PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[SnowDog1942]

Pfft. None of that means anything. All that matters is the game is fun. We've deliberately been vague so we're not painted into a corner by hardcore fans who are dogmatic about lore and what is acceptable. They could be undead. That is just some voodoo word meaning "this guy should by all intensive purposes be dead, but is somehow still walking". We might get a little more rigid with our lore as we start pushing out more story towards the end, but during early alpha development we wanted to be vague so we could make a fun game, and not be having conversations regarding lore or have the fun police step in and ruin a good game mechanic.

If lore and immersion were so important Telltale would have survived instead of us.

Totally agree!  The zombie lore and immerision police gets tiring!

 

[unholyjoe]

you want immersion or anybody else for that matter.... use your imagination... i do and i fooled my wife.

Spoiler

works in game and real life

 

[falloutcloud]

Our world and it's creatures are just pawns in a battle between Great Old Ones. The one known as Yidhra infects creatures that devour to feed her life force. Every 7 days she needs to feed though creatures linger about in between. The wright, spider zombie, cop, and screamer are just mutations from those infected.

Of course there's plenty of material from Lovecraft you could weave into the lore.

 

[Scyris]

Totally agree!  The zombie lore police gets tiring!

I must chalk the sombies we have up the radiation, yes it started as a normal zombie virus, but then the govt decided to try to nuke stuff to contain it, causing the virus to mutate into what we have now. Feral's for example I personally consider to be more recently turned people, so they retain the ability to run, are smarter, and healthier, the older a zombie gets the lower its stats should be, as they start to rot eventually.

 

[madmole]

Sorry, but saying none of that means anything is just not true. It's important for a game to be fun, yes. It's also important for a game to be immersive. You can be vague with the lore and still make sense (TWD does this). You can make a great game that's incredibly fun and also make sense. You make it seem like it's either one or the other, as if both things couldn't coexist.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the giant bee removed because people complained it didn't fit in the game? Why did you remove the giant bee if immersion means nothing?

We adapted to our audience a bit and felt a vulture would provide the same game play with less WTF. I'm not saying immersion isn't important, it is. But while in early development we didn't want to be worrying about lore all the time when we didn't even have a story fully crafted. Its more of a backdrop canvas, lets paint in stuff and if it seems cool lets keep it, if not then paint something else in it place. The details will come together later.

 

[Scyris]

Oh God... here we go.

So, one of my little nitpicks with this game is that there's little to no lore at all, and the devs haven't really defined what type of zombies they want at all either. Madmole has said many times in previous posts that these zombies are undead zombies, not infected (he said it recently when arguing about zombies not drowning). You can clearly see that zombies are injured with mortal wounds, such as having their faces torn apart and their skulls split open, showing their brains. You can also dismember all their limbs, yet they don't die of bleeding then, and can stay alive with no problem. Also, now with the new zombies it's even more clear that they're rotting corpses that walk, and that's the way the devs seemed to refer to the zombies. Clearly, they'd be the "undead" type, right?

Then how come they die of bleeding from a knife? 

Part of me hopes that the bleeding bonus is applied on zombies as a placeholder for when bandits and NPCs show up... Cause no aspect of the game hints at zombies being infected people that are still alive.

The dying from bleeding is honestly kinda silly not going to lie and makes little to no sense on a zombie. If it was like a dot from acid or fire I could see it, but bleed makes no sense, I just roll with it though.

 

[Adam the Waster]

In my lore they are infected with a weaponized STD, like Super Aids or something.  I mean this is a Fun Pimps game after all.  Every 7 days they have a flair up and ravenously look for a new victim to hump. 

It works for me.  

no dude its Mega Aids! super aids are different! 

 

[Tin]

Pfft. None of that means anything. All that matters is the game is fun. We've deliberately been vague so we're not painted into a corner by hardcore fans who are dogmatic about lore and what is acceptable. They could be undead. That is just some voodoo word meaning "this guy should by all intensive purposes be dead, but is somehow still walking". We might get a little more rigid with our lore as we start pushing out more story towards the end, but during early alpha development we wanted to be vague so we could make a fun game, and not be having conversations regarding lore or have the fun police step in and ruin a good game mechanic.

If lore and immersion were so important Telltale would have survived instead of us.

Your game, do whatever. All these people getting bent, over someone pointing something out that seems weird too them is funny as all get out though. 

 

[Ralathar44]

The dying from bleeding is honestly kinda silly not going to lie and makes little to no sense on a zombie. If it was like a dot from acid or fire I could see it, but bleed makes no sense, I just roll with it though.

I always considered them mutants.  We have cops who spit acid, spider zombies who can leap dozens of feet, ferals who can sense you through walls, radiation zombies who regenerate, and they all seem to be stronger and tougher than normal.  Mutant explains all of this and plays into the radiation angle.  But I think undead mutant is possible too.

See the funny thing about undead is that undead can work however you want it to works since it's a fictional concept that doesn't work IRL.  There is no rule that says undead can't still need blood to function.  And indeed you can have your flesh rot off you without even being dead so rot =/= dead even much less define your other capabilities.  I mean if we went full realism then "undead" zombies have ALOT of problems. 

IMO treat the blood like hydraulic fluid if you want.  Maybe the zombie doesn't "die" again but it loses the ability for locomotion.

 

[Guppycur]

Devils advocate... although they don't breathe or are alive, the liquid in their body is still important to... no, it's weird.  Zombies shouldn't bleed out.   I mean I get it from the gamey perspective (blunt, slashing, piercing damages) but that's what makes it uh, gamey.

 

[Ralathar44]

Devils advocate... although they don't breathe or are alive, the liquid in their body is still important to... no, it's weird.  Zombies shouldn't bleed out.   I mean I get it from the gamey perspective (blunt, slashing, piercing damages) but that's what makes it uh, gamey.

Why?  Why is blood not important to zombies?  Why do the muscles function without fluids or air?  How does them being hurt by bleeding make less sense then blood/breathing not being required?  I understand a realism argument but that debunks undead in general via many different problems unless magic is involved.

If it's a "this is what zombies are supposed to be like" argument even Romero had some pretty out there zombies like zombies riding horses, using firearms and tools, forming communities, etc.  So the "grandfather of zombies" breaks alot of the zombie rules people have decided are the one true zombie.

 

[Guppycur]

Well, because by that logic, the wounds they took (some have pretty blatant open wounds) would have led to blood loss long ago.

 

[Laz Man]

Guys, it's okay to agree to disagree here.  #RomeroGate is a controversial topic lol.

Havent really given much thought to why do zombies bleed or die from bleeding.  It doesnt quite fit typical zombie lore but understand it adds gameplay variance so it probably adds more then it takes away.

Love all you guys btw (dont get any ideas snow...lol).  Stay safe and keep your 7 Day Surviving on.

 

[Ralathar44]

Well, because by that logic, the wounds they took (some have pretty blatant open wounds) would have led to blood loss long ago.

I'd say that goes for all damage against them seeing as I can kill a zombie by sledgehammering it in the foot .  That's not confined to bleeding.  We can kill the zombies in alot of ways that suggest their original wounds should have incapacitated them.  Without some sort of internal bleeding or etc basically all forms of arrows and bullets really shouldn't have any effect on an undead enemy unless it's a headshot since tissue damage/bleeding shouldn't incapacitate undead.

 

[TSBX]

Leave the baby alone, it doesn't have to go with the bathwater. One thing being unrealistic doesn't mean you have to go careening down that slope and take anything that's not securely rooted in reality away. It's one of the worst arguments out there, and it crops up a LOT. Subjectivity is a thing, and not everything is binary.

 

[madmole]

Devils advocate... although they don't breathe or are alive, the liquid in their body is still important to... no, it's weird.  Zombies shouldn't bleed out.   I mean I get it from the gamey perspective (blunt, slashing, piercing damages) but that's what makes it uh, gamey.

Double devils advocate, maybe they aren't dead, they just quit moving and making noise from loss of blood. Yeah you got XP, but who says its kill xp? Maybe its a plausible victory over that zed xp.

IMO if we were debating a magic virus that brings people back from the dead or a transitory state from death to a new zombie like semi functional state, they would still probably need blood circulating to keep rigor mortis from setting in, which makes a corpse still and limbs difficult to bend. In that sense perhaps bleeding out would incapacitate a zombie. Perhaps they have a very slow heart beat so they are colder but still sort of function. With a very slow heart rate, etc they might not need as much oxygen either or be able to survive for hours underwater making them seem undead.

At any rate a virus could do some very weird stuff at a cellular level and cause an organism to function differently that what we perceive as possible. Its best not to get caught up in those details because most lack an imagination sufficient to suspend disbelief.  I like some things to be vague because those with imagination can make it fun and whatever they want. That is why we have a lot of options to make the zombie sim "feel" how you want it to without us being heavy handed and tied down to lore.

 

[madmole]

Well, because by that logic, the wounds they took (some have pretty blatant open wounds) would have led to blood loss long ago.

Not if the pulse is 1 beat per minute and the blood is semi coagulated. Maybe its very high in red blood cell count so they wouldn't bleed a ton.

 

[Xtrakicking]

I'd say that goes for all damage against them seeing as I can kill a zombie by sledgehammering it in the foot .  That's not confined to bleeding.  We can kill the zombies in alot of ways that suggest their original wounds should have incapacitated them.  Without some sort of internal bleeding or etc basically all forms of arrows and bullets really shouldn't have any effect on an undead enemy unless it's a headshot since tissue damage/bleeding shouldn't incapacitate undead.

Oh man, let's not even begin with the headshots only dilemma...

...

But yeah, headshots should be the only way to kill zombies. Lol

 

[Ralathar44]

Yeah, when you're talking in universe fiction that isn't based on staunch realism you can basically lore your way around almost anything.  I don't have a problem with many different explanations of how things could work.  I don't have a problem with folks applying realism, but cherry picking what realism you want to apply and what is ok is super subjective and so it's always a losing argument.  One that has been a talked about and openly mocked for decades in video games forums back even in the days of 56k .

 

[Cernwn]

Similar to "The Hunter" mod for weapons, bleed damage over time SHOULD only matter to (currently) pvpers and animal hunters. Once TFP finally add in bandits officially, bleed DoTs should be much more useful.

However, zombies affected by bleed DoT in items.xml and buffs.xml = lazy coders, and possibly QA for not catching an obvious bug. HR needs to get a crackin', because there are plenty of both talented and experienced personnel who will work from home right now.