Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Kattla]

Its called planning. Do you want us to build your base too? How dare you interrupt my crafting queue with your stupid low priority repair? Just messing with you. But what might be better is a drag and swap craft queue then we're not FORCING that repair to be first.

 

Perhaps a "Cycle Que" button near the 4 crafting que slots.

[bobross]

What are you saying? That you can't find any steel brown tools to break into parts to make into better quality steel tools? What game stage are you? I think part of the problem is 120 minute days you have too much time on your hands and no risk of a horde every 7 hours of real time. I spend a large amount of time fixing my base, grinding mats to fix my base, fighting off wandering hordes, preparing for the next horde (mining bullets and crafting spikes) which is less than 7 hours real time away. So I don't have a ton of time to loot and be bored that I don't have pink tools because I'm playing the game as intended. I get a lot of XP upgrading my base so maybe my GS gets raised more, and I find stuff I'm happy to get sooner? I raised 4 levels killing my horde.

 

Maybe if you fought more hordes you wouldn't have this problem which seems to be "too much time on my hands to steel parts and I'm not happy I can't craft the best stuff right now". I find a fair amount of crappy steel stuff later game, at which time you can craft your steel whatever. Day 14 120 minutes is day 28 in my time, so yeah you should barely sniff one t3 thing if you are lucky, not be crafting every guy a full set of sweet stuff. Its not A16, you should relish your scrap and iron crap a bit and embrace a 100 to 200 hour game before making any further comments on balance IMO.

 

I don't mean to sound like an ass either, I'm just trying to grasp the issue from over here. With all the settings its hard to say what we need to do based off of player input because some of the settings allow for some extremely different games.

 

Okay, to clarify, I'm thinking we've got too much stuff, not too little, but either way the discrepancy is real, and it won't be survivable if it's lesser.

 

What I'm saying is, all it takes is a mildly lucky find for SMG-5 schematic, or Compound Bow schematic, and suddenly you can scrap every crap wooden bow and crap pistol you come across, spend a couple perks, and have a Rank 3 or Rank 4 Tier 3 ranged weapon. You simply cannot do the same thing with tools and melee weapons - you have to get lucky and have them drop in loot.

 

My personal gamestage is around 35 - I'd have to login to check and I cannot do that right now - but our group gamestage for the horde night was not; the last wave was GS 174. So I'm not entirely certain how we could survive without Tier 3 weapons, even though I think we're getting them early. The 120-minute days are largely because we're not all on at the same time, so I don't think it works out so different from playing. Our top two guys are at around 40 hours, but most of us are around 20-25 hours played time. (Total of 6 of us.)

[MechanicalLens]

Yes, and I fixed that for you. But seriously, why not? Build a fortified tree stand and spike it up and go for it.

 

Did that twice with two bears; just built a couple pillars, upgraded them to cobblestone, and blasted them with my double barrel shotgun. After those two bear kills, the game also sent two boars and a wolf my way, so I'm stocked up on meat for a bit.

 

Ahh, I see what you did there. When in the apocalypse, just drink your troubles away.

[JayzenFreeze]

two things one what happened to barbed wire? Two Since last update when I open my inventory my FPS goes from 60FPS to 5FPS for a second or two and horde night its drops so bad i cant select stuff

[Laz Man]

Thats not what I meant. I think tier 6 should only start dropping in the midgame and not on day 17.

But thats ony my opinion.

 

And there lies the problem. What is considered Mid-game? That will vary player to player based on their settings.

[Lonestarcanuck]

@MM @TFP

 

one of the girls on my Server who lives in AZ and makes soap from Yucca wants to know if you can please add soap/shampoo recipes to the game that provide a mild resistance to infection or something.

[Laz Man]

Never log out until 4am after the BM unless you want more action. Think of it like this, the game doesn't know who you are or what you did. You join during a BM and you will get zombies after you.

 

Hi MM, if that's not considered a bug that will be fixed, what do you think of giving players the same temp. BM safety bestowed on players like when they die?

 

This would hopefilly prevent accidently starting another BM.

 

For example: "Oh crap why is the sky red.....I better stay hidden until 4am"

[MechanicalLens]

Hi MM, if that's not considered a bug that will be fixed, what do you think of giving players the same temp. BM safety bestowed on players like when they die?

 

This would hopefilly prevent accidently starting another BM.

 

For example: "Oh crap why is the sky red.....I better stay hidden until 4am"

 

Then players could just log out when the blood moon starts and avoid it entirely.

[Gareee]

I didn't say no more T5's, I said personally I'd like to see more T3's, and I want it to not repeat the same POI until I've cleared every damn T3 on the whole map. I don't care if its 10 miles away, if I want a T3, I have to go there.

 

Do the traders have a range restriction on potential quests? It seems there are a lot of potential pois, but very few end up on the rotation list.

 

I would think higher tier could also be further away, since transportation should be available by the time you get to them.

 

@ both Fataal and Madmole:

 

I was talking to the wife and we had an idea... I know you can't to the perlin caves because of performance reasons... but what if the same occlusion system could be put in place for underground in loaded chunks? if while underground the game engine occluded the above ground and visa versa, that would make it feasible, wouldn't it?

 

We always see a performance spike when entering pois...this might also boost performance even more.

[Jedo]

two things one what happened to barbed wire?

Removed. It was made for POI design, and apparently never was meant to be available for regular player use.

[Damocles]

Distant trees that have fallen should disappear. Buildings do not, but I feel like we could tackle the problem in a different way and solve it. Then player forts would render and distant POIs would reflect changes.

 

The code to generate low poly distant POIs are in the game anyhow. Maybe updating those POIs every couple of minutes if they have changed could work.

But making player-structures have a distant model sounds tricky, as they could be anywhere and of any shape. (not just within a POIs borders).

[madmole]

Okay, to clarify, I'm thinking we've got too much stuff, not too little, but either way the discrepancy is real, and it won't be survivable if it's lesser.

 

What I'm saying is, all it takes is a mildly lucky find for SMG-5 schematic, or Compound Bow schematic, and suddenly you can scrap every crap wooden bow and crap pistol you come across, spend a couple perks, and have a Rank 3 or Rank 4 Tier 3 ranged weapon. You simply cannot do the same thing with tools and melee weapons - you have to get lucky and have them drop in loot.

 

My personal gamestage is around 35 - I'd have to login to check and I cannot do that right now - but our group gamestage for the horde night was not; the last wave was GS 174. So I'm not entirely certain how we could survive without Tier 3 weapons, even though I think we're getting them early. The 120-minute days are largely because we're not all on at the same time, so I don't think it works out so different from playing. Our top two guys are at around 40 hours, but most of us are around 20-25 hours played time. (Total of 6 of us.)

 

So steel tool parts need to be more common, or brown steel tools?

[Kalex]

So steel tool parts need to be more common, or brown steel tools?

I would say brown steel tools. Hubby and I are at a similar group GS and so far we have only found 1 brown steel tool and 1 steel tool part (default loot settings)

[Adam the Waster]

@anyone at TFP

 

do you guys plan on adding more animals or are you guys done with that?

[Jugginator]

Honestly I haven't been finding brown steel tools myself very much. To be frank, I've really only found a couple period (maybe 2 or 3 across multiple playthroughs). I usually find blues from trader quests or something and that's it until late in the game when I already have what I need tool wise and/or auger and chainsaw. Perhaps lowering the chance of finding good quality steel tools (until late game) with more parts being common earlier on?

[Damocles]

@anyone at TFP

 

do you guys plan on adding more animals or are you guys done with that?

 

A honey-badger with 150% the Hitpoints of a bear would be funny.

[Adam the Waster]

A honey-badger with 150% the Hitpoints of a bear would be funny.

 

XD that would be funny also add a zombie one! but given the area of the game "America" it would be more appropriate if it was a wolverine

[Laz Man]

Then players could just log out when the blood moon starts and avoid it entirely.

 

True but is that really a problem? There is already a setting to disable hordes in the menu. On MP servers it's a free ride though...

[Sennen]

Its called planning. Do you want us to build your base too? How dare you interrupt my crafting queue with your stupid low priority repair? Just messing with you. But what might be better is a drag and swap craft queue then we're not FORCING that repair to be first.

 

Maybe just a pause button next to cancel? Time only ticks down for whatever is first in queue that isn't paused. When all things in queue are paused - meaning whatever you stopped the rest for is done - unpause everything and continue.

[Kalen]

Since the stable rebalance?

 

2 of the 3 games.... so you're right, I shouldn't count the first one. Like I said, small sample size, so I'm not really worried about it yet.

[ReDelicious]

Whenever I look at hilly terrain or mountains, my FPS plummets to about 30 when I'm otherwise at a solid 60 (even on a horde night with many people on. Great job on that front). Even standing on top of a mountain and looking straight down causes it. I seem to recall someone mentioning something like this before but don't remember which setting affects it?

[Kalen]

So steel tool parts need to be more common, or brown steel tools?

 

Either way would work.... or maybe have them scrap into a few more parts?

[madmole]

Hi MM, if that's not considered a bug that will be fixed, what do you think of giving players the same temp. BM safety bestowed on players like when they die?

 

This would hopefilly prevent accidently starting another BM.

 

For example: "Oh crap why is the sky red.....I better stay hidden until 4am"

 

Later game you won't even notice, they don't stop coming until 4am.

[Trekkan]

So steel tool parts need to be more common, or brown steel tools?

 

I'm not saying this needs to be changed, but I can say right now, day 69 level 40 (multi player server, so in game time, its a bitch)... steel tools are really rare, let alone parts. Maybe that's ok, no idea. Just saying they are incredibly rare for us.

[Star69]

So steel tool parts need to be more common, or brown steel tools?

Steel tools early on seems OP, even brown ones. So I guess steel parts since you still need to collect enough to make the tool which takes time. I agree, so far, the steel parts are rarely dropping. This is Day 15 for me though, so if they drop at a higher rate with higher gamestage, I think I need to wait before commenting if it’s appropriate or not. We should get proper use of our iron tools rather than skipping straight to steel unless RNG is kind to you.