PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary

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FramFramson said:
How would a new player even know to come on here and ask about it?

Just because they're not on here complaining about it, doesn't mean they're not making assumptions about the way the vehicle handles based on the animations, which should, in theory, be representative of motion.

But it's not. The wobble as we see it is not only annoying, it's not physically possible IRL (without crashing). The game is providing unrepresentative feedback in this case, and while some silliness can be explained away as quirks of game physics, the motorbike wobble is so blatant as to be out of scale with even the rest of the games liberties with physics. It's also just... unnecessary.

It's a visible graphical problem caused by incorrect application of unity physics to the motorbike models in-game. We don't have to pretend this bug is some kind of intended feature.
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It is not a feature. It may just be a very cheap way to represent losing control. And new players will just observe the vehicle going wild when they don't drive carefully and then adapt. Being a new player doesn't mean that person has an IQ below 50 and the obstinacy of a lemming.

Just because all new players are too dumb (in your opinion) to find this website doesn't mean they can't drive a motorbike in 7D2D.

 
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Roland said:
It is simply that when you die and then return to pick up your backpack everything goes back to the same slots they were in including your tool belt. The wording on that patch note was unfortunate...
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Well.. that's disappointing. Will it do that if you dump your stuff into a container and take it back? Like say, to use a dump box or what not?

 
meganoth said:
It is not a feature. It may just be a very cheap way to represent losing control. And new players will just observe the vehicle going wild when they don't drive carefully and then adapt. Being a new player doesn't mean that person has an IQ below 50 and the obstinacy of a lemming.

Just because all new players are too dumb (in your opinion) to find this website doesn't mean they can't drive a motorbike in 7D2D.
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If you consider it a "cheap way to represent losing control," wouldn't that be a feature?

 
Old Crow said:
If you consider it a "cheap way to represent losing control," wouldn't that be a feature?
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I would have to agree that if it is intended, then it's a feature.  I still feel it is a poor alternative to crashing.  If they can't represent crashing, then at least stick to just spinning out.  Wobbling back and forth if you do nothing more than tap right or left or sliding back for forth over and over for a long ways unless you stop (you can't actually regain control; you have to wait until it decides to stop sliding or you stop) are not good alternatives to crashing and look pretty ridiculous, imo.  If the vehicle damage wasn't so bad for the 4x4, this loss of control on the motorcycle would cause me to not ever use it.  Unfortunately, the 4x4 is even worse right now because of the damage it takes due to its size and damage appears to be a % of total health rather than a fixed amount, so the 4x4 takes even more damage from the same hit as any other vehicle, making it more expensive to drive around.

 
Old Crow said:
If you consider it a "cheap way to represent losing control," wouldn't that be a feature?
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You got a point there. "feature" just has that positive ring to it and the implication that there is some implementation behind it. My guess is that Faatal just changed physics parameters until the bike would get instable at a specific point and the physics engine did the rest. This assumes that Unity has a physics library they just used.

But no matter my reluctance, factually it would be a feature.

 
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meganoth said:
It is not a feature. It may just be a very cheap way to represent losing control. And new players will just observe the vehicle going wild when they don't drive carefully and then adapt. Being a new player doesn't mean that person has an IQ below 50 and the obstinacy of a lemming.

Just because all new players are too dumb (in your opinion) to find this website doesn't mean they can't drive a motorbike in 7D2D.
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But that's the whole point. You're NOT losing control, nor should you be because you can get excessive wobble while driving perfectly normally and sensibly.

The wobble has no meaningful link to a loss of control. It is neither proportional nor indicative.

While a new player may not realize this, they WILL figure it out quickly enough to ignore it. But it still looks stupid as hell. It's not fun. I'm trying to drive and here I am flopping and flailing all over the screen, even though I'm still in full control of the vehicle and not doing anything wild at all.

Also, nobody said new players are dumb - your words not mine - I said they wouldn't know about the official forums, certainly not right after getting the game. Even if they did figure that out quickly doesn't necessarily mean they would come here to ask about it. Maybe they'd try Steam or Reddit first (and indeed there have been occasional threads mentioning the excessive wobble on Reddit). 

So they come and ask? So what does that do? They would end up in the same conversation we're having right now, which is essentially.

"This looks really stupid and fake, even by the game's own standards."

"Well, it's supposed to be like that."

 
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Loving the new setting! I really hope they add more stuff like Zombie spawn, wildlife spawn, trader cost etc 

I mostly want the zombie spawn! I need that 3x zombies when console/ optimization comes out! 

 
FramFramson said:
"This looks really stupid and fake, even by the game's own standards."

"Well, it's supposed to be like that."
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I didn’t read anyone claiming that the wobble is supposed to be the intended feature. They speculated that if it is intended as it is, then it may have been a cheap and dirty way to do it. 
 

Until a dev weighs in, none of us can know if it is a bug, a work in progress, or the intended design and I don’t see anyone claiming to know that it is supposed to be like that—- only speculation that it might be like that on purpose. 
 

It’s definitely not a universal problem. Only some people complain about it just like only some people complain about having to constantly use repair kits—which is why these conversations typically devolve into offers of driving lessons… ;)

 
Roland said:
It’s definitely not a universal problem. Only some people complain about it just like only some people complain about having to constantly use repair kits—which is why these conversations typically devolve into offers of driving lessons… ;)
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Most players never even get on the forums to complain, but they sure do complain to the admins of their servers.

 
Roland said:
I didn’t read anyone claiming that the wobble is supposed to be the intended feature. They speculated that if it is intended as it is, then it may have been a cheap and dirty way to do it. 
 

Until a dev weighs in, none of us can know if it is a bug, a work in progress, or the intended design and I don’t see anyone claiming to know that it is supposed to be like that—- only speculation that it might be like that on purpose. 
 

It’s definitely not a universal problem. Only some people complain about it just like only some people complain about having to constantly use repair kits—which is why these conversations typically devolve into offers of driving lessons… ;)
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Well it's not completely clear what position meganoth is taking here, but a number of us have expressed our opinions that the wobble looks stupid as hell and meganoth's replies obviously take issue with this.

It doesn't really matter if the rubberband wobbling was intentional or just bad physics implementation (I suspect that latter, but obviously have no means of proving this), it's ridiculous enough to be noticed and discussed either way.

Personally, I'm getting more curious about two things:

1) What are the barriers to a mod looking to fix this?

2) How do motorbikes in mod packages which add vehicles handle? I should install one to test this quick.

 
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FramFramson said:
Also, nobody said new players are dumb - your words not mine
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I may have been misunderstanding your words, but what else does that mean:

FramFramson said:
It's not just a "looks goofy" problem, it's a legitimate functional issue, at least for a newer player.
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This sounds like a new player will not be able to adopt to this driving as easy as a veteran or have exceptional problems with it, i.e. **functional** problems. Usual "functional" does not mean a problem with understanding why something is but operating something, don't you agree?

But since you have explained it more, this is probably not what you meant and I can readily agree that this was just me reading too much into an ambiguous wording of yours.

FramFramson said:
Well it's not completely clear what position meganoth is taking here, but a number of us have expressed our opinions that the wobble looks stupid as hell and meganoth's replies obviously take issue with this.
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I never said anything about the stupidity of the wobble, no idea how you got to that. All I ever talked about was your claim about what problems new players were having and theories of why that wobble may be in the game right now

 
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FramFramson said:
But that's the whole point. You're NOT losing control, nor should you be because you can get excessive wobble while driving perfectly normally and sensibly.

The wobble has no meaningful link to a loss of control. It is neither proportional nor indicative.

While a new player may not realize this, they WILL figure it out quickly enough to ignore it. But it still looks stupid as hell. It's not fun. I'm trying to drive and here I am flopping and flailing all over the screen, even though I'm still in full control of the vehicle and not doing anything wild at all.
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I am playing with my 12 y/o and I let him drive all vehicles including the gyro. He never complained (day 80+ on our server).

Also, many people think that ground vehicles are a fast way to escape from any situation without damage, health loss, barriers and stuff. It should not be accepted as so. 

 
Guppycur said:
Am I late to @%$#ing about permadeath not wiping ownership of chests and stuff?
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I not tries update yet. Probably shouldn't even type this until I do but meh... I imagine if you started a a group and you placed the land claim and such down and you die and lost ownership then all chest and doors would be locked and others in the group are locked out of everything. So they are screwed just because you died. 

With that said it could be handled where it just passes on to whoever is in group or whatever. But at the same time unless you specifically put rules on yourself not to do it. What is to stop you from getting invite back to group and everything back to the same. So at that point why bother coding it. 

For people that do single player obviously the above means nothing. So idk they could do it for that purpose. Or at least do settings or something. 

 
beerfly said:
I am playing with my 12 y/o and I let him drive all vehicles including the gyro. He never complained (day 80+ on our server).

Also, many people think that ground vehicles are a fast way to escape from any situation without damage, health loss, barriers and stuff. It should not be accepted as so. 
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If we want driving to be more difficult, that's a different question. All I'm talking about is the fact that it looks dumb and that dumbness serves no gameplay purpose, because as you say, it's easy. You're not actually losing control you're just weeble-wobbling down the road like a goofus.

meganoth said:
This sounds like a new player will not be able to adopt to this driving as easy as a veteran or have exceptional problems with it, i.e. **functional** problems. Usual "functional" does not mean a problem with understanding why something is but operating something, don't you agree?
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It's not a severe functional issue, because it's fairly easy to learn it's just a quirk of the game and ignore it. But the animation being fundamentally non-representative of the state of the vehicle or player means this isn't a purely cosmetic issue, however minor.

 
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