Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Ouch Quit It]

I only draw about 2.5 inches

 

Irish curse?

[bdubyah]

It is unfortunate but also easily fixed yourself by harvesting a landmine. For some reason doing that fixes the problem.

 

Heh. Hehehe.

[unholyjoe]

It is unfortunate but also easily fixed yourself by harvesting a landmine. For some reason doing that fixes the problem.

 

there is a reason why some things are not documented (ya know... testing secrets maybe) oh well, too late now

[Aldranon]

I think you underestimate how much material you need for a decent base.

 

I've already used 1000-1500 rebar frames and about 10000-15000 cement to build my current working base. And I'm not finished with the construction yet. These are completely different quantities than the little bit you can get from the trader and the pallets in the POIs. And the base is not even very big. It is only 20 x 20 blocks with a height of 17 blocks and surrounded by a 4 block high concrete wall and a 4 block deep and 2 block wide trench with concrete walls.

 

And this is why "Mantis Shrimp" is coming our way.

 

I have a Working Stiff POI with 3 meter thick walls and 6 3x3 support pillars.

 

- I don't shoot at the night hordes. I do smack the vultures around though.

- I don't have traps.

- I just craft on the roof all night, 120 min days.

[Scyris]

I have no objection to what you have planned, but since you asked, I’m happy to help brainstorm! Building on your concept of knowing just where to hit things...

 

On the Money

+25% chance to do double block damage to safes.

 

Lucky Strike

+15% chance to do double block damage to terrain.

 

Sweep the Leg

+10% chance to apply headshot damage multiplier to a leg shot.

 

And additional ideas, based on being more sensitive or aware of sights, sounds, etc...

 

Nature Calls

Animals in your area make noises more often (because you're more perceptive of them; great for people who hate surprise dogs).

 

Far Sighted

+30% map radius revealed around the player as they explore.

 

Eyes in the Back of Your Head

The stealth meter displays while standing.

 

Clarity & Focus

-50% intensity of screen effects like 'bloody screen' and blurry screen

 

Trip Wireless

-30% chance of triggering a loose board or land mine when stepping on it.

 

Eagle Eye

+25% zoom when aiming down a sight or scope

 

Ooh, Shiny!

Certain objects (rare ore, loot containers, shot arrows) have a special shader applied that makes them periodically 'glint'.

 

Smoke Detector

-20% heat from stations running near you (you notice when a fire gets smoky, and compensate)

 

Dowsing Rod

Your shovel jerks slightly (alternate animation) when standing directly over an ore vein.

 

Target Acquired

The crosshairs change color when your shot or swing would land on a hostile entity (taking into account drop, for projectile weapons).

 

I really like that target acquired book. Actually a lot of these would be pretty useful in general I'd think.

[Scyris]

I think where the knife will shine in A18 is the higher chance of decapitation and comparably low stamina usage in power attacks. I have to agree though, usually I'll go with the sledge or steel fireaxe just due to the fact if I don't kill the zombie in 1 -3 hits, my face is a nom to death.

 

 

Edit: and a no duh captain obvious moment, I should have read madmole's response to you. lol

 

I never use power attacks in Vanilla a17, the stam freeze it causes hurts way to much mid combat. I hope a18 removes that or power attacks will still be mostly worthless due to all the downsides they have.

 

Darkness Falls mod doesn't have that stamina freeze on power attacks, and it just feels right. The downsides of power attacks is, more stam use which is pretty easy to see, but there is another downside, if your char does the power attack grunt its like banging on a safe standing up, it REALLY alerts nearby zombies like your firing a hunting rifle or a shotgun. I've had a power attack wake a entire floor of a poi multiple times.

[Scyris]

To me its a dedicated effort to get enough ammo. I mean I spent a whole day mining nitrate/lead/coal to craft enough ammo to kill the horde that came, half the day before the horde smelting forged iron for metal spikes. So I spent a day and a half and I easily wrecked the day 14 horde. To me the game played as expected. People who don't mine and don't scavenge brass will definitely have a bullet shortage, and the new better ammo is a higher cost to maintain.

 

We're balancing every day but I like what I'm playing now a lot. I probably played 10 hours on a Sunday, so it must be good. I'm actually working on "castle like details" to my fort that wouldn't ever do on previous tests because in 16 I could sit on a roof and be safe, and in 17 the loot wasn't interesting enough to keep me hooked. So its a good sign I'm working on my base (although barely any time for this as the desire to loot is super strong). With agility Im a night owl so my base time is limited. Im out hunting dudes with my bow and have found the no encumbrance at night book, so I go fetch my loot stashes I placed during the day and snipe everything with my bow for massive sneak damage.

 

No Encumbrance at night book? I like the sound of that, riskier to go looting at night but if you can remove inv encumbrance at night, it balances out.

[Scyris]

Its a toss up really. Random stats on items with quality is really cool, but I like the feeling of specialization the most. If I go into one tree and just max it out, use the weapons it governs and perks in the intended play style, I feel rewarded and I'm starting to feel like a special character archtype vs just "survivor" like before.

 

My strength character felt like a badass blowing heads off with shotguns and smashing zeds with clubs. He smashed open safes with his good tools and tool perks.

 

My agility character is sniping zombies at night with bows, using lockpicks to open safes, fights with a hunting knife in melee and uses a silenced pistol when I have enough ammo and a magnum on horde night or for bigger tougher zombies.

 

The books are cool every time, nearly every one I find is useful. Schematics are cool too, collecting recipes for foods saves me perk points I don't want to spend, and my Agility character has 1 int, so far I'm faring just fine. I am using the traders workbench, and bought a schematic for a chem station I will craft eventually.

 

As cool as those things are, the game feeling balanced and well designed is the best thing about it. I can do what I want and have choices. Perks if I know I'm going down that route, but otherwise books schematics and traders fill in the gaps.

 

I found a motorcycle chassis schematic, bought the handlebar schematic, but now an engine is keeping me from having my first vehicle. Its day 16 and still on foot. I don't mind it though, I have the no encumbrance at night perk so I transport my loot at night and snipe everything I see with my bow, its great. You can see at night now, the moon puts off decent light. Its still a little dark in some biomes, but overall its fun being a night stalker.

 

I still feel stuff like miner 69'er and motherload if they still exist should be in a general perk pool. I hate gathering resources to be frank its boring, and busting blocks slowly so I tend to get those pretty high early.

[Scyris]

Its a little more like Skyrim or Fallout where you might end up trading blows. Armor is way better out of the box now, perks do not influence it, so get some armor going if your going to melee. Cloth armor weighs nothing so pure benefit there. You can still avoid being hit if your good but the zombies tend to hit more with this, and its mostly just interesting to see them get aggro and start moving faster.

 

Not to thrilled about this, I always felt running zombies was a stupid concept (and still do), I mean maybe some special ones can run but every normal zed shouldn't be able to magically run once night hits. Their danger should be in their numbers, not their speed imo. I know performance issues, all this change is going to do really is force people to use ranged earlier on insted of melee, as early game you generally lack the supplies to stay healed up.

 

I do notice if you shut shadows off the insides of poi's get much brighter, maybe the blocks shouldn't be casting shadows from outside considering its a wall? Other performance impactor is the SI system, zombies start hitting a poi I'm in and my fps takes a sharp nosedive by upwards of 10-50 fps, due to all the SI Calcs its doing seemingly every hit they do.

[Scyris]

Not really, its game staged and loot is set up accordingly. Changing it would be a bunch of work that only benefits 5000 hour guys who have memorized how many zombies spawn at particular houses. There are loads of new remnants going into the game that have zero to a few guys that spawn, but the dungeons are what they are and the loot is good.

 

Any plans to fix gamestage spawning? so at late game its not always always run radiated zombies with massivle pools of hp that spawn and thats it? I was kinda wishing it'd be more like loot gamestage, where higher gamestate is a chance of those zombies spawning but it never gets to the point its guarteed, maybe up to always ferals is fine.

[alchemi2]

Bingo - this guy gets it.

IMO you don't get it and neither did he, you/me can think what you like but until we actually play the latest Alpha we won't know whether the balance is good and how much of a spread we need in anything.

 

So many complain about A17 but haven't even played A17.4, I watch many Youtubers and some still forget the changes and try to do things the oldway or don't take advantage of some features of A17.4 .

 

From the descriptions so far by MM and Roland etc A18 sounds awesome and many of the must haves of the perk system appear to have been addressed. Why not wait and see now you have raised your concern how it pans out, after all there is always A19 on the horizon, where further balancing can be done if needed.

[Scyris]

May be melee weapons will penetrate bars? It is logical.

 

Use the 50% pillars, you can melee thru the center of themmake a box of them like you would the bars, there you go, you can shoot/melee thru them and zombies can't walk thru them but they CAN melee you if your too close. Not to mention they can be upped to steel for 7k hp.

[DaVegaNL]

I only draw about 2.5 inches

 

It's not about the size of the drawing, you know..

[Gazz]

Any plans to fix gamestage spawning? so at late game its not always always run radiated zombies with massivle pools of hp that spawn and thats it? I was kinda wishing it'd be more like loot gamestage, where higher gamestate is a chance of those zombies spawning but it never gets to the point its guarteed, maybe up to always ferals is fine.

I don't know which GS you are referring to.

 

I picked out a random but pretty high GS sleeper group and it is very far from "all radiated".

 

<entitygroup name="sleeperHordeStageGS610">

<entity name="zombieSpiderFeral" prob="0.658"/>

<entity name="zombieSteve"/>

<entity name="zombieSteveRadiated" prob="0.504"/>

<entity name="zombieFatCopRadiated" prob="0.382"/>

<entity name="zombieMaleHazmat"/>

<entity name="zombieFatCopFeral" prob="0.505"/>

<entity name="zombieFemaleFatRadiated" prob="0.504"/>

<entity name="zombieSoldierRadiated" prob="0.382"/>

<entity name="zombieSkateboarderRadiated" prob="0.504"/>

<entity name="zombieArleneFeral" prob="0.658"/>

<entity name="zombieFemaleFatFeral" prob="0.658"/>

</entitygroup>

[jenniann]

@Madmole Any chance that we might eventually be able to run a torch in say left hand and still be able to use right hand for club or gun? Would be nice for early game when finding a mining helmet can sometimes be hard.

[Crater Creator]

I thought you were talking about a bug where if you did too much damage you missed part of the harvest. The old harvest more resources at the end feature I liked but Gazz said it made balancing harder so I let him remove it. When things are done moving around we could possibly add it back.

 

...Yes it teaches that finishing a job rewards you, something people these days need to learn.

 

Awesome! Then I guess all that's left to say is I agree. Getting a big 'payout' for destroying the block (regardless of the overall total) felt much more like I was achieving something. Steady harvesting throughout feels more like grazing aimlessly, with no obvious stopping point or reason not to drift from block to block.

[NukemDed]

i use a controller. rubber bands around the butons and sticks.

get up and cook tea.

heaps of resource ;-)

[Crater Creator]

Not even close.

Someone here was 100% dead on with a youtube video they showed.

There's your clue.

 

You just made my day, Kinyajuu. Because for those that missed it, the only video posted here that would apply is that one that showed the weapon's collider as a small red sphere at the end of the pole/sword that's sampled every frame as the weapon swings. Rejoice, brawler characters - A18 will have a modern melee system!

[NukemDed]

and a loooooong escape tunnel

[The Gronk]

It is unfortunate but also easily fixed yourself by harvesting a landmine. For some reason doing that fixes the problem.

 

One day landmine retrieval will be implemented and nobody is going to believe it's real. :-)

[Damocles]

Capabilities of a traditional bow in the right hands..

 

Lars Anderson

 

Its an impressive speed and accuracy, HOWEVER, the penetrative power in those shots might not be effective against a human opponent, especially when he wears armor.

For that the bows need a lot higher draw-weight, and the arrows need to be thicker.

A heavy war-bow just cant be drawn that quickly.

 

Similar, a zombie would also be quite resistant to those (light) shots.

 

Here a video of Scholagladiatoria about that topic:

 

[The Gronk]

<snipped for space>

 

To be fair, very few of the zombies wear armour, especially early in the game when you only have the primitive bow. Lars also seems to have learned the technique from cultures where armour is a rarity such as primitive tribes or mounted archers in hot countries. In that case, if it'll kill a deer it'll kill a human.

 

You're right that the zombies should be pretty much immune to the tiny amount of hydrostatic damage caused by the arrow unless you plant it in their brain.

 

During the early game my bow-work is almost always up-close and in-the-face of any zombie coming towards me. I still keep a few metres between me and the target but at that range, speed is more important than power. I don't want the arrow to pass cleanly through the target, I want it to stick in half-way so the tip is rattling around inside the target's brain-box.

 

Both have good points but they're disagreeing about wildly different scenarios and historical time-frames.

[Crater Creator]

Its an impressive speed and accuracy, HOWEVER, the penetrative power in those shots might not be effective against a human opponent, especially when he wears armor.

For that the bows need a lot higher draw-weight, and the arrows need to be thicker.

A heavy war-bow just cant be drawn that quickly.

 

Similar, a zombie would also be quite resistant to those (light) shots.

 

Here a video of Scholagladiatoria about that topic:

 

 

This is getting off topic, but Schlolagladiatoria’s historical claims aren’t borne out by experiment. For the second time, it must be pointed out that right there in that video, the archer penetrates chain mail armor, and whatever is behind it, with three out of three shots.

[Damocles]

This is getting off topic, but Schlolagladiatoria’s historical claims aren’t borne out by experiment. For the second time, it must be pointed out that right there in that video, the archer penetrates chain mail armor, and whatever is behind it, with three out of three shots.

 

Actual riveted chainmail ontop of a proper gambeson? Or cheap butted chainmail for costume parties?

If there is any chance to penetrate chainmail, it needs to be a bodkin head on a heavy arrow, shot from a heavy bow ... from short distance.

 

Armor was way more protective than what Hollywood movie made it look like.

[Gazz]

Also keep in mind that almost all "penetration tests" are made at a perfect 90° angle which is of academic value at best.

This is why (fighting) metal armor was smooth, curved, and with few parts that would catch a blow.