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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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There is the possibility that only the direction to ONE zombie is shown on the radar. As long as there are multiple zombies around you don't get reliable information from it, but it will always be helping you to find the last one.

 

A perk is a bad solution. Many players will not buy the perk except when they need it for that last zombie, but then they usually have no perk point left. And after you bought it you can't undo that even if you don't want it generally.

 

Why would it only show you one? The whole point is that the perk is an organic extension of having decent to high Perception in the first place; just look at Battle Royale players. They sure aren't only tracking the last person they engaged. You take the time to train your perception, you're just going to notice more, and that'll give you a rough mental map of your immediate surroundings (which is manifested as blips on your radar). A perk isn't a bad solution to this, and given more thought, I even designed some basic levels. Details are, of course, subject to change since this is conceptual.

 

Perk: Third Eye

Level 1: Detect hostile zombies (red blips) within 20 meters

Prereq: Perception 3

 

Level 2: Detect hostile zombies (red blips) and animals (green blips) within 30 meters

Prereq: Perception 5

 

Level 3: Detect hostile zombies and sleepers (red blips) and animals (green blips) within 50 meters

Prereq: Perception 8

 

...something like that. It's not an absolutely necessary thing, as evidenced by the fact that players who ignore quests are not totally crippled in gameplay. It's a natural progression if one decides for a Perception specialization; you'd naturally start to become in tune with your senses and recognize the unique noises, smells, and signs of animals, zombies, even the softer sounds of sleepers.

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The shorter the starter quest the better!

 

The ability to opt out of the starter quests would be nice. After doing them so many times they become a bit of a bother since you have to wait until the proper part of the quest chain activates before making your initial items (if you don't want to waste resources duplicating things you did before the quest calls for them). Opting out would just complete the quest chain and award the 4 points. The initial items crafted would then be on your own terms. No need to waste resources on the frames and upgrades, or the cooking fire, and people littering the area with their starter camps.

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I do not see why food has to be so important at the beginning of the game and something you can forget a few days later.

At the beginning of the game there may be abundant hunting but the zombies are supposed to be eating the animals and should start to become scarce.

The same goes for the nests could be plentiful at first to help the player and then go scarce for not having an easy resource.

This would force you to migrate to agriculture. Which would be nice to have to protect and that will be spoiled if you do not collect it on time.

 

This in a nutshell. Make things like nests and scrap piles a once use only, once scavenged it should disappear.

 

This would help a lot with forcing eventual player relocation and also a bit of speed up with map rendering and garbage cleaning.

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Why would it only show you one? The whole point is that the perk is an organic extension of having decent to high Perception in the first place; just look at Battle Royale players. They sure aren't only tracking the last person they engaged. You take the time to train your perception, you're just going to notice more, ...

 

The whole point was originally about solving the problem of the last zombie in a clear quest. Adding a perk that gives you omniscience of your suroundings at any time is quite a lot more and solves other "problems" and creates different situations.

 

The people who would need the first from time to time and the people who would actually buy the perk are not necessarily the same people. Just as an example, I would probably use a potion if I'm stuck in a level5 quest but I am relatively sure I would never buy such a perk, not normally, not to finish a level5 quest (because I couldn't turn it off again)

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There is the possibility that only the direction to ONE zombie is shown on the radar. As long as there are multiple zombies around you don't get reliable information from it, but it will always be helping you to find the last one.

 

A perk is a bad solution. Many players will not buy the perk except when they need it for that last zombie, but then they usually have no perk point left. And after you bought it you can't undo that even if you don't want it generally.

 

No, this is a task for either an option you can disable or enable temporarily or permanently from inside the game or an in-game one-use item, i.e. it could be a side-effect of one of the drugs in the game (preferably one you would often bring along with you).

 

I’m not picky about how the blips appear. My point is they appear because the player chose to have them. Options menu choice, drug effect, book effect, or perk effect—whatever. The key is that there are no radar blips naturally but the player has means to get them if they so choose.

 

I really don’t think seeing radar blips as a perception perk is bad game design but if I’m wrong and it truly is then one of those other ways that doesn’t cost a skillpoint is fine too.

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I'm not sure I was very clear, so here is a short video of what we would see :

 

Ok I see what you mean, it's a cool idea, it has no performance issues?

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Oh look everyone. Madmole is learning how to count! lol

 

Mr. Mole will not be happy with this...

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I sense another “Get off your ass and do it instead of asking for features that will do it for you” remark brewing from the Mole... ;)

 

I think its been stated 1000 times why we aren't getting pets or pet NPCs.

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I think its been stated 1000 times why we aren't getting pets or pet NPCs.

 

I think it stems from the mythconception that we'd have tamable wolves or something. <shrug>

 

Hey, y'all still plan on having a launch party in dallas? (was re-reading ks goals)

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The whole point was originally about solving the problem of the last zombie in a clear quest. Adding a perk that gives you omniscience of your suroundings at any time is quite a lot more and solves other "problems" and creates different situations.

 

The people who would need the first from time to time and the people who would actually buy the perk are not necessarily the same people. Just as an example, I would probably use a potion if I'm stuck in a level5 quest but I am relatively sure I would never buy such a perk, not normally, not to finish a level5 quest (because I couldn't turn it off again)

 

Er, no. The last zombie in a quest was simply an example the perk could help with. It's far from its only application. It's also hardly omniscience, since it only affects entities in ways that they're already tracked currently and merely pulls together information the player would normally notice and makes it a background process, much like humans actually do when they train themselves to react to particular stimuli. I believe this is just pulling Perception more in line with the concept I believe is being espoused (specialization and roles).

 

And, of course, no one has to take it; if it makes sense from a directional and realism standpoint and your only objection is... actually, I don't know what your objection is beyond, "I personally would not use it." Which... if we're being honest, is not a good reason to shoot anything down. Is there any other general concern that isn't an isolated circumstance?

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Why not just make the zombies remain active in trying to find the player? I mean if you are clearing out zeds, they obviously know their food is there. So, it only stands to reason that the zeds would remain active (noisy) grunting, groaning or whatnot, while the quest remains active and whether they see the player or not. Making them stay noisy, would negate the need of the blips.

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Er, no. The last zombie in a quest was simply an example the perk could help with. It's far from its only application. It's also hardly omniscience, since it only affects entities in ways that they're already tracked currently and merely pulls together information the player would normally notice and makes it a background process, much like humans actually do when they train themselves to react to particular stimuli. I believe this is just pulling Perception more in line with the concept I believe is being espoused (specialization and roles).

 

And, of course, no one has to take it; if it makes sense from a directional and realism standpoint and your only objection is... actually, I don't know what your objection is beyond, "I personally would not use it." Which... if we're being honest, is not a good reason to shoot anything down. Is there any other general concern that isn't an isolated circumstance?

 

Checking back I see it was really you starting the topic, but you were arguing for less info on clear quests(!), nothing more. But lets not get into "he said, she said..." any further, generally you and Roland want less information, but you propose to give others who still want the pointers in clear quests only(!) a solution they might not really want.

 

I don't think it is difficult to see that "permanent radar" is quite different from a situational radar in clear quests whose most important use case is to find the last zombie in a big POI.

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Pets are a ♥♥♥♥load of work for too little benefit. Should be asking them to polish current animations/models instead.

 

+1

 

They will, I trust in that new hired guy, the one who did Doom's animations. I hope they enhance zombie mocap animations too...

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There could also be player-placed defensive posts (as they did in Fallout 4) that the NPCs can man, and use long range attacks.

Those are called auto turrets. Hey I would love recruiting survivors as much as anyone, but until we get MUCH better performance allowing players to have pets/npcs is off the table.
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+1

 

They will, I trust in that new hired guy, the one who did Doom's animations. I hope they enhance zombie mocap animations too...

 

I really hope they add some extra attack/tripping/hugging/bite etc animations to zombies sometime in the future, triggering depending on limbs and randomly, so that combat and zombies feel more "organic/natural" and less "fixed"/predictable.

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Its never too late to start learning. Don't be a would have, could have, should have guy. Change your future by changing today's must do list. Being lazy doesn't have anything to do with it. Find your why, and make it a must do, not should do and then commit to x hours a week. You'll be amazed at what you can do if you put time into it.

 

Appreciate the motivation, got any pointers on where to start? It's been something I've put off for far too long now, and I'll be getting into it more now that my schedule is more normalized.

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Those are called auto turrets. Hey I would love recruiting survivors as much as anyone, but until we get MUCH better performance allowing players to have pets/npcs is off the table.

 

Ok fair enough, lets hope the performance allows ai actors apart from enemies.

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I really hope they add some extra attack/tripping/hugging/bite etc animations to zombies sometime in the future, triggering depending on limbs and randomly, so that combat and zombies feel more "organic/natural" and less "fixed"/predictable.

 

Zombies already have a bite animation, it just doesn't really activate till their arms are gone.

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I really hope they add some extra attack/tripping/hugging/bite etc animations to zombies sometime in the future, triggering depending on limbs and randomly, so that combat and zombies feel more "organic/natural" and less "fixed"/predictable.

 

Agreed, Dying Light combat feels really fluid, I think they did a good job with animations.

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Would be new to me, please restate why we will not get them.

 

They will not follow easily in a voxel world.

 

They will get stuck a bit everywhere; besides some players may simply close a door just to check what the pet will do.

 

In many games with followers, they are magically teleporting near the player whenever the above is happening.

 

Also +1 pet or more per player means more ressources used for animation and so on.

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I do not see why food has to be so important at the beginning of the game and something you can forget a few days later.

 

I take it you only play single player?? On servers that have active populations, food is VERY scarce. To the point where some servers have to mod in commands to let players spawn a deer near them just so they have an opportunity to get some meat. None of these suggestions for controlling "food hoarding" make any sense outside of single player. And at that point, it's only a problem if you let it be a problem.

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