Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[faatal]

2 hours ago, Xtrakicking said:

Wouldn't it be way easier to consider them dead and reserve the bleeding for bandits? Would solve many problems, including them being burnt but still walking, and them breathing underwater, and yadda yadda.

I've played agility a lot recently. The bleeding mechanic is fun and makes knives different from other weapons. Fun game play beats logic, which is why you can carry tons, jump a meter, build instantly, resurrect yourself, drive a vehicle underwater, fly a gyrocopter without lessons, span a day in 1 hour...

[JCrook1028]

16 hours ago, Roland said:

What comes first? Lyrics or tune? Do you write the poetry and then find music to fit it or do you compose the tune and then seek words to fit that.

TFP is establishing fun first and then will use their imagination to fit some lore to it that is still loose enough that players can use their imagination to fill in the gaps.

Some of you want the lore first and then fit the fun to that but that is not the only way to do it.

That implies that both are coming together at some point. I hope you're right. As it stands now they do not follow their own semi established rules. Madmole from his comments doesn't seem to see that as an issue. We'll see how it ends up.

[unholyjoe]

3 minutes ago, faatal said:

I've played agility a lot recently. The bleeding mechanic is fun and makes knives different from other weapons. Fun game play beats logic, which is why you can carry tons, jump a meter, build instantly, resurrect yourself, drive a vehicle underwater, fly a gyrocopter without lessons, span a day in 1 hour...

there ya have it.... the game is suppose to be fun folks. thanks faatal i just love your explanations.

[Xtrakicking]

9 minutes ago, faatal said:

I've played agility a lot recently. The bleeding mechanic is fun and makes knives different from other weapons. Fun game play beats logic...

None of that changes if the knife has the bleeding bonus added to bandits. It would actually make the Agility build more interesting, if you're looking for a set of weapons that's better against human NPCs rather than zombies (and also make the game more immersive).

 

"Should I go with the Strength build to fight zombies better? Or should I go with agility and cause bleeding damage to those pesky bandits?"

 

I still don't see the problem.

[Roland]

1 minute ago, JCrook1028 said:

That implies that both are coming together at some point. I hope you're right. As it stands now they do not follow their own semi established rules. Madmole from his comments doesn't seem to see that as an issue. We'll see how it ends up.

Well, as you can see from my two made up notes from the Red Mesa facility it isn't too hard to come up with something that could explain pretty much anything-- Especially if there was alien DNA involved.

 

"Alien DNA" is the Deus Ex Machina of any plot hole or continuity problem....

[faatal]

32 minutes ago, Xtrakicking said:

When people talk about zombies being dead, they mean they are rotting corpses. Their guts spilling out, their bones showing, their skin torn up or burnt to a crisp, etc. As to why they still walk if the person is dead, it goes from witchcraft to some sort of disease that affects the brain, and most of the times headshots are the only thing that takes them out. This is what he's referring to.

If a corpse gets up and walks towards you, it is not dead. They can call them dead all they want and I will disagree. Now if they want to say magic is making a corpse move, sure whatever.

[Adam the Waster]

1 minute ago, faatal said:

If a corpse gets up and walks towards you, it is not dead. They can call them dead all they want and I will disagree. Now if they want to say magic is making a corpse move, sure whatever.

it would be if it keep on coming! 

[madmole]

1 hour ago, Guppycur said:

You uh, can actually do that with the current buff system (Tin has done the XML, I'm working on the Unity side)... I know you don't like to talk about mods, but this fits right in... Tin has made it so that once the zombie "tastes blood" (gets a hit), it mutates into a different zombie; new walk type, stronger, etc. 

We're actually experimenting (successfully!) with showing physical changes as well.  Our proof of concept is that it grows horns, but you can have it do whatever.  Get the eye change color, hell have it grow a second head, doesn't matter. 

...all completely doable through the current buff system.  It's pretty friggin' nice.  And yes, although this is a unity video, it does this in game as well. 😃

 

 

That is pretty cool. I think material swap is broke after we updated the renderer for the new graphics so we're just using new prefabs for feral eyes and radiated for now. To do it properly we want zombies to target meat and play an eat animation for x amount of time and do an animation when the change occurs, its a bit of work to do properly so I'm not sure we'll ever get to it, but we need to save cool ideas for the sequel which will never happen if we keep working on the current version.

[Xtrakicking]

11 minutes ago, JCrook1028 said:

That implies that both are coming together at some point. I hope you're right. As it stands now they do not follow their own semi established rules. Madmole from his comments doesn't seem to see that as an issue. We'll see how it ends up.

I completely missed this comment. It's exactly my concern, and I 100% agree. Let's hope for the best.

[faatal]

9 minutes ago, Xtrakicking said:

None of that changes if the knife has the bleeding bonus added to bandits. It would actually make the Agility build more interesting, if you're looking for a set of weapons that's better against human NPCs rather than zombies (and also make the game more immersive).

 

"Should I go with the Strength build to fight zombies better? Or should I go with agility and cause bleeding damage to those pesky bandits?"

 

I still don't see the problem.

Except I plan on fighting a lot more zombies than bandits. Don't know what the ratio between them will end up being, but this is a zombie game. I'd expect to be bringing a gun to a fight vs bandits.

[madmole]

3 minutes ago, faatal said:

If a corpse gets up and walks towards you, it is not dead. They can call them dead all they want and I will disagree. Now if they want to say magic is making a corpse move, sure whatever.

Right. If they were dead they would be laying there like after you kill them. I'm thinking they have a super slow pulse, barely feel pain and the slow heart rate and breathing rate has caused them to start to appear decayed, but the virus supercharges them for that primal function of eating flesh, so it doesn't really matter what is going on with their body. They look dead, but are more like 28 days later zombies, infected and nobody knows wtf it is, but bullets and stuff can stop them, but they are hard to kill since they bleed slower and don't feel pain like we do.

[Xtrakicking]

5 minutes ago, faatal said:

If a corpse gets up and walks towards you, it is not dead. They can call them dead all they want and I will disagree. Now if they want to say magic is making a corpse move, sure whatever.

It's called undead for a reason. It's supposed to be a corpse, a dead body, that's still walking somehow. "Infected" are just people that are sick and have gone crazy, which is why those die by other means such as bleeding.

[Roland]

magic Alien DNA

[madmole]

2 minutes ago, Xtrakicking said:

It's called undead for a reason. It's supposed to be a corpse, a dead body, that's still walking somehow. "Infected" are just people that are sick and have gone crazy, which is why those die by other means such as bleeding.

I can pretty much confirm that they are not undead, I've stomped on any ideas or hope of zombies coming out of graves about 100 times around here because its cheesy af and a cheap move. We don't have skeletons running around, those are undead, undead are animated through magic.

[NoaAldritt]

13 minutes ago, madmole said:

I can pretty much confirm that they are not undead, I've stomped on any ideas or hope of zombies coming out of graves about 100 times around here because its cheesy af and a cheap move. We don't have skeletons running around, those are undead, undead are animated through magic.

Animated through magic, or a parasite, or some weird fungus, or some other external source of one sort or another. Point being is that 'Undead' are pretty well into the direction of supernatural as it breaks natural laws or requires things that do not presently exist on a scale macro enough to affect a human being..

Meanwhile something like infected ala Left 4 dead implies a living rational being driven to some level of insanity by brain chemistry changes- a basically purely scientific and plausible scenario.. We already have precedent in a myriad of medical cases of true insanity, animal like behaviors, unbounded hostility, and more from subtle changes in brain chemistry that can be caused from a number of sources- Heck, We take drugs to alter our brain chemistry too, and look at the effects some of those can have on the body or mind.. And in the case of infected, the biggest worry of the undead, decomposition, is not much of a factor.

[Gamida]

To me it seems to be a host situation. If a parasite could take over the brain function then couldn't someone be dead but still move. If something could enter a brain and send electrical signals to the muscles the same as a brain does (or is it the spinal cord. I have no idea) couldn't it make something dead move. It is like someone hijacked a vehicle and are now driving it to do what they want. Some one did it before with a frog leg I think. Gave it a little jolt and it moved. Now coordination would be a hell of a thing to do but the basics is there. Maybe eventually with decomposition the muscles and nerves would no longer work but that is another problem for another day.

[Ralathar44]

3 hours ago, madmole said:

Is it the spiffy new forums?

There is plenty more where that came from concerning them.

No lie, new forums are much better visually.  It was a good change.

3 hours ago, Xtrakicking said:

Wouldn't it be way easier to consider them dead and reserve the bleeding for bandits? Would solve many problems, including them being burnt but still walking, and them breathing underwater, and yadda yadda.

If they were aiming for things that were easy they wouldn't be in game development :D.

[madmole]

10 minutes ago, Gamida said:

To me it seems to be a host situation. If a parasite could take over the brain function then couldn't someone be dead but still move. If something could enter a brain and send electrical signals to the muscles the same as a brain does (or is it the spinal cord. I have no idea) couldn't it make something dead move. It is like someone hijacked a vehicle and are now driving it to do what they want. Some one did it before with a frog leg I think. Gave it a little jolt and it moved. Now coordination would be a hell of a thing to do but the basics is there. Maybe eventually with decomposition the muscles and nerves would no longer work but that is another problem for another day.

That seems plausible as well, but IMO you would need at least a slow heart beat and some oxygen for the muscles to continue to function for more than a short period. If you cook frog legs they often jump about in the skillet lol.

 

[Adam the Waster]

4 minutes ago, madmole said:

If you cook frog legs they often jump about in the skillet lol.

 

just go outside and Eat the frog. no need to cook it!

[Ralathar44]

45 minutes ago, Xtrakicking said:

None of that changes if the knife has the bleeding bonus added to bandits. It would actually make the Agility build more interesting, if you're looking for a set of weapons that's better against human NPCs rather than zombies (and also make the game more immersive).

 

"Should I go with the Strength build to fight zombies better? Or should I go with agility and cause bleeding damage to those pesky bandits?"

 

I still don't see the problem.

What you described there is a major change.  Knife is a melee weapon, bandits are full speed humans melee would be less useful on (especially if there are gun/bow wielding enemies in the encounter), and knife would function completely differently on zombies without the bleed and actually be pretty weak with no zombie compensation with zombies being the primary enemy in the game.  So it'd completely change how you play knife and be a significant nerf if it got nothing in return for that change.  I personally already find the agility build quite interesting and effective, I can place a bleed on an entire wandering horde at the same time and kill them potentially faster than any other weapon at earlier levels too.  Knife is good for many targets with it's quick swing speed and low stamina use, Machete is better for tough individual targets with it's higher per damage hit and increased stagger.

Archery and max stealth with cloth armor allows you to dominate POIs with careful methodical stealth gameplay and later on with mods you can even upgrade to leather or military with almost no movement penalty at all.  Though cloth is always still quieter.

I already find the agility build very interesting and powerful, I'm sorry you don't find it interesting it but that doesn't mean it should be changed just because you personally don't like it.  That being said, if they decide to redesign it I'll roll with the redesign and give feedback.  I'm fortunate in that I'm an adaptable player who likes a wide variety of things so changes and individual game mechanics are not much of a concern for me.  Which is why Learn by Doing > current skill system was a non-issue for me.  But I DID want to offer a little pushback on the idea of changing it from the perspective you offered here.  I feel like you can argue your position much better than you did here.

[Quantum Blue]

11 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

I'm fortunate in that I'm an ADAPTABLE (emphasis mine - QB) player who likes a wide variety of things so changes and individual game mechanics are not much of a concern for me.  Which is why Learn by Doing > current skill system was a non-issue for me.

(As well as open minded enough to let TFP define their story, gameplay, and contents any way they wish.)

 

💙

[pregnable]

Yeah, the zombies probably have rabies or something, which reminds me... I am apparently immune to mad cow disease. 

 

So when there is a mad cow scare and no one is buying it, I am all over it for cheap steaks and very high quality meat.  Allow me to use this forum as my person twitter and talk about myself constantly now...

 

 

Actually, hmmm... something about the game... actually the game is pretty good now. 

 

I do often think the zombie damage is too high vs blocks, and I kinda miss frantically repairing boarded windows while trying to survive in a crappy wood base during a horde.  It is not really a big deal though, and I am not sure how you would fix it. 

 

I did think that it would be cool if zombies did reduced damage and a large number of zombies in 1 spot would trigger a zombie event, kinda like vehicle events that have been talked about. 

 

Like you see an area and it is highlighted and it shows you have X number of seconds to repair or kill the zombies or the entire wall is coming down. 

 

It could be fun, but would probably be a lot of work to stop people from exploiting it, and it would have to account for player blocks in the area and height. 

 

 

Still, it was something to write about while I am waiting for the next updating, in preparation for throwing so many stone spears that I crash my game. 

[Ralathar44]

15 minutes ago, Quantum Blue said:

(As well as open minded enough to let TFP define their story, gameplay, and contents any way they wish.)

 

💙

I mean yeah, I'm a player and I have the right to give feedback on their thing but it's TFP's game and their baby.  Despite all the kevitching in the 7DTD community we're all still here so they're obviously doing something right 😝.

Most of what I'll actively give feedback on is objective balance considerations like when the Junk Turret came out and people were like "it's so OP" and I played a full intellect build and reported the areas it was lacking both balance wise and experimentally completely with youtube videos.  And TFP resolved the issues by making changes like increased ammo stack size, increased magazine size, adding an ammo bonus to Turret Syndrome levels, etc.  So turrets went from "free extra damage for other specs" while being mediocre and extremely high maintenance for intellect spec to "free extra damage for other specs" while being a viable spec in and of itself for intellect with it's own strengths and weaknesses.  I'm excited for the new Drone and Junk Sledge :).  which I assume will share the "two active turret" limit so it'll be interesting to put the combinations through their paces, see how they do, stress test them, do some dedicated performance/dps tests, and then give feedback based on all of that.

Same story with construction exp, when they redid that it was terribad and base builders got screwed.  We tested, we gave feedback, and they fixed it to where construction projects are actually worth your time exp-wise now but kill exp is still valuable, so there is a nice balance atm.

[Xtrakicking]

 

27 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

but that doesn't mean it should be changed just because you personally don't like it.

I see this sentence come up in many arguments, and it's such an absurd statement every single time. I'm not saying they should change the game to fit my needs and demands above everyone else's, I'm giving feedback on something I think it's a problem. If they decide to change it, great. If they don't want to change anything, cool, but then these things will remain as problems for the people that dwell on immersion. You're not one of those people, and that's great, because it's not a problem to you then, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem to many others that try to offer ideas to maybe see it fixed, especially now that it's still a possibility, since the game is still in alpha.

 

You can't possibly know how such a change would affect development because bandits aren't even in the game yet, and there's no way to know how players with different builds will play against them beyond assumptions. For all we know, knives might just be the best meele against them, especially with the bleeding effect, since you can stay away from the line of fire while that takes care of them.

 

This is just another assumption, anyways. The ones to determine if it's worth changing are the devs. Heck, they might even change how combat works again when bandits show up! There's no way for us to know what such a change implies, and for what it's worth right now, I don't see it far fetched.

[dcsobral]

1 hour ago, faatal said:

I've played agility a lot recently. The bleeding mechanic is fun and makes knives different from other weapons. Fun game play beats logic, which is why you can carry tons, jump a meter, build instantly, resurrect yourself, drive a vehicle underwater, fly a gyrocopter without lessons, span a day in 1 hour...

I agree with most of it... but have you seen streamers the first time they try to fly a gyrocopter? Or second, third? 🤣

Besides, driving vehicles underwater is no fun. They get bogged down. Now, flying a gyrocopter underwater, that's freaking awesome!