to eat.

Food - Making farming harder just makes that piece of the game no fun or turns it into more of a farming simulator than survival. In solo I have looted/bought more than enough food to survive, which admittedly is a bit tougher in multiplayer games. This make farming more of a flavor/fun in my games than a necessity, so why make it tough, as it removes fun. If it was to get tougher somehow - I would rather see the tougher obtained/grown food buff the character, not be needed for survival.

Infection - Getting infected day 1, can make for some interesting gameplay. I have done nothing but search and only found enough honey to keep me alive and finally cured on day 3. It is intense gaming if you can’t find honey/antibiotics (I play dead is restart). However, by day 7, I typically have enough cures to make the mechanic a moot point. I would like to see this scale somehow with game level to keep it a mechanic that is useful - but as with food look at this as more of flavor.

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I’d like my wife to bring home another woman but you cant always get what you want.

Haha - I was just saying I liked the suggestions he made.

 

[faatal]

i think it would be cool if your in a car the zeds would go SUPER Speed and try to latch on the car to slow it down and destroy it (spider zombies would be the most deadly for cars) and for gyros Vultures would attack it.

Well I know some mods disable all vehicles aside from bicycle on horde night. Although with A19 and the ability for vehicles to break down more readily it might be much more of a challenge

We have some of that already. Vultures do aggressively attack vehicles and move faster in that case, but they would need to spawn specifically on BMs when you are in a vehicle.

We've talked about spawning fast zombies in front of you on BM, but that is a good amount of work to make them not horribly pop in or have stale paths if you are moving fast and ones behind need to despawn quickly, but not visibly, and they probably need better hitting against a fast vehicle. Not simple, so all that may not be the best use of our time, when a simpler solution would work.

 

[Adam the Waster]

We have some of that already. Vultures do aggressively attack vehicles and move faster in that case, but they would need to spawn specifically on BMs when you are in a vehicle.
We've talked about spawning fast zombies in front of you on BM, but that is a good amount of work to make them not horribly pop in or have stale paths if you are moving fast and ones behind need to despawn quickly, but not visibly, and they probably need better hitting against a fast vehicle. Not simple, so all that may not be the best use of our time, when a simpler solution would work.

just a idea due to some people driving off during Blood moons Cuz thats not fun.

also hows the new zombie looks?

 

[Brian9824]

We have some of that already. Vultures do aggressively attack vehicles and move faster in that case, but they would need to spawn specifically on BMs when you are in a vehicle.
We've talked about spawning fast zombies in front of you on BM, but that is a good amount of work to make them not horribly pop in or have stale paths if you are moving fast and ones behind need to despawn quickly, but not visibly, and they probably need better hitting against a fast vehicle. Not simple, so all that may not be the best use of our time, when a simpler solution would work.

Just add special flying vultures that can spit and target vehicles and when hit they stall out your vehicle. Make them only spawn on blood moons ;-)

Or add Demo vultures that dive bomb vehicles.......

 

[Adam the Waster]

Just add special flying vultures that can spit and target vehicles and when hit they stall out your vehicle. Make them only spawn on blood moons ;-)
Or add Demo vultures that dive bomb vehicles.......

all i can imagine is some Very Fat vulture that just falls and blows up! just a fat bowling ball belly, with a neck and wings

 

[Naz]

What about having the blood moon lightning strike the vehicle every couple minutes and temporary immobilise it for a short time.

 

[sillls]

Where is Madmole? Don't tell me that he loaded all his dumbbells onto his boat and it sunk.

I told him not to do that. *Shakes head*

 

[Adam the Waster]

Where is Madmole? Don't tell me that he loaded all his dumbbells onto his boat and it sunk.
I told him not to do that. *Shakes head*

probably on his zombie free island, drinking some grandpas Moonshine, and a cigar.

 

[Survager]

That a realy nice quest list , if they can add the 1/3 of this list it could be really good way to keep the game entertaining at the end game realy appreciate this idea hope TFP will look at it

Joel has already called 2/3 of this list of quests earlier, as planned, if I'm not mistaken ...

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Zombies dont avoid gunfire from my experiences playing.

How do you explain the fact that vultures abruptly change the direction of flight only when the crosshairs of the sight are pointed at them? Sometimes they even fly their tail forward, if you can’t get out of sight differently)

 

[faatal]

How do you explain the fact that vultures abruptly change the direction of flight only when the crosshairs of the sight are pointed at them? Sometimes they even fly their tail forward, if you can’t get out of sight differently)

He does not need to explain it, because I already said there is ZERO AI code checking to see where you are looking.

It is simply random movement.

 

[Laz Man]

We have some of that already. Vultures do aggressively attack vehicles and move faster in that case, but they would need to spawn specifically on BMs when you are in a vehicle.
We've talked about spawning fast zombies in front of you on BM, but that is a good amount of work to make them not horribly pop in or have stale paths if you are moving fast and ones behind need to despawn quickly, but not visibly, and they probably need better hitting against a fast vehicle. Not simple, so all that may not be the best use of our time, when a simpler solution would work.

Add lightning streaks in the red sky and call it an emp wave that temporarily disables vehicles then call it a day...

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Joel has already called 2/3 of this list of quests earlier, as planned, if I'm not mistaken ...
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How do you explain the fact that vultures abruptly change the direction of flight only when the crosshairs of the sight are pointed at them? Sometimes they even fly their tail forward, if you can’t get out of sight differently)

Vultures use a different AI then zombies do. Besides, Faatal already confirmed it.

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Where is Madmole? Don't tell me that he loaded all his dumbbells onto his boat and it sunk.
I told him not to do that. *Shakes head*

Geez, a couple days into the new year and already peeking through his windows? Are you Guppycur?

 

[faatal]

Today was our first day back to work after the holidays, so got some rage changes in:

Changed entity damage buffs to store the damage remainder and use next tick (instead of rounding, bleed stacks now do accurate damage).

Added Zombie rage chance scales based on hit damage (80 damage gives the normal percent ramping down to 0% or up to 200% at 880 damage).

Added Zombie rage duration does not count down while stunned.

This should help balance rage for fast low damage vs slow heavy damage weapons, power attacks and head shots, low damage bleed/burn ticks, glancing blows and stuns.

 

[Survager]

Today was our first day back to work after the holidays, so got some rage changes in:
Changed entity damage buffs to store the damage remainder and use next tick (instead of rounding, bleed stacks now do accurate damage).

Added Zombie rage chance scales based on hit damage...

What do you think about reducing the health of luminous zombies, but adding an “escape” to their behavior in the event of severe damage, how does it work with animals?

Escaping will help the green zombies regain their health if they can escape, and the player will know that the zombies have little health left and need to be chased. )

 

[Blake_]

Today was our first day back to work after the holidays, so got some rage changes in:
Changed entity damage buffs to store the damage remainder and use next tick (instead of rounding, bleed stacks now do accurate damage).

Added Zombie rage chance scales based on hit damage (80 damage gives the normal percent ramping down to 0% or up to 200% at 880 damage).

Added Zombie rage duration does not count down while stunned.

This should help balance rage for fast low damage vs slow heavy damage weapons, power attacks and head shots, low damage bleed/burn ticks, glancing blows and stuns.

Happy Merry New Christmas Year Faatal! May I give some feedback on the pathing of quadrupeds?

There's a certainty of the predator AI spinning in weird circles when they stumble upon chairs and some other items. Wouldn't it be cool that to avoid this stuff, some wild animals (deer) just avoid entering POIs/props/rocks when closing in and dogs, wolfs and cougars just jump those things (meaning chairs and some other props ) It will probably require new animation/s though.

Also, there is an exploit with boars (so far, maybe others) that when you nerdpole with 2 frames they only attack the 2nd one from the floor so the 1st one (even being an unupgraded frame) won't be hit until the second one is destroyed, at which point they can already get to you of course. You can save materials that way, and that behaviour doesn't make much sense specificaly regarding boars (and I guess other animals with the same pathing).

Bears and Grace might need a multiblock pathing, Idk what is your plan on the subject.

Thx for the frequent answering!

 

[Adam the Waster]

Today was our first day back to work after the holidays, so got some rage changes in:
Changed entity damage buffs to store the damage remainder and use next tick (instead of rounding, bleed stacks now do accurate damage).

Added Zombie rage chance scales based on hit damage (80 damage gives the normal percent ramping down to 0% or up to 200% at 880 damage).

Added Zombie rage duration does not count down while stunned.

This should help balance rage for fast low damage vs slow heavy damage weapons, power attacks and head shots, low damage bleed/burn ticks, glancing blows and stuns.

Well take your time. no need to rush your teams work

 

[khzmusik]

Added Zombie rage duration does not count down while stunned.

Meaning, while the zombies are stunned (or knocked down), or while the player is stunned? Hopefully the former, the latter seems kind of brutal.

And, welcome back, hope you had a great holiday season!

 

[faatal]

Meaning, while the zombies are stunned (or knocked down), or while the player is stunned? Hopefully the former, the latter seems kind of brutal.
And, welcome back, hope you had a great holiday season!

While zombies are stunned. Formerly you could hit a zombie with a club, enrage them and stun them. Normal rage lasts 6 to 10 seconds, so that timer was ticking while they were on the ground, then standing up, so was significantly reduced by the time they could move.

I did. Thanks!