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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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Could one of you (Joe, calling all Joe's) stand in the exact spot in Nav at a specific time, and list your FPS comparing A17 to A18 using identical video settings?

 

I tried, but barfed all over my screen when I loaded A17, sorry.

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Hopefully one of the balances in A18 is a slower progression towards those scary poop-yourself day running female zombies. She seems to run even faster than at night, and it's so hard to hit her. And then one knock from her and I'm stunned and got no chance.

 

Unless I'm armed with a 9mm to lay them down before she gets to me, then I'm dead. :-( But since those gals got introduced around level 27, my 9mm ammo has depleted, too.

 

I like a challenge, but want a way to avoid death, too. Maybe a jog speed, instead of run until ammo and armor can be built up?

 

Unless you have a broken leg and 20% food from starving for days, there isn't a single zed that you cannot outrun.

 

Armor reduces stun and bleed a lot, I don't see any issues now.

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That's a bug that's been around since God's dog was a puppy. It's caused by the distant terrain tiles not destroying properly. It only ever happens if you travel far from your base and you can fix it quite easily by reloading the game.

 

Even easier solution: place a block. Whenever I see this happen I place a wooden frame in the void and it fixes itself.

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To what end? Why gimp building when it will still be possible to put ladders on POIS to get inside?

 

To the end of not letting the player escape danger instantly. It's not just about entering POIs. Zombies can follow you on ladders and they are much slower than nerdpoling, both when going down/up and when placed. As for building, planning and scaffolding is already better for larger builds - nerdpoling is not essential, it's a convenience.

 

However, I think that you can achieve the same result in other ways without removing nerdpoling. Perhaps you can make nerdpoling/frame placement/pickup or walking on frames produce some noise and make recently placed frames or frames that are below the player, more attractive to zombies and breakable in one hit by any enemy.

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So what you are saying is that you need a slaver to whack you every time you get sleepy?

 

I'm sorry I'm a stupid pacifist :D All I could do was give you slight loveslaps to please continue working on 18 :)

 

All my MF's are fixed, I'm dusting cobwebs off of old non mf's now.

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To the end of not letting the player escape danger instantly. It's not just about entering POIs. Zombies can follow you on ladders and they are much slower than nerdpoling, both when going down/up and when placed. As for building, planning and scaffolding is already better for larger builds - nerdpoling is not essential, it's a convenience.

 

However, I think that you can achieve the same result in other ways without removing nerdpoling. Perhaps you can make nerdpoling/frame placement/pickup or walking on frames produce some noise and make recently placed frames or frames that are below the player, more attractive to zombies and breakable in one hit by any enemy.

 

They already break with one hit. I want to make them climbable at some point.

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I'm right handed.

 

Me too, and I organize my tool belt similarly, the "left to right" tendency is far more due to our learned method of reading than it is which hand is dominant, Blake, the human brain is indeed an interesting thing, even it's mistakes have explanations...

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They already break with one hit. I want to make them climbable at some point.

 

Climbable nerdpoles? I mean, they do look climbable as-is. I know is a dif game but they added an interesting new block to the latest Minecraft, the scaffolding, and it would give you a great preview on how such a system could work. I for one am fine with frames, nerdpoling, ladders, as they are now. Any major change could ripple like a mofo in how it changes the dynamic/movement within existing POIs, seems risky AF. Not shooting the idea down, just pondering it's net effects within what we have now.

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Most players want to do stuff, not read tutorials and feel stuck. A survival game simply means you might need to eat and drink, and somehow survive, otherwise bad things happen. Like you don't load a save game, you respawn with loss, etc. It doesn't mean "expect some poorly designed game mechanics because mostly indy devs are developing this genre".

 

At the end of the day players want to have fun without wikis or struggling to understand things. You don't need to reinvent the wheel to stand out, just making a great product will do that on its own, as long as you have something no other game has or a combination of existing features laid out in a new way works quite well too.

 

Yeah, "might need to eat and drink..." is not what I expect in a survival game. Again, I don't think I'm alone in that.

 

The last couple alphas have slowly chipped away at every feature that drew me to this game. Instead of those features being refined and expanded on they are being stripped out/dumbed down. I didn't pick this game looking for a "shooter looter with a thirst bar."

 

Don't want to sound like im raving about the end of the world. I've gotten hundreds of hours of fun for my $20 so more than a fair deal. But, at this point, I am starting to doubt I will even play the gold version. But even if I don't, I'll eagerly await your next game and buy into early access for it too. This has been the best EA experience I've ever been involved in.

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They already break with one hit. I want to make them climbable at some point.

 

This would be fantastic. It increases their utility for building but because zombies can also climb them it limits the exploitive nature of using them as magical escapes. I know you've referenced the Minecraft scaffolding in the past and since then I've played with them and if frame blocks can become like that it would be perfect.

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Also who has played with, I mean really played with, the new "trellis" blocks(panels really) that were added in A17? A quick/easy way to find out what I mean is to go the the bakery POI, next to the Bear Den in Nav. Go upstairs, gently walk/hop across the beams to the upper wall covered in them... jump on it and POOF you are spiderman. I spent a BM up there strafing along that wall poppin Z under me. Cover any wall with those things and you can do some serious wall crawling in any direction. Is weird and fun.

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Not at default it doesn't unless you perk into it. Which imo is fine btw, one of the first perks I buy is for healing max health.

I was talking about health regeneration (1 point / minute without perk), not max health. I hope max health will never regenerate naturally. It should be the contrary as soon as you're injuried ^^.

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Me too, and I organize my tool belt similarly, the "left to right" tendency is far more due to our learned method of reading than it is which hand is dominant, Blake, the human brain is indeed an interesting thing, even it's mistakes have explanations...

 

Funny you should mention that. I reverse the direction of the scroll wheel in the options because i visualize scrolling up as reading from left to right on my toolbelt and scroll down is right to left.

 

Your absolutly right on, as reading is the exact thing I thought about when first thinking of the best layout for the toolbelt and the binding of buttons on the mouse.

 

EDIT: Tip, Due to the human brain tending to interact with the world like this. One must remember that you do not need to scroll the toolbelt from left to right in order to reach the desired slot. Sometimes, if slot 1 is highlighted and the desired slot is the last one, sroll from right to left. This for me was a conscious thing i thought about when first training myself to utilize the layout in the most optimized and officiant way possible.

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They already break with one hit. I want to make them climbable at some point.

 

I think that would be an improvement, but since the player can retrieve/place them on the fly with zero loss, they will still be able escape with ease or prevent zombies from following them in most situations.

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To what end? Why gimp building when it will still be possible to put ladders on POIS to get inside?

 

We did this little experiment where we required nails for frames, which of course meant that frames were not readily available... and I'll tell you, it was hella fun. No more easy escape routes, no more bypassing dangers... totally changed the feel of the game.

 

And building took more thought too, so for us it was a win/win. Not quite the same as removing nerd polling, but the net effect was the same, and it added difficulty AND removed cheesiness.

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That video was stupid, but I did get a few laughs.

 

But seriously, I suppose that is what I get for recording my vids in one take and no editing and no script. I think I'm getting a little better about it now but I don't know, I don't listen to my videos either. I will probably upload the wrong one sometime lol.

 

Honestly J man, I think they're better that way. First point to you is that you don't have a stupid 30 second intro graphic wasting my time, second point to you is that you don't spend 4 to 10 minutes describing what your video is going to show. No, you get straight to it, and yeh people DO LEARN from watching people make "mistakes". So no shame in your game.

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next thing will be people saying you cant run past the zombies you have to stop and fight them. (btw, isnt me because i love melee with them i go outta my way to find and kill zombies with a club) :)

 

 

oooh oooh yes... @guppy... i refuse to watch those videos with long intros and loud obnoxious music too. :)

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Yeah, "might need to eat and drink..." is not what I expect in a survival game. Again, I don't think I'm alone in that.

 

The last couple alphas have slowly chipped away at every feature that drew me to this game. Instead of those features being refined and expanded on they are being stripped out/dumbed down. I didn't pick this game looking for a "shooter looter with a thirst bar."

 

Don't want to sound like im raving about the end of the world. I've gotten hundreds of hours of fun for my $20 so more than a fair deal. But, at this point, I am starting to doubt I will even play the gold version. But even if I don't, I'll eagerly await your next game and buy into early access for it too. This has been the best EA experience I've ever been involved in.

 

Seems a little dramatic. I was just saying as an argument point that food is all you need to be in the survival genre. If anything the game is getting deeper into survival again with real infection, food poisoning is real now, and we're overhauling all the broken debuffs from 17. Looting is king not crafting (improves survival), and feeling like you need a million things all the time to me makes A18 feel like the best survival game I've ever played by far.

 

Survival doesn't mean sharp sticks and making players crawl over broken glass to enjoy the game, it means survival mechanics. Anyhow I think you will like 18, it certainly puts survival back into the game more than ever IMO. I'm constantly eyeballing my meds now.

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