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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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The plant occupies the voxel above the plot.

 

I know, what I'm trying to say is make the plate a ghost block (has no physics). So you put down the plate, then go to place the plant, it will look like you planted it on the plate but it's actually being placed on top of the ground beneath the plate. As if the plate wasn't even there. It would still grow because the plate, even though it doesn't have the physics, still has all the same properties as a regular farm block. I hope I explained it well enough.

 

Like clipping through a block, but intentional.

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So instead you trick them into playing a gimped version of what used to be a hard game by both nerfing the game and changing the default level... Gotcha. :)

 

Love ya gazz, but c'mon...

 

Maybe its actually harder and making it easier would be an injustice to the hardcore fans.

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Well, I do remember many alphas ago where food was a real problem and we were searching around for food, eating every berry we could find ... and dying, it was AWESOME. (really, it was)

 

Being able to be somewhat self sustainable was actually a goal we had. I've heard you said that's not the point and you want people to go out and loot. That's a fair point, but it should still take into account players using the mechanics in the game, to matter. I mean, if all we're doing is pushing people out to loot, shoot, eat and poop... then farming really has zero place in the game and should be removed, freeing up assets, etc.

 

Where once it seemed to have a purpose, it now doesn't in the new world of "loot and shoot" that the game is. Again, I'm not saying the new boxes are bad, I have no idea. Just that the entire farming system doesn't matter at all and apparently isn't going to, ever. Its just a hard pill to swallow. =)

 

I'm sure it matters to some play styles, and doesn't to mine. I still farm because I like to craft high end food that has a lot of calories food stack sizes are nerfed so there is value in high calorie recipes. DO I need it? No I can survive on charred meat with my style, but most players would starve. Farming is better than ever IMO, removing it isn't happening.

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For the record...I was joking about the tutorial world. I like being shoved in and scrambling to get tools and such. I love the way the current game starts. Not having a clue as to what to do with just a bit of nudging in the right direction is great (at least for me). I change my play style almost every game and never build the same type of base and/or pick the same skill trees. I love how flexible it is and have tried to experiment with a different type every time. Heck, 4,500+ hours later, I'm still looking forward to the next time we create and play a new world.

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...he wants to know how far after an alpha release do they start working on the next one.

 

The answer is it depends on who. Art guys will probably already into a19 immediately while others will be tasked to fixing a18 issues that arise.

 

We're working on A20.

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If that's true then why is the whole team dying 10 times in the first 3 days? One post you say they're vicious killers that are taking out the team and the next they're just an inconvenience.

 

Maybe I meant annoyance. Anyhow this topic is beat to death, there are 3 to 4 numbers you can change in literaly less than 30 seconds if you hate this change.

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I must agree, actually. I remember when cities were extremely dangerous. It was thrilling to just go and enter one, and you were always on your toes. I was once forced to go up the rooftop of a POI because zombies were swarming me from everywhere, they just overpowered me.

 

THAT'S how it should always have been. Now, cities aren't really any different from any other POI of the game, with the exception of being clusters of POIs instead of just one building.

 

While the game still has things that are great, it really does feel like the devs are trying to fix things that just weren't broken in the first place. This methodology of "adding by removing" is hurting the identity the game once had, in my opinion. It just doesn't give out the same feeling anymore, and it's mainly due to things like this.

 

As always, maybe it just sounds bad in writing and it's actually a better system. Guess we'll see.

 

Ultimately we want the wasteland to be this way, until we get some more communication to players its not happening, but it will.

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I had a chance to see the cool video that unholyjoe took the time to make, thanks joe.

 

I wanted to know Madmole, have you considered planting the boxes into the ground?

 

You select the area that you want to place your farming plot.

Execute the placement.

The ground voxel changes into the farm plot.

 

1. This removes the need to gig up ground.

2. Also removes that ugly looking lip that forms between ground voxels and blocks.

 

Also this could work on a static ground as well.

 

We had that. You could hoe the ground into a cube farm plot. Took it out and landed where we are. I don't recall if it made a cleaner look or not.

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This isn't about teleporting, its about a user died and the only options are pretty crappy if your base is overrun. Near my bedroll is as bad as my overrun bedroll, but at my backup secret base? That sounds good to me.

 

yep - every server I ran/run and play on has a /home /sethome and often a /fort or /horde or /safehouse option.

 

there is nothing like 5-20 people all at one fort fighting zombies - it is crazy fun.

 

some servers even have a /pack or /bag option that will teleport you to the top most block where you died.

 

good servers have timers and/or virtual cost to use some of these commands.

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MadMole

 

Things iv'e seen that would be Newbie complaint or compliant, take your pick same thing same result in the end.

 

In the starting ui menu either tell them to punch the grass x # grass, pickupup rocks x # rocks, punch the wood

giving twigs x # twigs, make sure its enough to fullfill the entire 8 segment quest. Next menu go to menu and

make some clothes, put on your clothes. Rinse repeat for each of the segments.

 

Next during their beginning, exemption phase, make their lost backpack, Give off a supply drop smoke signal

by day, and glow neon blue at night should they die. Pop up menu turn around and go find your back pack.

For Psychological guidance, add few emojis, upon completing of failing tasks that are on the screen.

 

Make a single simple biome, surrounded by an trader enabled wall, ingame hour 1 no spawn, ingame hour 2 timid

animal popup menu killit cookit eatit, ingame hour 3 a zombie just 1 popup menu "killit or run from it", ingame

hour 4 pop up menu "build a shack for the night", Popup menu "add some defenses". In this area include a

campsite with a campfire and a locked down cooking pan, a really small pond or puddle, and a house, with a

few sleepers. Set trader zone off until criteria met. Popup menu again explaing when they can enter and what to

expect. Once all are player killed, cutscene fade to black ominous laughing, MM voice over. Reset time to day one,

starting gear to day 1, teleport them to normal spawnpoint. and Bob's your Uncle. Tutorial complete, the rest is

muscle memory.

 

You already have the primer for this "GameModeSurvivalSP".

 

Enviro music might add to the situation. Suggestion Binaural beats and sounds, and a littl Taiko.

 

For future the lighting schemes from before. If you add four for colorblind individuals most games don't

untapped market.

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Guest Rassilon
Im curious if you're actually entertaining the idea of distributing A18 access or if you just used it to get people to be a little nicer. Because if that's the case that's pretty genius.

 

yeah exactly my thought ^^

Madmole is working in mysterious ways.

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...the world would literally be labeled "Tutorial", and xfering a player file to a new world isn't rocket science, but I get it. You're not open to new (really, old ideas I believe you once embraced) ideas this far into development. That's fine.

 

You could even do world transitions and do several maps, which are connected at the borders and then run it on a server cluster, each server running its part :smile-new:.

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If difficulty did something besides simply adjust damage values this might be a good point. But as it is nothing aside from damage values are changed so at least for me and some others this doesn't really increase difficulty it just makes things take longer. Now if difficulty changed spawn amounts or food\thirst\stamina drain or anything else that might actually make the game a little harder to survive I could see this point but as it is spawn amounts and food\thirst\stamina drain are just as trivial on insane as they are on the easiest setting making the game far too easy still IMO

 

This isn't true. Here is what is different that I know of (and there may be more)

 

1) Higher the difficulty --> Higher the HP of enemies

2) Higher the difficulty --> Faster gamestage progresses

3) Higher the difficulty --> Higher the chance for zombies to rage.

 

If there is more to it than that Gazz or faatal will have to reveal it but there are at least those three differences. The first two are true of A17 and the third will take effect for A18.

 

Also there are other sliders you can toggle to create additional difficulties.

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All of the terrain blocks snap up and down to match a placed block, but the side by sides would need to change their densities... I usually get this backwards, but you either set the terrain density to -125 or the block you're placing's density to -125, and that weird ass gap is gone.

WAIT! You mean you have THE SOLUTION for the 5-6 year old problem with terrain snapping?? :-O

 

@Madmole: please forward this to your "terrain dev guys" and see what they can do with this info!

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What no, if we release to streamers on Friday it would go public Sunday or Monday unless some super nasty bugs were discovered by the streamers.

 

is there an anticipated date when we will see A18? haven't heard anything about the MF's lately as to how many are left to fix would be nice to get an update.

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