Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Guppycur]

Walking down the street, sighting a small whole in the ground, that you look down in.

 

*oh, a hidden skyscraper*

 

You seen me nekkid?

[agrastiOs]

@Roland, could you update the OP?

[Guppycur]

Talking about loot and higher tier quests not being worth it, this is something I posted in another thread where someone was having a real hard time finding a tool and die set:

 

Being able to request the trader stock an item would be pretty cool...

[HerrKingsley]

Being able to request the trader stock an item would be pretty cool...

Yeah but what would be the difference of being able to craft them?

[Roland]

@Roland, could you update the OP?

 

Updated the OP with Zombie Rage and Shape Selector. What else is missing?

[SnowDog1942]

Updated the OP with Zombie Rage and Shape Selector. What else is missing?

 

Random weapon stats, i think

[Odetta]

Yes they get a damage bonus the more zeds are in an area so thin the groups as best you can. One guy can chew on concrete all night but several will plow through it fast.

 

Can we get an option to change the size of roaming hordes? As of now they are only scary in the beginning of the game. Later on they pose no threat because they are super small and are not affected by game stage (I think). I know we have a ton of options already and I appreciate it a lot because I can make each play through radically different.

 

On another note, we have random bloodmoons now, which is awesome. The ideal implementation in my opinion is to have them not only on random days (like we have now) but to also make them happen at random *times* within a day and without warning. Say you're on day 11 and it's 7 in the morning and bam! Bloodmoon out of nowhere. Scary factor X1000.

[Odetta]

Teeny tiny loot.

 

He wasn't kidding

 

[maleitch]

This just doesn't make any sense. If you are squatting in your base, you don't need ammo. If there are guys camping outside, create mine shafts with multiple exits so you can get out and do your looting that you need to, and give the guys camping outside the slip. As I've said, there is loads of brass. We'll probably allow duke smelting to brass again too, I don't see a problem with it.

 

If all you play is single player or coop, then yes it does not make any sense. If you are playing PvP then if you abandon your base through your escape tunnels then be prepared to come back to an empty crater where your multiple forges/workstations/crates you have spent weeks scavenging for gone. That is what makes PvP the ultimate long game for me. It is absolutely brutal. You are not hiding in your base because you are scared to loot. You must protect the base from total annihilation when raided by other players. Something you will never experience in a single player game so the concept is not obvious. This is not a defense of his desire for "mining" brass, but an attempt to put it in the correct context. Under single player I totally agree with you. In PvP I think the balance for ammo may need to be tweaked somehow.

 

I don't want to get this aspect of the discussion off the rails though, because this is yet another one of those PvP context type discussions that I think will take place down the road when some other PvP tweaks are made.

[Roland]

How would you define micro loot?

 

Micro loot is already in A17. It is the ammo caches, medicine caches, food caches etc that are sitting on table tops or on the floor or behind a panel and destroy when you loot them.

[Guppycur]

Yeah but what would be the difference of being able to craft them?

 

Non craftable items, or higher tier items...

 

I'm a believer of multiple avenues to achieve a goal.

[Roland]

Random weapon stats, i think

 

Already there under the Gear heading

[Guppycur]

Micro loot is already in A17. It is the ammo caches, medicine caches, food caches etc that are sitting on table tops and destroy when you loot them.

 

Oh, that's interesting verbage.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

isn't there that radiated corn that is poi specific?

 

I don't know. Huh.

[Crater Creator]

I'm at work today so I can't really experiment. Royale Deluxe would be the one to list the exploits, that bugger is great at finding them :-)

 

Just for the record, I think block HP should affect the pathing but not be the basis of it, a subtle difference in the grand old scheme of things.

 

It should also be noted that I was against the use of A* for pathfinding in the first place. I'm just trying to make the best result with the tools provided.

 

So you made the claim that "you can exploit that system in some scenarios" before you had any examples, just based on a hunch. I think your claim was unfairly premature, then.

 

And again, this difference you're making between HP affecting pathing and HP being the basis of pathing is too subtle for me. Other than some special cases like doors, what would the basis of path weighting be, if not block HP?

[Ti2xGr]

If all you play is single player or coop, then yes it does not make any sense. If you are playing PvP then if you abandon your base through your escape tunnels then be prepared to come back to an empty crater where your multiple forges/workstations/crates you have spent weeks scavenging for gone. That is what makes PvP the ultimate long game for me. It is absolutely brutal. You are not hiding in your base because you are scared to loot. You must protect the base from total annihilation when raided by other players. Something you will never experience in a single player game so the concept is not obvious. This is not a defense of his desire for "mining" brass, but an attempt to put it in the correct context. Under single player I totally agree with you. In PvP I think the balance for ammo may need to be tweaked somehow.

 

I don't want to get this aspect of the discussion off the rails though, because this is yet another one of those PvP context type discussions that I think will take place down the road when some other PvP tweaks are made.

 

I manage a server where our clients were complaining about cars and such. Easy fix - I fly around the world and restock parking garages and parking lots regularly. I also adjusted the XMLs for ammo specifically. I adjusted the level of ammo specifically that can be looted. Example Instead of 3-8 for count, it has been tweaked to allow upwards of 50 bullets. We technically don't do PVP on our servers but there is no reason I can see that this wouldn't work for you. Admin mode with jet pack with a supply of cars. On a side note, I also hide loot chests in random places with larger loot caches of extra ammo/mods/etc.

[Crater Creator]

This shouldn't be done with gamestage though. Gamestage doesn't reduce zombie numbers, it just spawns weaker zombies. Also makes you find worse loot. Right idea, wrong instrument.

 

Are you referring to the fact that a lower gamestage means fewer 'strong' zombies that carry the better loot bags? Or something else?

[Roland]

We had that and it sucked. Can't you remember day 28, 35, 42, etc? Then there was the case of logging in on day 140 on an existing server the first time and being a brand new level 1 character and you get the same nasty horde as the guys who've been there every night.

 

Game staging allows for players to get a horde they can realistically cope with regardless of what day the server is on.

 

You can make game staging be based on the day for that specific player by basing it on something that advances daily. In A18 that would be player max health and stamina since those advance by one each day automatically. So gamestage could be easily recalculated to be:

 

(max health + days alive) x difficulty multiplier

 

instead of the way it is now:

 

(level + days alive) x difficulty multiplier

 

This makes the gamestage progress daily independent of what the player does so that all the player wants to do is keep getting stronger without worrying about directly making the gamestage higher as well. Plus, the gamestage would still be low for a new player joining the game on day 100.

 

In my mod I changed it so the player levels up daily because I can't change the gamestage formula. But it doesn't really matter what you tie it to as long as it progresses daily. It should also be noted that I've had to increase the difficulty multiplier for all difficulty levels because most players do level up at a faster rate than once per day. Add gear and mods and perks from leveling and it will take some balancing to come up with fair but challenging pacing of the gamestage curve to keep things interesting. BUT...I have to say that disconnecting the gamestage from player achievement does make a difference in how the game feels-- for the better, IMO.

[Crater Creator]

One issue I haven't seen anyone mention or discuss, is the BIG difference in performance on the different systems in livestream. One was pretty much 60 fps the whole time with a few hiccups, but the other two were much lower fps, with some bad pop in like those clumpy scrub trees that magically look normal when you are 25 feet away from them.

 

It would be nice to see system specs from the different developer streamer systems so we can better gauge how its going to run.

 

I would assume the developers would have some pretty beefy systems, and if so, what was saw one 2 out of three systems was not improved performance, but worse depending on what resolution they were using.

 

It’s a good point, but I’d add that performance in a livestream can be skewed, since most end users won’t be live streaming in addition to running the game.

[maleitch]

I manage a server where our clients were complaining about cars and such. Easy fix - I fly around the world and restock parking garages and parking lots regularly. I also adjusted the XMLs for ammo specifically. I adjusted the level of ammo specifically that can be looted. Example Instead of 3-8 for count, it has been tweaked to allow upwards of 50 bullets. We technically don't do PVP on our servers but there is no reason I can see that this wouldn't work for you. Admin mode with jet pack with a supply of cars. On a side note, I also hide loot chests in random places with larger loot caches of extra ammo/mods/etc.

 

Well to be totally clear I was not the once originally complaining about ammo. The 30+ player PvP server I play seems to do a very good job attempting to balance resources and my small group seems to do pretty well managing ammo. I am not even saying the complaint about ammo is even valid, but in the multiplayer games I can absolutely see how it would happen. Hell maybe it should. Something to be said for a map running out of resource where everyone is forced to use sticks and stones again.

 

My main point is that I think there is no point in discussing things such as resource management for the PvP aspect of the game because it is cannot be simply carried over from the single player game without some adjustments. And PvP is definitely not the focus but MM said they may look into some of the issues a few patches from now.

[maleitch]

Oh, that's interesting verbage.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

 

 

I don't know. Huh.

 

Yes there is the Boars and Corn house that has the super corn. Don't know of another location that has it. Very prized POI.

[Guppycur]

@mm

 

Slightly off topic (ok fine, entirely, but this is your area of expertise):

 

What would it take to be able to use the paint system on custom imported blocks?

 

Feel free to be technical.

[The Gronk]

So you made the claim that "you can exploit that system in some scenarios" before you had any examples, just based on a hunch. I think your claim was unfairly premature, then.

 

And again, this difference you're making between HP affecting pathing and HP being the basis of pathing is too subtle for me. Other than some special cases like doors, what would the basis of path weighting be, if not block HP?

 

I've written A* from scratch before. I'm currently using a layered variation to path over an utterly ridiculous amount of kilometres. I know its strengths and weaknesses intimately. With a general understanding of how the algorithm works it shouldn't be too hard to work out that there _will_ be issues under the current system. :-)

 

In pure A* the weight is just a single floating point variable which indicates the difficulty of traversing between block A and block B. Why anyone would change the fundamental principle of how the algorithm works to something as esoteric as block health is beyond me. By all means adjust the basic system with whatever variables and modifiers you want but changing how the algorithm works on a fundamental level and expecting it to "just work" is somewhat optimistic.

 

Why anyone would use a 2D pathing algorithm in a dynamic 3D voxel world also causes me much discombobulation.

[DUST2DEATH]

@mm

 

Slightly off topic (ok fine, entirely, but this is your area of expertise):

 

What would it take to be able to use the paint system on custom imported blocks?

 

Feel free to be technical.

 

Texture Array access at a minimum.....

 

do want.

[madmole]

Point isn't "sometimes not getting big reward". The rewards are +- the same compared to difficulty. But big POIs are just.. Not worth going trough. As was said before, T5 quests lead you there. And as you said before, MM, you want to encourage exploration. It is not much of encourage to walk around the big POI and be like "Meh, too much ammo for so little, i guess i will skip this / jump to top"

 

 

 

That is kinda cool.

 

Level design realizes this and have been making some adjustments. We have ammo piles now that help compensate for ammo loss during the mission.

[madmole]

MM, don't know if it has been discussed recently but what is your point of view about current state of BM hordes? As I see it being able to just simply drive away from a horde without any implications moots the point for any TD elements or fortifications, as there is no real/practical reason for them to be utilized.

 

From what I remember you wish to add alternative ways to avoid them, which will include cost/risk, like more limited gas availability or paid trader night accommodation, which would be great as long as they are balanced to not the "obvious" choice one would take to deal with the horde.

 

What sayest thou mr. MM?

 

Its an ongoing effort to remove loopholes. Gas has been nerfed significantly but I need to get a vehicle on a long term save and see how it feels.