PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[meilodasreh]

Parkour.

Parcours is cool. I used to max that out later game.

Loved being able to jump over trader Joel's fort walls...but they nerfed that.

Still is fun though and often very useful when exploring or escaping from Zs.

 

[dcsobral]

Parcours is cool. I used to max that out later game.

Loved being able to jump over trader Joel's fort walls...but they nerfed that.

Still is fun though and often very useful when exploring or escaping from Zs.

I love parkour, but just for the fun. It doesn't really help with anything, except, well, combat.

 

[jorbascrumps]

Redirecting, I wanted to bring up the new upgrade chain for building materials in A20.  Will it be possible to place fully upgraded concrete or steel blocks straightaway if you have the mats on hand, or would we have to place the plywood / corkboard frames first and upgrade from there?

Yes, you can directly place upgraded blocks if you have the materials. The only difference is they've simplified the upgrade chain and blocks no longer degrade to lower tiers when damaged.

 

[hiemfire]

I love parkour, but just for the fun. It doesn't really help with anything, except, well, combat.

I don't. Not being able to control when I jump max height/distance gets really annoying really fast and the perk has proven terminal to my characters more times than I want to bother counting.

 

[meilodasreh]

I don't. Not being able to control when I jump max height/distance gets really annoying really fast and the perk has proven terminal to my characters more times than I want to bother counting.

You can control it by the lenght you keep the key pressed.

...well at least to some degree. You're right it could use some fine-tune.

I myself was "ejected"/bounced off a wall several times because i jumped a little higher than I wanted and hit a window frame or sth.

 

[faatal]

@faatal

Not sure on your personal life, but make sure you enjoy the reason you work so hard.

I have worked in IT on the support / administrator side well over 25 years and you don't get that time back.

I'm 52 and it took the pandemic and me spending a bunch of time with my grand-kid (hes just over 2 now) during it to realize how much I missed pushing the envelope working. 

All the best to you and the team.  Stay healthy (especially mentally).

Thanks for your hard work.

I rarely do a heavy crunch, so a few weeks here or there is not a problem. I don't have a commute, so that is also bonus time.

Thanks

 

[AtomicUs5000]

Sometimes it's more work not to crunch, especially when coming back from a weekend and you need to figure out where you left off on something.

 

[Star69]

Pardon the interruption. I'll be 78 on Xmas Eve

Seriously? Good for you! I hope I’m still gaming at 78. I’m curious as to how many of us 60+ years folks that actually play this game. I’m considering retirement this year which will allow more time for this game….I only have 5000+ hours so far lol. Fabulous relaxing game with unlimited replayability and I haven’t even tried any mods except Compopack. Here’s to the old people

 

[SnowDog1942]

I rarely do a heavy crunch

Thanks

No wonder why its not done yet! 

Kidding, thanks for everything you do!

 

[BFT2020]

I rarely do a heavy crunch, so a few weeks here or there is not a problem. I don't have a commute, so that is also bonus time.

Thanks

Of course, this is all relative.  Most people won't survive one day doing a normal "faatal" day

If the result you were looking for is an A on your report card. The result I look for in games is to have fun. Warrior is not fun to me, so why would I run around using anything on that setting. I actually prefer agility and stealth with some int, but I play with settings that make it fun for me.

This is why I have 3k hours in this game.  It is all about having fun.  Not trying to optimize my builds, not trying to do the min/max strategies.  Not doing the same thing over and over again.

It's why I am looking forward to A20.

 

[Aldranon]

It depends on how the outbreak happens. Lets consider the virus in game. if everyone was infected, and it was a slow incubation, then you would have just insane pandemonium where one day everything is nice then BLAMO zombie apocalypse. That would explain why we have the survivors, a destroyed society, but also a cure. 

It does not explain the bloodmoon. Why is the moon a weekly thing? don't know. Is it science or magic? don't know. 

Good points.

With the moon, I forget if its always full every 7 days.   If so it would be supernatural.

A biblical apocalypse would explain some things.  It does mention that people would "seek death but not find it".

My opinion on player infection is the player is immune to the virus (whatever) but not the host of (Edit Bacteria) in a zombies mouth.  So antibiotics cure the player.

 

[Yukkie]

Wasn't this place the Dev Diary for the Alpha 20?

 

[Doomofman]

Man, A20 cant come soon enough so I can stop checking in on this trainwreck of a thread

 

[SenpaiThatIngnoresYou]

Good points.

With the moon, I forget if its always full every 7 days.   If so it would be supernatural.

A biblical apocalypse would explain some things.  It does mention that people would "seek death but not find it".

My opinion on player infection is the player is immune to the virus (whatever) but not the host of (Edit Bacteria) in a zombies mouth.  So antibiotics cure the player.

Maybe? Or something wonky happened with the gravity and the orbit? It could go either way. I mean the blood moon is really cool, but it annoys me that it is a 7 day lunar rotation. I have set it to 28 days in the past and that is less annoying but i miss horde nights. I have tried modes where i put it on 3 days with a 3 day window and no warnings for random horde nights and those are fun. 

Did they remove dog hordes from vanilla? i don't recall seeing them in the vanilla game, but i do see them in some of the mods i play. I like dog hordes, and i would love to see  weekly bandit raids. 

 

[SenpaiThatIngnoresYou]

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Nope

Ok,  it's weird because i don't see them as often as i used to. I used to get jumped by lots of dogs at the worst possible moments in vanilla, and in a few alphas i had to sneak every where on the dog days. Sometimes i noped away because there would be bears and dogs in a horde. Lately since alpha 17 i have not seen that many of them. Did they dial them down? 

 

[Aldranon]

Phrase of the day:

 

[Gazz]

How do you know that default is incredibly easy for newbies? DId you really observe say a hundred newbies without giving them any hints and they soared through the game?

Nomad used to be the default.

Now we had put that "Default" label on the next lower difficulty level because actual (not made up) newbies were struggling.

 

[Uncle Al]

Bows in the game have never been pointless, but they are probably the only situational range weapon (not including turrets) when you look at them:



Ammo Type


Weapon


Base Damage


rpm


DPS


7.76 AP


T3 MG


50


440


367


44 HP


T3 pistol


70


130


152


9mm AP


T3 SMG


8


480


64


7.76 AP


T3 Sniper


50


140


117


Shot_slug


T3 shotgun


96


70


112


Steel bolt


T3 cross


45


75


56


Steel arrow


T3 bow


31


75


39






Ammo Type


Weapon


Sneak - NHS


Sneak HS


Dam / shot (silenced)


7.76 AP


T3 MG


50


150


128


44 HP


T3 pistol


70


210


179


9mm AP


T3 SMG


8


24


20


7.76 AP


T3 Sniper


50


150


128


Shot_slug


T3 shotgun


96


288


245


Steel bolt


T3 cross


90


270


230


Steel arrow


T3 bow


62


186


158



I can't get the table option to look right, sorry.  The first table is straight DPS while the second table is stealth attacks (NHS is No Hidden Strike, HS is hidden strike).  Silenced is based on the HS column.

I'm fairly certain that's not how sneak damage works:

All weapons get a +50% damage bonus for a sneak attack, with no points in hidden strike, bows get +200%, so a 31 point steel arrow is 93 damage with no hidden strike and a 50 point 7.62 round is 75.  Hidden Strike adds an extra 50% per rank, so 250% at max rank.  That means bows do +450% damage at max hidden strike (171 for a steel arrow) and guns do +300% (200 damage for 7.62).  Note that bows are, relatively, a much clearer sneak attack choice when you don't have Hidden Strike ranks than when you do.  The upcoming improvements to archery damage will probably mean bows become the best sneak damage dealers irrespective of skill, though.  Bows are also totally silent which is not true for silenced guns - in fact silenced high caliber guns are only as quiet as an unsilenced 9mm.

Oh base damage for 9mm is 32 not 8.

 

[Laz Man]

....

AFAIK solving the multiple-POI-problem is part of the RWG overhaul done for A20. It will certainly improve the game, though anyone having played thousands of hours will know all POIs. There is no way I will ever see waterworks with new eyes

, no idea.

....

Hopefully A20 will allow players to see more POIs that they have never seen before (old and new).

I know in A19 there was a high likelihood for the same POIs to repeat for quests at the trader.

There has been some discussions and changes in A20 to improve that.

 

[Blake_]

Hopefully A20 will allow players to see more POIs that they have never seen before (old and new).

I know in A19 there was a high likelihood for the same POIs to repeat for quests at the trader.

There has been some discussions and changes in A20 to improve that.

That is awesome, Traders avoiding repetition per singular player and also per party would be a cool way to avoid the exact same POI quest.

Regarding the current a20 state of RWG:

If you see the same 1-10 POIs in the first 2 cities you explore, you know the randomness has failed. There's never the same place in 2 cities. You can find different McDonalds, but not the same. That's what's happening now, you can theoretically have a map with 10 forest cities that are the exact same carbon copy in POI variety. That, as I saw, happens in a20 too, if just a bit less. So as long as the code is just randomizing per tile/district and not accounting for City differenciation then the experience will be the same as the standard a19 one, just with better detail and rwg props.

How should it be done appart from the current random tile assortment (AKA prevention of repetition within the same RWG tile)?

If POI is used on city 1, then do not use it on ANY other city until ALL the POI list for that building type has been depleted. It should be made for the random remnants too, they smell far too quickly.

You will also have repetition, but it will be so low that nobody will really notice (needs lots of POIs to work though)

I gather POI devs should have to keep making even more POIs for that to happen consistently, I mean AMIGONE funerals everywhere points to a lack of funeral home variety for example.