PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

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Quantum Blue said:
and, btw, am I the only one that no longer has an A20 stable branch in Steam?  Only have the latest experimental branch.  (which I was going to switch to anyways - but I didn't need to...)
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That should be the same for everyone.  You don't see the latest stable branch in there if you have selected None, just the previous Alpha versions from 19.6 and earlier.  None will be the latest stable version which is still only A20.0.

You have to choose the latest experimental to be Alpha 20.1.

Alpha 20.0 won't show up in the Steam list until Alpha 20.1 goes stable.

 
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@faatal

I have a repro stress test for the entities falling through the world that you might find definitive to check if there still are issues with the "falling through the world" fix:

1. Spawn 64 or more Zds in the same location in a biome (desert is best as it has low-hp blocks further down forcing the issue in the fastest way ).

2. Go into god mode to make it quick and place yourself directly 30-50 blocks below the spawned entities making sure they all see you and they are digging for you.

3. Notice that the crowd of zds starts going towards you digging straight down.

4. They will noticeably start falling through the world as some of them surpass the terrain mesh, never to be seen again.

5. In a20 b38 you can very well see 15 or more of those 64 entities fall down due to this issue in that particular situation. 

I hope this stresses your stress test even more, lol.

In 20.1 exp the issue of many entities falling through the world still happens. Not fixed.

 
Quantum Blue said:
Although I have >12K hours I try and like to play very 'averagely'.  Not quite a noob, but I also don't (almost never - except for tests) build 'super' bases, raid poi's for specific items, etc.

They should specifically have certain items in certain biomes, this would make you venture out then.

In my 8 run throughs (up to Lvl 30-45ish) of a20b238 I got about 1 acid every 10 levels/days.  (including a trader or two or three very late)  I have no problem with them adjusting acid and beakers up slightly.  I even resorted to using acid/beaker recipes on my last run-through because they were so ridiculously rare.  (out of ~42 trader visits I was able to purchase 3)  Are you playing standard 60 min cycle days?  (which 'hurts' with traders, but 'helps' with loots)  Are most settings at default?

Yeah settings you mention are default in all honesty.

I don't disagree with the trader frequency, but I also suspect TFP isn't done balancing RWG, cities and traders.

There seems to be more cities spawning in RWG consequently more traders (aka supermarkets)
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Diragor said:
Please fix arrow slit pathing... 
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Allan committed a fix for it and similar blocks today. He changed the colliders and xml tags, so path raycasts can now see the colliders.

Doomofman said:
Haven't had a chance to play yet. Has the vehicle teleporting fix made it into A20.1 B5? I thought the line "Origin shift could cause objects to fall through world" might be that fix
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It was a general fix for things falling through the world, which also effects vehicles. One of our testers retested vehicles and it is better, but he still found cases of them moving, so more testing when I get back to it.

 
Neminsis said:
And the next thing you know. every ultra-thin block suddenly has no vertical support and lower HP, and/or the Zs discover a new passion for digging when they find themselves between a pair of them...

Have you considered giving them a very short path and just keeping them perpetually stunned with electric fences? 
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I don't cheese the BM, until maybe late game (Around Day 100+) when I sometimes build a "cliff dweller" fort, if I take more than one full day to repair my base.

Of course, people can do whatever they want in the game, as its just a game.  I just don't understand the point of a cheese base early-mid game.

 
Aldranon said:
Of course, people can do whatever they want in the game, as its just a game.  I just don't understand the point of a cheese base early-mid game.
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Maybe some people don't want to invest that much time in base building or repairs. Or they need an emergency base because their last one didn't work as hoped.

Of course, you could just punch some holes into the roof of a POI and call that a base. This is in my eyes even worse than a cheese base because you can do that 5 minutes before the horde and had virtually any effort at all.
 

 
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RipClaw said:
Maybe some people don't want to invest that much time in base building or repairs. Or they need an emergency base because their last one didn't work as hoped.

Of course, you could just punch some holes into the roof of a POI and call that a base. This is in my eyes even worse than a cheese base because you can do that 5 minutes before the horde and had virtually any effort at all.
 
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i havent ever cheesed the ai in this game point for this is it makes the game way too easy if i took a guess id say the peeps who most likelly cheese the game are newcomers who are getting the hang of things or if you are playing on insane 

 
Aldranon said:
I don't cheese the BM, until maybe late game (Around Day 100+) when I sometimes build a "cliff dweller" fort, if I take more than one full day to repair my base.

Of course, people can do whatever they want in the game, as its just a game.  I just don't understand the point of a cheese base early-mid game.
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Personally, figuring out ways to cheese the ai is a whole game unto itself and I've spent a lot of time doing so, but when it comes to looping bases that take 0 damage you might as well just turn the blood moon off. 

I mean if you're looking for resource, ammo, and exp efficiency what could be more so than just providing the Zs with a very short and smooth path to you so that the Zs are never even tempted to go into destroy area, and then just keeping them stunned with fences while you shoot them in the head or bash them with your favorite beating stick?

 
Jost Amman said:
Define cheese.
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using blocks that have proporties that manipulate the ai, just sitting on roof tops on blood moons long concrete corridors to walk along on bms same goes for just circling around an undergroudn tunnel and probably repair spamming hatches so you dont have to fight the horde these all seem like messing with the game and or ai to make it easy i always have some sort of killing pillar with wedges leading upwards then i build myself with a kill box with poles and normal blocks seems pretty fair of a fight to me 

 
@faatal, can we see volumetric clouds in the future? And yes - I know that in the A20 they have been improved, and really look better than before.

 
Lord Morphleyes said:
Cheese - the act of manipulating the AI of a game in order to gain an advantage at the cost of immersion and realism.
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I like that definition, but if I build a shack suspended up on some really tall supports and the zombies smell, hear or otherwise sense me, I think they're breaking their own immersion and realism if these creatures decide to tear down the supports. I mean, they ~might~ circle around under the shack in frustration and ~maybe~ bump into a support, but they want me, not the wooden column. 

The zombies have to attack the supports because there's just no way to have a game without this sort of AI. It's not immersive or logical, but necessary.

If TFP wants to truly take on the issue, then...

1) Bring back and expand upon the spider zombie. A zombie that climbs or jumps and then tries to chomp through a wall or window when it gets close. 

2) Beef up vultures' ranged attack a bit and have them (periodically) agro on zombies too. Their AoE ranged attack would be landing all over the place creating chaos and breaching defenses in places you may not expect. Don't make them carpet-bombing death machines....just agro 5-10% of the time on some poor zombie that they thought looked too fresh ;)

3) We've got exploding cops, putrid puss spewing zombies and suicide vest zombies; I don't think it'd be a great leap to put a Crawling Pustule zombie in the game. Imagine a crawler/torso which was infected like a cop, but can haul itself up walls. Slow, weak, but will explode like a cop if you let it. You'd need to watch for these everywhere and/or create defenses against them. They wouldn't be zombie engineers, but they would path in three dimensions to you.

-Arch Necromancer Morloc 💀

 
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