Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[meganoth]

I don't know why getting "sandwhiched" in POIs or having to constantly watch your back is perceived as a bad thing. It's one of the few exciting moments in the game. Looting at your leisure is, well... more boring. General difficulty has nothing to do with it, so it can't make up for it. Besides it doesn't always happen. Hopefully that doesn't go away with the decreased roaming spawns.

 

Still don't understand this change from a gameplay perspective - it is my impression that the vast majority of feedback asked for the exact opposite. Anyway, time will show.

 

I assume it's seen as a bad mechanic because the countermeasure is easy but tedious: Clearing out the area of wandering zombies before you go into any poi.

 

So, have another question for you other players: Did you also spend the vast majority of your time in the forest biome due to temperature adaptation being such a pain in the ass in A17?

 

I went to the snow biome and desert a TON more often in A16, hated going in A17. All we had to do in A16 was find and wear the right thing. In A17 I would dress for it, AND add hot/cold mods, AND spec into it, then I'd go up north or to the desert and still get a ♥♥♥♥ing temperature debuff, it drove me nuts, so I jsut never went, and have spent far far more time in the forums this year than in the actual game.

 

Just wondering what your experiences were like.

 

Since the lesser temperature debuff just results in higher food consumption I just ignored it after the food problem was solved.

 

 

Oi! You redhead! You reversed carrot! You lighthouse!

 

..

 

At least those were the things thrown at me ^^

 

How could they be so wrong? Oi, you redrock. You rubin.

[KhaineGB]

Looking at A18... I could imagine a disease. You get bitten by a certain creature and eventually you get the ability to heal yourself with a part of the damage that you do to others in melee but you take damage when outside during the day.

That's all XML. Not even complicated.

 

In fairness, I could do that in A17 right now with cvars.

 

Also that wouldn't be new game functionality since it's using already existing systems in a different way.

 

The day/night bit would be SLIGHTLY more difficult due to the fact onGameDayStart and onGameNightStart currently don't work. So I'm guessing you guys finally finished off some of the things marked as // Hook Up in the buffs file.

[Ti2xGr]

Interesting - We set our servers to 120 minutes also. Same thoughts as well - Feels more like a "real" day, enough time to clear out a few POI's. Just recently, me and another guy cleared out 5 level 5 POI's in one day. It was an absolute blast.

 

I'm really curious about the new POI's. It sounds like there is going to be a significant variety in A18.

[JoeCavallo]

10 minute days?!? Sounds like they made their own problem, that is ridiculous. Though I can see how it could make for an entertaining video.

 

I can barely tolerate 1 hour days, even though it's the default. I always crank mine up to 2 hour days so it actually feels more like an actual day has passed. I find it far more immersive and can actually get some things accomplished, instead of traveling somewhere, clearing like one POI for a quest, and then having to rush home as it gets dark. That's too short for me. So glad we can adjust that setting.

 

Well let me tell you this, a streamer and me played vanilla A17.4 with 10 min per day setting, and horde night every night, it was insane, we spawned gathered few items, made few arrows and a bow, BOOM hordenight, 2 sec later dead. But when we stopped playing we were at 8th day with 5-6 deaths each, so I would say it was interesting.

[meganoth]

In fairness, I could do that in A17 right now with cvars.

 

Also that wouldn't be new game functionality since it's using already existing systems in a different way.

 

It seems to me you defined new functionality as "Stuff done below XML" and then ask "Show me new functionality in XML". Sorry, but that is a trick question and trivially impossible.

 

You are right in the sense that the xml in 7D2D is not a real programming language (aka turing complete) and therefore still quite limited compared to hacking the libraries.

[madmole]

I agree, and again, thank you. Although I must ask, have these changes also been applied to (ninja) zombie dog hordes?

 

Also, I'm just curious, have wandering hordes changed at all in A18? I'm just curious because in A16 they were quite irritating and somewhat overwhelming (especially before nightfall), but, just in my opinion, they were somewhat "lacking" in A17. You know, a horde of zombies that is 6 zombies strong is no longer a horde, but a mini-horde. But if nothing has changed, no worries! So long as we don't get wandering hordes 2-3 times a day like in A16. Lol

 

Its a general behavior fix (play alert sounds jerks!!)

[Ouch Quit It]

Coughs * Video * Coughs

[Prisma501]

Coughs * Video * Coughs

 

Please no...

 

Cheers

[CannedSmeef]

@madmole, can we get a MF report?

[madmole]

Hey! Madmole will there be an option to turn on/off digging zombies during the process of alpha 18 completion before Alpha 19 like the option given to alter how the blood moon works?

 

Not likely. You can die and then spawn in your underground bunker and be safe the rest of the night unless you attack zombies or get seen again. So get naked and make an offering every 7 days if you don't want them digging to find you.

[madmole]

Thanks MM, kudos for finding my post among all the doom and gloom posts. 😅

 

Its fairly easy to stay calm when you have an ace up your sleeve.

[Sigil_Thane]

Spot on, I almost posted the same thing.

 

I am one of "those", and only a ginger can call another ginger ginger;)

... Did someone say Jinjer?

[madmole]

Cool! I'm really looking forward to playing a18.. still playing the witcher 3 though.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

 

 

Lol you betya!

 

Speaking about rock; got any favourite bands?

 

I tried some more witcher 3, but the combat feels poor compared to Skyrim so I just get new mods and play a new build in Skyrim lol. Can you even level up in that game? Are there perks or ways to get stronger?

 

ACDC and Metallica, Extreme had one good album back in the day. More modern ones I like are SOAD, Shinedown, Godsmack, 5 finger death punch, Seether.

[madmole]

There it is again calling loyal players to get there "head examined". You said that to me when I told you that concrete textures don't belong on house walls.

 

If you were loyal you would trust our judgement to changes, and willingness to restore something if we got it wrong.

[madmole]

You’re supposed to let these things go on for days before letting them off the hook. You revealed it the very next page. Noob Troll move.

 

Git Gud MadTroll!!

 

I dunno, in the midst of misinformation about farming I couldn't deal with "madmole promised oculus support in a20".

[madmole]

It pains me to say it, but no matter how much logic we use, no matter how well we craft our argument, no matter how much we kick or scream, TFP is not going to change farming back. At least, at this time.

 

We can only hope once it get's pushed live, there will be enough feedback to encourage to make changes. I don't hold much hope for that, because most of the player base who enjoy that type of depth appear to have moved on to other games, and the bulk of current players seem to be millennials with short term attention spans.

 

I'm sure it'll be fine (as long as I can mod it to make it better.)

 

-A

 

Its fine right now. You mean mod it to feel nostalgic.

[wolfbain5]

Its a general behavior fix (play alert sounds jerks!!)

 

is that in the xmls or hardcoded? temp fix for the current version is why I am asking

[madmole]

But you have to do the basic starter quests all the time. You can skip them, but that will cost you xp points..

 

Can something be done in that regard?

 

Call it the no starter xp challenge, a new cool fad like dead is dead and just be man and hit the cancel button. Live life like a true viking and grow your beard out.

[madmole]

It reminds me of the time when reinforced concrete was introduced. We put rebar frames, then upgraded them with wood, then poured wet concrete, and after the blocks dried up the wood panels popped off. It was hell of immersive, I swear I could smell wet concrete! But the process was different from other blocks so the devs decided to 'streamline' it. And now we have what we have. Same thing with farming.

 

But I already know how I mod farming back, so I don't really care. The new nice boxes will be an advanced option after I find a book.

 

edit: to be fair, it would be close to impossible to have old concrete way for all the new shapes, so yeah, it has a good reason.

 

Well if it makes you like me any more, those were both my designs, but times change and reasons come up. Hopefully we can add some more realism elsewhere, like visual mods become a thing and get better organic destruction.

[Guppycur]

I dunno, in the midst of misinformation about farming I couldn't deal with "madmole promised oculus support in a20".

 

Joking aside about that, are you still planning on supporting VR, and if so, will it be in a deep way (being able to reach down and pick up rocks) or via the controllers (press button x to pick up rock)?

 

I expect the latter but hope for the former. =)

[madmole]

Oh we are getting close, I want to say great job the fun pimp and joel for an amazing game

 

21 MF.

[madmole]

Quick question on A18 and future @madmole

1 will the camp fire heat you again ? why it's not doing it anymore ? this is the kind of cool details i like in a survival game, any chance to add

more features like this ?

2 You said in the past that you were not going to add more firearm weapons cause you want this to remain a survival game and not a zombie

shooter, what brought you to add an M60 to the game ?

3 Will you add back what you cut from the game for the sake of performance and tweaking after fixing the major aspects of the game ?

4 Is there ever gonna be an update introducing whole new set of items, enemies, entities, veichle etc. enlarging the entire gameplay itself ?

 

1, Campfires should heat you.

 

2, don't remember saying that. We were out of texture memory forever until unity put in texture streaming, now we can add a ton of new content.

 

3, You would have to be specific. MOst cuts are permananet.

 

4, 18 has all of that.

[CannedSmeef]

 

4, 18 has all of that.

 

There's a new vehicle?

[madmole]

My most grieved cut out feature is the glorious procedural caves we had in A11(?) I'm hoping TFP will release some underground DLC with them some time after gold.

 

They were kind of cool at first, but then got boring and added SI and performance issues. Maybe something down the road, but I'd rather do man made stuff. Now that we have filler 2.0 we might see more of that in the future.

[MechanicalLens]

There's a new vehicle?

 

Nope, but nonetheless my hopes are still there for segways to (hopefully) be introduced to 7D2D one day.