PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

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Another spear that I've lost, I threw a spear and missed, hit a wall behind the zombie. I was overrun and ended up dying (I fell from the top of the construction site)
When I came back to collect my spear, it was nowhere to be found.

 
Xtrakicking said:
Is this serious... ? Why?? Why do you keep cutting things out that don't need cutting? Food and especially water have always been incredibly easy to manage. In A18, it looked like it was finally getting better, but now raw food is perfectly fine to eat and stack in hundreds in your boxes? How does that make sense??? You could've done so many things to make food poisoning fun and engaging, but nope, better cut it out for some reason.

Well... Now that food poisoning is removed, the one and only disease the game has is infection. Not exactly what I imagined when you said "The lower the quality level, the greater chance for disease" in the game's trailer.

Edit: Forgot about dysentery. Cool, 2 diseases, and none are even tied to food. Hurray.
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I understand your frustration. I too do not favor this change. I have an option though and thats to use the dirty word as i see fit to get it back.

I used to fight with the team all the time in an effort to keep survival in 7 days, but the sooner we all accept that 7 days is the foundation for a great survival game and not an actual survival game the better off we will be and the less upset we will get.

And when i say that I do assume that the developers agree on that one. There are over a dozen games out there that do survival right, and actually focus on it being a game mechanic that my assumptions is that the decision for 7 days to be more looter shooter than a survival game had been made a few alphas back. 

Looking a it from that perspective you develop a new respect for it, as its a great looter shooter that mixes in a trace of survival elements without getting in the way of running and gunning. Its quite a fun arcade experience.

 
hiemfire said:
My wife and daughter are going to be thrilled with this. :D No more "need" to depend on canned foods because the meals you just cooked or the food you'd made that morning and ate while you were 2/3rds of the way through a factory kept trying to kill you
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And that's what a lot of the feedback from players and testers sounded like.

In the month of keeping my ear to the ground in A18 there wasn't a single time that I heard that food poisoning doesn't trigger often enough or isn't bad enough when it does.

I suspect that players will eat way more food and better/cooked food than they ever did in A18 because of the immediately obvious advantages. It won't be trepidation and gambling but wanting a lot more of it. =P

The main reason for Food Poisoning was that players should be made to use up more food. That did not work out that way in the end so that was a bust.

I think we'll achieve that end now...

@khzmusik

Complexity in game is a slippery slope. Simple and effective is better in almost every case.

On numerous occasions I have seen helpful suggestions that outlined a "great suggestion" across 4 pages of text.

That alone is an immediate "Nope, not gonna happen."

(I'm just as guilty of armchair-designering like that. lol)

The Food Poisoning feature has been weighed, has been measured, and has been found wanting.

 
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Gazz said:
And that's what a lot of the feedback from players and testers sounded like.

In the month of keeping my ear to the ground in A18 there wasn't a single time that I heard that food poisoning doesn't trigger often enough or isn't bad enough when it does.

@khzmusik

Complexity in game is a slippery slope. Simple and effective is better in almost every case.

On numerous occasions I have seen helpful suggestions that outlined a "great suggestion" across 4 pages of text.

That alone is an immediate "Nope, not gonna happen."

(I'm just as guilty of armchair-designering like that. lol)

The Food Poisoning feature has been weighed, has been measured, and has been found wanting.
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Going along with that idea Id remove canned food too. Really no need for them at all anymore. One less useless item.

 
JaxTeller718 said:
Going along with that idea Id remove canned food too. Really no need for them at all anymore. One less useless item.
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Not if Joel continues to add a few recipes each update that use the canned food as ingredients. We are getting a handful this time and maybe another handful in the next update. I like the idea of having to decide if you should just eat the Sham now or save it for when you can make better dishes using it.

 
Roland said:
Not if Joel continues to add a few recipes each update that use the canned food as ingredients. We are getting a handful this time and maybe another handful in the next update. I like the idea of having to decide if you should just eat the Sham now or save it for when you can make better dishes using it.
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I love the cooking of better foods, a lot of the time i like to have the steak and potato meal in the game, more recipes are always welcome, though i wonder will we ever get wheat to grow to make bread and stuff down the road?

 
The problem with negative feedback right now, is it's just a moan fest. They havent even played with new system yet. Play A19 and if you dont like, then its true feedback.

Quit trying to pad your post numbers back up.😉

 
JaxTeller718 said:
Going along with that idea Id remove canned food too. Really no need for them at all anymore. One less useless item.
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I like the canned food, helps out early on until you can get cooking some stuff. I always save up the can's of sham to make chowder. Can't wait to see the new recipes and what the new foods are like. 

 
Curious on how Random Gen Maps are going. Any info or pic teasers?

Haven't scanned Trader loot tables but I haven't seen a single Sewing Kit for sale at a Trader. Any chance these are craftable in A19?

 
I am really excited for Alpha 19, I can say I am not going to miss the barfing mechanic.

The sheer amount of stuff been changed or added into A19 it is mind blowing.

Is water going to be looked at in A20 or further beyond that say in gold, I was thinking about it the other day if you made it flow and work like Minecraft water, I am pretty sure most of us would be happy with that.

I know that fog and the murkiness has been added into this version, which is very cool, along with swimming zombies is going to be terrifying.

 
Phoenixshade35 said:
From catching up, all i can say is madmole, it is looking good and I cannot wait to jump into the game.

In regards to the food poisoning it didn't really affect me, I would pop a green pill and eat a lot then carry on my merry way, seeing it go i don't mind, though i still think food spoilage should be a thing, then rotten meat could be easier to obtain for sure, food has never been an issue for me in any stage of the game, its never gotten low enough to worry about, with new food being added i'm kinda happy to see what I can make
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Personally i hated the food poisoning mechanic, it was far too erratic since you could eat a whole buffet of zombie flesh and sham sandwiches and not feel even slightly sick, or you could eat one blue berry and vomit your entire contents out in one shot. If you had enough @%$*#!ty food you could risk it and just chow down, take a spew and continue till you were full again, but having normal food, even if unprepared, have the same consequences as bad food wasnt good design.

I think having a sickness meter would be a better direction where if your sickness meter gets to 100 you vomit and lose it all, and it decays at a slow rate. Zombie flesh gives 90 sickness, its alright in a clutch but you cant risk anything else, while uncooked ingredients offer 5-10 sickness, so you can eat about 10 corn before you have to stop.

That would be a system i would consider perking into or i would feel good working with since i would actually have some control over it, but a 4% all or nothing system i have no control over at all.

 
A19 lookin' sweet! I myself am not seeing any A19 change or addition which makes me doubt if it's a good idea. This is the first alpha to feel like that for me. I'll miss food poisoning but I realize that food will be in the midway of development in A19, while still acceptable.

I wonder if the "Difficulty" option will one day be cut to Zombie HP and damage options, relegated to the "Advanced" tab. Then "Difficulty" could just change some settings in "Advanced" and make the gamestage progress faster. That'd make basic difficulty viable changes for people who don't want to dive in the advanced options and think about what fits to their game or doesn't, considering currently people sometimes talk about how the higher difficulties make the zombies huge bullet sponges. It'd also allow more customization for the advanced players (Zombie HP and damage)

 
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Roland said:
Not if Joel continues to add a few recipes each update that use the canned food as ingredients. We are getting a handful this time and maybe another handful in the next update. I like the idea of having to decide if you should just eat the Sham now or save it for when you can make better dishes using it.
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I already do that now. Eat the sham or save it for some nice sham chowder when I can make it.

 
I have hundreds of hours on this super game, I spend whole days building. I hope that one day you will correct the ground bug and I think that the "water" blocks should cover more than 80% of the blocks.

bug1.jpg

 
Roland your words are reassuring. But for me the correct design is and will be spoilage in the game. There are hundreds of hours invested in developing different types of food, mechanics such as hunting or agriculture. It doesn't make sense that food doesn't play a bigger role in the survival aspect of the game. Spoilage is the simplest and most effective feature to avoid swimming in food. Adding other mechanics that give importance to food are always welcome.

Too many changes to try to make the food useful. But in my opinion, without spoilage it is and will be a bad design.


Sorry for my bad English.
 
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