PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[meganoth]

I didn't say anything about a foolproof AI (it's that "all or nothing" you have).

Only a foolproof AI is one where all "exploits" do not exist, you specifically said at first that this was only one example of many you could list "That is just the easiest to understand example I can think of".

You also first said "The zombie AI does not adapt to the players constructs or methods .... ". Simple randomization of behaviour is not **adapting** to the players constructs, not as I understand that word.

But I'm fine with saying I misunderstood you.

Also, I don't look down on the current AI (that's your strawman on what I'm trying to do)

I guess some lore on what the blood moon really is would be helpful, but missing that...

As zombie vision should be very poor to non-existent (it's the first sense that goes when people are dying) some zombies might go to the new bridge if its close.  Most would become enraged and attack the first bridge area for a while.  The blood moon might be goading (and/or guiding) the primitive "lizard brain" of the zombies to attack certain areas.

If the Blood Moon is an Intelligence that's trying to kill the player, the zombies might dig under the building as well.  But it's a game, so FUN must always win.

SO, with each bridge switch fewer and fewer zombies would go and just rage attack the walls.

I'm not sure, but when I implemented such a two-bridge thingy only part of the zombies came over to the other side. Maybe I was just misconstructing the bridges but I assumed this randomization was already in place in A20. That is why I thought you wanted that behaviour completely blocked.

I am fine with any randomization as long as it doesn't invalidate the exploit in general. Because for me those are not exploits but the hooks the player can use to make more efficient base designs, i.e. one way of beating the game by intelligent construction.

Late game most people have literal tons of ammo.  I always thought BM hordes were to sink some of the extra ammo away from the players.

Thats a balance issue between giving newbies enough ammo so they don't get frustrated at having not enough ammo for their M60 and making ammo scarce even for veterans. Almost impossible and why I think the loot abundance setting should automatically be lower in higher difficulties (and include mining returns). Not to make people mine more but to make a veteran save on ammo.

 

[sillls]

Hardcore-Survival Players tend to assume EVERYTHING is trying to F them so no real surprise there...

That's because it's true! lol 

It is hardcore for a reason you know.   

 

[Fanatical_Meat]

Come on Pimps give us some kind of update and don’t get me started on “when it’s done”

 

[Games'n'Grumble]

Let me guess....that's the time after the last air drop where the supply plane gave you a box full of cornbread 

Almost. Actually, this is a quest POI with 9 burning zombie ferals. But in general, you are right, for those "rich" airdrops that they throw off, it serves them right!

 

[eciggy]

Do we have any sort of idea of which quarter Alpha 21 may arrive in? I know it is a longshot but needed to ask because I'm getting twitchy waiting for this.

 

[Uncle Al]

Thats a balance issue between giving newbies enough ammo so they don't get frustrated at having not enough ammo for their M60 and making ammo scarce even for veterans. Almost impossible and why I think the loot abundance setting should automatically be lower in higher difficulties (and include mining returns). Not to make people mine more but to make a veteran save on ammo.

I'm all for keeping them separate to allow flexibility in options settings, but I agree loot abundance needs to affect, or have additional settings for, mining, salvaging and quest rewards. Currently I know that reducing loot immediately optimises a 'quest/salvage/trade' playstyle and although I could work around this (no trader run) it would be great if I could play the entirety of the game at higher scarcity without having to self impose 'no trader' or 'no salvaging' rules.

Non monetary quest rewards are a bit tricky but it could be done. Give each reward a chance to be downgraded one or more tiers (chance based on how far below 100% loot is set to), and if it goes below tier 1 it's replaced with 'my undying gratitude'. Although you'll always pick the rewards that aren't nothing, you'll still significantly reduce the chances of getting an optimal reward.

If all sources of loot are equally reduced you don't actually have to affect barter prices as they'll self adjust.

 

[Riamus]

Laz ...why are runways an issue......they are only 1 block deep.....whats the max size of a tile again. You dont need a major airport....the country is dotted with small municipal and rural airports.......even some are in small runway communities with peoples garages as hangars. you have undriveable derelict cars...mnake a destroyed plane.....salvage parts or find parts at the airport to build the copter.

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It depends what you want for realism. The shortest commercial runway in the world is just under 400m.  Even were you to use 200m for POI size, which can be problematic, you are still at half the length. 

That isn't to say you can't make it work. You can have it shorter and many players wouldn't know the difference.  You can also do what I had suggested a while back and fill in parts of the end of the runway with dirt or sand, starting with one or two and increasing until the end is fully replaced.  This can make it look like the end of the runway just got fully covered by dirt or sand or snow, which can be realistic.  The only issue there is you don't want anything at the end of your POI that makes it clear the runway doesn't continue on for a long ways under the dirt.

 

[Matt115]

I have no idea what that is supposed to mean.

What has that to do with a horde night base?

it was a test how zombie will behave and it was rly... strange. 

I was not on a ladder when I had built a sniper tower. I was standing on the top of the tower looking down and shooting zombies in the head. Yes, it is a vertical death corridor but since a sniper weapon gives you exactly this capability to shoot through multiple zombies in a line it can hardly be called an exploit. I mean why add this perk power if you are not supposed to use it? By the way, building the tower so it works is not trivial and then using the tower in a horde night is not without danger either. So it isn't  just "exploitily" shooting fish in a barrel. But it is effective

To be honest - this sounds like  gyrocopter use but gyrocopter have more sense. Well dawn of living dead character were using helicopter to avoid zombie horde - so super vultures was rly bad idea - it would be better to 1) just accept that by devs 2) remove gyrocopter.  making tower so force zombies to use ladder sounds kind like exploiting - more logical would be if zombies would trying to collapse such building if there is no stairs

A demo will go through  those wood spikes unhindered and destroy them, and surrounding your base with 30 lines of spikes is a massive amount of boring work. And since the spikes do not do much damage you still have to kill most of the zombies one by one with lots of ammo, especially glowies who will surely heal faster than the damage they get from the spikes.

30 lines during chainsaw tier. then you increase more and more because you can use chainsaw plus more trees.  so yeah put barbed wire and use sniper rilfe is good enough.  So you just kill "big ones" - vultures, glows, fat.  normal zombies , spiders and doggos will just die from spikes

What does a horde night base have to do with normal nights?

Well during normal night you can have chances to get screamer and small horde too - so this mean reapair

What I am saying is that you plus a base that is optimized for your weapons and/or has lots of automated damage as well should by logic be more efficient that you alone.

And so I just don't believe you when you say that you play the most efficient way. You maybe play the most efficient way that you know.

from logical point of view? the most effective. From "gameplay" point of view? who know -  in Age of empire 2 DE the best option of defence is keep soldiers in siedge tower you transport above your own walls or use them as armored armor -  logical? ofc not. Effective? yeah 

So if there is option to use strange shaps of walls to exploit zombies? yes i saw many of such fortress on yt. it this does have sense? no. but this is sign that someone can exploit zombie AI rly good.  

strange example - in Call to arms ostfront i learned how to spam mines to destroy enemy tanks that i had nothing to do because script doesn't allow to more tanks to shows up and i fast cleaned inflantry so i could get even enemy heavy artilery because script teleported that. So this mean that i'm good at this game? no i just know how to exploit vehicles 

 

[Ouch Quit It]

A Tile is 150x150 in size.  A believable run way imo would need to be at least 300m in length.

From an art perspective, I would imagine we would need destroyed airplane models, baggage carts, carousels, etc. just to name a few.

Basically a new category of art to support one brand new type of POI.  

Could we hodge podge some shapes together to create some of that? Perhaps, but not at the current standards our other categories are currently at.

Could still happen, just unlikely for 1.0 is all.  Game has been in dev for a long time already as is.

So why cant airports be built like city blocks and use 2 or 3 or more tiles having runways. But I think just small rural/suburban airports would fill the gap nicely....cessna size....we dont need a 767 landing strip .....is 150 blocks enough of a take off landing for the copter.....then thats all we need. The ones I made were 200 blocks long.....ok removing 50 blocks takes away a sizeable chunk,,,but........I still think its doable at that size . If you are talking realism....where else would you find aircraft parts in game...except at an airport.....makes sense to me. 

Coughs * AIRPORT POI * Coughs

 

[Riamus]

So why cant airports be built like city blocks and use 2 or 3 or more tiles having runways. But I think just small rural/suburban airports would fill the gap nicely....cessna size....we dont need a 767 landing strip .....is 150 blocks enough of a take off landing for the copter.....then thats all we need. The ones I made were 200 blocks long.....ok removing 50 blocks takes away a sizeable chunk,,,but........I still think its doable at that size . If you are talking realism....where else would you find aircraft parts in game...except at an airport.....makes sense to me. 

Coughs * AIRPORT POI * Coughs

Why would an airport be built just for the gyrocopters?  These should have been there before the downfall, so would be built for normal planes.  If you wanted to say it was built after the fall specifically for gyrocopters, that's fine, but you wouldn't have a tower or terminal and if you had a hangar, it would be small.  I mean, I did build a runway at my base with runway lights and a tower just because I felt like it, but it was hardly realistic to do so.

You aren't going to land many planes on a runway under 400m other than something like a kit plane, which would be a similar idea to the gyrocopter and might have been in someone's yard, but not set up like an airport.

As to why you can't use tiles... There is currently no way to control tile placement other than manually adding them to a map.  If they added a way to control tile placement in RWG, then this would be an easy thing to do.  Right now, you can't even have more than one type of gateway tile, meaning you are going to have the same kind of tile on your airport as on your towns, which will look odd.

No one is saying you can't make an airport and put it on your map manually.  You have shown it can be done.  It just isn't all that good an option in randomly created maps right now.  I think adding control to tile placement would be a great option as it allows for far more than just airports, but we will see if they agree. 

And I think that if TFP makes their own airport POI, it needs to make sense realistically and not just be an unrealistically short runway.

 

[Roland]

Do we have any sort of idea of which quarter Alpha 21 may arrive in? I know it is a longshot but needed to ask because I'm getting twitchy waiting for this.

Yes. Take out a quarter and flip it.

Heads: Its done when its done.

Tails: Its not done until its done.

Spoiler

They've already stated they are in final bug fixing mode so it isn't that far off at this point.

 

[meganoth]

it was a test how zombie will behave and it was rly... strange. 

To be honest - this sounds like  gyrocopter use but gyrocopter have more sense. Well dawn of living dead character were using helicopter to avoid zombie horde - so super vultures was rly bad idea - it would be better to 1) just accept that by devs 2) remove gyrocopter.  making tower so force zombies to use ladder sounds kind like exploiting - more logical would be if zombies would trying to collapse such building if there is no stairs

The gyro can't be used for killing zombies (you can't shoot from it) and on horde night it will be unusable anyway. I don't see a connection with a tower horde base. As I said a tower horde base is still a design where the player is in danger and has to work for the zombies not reaching him. And the ladders get damage, if all ways up are destroyed they will attack the base and try to collapse it. 

30 lines during chainsaw tier. then you increase more and more because you can use chainsaw plus more trees.  so yeah put barbed wire and use sniper rilfe is good enough.  So you just kill "big ones" - vultures, glows, fat.  normal zombies , spiders and doggos will just die from spikes

Well during normal night you can have chances to get screamer and small horde too - so this mean reapair

If you don't protect your base, yes. Many players have a separate crafting base and naturally need some protection for it, but usually much much less than for a horde base.

from logical point of view? the most effective. From "gameplay" point of view? who know -  in Age of empire 2 DE the best option of defence is keep soldiers in siedge tower you transport above your own walls or use them as armored armor -  logical? ofc not. Effective? yeah 

So if there is option to use strange shaps of walls to exploit zombies? yes i saw many of such fortress on yt. it this does have sense? no. but this is sign that someone can exploit zombie AI rly good.  

strange example - in Call to arms ostfront i learned how to spam mines to destroy enemy tanks that i had nothing to do because script doesn't allow to more tanks to shows up and i fast cleaned inflantry so i could get even enemy heavy artilery because script teleported that. So this mean that i'm good at this game? no i just know how to exploit vehicles 

The question with all your examples is if they were part of the balance of the game or an unintended exploit that gave the player too much power, but was left in for some other reason.

I am pretty sure that a funnel base, a tower design, a large pit are part of the game as it is envisioned by TFP and even if there were very easy ways to make them impossible they would stay in the game. They are not necessarily realistic and if you analyse them with real world logic you will fail and may call them exploits. But they are not. Because they are not designed to be realistic simulations of a battle against zombies.

The logic I was argumenting with, by the way, was basic mathematical logic of the kind that A + B will always be greater or equal to A with A and B positive numbers.

 

[Matt115]

The gyro can't be used for killing zombies (you can't shoot from it) and on horde night it will be unusable anyway. I don't see a connection with a tower horde base. As I said a tower horde base is still a design where the player is in danger and has to work for the zombies not reaching him. And the ladders get damage, if all ways up are destroyed they will attack the base and try to collapse it. 

Okay - gyrocopter should ultimate reward. LIke artifact ball in The forest - usualy defence end with wipe up or evac in most zombie games and films. "TV tropes" - so if someone manage to get it and "ran away " all blood moon it should be some type of reward ofc then gyro should be 100x more expensive and harder to make + use a lot of gas but this would both this and " get to the roof " problem. 

yeah ladders get damage but usualy are smart enough to not hit them enough to brake it - just everything else except ladder 

The question with all your examples is if they were part of the balance of the game or an unintended exploit that gave the player too much power, but was left in for some other reason.

I am pretty sure that a funnel base, a tower design, a large pit are part of the game as it is envisioned by TFP and even if there were very easy ways to make them impossible they would stay in the game. They are not necessarily realistic and if you analyse them with real world logic you will fail and may call them exploits. But they are not. Because they are not designed to be realistic simulations of a battle against zombies.

The logic I was argumenting with, by the way, was basic mathematical logic of the kind that A + B will always be greater or equal to A with A and B positive numbers.

 12:27 - this looks like typical use of exploit of enemy AI. and it's new version because Zombie Tom Clark.  this was called corridor too. And very not realistic hah. But large pit can work - well it was in TWD "by accident"  - just depend what you mean but large

Well literaly there is nothing to do except building for just aestetic. It will be added new biomes in next update but who know what will be later

But returing to point - i was thinking what is wrong and good in both games - no i don't what to change 7dtd into valheim or valheim into 7dtd but "copy" some solutions is nothing bad - well that's how cars industry was working. 

I would explain more about that but i feel too tired - 10 km walk today

 

[WarWren]

When people make the statement "7 days to Die has problems" they should rather say I have problems with 7 days to die. And those problems are THEIR problems because others don't necessarily feel the same. 

 

[meganoth]

Okay - gyrocopter should ultimate reward. LIke artifact ball in The forest - usualy defence end with wipe up or evac in most zombie games and films. "TV tropes" - so if someone manage to get it and "ran away " all blood moon it should be some type of reward ofc then gyro should be 100x more expensive and harder to make + use a lot of gas but this would both this and " get to the roof " problem. 

yeah ladders get damage but usualy are smart enough to not hit them enough to brake it - just everything else except ladder 

Remember I was there, I built such a tower. And I saw them destroy ladders during the horde night. I needed to build parallel ladders nearly up to the tower top so they had alternatives.

 12:27 - this looks like typical use of exploit of enemy AI. and it's new version because Zombie Tom Clark.  this was called corridor too. And very not realistic hah. But large pit can work - well it was in TWD "by accident"  - just depend what you mean but large

Yes, that looks exploity. That you can show me an exploit with a corridor does not mean every corridor is an exploit.

 

[IzPrebuilt]

When people make the statement "7 days to Die has problems" they should rather say I have problems with 7 days to die. And those problems are THEIR problems because others don't necessarily feel the same. 

If you actually watched the video you'd see that they're going through the steam reviews to gauge the community opinion. The title "i have problems with 7dtd" would have literally been innaccurate.

 

[WarWren]

If you actually watched the video you'd see that they're going through the steam reviews to gauge the community opinion. The title "i have problems with 7dtd" would have literally been innaccurate.

True, but I was responding precisely to that statement. 

 

[RipClaw]

When people make the statement "7 days to Die has problems" they should rather say I have problems with 7 days to die. And those problems are THEIR problems because others don't necessarily feel the same. 

This is not always true. There are things that can be described as a problem that have nothing to do with a personal opinion. For example, bugs.

You always have to put it in context.

 

[beerfly]

Acid Rain!

Wait ! A buff that adds some sort of health degradation during rain (temporary), to make us go inside a POI or under a roof, but full of zeds/bandits, while full of loot and crap. This is excellent idea, mate. 

Also, just when a one feels save at a situation described above, a short "quack" sound from near our feet goes out. For pure cold sweat and panic.  

 

[RipClaw]

Wait ! A buff that adds some sort of health degradation during rain (temporary), to make us go inside a POI or under a roof, but full of zeds/bandits, while full of loot and crap. This is excellent idea, mate.

This might be a bit difficult to implement with the current weather system. Currently you can't tell if it's raining in the game or if the sun is shining. You can only determine if the character is wet or dry.