[A22 Dev Diary Overflow]

Will the problem of transport accessibility on the A22 be solved?
All my observations of the A21 led to the fact that I got a motorcycle for about 35-40 days of life (60 minutes/day).
Perhaps it was a balance for survival in a cooperative, but it disrupted survival alone.
In more than 200 hours on the A21 highway, I have cycled for more than 70 hours.
If trader Bob does not appear nearby and the player purposefully does not search for magazines (never did this on purpose) I only get 4x4 for 50-60 days.
According to my observations, quite a lot of players give up on survival, as soon as they get all the best weapons and armor, they reach the maximum of concrete. By this time, they have a motorcycle at best.

The situation with solar panels is repeated. Soon 4x4 will turn into such a rarity.

As far as I remember, it used to be something like this: in the first stages, the player has access to wooden and stone buildings, appropriate weapons, tools and armor, literally after the first horde we got the opportunity to craft a mini-bike, to the third or fourth horde - a mini-motorcycle. a motorcycle and much more. concrete, up to the sixth or seventh horde is 4x4, and the base is made of steel.
Progress has been steady, now I can have a concrete base, but at the same time I'm going to complete a level 6 task on a bike or, at most, on a moped.

I understand that the balance adjustment happens in each alpha version, and it is not final yet, but I thought this problem would be solved a couple of months after the release of A21, but it is still not solved.

Am I the only one having problems with transport accessibility? 
And yes, I am aware of int skills that increase the number of transport logs, but I am not obligated to put points into the int branch in every survival

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

@faatal 
1. What are you working on now?
2. Do you often encounter problems in the development of solutions that require a creative approach?
thx

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

It actually looks a little weird. The developers decided to move away from the comical style and replaced the funny nurse with a regular one. But they left the comical fat cop.
The developers have replaced less realistic cities with more realistic ones, but the more realistic course of the game "with what you find (firearms on the first day)" has changed to the Stone Age.
Now, in a less realistic Stone Age, strange sets of armor of different styles will be added, and all this will take place in realistic cities.

The game is under development, and this justifies the fact that it looks like a blanket sewn from scraps of various fabrics, but I hope that over time it will acquire some kind of general appearance.

If in the end, sitting at night by the campfire at the base and listening to terrible sounds, we will be dressed in medieval armor (or something that will be very similar to it) and there will be a mini-bike with a toilet instead of a seat on the street, I honestly don't know how to react to it. Be scared, laugh or cry.

I don't like the new steel armor, nerd kit and new transport concepts.
Decorative transport on the streets has received new beautiful models. Why does the player's transport become even more comical?

On the other hand, no one promised that I would like everything. I'm glad that the game has good support for modifications, and anything I don't like, I can replace with modifications.

I agree that everyone has their own tastes, and at the same time, new changes cannot please everyone. 
So whatever happens, it won't make me play much less or delete the game.

In any case, it's time to end this in the coming years, otherwise it will never end.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

 

Reddit often likes to set up the conditions of their own outrage....

 

Rabbit or Squirrel matters not. Only the silliness of it matters as a knuckle rub to Matt115. Faatal could even announce that the team was seriously thinking about adding skeletons and additional raunchy corpses but instead went with zombie squirrels at the last moment.

 

 

skeletons of zombie squirrels that can be tamed will suit everyone 

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

You're dying (fainting). You wake up in one of Dr. Jen's tents. She says that someone from her group found you unconscious and brought you here. You feel better now.
It's time to pay. 25,000 dukes or 5 quests and we're even. Good motivation not to die anymore.
 

I like the new function of punishment for death, but still, between the option with the preservation of all debuffs and the complete reset of the character, there is not enough option with a fine in dukes or with a constant decrease in the points of characteristics / the number of books read. (Amnesia)

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

16 hours ago, the_envenom said:

Why is there blue on the side of the moon?

Is this a bug or part of the game?

Shoot a few times at the moon, it should get bigger. 
Oops .. mixed up the game

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

I open the solar cell search program.

182 hours in A21 mode and only 4 solar cells of the 6th level.
It seems to me that you have reduced the probability of their appearance at the merchant too much.
In previous alphas, I collected a solar panel and 6 level 6 elements in almost every survival, now, even with more than 250,000 dukes, I can't get them.
Let them be even more expensive, the main thing is that they can be guaranteed to be found at the seller.
Or give the opportunity to create them for a large amount of resources.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

16 minutes ago, Aero said:

I got some weird bug/glitch that f'ed my savegame it seems.

 

I was just driving on my motorcycle over mountains etc. and all of sudden the game became very choppy/laggy (very few frames).

But for some reason I was driving insanely fast on my bike, like 10's of meters in a sec from standing still, but again, very very low frames.

 

So I quit the game, restarted my computer and the bug is still here... so I guess it's in my savegame...

 

Anyone had this and is there a fix for it?

 

I have several times encountered a sharp drop in fps, blurring of the image and teleportation by 20-30 meters during a fast ride.
The world did not collapse, the saves remained untouched after that.

Just now, q123 said:

 

For any chance, do you have a drone? If yes, than it's most likely this issue:

 

Not sure if it is fixed in A21.1...

Maybe you are able to manually fix it with deleting your "drones.dat".

hmm, it really only happened when the drone was flying after me..

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

1 hour ago, Riamus said:

Many people wouldn't be happy to remove that difficulty. I don't mind the screamers at all. They add a challenge that is at least somewhat different each time you do the POI, which is nice. I'm not sure why you have the FPS problem. I haven't ever had issues with FPS due to numbers of zombies even on horde night with 5-6 people in the group and even when I only had 8GB RAM. I know some people have issues with large numbers of zombies even when they have a better computer than I have but I have no idea why that is. It's obviously related to specific hardware or software running on their computer (kill Chrome if it's running) but why is a big question.

 

As I mentioned, it's very easy to just despawn non-quest zombie(s) if you're at the cap so you can spawn in quest zombies. That's the better option and I'd be surprised if they aren't doing that. Considering we don't see tons of people complaining about not zombies not spawning, I think it has to be something other than this cap being a problem. The people complaining right now are complaining specifically about zombies that aren't spawning because of the new triggers not working properly, which is entirely different and is a bug.

 

I haven't yet found the nursing home so I can't say how it's worked for me. For some reason, I haven't found that one or either prison on my map, which is unfortunate because I want to see what everyone's complaining about. For most POI, screamer hordes don't spawn soon enough to mess up your route if you're following the intended path. You'll usually be off the first floor before they do and they'll usually take the path of least resistance, which usually means following your path unless your path requires jumping. If you are going up and down, that might cause issues, though.

 

As I said, I've seen a wandering zombie despawn and end up as a yellow dot in a skyscraper POI (the one with the broken corner of the building at the top 4-5 floors, IIRC). Is that Dishong? I can't remember. Might be Higashi. Anyhow, when I followed the dot, I ended up getting the zombie spawning next to a large hole in the floor that you are intended to just walk around (not go up or down through) when following the intended path. I've never seen zombies spawn there before. And there's no way I could miss that spot as I walked around the hole originally. There was just that one zombie that spawned there. And I have no doubt that it was a zombie that wandered off. Letting zombies fall off the sides of buildings or letting vultures fly away always results in these weird re-spawns after a time. Note that that particular example happened in A20.6.

 

I'll also point out that when I try a new POI (mainly tier 4 or 5 since they are big), I can sometimes miss things or end up going the wrong way. After I do the POI 2 or 3 times or so, I'll have figured out the correct way and where things are and then I don't ever have problems with missing zombies, no matter how many zombies are outside or downstairs due to screamers. My only issue now are broken buttons preventing zombie spawns but those can be dealt with by breaking them while we wait for a fix for that bug.

You do not have to buy the game again after Early Access. I'm not even sure that Steam allows a developer to charge once in Early Access and again after gold, though they might. But it definitely isn't something that will happen here.

 

 

What you spend for equipment is entirely your choice and has nothing whatsoever to do with TFP. Also keep in mind that they have sold millions of copies (I think someone said 15 million). That's not a small amount of money. I doubt they are having any financial problems, though that's an assumption just like yours is. It really isn't anyone's business. They seem to be doing just fine, though. If they were strapped for money, they'd probably release as soon as possible and leave things like bandits for after gold so they can get that influx of money from going gold. They don't seem to be in a rush and that suggests they are doing just fine.

There were no such problems with the prison. The frame rate per second is within the normal range.
And I didn't have any broken buttons on any quest.
I've been playing A21 for 104 hours on two different maps with different world settings, and what I've described is the only and biggest problem I've encountered.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

37 minutes ago, Riamus said:

Removing screamers while doing tier 5 and 6 quests wouldn't be a good option. It is far better to just destroy any non-quest zombie (s) when you need to spawn a quest zombie if the cap is reached. And they may be doing that.

 

What you are experiencing may be something else. Fun what I've seen posted here by others, if a quest zombie wanders off, it will go back into a sleeper volume but that may be a different one than it was originally in. So it may end up in the loot room that you already cleared.

 

I know I've seen a zombie end up spawning where they don't normally spawn after wandering off before after I completed everything and had to follow a yellow dot to find the last zombie.

This time there was no yellow dot. 
The next quest completed by the invasion is the 6th level in a nursing home.
At some point, 3 screamers appeared, again two dozen zombies, and I was again looking for quest zombies that did not appear throughout the location.
In addition, they broke down the doors on the ground floor and thereby violated the "path of the developer" from the beginning to the final extraction. I passed this location for the first time and, to be honest, I was at a loss where to go, and wandered around the floors for about 10 minutes in an attempt to restore the path and find the very zombies that never appeared. 
I saw that the door to the kitchen was knocked out, but I didn't remember if I went in there, there were no zombies there, and as soon as I entered, they appeared.
I said I was facing this problem for the second time.
The first time was in A19, when I was cleaning Dishong Tower, a few screamers came, and then I had to fail the task because the zombies did not appear in the quest.
Another problem with screamers is that before they appear, I get 30-40 frames per second in level 5 (6) quests, and when they appear, they become 15-25.
Again, not shooting in quests of this level will not work, too many zombies come out at the same time.
I will be glad if they find a way out of this situation, but it seems to me the most logical thing to remove the screamers during the quests. This is a mini-horde, which complicates an already difficult quest and significantly reduces productivity.
Performance, because of which a new player can make a refand or write a bad review.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

1 hour ago, métaphore said:

Well, I'm not confused at all.

 

TFP certainly need to make money out of the game, like any other game studio, from the smallest to the largest or they will go belly up. Otherwise, they would be some kind of charity funded by unknown donnors, which they aren't ... or they would be spending taxpayers money granted by zombie-slayers officials but, last time I've checked, they were not listed as public contractors.

 

Take me as an example: I've bought the game a few years ago and paid less than $10 for two copies, including the one actually used by my wife. Later, I've build a $5.000+ home dedicated server for our co-op campaign that we played back in Alpha 16 to 20. We spent offline several thousands of hours on our LAN (but I've still managed - I don't know exactly how - to log over 1.000 hrs on my 7D2D Steam account).

 

So, in fine and mostly to play this game, I've spent about a thousand times more for my computers (server and laptops), than what I did spend for the game, including what didn't go directly into TFP pocket but was paid instead to Valve and Unity Engine.

 

And since the Alpha phase is still running after 10 years, no matter how many millions of copies they have sold up to his point, all this money would be now largely behind them considering the actual cost of development in order to finish the game - with an end line at least several years from now - and for releasing a new console version. So I'm pretty sure that TFP are backed by investors.

 

And, as you know, those Investors will need their money back at some point.

But, are you, like me and almost everyone posting here, going to pay again for this game when the day of its full release at full price will come?

I'm pretty sure you won't.

The money you spent on the server would not have gone to TFP anyway, because this is a third-party activity.

I don't count TFP money and I don't know if they have investors. 
I am fulfilling my duties as a player. I bought the game, I'm playing, I've been helping beginners with tips for the last 4 years, I report bugs found.

Of course, after the release, the price of new copies should increase, but I don't remember a single game that would have gone out of early access and would require a repeat purchase at full cost. (Actually I may be wrong because I haven't played many games in early access)

People who received the game at the development stage bought it cheaper, but instead suffered from bugs, mechanics were tested on them, they actually act as testers. Therefore, I am 99.9% sure that those who bought the game in early access will not be required to pay the full cost after the release.
In any case, it was the early access players who helped bring the game popularity.
I agree that TFP should earn money and pay salaries, but not at the price of reselling the game at full value.

In any case, time will tell.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

@Laz Man @faatal

This is the second time I have encountered this problem.
There is a hidden setting in the world for the maximum number of objects that are simultaneously placed in the world.
During a level 6 (5) task, if a screamer appears at the moment when you are approaching a large area of the appearance of entities, it will spawn two or three more screamers, and those, in turn, will spawn two dozen zombies, those entities that were supposed to appear in the task will be destroyed. will not be displayed from the moment they reach the maximum allowed limit.
I came across this now while going through the Invasion quest at Dr. Karen Hihashi's residence.
Just when I was in the room with the last loot, 4 screamers and 2 dozen zombies appeared. I killed them and took the last loot, but the task didn't count.
I went through the whole route again from start to finish, but nothing has changed. And only at the moment when I entered the zone with the activation button to open the last room that I had already activated earlier, the necessary zombies appeared.

Perhaps it is worth disabling the "area heat" for the duration of all quests of the 5th and 6th levels for the corresponding POI? Or stop spawning screamers for the same period.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

1 hour ago, métaphore said:

 

I wish I'm wrong.

By the way, I'm not paranoid as I'm absolutely positive they are out to get me.

 

We don't know yet how the creative menu will look like when the game will be completed. A good benchmark would be to look at the next console release and we'll see what direction they are taking. In fact, they probably could restrict whatever they want or simply disable such feature in the basic game. I'm just skeptical about the development path since more than a couple of Alphas: the game is made more and more "Trader-centric" with each new release and pretty much less "Sandbox".

 

Beside, what about their business plan?

They have 60+ people now on the payroll on top of subcontractors and expert costs while the game is mostly selling for a few bucks only. They probably have had to sell yearly several millions of copies only to get TFP running once distribution cost is substracted.

 

Game features are subject to change but what matter most is what was changed in the late years in order to predict where they are heading next.

You are confusing TFP with large studios whose sole purpose is to make money.
TFP is an indie studio that grew out of the hobbies of several people, and these people love their game.
Over the years, they have earned the trust and respect of the community. 
Participation after that in the release of microtransactions or any pay to win function will be equivalent to a shot in both legs from two shotguns.
They can start releasing cosmetic add-ons for those who want to support them or use other ways to make money after the game is released.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

47 minutes ago, métaphore said:

Then, thank you for sharing

 

But, you know, there was also this very large Savage Country POI right next to the Crack a Book POI that I've found. Guess what, did I go for the thousands of cloth rather than looting dozens of books?

 

My point is that, with the previous build, I would have had enough fabric at the end of this Crack a Book looting in order to make everything I needed without bothering to go next door for scavenging more clothes. With A21.1, I couldn't even craft more than a single spare bandage and a single Duct Tape with all the fabric I get from this Crack a Book POI. Hence, very very far from 300+ pieces I needed.

 

Hence, in my humble opinion, this is an update worth trying.

 

But, now, if you ask me if I really liked all this extra banging (taking several minutes) for each couch scavenged (those with several parts and high hp) with my Q1 stone axe, only to get a few extra pieces of cloth for it? ... well not really. In fact, I went out the next day and gathered coton instead, which is way faster, and one can also get a chicken spawn as a bonus.

 

What about the bottleneck for crafting? The previous version had one with murky water because it would be obvious that the priority use of water was for drinking or cooking but not for making tons of glue out of bones. Now, there is another one with fabric because, like iron, stone, wood or any other ressources which are practically in infinite number in the world, it simply takes a lot of time and (very boring) effort to collect it in the large quantity needed.

 

Hence, you'll end up being short of them (grind) when crafting.

 

Don't you think that the 300+ pieces of fabric you need by the end of the day is a problem of your settings?

Do you know that you can quickly collect fabric from curtains with a knife?

I still don't see any problems with the fabric. I see that you are playing with settings that are causing you problems. And instead of changing the settings, do you propose to consider a problem that does not exist?

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

4 hours ago, métaphore said:

More Glue is dropping now but the new bottleneck is obviously to find enough piece of cloth

Did you write that?
There are no problems with finding fabric in the game. I showed you places where you can find fabric even on the first day, although the game does not set any conditions for you.
No bottlenecks. You can find enough fabric. 

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

1 hour ago, métaphore said:

Maybe you didn't read the part where I'm also writting that I'm playing with all Traders removed from the World.

Anyway, trader or not, one of my first task, day 1, is to collect five glue in order to craft a full set of padded armor (glue is dropping now, from garbage much more frequently than Duct Tape). Like you, Cloth wasn't ever an issue, until now, for crafting crude bandages, duct tape and early armor on day one.

 

Now, as it takes 10 times as many pieces of cloth to do the exact same thing, one can easily understand that it's changing the early routine quite a bit... in fact, I usually can't collect those many piece needed as, even if I have all the glue to craft my armor, forge and workbench as early as the end of day one, I won't have them all before day 4 to 5.

What prevents you from collecting fabric from curtains, beds and tents? This can be done without the participation of a trader.
There is enough fabric in the game, but for some reason you don't want to collect it.

The original game does not involve survival without a trader and does not force you to do anything until the end of the first day. You are not playing the game the way the developers intended, so the balance is broken for you.

You should contact the modders to make the changes you need in the form of a modification.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

31 minutes ago, métaphore said:

You should give it a try as early game is quite different with A21.1 due to some change in the loot tables and recipes.

 

More Glue is dropping now but the new bottleneck is obviously to find enough piece of cloth in order to craft those five pieces of padded armor that I need in order to diminish the very high chance of getting any critical damage in case of zombie hit (I'm playing permadeath at survivalist/run/60 min with no trader, no airdrop, no loot respawn, no chunk reset).

 

But now, for crafting each Duct Tape, it's taking 10 pieces per glue (same for one bandage), hence 50 pieces for five DT. Adding 50 more clothes for each armor part, it's 300 total for a full set of Q1 padded armor. In fact, that's the first time ever that I had to harvest the fields for coton plants in order to craft some armor as, actually, taking it from POI is way slower and quite boring with a Q1 stone axe. Once I get killed (soon), I'm gonna use 200% player block damage for sure on top of 200% XP.

 

So water for Glue is much less an issue now for crafting without trader but the new early game grind is all about pieces of cloth.

It's a little strange to read about the lack of cloth.
The first levels of the trader's quests are mostly ordinary houses with curtains and beds. If there are small military bases nearby, then you can collect a whole stack from a couple of tents.
Maybe I'm used to playing like this, but in the first week, while I'm doing the initial tasks, I accumulate at least two stacks of fabric.
Perhaps you should pay attention to curtains, beds and tents.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

1 hour ago, Zombiepoptard said:

a22 you mean

No. I mean, A21 will be A21.1, A21.2 and maximum A21.3. We won't have A21.7 like it was with A20. I hope.
That's the question.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

@faatal Is it planned that A21 will be shorter than A20? .1 .2 maximum .3? 

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

12 hours ago, meilodasreh said:

I would guess that was staged.

Maybe he got a few hits on the zombie with the axe before (or with any other bladed weapon),

and then timed it to made it look like it was the tree falling on him, but he just bled out.

No. I can provide you with a complete video recording. I'm just chopping down trees, and at some point it happens. After I tried to repeat it on another zombie and it didn't die.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

Should a zombie die from a falling tree?

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

3 minutes ago, Riamus said:

Think about lockpicking as it is now. Your default action of picking a lock does not require any other action. Only if you want to use the alternate action do you hold E. This would be the same. If you didn't need repair mode, you would never even notice it. Nothing would change for you. Only when or if you choose to use repair mode will you hold E to switch. No extra steps if you don't use it.

In that case, I misunderstood. It's convenient. It seemed to me that it was about replacing the default action.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

7 minutes ago, Riamus said:

How will switching modes reduce QoL? First, it wouldn't be required. I'm assuming normal mode in this suggestion is what we have now. Both upgrade and repair in one. Repair mode would be only repair. To me, that improves QoL. Maybe you mean that if normal mode is upgrade only? I don't think that was the idea.

He wrote about an additional action. As far as I understand, pressing a key opens a menu where you can choose repair or upgrade. This can be seen in the screenshot he added. It's terrible when I imagine how many hundreds of times I will have to open this menu.
The way it works now is the most convenient option.
It is enough to monitor when the repair ends. 
Or not to take resources with you to upgrade during the repair.
Every time someone suggests adding one small action, he does not think about how many tens and hundreds of times he will have to perform it.
Abandoning the same type of actions that have to be performed many times during hundreds of hours of play improves the quality of life, Imagine if instead of holding down the left mouse button, you would have to press the button every time to chop down a tree or collect another resource.
A compromise would be to add both options, but not replace one with the other.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

3 hours ago, Pepelus said:

Would it be possible to please make only repair mod into the repair tools? Thanks.

It often happens that I have walls of different materials in my house due to the scarcity and difficulty of obtaining resources in the game. For example, the floor is made of stone while the outer wall is made of concrete and the outside has rotating blades. I have the necessary raw materials with me to repair various materials. And it often happens that I upgrade a block of stone floor to concrete or a concrete wall to iron. But I don't want that! I don't want to have a concrete block in places in the stone floor and an iron block here and there in the wall. Mining material is very time-consuming and I like having walls made of specific material. If I only had a repair mod available in the tools, it would make my life a lot easier in difficult repairs after red nights. I can't help myself when I accidentally upgrade a block when I actually just want to fix it. Thank you very much for your understanding and I hope my request will be heard.

 

 

Release the button in time.
Switching modes will worsen the quality of life in the game.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

25 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

He knows. The optimizations used could still have positive effects for <=8 players too, and making more players happy is nice if the changes are easy to implement and have no detrimental effects on normal play.

 

 

Good. It's a matter of optimizing performance. 
What about the balance problem? Do you think TFP will be able to balance the game for 1-8-32 players at the same time? The problem of synchronizing the destructible world between all players. 
This is either a solo and a cooperative of up to 8 people, or servers.  
I don't understand the TFP policy on this issue a bit. They don't want to deny more than 8 players on the server, but they also don't provide official support. 
I really hope this issue will be resolved by the time we get to the gold.