PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[Tmodloader]

How is progress on coding generic bandit AI going? This is my biggest worry for the game, as no other game has been able to pull off such a thing correctly. 

• Current 10 armor/clothing slots reduced to 4 slots for outfits that will merge both clothing and armor values. No more clipping issues of wearing clothing under armor. Better balance on number of mod slots available to use with outfits.
  

It feels like the game is changing and not all the changes are good. There have been weird removals of items such as Grain alcohol , Hoe's for land tilling , smell mechanic , cave systems , blunderbuss , Hub City , snowberry , separate animal meat , moldy bread , wood cutting bench , zombie looting ,  log spike traps , sliding jail doors , barbed wire , and the simplification of building tiers used to be Wood --> Reinforced Wood --> Iron Reinforced Wood --> Flagstone --> Cobblestone --> Concrete --> Reinforced Concrete --> Steel --> Stainless Steel This was a great upgrade path it wasn't that complex and it was rewarding upgrade slowly towards stainless steel in the end it was replaced by the current path Wood --> Cobblestone -- Concrete --> Steel. even farming has been simplified before you could till the land with a Hoe to plant crops and you could create fertilizer to speed up the process. Now you just use a farm plot. Another thing the new clothing system we have to wear limiting outfits to increase stats and completely toss out character customization. Sorry dude you can't look the way you want to anymore because you have to wear this specific outfit that you might not like in order to boost harvest percentage or be able to harvest crops effectively. You said in your post that the new system would fix armor clipping through clothing. Well it really doesn't. Removing clothing all together isn't really a fix, its a removal. NOT A FIX a removal you didn't wanna take the time to fix it. So you you removed the system entirely removing diversity in character customization. You could probably just add additional armor sets for mining farming etc and try to fix the clipping issue. But instead your removing all of them POOF and substituting it with this limited armor system. I love this game and want to be a fun like in previous alpha's.

If you do decide to remove all clothing do you think there's a way you could keep the clothing models for the Modding community. There are people who will want make mod's to bring them back. 

Sorry if a lot of this didn't make sense.

They should do what a lot of other games do, and they probably will. 4 slots for actual stat clothing, 4 slots for cosmetic overrides.

 

[spud42]

i appreciate the short distances for quests early game.  200 to 400 meters for the first quests is great. BUT i am now on day 38 and i keep getting the same POI's for the quests. the trader gave be a bike but still its the same POI's for quests. i have now done the same POI as a quest  level 1 2 3 and 4...a bit more variety would be nice. also as the levels increase so should the distance that the trader can send you.  Day 38 and i havent had a quest more than 500 meters from the trader. the only exception was the opening trade routes quests. My current tier 4 quest is 344 meters away and i am based 50 meters from the trader on the other side of the quest. 

my city is quite large. If you zoom right out it covers half the map.

 

[Roland]

Cave systems: caused issues with "stability" as they could be under stuff and you not know it (even in POIs').  I don't know why but I find that a feature and not an issue . I'm hoping they come back, or are an option to turn on as I loved finding (falling/driving into) and exploring caves, even when they were empty.

Also vehicles. There is a reason the top speed of the vehicles are where they are at and part of that reason is the calculation speed of rendering the chunk ahead of you as you drive so that you don't end up driving off the edge of the existing world. Cave systems add more complexity and would slow down vehicles even more.

- Zombie looting: People felt it as tedious, and I guess the corpse blocks/timers? ate up processing power or something.  Maybe it was the "swapping out" of corpses into corpse blocks?  anyway, the corpses stick around for awhile in game... it feels a little weird to not be able to chop/loot them for anything.

Also very much engendering a "meals on wheels" mentality towards zombies. Of course, XP for kills also does this....

- Farming: i heard it was am issue with performance or similar, so it was decided to "condense" the farming into a special block, maybe to target its specialness to that block type.  I do wish the farm plot could be "upgraded" like other blocks to nicer looking farm plot blocks by using the old hoe/fertilizer mechanic.  At least then you could put them in the ground and it would act mostly the same. And make farming a bit more "work" vs "perk"

The microsplat technology they switched to for the terrain carried with it some limitations. Terrain texture is now forced within a biome. If you place snow in the forest it will transform back to forest terrain texture once you leave and then re-enter the area. Therefore, farmed ground texture was no longer supportable and farming had to be done in containers which is why the switch happened.

- Clothing: oh please yes do NOT remove the existing clothes.

In my opinion they should make the outfit pieces all purely be clothing and make armor be mods that can be inserted "under" the clothing. Then there will still be some customizing and choice for light vs heavy armor independent of the outfit types you are wearing. I can wear a farmer outfit but have heavy armor insterted in the mod slots.

 

[LastTugBoat243]

In my opinion they should make the outfit pieces all purely be clothing and make armor be mods that can be inserted "under" the clothing. Then there will still be some customizing and choice for light vs heavy armor independent of the outfit types you are wearing. I can wear a farmer outfit but have heavy armor insterted in the mod slots.

This seems like a much better system than what their currently pitching. Its a compromise you can have armor that can be equipped to clothing as a mod and wouldn't remove the cosmetic factor of armor and clothing. The only thing is hopefully armor would appear on the characters clothing.

 

[Burrfly]

• Current 10 armor/clothing slots reduced to 4 slots for outfits that will merge both clothing and armor values. No more clipping issues of wearing clothing under armor. Better balance on number of mod slots available to use with outfits.
  

It feels like the game is changing and not all the changes are good. There have been weird removals of items such as Grain alcohol , Hoe's for land tilling , smell mechanic , cave systems , blunderbuss , Hub City , snowberry , separate animal meat , moldy bread , wood cutting bench , zombie looting ,  log spike traps , sliding jail doors , barbed wire , and the simplification of building tiers used to be Wood --> Reinforced Wood --> Iron Reinforced Wood --> Flagstone --> Cobblestone --> Concrete --> Reinforced Concrete --> Steel --> Stainless Steel This was a great upgrade path it wasn't that complex and it was rewarding upgrade slowly towards stainless steel in the end it was replaced by the current path Wood --> Cobblestone -- Concrete --> Steel. even farming has been simplified before you could till the land with a Hoe to plant crops and you could create fertilizer to speed up the process. Now you just use a farm plot. Another thing the new clothing system we have to wear limiting outfits to increase stats and completely toss out character customization. Sorry dude you can't look the way you want to anymore because you have to wear this specific outfit that you might not like in order to boost harvest percentage or be able to harvest crops effectively. You said in your post that the new system would fix armor clipping through clothing. Well it really doesn't. Removing clothing all together isn't really a fix, its a removal. NOT A FIX a removal you didn't wanna take the time to fix it. So you you removed the system entirely removing diversity in character customization. You could probably just add additional armor sets for mining farming etc and try to fix the clipping issue. But instead your removing all of them POOF and substituting it with this limited armor system. I love this game and want to be a fun like in previous alpha's.

If you do decide to remove all clothing do you think there's a way you could keep the clothing models for the Modding community. There are people who will want make mod's to bring them back. 

Sorry if a lot of this didn't make sense.

Thank you for addressing this. I think The Fun Pimps are making some mistakes regarding simplification. The old build path was perfect, and now it feels meh. Also because it doesn't make sense for some blocks to be a wood or cobblestone variant. In the past there were wood, iron and steel ladders and wood and iron catwalks and now we can have cobblestone ladders, cobblestone planks, or cobblestone railings. It was perfect before. Only thing I would have changed with the old building was the ADDING of new materials, not removing.

Also fear this will be the case indeed for the simplification of the clothing system for a21. Currently I'm playing with friends and everyone of us has a different outfit, which is a lot of fun to make ourselves. I'm pretty sure that will change to people wearing the same outfits (less variety etc) when the simplification hits, with maybe the exception of some dyes, but that's it.

@madmole, yes, 99% of us love the new RWG and the new POI's as well as for example feral sense, but on the other hand we are losing great mechanics.

I'm sure most of us also like the new building shapes, but I personally think that these should specifically be BUILDING shapes, not for example ladders or catwalks. Catwalks and ladders should be a seperate 'block', like it was before, with a seperate upgrade path.

I just hope that some old features will come back (for example concrete drying, etc) and there won't be any more simplification, because it makes things more boring  Sorry for maybe this negativity but it's how I feel. Thank you very much for reading.

 

[Doomofman]

i appreciate the short distances for quests early game.  200 to 400 meters for the first quests is great. BUT i am now on day 38 and i keep getting the same POI's for the quests. the trader gave be a bike but still its the same POI's for quests. i have now done the same POI as a quest  level 1 2 3 and 4...a bit more variety would be nice. also as the levels increase so should the distance that the trader can send you.  Day 38 and i havent had a quest more than 500 meters from the trader. the only exception was the opening trade routes quests. My current tier 4 quest is 344 meters away and i am based 50 meters from the trader on the other side of the quest. 

my city is quite large. If you zoom right out it covers half the map.

Just wait til you hit Tier 5 and the quests are all 3 to 5km away

 

[mstdv inc]

Thank you for addressing this. I think The Fun Pimps are making some mistakes regarding simplification. The old build path was perfect, and now it feels meh. Also because it doesn't make sense for some blocks to be a wood or cobblestone variant. In the past there were wood, iron and steel ladders and wood and iron catwalks and now we can have cobblestone ladders, cobblestone planks, or cobblestone railings. It was perfect before. Only thing I would have changed with the old building was the ADDING of new materials, not removing.

Also fear this will be the case indeed for the simplification of the clothing system for a21. Currently I'm playing with friends and everyone of us has a different outfit, which is a lot of fun to make ourselves. I'm pretty sure that will change to people wearing the same outfits (less variety etc) when the simplification hits, with maybe the exception of some dyes, but that's it.

@madmole, yes, 99% of us love the new RWG and the new POI's as well as for example feral sense, but on the other hand we are losing great mechanics.

I'm sure most of us also like the new building shapes, but I personally think that these should specifically be BUILDING shapes, not for example ladders or catwalks. Catwalks and ladders should be a seperate 'block', like it was before, with a seperate upgrade path.

I just hope that some old features will come back (for example concrete drying, etc) and there won't be any more simplification, because it makes things more boring Sorry for maybe this negativity but it's how I feel. Thank you very much for reading.

I see that you consider railings, stairs and other blocks special, but do not say why?
Do you have an answer to the question “why should they NOT be like all other blocks?” Just because you are so used to it?
TFP have an answer. They brought all the blocks to a single standard, not classifying any of them as special.
What's the problem with pouring a cement solution into the form and making a concrete pillar, slab or a whole block? Nothing.
What then prevents from pouring the solution into the shape of the railing or stairs and making concrete railings or stairs? Nothing.
Ditto for cobblestone. If you draw parallels with real life, then you can start by crafting hundreds of perfectly straight frames in a minute in your pocket without a saw, nails and any measuring tools.
I am interested in the logic of people who classify certain blocks as special.
In my opinion, all blocks are equally valuable and useful.

 

[Laz Man]

Just wait til you hit Tier 5 and the quests are all 3 to 5km away

Restore Power quests as well can be quite a bit away.  It would be nice if the distance a POI is a variable in the duke or xp reward.

This might be a nice incentive for players to take the farther quest since it essentially would require more of their time to do.

 

[JCrook1028]

t doesn't need to be in the game in order for any player to oppose such ideas even in the concept stage.

Read the title of the thread....


Alpha 20 Dev Diary




Not yea, if you wanted to make a new thread about a possible Alpha 21 feature change you're able to do so........ but here is just not the place yet.

 

[Hockallz]

Thank you for addressing this. I think The Fun Pimps are making some mistakes regarding simplification. The old build path was perfect, and now it feels meh. Also because it doesn't make sense for some blocks to be a wood or cobblestone variant. In the past there were wood, iron and steel ladders and wood and iron catwalks and now we can have cobblestone ladders, cobblestone planks, or cobblestone railings. It was perfect before. Only thing I would have changed with the old building was the ADDING of new materials, not removing.

I've not looked too closely at the blocks themselves, but ladders are still craftable as a separate block as well as part of the shapes menu and follows the OG upgrade path. 

 

[Roland]

i have now done the same POI as a quest  level 1 2 3 and 4...a bit more variety would be nice.

I agree that more variety will be nice and that will take time for them to hook up additional POIs for quests. In the meantime you have some control over that by doing quests for different traders instead of only doing quests for one trader. I have three traders in my network  currently and they each have a different set of POIs for doing quests. 

 

[LastTugBoat243]

I see that you consider railings, stairs and other blocks special, but do not say why?
Do you have an answer to the question “why should they NOT be like all other blocks?” Just because you are so used to it?
TFP have an answer. They brought all the blocks to a single standard, not classifying any of them as special.
What's the problem with pouring a cement solution into the form and making a concrete pillar, slab or a whole block? Nothing.
What then prevents from pouring the solution into the shape of the railing or stairs and making concrete railings or stairs? Nothing.
Ditto for cobblestone. If you draw parallels with real life, then you can start by crafting hundreds of perfectly straight frames in a minute in your pocket without a saw, nails and any measuring tools.
I am interested in the logic of people who classify certain blocks as special.
In my opinion, all blocks are equally valuable and useful.

There is nothing wrong with pouring cement solution in the form of pillars slabs and whole blocks because that is logical and normal. What doesn't make sense is pouring cement solution into things like Frames , Ladders Catwalks and Railings. Those Items should have a different upgrade path one that makes sense. Those blocks should be separate from the "Everything Block" and have separate crating recipes in the inventory like the ladder.

 

[PoloPoPo]

Having all different shapes available from one block and therefore all having the same upgrade path feels convenient to me. In my current savegame I am crafting tons of forged iron since I am used to that for my bars and stuff but as they don't need any forged iron anymore I have most forged iron laying in my storage box without any use 

 

[LastTugBoat243]

Having all different shapes available from one block and therefore all having the same upgrade path feels convenient to me. In my current savegame I am crafting tons of forged iron since I am used to that for my bars and stuff but as they don't need any forged iron anymore I have most forged iron laying in my storage box without any use 

I know its convenient but sometimes in these survival games things aren't easy. That's what made getting all the forged iron worth it was making the iron bars. We don't have to get rid of the "Everything Block" or even remove Bocks from it. It really comes down to the upgrade paths. Certain blocks in the like ladders , railing , bars and catwalks should have different upgrade path's. ones that make sense. no cobblestone ladder's , railing , catwalks or there strange concrete counterparts. just a normal upgrade paths. like wood or metal maybe?

 

[mstdv inc]

There is nothing wrong with pouring cement solution in the form of pillars slabs and whole blocks because that is logical and normal. What doesn't make sense is pouring cement solution into things like Frames , Ladders Catwalks and Railings. Those Items should have a different upgrade path one that makes sense. Those blocks should be separate from the "Everything Block" and have separate crating recipes in the inventory like the ladder.

Doesn't make sense just because? Is there a reason?Are you against the convenience of construction?

 

[POCKET951]

I agree that more variety will be nice and that will take time for them to hook up additional POIs for quests. In the meantime you have some control over that by doing quests for different traders instead of only doing quests for one trader. I have three traders in my network  currently and they each have a different set of POIs for doing quests. 

will there every be a way to ask for a set  new quests at the trader? even if only once  per day, or for some token fee, or maybe some kind of special token you find from  couriers satchels in Pois?

or maybe the solution is to offer bigger quest list for each tier once you have fully unlocked all the tiers? (even if you could only complete 5 max per tier on any given day)


I often find I get alot of the same Pois  every 2 or 3 days despite the fact that there are so many Pois in the city, and at my main trader all my current tier 2-3 quest send me to the outskirts/rural areas and not into the city as much where there are some tier 2-3 pois. And there are just certain Pois traders will never give me despite the fact that they are questable.

questing is definitely much better overall in A20, but I think there needs to be a better balance of quest offerings from traders, sometimes you will get 4 restore powers+1 other and that feels bad because you can only do 1 restore power a day.

 

[LastTugBoat243]

Doesn't make sense just because? Is there a reason?Are you against the convenience of construction?

I just want some realism you can have both.

Just change the upgrade paths of a handful of shapes everything else is fine.

 

[Jost Amman]

So, I was farming some sand/rocks from a POI and I realized that a pile of dirt/sand was working like if it was a bunch of rocks!

Is this intended or a possible glitch/bug?

Spoiler

The POI I'm talking about is this one:

Spoiler

 

[Irushian]

Building is perfect the way it currently is. In previous alphas you had to remember which material had the shape that you wanted when wanting to build something and it was frustrating and they have removed that annoyance.

If you do not want concrete ladders then don't build concrete ladders. Please don't impose your views on the rest of us. I do not want to have to go back to having to remember what materials support what blocks when a material is just basically a health value and not much more.

 

[Laz Man]

I just want some realism you can have both.

Just change the upgrade paths of a handful of shapes everything else is fine.

The challenge is probably where to draw the line and/or a limitation with the new material upgrade system.

One of the benefits of the new shapes system is being able to quickly add shapes without having to manually setup things like block upgrade paths, etc.  This also reduces errors.