Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[khzmusik]

2 hours ago, Gazz said:

It really was inevitable that someone would throw a tantrum about "TFP dumbing the game down" when one feature was removed. (and 6+ new ones added instead, but who's counting?)

And this time Joel was really careful about not saying a peep about it until it was actually in and working the way we wanted.

 

There is no doubt that there will be another straw fire of over-analysing the patch notes when they come out, predicting doom and gloom (in no particular order) for the game.

Actually playing the game? I predict a very different outcome except for those with prescription rose tinted glasses.

What we were actually predicting was gloom, despair, and agony on me! WHY DO YOU NOT LISTEN TO US!!!

 

...seriously, though, what I personally would have done is this. Rename "dysentery" to "food poisoning," have it gradually decrease as it does now (and not increase like infection), and have tea work similarly to honey (removes a % but not necessarily all of it). It still simplifies the game mechanics but doesn't "dumb it down," so most players would probably be on board.

 

That's not a complaint though, just a suggestion, and I'll probably eat my words when the new alpha comes out.

[mr.devolver]

2 hours ago, Roland said:

I think YOU will be happy with what they have planned for A20. 😀

We are always happy about what their plans are for the next Alpha. For example, I was so happy to hear that NPCs such as bandits would be coming to Alpha 17, and look there are bandits now! You can find them here...

 

Furthermore, I was looking forward to more quests and look, I've been already creating my first quests! Aren't their plans fantastic?

[Roland]

The change basically does this:

 

You are punished for eating bad food with a hit to your max health. (moldy sandwiches, rotten flesh)

You are neither punished nor rewarded for eating okay food other than gaining fullness (canned food and basic recipes)

You are rewarded for eating good foods with buffs to your stamina max and greater health regeneration in addition to greater fullness gains (unlocked recipes)

 

Vomiting is gone for now. Prepared food from fresh ingredients is now demonstrably better than canned food. These were the two largest issues that community feedback seemed to coelesce around.

 

Next alpha there will be a more robust system for food. They could have left it alone until A20 but there was a lot of feedback from players and testers alike that a large number of the community wasn't happy with the vomiting. So...instead of having people vomit for the next 6 months until A20 comes out they decided to remove that unpopular consequence with what Joel described. It's already done as well. So this won't even delay A19.

21 minutes ago, mr.devolver said:

We are always happy about what their plans are for the next Alpha. For example, I was so happy to hear that NPCs such as bandits would be coming to Alpha 17, and look there are bandits now! You can find them here...

 

Furthermore, I was looking forward to more quests and look, I've been already creating my first quests! Aren't their plans fantastic?

 

Well...what is fantastic is the platform they have created that so easily supports mods. You can be snarky about how mods have already accomplished what TFP is planning to do but then you are just biting the hand that gifted you the very reason and means to be able to create your new quests in the first place. Yes, plans get delayed and priorities cause NPCs that were supposed to release in A17 to get released later. I don't blame you for being skeptical about timelines and release projections. Heck, I'm skeptical when I retype them in the announcement banner. That doesn't mean those of us who like mods need to be snide with an attitude that mods are somehow picking up TFP's slack. Instead we should always be grateful that we have mods to play and tweak the game to our preferences. And that gratitude should extend to the author of the mod AND The Fun Pimps.

[hiemfire]

9 minutes ago, Roland said:

You are punished for eating bad food with a hit to your max health. (moldy sandwiches, rotten flesh)

You are neither punished nor rewarded for eating okay food other than gaining fullness (canned food and basic recipes)

You are rewarded for eating good foods with buffs to your stamina max and greater health regeneration in addition to greater fullness gains (unlocked recipes)

My wife and daughter are going to be thrilled with this. No more "need" to depend on canned foods because the meals you just cooked or the food you'd made that morning and ate while you were 2/3rds of the way through a factory kept trying to kill you (our rng can suck some times, but I'd guess that'd be the way with most people). Looking forwards to learning what fullness actually does.

[mr.devolver]

11 minutes ago, Roland said:

Well...what is fantastic is the platform they have created that so easily supports mods. You can be snarky about how mods have already accomplished what TFP is planning to do but then you are just biting the hand that gifted you the very reason and means to be able to create your new quests in the first place. Yes, plans get delayed and priorities cause NPCs that were supposed to release in A17 to get released later. I don't blame you for being skeptical about timelines and release projections. Heck, I'm skeptical when I retype them in the announcement banner. That doesn't mean those of us who like mods need to be snide with an attitude that mods are somehow picking up TFP's slack. Instead we should always be grateful that we have mods to play and tweak the game to our preferences.

I'm not biting, simply trying to make you see my perspective. I wanted to enjoy those said features as a gamer and ended up learning how to create stuff like that myself, because I had no other choice I wanted to enjoy those features. So your argument about having those features is nice and all, but not really valid for gamers who just want to spend their time playing game (with all those features already implemented) instead of learning how to implement them.

[Adam the Waster]

8 minutes ago, hiemfire said:

My wife and daughter are going to be thrilled with this. No more "need" to depend on canned foods because the meals you just cooked or the food you'd made that morning and ate while you were 2/3rds of the way through a factory kept trying to kill you (our rng can suck some times, but I'd guess that'd be the way with most people). Looking forwards to learning what fullness actually does.

thats very sweet that you play this game with your family *sniffle*

 

 

 

[Roland]

The family that slays together, stays together.

[hiemfire]

11 minutes ago, Adam the Waster said:

thats very sweet that you play this game with your family *sniffle*

 

 

 

 

10 minutes ago, Roland said:

The family that slays together, stays together.

What sealed the deal with me on this game is that it is sort of LANable (Had been looking for a game other than Minecraft but in a similar vein that I could play with them and our satellite internet connection is not MMO friendly). Still have to be in Online mode with Steam to do so, annoyingly, but that is better than nothing.

[Rizzano]

On 5/10/2020 at 9:27 AM, Guppycur said:

Yes.

THANK YOU! This is amazing news. I have an idea for a mod for A19 based on this answer. TY TY!

EDIT: Regarding my customizable drones question.

[Guppycur]

22 minutes ago, Rizzano said:

THANK YOU! This is amazing news. I have an idea for a mod for A19 based on this answer. TY TY!

EDIT: Regarding my customizable drones question.

...well I didn't do it.  It just stands to reason to be possible.  We can already bring in new entities, so in XML you should just be able to add the drone to any entity.  Zombie protector, wolf protector,, whatever. 

[SnowDog1942]

3 hours ago, SnowDog1942 said:

Guys I'm going for the record number of turd reactions in one post.  Turd me.

 

 

Edit: unlike real life, I can't poop myself.

8 turds and counting.. I definitely won -- already.  Roland, what do I get?

[Adam the Waster]

35 minutes ago, SnowDog1942 said:

8 turds and counting.. I definitely won -- already.  Roland, what do I get?

a potato 

[Phoenixshade35]

From catching up, all i can say is madmole, it is looking good and I cannot wait to jump into the game.

 

In regards to the food poisoning it didn't really affect me, I would pop a green pill and eat a lot then carry on my merry way, seeing it go i don't mind, though i still think food spoilage should be a thing, then rotten meat could be easier to obtain for sure, food has never been an issue for me in any stage of the game, its never gotten low enough to worry about, with new food being added i'm kinda happy to see what I can make

[Blake_]

5 hours ago, Roland said:

We'll see. A lot of work has been done to prevent things from falling through the world. But there is no amount of work that can compensate for a potato that can't generate the world fast enough to play in it or a poor internet connection with a ping too high to coordinate between your machine and the host. As I said, I haven't lost a single spear and I use spears all the time. Not one has slipped through the world for me and the nav beacon always leads me straight to it. It is impossible to lose given that your rig/network can possibly render/communicate the world in a timely fashion.

If I'm being completely honest, the few times I lost it, I could not confirm if it was due to the world falling thing. The only world falling I ever saw in the game (a18.4 b4) was from 1 yellow bag ( 1 in a 200 hour session), the player (around 5 times total /200 hour session, mostly due to the low poly count of the terrain and block seams ) and zombies generated through loot-quests, like Itsy Bitsy Spider and the like ( very common, ~20% chance of delaying de quest due to the issue).

[Marinxar]

5 hours ago, Gazz said:

It really was inevitable that someone would throw a tantrum about "TFP dumbing the game down" when one feature was removed. (and 6+ new ones added instead, but who's counting?)

And this time Joel was really careful about not saying a peep about it until it was actually in and working the way we wanted.

 

There is no doubt that there will be another straw fire of over-analysing the patch notes when they come out, predicting doom and gloom (in no particular order) for the game.

Actually playing the game? I predict a very different outcome except for those with prescription rose tinted glasses.

HAHA.. It is the same thing every release. A18 was the big Iron ore one, and so you can go back to every update, there was at least one change that had people unsheathe the pitchforks... People in general don't like change, but forget this is Alpha development and everything is subject to change until release date...even though you guys have actually done a amazing job at communicating and explaining all necessary changes.  

[FranticDan]

Another spear that I've lost, I threw a spear and missed, hit a wall behind the zombie. I was overrun and ended up dying (I fell from the top of the construction site)
When I came back to collect my spear, it was nowhere to be found.

[Laz Man]

2 hours ago, SnowDog1942 said:

8 turds and counting.. I definitely won -- already.  Roland, what do I get?

Another turd...lol

[JaxTeller718]

8 hours ago, Xtrakicking said:

Is this serious... ? Why?? Why do you keep cutting things out that don't need cutting? Food and especially water have always been incredibly easy to manage. In A18, it looked like it was finally getting better, but now raw food is perfectly fine to eat and stack in hundreds in your boxes? How does that make sense??? You could've done so many things to make food poisoning fun and engaging, but nope, better cut it out for some reason.

 

Well... Now that food poisoning is removed, the one and only disease the game has is infection. Not exactly what I imagined when you said "The lower the quality level, the greater chance for disease" in the game's trailer.

 

Edit: Forgot about dysentery. Cool, 2 diseases, and none are even tied to food. Hurray.

I understand your frustration. I too do not favor this change. I have an option though and thats to use the dirty word as i see fit to get it back.

 

I used to fight with the team all the time in an effort to keep survival in 7 days, but the sooner we all accept that 7 days is the foundation for a great survival game and not an actual survival game the better off we will be and the less upset we will get.

 

And when i say that I do assume that the developers agree on that one. There are over a dozen games out there that do survival right, and actually focus on it being a game mechanic that my assumptions is that the decision for 7 days to be more looter shooter than a survival game had been made a few alphas back. 

 

Looking a it from that perspective you develop a new respect for it, as its a great looter shooter that mixes in a trace of survival elements without getting in the way of running and gunning. Its quite a fun arcade experience.

[Gazz]

4 hours ago, hiemfire said:

My wife and daughter are going to be thrilled with this. No more "need" to depend on canned foods because the meals you just cooked or the food you'd made that morning and ate while you were 2/3rds of the way through a factory kept trying to kill you

And that's what a lot of the feedback from players and testers sounded like.

In the month of keeping my ear to the ground in A18 there wasn't a single time that I heard that food poisoning doesn't trigger often enough or isn't bad enough when it does.

 

I suspect that players will eat way more food and better/cooked food than they ever did in A18 because of the immediately obvious advantages. It won't be trepidation and gambling but wanting a lot more of it. =P

The main reason for Food Poisoning was that players should be made to use up more food. That did not work out that way in the end so that was a bust.

I think we'll achieve that end now...

 

@khzmusik

Complexity in game is a slippery slope. Simple and effective is better in almost every case.

On numerous occasions I have seen helpful suggestions that outlined a "great suggestion" across 4 pages of text.

That alone is an immediate "Nope, not gonna happen."

(I'm just as guilty of armchair-designering like that. lol)

The Food Poisoning feature has been weighed, has been measured, and has been found wanting.

[JaxTeller718]

2 minutes ago, Gazz said:

And that's what a lot of the feedback from players and testers sounded like.

In the month of keeping my ear to the ground in A18 there wasn't a single time that I heard that food poisoning doesn't trigger often enough or isn't bad enough when it does.

 

@khzmusik

Complexity in game is a slippery slope. Simple and effective is better in almost every case.

On numerous occasions I have seen helpful suggestions that outlined a "great suggestion" across 4 pages of text.

That alone is an immediate "Nope, not gonna happen."

(I'm just as guilty of armchair-designering like that. lol)

The Food Poisoning feature has been weighed, has been measured, and has been found wanting.

Going along with that idea Id remove canned food too. Really no need for them at all anymore. One less useless item.

[Gazz]

Nah. You can do that in a mod, though. 😃

[Roland]

13 minutes ago, JaxTeller718 said:

Going along with that idea Id remove canned food too. Really no need for them at all anymore. One less useless item.

Not if Joel continues to add a few recipes each update that use the canned food as ingredients. We are getting a handful this time and maybe another handful in the next update. I like the idea of having to decide if you should just eat the Sham now or save it for when you can make better dishes using it.

[Phoenixshade35]

3 minutes ago, Roland said:

Not if Joel continues to add a few recipes each update that use the canned food as ingredients. We are getting a handful this time and maybe another handful in the next update. I like the idea of having to decide if you should just eat the Sham now or save it for when you can make better dishes using it.

I love the cooking of better foods, a lot of the time i like to have the steak and potato meal in the game, more recipes are always welcome, though i wonder will we ever get wheat to grow to make bread and stuff down the road?

[Dethar]

The problem with negative feedback right now, is it's just a moan fest. They havent even played with new system yet. Play A19 and if you dont like, then its true feedback.

 

Quit trying to pad your post numbers back up.😉

[stallionsden]

1 hour ago, JaxTeller718 said:

Going along with that idea Id remove canned food too. Really no need for them at all anymore. One less useless item.

Sorry bro Not gonna agree on ya with this one lol 😛 Can food is good lol 😄