PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[Kosmic Kerman]

Wow - video too, thanks for the demo !

What the hell am I doing then, I look into it prob something stupid my end.

Thanks again.

I would check to make sure you don't have any mods or remnants of them.

 

[DEADFACE]

If this was true, what does lowering the block HP do? You're saying the zombies did not attack the blocks at all right?

I'll admit I haven't tried in A20, but I also have the understanding that the AI didn't change since A19.

Anyway, yes, you could construct a parameter consisting of pole blocks configured in such a way as to cause the zombies to simply run in place and almost never be able to attack the block. even when they tried they would swing and miss. If this isn't the case in A20 then I'm glad they fixed that. I do know that in A20 you can make a wall with the "arch window" block that will cause the zombies to attempt to pass though it but be unable to so they do the same running in place bug.

 

[Mahnogard]

but since we don't (unless I'm blind) have a window paint texture, it's kind of a stretch to call it a "window".

Just posting to correct myself - I was, in fact, blind, and we do have a paint texture for that. "glass opaque"

 

[Xtrakicking]

Very true, complaining is necessary. But rants are not. Rants are only necessary if there is a shouting match going on where nobody is listening to reason anymore.

Loot was changed from A19 because people had given valid reasons for their dislike beside some people ranting. Other things like digging zombies were not changed even though people posted rants about it.

Maybe you equate complaints with rants, I see a difference there.

Fair enough, though there's also a problem when someone is trying to legitimately give negative feedback on something and it just gets shrugged off as a "rant", while also twisting words to try and make someone sound irrational.

 

[Blake_]

@joshwa0816 Lol, I don't know who this weirdo is that keeps down-voting every single thing I say... did I do something personal to you?  :loco:

It's your avatar's moustache. One can't just not look at it. Instahate. It reduces our hp 50% every time we see you. Needs rebalancing into a manly beard. A manly viking beard. 

It worked for madmole. It must work for us too.

 

[Jay_ombie]

as i show in my a20b233 build i have all ammo types for the 7.62 and an ak-47 and can load any of them and shoot them.

https://youtu.be/QOCkVVuegP4

Holding [E] instead of [R] maybe? I know I've done that plenty of times so it isn't something to beat yourself up over.

i can definitely see why you might have been confused on that i don't think there's a description on bullets to hold r to load different ammunitions in which that would be a really good idea for newer players so they can click on the description of bullets and let it say this 7.62 ammo all the other stuff then underneath it say hold r to load different ammo types into the respective weapon 

just saying i think its a good idea

I would check to make sure you don't have any mods or remnants of them.

I 'am a bone head. Yes HOLDING down R -- I think I may have hit the wrong key or was tapping it instead.. ... ugh. !

 

[faatal]

Hello @faatal. I have a couple of questions about optimization A 20 (although these questions arose earlier).
1. I noticed an interesting way of optimization - on remote objects, on LOD models, the number of framerate for animation decreases. Do you think it can help the game if distant trees, zombies and other objects move "skipping" frames?
2. If I turn off the "brain" of a zombie, and then turn on the display of the perception of noise and light in a sleeping zombie, I will see that the zombies track the player's position up to 5 digits after the dot (for example, 64.74735). Moreover, when the player stops (visually it looks like this), he will still continue to move in place, but sooo slowly (because the 5 digits after the dot will continue to change). Does such accuracy of player tracking somehow affect the workload of the system (probably the processor?).
Thank you for your work.

1. Not likely as I've never seen anims being expensive.

2. No, since gravity is always trying move the player down anyway.

 

[JaxTeller718]

Just want to say again, as a player since Alpha 9, as someone who both loved and argued with @madmole over changes etc, as someone who HATED alpha 17.

Good F%&%ng Lord am I having an amazing time playing Alpha 20. This is such a huge leap from A17 to now. It has reaffirmed my love for this game and this company. 

Every choice matters, every corner has dangers, every minute in the world feels important and scary. The pois and generation are mind bogglingly great. Cities are amazing. Realistic. It is everything I was hoping for when I began this journey with you guys. 

Just wanted to point that out. Many times have I posted when I did not like things, so I owed it to make sure you guys know just how much this old school player has fallen in love with this world once again.

 

[JaxTeller718]

Ah yes someone dares disagrees with you better insult their mental health and talk down to them.

Seriously Roland you claim to a grown man but that's your response? Grow up.

And you have done nothing to answer the legitimate concerts that I and may others have brought up, all you've done is pout that you're right and give passive aggressive remarks.  If you guys would actually talk to us about your motives and actually be consistent with them maybe we wouldn't come to the conclusion that we do, but as of now you have done nothing but dismiss and flip-flop on your supposed stance faster than any politician I've neve seen.

If you truly believe what you claim to then there is a clear path, either reverse the HP change or change the material amount. Until you do one or the other it is clear you are either lying about your reasoning for making the HP chance or you don't actually believe in the "realism" argument. 

Until then I suggest anyone not happy to talk to steam, they tend to me every generous when refunds when it comes to EA that aren't going anywhere. I got my money back despite having the game for years.

Welp that seals it

 

[Blake_]

1. Not likely as I've never seen anims being expensive.

2. No, since gravity is always trying move the player down anyway.

Any planned changes on performance? I know it won't help my particular case, but ANY calculations that you can actually separate in a new CPU thread is a very needed change.

I hope you guys can magically find a way to significantly reduce the "class-calling" hell of Unity. 

Music is bad for me now. The music fading and unfading reduces performance to a crazy degree, and sometimes it doesn't even fade properly if you leave the area quickly. I'm talking 300% in some particular scenarios (screamer calling next to a trader, buried supplies when also producing combat music, etc).

I think the Mesh calculation did hurt 4-core systems, as they just can't handle any more, but I've seen the drops in streams , and recent ones too, meaning current version b233.

 

[Khalagar]

Nearly everyone, including myself, seemed so excited... for like a week. Now no one knows what is going to happen by the time this issue settles back down and gets finalized.

I assure that barely anyone cares about the block changes lol. There are a dozen or two people fired up about it at most, but checking somewhere like Reddit where there's 600-1,000+ people on the sub at any given time I don't even see a single thread on it, and even that is a tiny tiny tiny sample size compared to the 48,000 people playing at the time of posting this message

Fun fact, while checking if literally anyone outside this forum cared about the change, I saw other people sad that the pipe baton has cool animations but is utterly useless past early game lol.

I am honestly baffled on why TFP will spend tens of thousands of dollars making animations, models etc for stuff and then just . . . not care about making it actually useful or something players will continue using.  Like . . . the works is quite literally already done , all that's left is just the easy stuff of changing a couple of lines of code to give it a chance to stun zombies or allow it to accept a "tazer mod" or something so it scales with it's own perk line. The mod would require new assets, but just giving it a chance to hit a "pressure point" and "stun" the target for a few seconds would give you a reason to invest in the perk line while using it

bUT tHaT wOUlD bE oP

Have y'all even read the club line? It has a super high chance to stagger / stun / knockdown and does stupid high extra damage to stunned targets, all while it literally has better stats then the baton to begin with.

Make Pipe Baton Great (to begin with) and give it a steel reskin for a t3

And I know people who stopped playing because of that.

People stop playing all the time no matter what. Like MM said, A20 isn't going to fix burnout and if someone quits because they can't find an auger or steel pick in the first week then it be like it is. The loot change undoubtedly increased player retention,  and made it so 95% of the items in the game weren't pointless. Finding a steel pick day 5 meant you no longer cared about any iron or lesser drops you found. 

It honestly feels bad skipping tiers for most stuff. I found a level 3 auto shotgun in A20 too early and went from double barrel to auto and bypassed pump entirely, and feel kind of robbed. I almost stopped using it just to use the pump shotgun for a bit lol

 

[Beelzebubs Ghost]

@joshwa0816 Lol, I don't know who this weirdo is that keeps down-voting every single thing I say... did I do something personal to you?  :loco:

Is it Kuosimodo? He has been going through my posts downvoting everything too.

Roland should do something. Everyone has a right to react, and to be critical - but a downvoting spree seems malicious to me. 

 

[Morloc]

I meant "profitable"

Are you sure?

I'd thought that (without LOtL) your average seed Harvest would equal (.5 * Farm plots) + (2 * Farm Plots)/5 presuming you convert as many crops as you can to seeds.

For any number of Farm plots, your average Harvest would be lower than your plots indicating unsustainability.

-Arch Necromancer Morloc 

 

[Roland]

Roland should do something. Everyone has a right to react, and to be critical - but a downvoting spree seems malicious to me. 

There are zero negative consequences to a downvote. Reputation can only be gained or stay where it's at. None of the reactions carry a negative reputation penalty. A like, thanks, and Prime Bless You all give positive reputation and the rest are neutral.

Those who abuse the system lose credibility with it. Does a Kuosimodo dislike really carry any weight with anyone? joshwa0816 is headed the same way. 

 

[RBN]

There are zero negative consequences to a downvote. Reputation can only be gained or stay where it's at. None of the reactions carry a negative reputation penalty. A like, thanks, and Prime Bless You all give positive reputation and the rest are neutral.

Those who abuse the system lose credibility with it. Does a Kuosimodo dislike really carry any weight with anyone? joshwa0816 is headed the same way. 

Are you telling me that I will never have my cookies either......

what a scam

 

[Jost Amman]

Is it Kuosimodo? He has been going through my posts downvoting everything too.

Well, to be honest, I've received both positive and negative reactions from Kuosimodo... so, in my case, nothing to say to him.

 

[JaxTeller718]

There are zero negative consequences to a downvote. Reputation can only be gained or stay where it's at. None of the reactions carry a negative reputation penalty. A like, thanks, and Prime Bless You all give positive reputation and the rest are neutral.

Those who abuse the system lose credibility with it. Does a Kuosimodo dislike really carry any weight with anyone? joshwa0816 is headed the same way. 

The only upvotes that matter are the ones given to me of course.

Still waiting on a few from you. 

 

[SnowDog1942]

Does a Kuosimodo dislike really carry any weight with anyone?

No, but my turds were so powerful you had to remove them.

 

[bachgaman]

Got 100+ dislikes from kuosimodo at least

Are you sure?

I'd thought that (without LOtL) your average seed Harvest would equal (.5 * Farm plots) + (2 * Farm Plots)/5 presuming you convert as many crops as you can to seeds.

For any number of Farm plots, your average Harvest would be lower than your plots indicating unsustainability.

-Arch Necromancer Morloc 

Without lotl u get 4 crop + 50% of seed, 1 seed = 5 crop => u got 6.5 crops in average spending 5 crops for seed

Am I wrong? Im not sure now btw 

 

[pregnable]

I do not really have time to mess around with it right now, but it looked like the feral fat chick was doing 200 damage to all blocks, on insane difficulty.  Not sure if that is right since that should 2.5 shot a wood block, but maybe... Just seemed kinda high, but does not really matter much the way I play anyway. 

Also, anyone wanting to use plates, there are a number of blocks very close to the shape of the plates with full hps still in the game, which makes the change even more silly, heh. 

One is the flat pyramid shape, that I like to use... then there is the almost flat one under triangles... then there are a few of the pipe pieces... probably others as well... and if you do not like any of them, the old half block is probably well enough...

Block hp nerf be silly yo