Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Guest Rassilon]

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.

 

And i can allready feel that alone from your videos, and frequent Forum Visits. Every Information you (and Staff) share increases the anticipation for A18. My current favourite to come features are the random Stats on Guns, the new Textures/Landscapes ( especially Desert ) and dont get me started with the Books... Its jawdropping.

 

With A17 dont get me wrong. I appriciate the Framework changes/work you did but besides the quests and new POIs it didnt have to offer much for my !personal! Style of Playing, thats all.

I have no doubt that A18 will change that drasticial! I keep fingers crossed, in two weeks i got vacation. Maybe destiny works in my favour this time.

[Callum123456789]

And i can allready feel that alone from your videos, and frequent Forum Visits. Every Information you (and Staff) share increases the anticipation for A18. My current favourite to come features are the random Stats on Guns, the new Textures/Landscapes ( especially Desert ) and dont get me started with the Books... Its jawdropping.

 

With A17 dont get me wrong. I appriciate the Framework changes/work you did but besides the quests and new POIs it didnt have to offer much for my !personal! Style of Playing, thats all.

I have no doubt that A18 will change that drasticial! I keep fingers crossed, in two weeks i got vacation. Maybe destiny works in my favour this time.

 

I know a17 wasn't everyones cup of tea but I still loved it and it is the foundation of which alpha 18 will build upon and shine in all its glory

[Blake_]

Its a bunch of work just to go into the next POI and find a perfectly good working one. You can find functioning workstations if you look for them. However the quest reset can reset the POI into a broken version, so it already kind of does what you are suggesting, without a ton of new work.

 

We have to be super careful about new tasks or we'll be in alpha another 3 years. A18 is playing great, none of this stuff is needed.

 

I wish for you guys to stay in alpha for 3 more years. I really do. Because this game is nothing compared to the rest on steam. There is at least 2 years to go until gold stable patched but we don't care much. And there's a lot of us that expect dlcs. Big fat ones.

 

You are naive if you think your game is not one of the best. I have been playing for 20 years now, many genres, but I've never come across such a jewel. Your team has become the Spiderman of videogames. A great game comes with great resposability.

Yours is to not stop in gold.

 

that said where's the MF a18 kraken?

[Thecolours]

Madmole, have you taken on the demolisher yet?

[madmole]

Will there be more skyscrapers in RWG in A18 ? I had some 8k maps created in A17.4 and always had a maximum of 3 skyscrapers and that was mostly the construction site.

 

I haven't seen any in my world.

[Tin]

I haven't seen any in my world.

 

So ahhh.. Let me see the file and I'll fix it for you Ill make them show up

[madmole]

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.

 

Lol, there is nothing about procedural underground caves that is simple. Minecraft doesn't have stability nor more than a cube every meter for detail, and the whole thing is about mining, hence the name. This isn't 7 days to mine or explore caves. Arizona has a total of 11 caves in the entire state, so its not like we're not accurately portraying the region. We have a few man made caves we place randomly, that is good enough to ship.

 

As cool as it would be, after already investing several alphas into this idea we've concluded that its not worth the man hours to chase this feature. We can always add some more man made ones that are randomly placed.

[madmole]

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

 

Yes its still good or better than ever.

[kareed]

Honestly its fustrating waiting for A18, A17 slows my gamers laptop that has never had a problem playing any game to the point I can't even play it. So its been a long time, hoping the new optimizations makes the game playable again.

[madmole]

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.

 

Diamond tools and armor, can be obtained in no time, it spawns 10-14 from bedrock IIRC. I've been to the ender, I enchanted all my stuff, made a farm, electricity, pistons, railroad to bedrock, I know a lot about the game, but its not a 1000 hour game to me and never will be. I know you are a fanboy, I enjoyed it for a bit, but to me it has zero replay value because it lacks story, npcs and the graphics leave everything to be desired.

[madmole]

And i can allready feel that alone from your videos, and frequent Forum Visits. Every Information you (and Staff) share increases the anticipation for A18. My current favourite to come features are the random Stats on Guns, the new Textures/Landscapes ( especially Desert ) and dont get me started with the Books... Its jawdropping.

 

With A17 dont get me wrong. I appriciate the Framework changes/work you did but besides the quests and new POIs it didnt have to offer much for my !personal! Style of Playing, thats all.

I have no doubt that A18 will change that drasticial! I keep fingers crossed, in two weeks i got vacation. Maybe destiny works in my favour this time.

 

It should, but we'll see.

[Guest Rassilon]

Lol, there is nothing about procedural underground caves that is simple. Minecraft doesn't have stability nor more than a cube every meter for detail, and the whole thing is about mining, hence the name. This isn't 7 days to mine or explore caves. Arizona has a total of 11 caves in the entire state, so its not like we're not accurately portraying the region. We have a few man made caves we place randomly, that is good enough to ship.

 

As cool as it would be, after already investing several alphas into this idea we've concluded that its not worth the man hours to chase this feature. We can always add some more man made ones that are randomly placed.

 

i think indeed that this would be a waste of ressources ( procederal generation ) Maybe do within the next Alpha 1 or 2 Manmade Mines ( like a Corporation Mining Side ) with the same passion you did with the recent POIs and i think even the doubters would be happy.

Im now allready. As you stated: Minecraft for mining, 7 Days to Die for dying.

[wolfbain5]

The game is already striving for realism and is full of such elements, spoilage won't suddenly make it "a real life sim" or anything. Only thing spoilage would do is making sure that an already elaborately implemented feature which is hunger/food etc, stops becoming irrelevant in the first few days.

 

Some of you may think that spoilage "will be a drag" but it will actually keep many of the activities the game is consisted of, alive, like hunting, foraging, farming, cooking and even trading to a degree, for more than a few days. Exploring and looting are also affected as a large part of the things you find, such as seeds, cans, food etc, are quickly perceived as trash because the player can stockpile food indefinitely. Then you suddenly run out of things to do and before you know it, ask for space rockets, underwater diving, boss zombies, legendary items and new guns, but they will never be enough as the novelty will quickly wear off.

 

Spoilage will also help to mix activities the player does in the game in a, say, weekly basis, which is very important too imo. Observed people mining for many days straight for example, or doing something until they burn out because there is nothing to draw their attention elsewhere or any emergent needs - they just click their fat stack of equipped food and carry on. It doesn't have to actually interrupt your activities every once in a while having strict timers, or make you look at a timer every now and then, as long as it lenient and simple enough, so that the player intuitively knows when to care for it after a while.

 

And no, I am not saying that the player should "constantly search for food" or struggle throughout the game, but atm food/water become irrelevant way too early and way too abruptly. Just that the time the player spends for needs should be lowered more progressively, increasing the player's QOL along with progression via electricity etc. Also, balancing the food income won't change anything, as long as it's always a net positive and can be stockpiled.

 

food spoilage would require a timer. which like a durability bar would make each thing stack separately. then you wouldnt have space for each bit of food would be its own stack of one. This would make for very poor gameplay.

 

so, no spoilage for now.

[sillls]

Intro:

 

So are you all planning to do an introduction of the game? A lot of cool games start you all with this short story at the start of a new game.

Subnautica has a short intro while games like Skyrim have longer interactive introductions to the game.

 

This could even incorporate the short tutorial that is already in the game. So they work together instead of the tutorial being a distraction to veteran players.

[wolfbain5]

Diamond tools and armor, can be obtained in no time, it spawns 10-14 from bedrock IIRC. I've been to the ender, I enchanted all my stuff, made a farm, electricity, pistons, railroad to bedrock, I know a lot about the game, but its not a 1000 hour game to me and never will be. I know you are a fanboy, I enjoyed it for a bit, but to me it has zero replay value because it lacks story, npcs and the graphics leave everything to be desired.

 

ah, you play vanilla mc. mod packs from ftb extend gameplay immensely. diamond gear becomes so low class. I play it more to explore, especially with dungeon modpacks tossed in.

[Ouch Quit It]

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.

 

Coughs * Airport POI * Coughs

[Star69]

Can you explain the issue better?

Sorry for the lack of clarity, I’ll try to refine my idea. The floating quotation mark showing the quest start is a place holder. Replace the quotation mark with a 5 meter area. If a player steps in that area, a text pops up on screen saying something like: “such & such quest hit E to start”. Invited friends would just see “such & such quest” when standing in the area. Five meter area is big enough for 8 people to stand....8 is the current max number in the party. I’d also not allow the quest to start until all party members are in the 5 meter area.

 

Using an invisible-to-player 5 meter area allows the quest activation to not be like a cheesy glowing object to start the quest. You can already find the building easy enough since it’s marked on the map. Players would just need to walk around the building to find the activation area instead of walking to find the quotation mark. Just my 2 cents but I was wondering what ideas you guys have discussed to get rid of the floating quotation mark?

[RestInPieces]

food spoilage would require a timer. which like a durability bar would make each thing stack separately. then you wouldnt have space for each bit of food would be its own stack of one. This would make for very poor gameplay.

 

so, no spoilage for now.

 

You probably haven't played any games with spoilage - there are various ways to handle it, like simply using the average of the combined stacks.

[wolfbain5]

You probably haven't played any games with spoilage - there are various ways to handle it, like simply using the average of the combined stacks.

 

I have played many with it. but the way things are programmed in THIS game. it is my understanding that it won't work here. coding wise. and I always hated the use the average method it doesnt really do anything. the oldest food takes the average of the stack, make a new one, stacks timer gets gets pushed back, eat the oldest, time gets pushed back, basically becoming a useless feature.

 

and, on servers that are always on but you aren't... becomes a headache

[RestInPieces]

I have played many with it. but the way things are programmed in THIS game. it is my understanding that it won't work here. coding wise.

 

Oh? Please explain how it won't work here "coding-wise", because what you are saying doesn't make much sense.

 

and I always hated the use the average method it doesnt really do anything. the oldest food takes the average of the stack, make a new one, stacks timer gets gets pushed back, eat the oldest, time gets pushed back, basically becoming a useless feature.

and, on servers that are always on but you aren't... becomes a headache

 

Except this being only one of the ways to deal with spoilage with stacking food, how is it a "useless feature"? It still achieves the same thing, which one would implement spoilage for, and it works fine in other popular games. Whether you hate it, or hate spoilage altogether, is irrelevant.

 

PS @MM: Apologies for continuing to talk about spoilage, just replying to quoted posts.

[Mechanimal]

Sorry for the lack of clarity, I’ll try to refine my idea. The floating quotation mark showing the quest start is a place holder. Replace the quotation mark with a 5 meter area. If a player steps in that area, a text pops up on screen saying something like: “such & such quest hit E to start”. Invited friends would just see “such & such quest” when standing in the area. Five meter area is big enough for 8 people to stand....8 is the current max number in the party. I’d also not allow the quest to start until all party members are in the 5 meter area.

 

Using an invisible-to-player 5 meter area allows the quest activation to not be like a cheesy glowing object to start the quest. You can already find the building easy enough since it’s marked on the map. Players would just need to walk around the building to find the activation area instead of walking to find the quotation mark. Just my 2 cents but I was wondering what ideas you guys have discussed to get rid of the floating quotation mark?

 

I too am no fan of the bouncing holographic exclamation point, thought it was just a temporary placeholder, but no. Sure I get used to it, but it still sticks out way too much, like it does not belong.

 

My suggestion would be to make an existing object, or maybe something new, activate the quest, same as the exclamation does now. One great one would be the mailboxes out in front of most POIs, then just add one to POIs without them... I mean everyone, every building, does get mail, so it makes plenty of sense. Then if nothing else just make it stand out to the quest holder a bit more when active to help identify it, like a gentle throbbing glow or something, just enough, no holograms, this ain't the Matrix.

 

I think using the mailboxes is worth serious consideration the more I think about it, plus they're already there for the most part.

 

PS: please no food spoilage, just my opinion, but it is still the biggest reason I hated Ark, and Atlas, and other survival games that just annoyed me far more than challenged me. We have plenty to deal with, though I wouldn't mind the meat count going back to normal numbers again, like 1 meat is 1 meat, not 5 meat is 1 meat, who the F did that and why. Stop it, I can think of no good reason whatsoever for that serving any purpose other than confusion. Deer would be 4 or 5 meat, not 20 or 25 to make 4 or 5. Rabbits like 1 or 2, fine. Some fancy meals could require 2 meat, but most all others should be 1 to 1 ratio, I will never understand why that devolved.

[Eliphas the Inheritor]

Diamond tools and armor, can be obtained in no time, it spawns 10-14 from bedrock IIRC. I've been to the ender, I enchanted all my stuff, made a farm, electricity, pistons, railroad to bedrock, I know a lot about the game, but its not a 1000 hour game to me and never will be. I know you are a fanboy, I enjoyed it for a bit, but to me it has zero replay value because it lacks story, npcs and the graphics leave everything to be desired.

 

That fanboy got rekt. xD

[FA_Q2]

We have plenty to deal with, though I wouldn't mind the meat count going back to normal numbers again, like 1 meat is 1 meat, not 5 meat is 1 meat, who the F did that and why. Stop it, I can think of no good reason whatsoever for that serving any purpose other than confusion. Deer would be 4 or 5 meat, not 20 or 25 to make 4 or 5. Rabbits like 1 or 2, fine. Some fancy meals could require 2 meat, but most all others should be 1 to 1 ratio, I will never understand why that devolved.

Most likely scaling. Huntsman does not work well with 1 meat as a 20% increase cannot be done. With 5 meat per serving it becomes much simpler to balance and play with boosts like Huntsman.

 

I don't understand the hate for the larger numbers.

[Mechanimal]

Most likely scaling. Huntsman does not work well with 1 meat as a 20% increase cannot be done. With 5 meat per serving it becomes much simpler to balance and play with boosts like Huntsman.

 

I don't understand the hate for the larger numbers.

 

Ah, is a good point, for scaling with those bonuses, however, if a deer gave 5 meat then a 20% boost would simply yield 6 meat, so I think it is still possible. But before they changed it 1 meat was 1 meat, now I need 5 pieces to make 1 and aside from how irritating that is, especially since the icons in no way represent the difference, it also leaves me with awkward piles of useless meat. It is annoying to have 50 meat and think that sounds awesome until you cook it down to 10. Anyway, although that point is valid, I still think going back to simpler, more direct, amounts makes more sense. Is not a game breaker, just a QOL thing, feels like the system went back to an older less graceful method in A17. I'm gonna play the F out of A18 regardless, but it will still feel more like a step backward than forward if they leave it as is.

 

Edit* I do think it was worth experimenting with in A17, but I hated it, my son thought it was "really dumb", and in an MP game I played with some noobs a few weeks ago each and every one of them thought it was stupid. I told all of them this is Alpha, where these systems are played with and tweaked, and that I highly doubted it would stay this way. I could be wrong, maybe it will stick, if so my opinion as a designer is that the change is more of a devolution than a refinement. Was a solid B before, now I'd give it a D, maybe a C-, and hope for a refinement of some kind at some point. It's like they forgot about KISS in this situation, usually they go that way, for the better.

[Doombringer101]

Ah, is a good point, for scaling with those bonuses, however, if a deer gave 5 meat then a 20% boost would simply yield 6 meat, so I think it is still possible. But before they changed it 1 meat was 1 meat, now I need 5 pieces to make 1 and aside from how irritating that is, especially since the icons in no way represent the difference, it also leaves me with awkward piles of useless meat. It is annoying to have 50 meat and think that sounds awesome until you cook it down to 10. Anyway, although that point is valid, I still think going back to simpler, more direct, amounts makes more sense. Is not a game breaker, just a QOL thing, feels like the system went back to an older less graceful method in A17. I'm gonna play the F out of A18 regardless, but it will still feel more like a step backward than forward if they leave it as is.

 

The fact that a wood frame uses the same amount of wood it takes to make 4 arrows must really drive you crazy then