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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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You don't hoe. The hoe is gone. You craft a box and put it where you want a crop to be.

 

Oh no :upset:

But if it is for better FPS I can live with it.

 

...

 

Sorry some of you guys were attached to it, but we like one way to do things, and it needs to be simple. Its kind of stupid saying you need a hoe anyway, I can dig a hole with my hands and plant a seed with no tools.

 

Disclaimer, this not an insult.

I dare you to do that in RL. I DO grow my own vegetables in RL btw.

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Dude, chill your horses.

A18 is not even out.

Dont mix up simplicity and lack of Challenge. Not the same.

 

Lay down your toxicity and lay your hand on it.

 

Remember, this is still Alpha. What they bring in they can change over time.

 

Simplicity does not equate lack of challenge indeed. Simplicity doesn't equal fun as well, IMHO.

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If this starts a ♥♥♥♥ storm I'm going to ban everyone or close the forums down.

 

You can no longer boil water in a can. You can simply boil water from a jar of murky water now without a cooking pot, but it takes 4x as long as with a cooking pot.

 

Why? More sharp sticks. Only veterans knew about the canned water trick and it was only useful on a really bad day where you couldn't find a cooking pot. So we removed cans of water and you can just boil jars of water now. One way to do things is best.

 

Why don't people start with a gun, and a mod, and a bunch of bullets in their inventory? That way they can start shooting straight away, and we don't need to have all this annoying survival stuff in between?

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How is improving farming bad for the survival experience? Sorry but we don't want players to crawl over broken glass to do things in the game. Now its easy to understand, how does that make it bad? Try explaining to someone new how to farm. Just do it. Please respond to me and lets watch how ridiculously long the conversation is going to be.

 

We've been through this before. Its a sharp stick. Now its usable by anyone, without a wiki and a 50 step process. FFS its farming, not rocket science. Why should I need a forge to start a farm? WHy would I need a cement mixer to make fertilizer. That ♥♥♥♥ was lame, now its fun, simple and easy to learn and use. Some people are just married to clunkly old crap and like crawling over broken glass I guess. If that one thing is a deal breaker to play this game you need your head examined or to download a mod that restores legacy farming.

 

I have to ask.. what survival experience? Survival implies that you have to overcome something. Weather? Food? Thirst? Yes there are enemies in the game, but that would imply that any WW2-shooter out there can be classified as a survival game..

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Cans of water were another sharp stick. An entire system that many players never used or even knew about and the ones who used it did so maybe once in a game. It was the best that could be done at the time but we have better tools now. It is no longer needed.

That they were balanced by using more inventory space was just the polishing on the turd.

 

Not even remotely accurate.

 

Every time I or a group of us started a new game, the hunt was on for a cooking pot. Every time we found one, there was rejoicing. Every. Time. To be able to go from making a single drink of clean water (and clean water only), to mass producing clean water, or making teas/coffee/what have you, was a leap of progress. It looked, smelt, felt and tasted like progress.

 

You guys screwed it up by making cooking pots more common than Roland having to prune the DD thread of cruft.

 

Changing the system so you can boil glass jars of murky water is identical to boiling cans of water, with *zero* drawbacks. So if the old system was "a turd", then the new system is "the scoots."

 

-A

 

PS - the issue isn't whether it can be modded or not to our taste. The issue is the design decisions you guys are making all scream "dumb it down."

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You are missing the point. You join a server, and are trying to help a noob. He asks you how to craft a hoe and you would have to explain the deep process of gathering clay, stones, kill some animals and get some leather, but make sure to use a bone knife to maximize harvest, search a sink for short metal pipes, and then boil some bones and murky water in a campfire to make duct tape. Then you need to find a forge schematic or buy the first rank of engineering. Next you craft a forge and load it with iron (where do I get iron) and clay. Now that you have a hoe you need to gather fertilizer and right click the earth to make it fertile, then you need to plant a seed

 

Or you can just craft a farm plot and place it, then plant seeds.

 

A new player would be overwhelmed with how to start a farm and would have interupted you asking many questions like how do I find iron and clay, where do I get the stuff for fertilizer, etc.

 

At least now you can look it up in the crafting menu and its clearly right there how to do it. The old system was part urban legend and required looking up on the internet exactly how to do it.

 

I am sorry you were attached to the old method, but anyone can see the new system offers less confusion, smoother harvest because its nice and flat surface, and less uneeded complicated mechanics. Since when is simple the bad guy? Complex stuff is the bad guy.

 

We want more players to enjoy the game, not have to tab out to figure out complicated systems. If you never played minecraft nobody would figure it out without a wiki. Now its pretty straight forward. Nothing is worse than struggling to learn a game. We're streamlining systems as we go gold only old players will complain, new ones will just enjoy it because they get it right away.

 

Sorry MM, this is a stupid argument because newbies shouldn't be starting a farm on day 1. I will probably only start considering it at day 14 at the earliest and at this point a newbie will know about half of those things and either be able to work out the rest themselves or should be able to refer to an easy tool-tip.

 

Having a farm is rewarding and a progression to your base and should help ease you into a mid-game sort of thing.

 

From what i'm understanding, getting more nitrate, more clay and rotting flesh is more grind. You mean more digging? Ugh! You mean more mining? But I just did that to get the iron. Rotting flesh? I just pushed that mouse button 20 times to kill that guy and now I need to attack him some more?

 

I think that's what people are getting upset about. It's becoming more of the same with each Alpha. Sure, each Alpha has it's pro's of course. But game mechanics seems to be getting simpler.

 

I even remember you saying you wanted the game to force you to eat the moldy sham sandwiches once in a while because you would die of starvation otherwise. But now the game has gotten easier to survive with the only difficulty being the stronger and smarter zombies. If I'd want that, I'll play any other FPS.

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You still need nitrate, clay and rotten flesh to make a farm plot. So find a mine, get a pickaxe etc. Maybe one less clutter item is needed but its still fairly deep and involved to get it going, and finding seeds is fun. I took pride in creating my farm one plot at a time as I found seeds as I didn't want to waste perks on seed crafting.

 

I see, then why not have both methods?

 

EDIT: I read about the programming issue with voxel, makes more sense now, but still :(

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I'd like to put in my two cents here on this whole debacle about making the game "dumbed down" and how it's removing the soul. I've done quite a bit of reading on game design and I've seen a lot of different developers talk about their craft. One thing they all have in common is wanting to achieve elegance. Simply put, elegance is a feature that is not only effective, but it's also simple in design.

 

Making things more simple is not a bad thing, and if done correctly it can actually improve a feature. Let's look at the farming system for instance. Back in earlier alphas, you needed to find/craft a hoe (you probably won't find one for a while and you need metal production to make one, which has its own steps), till dirt, loot around for some fertilizer/buy one from a trader/gather a ton of ingredients to make it yourself, upgrade it by right clicking it while having said fertilizer, and then you could finally plant your food for a nice farm. That's a lot of steps for something that is as essential as food production in a survival game.

 

Currently in A17 the farming system is find/craft a hoe (you probably won't find one for a while and you need metal production to make one, which has its own steps), till dirt, plant the seed, and buy a couple of perks. Already this is much simpler, we just got the same result but cut out an arduous process in favor of something more intuitive. It's more immediately understood when someone tells you "oh if you want to grow food just put some points in this perk"

 

Now in A18 the farming system is craft a plot, place it, plant it, and buy a couple of perks. This is much more elegant than where we started, now if you wanna start a farm you just type "farm plot" and it tells you exactly what you need. No guide to metal smelting, no guide to fertilizer production, just a box and some perks.

 

The stone hoe is a good solution, not?

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ok peeps.. i decided to go ahead and jump back a build or so and show you a tad bit about the farm plot..

 

i hope it shows you what you are asking about, i thought i covered what was needed... one thing i forgot to show you was.. you can paint the plots too.. i did do a screen shot. enjoy :)

 

the plot is a 1 m block.

 

 

 

video:

 

 

painting:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]29094[/ATTACH]

 

 

 

video is public now!

 

Your comment about being able to do something else while crafting the planters is exactly why I think this is a bad move.

 

Oh, and uh... if people can only plant trees using the planters, I suspect you guys are going to have a very vocal and negative reaction from people who plant tree farms. Which is almost everyone who plays a long term game.

 

In spite of that - thanks for sharing the video :)

 

-A

 

Edit: They look beautiful - I love their aesthetics, and I'm ok with using them as an advanced farming plot, available after getting a perk or schematic. I think the mistake is replacing the current system with the planters.

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Your comment about being able to do something else while crafting the planters is exactly why I think this is a bad move.

 

Oh, and uh... if people can only plant trees using the planters, I suspect you guys are going to have a very vocal and negative reaction from people who plant tree farms. Which is almost everyone who plays a long term game.

 

In spite of that - thanks for sharing the video :)

 

-A

 

For the people against this change, they'll get over it. :) Remember when the zombie AI was changed in A17? Or when radiateds were introduced in A16? Sleepers as well? People can choose to leave if they wish, but at the end of the day, the game benefits from these changes.

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I see, then why not have both methods?

 

Question, why is the farm perk there then?

 

I don't think the farm perk affected hoe use in A17 either. The farm perk affects yield of crops so will still be as relevant in this iteration as in the past.

 

As Gazz said, if you want your plots to be even with the terrain you have to dig out the dirt. In actual real life gardening I use a shovel way more than I do a hoe and when I tried the farm plots for myself digging out the dirt and then using that dirt to mulch with the decayed matter and nitrate and then placing the garden box actually felt closer to actual farming than the old hoeing action.

 

If you liked the hoeing gameplay you get almost the same by digging (ie: direct interaction with the world)

If you liked the idea of fertilizer mixed with soil you get that now (ie: crafting together decay matter, nitrate, and clay soil)

 

I don't think the current system is any less complex than the old. The only real difference is the loss of a tool which may come back later anyway as a terrain leveler/grass clearer and the change in aesthetics for how the new garden plots look with the world. They now mesh perfectly with man made blocks but have lost the way they blend with surrounding dirt in natural terrain.

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I don't think the farm perk affected hoe use in A17 either. The farm perk affects yield of crops so will still be as relevant in this iteration as in the past.

 

As Gazz said, if you want your plots to be even with the terrain you have to dig out the dirt. In actual real life gardening I use a shovel way more than I do a hoe and when I tried the farm plots for myself digging out the dirt and then using that dirt to mulch with the decayed matter and nitrate and then placing the garden box actually felt closer to actual farming than the old hoeing action.

 

If you liked the hoeing gameplay you get almost the same by digging (ie: direct interaction with the world)

If you liked the idea of fertilizer mixed with soil you get that now (ie: crafting together decay matter, nitrate, and clay soil)

 

I don't think the current system is any less complex than the old. The only real difference is the loss of a tool which may come back later anyway as a terrain leveler/grass clearer and the change in aesthetics for how the new garden plots look with the world. They now mesh perfectly with man made blocks but have lost the way they blend with surrounding dirt in natural terrain.

 

That could actually look pretty natural (well, "natural"); digging a wide trench in the ground, filling it with planter boxes, lining the edge with a trim of upgraded wood frames, and then painting those upgraded wood frames to look like gravel or brick or... Yes, yes... *Plotting* Ahh yes, some very aesthetically pleasing designs are definitely coming to mind...

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I don't think the farm perk affected hoe use in A17 either. The farm perk affects yield of crops so will still be as relevant in this iteration as in the past.

 

As Gazz said, if you want your plots to be even with the terrain you have to dig out the dirt. In actual real life gardening I use a shovel way more than I do a hoe and when I tried the farm plots for myself digging out the dirt and then using that dirt to mulch with the decayed matter and nitrate and then placing the garden box actually felt closer to actual farming than the old hoeing action.

 

If you liked the hoeing gameplay you get almost the same by digging (ie: direct interaction with the world)

If you liked the idea of fertilizer mixed with soil you get that now (ie: crafting together decay matter, nitrate, and clay soil)

 

I don't think the current system is any less complex than the old. The only real difference is the loss of a tool which may come back later anyway as a terrain leveler/grass clearer and the change in aesthetics for how the new garden plots look with the world. They now mesh perfectly with man made blocks but have lost the way they blend with surrounding dirt in natural terrain.

 

Thanks, edited my post accordingly

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ok peeps.. i decided to go ahead and jump back a build or so and show you a tad bit about the farm plot..

 

i hope it shows you what you are asking about, i thought i covered what was needed... one thing i forgot to show you was.. you can paint the plots too.. i did do a screen shot. enjoy :)

 

the plot is a 1 m block.

 

 

 

video:

 

 

painting:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]29094[/ATTACH]

 

 

 

video is public now!

 

Any chance for the future to get the voxel ground to connect to the farm plots instead of leaving that gap around the side? Some POI's in A17 also have this gap where the building meets the terrain, making some doors difficult to enter as the gap will get you stuck for a moment as you walk over it.

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Any chance for the future to get the voxel ground to connect to the farm plots instead of leaving that gap around the side? Some POI's in A17 also have this gap where the building meets the terrain, making some doors difficult to enter as the gap will get you stuck for a moment as you walk over it.

 

TFP just discovered the ninja animals. Give them a moment to discover the gap... ;)

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