Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[madmole]

Why more of old? Well, imo, and I know I’ll probably get the same “fun trumps realism” go-to reply, but why would someone barricade their home with a single direct path to where they would essentially be hiding? And why would so many people do the same thing?

 

It would make more sense to have more variety in the overall interior designs. For example some that have no barricades, some that have very little barricades, and some that are a cluster to get through with no pathway. Change it up a bit so it’s not as linear. Not every civilian has a forklift to place pallets of boxes throughout their homes... just saying.

 

 

Loc

 

The end of times would have people stockpiling supplies and putting them anywhere they have room in a hurry. They would also rig traps against looters and walkers. I don't find any of it immersion breaking at all. As a landlord I had guys who carried pallets of crap to the basement and moved out and left it. Like 500 bags of dog food or something. Luckily it was something of value I could give away, just come get it.

[madmole]

I was expecting more from the Demolisher, is not doing any dmg to block s from what i can see in the video.

 

Yep he's shy about 5k damage on his explosion. We'll fix it.

[MechanicalLens]

Yep he's shy about 5k damage on his explosion. We'll fix it.

 

Will he deal 5k damage regardless, or will shooting his sweet spot cause him to deal less block damage when he explodes?

 

Also, will his block damage effect terrain at all? (Stone, forest ground, etc.) If he does, that's fine, but it would be somewhat unfortunate to have to deal with a bunch of "Creeper holes" (if you get the reference) after every late gamestage horde.

[beerfly]

Yep he's shy about 5k damage on his explosion. We'll fix it.

 

The moment where one of them exploded in your storage/crafting room was brilliant, we all expected destroyed room, if they do it for real, would be another reason to shake in horde night.

 

You are doing great so far guys, can`t complain, but just say thanks, a lot !

[madmole]

Reposting the question with the rest of the post below:

 

Do you ever plan on focusing on improving normal zombie behavior?

 

Mostly talking about randomization and perhaps adding a few simple animations. Little things that will not only make zombies feel more organic and movie-like, but also make them less predictable and more threatening. Things like randomized slight walking speed fluctuations, stumbling/tripping forward randomly towards the player or just randomly stumbling in place "losing balance" momentarily, a "reaching out" animation, the biting animation (which already exists and activates only when the zombie has no hands) mixed with normal attacks with a different hit cast etc.

 

Even something that seems insignificant, such as, for example, the player *not* knowing exactly when the zombie he is kiting or the zombie in the other side of the store will reach him, would change the threat/surprise level of normal zombies dramatically.

 

As for specials, I think that while some specials are great for gameplay, overusing them or not giving them careful thematic consideration, will end up making the game's combat the same cliche experience you find in pretty much every game. Ranged enemies, flying enemies, bomber enemies - not saying it doesn't work for the time being, but I think that you have already proven to be able to think out of the box and humbly believe that you can do better in this department.

Some things we will try but not committed to are:

 

Head and eye tracking

Stumbling into doorways when they finally breach the door.

Crawling in and out of 1 meter holes at floor level, eye level, 1 above eye level.

Remastered art

Landing animations from jumps, bosses land more controlled, other zeds face plant and ragdoll

Whats in and new:

They fall and ragdoll sometimes

They walk off higher ledges now

rage when injured and speed up their walk/jog randomly

probably more, I forget.

[madmole]

Hey MadMole, thanks for the reply.

 

In this instance, what's the point of a full intelligence build? And how does a full intelligence build affect the quality of items if the best you can do is medium quality re: stats? 🤔

 

Taser and Junk Turret, XP for traps. Guaranteed recipe unlocks, best with medicine.

[madmole]

Havent been on the forums in a bit, new work schedule. What is the demolishers sweet spot if not his head?

 

And if we kill him he blows up a chunk of our base anyway? So the best way to deal with him is to jump off our base and lead him away?

 

Shoot the illuminated box. The best way depends where he is, shoot the box if he's a ways from your base, if your concerned about that damage lure him away.

[Locusta]

The end of times would have people stockpiling supplies and putting them anywhere they have room in a hurry. They would also rig traps against looters and walkers. I don't find any of it immersion breaking at all. As a landlord I had guys who carried pallets of crap to the basement and moved out and left it. Like 500 bags of dog food or something. Luckily it was something of value I could give away, just come get it.

 

Thanks for the reply. I’m hoping the 70 POIs you mentioned will eliminate my concerns. That combined with not seeing the same POI twice and randomizing trader quests would definitely put things in the right direction. I guess I won’t know until A18 is in my hands

 

 

Loc

[madmole]

The solution that was bantered around here awhile back that I think is the best would be to make multiple copies of each major POI. Not totally reworking the POI itself but rather placing the goddie room in a different place in 3 different versions of the POI, i.e., One in the basement, one on the top floor and maybe one in the middle. That way you never actually know where the final room is and to locate it may require going through most of the POI anyway. you would not know which of version of the POI spawned without actually exploring it. This would also take some of the familiarity with looting the 10th paper mill or warehouse as there would be differences in the crawl.

 

Such should not be to difficult to accomplish as the POIs would not be all that different - just the path that takes you through it. I don't know how that would work with the tier 5 POI that we currently have though, they are pretty complex in path atm, or the specialty ones like the bear den. The rest of them are much simpler though.

 

Any changes to stop nerdpolling directly just end up creating another way to nerdpole in a fully distructable and craftable world like this one. I think the only way to mitigate opening the goddie room without any challenge is to make the room location somewhat random.

 

 

 

Should have read the rest of the thread. Are you really going to make THAT many POIs? That is a crap ton but it would be fantastic.

 

Well I can't guarantee it, but right now the code spawns duplicates. I think once all the duplicates stop spawning it will be much better. At least not the same house in the same town or two poopy pants day cares next to each other like now. There are a LOT of pois.

[Kage848]

Shoot the illuminated box. The best way depends where he is, shoot the box if he's a ways from your base, if your concerned about that damage lure him away.

 

I'm excited to see what you guys settle on. With that said an enemy that requires you to leave your base doesn't sound very fun in a base defense game. Just my 2c

[madmole]

Well, nothing about that sounds OP 🤦🏻

 

All you do is lure him away from your base, or shoot him in the head. No problem.

 

There is a way to mitigate his damage and a way to leverage it to kill other zombies.

[Locusta]

Shoot the illuminated box. The best way depends where he is, shoot the box if he's a ways from your base, if your concerned about that damage lure him away.

 

In your video, you kept shooting them in the “sweet spot” but they exploded regardless. Is that intended? There is no way to prevent damage, just reduce it?

 

 

Edit: Damn lol, you answered my question before I could ask.

 

Loc

[madmole]

Madmole, how long would you say it took you to acquire the needed supplies/blueprints for things like workbenches/vehicles without specing into INT? I'm assuming it would take more time to find everything overall.

 

You know there is no right answer to this. I could walk into a trader and find all those schematics for sale one day, or look for a lifetime and never see them.

[MechanicalLens]

@madmole Just giving some feedback referring to non-dungeon POI's. Now before I continue, I want to make it clear that I organize non-dungeon POI's into two distinct categories: bog standard A16 houses, and POI's that have a lot of personality to them but still have somewhat of an "outdated" (but still welcomed, imo) design, such as fire stations, military bases, etc.; I will be discussing the latter in this post. Regarding many non-dungeon POI's (Meaty Burgers, trailer parks, the junk yard, Poopy Pants Daycare, military bases, fire stations, the Adult Movie Theater, etc.), I would just like to express my opinion in that besides the fact they are not "up to date" (dungeon-style crawls), I still believe they hold much value in "modern 7D2D" due to their "unique personalities". Despite the fact that they aren't as interactive as many recently designed/redesigned POI's, like I said, I still believe they hold their ground in terms of worth and interest. And to anyone else reading this, no, A17 has not completely done away with dungeons. Read the examples above.

 

I'm just curious if you plan on updating these sorts of POI's, or if you share the same opinions on them? (Their justification for sticking around, I mean.)

[madmole]

@Kage848. They are discussing the demolishes more. If you do hit it’s sweet spot for example it’ll still blow up but won’t do nearly as much damage as if it did it on its own.

 

We're trying some new stuff, there is no set in stone design right now.

[madmole]

Would it possible to direct the damage? For instance, if you shoot the target, there is a little damage within a radius, but if he explodes on his own, there is an additional directional damage, like a cone in front of him... so that it smashes a wall or other obstacle that he is facing?

 

AFAIK he never explodes on his own. He smashes with his fists. We're still experimenting with him.

[jdm311]

There was no good reason for the nail gun to have quality ranges as it was never intended to be a weapon.

 

Does it not make sense to be depleting durability of building tools as you use them? I'm ok with it as is, but just curious.

[madmole]

Does that not make building a fort rather pointless then? There were a ton of demolishers on your video - if there is no way to stop them blowing massive holes in your base then is the only method of dealing with them to not be in your base?

 

Shoot them anywhere but the bomb and they die doing no damage. Shoot the bomb and he blows up. He will certainly cause action from the players, if left unattended he'll punch a hole through your defenses, if you shoot the bomb while he's near your base your base will take a lot of damage. The strategy will be to waste ammo on his head, or lure him away and shoot the bomb. Either way it gets players out of their comfort zone and is balance IMO.

[madmole]

Hmmm - I know you are trying to make it challenging for the hard core players but this sounds like it is pretty much guaranteeing that most of your base will be destroyed on horde nights for everybody else. I am already in the habit of building two bases, one is my normal storage/crafting base the second is designed around pure horde management/killing. That way if the horde base is lost, hopefully much of my supplies will not be impacted since very little is kept at the horde base. Now I am thinking I will need a backup horde base in case I cannot repair the first one in the days between hordes. Because silly me, I like going to the POIs looking for loot rather than spending days digging up stone and iron for the concrete and steel to build with...

 

I spend nights mining (3 to 4 nights a week) and all day every day looting, barring a couple of days I spent taking my base to the next level a few times, but out of 84 days I might have spent 5 days working on my base, typically I do it at night on the 3-4 nights I am not mining.

[madmole]

Will he deal 5k damage regardless, or will shooting his sweet spot cause him to deal less block damage when he explodes?

 

Also, will his block damage effect terrain at all? (Stone, forest ground, etc.) If he does, that's fine, but it would be somewhat unfortunate to have to deal with a bunch of "Creeper holes" (if you get the reference) after every late gamestage horde.

 

He will never explode unless the box is shot, and it will be 5k period since there is one condition it explodes, when the player shoots it. Explosions do not hurt terrain except tnt.

[MechanicalLens]

He will never explode unless the box is shot, and it will be 5k period since there is one condition it explodes, when the player shoots it. Explosions do not hurt terrain except tnt.

 

Good to know, thanks.

[madmole]

The moment where one of them exploded in your storage/crafting room was brilliant, we all expected destroyed room, if they do it for real, would be another reason to shake in horde night.

 

You are doing great so far guys, can`t complain, but just say thanks, a lot !

 

Thanks Beer, keep on being an awesome fan.

 

Yes my room should have got wrecked. I will build a new horde base across the road.

[MajorMunchy]

He will never explode unless the box is shot, and it will be 5k period since there is one condition it explodes, when the player shoots it. Explosions do not hurt terrain except tnt.

 

omg thank you. less things digging for me buried treasure!

[JCrook1028]

The initial idea was you shoot his flashing light and it blows him up doing massive damage to entities near him, but after playing it I think block damage will be a better design. The issue is, is there no way to minimize massive destruction? So maybe shooting it can half the damage or 1/4 it or something, but if it goes off on his own it does a lot. I'll have to chat with the team to come up with a plan. This was my very first look.

 

So what's the point of the Demolisher if you're now going to make him just a different skin of the Cop? Having one be a block threat and the other an entity threat seems better to me.

[Erik Louden]

My biggest issue with the game is the non-horde zombies are boring and not a concern (have over 4k hours in the game).

 

How about a glass cannon type of zombie that can be thrown into the mix. Noisy, faster moving, half-human that goes down quick but god help you if he connects.

 

Kinda like ferals but higher damage but lower HP, make exploring the wilderness more tense.