PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

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Wulf said:
So I'm running a new PC compared to when i ran A19. Ryzen 5900x + 32GB + 3060Ti. I don't 'remember' there being this much a of a hitch sometimes. Though that is just that, I don't *remember* it. But if the hitch is THIS bad on my current machine, hopefully that is something you can optimize further...
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Can confirm, 6700xt, i9-10850k gets hung up at 1-3 seconds when looting, sometimes it gets REAL hung up at 5 seconds. I've got the OS on an M.2, and the game on a separate SSD, hwinfo shows no sectors having problems, and other benchmarking programs show no problems.

 
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MechanicalLens said:
It would also probably be good to take the smelting process out of the game entirely, to eliminate confusion for new players. In Darkness Falls you craft forge-related recipes straight out like recipes from a workbench, and I honestly believe vanilla should implement a similar feature. Instead of putting the items in, you simply select what you want to craft and, if you have the appropriate materials, you punch in the number and click "craft".
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Yeah, we had talked about that 1-2 years ago. Our "forge" is a smelter, not a forge. It doesn't even make sense to craft anything that isn't directly cast like the ingots themselves and even in that case it's pointlessly complicated and silly. You don't keep 5 different materials in a smelter and magically keep them separate. 😃

 
Gazz said:
Yeah, we had talked about that 1-2 years ago. Our "forge" is a smelter, not a forge. It doesn't even make sense to craft anything that isn't directly cast like the ingots themselves and even in that case it's pointlessly complicated and silly. You don't keep 5 different materials in a smelter and magically keep them separate. 😃
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Sounds like we need individual smelters for each processed resource - one each for Forged Iron, Forged Steel (iron + coal), Forged Brass, Forged Lead, Cement, and Silica - and once you start processing a raw mineral into it, you can't retool it until you empty it.

Not needlessly complicated at all :D

 
Just saying that the current system is nonsensical. Of course it can be changed in any number of ways.

 
schwanz9000 said:
We didn't have a really good way to display the HP in the shape menu and decided to pull it for now.
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Yeah, that was the main bad part about it, other than the costs not scaling. 

If you put it into the shape menu it might look wonky, and you want to let the new player know that the block is cheaper and weaker. 

If you really want it in the game, you could add it to the starting quest and have a toggle block hp button. 

Be like "build full hp block, and toggle hp", then "build half hp block and toggle hps"... 

Although it seems like a bunch of work to me, when there is not really anything wrong with having them all 100% anyway. 

Gazz said:
Yeah, we had talked about that 1-2 years ago. Our "forge" is a smelter, not a forge. It doesn't even make sense to craft anything that isn't directly cast like the ingots themselves and even in that case it's pointlessly complicated and silly. You don't keep 5 different materials in a smelter and magically keep them separate. 😃
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Yeah, I thought I remember you guys saying something about having everything done with the workbench, and having some of the stuff like the cement mixer as upgrades to the workbench to enable crafting.  Kinda like the cooking pot and grill, etc...

I actually looked for it when I started playing A20 and was like "Oh, I guess that did not happen yet", heh. 

A20 is pretty great so far though. 

 
Gazz said:
Just saying that the current system is nonsensical. Of course it can be changed in any number of ways.
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Oh yes please don't get me wrong. 1) I love how flexible the game is and 2) although realism is nice it's still a game, it shouldn't actually turn into a job

If I did decide I wanted 6 different smelters I'd mod it (and nobody would run it)

 
Gazz said:
Yeah, we had talked about that 1-2 years ago. Our "forge" is a smelter, not a forge. It doesn't even make sense to craft anything that isn't directly cast like the ingots themselves and even in that case it's pointlessly complicated and silly. You don't keep 5 different materials in a smelter and magically keep them separate. 😃
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Not to mention that it would be a massive quality of life improvement. Instead of babysitting the forge for items to be smelted into it *coughs* brass *coughs* you could just click "Craft" and go about your merry way, it's fantastic. I seriously hope this change gets implemented in the vanilla game one day. :)

 
POCKET951 said:
So what's a shapeHitPointMultiplier and how does it work? Or is it something added for the future re-implementation of different block HPs?
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Actually, it is exactly how the different block HPs was implemented. And even before then (and now) it is used so things like zombie closets, hidden loot covers and street painting have fewer hit points. And it works exactly the way the name says: it multiplies the hit points (durability) by the value of shapeHitPointMultiplier.

 
Gazz said:
Just saying that the current system is nonsensical. Of course it can be changed in any number of ways.
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What is fun is frequently debated but if it doesn't have any challenge to it then it probably will not be fun in the long run. (What is considered challenging differs between people)

Also too much tedium is a fun killer (What is too tedious depends on who you talk to as well).

So options, with a possible Dev. Recommended set of options.  Maybe with a brief explanation on what options certain types of players might like?

Edit: Thinking a little more about it, TFP have a lot of options already, but I can see having an area where you could fine tune the game options it what people might like.  But maybe a mod is what I'm talking about, which we have.  :)

 
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MuffinMan said:
So if it is taking my 5950x/64GB RAM/3090 3-5 seconds sometimes, even slower comps are longer? That must be pretty bad for them because the long hitches make me feel like the game is about to crash and I even get that windows hourglass indicator like the window is frozen.
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My 3900 takes about .5 to 1 seconds. Worse case maybe 2 seconds. Don't know how you manage that long with that CPU. Never seen an hourglass while it happened. 3 other devs just told be the same thing. Not that long and never an hourglass.

Are you using any mods?

 
So... what is everyone's thoughts on the super scarcity of acid? I'm on day 36 and I've only found 6 acid so far.5 of it went to a Chem bench and I have hardly seen any. Has anyone had any luck with acid? Also what type of medical containers yield acid when wrenched?

Would like a photo if possible

As is Acid seems far rarer than antibiotics maybe acid should be offered as a potential quest reward?

 
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MechanicalLens said:
It would also probably be good to take the smelting process out of the game entirely, to eliminate confusion for new players. In Darkness Falls you craft forge-related recipes straight out like recipes from a workbench, and I honestly believe vanilla should implement a similar feature. Instead of putting the items in, you simply select what you want to craft and, if you have the appropriate materials, you punch in the number and click "craft".
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There has been more than enough simplification over the years. They are new players, things are supposed to be confusing. Hell, we already have glowing symbols floating over rocks and nests. Why not just have the game autocraft what it thinks you need at that time as soon as you have the resources in your inventory. Why even have different resources? Just have everything scrap to "scrap material" and you can craft everything from frames to vehicles with this same resource. The game already progresses too fast as it is. If you don't even have to wait for things to smelt anymore, it just gets that much faster. I do not think that is a good thing.

 
POCKET951 said:
So... what is everyone's thoughts on the super scarcity of acid? I'm on day 36 and I've only found 6 acid so far.5 of it went to a Chem bench and I have hardly seen any. Has anyone had any luck with acid? Also what type of medical containers yield acid when wrenched?

Would like a photo if possible

As is Acid seems far rarer than antibiotics maybe acid should be offered as a potential quest reward?
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damn thats odd im on day 44 and i think ive got 35 or something including making 3 chem stations

 
icehot said:
DLSS and ray tracing might be nice too :D
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It's not like the devs sit there using Unity and click a checkmark saying 'enable Ray tracing for this game' and boom. In my opinion the graphics already look amazing and even better than I would ask from a game and if they add ray tracing I think that's something for gold.

Edit: didn't read faatal's reaction yet. Glad that they won't add it tbh :)  Sounds weird but it's just unnecessary and I can imagine that it's a LOT of work to rewrite the graphics system.

 
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