Crater Creator

I've noticed this with more complex blocks, like loot containers and cardboard boxes, mostly when shining a torch or other first person light on them. It's as if the shadow isn't cast by the geometry you see, but instead by a slightly different, probably lower poly invisible mesh. I assume it's a way to cut corners when rendering shadows, for the sake of performance, but I don't know.

I wonder if one could still manually modify the colors in the biomes.png file to get burnt forest. The art assets are still in the game for the sake of Navezgane, so maybe it's just that burnt forest isn't selected by the random world generator. I'm not sure what the long term plans are, though. They may eventually cannibalize the burnt forest, even in Navezgane.

I tested several vehicles, I believe in A20, because I was interested in modding their speeds. And assuming 1 voxel = 1 meter, the listed speeds looked to be accurate. I wouldn't be surprised at all if there's significant added drag, intentional or not, when the gyrocopter's little wheels are rolling along the ground. Or perhaps you're angling it down slightly so it doesn't lift off the ground, and thus some of the thrust is wasted pushing down instead of forwards.

Indeed. Please discuss mods in Modding -> Discussion & Requests. I’ll move this thread there.

There’s no guarantee that the structure was stable enough to remove even one pillar. Maybe it really did need all four pillars. I’m not sure if the timing matters, either. The game isn’t doing structural integrity calculations every frame (for performance), so maybe you can ‘pull a fast one’ by immediately replacing the destroyed block with a wooden frame, but I’m not sure. Technically knocking out the pillars one at a time, while reducing the risk, isn’t ‘doing it right.’ You could have reinforced the support first, adding new pillars to take the load off the pillars (even pillars of dirt/stone) you want to replace. It’s also possible that POI is inherently unstable. If you ever, say, destroy a painting on a wall and that causes a collapse, you know something’s wrong with the POI itself. Structural integrity isn’t calculated until a block changes, which is why inherent instability doesn’t show up right away. If you do see something like that, I would treat it as a bug worth reporting.

Yes, I agree with you OP. I believe Gazz himself once said that if you’re playing on less than 100% loot, it could only be expected that sometimes you don’t get something - that is the setting you chose. But an airdrop is no mere pile of trash. It’s a destination you plan trips around. And that’s what it’s supposed to be, or it would drop right in your lap. So yes, it’s a big letdown if it’s empty, even on a lower loot setting.

Wait, are you sure? Did you try this? Because historically, you lose all material that’s smelted in the forge when you pick it up. Many players, myself included, have experienced this at one time or another. And I assumed it was by design - that instantly getting out all the smelted material would be ‘cheating’, and tracking what’s in the forge while it’s in your backpack wouldn’t be technically feasible.

Always finish your Sham Chowder before visiting the forum, kids!

No, I haven’t noticed any lag from my tree farm. I planted them 10 blocks apart because they look unnatural if jammed too close together, and I wouldn’t call it a huge farm by any means - maybe 60 trees in total (all pines). They’ve spent most of their time as full grown trees, because in the end I just haven’t needed that much wood.

True enough. Case in point, I did put this together. I like games and writing about games, or I wouldn't be here. I expect there will be more instructional content in the game, in some form, once it's out of alpha and all the features are finalized.

Journal tips, loading screen tips, verbose HUD notifications, tutorial quests and buffs created solely to convey information... these are the manuals of today. And that's before we get to online resources players create for each other, like wikis, Steam guides, pinned threads, etc. Now, I loathe when people get into 'back in my day' mode, as if winning the award for Most Curmudgeonly User is some kind of prize (not that that's happened here). But I think it's accurate to say that more work goes into explaining a game to the player than in the RTFM days. Of course, the complexity of games from any era varies widely as well.

The last time I looked into this myself (which to be fair was A19), the cap was one third of their hit points, but the amount of damage short of that was an absolute number based on the distance. E.g. 30 points of damage for a given pit, which could be a smaller percentage for a tough zombie or a larger percentage for a common zombie so long as it didn't exceed 33.3...%. I made my pit just deep enough to do approximately the max damage for common zombies.

I know you're probably sharing this just as an example of how they behave, but I wanted to mention... I've used similar designs, but I often build in redundancy. Instead of one staircase/ramp leading up to the raised platform that takes zombies towards me, I'll build a staircase/ramp on three sides of a pillar (technically I use a coarse 'staircase' of full blocks, because jumping is slower). I don't play with 64 zombies, but the number that beat on my structural supports stays minimal.

I could swear that in a dev video at some point, TFP not only said they wanted to do an auto-run feature, but they actually demonstrated it working in game (or at least in Unity). Does anyone else remember that? Unfortunately I can't remember which alpha was being previewed, and there are many many hours of such videos.

They have a 'destroy area' mode which they're primarily supposed to use when they can't deduce a path to you. This is handy for example if you're on a raised platform with no way up: you must have a pillar somewhere supporting that platform, which is what they'll theoretically attack. But they don't think through the consequences of destroying blocks; they just start destroying. I understand more randomness has been introduced for the sake of making them feel more natural, and less like every zombie makes the same beeline as if they're controlled by a hive mind (they kind of are). In cases where they do have a path, I don't know the particulars of when they may start attacking instead of taking the path.

Moderators when they read that post:

Hmm. My first instinct is a knife or multitool like others are saying. But you asked about items and guns separately, and if these can work like they do in 7DtD, then that junk turret is pretty appealing. I don't know if I could come up with ammunition for a regular firearm on demand, but I'm sure I could scrounge up some scrap iron to make junk ammo. Plus, to not only use it as a man-portable gun, but also deploy it and have it cover me 24/7 without needing power... however that works, it'd be dang handy. If that's deemed cheating, then back to the knife/multitool. I'm pretty good at keeping a low profile when I want to, so I may have bigger concerns in the apocalypse than zombie combat. Hot sauce? No thank you, that's waaaaaaaay down on the priority list. I might sooner take, say, an N95 mask, if our last pandemic is any indication of how the apocalypse could be. If you ask me again in six months, I'll probably have different answers.

Technically yes, you can rotate the ladder blocks to a diagonal heading to match the diamond. But when you see that diamond shape in your 1x1 block hole, you’re seeing a full block of space partially filled in to make the diamond. In other words the diamond is inside the square, not the other way around. And the ladder’s position is relative to the whole voxel, rather than plastered onto wherever the terrain’s surface is. So while you can easily place the ladder to align with the wall of the diamond-shaped hole, it will probably be entirely swallowed up by the terrain.

I can get behind tap to power attack and hold to throw. Good idea! I agree with BFT2020 though on the point that knives and spears are separate weapon classes, so giving both the same abilities may break the mold. For example as much as I'd love to get stealth kills at spear range like I can with a knife, I can see how that'd probably be OP.

Sure. For a weapon class to be interesting and justified, it should do at least one thing better than weapons of a different class (for the same tier at least, so it's apples to apples). And spears being the superior melee weapon for range - just as the knife is the superior melee weapon for stealth, the club is the superior melee weapon for knockdowns, etc. - definitely makes sense. And poking through bars may not sound like much, but I think it would add a lot to the spear's appeal. It would support a different style of defense: survivors that fight the zombies via melee combat, but rely on their bases to protect themselves from damage rather than heavy armor or nimble movement. It would literally be more in-your-face than shooting through bars, too, which is the option we have now.

For sure. What they have now seems like a temporary version of dyeing. Note you can dye vehicles now, and it only colors certain parts instead of the whole thing. So it looks like the tech is there.

Hot take: is it really a melee weapon, though? The melee attack is the regular attack, with regular attack stats. With every other melee weapon I use, it's the power attack stats that really matter, because I'm using the power attack 90% of the time. I can't really do that with the spear, unless I'm 'throwing' it at enemies a foot in front of me (which is just awkward and defeating the purpose). The net result is that while the spear's stats may look competitive on paper, it's underpowered in practice since I'm using the regular attack more. Honestly I don't need a spear I can throw. A spear with a regular melee attack and power melee attack, whose specialty is excellent melee range and the ability to poke through bars, would be perfect! Hitting through iron bars was literally the only feature I wanted when they announced the spear. Or, if they flipped the attacks so that the regular attack was a throw and the power attack was a melee, I'd be happy because I'd just use the power attack 100% of the time. If it's going to be a throwing spear, we need to back up a bit and ruminate on why throwing the spear is so disruptive. It's not just losing the weapon from your inventory. It's the fact that you're literally throwing away the thing you've invested a lot into. I don't care if I lose a lot of arrows, because I can make more bow ammo cheaply. But the spear is made of rare parts and mods, at least after the early game. A solution to that is to introduce a spear launcher, or atlatl. Then the spears can be a type of ammo, which is cheap to make and stacks, while the expensive spear parts and spear mods go on the launcher.

Similar to this, on a foggy day you may not be able to see a POI in front of you. But if you turn to the side, it becomes visible. I think both of these things should be fixed. I just haven't figured out how to phrase it in a bug report, so the response that comes back isn't, 'Oh yeah, that happens because camera projection blah blah blah field of view yadda yadda yadda...' I know that's how games do things, but it doesn't mean it's not a visual error.

So... other than where you went hunting, what you were hunting, what you were hunting with, why you were hunting it, and what you walked away with, it was exactly like ivory hunting. Got it.