PC V2.0 Storms Brewing Dev Diary

[TWORDY]

Damn. I launched the game for 15 min and I must tell the experience is butter smooth in Navez 6144x6144. Am I seeing much less trees on the map? This might be actually good for me. No FSR 3.1 and 4.0... only 3.0

I have a feeling this is going to be my favorite update so far.

 

[KirillWright]

First impression, the game is still very bright at 0 brightness setting (in some places even too much) I would like to see more darkness and less moments with crazy brightness during the day!

 

[Riamus]

Overall thoughts so far...

I had to set FSR 3 to no upscaling to get rid of serious flickering on certain buildings in the distance. And trees look really weird until you are close to them. I can live with that, but maybe they can improve those. However, the spacing on the trees and plants and grouping together in spots really looks great. That's a nice improvement.

I seem to be seeing far fewer animals than normal in the forest. RNG was bad to me... got a grill almost immediately, but had to finally craft a pot on the forge so I had something to drink... only to find one about 5-10 minutes later. Lol!

I've seen some of the new POI and they look really nice. Performance is good. Hard to say if it's improved since I'm running at a 30FPS cap to avoid most fluctuations in FPS and mostly hold steady at 30FPS with medium to high settings (mostly high). So I can't really say if it's better than in the past. I could try removing the cap and see how it performs, but I haven't done that in a long time and probably won't know if it's better or not. But it still performs well for my system.

I killed a burning zombie in the burnt forest on day one with a Q1 stone spear. That was a challenge. They seem to be harder to kill than in the past. That's not a bad thing. I definitely wouldn't spend time trying to unlock the protection for the burnt forest until I had better equipment.

I can't really comment on the perks because none of the new or changed ones are ones I would take right away and I'm only on the beginning of day 2 (2 hour days). So I've mostly only put points into spears and I took one rank of parkour.

Overall, it looks and plays well. Not really any different feel from 1.4, though. Maybe that'll change when I'm a bit higher level and start going into other biomes, but I think it'll mostly just be the same as before and so not really a significantly new experience the way 1.0 was. But still not bad.

 

[Adam the Waster]

seem to be seeing far fewer animals than normal in the forest. RNG was bad to me... got a grill almost immediatel

I was watching a streamer and I saw like 4 animals as he was getting mauled

I'm glad hogs spawn but still wish there was a little dangerous wildlife

And I'm glad Mr crispy got a buff he was laughable before but sense ferals can set you on fire they are going to be scary

 

[Arma Rex]

Did the pig get added into the game yet? The model has been teased since the 1.0 development. Any news on that?

 

[Dark Sun]

I just finished my third day in 2.0 experimental. I'm running a spear/rifle/explosives build, with the plan to expand into salvaging, machine guns, and farming. They were pretty typical for me - questing, some resource grinding, again I unlocked the bicycle and workbench before finishing the T1 job line from Rekt (thank you, RNGesus). Some notable differences between 1.4 and 2.0 I've noticed so far:

1) Flower fields are rarer, but they are so much larger! Also, thank you for making goldenrod as plentiful as chrysanthemum. It made little sense to me before that one flowering type was rarer than the other. Is it just me, or are stumps more common, as well?

2) Lumberjacks can spawn at nighttime in the pine forest, presumably feral versions as well. Scary stuff, definitely not complaining!

3) Do zombies rage a heck of a lot more in this version? I'm on warrior difficulty, and almost every encounter I've had with a zombie has involved them sprinting after me in only a hit or two. It keeps me on my toes!

4) The correct ammo type for the weapon you're specced into seems to be working at long last? It seemed very uniform in 1.4. I'll have to do some further playing to have a solid answer for this observation, though.

Overall, it seems like a solid update so far, and I can't wait to sink my teeth into it more!

Bonus - Some notable lucky early game drops:

1) Wrench on day 2 inside a car
2) A beaker and 3 acid inside the Cook's Residence on day 2
3) Several first aid bandages on the first day very early on

 

[Treb]

Did 7 days.

Love the new sledge books.

Pack mule seems very strong early gamer. I feel like it shouldn't be maxable at 5 strenght or the percentage needs to go down a smidge. I made very dumb moves and pack mules definitely saved me.

 

[Dark Sun]

Did 7 days.

Love the new sledge books.

Pack mule seems very strong early gamer. I feel like it shouldn't be maxable at 5 strenght or the percentage needs to go down a smidge. I made very dumb moves and pack mules definitely saved me.

Faatal commented up above that Pack Mule changes are coming.

 

[zztong]

Good news for custom POI -- From what I've tested so far, custom POI work without needing to be updated. [...] I'm not seeing any POI with missing blocks in the POI Editor, though I have of course not tested anywhere near all the custom POI, so there may still be some problems.

I ran the various "prefabupdate" commands first thing and got 0 block changes across around 240 POIs. That doesn't always tell me about missing blocks, but there weren't any block replacements.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 8:04 PM

apparently uninstall didn't uninstall the custom prefabs folder.... my bad as expected!!.. thanks.

If you mean folders under AppData they don't get deleted. They're yours, not the game's.

 

[bdubyah]

Pack Mule having anything to do with damage mitigation just seems weird to me. I get trying to give it value as no one really used it before but I don't think this was the answer. Why not make it so pocket mods cannot open the whole backpack so that at least a few levels of PM are still required?

 

[zztong]

are real rivers completely gone in RWG? There are the small looking prefab rivers for the bridges but no really long ones?

The "S" oxbow river stamp is still there. I saw it in my test worlds and I think RWG was scaling it larger than it had in the past. There might have been one or two more lake stamps, but I didn't make a study of it.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 8:08 PM

Like this?

Hehe! That's not a river. Those are two islands close together.

 

[Riamus]

LA finally splitting off into the ocean?

 

[beerfly]

Stopped 1 hour before first blood moon. Almost 5 AM irl time here, need to sleep.

So far 2.0 is impressive, some balance of the perks is welcome as some guys above stated.

Thanks Pimps for another great version, keep up the good work !

 

[khzmusik]

So far I like a lot about this update, but there is one change that I absolutely can't stand: that there is a delay now between when you hit something to harvest a resource, and the sound that happens when you actually get that resource. It's maybe half a second.

Does anyone know what this sound is? Frankly as soon as I figure that out, I'm going to make a mod that disables it.

 

[User]

I was concerned before release, but honestly I'm actually really enjoying the systems. I found I didn't have the water on hand to craft smoothies, so I'd just go in and out of the biome to complete the objectives, and then craft a smoothie at my base. I really like the new generation of trees, bushes, mushrooms, etc. Haven't seen the new zombies just yet.

 

[SethPace8]

Can you give us a moment? It is not all doom and gloom. We actually play the game too.

We have already been talking about perk changes. Pack mule is getting changes. Also we are going to buff the light armor perk, because I play agility and I am not spending more than 1 pt in Light armor to only get a durability reduction.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 12:58 PM

I just tried those settings and no error. Do you have any mods? You could try deleting old data. Does another seed work?

I would like to add some more input regarding further balance to other perks as well, along with the preacher gloves. I believe that the level 5 strength mastery perk could use a nerf, either with its 50% damage resistance value and/or its 10 second duration. I also think that the agility's hard target perk could use a nerf. At max level 5 you can have a 50% damage resistance, just by moving, which is effectively almost every fight you will encounter. And with it being an agility perk and resisting that much damage just seems kind of odd to me. I think reducing its percentage damage resistance in half would still make it amazing. Lastly, the "no brainer" choice of an armor slot, the preacher gloves. I always thought it was strange how overpowered the preacher gloves are, especially compared to the other options. At max level 6 you get a whopping 60% damage increase to zombies. On it's own, I think that is way to much of a boost, but then you also factor in that 60% damage increase to ALL zombies and is applied across the board no matter what weapon you are using, unlike some of the other armor damage buffs that are more specific to a type of weapon or type of zombie, and those armor percentage damage increases are the same or LESS than the preacher gloves damage increase, which seems backwards and unbalanced. The preacher gloves damage increase should be less than other armors, solely because of its damage boost versatility.

Thank you guys for taking in the feedback, and all the hard work!

 

[Abnormal Zombie]

You were told this would be the case before you bought the game. This isn't something they were hiding.

View attachment 34556

Do you really think all players seek a FAQ section online about a game before purchasing on console? No.

Decency is simply expected. All of our creations being deleted without control and no option to opt-out of the update is uncalled for.

 

[Space4Ace]

Did the pig get added into the game yet? The model has been teased since the 1.0 development. Any news on that?

The Pig is the only model missing. Grace is in and so is the new coyote (just saw one in the Burnt Forest). The Boar was improved and I like the new model.

 

[Khalagar]

New update good, but man why do the devs hate Int lol

I think this is the only one where you literally just replace your previous perk? So int mastery only has 4 total perks because Perk 4 is replaced instantly by perk 5 which is not great design at all imo. Perk 5 is good, but 4 should like, at least buff Robotic turrets or the drone or something? The turrets are extremely weak late game and the drone literally has zero scaling at all from *anything* in the Int Tree which is really weird

Int in general seems hit pretty hard this patch. It got no new toys at all while the others pretty much all got big stuff, and the only new int perks are, uh, certainly perks that exist? And a lot of the int perks were watered down when they went from 3 to 5 and got no extra value



Pls devs, it is me, the guy who rambles about int every patch. We are so close to int not being the jankiest build in the game, it just needs like an patch unto itself and it will make the other attributes tremble in fear

 

[Abnormal Zombie]

This is an industry standard for software that is still being developed.

You did notice the warning in the store that it was pre-release software yeah?

Typically an "in-development" or "pre-release" warning is received as a caution for bugs or imperfection. I do not see it as "Everything you do and create will be intermittently deleted throughout the year". If I see it that way, other people will too.

First, to answer your question -- 1.4 saves will NOT work in 2.0. That has been verified by the devs.

Now, here are some things to keep in mind...

• You do not HAVE to update your game. You can keep playing on 1.4 until you are ready to update your game. Just turn off the automatic updates on your console for this game. You will not get the new stuff, but that's to be expected. Note that if you do not turn off the updates and allow the game to update, you will not be able to revert back to 1.4 on console.
• This game is designed to be played over and over. You should expect to start new games regularly with this game. It is a very different game than most others out there in that regard. Since that is how it's designed, starting a new game is not really a problem. It just takes getting used to the idea.
• This game is in active development - note the pre-release information about the game. Thing in active development will often require you to start over with any major updates. If that isn't acceptable to you, you can choose not to update the game or to wait to play it until development is complete.
• Only major updates are likely to require a new game. That means 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 and then the game will be complete and you won't have to worry about it again. So that's a total of only 3 restarts that would be required. It will be very rare (likely never happening going forward) to need to restart a game for a minor update like 2.1 or 2.2. Each of these major updates will take a decent amount of time between releases. I'd personally expect around 1 year between, though they want to believe it'll be about 6 months between. That's plenty of time to play a game before starting a new game (most people would play at least a dozen games in that time period).
• As the developer has pointed out in his response here, they try to keep things compatible, but major updates have so many changes that just can't be compatible that it's not feasible. Again, this is not a finished game yet, so this is to be expected.
• Even if you could continue a 1.4 save in 2.0, you'd miss out on the 140 new POI and various other things that wouldn't be in an older map/save, so it is better to start a new game anyhow.
• Look at it as a way to try something different. If you liked building the base, then you'll like building a new one as well. And with your past experience building that one, you'll have ideas of what to try with a new base.
• And although it won't help you since you're on console, on PC it is possible to copy a base and make it a POI you can place back into a new game. If you were to choose to play on a dedicated server, or with a PC hosting, it *may* be possible to have a PC user copy your base and place it onto a new map for you to use. You'll have to redo any wiring and may have to replace things like crates or turrets, but the base itself would still be there for you.

I wouldn't say a game should be expected to be played any particular way, such as being played over and over. Although many players keep the creativity limited to small projects, my cousin and I spent a lot of time in making an elaborate and expensive base in survival. We created a 61x61 pyramid, which we have been working on for the past few months on insane difficulty.

I do appreciate the mention of being able to copy bases on PC. I'll look into that.

Regardless, there will be many unaware people who I think won't realize that they won't even be able to load their old saves. "1.4 saves won't work on 2.0" can be interpreted as 2.0 features not working on the old saves, which is what I thought it meant. That was the small text on the news screen for xbox.

Edit: The game doesn't even need to be backwards compatible. Old save files can be converted into the new format, with special considerations for player profiles. Several hours of the Fun Pimps programming this would save tens of thousands of hours for creative players.