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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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I'm not interested in mining zinc and copper. There needs to be something people need to do to risk their necks. Its easier than ever to get brass.

 

You obviously haven't been mining during a cave in. ;)

 

I have been in several and it's scary as hell. I would be mining and all the sudden all hell breaks lose.

All that crap hitting you, lose most of your health, blood going all over the screen. You just want to get out of that hole. lol.

 

But I'm good with scavenging the brass that I need for bullets. Besides, it's faster scavenging for brass anyway.

I like shotguns to, which don't need brass anyway.

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"Johnny newcomes' whatever that means, who are playing for 5 years and had servers for that time, relaying what the actual players with 1000's of hours on those servers are wondering. I guess you prefer those people to shut up or at least you could care less it seems. Noted. "Dont question things, loyal fanbase".

 

 

 

So it's based on your own preference. It starts to make sense now. Weird you didnt have that feeling with lead then.

Besides, you can have both. Making brass would be a late game thing. But hey, why give people a choice I guess.

 

 

 

Again, its about the fact that it's a mandatory, annoying trip, destroying stuff like cars ... lootable cars. It's about wasting a whole day on just a 1000 casings (which isnt that much lategame) and then after that you have to go even further and hope no one else looted/destroyed that place. It's not infinite you know.

But I guess thats not a problem when you only playtest solo games for 21 gamedays or so.

 

I'd suggest playing on servers sometimes, then you'd see people loot for gun/tool mods, trading them etc.. the whole "looting for brass" is very A10- back when there was little else to loot of value.

Not only are mods a great way to keep the game interesting late-game, it's THE reason to go looting. On top of that you have things now like acid etc, that will keep people looting. You seem to be thinking in 2015.

 

I'm sure people will not riot about being able to make brass, like they did with lead being mine-able.. Oh wait, everyone loved that change. :biggrin-new:

 

I think by Johny Newcomers he just means people new to the forums or this thread that have not been closely following his posts on the developments of a18, and thus are not aware of the things he has already stated on the matter. You're assuming a bit too much if you think that it means that he wants you to shut up. If he doesn't want to hear people discussing his ideas he has a simple solution - to not get on the forum at all. But he does so regularly.

 

As for being based on his own preference, well... yeah. It's their game and he does all or a lot of the game design, as far as I'm aware. Why would it not be based on his preference? What else would you want it to be based on? Your singular preference? A democratic vote among the minority of the community that is present in this forum?

 

To me, 1000 bullets in a single ingame day is an insane rate. If a single person can get that much you're never ever gonna be lacking ammunition. Sure, on a PvP server with many people things are gonna be different since brass may run out, but PvP is not (yet) their focus, and there's no reason the game should be designed so that a single PvP map should last forever with infinitely renewable resources. You could think of each generated world as a multiplayer match that eventually ends by agreement of all players.

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But I'm good with scavenging the brass that I need for bullets. Besides, it's faster scavenging for brass anyway.

I like shotguns to, which don't need brass anyway.

 

Am i crazy or do i remember it being said that ALL ammunition will require brass in 18?

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I agree but underdesign is an issue also. Hit point values and recipes all over the place came along with making it a voxel game. A slim bar 1/10th the thickness of the base block having the same HPs just makes no sense.

 

And that slim bar still take up the space of a full block when building. The reason all block shape have same hp is that this is a game. As gamer, we will use every advantage we can get to win the game. So what does that mean? Cube steel bases everywhere. Why would I build a nice looking base that only have 50% hp of a steel cube base? So then why bother having any other shape?

 

 

Even in a game with zombies and being able to care tons and tons of rock, it still makes no sense. I don't need a game to be realistic. It does need internal logic and consistency. This is neither.

 

Wood < flagstone < concrete < reinf. concrete < steel

structure integrity

 

There already an internal logic and consistency.

 

 

I also don't like the whole idea of the shape selector. It's just another step on the road to nerfing out any difficulty. There are basically no "survival" elements left. This is the first step in simplifying the "building" aspect out of the game. You don't have to plan out what you need. How many corner shapes, etc.

 

They making the shape selector to eliminate hundred of recipes in the crafting menu. That was the primary focus. The nice bonus is that we don't have to make extra crap in case we f up and have a chest fill with a bunches of random blocks in case i might be needed in the future. Or run back to storage room when we're one short.

 

And how does making things aesthetic nice "survival"? You still need the material, you still need to craft the base block. If I want to survive, I can just throw a cube block and that the end of the day.

 

Just grab 10000 blocks and place them and magically turn them into any shape you want.

and the magically fit 10k blocks in your backpack didn't get you?

 

 

That's not building. That is designing. It's autocad for gaming.

You'll be surprise how those goes hand in hand.

https://targetjobs.co.uk/careers-advice/job-descriptions/277573-architect-job-description

 

- Oh no, I can't get in my base because I just build a bunches of cubes together and didn't design a way to get inside. Silly me.

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If you want to ease the pressure of the horde night. This would also get you out doing quests that doesn't amp up the pressure. I'm not a race to the end sort of guy. I like long builds. The quest could be like "keepin' the peace " or " knockin' them back to the line". It would give you feeling of actually winning

 

So turn down your xp slider? What pressure? Build turrets and amp up your defenses. That is the whole point of the game, to try and keep up with the increasing pressure.

 

In the future you can rent a bed from a trader for 5k a night or something if your a nomad with no base who likes doing quests or doesn't like horde defense you can safely sit it out for a fee.

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This does have some appeal to it. Maybe even throw in some randomness of changes to it to keep it interesting.

 

This has zero appeal. Every game I play when it gets too easy after I reach high level I quit playing, there is no fun with god mode on.

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I showed my friend a pic of the decapitated bear in the A18 stream yesterday. Her reaction was, "Oh no! They have giant moles in A18?!"... Yes there's a striking resemblence:rofl:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]28754[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]28755[/ATTACH]

Giant Madmole confirmed for A18.

 

I'm a giant mole. Now that my critical work in A18 is done I'm smashing the gym, cardio and diet. Feels good settling back into my old lean and muscular self, potato mode sucks.

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Personally for me, it would reward that bird part of my brain that likes to be rewarded. But, it also does feel nice to see a quest have an actual effect other than just being for the loot. Even if lowering game stage results in inferior loot, I'd find that an even compromise. Perhaps, it could be an effect after during multiple kill zombies quest? Where the gamestage is temporarily lowered for a day or two, to allow a player some breathing room.

 

Dying lowers the game stage already so this pressure you talk of is relieved upon death.

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The A17 upgrade path where you somehow infuse the same block with wood, scrap iron, concrete mix, rebar and steel in order is pretty weird, and so is the downgrade path. However, you would lose something under this proposal, namely the sense of investing a lot of labor and resources into your walls, and them being that much better because they’ve been improved multiple times. Then again, the existing ‘shortcuts’ like going directly from frames to reinforced concrete already circumvent this.

 

Its there for people who cannot afford it, but shouldn't be there for people who found a cement mixer and are ready to go full on super base mode. Having to tediously upgrade each tier sucks so bad I just chop out the old blocks.

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@madmole

 

If occlusion culling comes with A18, shouldnt then return the old tunnels for mining ?

Performance impact should be minimal then !? This was the argument of removing them.

 

No it was way more than just rendering them, generating them caused a lot of extra overhead and we no longer generate any terrain on the fly, everything is pre calculated. Culling something doesn't mean its free, the more things you can cull the time to cull them increases too. We need to focus on the future of bandits and faction quests, not dwell on experimental features that got cut that will not improve performance.

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folks if you want easier horde nights just turn off horde nights or lower the in game difficulty to its lowest setting. I mean if people want to build large complex buildings and other just stuff go into creative or if you don't want creative then turn off horde night and put the game at its easiest setting and I can't remember if this is in the settings or not but lower zombie block damage to its lowest setting also.

 

Yes, lower difficulty, set them to always walk, slow XP, build a horde base tower separate from your real base, etc.

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I hope you get the coyotes and the cougars.

You can also include horses and bring back the pig animal.

The raising of animals, domestication and riding.

 

Coyotes and cougars are in, aside from sounds. No to the rest. Horses would set us back 6 months to a year to do them properly. We have vehicles horses are fluff. Raising animals would kill the performance, so no.

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Madmole: Loving the new shapes menu. My comments as well as others from YouTube are loving the visual changes to the desert which seem to me more than just textures and splat maps. Will other biomes be getting a make over like this? Are there other visual changes from the desert that you've not mentioned? The lighting/pallet looks different.

 

All the textures are getting redone, its just textures and splat maps. New unity terrain is coming that should reduce the distant melted ice cream effect, and there are still RWG bugs preventing it from looking as awesome as the artists designed it.

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A half block would take half(ish) the resources of a full block, the same way a single-thick wall takes half the resources of a double-thick wall. So I don’t see what the “weird exploit” would be if zombies prefer to attack the latter, all else being equal. :)

 

What we have now looks like an exploit. You can build a column of single full blocks or double half blocks or quadruple quarter blocks, and they’ll look identical but have 1x, 2x, or 4x the HP. And zombies may avoid certain walls in a POI simply because there are decorative trim blocks on one side, which no human would give a second thought to, but they have the same HP as full wood blocks.

 

I get that addressing this wouldn’t be easy, but I don’t get how it would be worse in terms of exploits.

 

Its a bunch of work for no return, so no. I see the base as a binary on or off position. A block is there its 1, if not its 0. Adding some .1's for railings and .5's for half blocks doesn't make the game any better and makes balancing a nightmare. Zombies target weaker blocks so suddenly they go for railings instead of walls and it would look dumb.

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Why not just have biomes with higher difficulty and better loot.

 

The goal is to increase game stage in some biomes we want by design to be harder. You need game staging for teams, and proper scaling of enemies based on all the conditions, like I'm dying a lot so we scale it down. Going to the easy biome is not a solution if you spawn in the wasteland. How do you get there? You get killed by vultures and puking cops and radiated ferals over and over again. Ark is not fun the first 2 hours.

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But I'm good with scavenging the brass that I need for bullets. Besides, it's faster scavenging for brass anyway.

I like shotguns to, which don't need brass anyway.

 

Am i crazy or do i remember it being said that ALL ammunition will require brass in 18?

Your crazy! lol

 

Madmole said that all steel ammo is going away. He did not say that shotgun shells would need brass.

 

On a side note we really got to fix this quote thing. It isn't boxing in the whole quote like it should. [Fixed - mod]

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Your crazy! lol

 

Madmole said that all steel ammo is going away. He did not say that shotgun shells would need brass.

 

On a side note we really got to fix this quote thing. It isn't boxing in the whole quote like it should. [Fixed - mod]

 

Wasnt' it the shotgun slugs that needed brass? I can't remember now, I think it does but I have to check.

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