PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

Status
Not open for further replies.
Maybe I'm just an unobservant oaf, but I had lots of fun on all the seeds I played. 8k is huge, so the size card doesn't mean anything to me. Aside from that, how can you pick it apart? Generation time? PFFFT, that is one little 15 minute time then you are set for 100 hours. Rust takes longer than ours. Not really high on our list.

The only thing that caught my eye was two identical pois close to each other, and a few dead end roads that could be better. We already improved biome generation, so what else is there?
Click to expand...
The fact that POI's like gunshops, hardware stores, pharmacy's, library's and spamway are randomly missing from RWG maps. Probably others too, but I only check the stores in the prefabs.xml. I have made many bug reports on this issue. Even the PREGEN maps are not completely populated with stores.

 
That ring world looks pretty cool. 25km of road would be epic. Now if only it could ascend vertically so it would be reminiscent of Halo... ;)
Click to expand...
larry nivern!

edit = help! - the winky face is following me!

 
There is only so much you can do though. Cut one head off, two grow back. Players who spend that much time learning exploits can easily NOT use them so that they can have a bigger challenge.
Click to expand...
Players have been making that argument for years, and I just don't buy it. Two points.

First, over time the AI has had problems in traversing a variety of cases, including

  • player underground
  • player on stilts
  • player riding
  • player treading water
  • broken stairs
  • broken ladder rung
  • hatch
  • can't fit between certain-shaped blocks
  • can't walk on certain-shaped blocks

In every one of these cases, you could have thrown up your hands and said oh well, good enough, exploiters gonna exploit. But you've cultivated a good track record by now. You can put a check mark next to most of these items as fixed. And every time you have, you've made the game better in the process: made another path balanced or at least balance-able.

Second, players aren't finding exploits just out of spite. They find the exploits largely because they've been put in a situation that rewards creative thinking. They are in a survival sandbox game, thrown to the wolves and under pressure to figure out the how of surviving for themselves. In other words, players are pushed into a role where they explore what's at their disposal, and ruthlessly leverage what they can find. That's what a sandbox survival game is all about. So please don't ask us to tie one hand behind our backs, and pretend there's a bigger challenge than there really is. That's poison to the survival thought process.

 
Players have been making that argument for years, and I just don't buy it. Two points.

First, over time the AI has had problems in traversing a variety of cases, including

  • player underground
  • player on stilts
  • player riding
  • player treading water
  • broken stairs
  • broken ladder rung
  • hatch
  • can't fit between certain-shaped blocks
  • can't walk on certain-shaped blocks

In every one of these cases, you could have thrown up your hands and said oh well, good enough, exploiters gonna exploit. But you've cultivated a good track record by now. You can put a check mark next to most of these items as fixed. And every time you have, you've made the game better in the process: made another path balanced or at least balance-able.

Second, players aren't finding exploits just out of spite. They find the exploits largely because they've been put in a situation that rewards creative thinking. They are in a survival sandbox game, thrown to the wolves and under pressure to figure out the how of surviving for themselves. In other words, players are pushed into a role where they explore what's at their disposal, and ruthlessly leverage what they can find. That's what a sandbox survival game is all about. So please don't ask us to tie one hand behind our backs, and pretend there's a bigger challenge than there really is. That's poison to the survival thought process.
Click to expand...
I agree. I hate it, when you have challenge before you, but in the back of your mind you know you are pretty much safe, because if things go dire, you can just use an exploit and survive. It takes tension out of the game, which sucks.

 
Players have been making that argument for years, and I just don't buy it. Two points.

First, over time the AI has had problems in traversing a variety of cases, including

  • player underground
  • player on stilts
  • player riding
  • player treading water
  • broken stairs
  • broken ladder rung
  • hatch
  • can't fit between certain-shaped blocks
  • can't walk on certain-shaped blocks

In every one of these cases, you could have thrown up your hands and said oh well, good enough, exploiters gonna exploit. But you've cultivated a good track record by now. You can put a check mark next to most of these items as fixed. And every time you have, you've made the game better in the process: made another path balanced or at least balance-able.

Second, players aren't finding exploits just out of spite. They find the exploits largely because they've been put in a situation that rewards creative thinking. They are in a survival sandbox game, thrown to the wolves and under pressure to figure out the how of surviving for themselves. In other words, players are pushed into a role where they explore what's at their disposal, and ruthlessly leverage what they can find. That's what a sandbox survival game is all about. So please don't ask us to tie one hand behind our backs, and pretend there's a bigger challenge than there really is. That's poison to the survival thought process.
Click to expand...
most those things are not exploits I will happily argue.... Tell me how a fatladyzombie or a cop or a hawaiin guy can fit thru a small gap between 2 blocks lol........

treading water.... zombies cant swim

broken stairs. That is just smart and one using their brains to be able to defend themselves and stay safe from zs not an exploit. tfp can bring in any type a z and there is always going to be a smart way to make sure your able to stay away from them in your base etc,. it isnt a exploit it is us using our brains and working our play styles.

Broken ladder rung same as above...

etc

etc

etc

not exploits

 
Jesus christ dude, if it takes that long you need better hardware or an SSD. at MOST it takes 20 minutes to generate for me.
Click to expand...
Sounds more like a server build to me. Here's the thing: I watched my GPU utilization. It was barely touched using NitroGen. 12k world in less than 5 minutes. It took nearly an hour and a half on a server with no GPU available for an 8k world. I will grant, a Xeon E5-2640 is a tad outclassed by a Ryzen 5 2600, but not by THAT much. Per-thread is only 25% passmark increase.

 
most those things are not exploits I will happily argue.... Tell me how a fatladyzombie or a cop or a hawaiin guy can fit thru a small gap between 2 blocks lol........

treading water.... zombies cant swim

broken stairs. That is just smart and one using their brains to be able to defend themselves and stay safe from zs not an exploit. tfp can bring in any type a z and there is always going to be a smart way to make sure your able to stay away from them in your base etc,. it isnt a exploit it is us using our brains and working our play styles.

Broken ladder rung same as above...

etc

etc

etc

not exploits
Click to expand...
No, let’s call a spade a spade. I’ll stop calling them exploits when there’s evidence the developer intends for the player to be unreachable in these situations. Not just “we didn’t catch that” or “we don’t have a good solution for that” but “yeah, that’s how we want it to be.” Though again, they’ve already done work on a majority of the exploits I listed.

Being a smart thing for a player to do doesn’t change the fact that being unreachable breaks the game. That was the second point I was making. The base building element if nothing else encourages player ingenuity, so it’s only natural for players to seek out advantages, and AI exploits are the ultimate advantage.

I do apologize for my brevity. When I said can’t fit between certain-shaped blocks, and can’t walk on certain-shaped blocks, I was really referring to cases where the AI thinks it can traverse these spaces, but actually misjudges the space and so gets stuck. For instance, I recall designs based on pillars or poles rotated just right, so that zombies would never squeeze through nor attack the blocks. I don’t think that happens anymore, and if so, the game is better for having that exploit removed.

Of course they can bring in a type of zombie you can’t stay away from, if they wanted to. Zombie ghosts. They float straight to the player character in any direction, through any type of block, as fast as necessary, and the player character dies when a ghost touches them. Bam, player loses. But of course, that would swing from unbalanced for the player to unbalanced against the player. Which highlights what it’s all really about: balance. When the player’s unreachable, the game can’t be balanced. All the levers and knobs you can adjust for balance - zombie numbers, zombie HP, zombie damage, etc. - don’t matter.

That’s why treading water is an exploit. Even if the lore says zombies can’t swim so it should work without a hitch, balanced gameplay demands that the zombies or something needs to be able to counter that tactic. Since the big water update has been so long coming, I’d speculate that’s part of why the worlds are so much drier than in the past. The devs likely recognized water has this and other problems, and so wanted to at least reduce the incidence of it until they work on the robust solution.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
No, let’s call a spade a spade. I’ll stop calling them exploits when there’s evidence the developer intends for the player to be unreachable in these situations. Not just “we didn’t catch that” or “we don’t have a good solution for that” but “yeah, that’s how we want it to be.” Though again, they’ve already done work on a majority of the exploits I listed.

Being a smart thing for a player to do doesn’t change the fact that being unreachable breaks the game. That was the second point I was making. The base building element if nothing else encourages player ingenuity, so it’s only natural for players to seek out advantages, and AI exploits are the ultimate advantage.

I do apologize for my brevity. When I said can’t fit between certain-shaped blocks, and can’t walk on certain-shaped blocks, I was really referring to cases where the AI thinks it can traverse these spaces, but actually misjudges the space and so gets stuck. For instance, I recall designs based on pillars or poles rotated just right, so that zombies would never squeeze through nor attack the blocks. I don’t think that happens anymore, and if so, the game is better for having that exploit removed.

Of course they can bring in a type of zombie you can’t stay away from, if they wanted to. Zombie ghosts. They float straight to the player character in any direction, through any type of block, as fast as necessary, and the player character dies when a ghost touches them. Bam, player loses. But of course, that would swing from unbalanced for the player to unbalanced against the player. Which highlights what it’s all really about: balance. When the player’s unreachable, the game can’t be balanced. All the levers and knobs you can adjust for balance - zombie numbers, zombie HP, zombie damage, etc. - don’t matter.

That’s why treading water is an exploit. Even if the lore says zombies can’t swim so it should work without a hitch, balanced gameplay demands that the zombies or something needs to be able to counter that tactic. Since the big water update has been so long coming, I’d speculate that’s part of why the worlds are so much drier than in the past. The devs likely recognized water has this and other problems, and so wanted to at least reduce the incidence of it until they work on the robust solution.
Click to expand...
Threading water luckily is one of the exploits that can be fixed relatively easy by taking a look at reality. There are not that many people that can thread water all night in their soaked full gear with backpack in cold water. Hypothermia, stamina loss and then drowning are usually the results in such situations. I remember a streaming using it once to beat my mod and then I added some buffs that made swimming for longer times very dangerous, causing hypothermia among others.

But I agree overal, exploits need to be addressed and turned into something that could work for say a limited time or against a certain challenge only. It is not necessarily a bad thing zombies cannot get to the player all the time, but when a big horde hits they need to have some ability to get to the player, damage him or bring the player to them by bringing down the structure they are on. There are improvements to be made to those things for sure, its better than it was, yes, but you can easily still climb on any POI roof and be safe, even from a bloodmoon horde.

 
The fat zombies should probably float on water. Not only is fat lighter than water but so are the gases produced as the intestines digest themselves.

 
I would suggest all zombies float on water. This makes players wanting to hide would need to stay submerged for a long period or try evading them "floaters". Adding debuffs like hypothermia or swimming fatigue may be good, but considering it against a lack of breath is different. Players will not be able to float in one spot for long (at least underwater), so they won't be 100% safe.

 
I would suggest all zombies float on water. This makes players wanting to hide would need to stay submerged for a long period or try evading them "floaters". Adding debuffs like hypothermia or swimming fatigue may be good, but considering it against a lack of breath is different. Players will not be able to float in one spot for long (at least underwater), so they won't be 100% safe.
Click to expand...
zombies are not suppose to be breathing air so dont have any air in lungs to help float but..... oh yeah here it comes.... i would rather like to see dangerous fish like maybe.... sharks! as they wouldnt be dead and want something to eat as well... then a human in the water no matter what height/depth would be a free meal as he can out swim a shark. :)

 
zombies are not suppose to be breathing air so dont have any air in lungs to help float but..... oh yeah here it comes.... i would rather like to see dangerous fish like maybe.... sharks! as they wouldnt be dead and want something to eat as well... then a human in the water no matter what height/depth would be a free meal as he can out swim a shark. :)
Click to expand...
if they dont breath and dont have air in their lungs how the #$@! do they make all those noises!!! to the point once their heads are shot off they still make noise for 10 seconds...

 
if they dont breath and dont have air in their lungs how the #$@! do they make all those noises!!! to the point once their heads are shot off they still make noise for 10 seconds...
Click to expand...
It’s the midichlorians....duh. :p

 
If all zombies floated you've just reversed the problem, an air pocket at the bottom of a lake would be safe.

Having a mix of buoyancy would eliminate safe spaces altogether without the need for new entities. Not that there's anything bad about extra dangers in the water. :-)

 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top