Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[Gazz]

5 hours ago, Ranzera said:

I'm not sure if TFP have touched it for A19, but I haven't seen any indication of it yet. There's a trick with an often forgotten (even by TFP) resource that completely trivializes the food system. At this point I'm most interested in seeing how long it goes undiscovered.

I doubt you mean yucca because that's that's just a normal resource.

Real oddball ones like blood bags are not edible any more.

[Khalagar]

  

2 hours ago, stallionsden said:

Nah i dont see an issue with having to work for your food. Having to hunt for food and prepare it etc. Even canned food I find Always come in handy.

food should be tedious. But never wasted my time with super corn I rather steak and potato. Each to their own but canned food and having to hunt for food adds extra to the game in having to keep an eye on and make sure you have enough food to go on loot runs or to work on your base etc.

 

I don't disagree, I don't want them to remove food or anything, the current implementation  just kind of eh. Food is a big deal for the first few days, then is basically a complete non factor after that. That's pretty common in survival games, but usually because you automate a farm.

 

Instead, in A18 farm plots cost way too freaking many resources early and even sometimes mid game, and farming and cooking requires heavy perk investment as well as cooking grills and other things. Instead of wasting a bunch of points on that, you can just go to a vending machine or trader and buy good food without worry.

 

And why would you use anything *but* Super Corn late game lol. Steak and Potatoes are fine mid game, but once you get super corn growing, it's 100% undeniably objectively the best food in the game. Well, some of the others give really minor stat boosts I guess? But the stat boosts are . . .really minor, and planting 4 or 5 super corn plots per person nullifies food completely forever. It also heals pretty well too, and it doesn't matter if you get food poisoning off it because you can just eat more for free essentially. 

 

The other top tier foods are okay for role play, but are just way more work than they are worth once you find a super corn recipe book and a Carls Corn.

 

I think the biggest issue isn't that Super Corn is OP, it's that the other food just takes way too much investment. Even Super Corn would be near trash tier if you couldn't find a book to make seeds from it because it takes SO many points to get to. There's just a lot better things to invest points into than having to learn to make a bunch of seeds, and then make all the farm plots, and then kill animals to get meat, and then use a lot of points to  learn to cook, and then get a cooking grill as well as screw around with jars of water,  then cook your meat stew or w/e, then get food poisoning off it and cry because you just wasted half your ingredients and threw them up

 

All that, vs just buying food from vendors / machines, while you work on  finding super corn and it's book, which aren't that rare, and getting enough rotting flesh to make farm plots. Once you've got Super Corn you have zero reason to bother with any other food type. But even until you get Super Corn, it's pretty simple to just buy your food and not have to sink 15 points into learning to cook it and then pray you actually find a deer or boar which are basically extinct. Food is super cheap and you can do 1 mission and have enough to buy a weeks worth of food, as well as loot like 3+ days worth of food from the PoI while you were doing the mission

 

[Gazz]

We'll see if that notion holds up in A19. =P

[DaVegaNL]

18 hours ago, SnowDog1942 said:

Honestly, I'm not a cop --  but I have a uniform and cuffs

Oh boy... ITS A TRAP!
But you do get my rocks off.

[FranticDan]

My opinion on farming, I enjoy getting a farm up and running, however with living off the land letting you get more yield per harvest makes food too plentiful. I now never invest any point into Living off the land or master chef and instead rely on finding recipes. Once I know how to make potato, corn and mushroom seeds and vegetable stew, I'm good for the rest of the game anyway.

Vitamins are so easy to come by in a18, plus all those sham sandwiches, you don't even need a farm when you really think about it.

We'll see what's changed in a19
I am all for a hardcore experience!

[Demonoid74]

I got my farm running in the backyard in real life right now! Was pissed when I went out there after Day 3 and I didn't have rows of carrots , potatoes and corn ready to harvest...fml 

[Roland]

4 hours ago, Khalagar said:

Yes yes, everyone knows you can just kill yourself to get back to full food and water and cure all your ailments and get the exp back in 2 minutes work.....

quoted for truth

enlarged in case any devs don't have their reading glasses on....

[Ranzera]

So far no one has guessed it. It's not suicide (or death for that matter) and it's not yucca. In fact I doubt anyone here will figure it out.

 

The only hint I'll give is this:

A new player is dramatically more likely to stumble across it than a veteran.

[Odetta]

Are you talking about the Boar trick 

 

Or 

 

That the Land Claim block is edible? 🧇

 

 

Nah, you're probably referring to the harvesting bug, right?

 

[Ranzera]

2 minutes ago, Odetta said:

Are you talking about the boar trick 

 

Or 

 

That the Land Claim block is edible? 🧇

 

 

Nah, you're probably referring to the harvesting bug.

Nope and there are no bugs involved. I'd report it if it was a bug.

[Odetta]

Hmmm...

 

[Jost Amman]

15 minutes ago, Ranzera said:

Nope and there are no bugs involved. I'd report it if it was a bug.

The only thing that comes to my mind that a new player (starting up a new game) has more than a veteran is Buried Supplies quests, which in mid to late game IIRC do not even appear in the list of possible quests anymore.

 

If that's the case, well, true... you can get A LOT of food from those quests and repeat them several times (a day?) maybe.

But I don't consider that an exploit.

[Ranzera]

Just now, Jost Amman said:

The only thing that comes to my mind that a new player (starting up a new game) has more than a veteran is Buried Supplies quests, which in mid to late game IIRC do not even appear in the list of possible quests anymore.

 

If that's the case, well, true... you can get A LOT of food from those quests and do them several times a day maybe.

But I don't consider that an exploit.

Nope. I'd say this is a pretty common veteran strategy for day one.

[agrastiOs]

21 hours ago, Annihilatorza said:

There is so much new things in alpha 19 coming, the survival system is just one of them.

Yeah, and some of these are mentioned in the OP. I'd wager that the new ISS is big enough for it to be at least mentioned in the OP too.

[Ranzera]

I'd say the ISS is probably the biggest feature of the Alpha, with maybe only the finished weapon tiers rivaling it. It is kinda amusing that it's not featured in the OP.

[Annihilatorza]

9 hours ago, Xtrakicking said:

Forgive me for this, but that's what a survival game is. The point is to find food to sustain yourself, and is also a main premise of this game in particular. It seems you're more into looter shooter games like STALKER, which is fine, but for a survival game such as this one it would be a bit of a downer, especially for the survival enthusiasts (one of the main target audience), to see the basics of the survival aspect dumbed down in the final product.

Well we shall have to wait for A20 to see what changes they will make to the food system.

 

I have no problems running to get murky water and boil it clean, or driving around kill a boar, bear wolf, deer ect.

 

With meat a single bear could sustain you for weeks on end in real life, eat want you now and if you dont have electricity.

• You can smoke it
• Salt it
• Turn it Into Biltong
• Store it in a cool room (what they used to do in the 1800s)

If you have electricity like we do in 7d2d then its easy.

 

Get a bunch of solar panels, build few battery banks and liberate some fridges and Freezers and your golden.

 

In the end its a game that the Fun Pimps are building and they have said time and time again, they will go for gameplay and fun over realism.

 

Now onto something completely different - I have done a fair amount of research but I am not sure I fully understand the benefits of the new linear lighting system.

 

So far what I can find it mentions that it gives your more colour accurate lighting that matches the what the artist had in mind instead of the compromise of the old system.

 

Am I correct in saying that if not please correct me as I am busy with my next video and this is a part of it.

 

Thanks

[Khalagar]

2 hours ago, Gazz said:

We'll see if that notion holds up in A19. =P

 

Well, this is ominous and scary!

[The Gronk]

16 minutes ago, Annihilatorza said:

So far what I can find it mentions that it gives your more colour accurate lighting that matches the what the artist had in mind instead of the compromise of the old system.

 

It's still a compromise, just less of one.  The maths for a truly accurate representation of photonic behaviour is beyond most computers.  :-)

 

The future of gaming graphics has already been written.  The real technological innovation comes from the movie industry, they have the time and resources to spend hours rendering a single frame.  This means they can experiment with various systems that may later make their way to the gaming industry where the constraints are far tighter.

[Gazz]

25 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

 

Well, this is ominous and scary!

I prefer "exciting" but... that's arguably the same thing.

[Tahaan]

2 hours ago, Ranzera said:

Nope and there are no bugs involved. I'd report it if it was a bug.

Just eat the raw meat, and either use vitamins or cure the dysentry.

[Aldranon]

2 hours ago, Ranzera said:

Nope. I'd say this is a pretty common veteran strategy for day one.

So here's my Day 1 super veteran secret:

1) You take the pile of grass and sticks and make a mud mixture the with your water and some dirt.

2) Form all that into a life like female deer (preferably with a "come hither" look to her).

3) When the male deer approaches and gets ready for romance, and while in you;re still in the ninja tree suit (I've explained on how to make a ninja tree suit before) and kick him in his dear deer balls!  Veteran secret: (Using 2 rocks smashed together will only kill the deer and you are after bigger stuff)

 

This should enrage the male deer to hunt down all female deer on the map and kill them in various horribly graphic ways.

You just follow the deer in your ninja tree suit and pick up whats left.

 

Was that your secret too?

[Blake_]

4 hours ago, Ranzera said:

Nope and there are no bugs involved. I'd report it if it was a bug.

Meh. Eating glass is the best part of 7dtd. It is not good at all now due to the xp loss after lvl 5 . 

[Xtrakicking]

9 hours ago, Guppycur said:

The point is, why have food in the game at all if it's such a trivial post script that's over by day 2? 

 

Just remove it entirely, since all it sounds like it's good for is a plus with no (in practice) negatives.  Eat bad food, lose some hp.  Eat some good food, get it back.  It's a wash. 

Exactly my sentiment. If hunger and thirst, the basics of a survival game, are such low concern mechanics that don't present any challenge, it almost seems pointless to have them.

[Guppys Fur]

14 hours ago, madmole said:

Probably when we hired more testers. I think even 4-5 people can chew through all the meat in no time, these guys are like rambo savages. I hopped on one time half an hour after they got started and every nest and POI was picked clean and not a single animal seen by me.

Mr. Mole i cant stress enough how thankful i am that you guys now look into MP Balance and Gameplay

[Blake_]

39 minutes ago, Xtrakicking said:

Exactly my sentiment. If hunger and thirst, the basics of a survival game, are such low concern mechanics that don't present any challenge, it almost seems pointless to have them.

If I'm being completely honest, in general I think hunger is the most tedious and boring system of any and every game. I have played A LOT of videogames, each and every one which has hunger in some form has never fulfilled my expectations. What are my expectations? Thrill and fun of having to eat and then overcome it almost completely in a way that doesn't make it repetitive and instead generates emergent gameplay in the form of different not-too-overbearing hurdles.

 

7dtd' s is going on the path of perfection by adding and deleting redundant stuff and is shaping up to be my favourite hunger/medicine management system . I must say I like it in a18. Poisoning was boring and unrewarding in my opinion.

 

The system still has some polishing and refining left, but I like what I read. I only hope for the food to remain relevant to the "survival" description while remaining fun.

 

Can we have some tales about the current hunger/medicine system? Roland, MM?