Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Guppycur]

FYI, farming is still in. You still can plant seeds and harvest. That makes your statement hyperbole.

 

No, you craft them. The farming system of requiring a hoe and using fertilizer while doing the physical action of tilling the ground has been removed. That was a system. It was a more complete system in earlier alpha's, and has been slowly getting chopped up (crop trampling, water proximity), but it is/was a system nevertheless.

 

This new "system" is just a copy of an existing system. Crafting.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Giving you a heads up, you will be reducing or removing rage. I know my findings are useless to you and the three fans i have of my mod mean nothing to your empire, but it was unanimous. It was hated. No one wants a faster zombie unexpectedly. I love it but I love farming so if thats any indication then i suspect 10 million people will be telling you they hate rage along with their glowing reviews of the farm plot boxes.

 

They'll probably nerf it to like a range from half a second to two seconds, instead.

[madmole]

@mm

kinda wonder if z spawns in the wilderness could be concentrated into groups rather than reduced over all. stealth players and early gs can sneak around the mobs while the gun ho mob can rip into them to their hearts content.

how well would that work?

i dont really give a s**t for fps as my first obsessive game was moria. game play trumps graphics in my world.

id take em on if i felt like it, or avoid them if i was on a mission...

 

Turn them up in spawning.xml, but only after you try 18 as is, I don't even notice it, and be careful what you wish for, rage zombies with bread crumbs are like terminators that won't quit, I don't know I see this again as speculation and not first hand experience. The game runs better and outdoors is still a PITA just like before.

[madmole]

Sleepers are not bad at all, but its a nature`s instinct for an animal to go out and look for food and water, or brains, wandering around. It is not inconvinience, it is how life works. Its nonsense that they will clear them from streets.

I won`t talk about that anymore. Lets move on.

 

I had 5 guys in my face last night... no its not dead rising but our zombies are much more dangerous.

[madmole]

how about you tie some sleepers to cars? or even boulders? just lying on one side? you might miss sight of them as you approach to harvest.

 

They spawn when you get close or breach a volume, it would be like older alphas of zombies spawning in your face, not good. Once random encounters are in it will be nastier, if its even needed.

[madmole]

Is there at least a small chance to get seeds from the dead plants ? The chance should be small but so high that you get at least one or two seeds from a small field. That would be enough to start a little farm.

 

No that just makes it easier and easier to grow a farm because you exponentially get more seeds. Grow 5 crops, craft to a seed if you have the recipe or perk, and thats it. Simple, but its a tangible sacrifice. Do I want to eat this yummy corn today or starve a bit and have 2 corns in 3 days?

[SnowDog1942]

I had 5 guys in my face last night.

 

Can u elaborate?

[madmole]

Regarding early-game deaths, would it be possible to implement a "drop-nothing on death" for the first few levels or maybe the first full day on a server for a new player?

 

That is the only thing I have not liked about an early death is losing all my stuff that was given to me as a new player. That drink and can of food are important along with the torch. Losing that early-game stuff forces me to go try to find my bag and that gets me into the multi-death scenario.

 

Just place a bedroll and never go too far away, or pick it up when you go and when your doing a poi I set up a little camp outside with a chest, some backup gear or clutter I don't want on me in combat and a bedroll.

[madmole]

Give yourself some peace of mind mister MM (play some more, but dont record it. Have some fun). Let this forum piss on itself and deal with the stink. I would have given up on being interactive with this kind of crowd long long ago.

 

Cheers

 

I'm skimming now, and trying my best to let them do that. It will calm down once rationality dwarfs nostalgia.

[Guppycur]

Can u elaborate?

 

...glad I was able to give you your 69th point for that one...

[RipClaw]

Yeh it was kind of a joke; I'd love to see a charcoal filter addition to get purified water...

 

There seems to be something similar in A18. There is a book that unlocks a recipe to make purified water. I think you need chrysanthemums.

 

EDIT: I looked it up. The book is from the series "Wasteland Treasures". The recipe includes coal, goldenrod, chrysanthemums and murky water.

[SrslyGTFO]

Can gamestaged loot bring on a bit of a canned food shortage? Hunting is a bit too easy right now, so I always have 100's of steaks ready to be cooked and eaten after a week or two in-game. Perhaps lessen the amount of meat you can harvest? 5 for a small animal, 10 for a medium animal, and 15 for bears, 20 for Grace (who should be always aggro'd)? If food was scarce, those air drops would be more useful, and the need to farm would be more pronounced in late game. It would be kind of like spoilage, but it's the loot that spoils (giving us more empty cans, bottles and rotten flesh), not what you've harvested.

[madmole]

Inconvenience? Because sleepers in POI's are not inconveniences?

 

Zeds in the wild are an inconvenience, period. Unless you are in the wasteland at night and then its an actual threat, but a few stray zombies have never killed anyone who didn't get stupid and try to kill them while not being prepared.

 

All they do is follow you and cluster up around your POI you are about to clear out and ruin the fun of that. They still do it, but instead of 20 slow lame ones there are 10 rage ones that are more of a threat.

[Trekkan]

Yeah I was in shock to see anyone get defensive of the old "wonky" way, let alone die on the hill about it. FFS its farming not weapon crafting, it doesn't need to be rocket science and gated behind 2 perks just to get started.

 

I think the reason people have issue with it, isn't so much because its dumbing down those specific actions, but many of us thought (think) that farming is a part of the game and would, if anything, be expanded to make it into a system in itself. When you say that farming is "opt-in" and unnecessary, that's a bit of a shock since being able to feed yourself and group, is very much a part of survival. Personally, I don't care all that much about the current change to it, its more like I said... the shock that what many of us see as a key part of a survival game, isn't.

[unholyjoe]

Just place a bedroll and never go too far away, or pick it up when you go and when your doing a poi I set up a little camp outside with a chest, some backup gear or clutter I don't want on me in combat and a bedroll.

 

truer words were never spoken...

 

i have been forced to set up BR and chest just a small distance away from a poi before i start it... bigger pois may need a 2nd chest.

[madmole]

You need some way to let new players know that they can throw away that LCB when they spawn to save that important slot for more useful loot in beginning game. I keep forgetting to get rid of it myself sometimes. After all it just takes 5 stone to make one. A campfire takes 8.

 

Or just not spawn with one to begin with.

[madmole]

@MM

I will gladly give up one-use hoes for a tool that can cut grass/level large sections of land.

 

Do you think you will add to farming's late game, like growing mutant crops for advanced farmers, or adding new crops and more cooking recipes with unique effects?

 

Yes we need to do something interesting with the recipes, like hunters stew, gives +1 to perception and animal damage for 10 minutes, stuff like that.

[Genosis]

truer words were never spoken...

 

i have been forced to set up BR and chest just a small distance away from a poi before i start it... bigger pois may need a 2nd chest.

 

You know, this brings to mind something I liked about Conan: Exiles. A bed and a bedroll acted as separate spawn points. The bed was back at home base, while your bedroll was intended for an "adventuring" spawn point, allowing you to choose between based on the situation.

 

Maybe that could be a neat addition, and it would validate crafting a bed for more than aesthetics.

[Trekkan]

YOu know I'm on day 1, in the snow biome at night in a hole in the ground digging buried treasure. For some reason when I clicked your link I was worried about it being a video making noise that the zombies might hear. I always thought it would be cool if voice to chat or discord noise was picked up on and the zombies could hear it, that it would be cool AF to watch streamers whisper and stuff.

 

That would be cool, except I don't know of anyone that actually uses in game voice chat for most any games. We're all in Discord, etc. Granted, I don't know everyone... But... I don't think that'd be worth the time to code it.

[madmole]

Holy hell, that took a while to catch up on. Ok, so... not to kick any dead horses, but I had to sleep and the forums kept buzzing without me. Farms and wandering zombies...

 

Farming: I love farming. Creating a fully stocked farmland is one of my milestone goals to becoming self-sufficient. Making an oasis, life where there was once death. A source of food that didn't required RNG code to sustain me.

 

That being said, when I saw the farm plots I was like GREAT! I love it! Above-ground plots that snap together for nice clean roof-top gardens. But when I read "you cannot till soil" and "the hoe has been removed" it immediately felt WRONG. I watched the video graciously provided by UnholyJoe and saw him place plots in the ground, surrounded by the dreaded block-terrain trench. OCD triggers, and I hate it. Yeah, I could put plates or sheets around the edges to smooth, but meh.

 

Just place them on the ground so they are waist high. Why bend over or crouch to work? Make a green house, nobody would put their crops out in the open anyway in an apocalypse.

[Genosis]

Just place them on the ground so they are waist high. Why bend over or crouch to work? Make a green house, nobody would put their crops out in the open anyway in an apocalypse.

 

I've made some pretty sweet greenhouses in my time. Should things remain as described, I most assuredly will do that. Until I can invest the time and resources to do so, however, I have a little plot along side my house hastily scratched into the ground so I can get the growing started immediately.

 

I appreciate the response, and I will continue hoping for some middle ground on the concerns (smaller crop plots ala' Ark, a terrain crop plot version so it will blend into the ground, or fixing the block-terrain gap that plagues many OCD'ers out there)

[Guest Rassilon]

No that just makes it easier and easier to grow a farm because you exponentially get more seeds. Grow 5 crops, craft to a seed if you have the recipe or perk, and thats it. Simple, but its a tangible sacrifice. Do I want to eat this yummy corn today or starve a bit and have 2 corns in 3 days?

 

+1

This is my main concern too, and has proven true in the last alphas.

 

Thats why i think the costs of the plant boxes are good and apropriate. Maybe even too low.

[madmole]

So what you're telling me is that I cannot plant crops in the ground, I can only plant into a box that I craft. Peoples complaints about simplification are valid. Why have different tier weapons? It's all about progression. Planting in soil was Tier 1, watering the soil, Tier 2, fertilizing the soil, Tier 3 to get better harvests. Yes, I know harvest is by perk points now, but you keep removing things that players like. No one is complaining about the farm plot blocks. Like most, it is an attractive addition for internal base farms, but I had fields and fields of farms with every type of plant.

 

It seems you are making an Action RPG. The Survival, Horde, Crafting game is losing those characteristics. RPGs are about choice, different builds play differently. Now your choice is less about play styles and more about which weapons to choose. Crafters, and survivalists, even miners are getting less and less each alpha until everyone is just a shooter. This is all my opinion of course, but I also find the reduction in complexity saddening.

 

It isn't hard to add a fertile dirt block that extends the farm plot to appease this, but I really like working at a waist high level like now, I can't imagine people doing it the old way. We'll release as is and consider it in a few weeks after people have settled down about it. Its no different than a block next to your base how that looks.

[Sam_Neill]

Madmole,

 

if you can manage to remove the gap in between ground blocks and the others, much issues would be solved:

-for farming aesthetics and

-for all of the POIs merging with terrain and

-for player buildings too.

 

Is that doable ?

[Guest Rassilon]

Or just not spawn with one to begin with.

 

no no no. dont go that way.

 

Most of new players in MP are not even knowing what to do with it, but its so important even on PVE Servers.

( You can forbid and punish Baseraiders, but not prevent it ) unless with an LCB

[Tin]

You'll have nothing to worry about.

 

And I'm not arguing you with here, but it's odd how everyone I know (including yourself, I guess) dislikes Lucky Looter being a purchasable perk and that they prefer Scavenging... When we had Quality Joe back in the day, and no one made a scene about that. Just saying...

 

You would be wrong about that..