Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Odetta]

Garbage Collection

[Weazelsun]

In all seriousness for farming perks I would like to see a return to the game’s roots and make it so that crops will only grow if adjacent to a water block. It was like that in Alpha 6.

 

THEN there could be a perk called Irrigation that would allow you to plant without the need for an adjacent water block. Also, the growing lights recipe for interior farms would be great as Chikorina pointed out.

 

Any noob coming from Minecraft would EXPECT crops having to be planted near water blocks so it would be intuitive as well for new players.

 

See, I'm mixed on this. Yes, it is intuitive to expect crops to be planted near water. But at the same it is tedious. I like how it right now where all we have to do is get a hoe and till then plant. Or at the very least @madmole, perhaps one revert could be that we can plant crops on untilled land like it was back in A15 and A16.4.

 

Some perks I do want to see:

• 
  Crafting more mutated seeds for all the crops in-game
  

• 
  Learning the secret of harvesting and growing snowberries. Could tie this into a biome-specific perk of being only able to grow it successfully in the snow biome.
  

• 
  Magic fertilizer, now we can craft fertilizer again! But just don't ask how or why it looks to have brown clumps in it. Applying fertilizer to untilled or tilled land decreases the time it takes for a crop to grow to adulthood. I'm thinking 1/2 the grow time, this could be OP though.
  

• 
  As for harvesting, a perk that gives a chance of getting an abnormally large version of a crop, like for example getting one big-ass potato. This is mostly for people like me that need things to sell at a trader. However, the abnormally large crop can be used in making recipes but it counts as two!
  

[beerfly]

 

Too late :-)

 

Its alright, I expected nothing

 

 

Tho, the new screens are awesome,m60 and the ghille looks pretty neat, MM.

[beerfly]

Looks awesome!

Although if the bayonet serves no purpose does it need to be there? Or is this just some kind of placeholder?

 

I gotta be honest, not sure why’d you’d put a bayonet on the model if you have no intentions to make it functional. Seems like a tease.

 

Agree. We have hunting knife already. Might there be a plan for later to be an attachment. We`ll see.

[The Gronk]

Then you couldn't iron sight.

 

How about clicking both mouse buttons for melee with a firearm? Perfect for those moments of panic :-)

[Guppycur]

Re farming and water:

 

Players can only plant dead seeds.

 

Players must hold a water bucket to pour (hit) the dead plant with.

 

Dead plant transforms into live plant.

 

...all doable via XML...

[The Gronk]

<snipped for space>

 

Is there such thing as an AOE requirement? In the sense that whatever is required must be within a certain amount of blocks.

 

That would allow the plants to check if there was a water source nearby.

 

A great place to test the water physics engine... if I had one! :-)

[Skipio]

I second that, the notion is ridiculous. We're focused on the 20-30 hour player right now, (and actually adding many T3 items you can find late game) and later we can focus on the 100 hour+ experience, because we'll have you all by then anyway. We don't like 2 hour players slipping through our fingers over an ARK like experience that I had is all. So if we make the first 30 hours play great, and easy to understand they might get to all the late game content. But if they are stonewalled at 1 hour and rage quit, its just cutting us off at the kneecaps, and that will affect our ability to add more late game content. So like it or not, the Johnny Newcomes are paying the bills to move forward.

 

What. You’re focusing on the 20-30 hr player and later you’ll focus on the 100+ hr player?? What about the 31-99 hr player, MadMole?.

 

JK!

 

I’m really in favour of the 20-30 hr focus as I (and my mates) play “dead is dead” and I see those early hours quite a lot... well I did in A17. But there seem to be a lot of good noises about A18 and maybe I won’t have to see them quite as much, next alpha

[Ezed]

M60...iron sight/bayonet...

 

Isn't an M60 a fairly hefty weapon? I would expect so anyway, and so the premise of swinging it around as a melee weapon seems impractical...as does the thought of iron sighting unless it was mounted on a base wall or a vehicle, or when lying prone and utilizing a bi-pod.

 

I could see a sprinting zombie impaling itself on that blade though

[canadianbluebeer]

You have to carefully read the second to last line of the post I quoted to get the joke...

 

Oh, I did, hence my post.

[canadianbluebeer]

Can we put this m60 on the Jeep?

 

That could be amusing. Couple jeeps driving in circles around the zeds on bloodmoon, while blasting away.

(until the vulture comes down and tries to eat the driver, the gunner shoots the bird and the driver, and they

all die a horrible firey death. wheeee!)

 

yup, gimme!

[madmole]

You should add some aoe ability when hitting grass, or a tool that helps do it. The crowd would go crazy for that ability.

 

Collect grass on all adjacent blocks or something like that.

 

Maybe a hoe mod?

[madmole]

Actually I have to click on it, then press A. Two clicks compared to holding shift and clicking once. It makes a difference. Really does. Play Empyrion, try it out. Clicking for hours upon hours, every click makes a difference. Anyways, thanks for the response at least, I'll take it as a no. Everyone would appreciate it though, that's all I'm saying. I didn't know I would until I tried it. It's like holding shift and left clicking to transfer items. You could just click and drag, but with so much of that throughout the game, you appreciate any shortcuts. Maybe I can work out a macro setup or something.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

 

 

You have to select the item then press A. If you hold shift and select the item, you could use it as you select it. And that would be half the work.

 

Ok I have only had one sip of coffee here, but how is that half the work? You are asking to press shift and click, I'm offering click and press A, its still two actions.

[madmole]

I was about to suggest exactly that. But, I doubt it would make it into the game.

 

For one thing, it's adding an entirely new mechanic - the "alternate attack within range X" mechanic. I doubt TFP are willing to do that this close to gold.

 

For another thing, once they implemented that mechanic for one weapon, people would want it for all weapons. "Hey, it would be cool if you hit zombies with the butt of your shotgun." "Hey, it would be great if clubs pushed zombies back." All neat ideas - but a ton of work beyond what TFP are planning for.

 

I'm willing to be pleasantly surprised though.

That is klunky. What if the user wants to iron sight to shoot a barrel in the distance to blow up 50 barrels to kill a huge horde, but can't because one weak zombie is near him?

 

If anything we'd change power attack to press and hold LMB, and make RMB block/special attack on mining. But that might annoy miners who like to just hold LMB forever to mine. Remember everything we do has to port to a controller.

[madmole]

In that case, I would suggest a perk that makes it so you don't have to keep replanting every time you harvest.

 

Someone hasn't played A17 lol.

[Thecolours]

Any chance you can buff the AOE knockdown radius on the sledgehammer?

[madmole]

How will you combat the pvp players turning off shadows, low grass, etc etc that they do? Thinking the suit will stand out quite a bit, unless maybe those graphics will go down too?

 

You make your game and move on, there are always jerks who hack players to hack skins or mess with gamma so they glow or whatever. Even with no shadows its harder to see someone in it than a naked or the other outfits.

[madmole]

Garbage Collection

 

We're talking about writing our own and controlling when GC takes place.

[The Gronk]

Isn't an M60 a fairly hefty weapon? I would expect so anyway, and so the premise of swinging it around as a melee weapon seems impractical...as does the thought of iron sighting unless it was mounted on a base wall or a vehicle, or when lying prone and utilizing a bi-pod.

 

I could see a sprinting zombie impaling itself on that blade though

 

That would depend on your strength.

 

The British military largely ignore the standard BMI index score for their soldiers mostly because of one war story. There was a very heavily built fellow who, upon being charged by an overwhelming enemy force, picked up a vehicle mounted heavy machine gun and started firing it from the hip. If BMI had been implemented at the time this gentleman would have been considered overweight.

 

A tertiary action on weapons would be useful, click the middle mouse button or something.

[n2n1]

Someone hasn't played A17 lol.

he is not alone

(me too, but honestly - i tried )

[n2n1]

He can just press A.

I disable most hotkeys because they don't work correctly when i try to start moving urgently.

 

 

Then you couldn't iron sight.

Yes, of course, be able to aim OR push ... yeah, of course - the limitation of the Unity engine does not allow you to implement it... yes...

 

Push would be much more useful and interesting for the gameplay than an enhanced attack. When run out of ammo and no time to reload. A good example is L4D.

[Gnomaana]

Ok I have only had one sip of coffee here, but how is that half the work? You are asking to press shift and click, I'm offering click and press A, its still two actions.

 

Because lets say you are going to use 5 items in succession, you press shift ONCE and hold it down as you click each of the items. So to use 5 items it would be 6 total actions. With the current method it would be 10. He is right. I've played Empyrion and it is a nice feature. Not a must have but it makes doing certain things much less tedious feeling.

 

The shift click to loot items is pretty much the same thing and already in the game so the code to implement is possibly already there.

[madmole]

I disable most hotkeys because they don't work correctly when i try to start moving urgently.

 

 

 

Yes, of course, be able to aim OR push ... yeah, of course - the limitation of the Unity engine does not allow you to implement it... yes...

 

Push would be much more useful and interesting for the gameplay than an enhanced attack. When run out of ammo and no time to reload. A good example is L4D.

 

Yes there are guys on the team asking for it since 2013. I'd like to see it and a perk to improve it. Charging bull is getting reworked to stun or ragdoll guys when you run into them and is now a strength perk.

[art1336]

Yes and when I talk about this some forum rats act like we're ♥♥♥♥ting on the veteran players lol. Better designs are better designs.

 

Yup, I suppose that sums up the opinion the devs have of their playerbase when we complain that the game isn't geared for us anymore, it's geared to "hook" new players.

[madmole]

Yup, I suppose that sums up the opinion the devs have of their playerbase when we complain that the game isn't geared for us anymore, it's geared to "hook" new players.

 

We're not always right and are working towards making everyone happy as possible. Lets not confuse fixing bugs, performance, finishing half baked ideas and polishing art and animations to hook new players with dumbing down the game.