PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[Wulf]

That is a unload unused resources call. It is on a timer and has to happen sometime or memory use would keep climbing. Slower computers take longer.

Same call using same rules as A19.

Basically yes, but is the unload. Garbage collection is incremental (multiple frames) and runs every few minutes and is rarely noticed.

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...

 

[MechanicalLens]

I don't think there are tier1 restore power quests. If you don't see an acceptable quest on your level just select one from the 5 tier1 quests offered.

Not speaking for TFP, but restore-power quests actually have buffed loot in them because it is night and often in the town center. I actually got stuff out that looked better than the stuff out of normal POIs. TFP could reason that it is a choice like going to the wasteland for the higher loot gamestage.

I think an easy fix to the trader loot would be to have tier3 restore-power quests use tier2 POIs, tier4 use tier3 POIs, and so on. This would make the quest overall easier at a specific tier while keeping the higher trader reward of that tier

Or they could just buff the amount of dukes and XP you receive from the trader for completing a Restore Power, at the very least.  Just a spitball.

 

[Kosmic Kerman]

Yes. If progression was altered. I personally had the comment watching dev streams that ammo and weapons were super common. It's not hard to have hundreds of rounds of ammo day 1-2, and a few pipe weapons. Save a bit of cash and buy a proper low quality "proper" firearm is easy day 1-2 as well.

If progression was day 1-5 bows and if VERY lucky a pipe weapon, then day 6-12 pipe weapons, and 13++ getting into "factory made" firearms, I think people would for sure use them.

Right now I commonly find pipe weapons that are better than factory made weapons. Why use that q4 Ak-47 when your Q6 pipe machinegun has more mod slots and better stats?   I'd be proud if I could with some pipes and duct tape put together something that's better than a somewhat beat up ak-47

I've done two play throughs and I have been short on ammo for the first week (default days).  If my first playthrough I had very little 9mm and a little more 7.62. In my second playthrough I had more 9mm than 7.62.  In both playthroughs, the 7.62 ammo I received had to be saved for emergencies like bears, dire wolves, and dog hordes. In my second playthrough I had finally amassed a small cushion of 7.62 and that cushion disappeared after clearing the Bear Den on a quest. I have serious doubts about the ability to consistently obtain "hundreds of rounds" in the first 2 days. I haven't included shotgun shells here because I've found the pipe shotgun to be less useful than the blunderbuss. And shotguns seems to be somewhat rarer drops than in A19.

In terms of the pipe machine gun being better than the AK, it has a lower magazine capacity and I've never had enough ranged mods drop early enough in the game that mod capacity on the pipe machine gun matters. 

 

[outhous]

the new pick ax sound is really bad

Was wondering if this was something just bugging in my game or what... my buddy says it sounds the same (he is fairly new to the game, what does he know). To me it has that 'fingernails on the chalkboard' effect. Sounds like hitting metal wrapped in a thick layer of mashed up aluminum foil. It has a crunchy snow sound to it, please change this. I beg you.

 

[dcsobral]

There is something just WRONG with having one of the fat zeds do the crouch and TRY to leap.

(they're too fat and just sorta lurch at you and nibble your ankles)

Big Momma... leaping.... no. just no.

Bouncy balls, what's wrong?

 

[GRITTY]

Was wondering if this was something just bugging in my game or what... my buddy says it sounds the same (he is fairly new to the game, what does he know). To me it has that 'fingernails on the chalkboard' effect. Sounds like hitting metal wrapped in a thick layer of mashed up aluminum foil. It has a crunchy snow sound to it, please change this. I beg you.

i mine a lot and i've found the new sound pretty unbearable.  this is the only thing in a20 that i just flat out don't like.  i'm working on a way to change the XML to make all the mining sounds like the sound of hitting rocks.  like you said, it's very fingernails on the chalkboard.  i would love to know from TFP, what is the new sound supposed to sound like? i just can't place what the sound is and maybe that's why i find it so off putting.  it's like if uncanny valley had a sound.  

 

[dcsobral]

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.

  It has the exact same damage. It is slower, so less DPS, but now it uses less stamina too which really makes up for it. I've seen a lot of streamers that just attack, back off, wait for the zombie act or not, then go in again. The pipe baton is the superior weapon for them (compared to the wooden club). 

Now... skills and magazines. The clubs are incredibly OP in this regard. Three exclusive mods, incredible bonuses and plus the completion bonus that makes it the best melee weapon bar none, since it allows you to always power attack. But you won't be seeing much of these while you are still using a wooden club.

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. 

"What you said is not true because of X" "Well, here's the counterproof" "It doesn't matter anyway". Plus strawman. No one dropped out of the game because they couldn't find a steel pick on day 5. They dropped out because they couldn't find a quality 1 iron pickaxe on day 21. Because the loot on alpha 19 was very, very boring for weeks.  And there's a big difference between burnout and boring. The same people who stopped playing alpha 19 altogether are all in on alph a20.

 

[BFT2020]

This gets the Meganoth Royal Seal of Approval .

As long as ammo is not really scarce the scrap machine gun will always own the other scrap weapons, especially the pistol. The "normal" use for guns in the first days is as a oh-@%$# weapon and for that task ammo usage is secondary anyway, only magazine size and damage count.

By changing ammo types for scrap pistol to .44 and scrap machine gun to 9mm players would have valid alternatives to choose from. And I think it would add a little depth to the early gun crafting

Hmm, I might mod that in for next playthrough to see how it works, or I can do it now and just craft new guns.  Thing is though, I don't have any 44 cal ammo so far so my pipe pistol will stop being useful.  I already got a higher damage reduction and slower fire rate on the pipe machine gun to see how it feels with a stronger nerf.

 

[dcsobral]

Anyone else notice that engines are disappearing everytime there is a new update....ive had about 25 motors go POOF out of generators??

Also you switch over to 3rd person when wearing night vision and driving the motorcycle.

None of these things happened to me.

 

[dcsobral]

Just curious, how come the auger starts to gradually lose block damage as it gets below 50% durability level?

It's been that way since forever. The chainsaw too. I believe I reported it in alpha 17. You know what else loses "capacity" when below 50% durability? Armor. It doesn't show on the stats, but it loses rating starting on 50%, until it reaches 0 at 0% durability.

 

[Red Eagle LXIX]

Are achievements not working in A20 known?  I've seen quite a few posts about it on Steam.  Can't test it myself as I have them all.

EDIT: I did check https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1ctmU1eMhVZYoUXCZtFijnbboLQ2r8FIj_D-Ui6b6YHU/htmlview#gid=0 but the word achievements did not come up in search.

 

[dcsobral]

I hear that!  For me, the wasteland will be for when I'm getting bored and no longer mind dying "In a blaze of glory" (gory?) 

But its out there and I am sure that many people who are much more skilled in FPS (or don't mind dying and continue playing) will greatly enjoy that. 

I don't see anyone (of the people I normally watch) doing a playthrough in the wasteland on YouTube, I bet Games4Kicks has done or will do a playthrough on just that!

Kage went once to the wasteland. It was the funniest episode I have ever seen from him -- I've never seen him that scared!

 

[JCrook1028]

That's very true.  For me, it would not make a lot of difference as the "waste" of gas bothers me and I like the feel of using a pickaxe for some reason. 

That's me too. I never use the auger. Yes I do mean Never. Never use the chainsaw either.

 

[dcsobral]

Has anyone done the restore power quest yet? I've avoided them at all cost because there rewards are the same as same tier fetch and clear.

It should be more rewarding.

1. It's a full clear at night,when zombies are more dangerous

2. It can only happen at night between certain times

It's basically more risk and danger for no additional rewards. And it is also restricted by time. I have had zero incentive to do them compared to other quest.

Supposedly they offer increases loot stage, but it doesn't seem to be the case.

 

[dcsobral]

I take the power quest like any other - but only if I can do them without standing around and waiting for nighttime and if they are as close as other quests. Given the time window and the fact that few POI are set up for that it, resulting in long travel distance, means that 95% of the time they are genuinely bad choices.

I take it if I think I might have time to do one of them during the night and, if not, I just delete them.

But, to be fair, I do quests at night all the time so the increased danger is not an issue to me.

 

[JoeDaFrogman]

I know random world gen is and should be random, however since b231/b233 came out I have generated a high number of worlds and it "FEELS" like a change has been made to the forest city spawning in what I would consider a negative way.     I am using non default settings in an attempt to get larger/more cities using the logic that mountains and hills will interrupt to spread cities out.  To limit my expectations, I know that there can't be a "whole map city", that is NOT what I am expecting, hoping, or looking for.  Base on my results, 13 is the most cities that can be generated on a single map and those by necessity must be spread out somewhat.   

Settings for all maps: 

Size: 8192Towns: ManyWilderness POI: DefaultRivers: DefaultCraters: DefaultCracks: DefaultLakes: DefaultPlains: 8Hills: 2Mountains: 1Random: 0

These are some of the most egregious examples.   I have found a very small proportion of forest biome with decent city size/groupings, but they are few and far between, especially compared to b213.   It almost seems like the latest update moved the city grouping biome preference away from the forests.   

My concern is what appears to be a much smaller number of forest biome city groupings in the latest update.   If nothing changed that would make this be the case, then I will just keep generating more maps.

Sample size is roughly 200+ worlds in both b213 as well as b231/b233.

SavoyardDrumfishes



TamedAgglutinogen



AmusiveAir

 

[dcsobral]

On b233 it is much harder to kill sleepers without waking up the others. In fact, I haven't been able to do it. Hitting zombies now is essentially equivalent to missing a shot and hitting a wall are previously.

 

[irongamer]

For added fun, I highly recommend this mod to make the roaming hordes bigger. With feral senses on you can get some legit zombie movie moments when suddenly 20-50+ zombies come tearing their way into a PoI / your base. I spent several hours trapped in a trader's PoI as it was sieged by a horde, and early game I pretty much was always crouched all night with my lights off trying to stealthily open chests etc. 

Def added a lot of scary moments to the early game, and after using it I feel like vanilla roaming hordes should be at least 2x size

Moar Zeds

No joke!  This is fraking amazing!  Hands down the best 7 days experiences I've seen yet.  The x12 natural spawns mod is amazing for creating zombie movie like events at whatever stage screamers start to show up.  The thing to fear is the amount of mobs building on the outside of the POI while you try to clear asap, the longer you take the higher chance a horde breaks in somewhere.  Feral sense is on in the example below.

Sample Experience

There is one poi that is rather deadly with this mod.  It is a pharmaceutical factory with the underground section and the elevator shaft with the glass side.  I was mopping up the last room and I'd been hearing a lot of noise outside.  Dropped to the floor in the last room to check on a wall, it burst open and a massive horde starting flooding into the room.  I turned to run to high ground and there in the f'ing floor was a new hole and a zombie head sticking out!  They had dug in multiple ways at once!  I fought the horde from high ground but they were just taking too much ammo and a screamer (that I couldn't find) kept them pouring in that wall breach.  I finally decided to fall back to the elevator shaft.  There was just as much noise at the elevator shaft and then I saw it,  a 3 story tall wall of zombies pummeling the reinforced glass wall.  It was then when zombies started raining down the elevator shaft.   I panicked and tried to ascend the stairs around the shaft but kept failing a jump only to land on a horde below.  The window was broken at this point and I had to flee back to the final underground room.  At this point I was starting to run low on ammo,  I had to get out.  I lured zombies out of the elevator shaft and finally managed to make my way up and out.  It was an amazing experience!

I've taken another mission or two at the same poi and it resulted in similar experiences.  Just stupid dangerous with hordes outside breaking in and having to fall back or up to the roof only to find out i forgot the cache pickup and having to descent back into the hell hole.  Should be recording this insanity.

Performance notes

I tried a few varieties of this mod, x4, x8, and x12.  I'm running a 5800x and a 3060 ti and had to kick resolution down to 1080p to maintain ~100 fps, this works in most tier 4 poi, but most of the tier 5 poi will drop to 40-50 fps.  Especially the skyscrapers, not sure if the performance drop is just high poly count or the extra pathing due to the huge horde sizes building on the outside of the location.  The x12 results in the most insane situations and is just amazing, but you may have to lower the graphics or avoid some pois.

Summary

I'm hooked, the zombie increase mod is amazing.  Would be great if the default menu options had sliders for natural spawns and wandering horde sizes.  If not, or until then, this mod will always be installed.

https://www.nexusmods.com/7daystodie/mods/1310?tab=description

 

[Lemmers]

Clubs are OP AF lol, especially when you perk into them. Clubs get barbed wire and spikes mods as well, which makes them even more ridiculous. I ran a series of tests in A19 to test how each weapon did against an incremental number of irradiated wights, and clubs absolutely destroyed everything besides junk sledges. Junk sledge seem much weaker in A20 though with the new zombie dodge system, so club is very likely king of melee in all situations

Unless I'm mistaken... With clubs you are perking into the Strength tree, so besides being a really powerful melee weapon you also get access to Pack Mule and Miner 69er which are two huge quality of life improvements that I always want when I'm playing.

So I didn't choose the club life. The club life chose me.

 

[dcsobral]

Does the drone affect stealth? It seems it's much harder to be stealthy when using the drone, even in quiet mode. I don't particularly mind it, but it does not change the stealth meter.