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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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Of course I will. I already put 1300+ hours into this game and convinced a friend to play this game with me. We are eager to play another 200+ with A18.

 

Any plans to overhaul Steam achievements? I think with all this changes and balancing to come it would be almost impossible to get e.g. Warrior (GS500) or Survivalist (GS1000).....

 

EDIT:

 

There is a game (I think NEO Scavenger) which solves this the way you say. There is a spoilage counter which decomposes only one piece of the whole stack. If it's spoiled, then the second starts and so on..

So if you have a stack of 10, and every 24hours one spoils, the stack lasts 10 days but constantly depletes.

 

No plans to touch steam achievements until we're closer to gold so we can come up with relevant ones. UNtil then its a moving target.

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This system would also encourage players to get into electricity, as a powered fridge could be used to slow down or even remove food spoilage.

 

Lets not derail the thread with food spoilage again, go re-read the thread if your that into it.

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I saw some talk of clip vs magazine a few pages back and it reminds me of a similar issue regarding the machete. The model used for the machete more resembles a Khukuri, a curved blade used by the Gurkhas. Could we perhaps see an additional bladed weapon that's more true to form for the machete in the next alpha? I'm a expert nitpicker =)

 

Probably a katana or sword.

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Performance, why is this simple scene laggy? (there is a complex sewer/cave network you can't even see rendering, adding to chunk building time, etc.)

 

Wouldn't that be solvable with occlusion culling?

 

I'm curious if any PVP players use this feature to locate underground bases.

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Hi MM. I made a suggestion a few days ago in relation to that discussion about Tier 4 & 5 building loot, but this can also be adapted to quests from the trader.

 

How about some PI type quests? So the trader asks you to gather some information for him or sends you on a quest to gather evidence of (in the original example I gave) MM's first love?

 

I'll put the original mention below, but again, you can change this to suit trader quests:

 

Its already in, those are love letters in the fetch quest boxes :)

 

We might, but its best to come up with new game play and mechanics rather than just new seasoning on the same sham sandwich.

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I'm sure I'm not the only one here who also plays Empryion, which has food spoilage.

 

With that experiance does spoilage really add much to the later game?

 

Sure in EGS I'd say it does add some complexity to early game, and makes farming more important, but to be fair, EGS's food/health/farming systems are a bigger part of the early game gameplay. And EGS also uses fridges/food-processors as a significant energy sink; something I really don't see 7dtd doing.

 

I don't think 7dtd was ever intended to have a highly realistic food/hunger/health system. If it did then we'd have to be a lot more nomadic than has ever been needed, due to all food resources being used up. And, at least in my survival gaming experiance, it's much easier to wind up with a system that is annoying instead of fun, and burns a lot of dev time to wind up with a complex system that doesn't add much, for most, 'fun' wise. IMO of course :)

 

Guess I'm more inclined to hope TFPs budget what dev times remains before Gold towards other things like more traps or new guns, more block shapes, etc.

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Hey, that's a great idea.

+1 for this.

 

Thinking about all of these quests, I wonder if there are any plans on making some quests with it's own penalties, like in FallOut 3 with the city with the bomb? Option of disarming it or setting it off type options?

 

So do a quest 1 way = some otherwise ally hating you

Do it the other way = the different guy becomes your ally

 

???

 

Just wait for Duke and Noah quests.

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Wouldn't that be solvable with occlusion culling?

 

I'm curious if any PVP players use this feature to locate underground bases.

 

No because occlusion culling slows the game down for potato computers, and speeds it up for people with good ones. There is an option to disable it for people where it actually makes it worse.

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In A17.4, RWG towns are in a grid-like pattern, usually with one in the center and with other towns along perfect paths along the edges. I'm just curious if RWG town placement in A18 will follow similar patterns (or patterns in general), or if their locations will be randomized? No specifics are needed in an answer, I'm just wondering. It would be nice to just pick a direction again and not knowing if you'll find a town/another town or not.

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Performance, why is this simple scene laggy? (there is a complex sewer/cave network you can't even see rendering, adding to chunk building time, etc.)

 

Isn't that what occlusion is for?

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

No because occlusion culling slows the game down for potato computers, and speeds it up for people with good ones. There is an option to disable it for people where it actually makes it worse.

 

I see you answered, can you explain why it would slow a computer down?

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Guest Rassilon
Not trying to get into a debate there just isn't any reason to play it more than 2 hours to get the best gear and be set for life, unless you just like to play with tinker toys. Its a fun sandbox, but as a game its pretty lacking in goals, quests, reasons to survive, story, realism, immersion, etc. I enjoy it, and I don't know how many hours I had, but it doesn't have that Bethesda type appeal where you want to start a new character with a new story, new abilities, gear, npc friends etc which are the types of games I might get 1000's of hours in. I probably built my nice castle with rail mining system over the course of 100-200 hours max, but never felt compelled to play again after I'd done everything.

 

Just tried an Analogy with 7 Days, thats all :)

im getting close to 3k hours on 7 days and i aint see it stopping.

 

I might have 300 or 400 hours in minecraft, but as you yourself stated: starting over with a new character (and for me new rwg map ) is all the fun and replay value i need.

 

I did a break of 3 months recently from 7 Days ( A17 just didnt "do" it for me) and now im back, preparing my server for A18 and having real fun and anticipation for your game. Something i never had with Minecraft :)

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Managing hunger absolutely should get easy after a while.

 

At first, getting good tools/weapons.armor is hard, but it becomes easier as you progress.

At first, surviving packs of zombies/wolves/dogs is hard, but it becomes easier as you progress.

At first, clearing a POI for a quest is hard, but it becomes easier as you progress.

Etc.

 

Managing hunger is never irrelevant, it just becomes easier to manage as you progress.

 

Lots of other things get harder, like Blood Moon hordes and the constant need to prepare for them. Survival is still the main point of the game no matter how easy some of the subsystems get.

 

This!

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No because occlusion culling slows the game down for potato computers, and speeds it up for people with good ones. There is an option to disable it for people where it actually makes it worse.

 

Haven't you just given the solution after the problem?

 

Even a simple built-in system that can be expanded by modders would be better than never having an underground at all.

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is the stealth class still good like in a18 because when I play a stealth class I use my bow and arrow to kill zombies and I think the class is good because you can cause massive damage with a bow and not really need to use a melee weapon so if you only use a bow and silenced weapons you wont use much food or stamina compared to just swinging away with a weapon and using lots of stamina and I like it that way really

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Not trying to get into a debate there just isn't any reason to play it more than 2 hours to get the best gear and be set for life, unless you just like to play with tinker toys. Its a fun sandbox, but as a game its pretty lacking in goals, quests, reasons to survive, story, realism, immersion, etc. I enjoy it, and I don't know how many hours I had, but it doesn't have that Bethesda type appeal where you want to start a new character with a new story, new abilities, gear, npc friends etc which are the types of games I might get 1000's of hours in. I probably built my nice castle with rail mining system over the course of 100-200 hours max, but never felt compelled to play again after I'd done everything.

 

It's obvious you don't know Minecraft enough. I bet you don't even know what the best gear is, and of course it would be impossible for you to get it in 2 hours.

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In A17.4, RWG towns are in a grid-like pattern, usually with one in the center and with other towns along perfect paths along the edges. I'm just curious if RWG town placement in A18 will follow similar patterns (or patterns in general), or if their locations will be randomized? No specifics are needed in an answer, I'm just wondering. It would be nice to just pick a direction again and not knowing if you'll find a town/another town or not.

 

I think it still uses the socket system. Towns appear to be grids often square, in random locations, sometimes even subdividing two biomes.

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Isn't that what occlusion is for?

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

 

 

I see you answered, can you explain why it would slow a computer down?

 

Because some pc's are cpu/gpu bound and the calculations end up costing more than removal of the geometry, afaik, Faatal wrote it so he can explain. Bottom line is it helps some pcs, makes it worse on others. If you have a good rig you will probably love it, if you have a potato, well your still up a creek. You'll have to try it and see.

 

Regardless we've done a lot of optimizing, I'd say everyone should have a faster game in A18 than 17, but occlusion is like icing on the cake for fast pcs, but its no magic bullet to introduce 1000's of zombies, caves or to be careless designing heavy POIs.

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Because some pc's are cpu/gpu bound and the calculations end up costing more than removal of the geometry, afaik, Faatal wrote it so he can explain. Bottom line is it helps some pcs, makes it worse on others. If you have a good rig you will probably love it, if you have a potato, well your still up a creek. You'll have to try it and see.

 

Regardless we've done a lot of optimizing, I'd say everyone should have a faster game in A18 than 17, but occlusion is like icing on the cake for fast pcs, but its no magic bullet to introduce 1000's of zombies, caves or to be careless designing heavy POIs.

 

i would like to add that i have 2-4k 27" monitors. rtx2080 ryzen 2700x @4GHz.. my video settings are at medium to some high... game looks damn good... dont need to have everything at ultra anymore... :) and now can play at 1080p without losing picture quality.. so i dont need to run at 3840p anymore.

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Just tried an Analogy with 7 Days, thats all :)

im getting close to 3k hours on 7 days and i aint see it stopping.

 

I might have 300 or 400 hours in minecraft, but as you yourself stated: starting over with a new character (and for me new rwg map ) is all the fun and replay value i need.

 

I did a break of 3 months recently from 7 Days ( A17 just didnt "do" it for me) and now im back, preparing my server for A18 and having real fun and anticipation for your game. Something i never had with Minecraft :)

 

Awesome, I feel like most people who didn't like 17, we will make happy. Even if we didn't address an issue there is enough cool things going on you can set that aside and enjoy the future of the game. Kind of like some disgruntled Morrowind players might complain, but as a whole liked Oblivion a lot too, then some disgruntled Oblivion players complained about Skyrim, but you know, as a whole, even though they removed your favorite thing about the game, was still a better game.

 

Like a18 won't have LBD, but has hundreds of books and schematics which are learn to do stuff by doing (finding them), we won't have stocks, barrels, recievers, but we do have specific gun parts, and random stats, so the gun guys should be pacified and every gun is different now stat wise. So much looting now, anyone who didn't like buying all the perks from a menu will be happy, there are looting ways to do most things now. People who got poor performance should see much better performance. We've addressed stamina and early game feeling too grindy. Level gates are gone, but as a result we slowed leveling, but the game feels way better that way.

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