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Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!


madmole

Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!  

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  1. 1. Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

    • A18 Stable is Out!
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Thats the one art system I'm still author of, otherwise Justin, Yongha, Ryan, and Joey are handling all the art. I'm doing game balance and system design and a bit of technical art and animation work. But the latter is about 5% of my time at most. I'm sure Justin will take over in time lol.

I just love these sunrises and sunsets. Working with color and light is amazing...

I often move the time slider just to admire it.

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I was referring to Aerial’s (and other’s) idea of growing seasons. The problem being, how to balance it for everyone, if one player joins when crops grow, while another player joins when they don’t. Yeah, the Blood Moon presents the same problem... but that doesn't mean we should introduce more balance problems. :)

 

Well that's what I am saying. The newbie coat buff could be the balance for season. It could also be the balance for spawning in during a bloodmoon.

First time spawn: check for bloodmoon. Increase the amount of damage reduction by 50%.. or whatever.

If seasons were a thing, they could even check for what season it was and give that player x amount of days staying at full food levels. Heck, they could even give the person a temp boost to their loot drops percentage by increasing lucky looter for a couple/few days.

I'm not really arguing for seasons (although I would like it), I'm just saying they already have the means to do that stuff, or will, if the xmls are anything to go by; including whats still in the "needs to be hooked up" areas.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

 

So, When do I.. errmm, I mean WE! get to play with all the new goodies? O.o :playful:

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What if player grown crops generate a type of plant-heat that increases the grow times of crops nearby? A sort of way to prevent massive farms (and the lag that comes with it) while forcing players with enough resources to create big farms to either invest in fertiliser, or spread out their farms more (and thus spend more of their limited attention on maintaining those farms, to the point where having a super farm would require you to invest all your time into said farm to keep it running)

 

With the whole grinding for xp thing, perhaps each level could have diminishing returns? If there's any sort of information about what gives you xp when you get xp, you could compare it to how much xp this level you've already gotten by doing that activity, and divide it by an appropriate amount. This way you can't just leave a weight on the w key and look at a corner, you can't punch thousands of bushes, you can't mine non stop and ignore all other aspects of the game. It prevents the grindy gameplay loops but in a way that still rewards players who stay at the base while their friends go out looting, preventing them from falling behind the level curve, while at the same time players who just grind zombies for kills also are drawn towards different areas of the game once they don't get much xp that level from zombie killing.

 

Could spears be treated as an ammo and weapon? You could make a pack of level 3 iron spears, and it has an ammo assigned to itself, which reduces when you throw the spears and increases when you pick them up. You could even set the spear pack to have it's own durability that reduces with throws and jabs, thus even if you keep picking up your spears, once the pack's durability wears out then you have to get new ones or repair them. This way you can maybe have stacks of spears without having to worry about different levels, maybe?

 

Regarding players not knowing that scrapping guns can give them gun parts, maybe replace the text "Scrap" for firearms to "Disassemble"?

 

Also hey, first time posting, hope this isn't too long :jaded: I know development can be really tough especially when you always will have people criticising every decision you make, but just remember that you it's impossible to please everyone, and no matter what you do, there will always be people who want the opposite

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First of all - that RWG pic looks very awesome. I'm happy with the fixes in A17.3 but that just takes it to a whole 'nuther level.

 

Now, about the whole "food spoilage" thing. There's one mechanic I'd like to suggest, and I don't think it would either impact current performance, or be easy to exploit.

 

Simply make crops spoil after a certain point. I'm not suggesting spoilage of anything in your inventory. I mean, once a crop has reached a "harvestable" stage, it's not finished growing. The next stage is that the plant dies.

 

This means you'd have to harvest crops when they were "ripe," and if you missed your window, all you'd be able to harvest is grass (or whatever dead plants give you).

 

There's already a timer attached to growing plants so this shouldn't be any more of a performance drain than already exists.

 

One other idea - but this one is for NPCs. Others (including MM) have said that zombies destroying crops might be a thing. If so, I suggest hostile NPCs (bandits or whatever) be able to do the same thing.

 

Except in their case, they gain health from "destroying" the crops. If it's easy/practical to implement, possibly have NPCs put the crops back to "seed" state instead of utterly destroying them. This gives the impression that they are "stealing" them rather than destroying them.

 

EDIT: I also had some thoughts about how to implement "permadeath."

 

The question is, what does "permanent death" mean if you're not starting an entirely new game with a new map? IMHO this means starting over, but living in the same world.

 

Some things that might help with this mechanic:

  • No bedrolls in the game.
  • The exposed map resets itself (so everything is hidden and you lose all your saved markers).
  • Permanently drop everything on death. OR...
  • Drop a backpack with your stuff, but it doesn't show up on the map.
  • Lose all your skill points, and/or keep them but have to re-invest them. (The latter is better if you can't reset your gamestage.)

 

A lot of this is possible via mods, but only if you use SDX, which I personally am against. Ideally all of these things could have a setting in the advanced menu, or at least be moddable via XML.

 

Obviously these are just suggestions, and to be honest, I'm not going to be upset if the game stays as it is.

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What if player grown crops generate a type of plant-heat that increases the grow times of crops nearby? A sort of way to prevent massive farms (and the lag that comes with it) while forcing players with enough resources to create big farms to either invest in fertiliser, or spread out their farms more (and thus spend more of their limited attention on maintaining those farms, to the point where having a super farm would require you to invest all your time into said farm to keep it running)

 

With the whole grinding for xp thing, perhaps each level could have diminishing returns? If there's any sort of information about what gives you xp when you get xp, you could compare it to how much xp this level you've already gotten by doing that activity, and divide it by an appropriate amount. This way you can't just leave a weight on the w key and look at a corner, you can't punch thousands of bushes, you can't mine non stop and ignore all other aspects of the game. It prevents the grindy gameplay loops but in a way that still rewards players who stay at the base while their friends go out looting, preventing them from falling behind the level curve, while at the same time players who just grind zombies for kills also are drawn towards different areas of the game once they don't get much xp that level from zombie killing.

 

Whoa there, new person! You'll get a lot more support for ideas if you don't present them as, what if the game prevents this, what if the player can't do this, and what if the player is forced to do the other thing. Limiting gameplay always gets a lot of backlash, and that's coming at it from the wrong angle in my humble opinion. The goal should be to bring a new or existing system into balance, with itself and with other systems.

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Dead is dead is not hardcore in my eyes. These players avoid the higher gamestages and start over with the easy zombies.

 

When I met my first radioactive zombie in A17 he immediately killed me. When I wanted to get my backpack he killed me again. A dead is dead player would have started over and for the next 2-3 weeks no more radioactive zombies seen. I adjusted my tactics, set up rules for looting POIs and improved my equipment. I have learned.

 

A limited number of lives would only benefit those who start all over again after 3 weeks of play anyway.

 

Death in the game should be something that gives you the opportunity to learn and develop.

 

Ever played one of the Dark Souls games or one of the other games from FromSoftware ? You die extremely often in these games. But you learn more with every death. You learn to recognize the attacks of your opponents and how to counter them best. Which attacks are successful with which opponents and which ones the opponent can simply block. This is how you develop as a player. And if you have finally defeated a boss after 50 attempts, that is a sense of achievement.

 

Dark Souls? *Laughs in SL1 no death/damage taken fists only playthrough*

Joking aside dying a lot in games is what allows you to adapt. do you think I was able to do these types of runs in Dark Souls from the get go? nope, I died and learned and died again. I used to play dead is dead until I realized that I will die no matter what at some point and just need to continue playing so I can overcome these obstacles.

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If you go that direction, perhaps you’d want to separate stack size in the player’s inventory from stack size in storage, so your kitchen isn't crates stacked from floor to ceiling.

 

Na, just don't cook everything. Pretend there is spoilage or role play it. Cook what you need and have ample space for, otherwise keep loads of ingredients. We won't nerf ingredient stacks, only health related food items and bandage stacks.

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Neat! Would animals path towards plants, specifically, or just trample them incidentally? If they don’t mill around the garden, I fear it wouldn’t be clear why your plants were destroyed, after the animal's moved on.

 

Also, I think it’d be most interesting, and give better performance, to put this behavior just on animals. Zombies do enough different things already.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

 

 

Hmm. That would be interesting, if a blight or similar wipes out ALL crops of one type. Then you might still bring in 500 potatoes, but no corn. So no more mass production of stew for you: you’re reduced to baked potatoes until you can ramp up corn production again. That would affect a big farm more than a small farm... I think I like this idea!

 

Again baby steps. I think we would try trampling by accident, and if it didn't feel like enough maybe do some intentional stuff to simulate animals eating your crops.

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I believe that not everyone is closeby, right? Some are even in another city or country? The wonders of the digital age! Is this true for TFP's? How far apart are the programmers from each other? I'd have to think they were at least quite close?

 

No most of us work virtual, but the core group in the Dallas area keeps growing.

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I just love these sunrises and sunsets. Working with color and light is amazing...

I often move the time slider just to admire it.

 

Yeah I spent a zillion hours on it. Thank god for a reload spectrums command so I can edit them and see the updated colors lol. We didn't have that originally and it was too slow to get looking remotely decent.

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Will the spear have different versions...Stone , Iron, Steel with more damage as you go up and can it be thrown and retrieved like arrows?

 

Yes, three versions. Most everything in the game follows the same design now: Primitive craft, mid level craft and schematic only high tier craft at workbench.

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First of all - that RWG pic looks very awesome. I'm happy with the fixes in A17.3 but that just takes it to a whole 'nuther level.

 

Now, about the whole "food spoilage" thing. There's one mechanic I'd like to suggest, and I don't think it would either impact current performance, or be easy to exploit.

 

Simply make crops spoil after a certain point. I'm not suggesting spoilage of anything in your inventory. I mean, once a crop has reached a "harvestable" stage, it's not finished growing. The next stage is that the plant dies.

 

This means you'd have to harvest crops when they were "ripe," and if you missed your window, all you'd be able to harvest is grass (or whatever dead plants give you).

 

There's already a timer attached to growing plants so this shouldn't be any more of a performance drain than already exists.

 

One other idea - but this one is for NPCs. Others (including MM) have said that zombies destroying crops might be a thing. If so, I suggest hostile NPCs (bandits or whatever) be able to do the same thing.

 

Except in their case, they gain health from "destroying" the crops. If it's easy/practical to implement, possibly have NPCs put the crops back to "seed" state instead of utterly destroying them. This gives the impression that they are "stealing" them rather than destroying them.

 

EDIT: I also had some thoughts about how to implement "permadeath."

 

The question is, what does "permanent death" mean if you're not starting an entirely new game with a new map? IMHO this means starting over, but living in the same world.

 

Some things that might help with this mechanic:

  • No bedrolls in the game.
  • The exposed map resets itself (so everything is hidden and you lose all your saved markers).
  • Permanently drop everything on death. OR...
  • Drop a backpack with your stuff, but it doesn't show up on the map.
  • Lose all your skill points, and/or keep them but have to re-invest them. (The latter is better if you can't reset your gamestage.)

 

A lot of this is possible via mods, but only if you use SDX, which I personally am against. Ideally all of these things could have a setting in the advanced menu, or at least be moddable via XML.

 

Obviously these are just suggestions, and to be honest, I'm not going to be upset if the game stays as it is.

We tried crops cycling to a dead version but on a public server you'd log back in the next day or whenever and everything was dead. Not really a good solution. Its great for SP, but again, this is also a MP game.

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I see those all the time. I believe those are broken wandering hordes. I mentioned it in another post and was told wandering hordes work fine. It is a group composed of the same number of zombies that are in wandering hordes but they stand around in a group, jumping up and down. I see them near the base the first thing in the morning and see them after I've been in a poi for a long period. My uneducated opinion is that for some reason wandering breaks down and they just stand there sometimes jumping up and down. Hopefully someone will look into it.

 

I'm pretty sure some zombies in wandering hordes will break from pathing or spawn in a bad place and just hang out. Don't know why. It is on my todo list.

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Okay, I can appreciate that it's driven by gameplay needs, in the case of making a visual language for bandit armor. But I completely agree with Haidrgna. If you have a system for swapping parts and textures of a character, but you only use it on a small, less often encountered subset of the game's enemies, that would be a big waste of the tech!

 

Use your imagination here. If you have the tech to turn off a bandit's scrap iron chest plate and turn on his bandolier, you have the tech to turn off a farmer zombie's cowboy hat and turn on his trucker cap. Or turn off his prospector beard and turn on his lumberjack beard. Or turn off his fully intact left leg and turn on his gory left leg with exposed bones.

 

By simply mixing and matching these variants into many possible combinations, you get more variety, more bang for your buck than you could ever achieve by spending the same amount of art time creating whole zombie models that look the same each time. I'd compare it to the variety of randomly assembled worlds compared to the hand-made Navezgane. And again, since zombies are the 'bread and butter' that players see every day, if this variety is worth it for anything, it's worth it for zombies in my opinion.

 

I should point out you guys have been making some great strides in best utilizing the assets you have, though. Not long ago you changed the makeup of hordes, to avoid multiple instances of the same zombie type where possible. And in 17.3, you made RWG avoid putting copies of the same building next to each other where possible. Changes like these are HUGE for me, because they're smarter ways of utilizing the existing content.

 

There is not much to the 'tech'. Find object enable/disable. That is the easy part. The problem is the content. All those zombies are mostly one skinned mesh. You can't turn cowboy hats off. The artists would need to edit each model to split the mesh up and that would take a while to do.

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Hi Faatal. Talking about optimisations, can voxels be combined? For example, in a cave collapse, it seems to calculate each and every voxel separately. My thoughts on the matter is, especially for sand or soil, combine the voxels of the same type and calculate it all at once. Or at least calculate 5 or 10 blocks at once.

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