PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[madmole]

Yeah, I can totally see how it being a quest with the objective floating in text in the top right of your screen adds some artifical incentive to doing it now now now!  What else is a new player going to do but exactly what "Clippy" is telling him to do and whether the number in the top right says 600m or 1.4km or 2km they are going to spend all their time reducing it to zero before doing whatever else.

I'm so glad I ditched Word years ago....

You would be surprised what they do.

I remember reading Skyrim previews from people who got to play it a few months before launch at pax or something and they talked about getting distracted by POIs or random events on the roads that kept them from following the quest. I end up with 50 active quests in Skyrim all the time, so it depends on play style. I think more veterans are going to run to the trader because they know the trader makes the game easier. It is why people settle together IRL, so they can trade goods and services and not learn 500 different tasks just to have meat, grain, fish, candles, tools, clothing, etc.

Now I challenge you to put on an Arnold persona every time you interact with a trader. Be sure to include as many references and quotes as possible.

Arnold would make a great commentator for the initial starter quests though, commanding you step by step.

"AAAHHHHHHH! SHOW DAT GRASS WHO'S BOSS! FASTER, FASTER, THEN CRAFT DEH BEDROLLLL!!! AAAAAARRRRRRHHHH!"

I always go to the trader and say "I need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle". lol

 

[wolfbain5]

well different topic for me. playing mp with wife and a friend. I am hosting the game. after 4 hours of play, we started having visual glitches.. we were trying to do a quest, but we had blocks showing up that we could walk through. blocks that just werent there, but didnt let us see a damn thing. I made a short vid if necessary. kicking everyone off and restarting the game cleared it up.

specs are

ryzen 5 2600

16gb ram

on an ssd drive

radeon rx5800.

 

[Rusrec00]

My random thoughts  on recent topics:  .

Cheese - with freedom comes great responsibility...

If something is "cheesy" and "ruins" your game experience, and you continue to use said cheese, that's a you thing.  If something is broken, i.e. pathing errors, that's a TFP thing

Quest distance - works great, sometimes your just gonna get a bad batch, damn RNGeezus.  I've had quests where I had several under 500m away and days where nothing was under 1.2k.  I love Roland's idea of having the Trader quest not show up until a later time so people take the first day-ish to explore and setup base, without feeling the "need" to get there ASAP.

Loot balance - my biggest issue with the game is storage, but admittedly I'm pretty ADHD and struggle leaving anything behind in case "I might need it later,"  so I love both the primitive focus early game and the seemingly less loot overall.   I currently lower loot abundance to compensate.

Trader quest rewards - I vote we keep the good Trader rewards though as I think its favor for the extra effort/time involved.  What I think would be nice in the future would be easy medium and hard quests with difficulty appropriate rewards. 

Vehicles using stamina - Still not sold on its value, but so far hasn't been game breaking for me.  I still say the best answer is to have the electrical storm from BM disable all vehicles except bicycle

P.S. The Fun Pimps are doing OUTSTANDING work!  Thanks for another brilliant update folks!  I cant wait to see what you come up with next.

 

[madmole]

New Vram algorithms (drivers) are coming up for this year's RTX releases and AMD is soon to follow. That means less bumps and more stable performance for the same amount of VRAM.

I not only have to exit just after generation in order to not see squared trashcans and extra blocks everywhere, I even run out of potato juice when exploring a bit too much sometimes and things start to get "squared" again.

I wish we had an option to delay the loading screen just after generation and let the game automatically perform the reset/vram cleaning internally.

How hard is it to just exit the game and reload it? I am usually afk anyway and its noon by the time I notice my game started, so I start a new game using the same seed I just baked. Like I start a new game when I'm going to dinner so when I come back it's ready to play so I just start a new one using the map and delete that save.

@faatal Do you have any plans to fix the killing corridor that some people use to exploit that AI?

I know its a way to play but I find it so so cheesy.

Those will always be possible. The goal is to make enough random AI that no one trick is 100% successful.

The AI sometimes does not know how to path in it and does endless loops and so is no challange, but I suppose to each their own.

I prefer them breaking them against my defences.

You should call that a cheese corridor, big difference. Cheese tactics should not persist, but solid ones like a true kill corridor should, with the goal of them not being 100% effective, or at least not for very long or at a cost that is easily sustainable.

 

[Damocles]

well different topic for me. playing mp with wife and a friend. I am hosting the game. after 4 hours of play, we started having visual glitches.. we were trying to do a quest, but we had blocks showing up that we could walk through. blocks that just werent there, but didnt let us see a damn thing. I made a short vid if necessary. kicking everyone off and restarting the game cleared it up.

specs are

ryzen 5 2600

16gb ram

on an ssd drive

radeon rx5800.

A known bug. The imposter models dont despawn when near them.

Should be fixable in the next versions.

 

[Adam the Waster]

Those will always be possible. The goal is to make enough random AI that no one trick is 100% successful.

So basically make zombies have random AI

like say AI from A12 to A19??? Dumb and smart!!

that would be cool and would make some people happy for having dumb zombies again!

but i can't wait for all the new special zombies that may come out in the future (i have many ideas for them  )

 

[madmole]

I feel like having a quick way to shed armor or save loadouts so that you can equip or remove from inventory (and failing if the pieces aren't there/you don't have enough room) would go a long way toward more people doing that. I tried doing it myself a few times, but it dramatically slows down the pacing of everything when you have to navigate menus and drag half a dozen things around every couple of minutes if you decide to fight what you come across, explore a POI, or get surprised by a sudden horde. Of course, programming that when any given piece of equipment is modifiable could be a logistical nightmare, so eh.

I just feel like this sort of advice isn't really all that applicable to a lot of people. There are plenty of people who are minimalists when it comes to inventory and don't want to take up half their backpack slots with stuff designed to make travel suck less when travel could just suck less to begin with, you know? I personally always carry coffee with me since I'm an explorer by nature, but I think it's important to think about how other people might not have the same views we do, and it can be counter-productive to effectively say, "You're doing it wrong, do this."

I never intended to sound like do it my way or the highway. But it is a very viable and super quick thing to do. There is no dragging and drop, you simply shift click off, shift click on and only scrap/leather/iron pieces, padded have no penalty and can stay on, so typically its 1-2 pieces before I get a bicycle. You shift click it back on too. I see a lot of people play that don't use shift click and they lose hours doing their slow dragging and dropping all the time for every action.

If you even watch me play with Rick and Lathan there was a scene were they were in front of me, I stopped, took off my heavy stuff, and then ran right by them, so in the grand scheme of things, it is faster. I treat it like mega crush though. Once I take my armor off I am in sprint mode and will not stop for distractions or combat unless its an easy zed I know I can kill with one shot to the face because it is easy to forget your armor is off and get messed up.

If you are traveling to the POI without 5 free slots for armor then I have to question your inventory management choices Coming home is different, but steroids help. I will hit up gas stations and tennis court concessions though I see for mega crush, that is a must have early game. Otherwise I don't get sidetracked when going to the POI because daylight is burning and I can't stand crouching in an attic at night, I like to get back to base, organize and mine for whatever is left of the evening.

Sorry, but this issue has actually been plaguing me through every Alpha  since i started in A16.

Dynamic resolution in A19 has nothing to do with it.

I'm just kinda stumped on what is causing it. I've even tried to change the values in Regedit and it still happens, on both A18 and A19.

Sounds like wherever those values are saved it is read only?

 

[Blake_]

How hard is it to just exit the game and reload it? I am usually afk anyway and its noon by the time I notice my game started, so I start a new game using the same seed I just baked. Like I start a new game when I'm going to dinner so when I come back it's ready to play so I just start a new one using the map and delete that save.

Yeah. That's singleplayer alright. In multiplayer by the time you spawn and restart you have lost around 1 ingame hour in weak systems (as a client even more) . Not nice if you ask me. 

A simple solution would be starting the game sooner in the morning to allow restarts if coding in a reset takes away from dev time.

 

[madmole]

Spoiler

View attachment 11051

My day 7 horde base.

Copycat. Except for the cheese ramp. Just kidding Is that for you to get in? Actually I don't do overhead bars nor do I use spikes anymore, they just steal my EXP.

 

[MechanicalLens]

Copycat. Except for the cheese ramp. Just kidding Is that for you to get in? Actually I don't do overhead bars nor do I use spikes anymore, they just steal my EXP.

Yeah, I'm sick and tired of designing every base I have ever made without a legitimate entrance/exit. Haha. I'm the sort of person to erect the walls around me before realizing that I forgot to add a door.

Sure, call me a copycat if you want. But I learned from the best.

Spoiler

SCORE!!! Score, score, score!!!

 

[Laz Man]

I never intended to sound like do it my way or the highway. But it is a very viable and super quick thing to do. There is no dragging and drop, you simply shift click off, shift click on and only scrap/leather/iron pieces, padded have no penalty and can stay on, so typically its 1-2 pieces before I get a bicycle. You shift click it back on too. I see a lot of people play that don't use shift click and they lose hours doing their slow dragging and dropping all the time for every action.

If you even watch me play with Rick and Lathan there was a scene were they were in front of me, I stopped, took off my heavy stuff, and then ran right by them, so in the grand scheme of things, it is faster. I treat it like mega crush though. Once I take my armor off I am in sprint mode and will not stop for distractions or combat unless its an easy zed I know I can kill with one shot to the face because it is easy to forget your armor is off and get messed up.

If you are traveling to the POI without 5 free slots for armor then I have to question your inventory management choices Coming home is different, but steroids help. I will hit up gas stations and tennis court concessions though I see for mega crush, that is a must have early game. Otherwise I don't get sidetracked when going to the POI because daylight is burning and I can't stand crouching in an attic at night, I like to get back to base, organize and mine for whatever is left of the evening.

Sounds like wherever those values are saved it is read only?

Lol...you would be surprised how many people are hoarders in game and irl....thus the poor inventory management skills and the desire for bigger backpacks...

 

[Trankitas]

Anyone noticed that the reload animation of the Hunting rifle is shaky AF?

 

[Blake_]

I never intended to sound like do it my way or the highway. But it is a very viable and super quick thing to do. There is no dragging and drop, you simply shift click off, shift click on and only scrap/leather/iron pieces, padded have no penalty and can stay on, so typically its 1-2 pieces before I get a bicycle. You shift click it back on too. I see a lot of people play that don't use shift click and they lose hours doing their slow dragging and dropping all the time for every action.

Honestly, since I stumbled upon the "deleting second stack bug due to shift clicking a second stack in your inventory when in the process of consuming something from the first stack when having two stacks of  the same consumable both full or not" bug, I prefer dragging and dropping in certain cases.

That one makes me cry.

 

[MechanicalLens]

Lol...you would be surprised how many people are hoarders in game and irl....thus the poor inventory management skills and the desire for bigger backpacks...

7 Days to Die does teach the player some valuable life lessons. You know, like selfish hoarding, last minute prep, so forth. 

 

[Annihilatorza]

How hard is it to just exit the game and reload it? I am usually afk anyway and its noon by the time I notice my game started, so I start a new game using the same seed I just baked. Like I start a new game when I'm going to dinner so when I come back it's ready to play so I just start a new one using the map and delete that save.

Those will always be possible. The goal is to make enough random AI that no one trick is 100% successful.

You should call that a cheese corridor, big difference. Cheese tactics should not persist, but solid ones like a true kill corridor should, with the goal of them not being 100% effective, or at least not for very long or at a cost that is easily sustainable.

That works for me 200%, I know there will always be cheese tatics no matter how good you make the game, its a fact of life.

Only thing is it Gouda, Chedder or Feta.

 

[Adam the Waster]

7 Days to Die does teach the player some valuable life lessons. You know, like selfish hoarding, last minute prep, so forth. 

so what i do normally? 

 

[Jugginator]

The biggest deal I think  would be collecting book and schematics, and dealing with RNG just thinking about it, and food early on, and vehicle delay as crafting will be the only option.

Yeah food is a little rough but it's doable sorta, depends how many animals you find. Even though you guys added a little nerf to the new bookstores they still net a ridiculous number of books and schematics... hell you're likely to walk out the new crack a book with an anvil, crucible, gyrocopter, m60 schematic, and half of a cpl book series and random recipies lol.

 

[Adam the Waster]

Yeah food is a little rough but it's doable sorta, depends how many animals you find. Even though you guys added a little nerf to the new bookstores they still net a ridiculous number of books and schematics... hell you're likely to walk out the new crack a book with an anvil, crucible, gyrocopter, m60 schematic, and half of a cpl book series and random recipies lol.

lucky i Raided a store and i got only a BP for Pumpkin bread and a Reflex sight!

I WANT MY RATCHET! 

 

[madmole]

Yeah food is a little rough but it's doable sorta, depends how many animals you find. Even though you guys added a little nerf to the new bookstores they still net a ridiculous number of books and schematics... hell you're likely to walk out the new crack a book with an anvil, crucible, gyrocopter, m60 schematic, and half of a cpl book series and random recipies lol.

Yeah but I typically find 1-2 crack a books my entire game, so it might be ok.. makes you WANT to go in there. I will pay attention next time though to see if it feels too OP.

lucky i Raided a store and i got only a BP for Pumpkin bread and a Reflex sight!

I WANT MY RATCHET! 

What is weird is 2 games ago I found lots of pumpkin seeds, and this game I have found 2 already, but my previous game I found 0, and I love my pumpkin cheesecake for the 5% discount and it is my favorite desert I craft 2x a year IRL.

 

[Jugginator]

Yeah but I typically find 1-2 crack a books my entire game, so it might be ok.. makes you WANT to go in there. I will pay attention next time though to see if it feels too OP.

What is weird is 2 games ago I found lots of pumpkin seeds, and this game I have found 2 already, but my previous game I found 0, and I love my pumpkin cheesecake for the 5% discount and it is my favorite desert I craft 2x a year IRL.

Yeah to be fair that's true and possibly good to have a lot in there for co op MP. I suppose m60, sniper rifle, millitary armor, gyro accessories, crucible, iron tools, baseball bat, half a dozen mods and lota of several book series was a knee jerk reaction to needs a nerf if they're rare

Speaking of pumpkin cheese cake, grain alcohol?! Eww lmao. I know it's for balance reasons though.