Crater Creator

If I'm going to do a real playthrough rather than just testing, I can't start the map generating until I come up with a cool, original seed name. It has to sound like an ironic or tongue-in-cheek name for a place in a dystopian zombie movie. Names I've used include Crestfall, Desolatia, Pandaemia, Necroponos, and Semper Vitalis. It's illogical since "abc123" would generate a map no better or worse. But I do it anyway, as if it were part of some deep role playing.

Nobody asked, but... after reading this thread I was starting to question my assumption that bows did more damage with longer aiming. I just turned on debug info and confirmed that, thankfully, they do.

Interesting. What's a game that does this?

My attempt to translate: there’s a UI bug. With a certain unspecified dual monitor setup, the start button is visible and enabled while generating the map. If you click start, the game will stop generating the map and launch into the partially generated map. This is not a Pimp Dream, this is a bug. You should file a bug report with the necessary details.

Since you ask, the Pimp Dreams section is for suggestions. I’ll move your thread there.

That’s a good idea!

First, I love this change where smaller block shapes have less HP. I've wanted that since forever, and I don't want to gloss over how awesome it is to have that now. Thank you, Gazz! I don't really share Papa Legba's fear that this will reduce base diversity, because HP isn't the only consideration for a block's shape. Besides aesthetics, there are other properties to consider, including sight lines, what can penetrate, and how zombies move in the presence of a certain shape. Depending on the base design, the HP may not matter for a large majority of the blocks that make up the base. I also anticipated long ago that the move to craft universal blocks that can take any shape would shut the door on material cost being proportional to the shape's size. But now that I'm thinking about it again, I guess the stack sizes are arbitrary. They could do the same thing they did for meat and gas: scale up the numbers enough that you don't need fractions of a unit. Placing a full block depletes your stack of building material by 4 units. Placing a half block or ramp depletes it by 2 units. Placing a pole shape depletes it by 1 unit. The other common sense quality that different shapes could have is smaller shapes having less structural strength than larger shapes. Although given my druthers, I'd rather see structural integrity depend on a block's rotation. E.g. you should only be able to attach a block to a plate or sheet shape on one side. This would cut out a large class of floating base nonsense.

Please limit discussion in this section to the unmodded game. Like Sylen says, there should be a thread where you can ask such questions over in Modding.

When you turn on light performance in the POI editor, it stops rendering the textures of blocks and instead paints them a color based on how many lights hit that surface. That's what I meant by coloring. The shape of these blobs of color is always spherical, even if some lights are directional instead of point lights. You answered my question, though: you think the type of light doesn't affect performance.

As long as we're on the subject, is the coloring you get with light performance turned on accurate for different types of lights? It draws a radius around the light, even if it's a spotlight instead of a point light. Are you on the hook performance-wise anywhere near a light, even if it's a spotlight pointing the other way?

The best way people can help when encountering issues like this is to file a bug report after checking the known issues list.

Please file a formal bug report here, following the instructions: https://community.7daystodie.com/a20-bug-database/

PvP feature? We don't have those. So I, too, wonder about this. Maybe it's easier to balance the range as a proportion of the base item's price? No doubt @Gazz has a reason. I mean an item+mod being worth more than the sum of its parts could make sense, if it required some skill or item to combine them. Then you'd be leveraging something your character build can do, or do more easily, than others can. But you're getting more or less money just for re-packaging how you sell the same stuff. If you were trading with another human player, they'd laugh at you for wanting more money just because you took the 10 seconds to stick the mods on beforehand. Regardless of their overall profit margins, the traders shouldn't be so easily manipulated. We have the converse problem with durability. What would I pay for someone's military armor that's at zero durability? Not nothing, like the trader does, that's for sure! I'd pay full price, minus the cost of a repair kit. Because that's the only added cost for me to have it at full durability. Again, if repairing required a skill or some other significant 'labor cost,' then I could understand the price reduction, but it's almost trivial. In fairness, I haven't re-examined these prices in A20 specifically.

User @omegarte reports they are "having same exact bug as this person" and provides this screenshot. https://imgur.com/a/FMiGOhl

User @omegarte reports they are "having same exact bug as this person" and provides this screenshot. https://imgur.com/a/FMiGOhl

The prefab editor will tell you both the triangle and poly count. You can also turn on light performance to see color coding for how many lights overlap a space. I concur that these are two of the most important performance factors to check.

From the FAQ on the Steam forum: A) Builds Q1: How can I play the latest experimental build?A: Before you read the answer, understand that experimental builds are bleeding edge. Unstable. There will be bugs. It may be unplayable. You may lose your saved game or your world. That’s why it’s not released to everyone, and you have to voluntarily opt in. Still feeling brave? Okay. Right click on the game in your Steam library and navigate to Properties... -> Betas -> latest_experimental. Then Steam will download the experimental build. Note that there is not always an experimental build available.Q2: How can I reject future updates and stay on this build, or play an older build of the game?A: Right click on the game in your Steam library and navigate to Properties... -> Betas. Whatever build you select here is the build you’ll download and play, until you change it. Q3: Do I have to start over with the new Alpha? Can I still play my old saved games? Will they be deleted?A: Your saved games are only expected to work with the Alpha you were playing when you started them. If you don’t want to start over, you can roll back to that earlier Alpha to play your old saved games - see previous question. An update will not delete your saved games.Q4: I want to play the latest stable build, but I don’t see it in the betas tab with the other versions.A: The latest stable build is what users download by default instead of a beta build. Select “None” from the betas tab to download it. Note that you may have seen the same build with the same build number on the betas tab in the past, because the build that is now stable, used to be experimental. Also, remember that if you do nothing and don’t manually opt in to A20, you’ll stay on A19 during the experimental phase. You won’t download anything until later, when A20 goes from experimental to stable.

Perhaps individual slabs of natural slate just vary a lot in thickness and luster? We need a geologist... @DaVegaNL?

When you hit play in Steam, you have the option of starting a launcher instead of the game proper. That launcher has a field under "Game start options" for "Additional parameters". I haven't tried this, but it looks like something that may accept console commands pre-launch.

If you want another idea to steal ... we have all these parts now. I think it would make sense to repair your item with a part for that item. A broken shotgun is repaired with one unit of shotgun parts. A broken auger is repaired with one unit of steel tool parts, etc. This makes sense, doesn't require new art or the bloat of new items, and gives you something to do with e.g. all those extraneous shotgun parts you continue to accumulate once you have a top tier shotgun.

That's a little off the mark, because if the community at large concludes that this technique offers them an advantage, it'll quickly become a more common tactic. But I also acknowledge and accept that TFP don't prioritize tuning for PvP. I actually saw the idea less as going backwards on quality-of-life, and even less as addressing this inadvertent PvP tracking function. I saw it more as repackaging an interface feature that's already implemented, in a way that gives the player more interesting options in game. If you use and like the spear tracker, great! You can mod your spear to include that. If you don't like or need the tracker, then you can make a spear without it. But rather than being a main menu option that 'hardcore' players turn off, people that aren't going to use the tracker get to make a cheaper spear, and put the resources and/or mod slot they save towards something more important to their playstyle. It reminds me of the minibike in A14. At the time, I thought that all the minibike needed for tracking was a tall, brightly colored flag on it, that you could see above the tall grass. Now you can see every vehicle on the compass. And that is superior. But instead of being the default, that could be a mod you put on your vehicle if you want it. I know you're a strong supporter of as little interface as possible, so I'd actually think you'd be someone who'd appreciate the choice to opt out of interface elements like this. Similarly, the minibike used to require a padlock as part of its crafting recipe. I didn't like that not having a padlock meant I couldn't build a minibike (especially in single player, where I was the last man on Earth and really didn't need one). The padlock should've been an optional mod you install to enable the ability to lock and unlock your minibike. It's the same idea as putting a tracker on things. We have these neat quality of life features, but instead of them just being part of the system we take for granted, they could be available as upgrades over the default, giving us more goodies to weigh the costs & benefits of, without programming new features. One can argue that the tracker is such a beneficial part of the spear that I needs it all the time! But that same logic would apply to all sorts of items/playstyles. Once you've played a sniper character with a scope on your rifle, you don't want to play without one. Once you've played a stealth character with night vision, you don't want to play without it. And so on. A feature can be adored by players, but still have a cost you appreciate and choose to pay for instead of being ubiquitous.

That's crossed my mind, too. Press reload to 'pull the cord' and retrieve the spear, whether or not the cord is visible. I'd definitely try spears again if they had a mod like that. For that matter, the 'GPS tracker' function could be its own mod for spears, instead of all spears having it.

Version 1.0 is now released! This update adds four new POIs, bringing the total number up to 10. It's also a big milestone, in that it now covers all the locations in Death Toll that I wanted to include. In addition to testing all POIs in RWG, I've made some revisions/fixes to the older POIs, especially to smooth out sleepers. With Alpha 20 right around the corner (no, really this time ), this should be the final Alpha 19 version of the pack. So enjoy!

I second Roland's suggestion to try an earlier Alpha if you haven't - Alpha 16 is remembered particularly fondly by some. Back then, there was a sense of decay which I think you're after. Every time you repaired a tool, it got a little bit worse. Eventually you would swing it one too many times and it would literally fall apart in your hands. You could use the workbench (using a remarkably simple interface) to combine two of the same item, resulting in a new item of slightly higher quality. And as I recall, if your skills advanced enough you could craft items of the highest quality, to make as good or better replacements for what you'd find in loot. All of this added up to a world that felt like you were pushing back against a force of decay, working to not only reach the peak of success, but maintain that status. In theory that feeling tied in nicely with the other forces of survival, and increasing hordes of zombies, that work against you. In other words, your inversion principle does have a certain appeal where it comes to having a progressive difficulty curve over time. And that's something that survival games struggle with: the player gets a handle on food, water, shelter, etc. and then asks, "Now what?" Another underlying premise here is resource depletion. You want to have the experience of running out of pre-apocalypse equipment and supplies. One way to do that would be to invert the loot progression, but another way would be to play without loot respawn. Then you would in fact run out of the good stuff unless you further extended yourself and moved on to another town, even if your level had no bearing on what loot you find.

Being unaware of it may not be the problem for the victim. I assume the problem is that this has no counter. You can't remove it, and you'll probably need to go to your base sooner or later. My solution would be that if a player is hit by a thrown spear, they're guaranteed to get a visible debuff. No need to reinvent the wheel with a 3rd person view or something. This debuff would have an item to counter it, like other injury debuffs. Say, a puncture debuff, cured by using a medical clamp item. Some bow projectiles could cause this debuff, too. Failing that, it could just re-use the bleeding or laceration debuff. In this way, the victim controls if and when the spear is removed and drops to the ground. I guess there'd be nothing stopping them from then taking it for themselves. As far as changing the mechanics of the spear, there are several ways it could go. I don't like using the darn thing, because I don't like not having a weapon after I attack, and I don't like filling up my tool belt with redundant weapons, either. Someone on the Steam forum mentioned changing the spears to be the ammunition rather than the weapon. An atlatl would become the weapon that launches the spears. Any quality level or mods would be tied to the atlatl. That thread devolved into an argument about realism and terminology, but I like the idea from a gameplay standpoint. The value of the ingredients that go into the launcher versus the ammunition could be balanced, so that losing a spear doesn't mean losing everything.