Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[madmole]

Maybe take away the whole xp stuff. It's not gonna work very well anyways. You're just chasing your own tail trying to integrate it in a way that fits the game. ;-P Action-Bound xp just hurts your game. I never thought I'd say this, but Roland had a great idea - "Daily Skillpoint For Surviving".

 

Link to his mod:

https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?114413-0XP-RolMod

 

Uh ok. XP has worked forever in games. Rolands idea is suitable for a mod, but doesn't meet our vision for the game. Aside from that is totally flawed. A farmer can sit in his base with enough food to survive, go AFK and come back level 300 without actually doing anything at all.

[madmole]

Personally, I think the xp on the zombies is fine, it's the 'risk' that is missing, and how we approach and view the zombies now.

In the early builds, getting the "infection" actually caused a sense of dread and urgency. Then it was a priority to find antibiotics to cure it, because the antibiotics were rare and turned into the first real goal of trying to get a mini stockpile of them throughout the game.

It wasn't until the mid/later part of the game, to where you had a decent supply of them, that the zombie smashing really started to take place (at least for me).

 

That sense of urgency is missing now, not because I'm so much better at the game, but the 'fear' of getting infected is pretty much gone.

Sure, we can still die at the hands of the zombies now, if we are caught unawares, or we did something risky to get pummeled to death, or failed to bring enough bandages, but they really are nothing more than targets at a shooting gallery now, little risk involved.

 

I remember quite a few times, fighting zeds, wining the confrontation, only to get infected in the process, then the new urgency and need of finding a way to cure. This often resulted in traveling, looting, fighting more zeds in the process (if I didn't have the materials to make the antibiotics on hand) because just getting all the ingredients together, or finding the antibiotics themselves, was longer to come by, which made the threat of getting infected meaningful.

Now? It's nothing more than an after thought, after the first couple/few days in game at best, and that it's basically impossible for the infection to kill you.

 

This is spot on. Unfortunately all the old diseases got broke with the rewrite of the new awesome framework for A17. When we get time we should have something like this again.

[RestInPieces]

This is spot on. Unfortunately all the old diseases got broke with the rewrite of the new awesome framework for A17. When we get time we should have something like this again.

 

No matter the risk, players will still actively hunt zombies with this kind of XP, but nevermind that, it is something you will see for yourself in the future as well. It is good that you agree with this sentiment about diseases, but since a disease is mostly feared for its result which is death, and seeing how you reduced the effects of death since 17.0, how do you plan on implementing that risk when fighting zombies?

[Tildja]

@madmole

 

Is there any work beeing done on the current road situation, where we end up with a road going straight up or down depending on where your comming from ?

[Anthonydevidal]

my fear and concern is the distancing of the community and the developers.

 

and as between these two entities is not dialogue but rather is imposed by the developers

and if you do not like you have the generic answers ramdom:

 

Roland-----> if you do not like make your own game (This is my favorite, I have a predilection for Roland)

 

Madmole---->If you do not like it look for a mod that suits your tastes.

 

other Devs---->currently Unity does not allow us to do it without overloading the cpu and gpu.

 

this is a bit the summary of this thread A17 / A18

[jcalvelli]

In my opinion, death should have a temporary damage and a permanent random damage (-1 attribute point for example). With the disease working again and the possibility of permanent damage the zombie fighting approach will be different, making the fights something you try to avoid because survive is more important (a feeling that must be pursued in a survival game!).

[Guppycur]

...how should it be? They're a company that has a leadership structure.

 

Those answers you cited are spot on. How they should be.

 

/Predilecting for Roland since 1971

[Anthonydevidal]

...how should it be? They're a company that has a leadership structure.

 

Those answers you cited are spot on. How they should be.

 

/Predilecting for Roland since 1971

 

I did not say there is any problem,I said lack of communication,and that is supposed to be one of the objectives of a Forum, right?

 

 

PD

 

I love your vehicles mod

[Guppycur]

I did not say there is any problem,I said lack of communication,and that is supposed to be one of the objectives of a Forum, right?

 

 

PD

 

I love your vehicles mod

 

Thanks!

 

I respectfully disagree. I tried a few other game forums, this is the only one where I know the devs by first and last name, have talked to them publically and some privately, because they're f*cking cool people.

 

I talk a lot of crap, but they're good people, trying to do a good job, and I appreciate their willingness to interact with us fools.

 

Joel's skin grew about 6 inches thicker from a few years ago, so deep down I think he appreciates us for our asshaterry too.

[Anthonydevidal]

I understand you, if I had to read a guy saying, the game is now too easy, and the next saying now the game is too difficult. I would send them to hell

[madmole]

MM earned a bunch of XP flipping houses and invested that into the Game Design perk.

 

There is some crossover XP from all the businesses I've done for sure.

[Pille]

Uh ok. XP has worked forever in games. Rolands idea is suitable for a mod, but doesn't meet our vision for the game. Aside from that is totally flawed. A farmer can sit in his base with enough food to survive, go AFK and come back level 300 without actually doing anything at all.

 

Well, getting xp for basically nothing is already possible in several ways. For instance, once you have decent tools you can practice auto-mining. Just change the key binding for moving forward and primary action to the left mouse button. Then put something heavy on the mouse button.

 

But ofc I do understand that you don't want to implement mechanics that don't fit your myth-enshrouded vision. I expected exactly that reply from you but still wanted to draw some attention to Roland's idea.^^

 

 

I felt the back-handed sting of that compliment. But it is appreciated. My cheek will heal.

 

I'm not as anti-Roland as you may think.

[Aerial]

In my opinion, death should have a temporary damage and a permanent random damage (-1 attribute point for example). With the disease working again and the possibility of permanent damage the zombie fighting approach will be different, making the fights something you try to avoid because survive is more important (a feeling that must be pursued in a survival game!).

 

A "permanent" health reduction as a death penalty could work pretty well if it forces you to spend additional skill points to bring your health back up. It would be sort of like a permanent -1 to fortitude except it wouldn't impact all of the other skills attached to your level of fortitude. Unfortunately, I think that would be too confusing and non-intuitive for the player to be viable in that form.

 

Instead, maybe uncouple health and stamina from skill points and this could work. If you simply earn a point of health or stamina with each level (or two, whatever works for balance), then you can penalize the player 10 health or 5 health/5 stamina for dying because as long as they can keep filling the XP bar they can earn them back. It'll just take a while. And it has no impact on skills in the skill tree, which is the major complaint with the death penalty as it currently stands in A17.

[madmole]

madmole has requested a few times now that lbd discussion be taken elsewhere. I am now enforcing that. There is a thread for lbd discussion in general discussions. Please refrain from bringing it up here in this thread. Thank you.

 

https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?116806-lbd-talk-is-right-here

 

rip lbd.

[madmole]

This ... this needs to happen. Some where, some how, only on a day-7 blood moon where you're carrying 13 boiled meat, I don't care how you hide the easter egg.

 

I want to believe.

 

I was talking about early alphas there was one zombie roam sound that was reminiscent of a cow mooing.

[Pille]

Yeah goodbye level-based dangers aka sleepers that depends on the players' gamestage.

[madmole]

Can vultures carry dogs in this version? Or was that for a future build? That and climbing zombies again. I know a base wrecker is coming.

 

I kinda like how the spider zombie is a jumper now and think he should stay that way. Add the climbing ability to another zombie. The more unique zombies we get the better. Have bears climb also, that would be scary as hell for sure.

 

Climbing over the few block shapes we had back in the day wasn't too hard, but still looked pretty fugly. Doing it over all the million shapes we have now, is a lot more challenging. Bandits might be able to cause a lot of new problems.

[madmole]

MM:

My only request for Alpha 18 or beyond... in-game voice chat needs to be tied into zombie awareness!

The zombies should be able to hear you talking to your comrades via the in-game voice chat... the louder you talk the more the zombies will be able to zero in on you!

 

Everyone will just use discord then.

[madmole]

So, that skin ain't that thick after all.

Old madmole did put mines in the wasteland, but the new one just commissions the silent thread slicer in the dark!

 

No I'd go off on people and call them babies and whatnot. The landmines were to simulate that the wasteland was a warzone and landmines are a thing in warzones.

[madmole]

Sounds about right - most people would do that.

 

*dramatic voice*

Is it this the zombie killing game you want MM? Or zombies being obstacles that you have to kill to survive, like you had also said in the past?

 

Dude, I've seen multiple walls of text about hordes, but honestly my brain is focused on perks, perk books and the 10 million moving parts with ungating crafting from INT. This is a huge amount of work, so I have limited capacity and time to read pipe dreams right now.

[madmole]

Is there any thought around animal traps? I like that in The Forrest (game) I can make traps to catch rabbits. I also liked that I can raise/hatch chickens in Minecraft. with both of those breadable species in the game it would be nice to have a system that supports:

 

a. Trapping (Live trap and dead/death traps)

b. raising/breading - with chance of Feral/zombie animal (bonus)

c. some sort of interaction that is required in order to keep them alive like feeding/water

d. Risk - if a wolf is XX blocks they will try and attack/kill them or destroy the cage/trap.

 

Seems like you can get out there and hunt. If you want easy food go farm. We're not allowing players to farm animals in traps, it would eat cpu having expensive entities stuck in cages. I wish we had Unreal Ark you can have a lot of dinos and it somehow still runs ok lol.

[madmole]

Breeding animals isn’t gonna happen. Breeding animals means new entities taking up space and causes performance issues. Just like in Minecraft when you breed a bunch of animals.

 

tfp dont want MP servers to suffer because some dude is breeding hundreds of chickens for his new KFC restaurant.

 

As far as taming goes, we were supposed to be able to tame wolves. I donآ’t know if this idea got scrapped or not.

 

I should read ahead before I respond. Yes this exactly.

[madmole]

The difference is that if they hunker down and do nothing while waiting for the level up to hit they aren't getting it any faster than others who are going out and accumulating gear, materials, dukes, and building up defenses. Right now we have people who figure out the fastest way to progress and they stick to that. With time based progression no player action can affect the speed at which that progression happens. That means players can do what they truly want to do in the game and not worry if it puts them ahead or behind the curve.

 

Hunkering down and doing nothing becomes the least effective way to play.

 

Depends on your goal, if your wanting to pvp you would hide until you get max level, buy all the perks, then start gathering gear.

[hiigaran]

I realy like the Roland idea.less meta Game to think about.

Just nerf food.

 

Crops:. + time to grow

 

Meat:. adds decay... You alredy have the rotten flesh item.

 

Loot: make food less common. I play in 25% and even whit this i have a lot

 

Is not a food simulator...but is the main issue in a survival event.

[beHypE]

Dude, I've seen multiple walls of text about hordes, but honestly my brain is focused on perks, perk books and the 10 million moving parts with ungating crafting from INT. This is a huge amount of work, so I have limited capacity and time to read pipe dreams right now.

 

I'm soooo interested to see how you will shake this all up, out of everything aside RWG this is probably the change i'm awaiting the most. Glad you figured out a solution to the "Intelligence tree problem" !