PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary

Status
Not open for further replies.
Uncle Al said:
Oh horde night zombies won't spawn on water, so theoretically flooding your courtyard would work. That's a bit of a pain to do with the messed up water mechanics but something I'm definitely going to try once new water is in.
Click to expand...
this brings up an interesting question, as the front page states

All new water coding--water is no longer a block but a water voxel
Click to expand...
Whatever this change means, would that impact whether zombies could spawn on water in A21? (if shallow enough)

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Snowydeath said:
I think you're right about the fact that water is trivial in the game. You don't have to do much in order to be stocked up on water the way it is currently. Plus it's another item that won't clog up the inventory space too so that's a bonus!
Click to expand...


While I like the idea of not having all these jars, I think water should be trivial... past the first week or so.  It shouldn't be so scarce that we are spending a significant amount of time on water acquisition all the way into late game.  Rather it should be kept as it is, one of the first problems that players need to solve on their way to mid-game.

I mean, one could say that shelter is trivial.  It doesn't take much to maintain a base once established, especially if one decides to do horde night on a throw-away structure away from the main base.

What I'm saying is that it isn't a problem if water becomes trivial after the first week or so.  By then we should have solved the water problem and are instead working on the food problem or the antibiotics problem or the better tools problem or the raw materials problem.  There are plenty of things to try to find mid to late game without having to constantly worry about water.

 
Uncle Al said:
The solution appears to be to pave inside your walls.  Horde night zombies have to spawn on dirt, rock, asphalt, topsoil or snow.  There might be some other viable materials but generally speaking paving your courtyard stops the problem of spawns inside the walls. Even a wood floor will do the job.
Click to expand...


Appreciate this insight, but we shouldn't have to pave the entirety of our land claimed areas to prevent horde spawns.  Land claims should negate blood moon spawning by default, or at least trigger a recalculation of the distance from players at which spawns occur to adjust for spots that are within a land claim.

 
Cr0wst0rm said:
That problem is bit more complicated, because if they are not allowed to spawn on soil that occupies your land claim area, they could spawn outside of streamed terrain and fall out of world...
Click to expand...


Yeah, that occurred to me the more I thought about it.  So we're back again to the idea that instead of extending the distance of spawns, just have the spawn logic run a check to see if the ground it wants to use falls inside a land claim.  Then it can move the spawns in another direction to a space that isn't land claimed, is still in the active chunk, and retains the max range allowance to prevent spawns outside of the streamed terrain.  That way even if players are standing at the edge of a land claim zone, it won't put the spawns behind them and inside the zone (and potentially inside their base).  

The spawn conditions could feasibly consist of:

- Within ~35 blocks of players

- Within active chunk

- On terrain (solves for potential issue where occupied POIs can still spawn the horde inside)

- Not in a land claimed / bedroll radius

And to anyone thinking "oh this won't be abused at all" then consider what happens if you were to pave most of an active chunk to limit or prevent blood moon spawns altogether.  The current system has its own potential exploits.  I just want to stop having zombies appear inside of my walls.

Edit: I would even throw in an anti-exploit condition that says if and only if all the checks above fail and there's no ground available for spawns to migrate to, then the land claim / on terrain parameters get overridden to prevent people from trying to cover a chunk in land claims or pave everything and totally stop all spawns.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
DanLW said:
While I like the idea of not having all these jars, I think water should be trivial... past the first week or so.  It shouldn't be so scarce that we are spending a significant amount of time on water acquisition all the way into late game.  Rather it should be kept as it is, one of the first problems that players need to solve on their way to mid-game.

I mean, one could say that shelter is trivial.  It doesn't take much to maintain a base once established, especially if one decides to do horde night on a throw-away structure away from the main base.

What I'm saying is that it isn't a problem if water becomes trivial after the first week or so.  By then we should have solved the water problem and are instead working on the food problem or the antibiotics problem or the better tools problem or the raw materials problem.  There are plenty of things to try to find mid to late game without having to constantly worry about water.
Click to expand...


That is exactly what the A21 change accomplished. In A20 water was trivial and solved on Day 1. In A21 it will take about a week or two (depending on settings) to solve the water issue and make it trivial for the rest of the game. The process of getting the dew collectors going is interesting as well and adds to the "to do" list of early game tasks.

 
Good Day Everyone, 

I just got caught up reading the 81 monstrous pages of this diary. It was nice to read what is coming and see everyone's thoughts. I am really looking forward to A21 and can't wait to see how things play out. 

For the crafting skills getting their own magazines: I am a crafter, through and through. I take Adv. Eng. and Grease Monkey to level three and four respectively every game play for electric goodies and Motorcycles. So we will have to see how the perks get rebalanced. I am guessing a fairly decent shift in my gameplay though.

For the WaterBottleGate: I see this as a positive. It will be difference at first not having multiple stacks of 125 bottles at any given time, but we adjust. I do think that the new workstation is very cool and look forward to trying it out. 

I do have an idea/ question about a change that I can see as useful. IMHO it would be beneficial to be able to choose what level you craft items at. So, if you can make lvl 5, you can make an item Level 1 - 5. One reason is material cost. As it is now, it goes up as the level goes up. And when you don't have enough of something,  you can make a lower level one and still improve your gear. Also, you may be making an additional workstation (for example) and need a hammer. If you don't have any hammer, you can always make one, but why make a lvl 5 hammer, just to throw into a workbench? 

I totally get it if it is seen as below the scope of intent. And I agree that it is a total QoL change, but QoL is a thing! 

Thank you for all the hard work you all do! And nice to have some time to post again.

 
Games'n'Grumble said:
Hello, @faatal! You have already answered that DLSS and FSR are unlikely to be included in 7DTD, but what do you think about XeSS, a new technology being developed by Intel? Are the same principles used there?

And also please tell us what you have been working on lately and what are you working on now? :)
Click to expand...
If it is not a new technology being developed by Unity using the built in render pipeline (old, so they won't), then it would be a no. Or some driver level feature that works outside the game.

 
faatal said:
Thanks for the info. I looked at that today and in testing, it both looked worse and had lower FPS than just switching to a lower resolution. FSR 2 is probably much better, but it appears a lot more complicated to integrate.
Click to expand...


Yeah FSR 1 is rather lackluster; evidently, they made a lot of changes in FSR 2 that make it way better.

 
NekoPawtato said:
I might be overthinking this but I noticed in the pictures about learn by looting there is a section for "harvesting tools" and "blades"

A hunting knife is both a blade and used to harvest meat/corpses/etc so... do both trees increase crafting lvl of hunting knife? 

Similarly I think steel knuckles can also harvest, so would that be both knuckles and harvest tool trees?

Or stone axe as both a repair tool and a harvest tool?
Click to expand...
No overlap, but it would be nice if bone knives and hunting knives felt more like weapons and less like just tools. I do like that they can pull double duty as both, but that tree doesn't feel like an actual weapon until you get a machete.

 
Old Crow said:
No overlap, but it would be nice if bone knives and hunting knives felt more like weapons and less like just tools. I do like that they can pull double duty as both, but that tree doesn't feel like an actual weapon until you get a machete.
Click to expand...
Just curious what you mean by the knives don't feel like weapons. What is it about them (besides using them to slash/stab zombies to damage and cause bleeds) that would make them feel more like weapons?

 
No one wants to talk about the details more than me but alas I cannot.

Maybe if someone could figure out what 7 Brutus Denied 5 means I could work up something new...

 
Roland said:
No one wants to talk about the details more than me but alas I cannot.

Maybe if someone could figure out what 7 Brutus Denied 5 means I could work up something new...
Click to expand...
Alright I have 4 interpretations:

1- Safe haven for players from the horde for a price. 

2- A new quest.

3- Camouflage feature of some kind.

4- Ranged bandits.

(Edit: Actually, 5. Death penalty has been revisited and improved to a more challenging one, with maybe a new set of options with various degrees of punishment. That one wouldn't come as a HUGE surprise though, just a mildly awesome one).

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Last edited by a moderator:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top