PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

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MechanicalLens said:
I've heard different, so... Oh @madmole? Care to bring upon us some final clarification here if you wouldn't mind? :)
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Yeah. We`re gonna miss its bang early in the morning, no doubt, but for good.

Can`t wait to see the models or sketches of the new pipe weapons, and their stats, and mods if they have some. 

 
Adam the Waster said:
Ranger in my mind makes me think of "Rangers guide to Archery"

So it makes me think that Armor will have more of a "Archer" build to it (like some buffs with it)

kinda like how Scavenger makes you better with Salvage tools    
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Right now he gets a bonus with all ranged weapons and knives, but that could change for balance reasons.

Kalen said:
Awesome, the more the better IMO.... what we've seen so far looked really cool.   Will we still be able to dye the new outfits?   
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Hopefully.

MechanicalLens said:
I've heard different, so... Oh @madmole? Care to bring upon us some final clarification here if you wouldn't mind? :)
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Pipe shotgun will replace the blunderbuss. Ammo will be in POIs and scale in quantity, so no need for super primitive ammo.

beerfly said:
Yeah. We`re gonna miss its bang early in the morning, no doubt, but for good.

Can`t wait to see the models or sketches of the new pipe weapons, and their stats, and mods if they have some. 
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They are incredible, but we needed to save some content for future streams.

 
Gazz said:
Yes, obviously.

The proposed bonuses seem... really good... but that's just the first pitch. AFAIK no balancing has yet been done in the greater context of all the perks and assorted buffs.

We certainly don't want to get back to the Barbie Dressing Game of earlier alphas.

Could also have something like a set bonus cooldown.

Sure, you can switch gear anytime but any gear switch disables all these bonuses for 10-15 minutes. Constant switching would not be beneficial.
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This is hard for me to convey but oh well

What about making it so set bonuses increase with diminishing returns for piece of set equipped. So for example, If you have 2 pieces of a set (Nerd Outfit for example) you get +10% to something, with 3 pieces you get +14% set bonus, and with 4 pieces you get +16% set bonus. So you can get partial set bonuses or you can go all out and get the full set bonus which is stronger but not tremendously so.

The reason i suggest this is because then mixing and matching other clothing pieces would be more interesting. You could do 2 pieces of Nerd gear and 2 pieces of Scavenger gear for 2 fairly strong set bonuses at once, but you wouldn't be maxed out in either one. The total stat benefits of wearing 2 set clothing each would be better than the total stat bonuses of wearing all the pieces of one clothing set. On the other hand if you wear all of one clothes set you get a higher ability at doing one particular thing.

Example:

4 Nerd Gear Equipped: +16% loot quality

4 Scavenger Gear Equipped: +16% more from scrapping/salvaging

OR

2 Nerd Gear and 2 Scavenger Gear Equipped: +10% loot quality and +10% more from scrapping/salvaging

 
madmole said:
Right now he gets a bonus with all ranged weapons and knives, but that could change for balance reasons.
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That too me would fit more for a Military's armor, it would be nice as a old legacy armor (of course with a new look, Maybe a Mix between Military's and apocalyptic)
Kinda like Nomad but more meant for Fighting rather then exploring 

IE like this!

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vlad-tkach-008.jpg

 
Gazz said:
Could also have something like a set bonus cooldown.

Sure, you can switch gear anytime but any gear switch disables all these bonuses for 10-15 minutes. Constant switching would not be beneficial.
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I don't see any benefit to this. What exactly is being prevented in that 15 minutes? Is such a system worth the extra little amount of ore someone would get within 15 minutes? Someone could carry around an extra set of armor to swap out, but that would already be a huge burden on the inventory. To me, that's enough burden to justify the gains of attempting such methods.

 
There was something from a19 that im curious if a20 will have it, there was going to be a grease monkey book that would allow you to craft the vehicles in the enviroment, so the cars, busses and such could be driven, is that still a thing or was that removed completely?

 
madmole said:
The generator for these won't be the same kind that you can hook power up to, so no you can't hijack free power. You can enjoy the existing lighting the POI has just like now though, but you can't tap into the power.

Nope otherwise the outside will be too dark and the inside will be too bright. This is the only way to have semi decent lighting indoors and outdoors with a dynamic world you can fully destroy.

You won't find a legendary full set until 500 hours into a game so I don't think it's going to be that big of a deal that compel people to change outfits all the time. The non legendary bonuses are good at blue but not OP.
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Doesn't unity support negative lighting volumes?

 
Jims2cents said:
Most important question I feel is, will we be seeing any better optimizations to FPS and rendering? I own a 3k pc and watch other streamers with top line rigs having FPS drops and overall bad performance. It’s demoralizing to watch it flatline. 😕

Thanks for all the hard work you guys are doing! :D
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CPU yes. 1% here. 2% there. Over and over...................

Rendering probably not much, but that is not the bottleneck anyway.

 
The "restore power" quest looks pretty neat. I have a couple questions/suggestions:

  • Is the new generator model the only thing you can repair? (It would be cool to have other stuff, like fuse boxes)
  • Can there be different sets of rewards for the quest? (I'd like it if rewards could specialize in electrical items - e.g. completing a Tier V restore power quest is the only way to get a solar bank)
  • Will this quest be equally available at all traders, or will certain traders be more likely to give this kind of quest? (Trader Bob specializes in tools and vehicles, so could be more likely to grant this kind of quest)
  • Can the POIs be dark by default, and only have the lights turned on when the quest is completed?
  • How, technically, does the "power on" process work? Does it actually turn on the lights in the POI or swap out the darkened POI with a lighted version? (If the latter, and the POIs are specified via XML, then this would be a gold mine for creating all kinds of quests)
Just questions and food for thought. Even if it's just a "normal" quest in every way other than the mechanics, it still looks like it will be cool.

 
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Quest thoughts: 

Are there any plans to add "timed" quests? Examples:

When NPCs are added, you could have a time limit to rescue an NPC holed up in a POI before the zombies kill them and you lose (if you win, they just run off.

When bandits are added, you could have a disarm quest, where you have to disarm a bomb mechanism before it obliterates the loot room.

There could even be quests where if you accept it, the timer starts immediately, like recovering a medical bag from a POI for Jen, where the meds will expire if left in the open too long.

Timed quests would have higher rewards, of course.

Dead drop/delivery quests would be great for timed quests too. 

SUPER stoked for A20. Can't wait for the next live stream!!

 
madmole said:
No, that would be like getting the book set bonus for not actually collecting the whole series. You will have to wear the entire outfit to get the full set bonus.

What repair quest? That isn't in the roadmap.

It is never coming. Requires starting over completely and we're basically 95% done with weapons.
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Thank you for the clarification, just made the glorious switch from console to PC and can’t put the game down, it’s just so much better than Xbox. 

 
So with all the zombies eventually being redone & the addition of specialty zombies (well, more specialty zombies), are we getting any water dangers like mutated muskies or piranhas? 

I know you said in the stream there is enough variety of food but is fishing ever gonna be a thing?

Loved the stream, excited for A20!

 
Well yeah, reading the official list of planned changes completely changed my mind on what I wrote on page 2. Alpha 20 looks amazing, moreso than A19 for my taste since A19 brought more eye candy and the loot progression was a fun killer. Hope the changes to that will be good. 

Damn I'm hyped! 😍 I know no dates, ready when it's ready etc... But earlier this year there were talks of A20 being a late 2020 update, is that still a possibility or is the A20 update way more ambitious than initially planned? 

 
With the  armour sets, are you guys thinking about tools or weapons that could go with each set for an added bonus?  Like for the farmer it could be the iron shovel as a special one to find and depending on how many pieces of the outfit you have could determine how many boosts the tool gives?

So for the miner as an example we could have a legendary Iron Pickax then say you only have the helmet it gives like a 10% extra block damage, gloves gives an extra 5% swing speed and stuff like that

Oh and not going to lie I would love to have a policeman outfit in the game, simply because it would be awesome haha

 
For future versions of the game would you consider the possibility of re-adding cosmetic mods. Like the current hat mods for helmets to make them look like a cowboy hat, baseball hat, etc but for all 4 gear slots. In order to allow us to swap out the look of our gear to further diversify our characters appearance beyond the dye system. As one of the main complaints about the new gear perk system is that everyone will end up looking identical when doing a specific role.

 
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I have a little complaint about the new nurse 😃
The new zombie nurse has a movable lower jaw and hairy tail, but the stethoscope is firmly glued to the zombie.
A stethoscope, unlike a tail of hair, is constantly in front of the player's eyes, and the fact that it has no physics is very striking.
Will the stethoscope have physics like this zombie's jaw and hair?



 
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