Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[meganoth]

i came to the conclusion that the game refused to accept my design as it would forcefully try to load the old house, sometimes i would even see my base as the old house for few seconds when far away from it

 

That you see the old house from far away is simply the result of how distant terrain is shown. You would get much less than 1 FPS if the game had to draw every block of every house when you look at a town from afar. So the game engine pre-generates static pictures of how pois look from afar and shows them instead of generating the real scene in real time.

[meganoth]

Yes but it doesn't really work that way. At some point the real struggle ARE the horde nights and as such you need a specialized weapon to face the horde. If I'm gonna resort to using my AK I might aswell just spec into FORT and thus machine guns. The odd dude in the wild is easily dispatched with a decent sledgehammer anyways. Let's also not forget the AK is better than the pump shotgun in pretty much every area : DPS (when you account for reload times), effective range, magazine size... We're talking a T2 being much better overall than a T3. And the T2 double barrel is just a terrible weapon overall.

 

I don't want all weapons to be equal in all situations, but when your 100% close quarter strength guy has both less survivability, less raw damage output, less effective range, less crowd control/area damage than his closest friend the tank machine-gunner, the discussion isn't really about making everything equal but balancing stuff out in the grand scheme of things.

 

You have to take into account that the strength guy is the one who should swim in building material. What he lacks in shooting power at horde night he might make up for in wall thickness, multiple bases to switch between, etc....

 

Since the horde is practically an unlimited flow of zombies in end-game horde base defense isn't necessarily about killing zombies as fast as possible, it is about keeping them busy and away from your skin as much as possible.

 

This doesn't mean your argument especially about the double-shotty being too weak is wrong, but you should take that into account when comparing. With sex-rex, miner69 and mother lode the strength guy has 3 must-have perks in his own tree that almost everyone else has to specc into a bit as well. Yes, he has no long-range weapon, but otherwise he is "king of perks".

 

-------

 

At the same time Onarr complains that Agi is too weak and strength is soo strong. Everyone complains, so it looks like it is well balanced

 

 

First off, you really cannot kill anything at night, because night vision goggles do not drop. From what I saw in XML files, they only drop from loot bags and in several of my games,

 

I observed something strange with stealth: Even though I have helmet lights on in the night and the stealth meter is at 90 or more I do not wake up zeds on the other side of the room. It seems your stealth perk shrinks the noise range greatly. After that first shot though you often wake up other zeds and have to use quick shots with the pistol. In night raids of POIs I use a turret as backup, very helpful.

 

NV googles, yep. The drop chance of that item seems to have been nerfed hard. Maybe too hard, I haven't seen it yet in both my playthroughs (day ~20 4-person MP and day 47 SP). But that doesn't say much, it could drop any day now and then would be just at the right time when glowies start appearing in POIs

[Onarr]

Yes but it doesn't really work that way. At some point the real struggle ARE the horde nights and as such you need a specialized weapon to face the horde. If I'm gonna resort to using my AK I might aswell just spec into FORT and thus machine guns. The odd dude in the wild is easily dispatched with a decent sledgehammer anyways. Let's also not forget the AK is better than the pump shotgun in pretty much every area : DPS (when you account for reload times), effective range, magazine size... We're talking a T2 being much better overall than a T3. And the T2 double barrel is just a terrible weapon overall.

 

I don't want all weapons to be equal in all situations, but when your 100% close quarter strength guy has both less survivability, less raw damage output, less effective range, less crowd control/area damage than his closest friend the tank machine-gunner, the discussion isn't really about making everything equal but balancing stuff out in the grand scheme of things.

 

Honestly the double barrel doesn't fit the game and should be replaced by the pump shotgun as a T2, and a brand new T3 shotgun should come into play. And give the shotguns some uniqueness, whether it is AOE damage with more damage/more spread, less movement penalty when reloading, anything really. In my book it only has drawbacks right now, expect for a lower skill floor.

 

Got to agree. I would like to see combat shotgun modable with drum magazine. something like this

https://www.ammoland.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/fostech-drum-600x406.jpg

 

Also it would be nice if with slug ammo, the shotgun would become more precise as you shoot a single bullet

[Onarr]

At the same time Onarr complains that Agi is too weak and strength is soo strong. Everyone complains, so it looks like it is well balanced

Nope, in regards to shotguns, they are weak compared to AK. I agree with that. And AGI is weaker than STR (from single player standpoint)

[meganoth]

True, but scrap iron is only useful for a handful of items, most of them being scrap armor and mines. The only notable recipes that I can see are junk turret ammo, barbed wire fence, timed charges, and spotlights.

 

I think it's fine the way it is, but one would have to be crazy to sell lead over scrap iron.

 

Put scrap iron into forge -> get forged iron and forged steel -> recipe explosion!

 

 

I wonder if new players would not even know about the alternate weapon types were because the tutorial only has them make the club.

 

It probably leads to new players often doing a strength build and only in later playthrough checking out other attributes. At least for melee it isn't the worst way to get into the game.

[Onarr]

The cripple effect is permanent.

 

What is cripple effect is anyway? A slow? Its not really explained. What is stun? How do I recognize it on a zombie? Its quite important, because for example clubs say they have increased DMG to stunned zombies. If zombie lies on the floor is he stunned? Or only when he is flinching after a hit? Its not really explained anywhere so Iam asking. It might be nice to write it into those tutorial notes too (if it is there sorry ).

[Gazz]

Also it would be nice if with slug ammo, the shotgun would become more precise as you shoot a single bullet

Yes, it does.

 

Even better, if you install a laser sight it will tell you exactly where a slug goes.

[MechanicalLens]

Yes, it does.

 

Even better, if you install a laser sight it will tell you exactly where a slug goes.

 

I haven't tried the laser sight mod yet. Is it more visible (including in dark environments) than in A17? In A17, not complaining, but it was almost not noticeable? Haha

[madmole]

2 hrs to clean a big bussines??? you cant be serious.. this is not alpha 17 mate, specially in early game where there are no radiated zeds yet, also there is like 2-4 zeds in some houses/farms, multifloor buildings have like 4 zeds per floor... what would i get from lying anyway?? i came to write this exactly because just yesterday i cleaned like 60% of the town i stablished myself at (horde included) in 1 day, i am in day 18 and the town i am in has like 30 houses/bussines etc, also what are you talking about walmart? i am not asking you to increase loot or remove exploration.. i have 4 storages full of stuff and it will be a pain in the ass to move all that every 2 days without perking into the truck until i find a city i like to build my base at, thats all.

 

It takes 1 to 2 real time hours to clear shamway or shotgun messiah factories with fists, unless you have a team of guys and have done it 10 times and have it memorized. I have never cleared a full town, I'd rather walk down the road and explore than systematically grind a town out hitting POIs that visually have no interest to me or look too risky for where I am at in the game.

 

Anyhow, town size is fine I played with towns half this size and felt like it was borderline too much when we made them as big as they are now so no way are we making them bigger. It won't kill you to sprint down the road for a few minutes to find another town I do it on day one with crap stamina and no gear if I spawn in a non forest biome because of the dangers.

 

That said I'm sure a modder or even us might expose some sliders at some point like "town size", frequency, etc.

[meganoth]

Not sure, but here is how I think SI works (and I could be wrong so please correct me if you know better). This is a side view of your base with one of the support pillars:

    #    <-1
    #    <-2
    #    <-3
    #    <-4
    #    <-5
  S##     <-6,7      <- so 7 is the necessary SI your pillar needs to provide
  S
  S
  S      <- pillar providing SI
  S
--------------------  <-ground

 

Supplement to this: I was right, tested with wood frames and cobblestone. This is a before and after of two cooblestone piles where I just stacked blocks on top:

 

Before:

 

 

After:

 

 

 

Note on wood frames: Not sure but there might be a bug so that if you stack them on a column that is only 1 block sideways it seemed to stack endlessly (at least I tried for about 20 up and it still wasn't collapsing while a column 2 blocks sideways collapsed after about 6-8 blocks on top)

[Laz Man]

After a bug or something tonight (out of blue one side of my living quarters decided to just cave, no rhyme or reason, just crumbled. Wasn't due to structural integrity and zeds aren't around to blame LOL. This sort of thing has happened in previous alphas but can't replicate (captured it:

)). But anyways, I reassembled base just in time for day 35 horde night.

 

Bumped settings up to difficulty: Survivalist, BlockDamageAIBM to 125%, with BloodMoonEnemyCount at 35. Demolishers decided to make their grand entrance this horde night -- need I say more.. ROFL

 

Favorite picture of the night:

 

 

 

Full horde night video:

 

Aside from the recording not capturing "my" voice, thankfully, that was a blast! No pun intended -- ouchh is more like it. Definitely could have played a little more strategic and paid a bit more attention in alot of areas.. LOL, definitely not my finest moment. I didn't die so there's that. I feel the stack size for shotgun ammo is low, especially for the shotgun turrets, but thats my opinion. I did learn, after the fact, how to deal with that for the next bloodmoon. Havent played with turrets in A18 until this go around. So, live and learn. I couldn't seem to protect the electric posts (encasing them in steel didnt "seem" to help). The zeds, they are smarter than they have been in the past, that much was apparent tonight. It's all good, Day 42 horde will be my b****.

 

Great job and thanks for sharing. At that gamestage, lvl, and difficulty setting, you hung in like a champ. Look forward to seeing your next attempt. 😎👍

[Laz Man]

My friends and I have decided to play version 17.4 again. Since in 18.0 the creative menue was partially destroyed. No structure has been assigned to the soil types so that they look the same except for 2 exceptions.

After 6 years = ♥♥♥♥, worst update

 

Switching to 17.4 because of soil issues? Wow...

[madmole]

This is only the tip of the iceberg, to be honest...

 

TFP really needs to hire a copy editor. There are many punctuation mistakes, spelling errors, wrong use of "its" vs. "it's", etc. The grammar Nazi in me gets angry every time I see them.

 

What's worse - I see Joel's posts here, and how he types, and I'm pretty sure most of them come from him. And he's the boss, so it's going to be harder to correct him.

 

(My boss at work is the same way, incidentally, so I speak a little bit from experience here.)

 

No we just need you guys. I improve all the time. I JUST learned that It's is opposite of standard use of 's and I want to shoot whoever invented English right now. So apparently It's is only used for It is, but not possessive, like Joel's Gym, its is considered to be like his/hers. Stupid IMO but it is what it is, or isn't lol. BTW, most mistakes I'm finding here aren't mine but I'm sure some are Thanks for pointing it out.

[Laz Man]

That you see the old house from far away is simply the result of how distant terrain is shown. You would get much less than 1 FPS if the game had to draw every block of every house when you look at a town from afar. So the game engine pre-generates static pictures of how pois look from afar and shows them instead of generating the real scene in real time.

 

Mm mentioned an idea how to address that issue develolment wise (some type of update set at a certain frequency) but it was mostly conceptual at this point.

[AlabasterW]

Not really liking the new 'Topsoil' block system. It's steamlined and cool in theory, but it kills a lot of biome-ignoring building opportunities, and it REALLY sucks in the desert biome; the Topsoil block you place doesn't actually behave like the sand around it (it acts exactly like the soil from other biomes, with its more HP and digging up into clay), and it also costs way more clay than you'll actually get from digging up the native sand.

 

The current system means the desert is self-depleting, and you can only patch things up with these weird doppelganger blocks. Could we get Sand blocks and something like the old system back? Topsoil could be a helper block pointing to the traditional interchangeable soil types (Forest, Burnt, etc.), and Sand could just be Sand again. It just sucks having this weird compromise system for the GROUND, of all things.

 

E: apparently a guy up-thread agrees with me, VERY much so to switch back to 17.4, lol

[AlabasterW]

No we just need you guys. I improve all the time. I JUST learned that It's is opposite of standard use of 's and I want to shoot whoever invented English right now. So apparently It's is only used for It is, but not possessive, like Joel's Gym, its is considered to be like his/hers. Stupid IMO but it is what it is, or isn't lol. BTW, most mistakes I'm finding here aren't mine but I'm sure some are Thanks for pointing it out.

 

Don't forget plural possessive apostrophes!

The truck's wheels = the wheels of one truck

The trucks' wheels = the wheels of several trucks

 

I'm a real grammar nazi as well; I want to go through all the game's text with a fine-toothed comb and fix it all for you guys

Another small grammar lesson for those interested: semicolons are used in place of periods, when you want to elaborate on a previous sentence, but a comma would create a run-on. It's a joinder for two grammatically complete sentences. See five lines ago for an example!

[Hek Harris]

My friends and I have decided to play version 17.4 again. Since in 18.0 the creative menue was partially destroyed. No structure has been assigned to the soil types so that they look the same except for 2 exceptions.

After 6 years = ♥♥♥♥, worst update

Don't forget to write a negative review on Steam: there is a real deficiency right now. And above all, make it clear why you are furious: we are living in difficult times and it's good to laugh sometimes.

[Laz Man]

@MM, did you see this meme from Roland in the 7d2d meme thread? I lol'ed....

 

https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?62913-7-Days-to-Meme&p=1012371&viewfull=1#post1012371

[MechanicalLens]

Don't forget to write a negative review on Steam: there is a real deficiency right now. And above all, make it clear why you are furious: we are living in difficult times and it's good to laugh sometimes.

 

Is it just me, or are all/most of the negative reviews on 7D2D on Steam written by people who prefer older versions of the game, and not new players who dislike A18 for some reason or another? (Just goes to show how awesome A18 is. Like, legit. Few/almost no "legitimate" negative reviews)

[Jedo]

The wolf killed the deer,

The player killed the wolf,

Hi-ho, the derry-o,

Hunting sure is fun!

[madmole]

Could you add maybe a Trader Quest leading to a garage (or a factory) where the Trader knows there's a working vehicle?

That could be a new (sort of gated) way to get vehicles without just dropping them on the player from loot.

 

Maybe the level of the POI you're sent to can be related to the vehicle tier.

E.g.: a Garage could be for the Bicycle and the other tiers would be found in a Factory maybe.

 

Why? Its perfect as is. If you want a guaranteed thing, spend 1 point on it.

[madmole]

Well that's all good and well but if I'm gonna use my shells for looting to keep my 7.62 for horde nights (which I honestly should right now) there's really no point speccing into shotguns in the first place. The other huge issue with the double barrel is the constant reload that slows you down. When you're surrounded it's a death sentence while this should exactly be the situation in which the shotguns excels.

 

To be honest the whole concept of a 2 magazine gun should be rethinked because it doesn't fit a game play of killing masses. Or the mechanics need to be revisited so that it does massive splash damage so that a bullet equals several casualties. Right now it has no niche at all and is very unforgiving.

 

The other issue with the STR build is more global : he has absolutely no ranged specialization. Every other character has both melee and range power, the strength guy is a close quarter dude with no survivability. The more I think about it the more I think machine guns should be a STR specialization while shotguns should be for the tanky FORT build.

 

While I don't think shotguns are perfect I think you are wrong, shotguns can craft slugs which are like 762 on steroids.

[madmole]

What if you die again?

 

They recapture you sometimes, other times you die a true death and have to reload a save if you didn't save while captured.

[Gazz]

I'm a real grammar nazi as well; I want to go through all the game's text with a fine-toothed comb and fix it all for you guys

We're not holding you back. =P

 

Data\Config\Localization.txt and Data\Config\Localization - Quest.txt are csv files with all the game text.

[madmole]

A temporary delay on looting (i.e. the loot-timer takes 20% more time, sort of inverse Lucky Looter effect) would still get the "kicked while down" reaction but not weaken the player against dangers or make getting your gear back more difficult. No death loop.

 

XP loss could also be 60% of a level below lvl 10, 50% of a level below lvl 20... to address the non-nastyness early game.

 

We're going with 25%, keeping it simple. Early game isn't hard, you have no gear is all. So losing xp early game means nothing IMO you keep looting and your fine. Kill a few zeds and XP is back. Or choose to build a base you can get some good xp no risk.