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Alpha 19 Dev Diary


madmole

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6 hours ago, madmole said:

You drastically over estimate the number of players who paint. Its a late game luxury for those who've mastered the survival aspects few ever do. The community is .0001% of the player base. You guys are hardcore and know every system in and out, the player base is water washing over the rocks, you guys are grains of sand stuck in the rocks, watching all the water pass by.

I get what you are saying, but there are so many 10-30 hour guys who never paint, its not something we should keep investing into because the lack of more important features is preventing them from discovering paint in the first place.

Yes we will unify the shapes menus, but would like to automate it instead of doing everything by hand so its more flexible and easy to maintain as we add more shapes. Hopefully copy shape will even work with any block of any material. Not right now though. We can go back to crafting all the blocks if you think its that bad :)
 

Well I'm part of that .0001% who paint. Fixing up a base is a huge part of the game for me, however I both understand and am not bothered by the lack of fresh/new/nice texture choices. I get why those are not worth the resource cost as they would rarely if ever be used for POIs, and tbh I think many of the existing textures work great as is. Do I want more? Always. Do I need more? Nope.

Point is I get the technical reason, and agree with it, but thinking that "those who paint" are rare is not the route to take in justifying it. It's both unnecessary and very, super, incredibly, inaccurate in my experience. I've seen far more players use paint than not, especially mid/late game.

However I do not think more is needed, or that this should be a huge priority and take up more texture space. If neat new textures show up as a result of other POI dev, great, if not, so what. That's my 2 cents on it.

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13 minutes ago, Adam the Waster said:

please god no!

 

i want a Working stiff or SM poster, or a Bobbie trap poster  

Posters are neat. They exist in more than one mod and are fun to collect. One of my other mod fav's is one that let's you collect the existing paintings(instead of glass when you hit it) and putting those up around my base. I shall not mention them, modding is topic taboo atm. But posters and other signs/adverts would be a good add for vanilla POIs in general, I am guessing there are more we have yet to see due to the nature of what they've focused on in this update. However I bet we can't collect them, and that's the problem, this ability wouldn't even add to the asset list, just let us collect what already exists.

Point is players like to collect and display things, gives longer games more meaning, you can display your progress visually. I think little things like that are important in games like this. 

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1 minute ago, Mechanimal said:

Posters are neat. They exist in more than one mod and are fun to collect. One of my other mod fav's is one that let's you collect the existing paintings(instead of glass when you hit it) and putting those up around my base. I shall not mention them, modding is topic taboo atm. But posters and other signs/adverts would be a good add for vanilla POIs in general, I am guessing there are more we have yet to see due to the nature of what they've focused on in this update. However I bet we can't collect them, and that's the problem, this ability wouldn't even add to the asset list, just let us collect what already exists.

Point is players like to collect and display things, gives longer games more meaning, you can display your progress visually. I think little things like that are important in games like this. 

i said that because yesterday i checked the Adult movie theater and i saw all those pics of people that made me go. "that would be cool if there was some posters here, like Mock up movies, stores, Traders and maybe even the Fun pimps poster" 

 

they would not do anything but make your room and base look cool!

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17 hours ago, madmole said:

Sorry but game play overrides realism. You need to see stuff in the iron sight. F.e. the hunting rifle is how you want the AK, and sorry the hunting rifle is wrecked, it needs the eye ball half way up the barrel so you aren't shooting through a pin hole.

Wasn't sure if it was a design choice or not because of the hunting rifle as you say. Fair enough then.

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1 hour ago, Mechanimal said:


Point is I get the technical reason, and agree with it, but thinking that "those who paint" are rare is not the route to take in justifying it. It's both unnecessary and very, super, incredibly, inaccurate in my experience. I've seen far more players use paint than not, especially mid/late game.

 

Yeah, I get the logic, it just has me worried a bit.  "People who post on the forums are a minority so just ignore them" is a stance I've had a few devs take when they are trying to cater to the casual market, and then it just ends up losing the enthusiasts and it stops spreading word of mouth so the casuals pass over it too.

 

Not saying it'd happen here, just puts me in mind of my days on the Marvel Heroes forums when they basically decided "Okay the PC market is saturated, we want that sweet sweet console gamer booty" and spurned the existing player base to try and draw in casual players and then failed to have any staying power . . .because casual players play for 10-30 hours and then never touch it again. It was pretty big on PC already too, which was the most baffling, it was one of the biggest ARPG of the time on PC alongside Diablo and Path of Exile

 

Poor Marvel Heroes, was such a shame it died the way it did. The devs were super cool and friendly, it wasn't even them making the decisions, was out of touch top management as usual that just said "WE NEED MORE $$$, GET SOME OF THE CONSOLE MARKET" and drove the game off a cliff.

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I mean, I literally work in marketing for software and work with our dev team daily lol, I know it boils down to money and dev time being EXTREMELY valuable.  Your existing customer base is normally extremely important for marketing, the issue 7 Days faces is just that we already own the game and aren't making them any further money unlike games like Marvel Heroes which had microtransactions, so TFP basically have to walk the line of attracting new customers while not spurning the existing base and getting review bombed into oblivion which is a near death sentence for early access games

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6 hours ago, Adam the Waster said:

pic

Image

 

My question: Is it a WORKING clock that shows the actual time of day, or is it only right twice per day?

 

 

If it is functional then we could possibly see these popping up all over the place, think about how often you see clocks in modern day, and then add to that that there is a specific measurable TIME of day that all zombies start to run, and once every week there is a specific measurable TIME of day that all zombies come to sniff out survivors. I feel the Traders at least would have them so that they can coordinate the opening chime at 6:05:00 AM every morning.

 

...that said, will we be getting different intercom notices so that you don't hear that "Trader Joel's is closing soon" when we shopping at Trader Jen's?

 

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9 hours ago, Guppys Fur said:

 

Mr. Mole,

you made me sad with the first part, but happy with the second. I guess i can live with that :)

 

We're not removing paint, we're just not adding 500 new paints, its just not possible. I'm sure skin packs that replace certain textures will be possible at some point so users or mods can change the textures out.

10 hours ago, Guppycur said:

Are you saying the paint textures are NOT part of the texture streaming array thingie? 

No its a big atlas. We stream individual textures like zombies, block entities like doors, forges, coffee makers, etc. But paintable blocks all use the texture atlas which cannot stream. Even if it could it wouldn't offer much benefit there is almost always a block in view which would require it to be high res.

4 hours ago, Mechanimal said:

Well I'm part of that .0001% who paint. Fixing up a base is a huge part of the game for me, however I both understand and am not bothered by the lack of fresh/new/nice texture choices. I get why those are not worth the resource cost as they would rarely if ever be used for POIs, and tbh I think many of the existing textures work great as is. Do I want more? Always. Do I need more? Nope.

Point is I get the technical reason, and agree with it, but thinking that "those who paint" are rare is not the route to take in justifying it. It's both unnecessary and very, super, incredibly, inaccurate in my experience. I've seen far more players use paint than not, especially mid/late game.

However I do not think more is needed, or that this should be a huge priority and take up more texture space. If neat new textures show up as a result of other POI dev, great, if not, so what. That's my 2 cents on it.

There is no doubt if you get to late game you will probably end up doing some painting, unless all you care about is pure game mechanics.

So I smashed my day 21 horde no problem. 24 alive and had them all dead by 12 something. THen I go to a T5 poi and its all going smooth and I walk into a bathroom and guys fall from the ceiling so I try to back pedal out of the door way and I can't move. I start hearing the sounds of iron armor getting smashed, and see stun and stuff, turn around and I'm sandwiched in by half a dozen zombies at my back. I tried moving forward shooting guys as fast as possible with my sawed off pump shotgun, but it was too late, I got wrecked. Now I have to pedal my bike back to get my stuff :( Oh well it was fun, getting wrecked can be a strong motivator... time to get some better armor I think. I've stocked up a lot of parts but I don't have any perks yet so I'll level up my armor skill and start making some better armor.

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6 hours ago, MechanicalLens said:

Earlier on in A19's development it was talked about that vultures will attack down on bars (and blocks?) and will shred vehicles. Is this still planned for A19?

That has been done for months.

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55 minutes ago, madmole said:

We're not removing paint, we're just not adding 500 new paints, its just not possible. I'm sure skin packs that replace certain textures will be possible at some point so users or mods can change the textures out.

No its a big atlas. We stream individual textures like zombies, block entities like doors, forges, coffee makers, etc. But paintable blocks all use the texture atlas which cannot stream. Even if it could it wouldn't offer much benefit there is almost always a block in view which would require it to be high res.

There is no doubt if you get to late game you will probably end up doing some painting, unless all you care about is pure game mechanics.

So I smashed my day 21 horde no problem. 24 alive and had them all dead by 12 something. THen I go to a T5 poi and its all going smooth and I walk into a bathroom and guys fall from the ceiling so I try to back pedal out of the door way and I can't move. I start hearing the sounds of iron armor getting smashed, and see stun and stuff, turn around and I'm sandwiched in by half a dozen zombies at my back. I tried moving forward shooting guys as fast as possible with my sawed off pump shotgun, but it was too late, I got wrecked. Now I have to pedal my bike back to get my stuff :( Oh well it was fun, getting wrecked can be a strong motivator... time to get some better armor I think. I've stocked up a lot of parts but I don't have any perks yet so I'll level up my armor skill and start making some better armor.

You went to a T5 POI on a Blood Moon?

Either way it's crazy how fast a @%$*#! ton of zombies can build up in those T5's, it can be like triggering an indoor mini-horde sometimes. Sounds fun tho, can't wait for experimental, and for you to start making vids until then, when ready.

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More furniture options, food options, zombie diversity and drones. Vehicle damage to zombies would be something. I'd like to see different POIs to hammer out all the nothingness in some maps. Adding tiers to weapons sounds exciting so I am really looking forward to all future updates.

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On 5/23/2020 at 7:38 AM, Khalagar said:

Rest in peace, my hopes and dreams of a robot army serving my whims.  That will put quite the constraint on the drone as it will have to compete against the turrets, and  . . .I don't see the Sledge getting used at all once you get the turret =(

If that's your ideal game, make it so. It's a single number to change in a text file. (ask a modder =))

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6 hours ago, madmole said:

I got wrecked.

 

Have you died much in your test run? Do deaths factor very heavily into your results for your test, like "If even I died there, how hard would that be for a noob? Are they likely to encounter a situation like that?" ?

 

Or do you just see it as a job well done if even a veteran player still has challenges from time to time

 

1 hour ago, Gazz said:
On 5/23/2020 at 12:38 AM, Khalagar said:

 

If that's your ideal game, make it so. It's a single number to change in a text file. (ask a modder =))

 

True, I guess in my mind it wasn't too OP as I was picturing the flying drones as mostly just storage bots with essentially no offense, so int focused characters would just get a couple of floating storage bays and a psuedo movable wall with the melee turrets to deploy at strategic junctions.

 

Can you hot swap out between your devices? Like if I go out with 2 of each Junk Item, I can just throw down a turret and a drone, then pick the drone back up and throw down a second turret, then pick it up and throw down a junk sledge etc , without any kind of "change mechanic" to decide which two I'm allowed to use?

 

I could see that being pretty fun, since you could always use the drones later into a PoI delve when you run out of storage and use the Sledge to block doors.

 

Can you guys talk DPS numbers on the Junk Sledge? Late game with perk investment, would you say it's DPS is more akin to a Stone sledge, iron sledge, or Steel Sledge? It's T1 like Stone Sledge, but it's also the only melee weapon of the Junk line and AFAIK the only other Int melee weapon is stun baton which is also 1 level (and hopefully more on par this patch) unless you've made the stun baton 3 tiers . . .in which case I'm curious and amused at the idea of a moss covered stick stunning zombies

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5 hours ago, faatal said:

I think the clock is just a texture an artist made. You would not see hands moving on that.

He assumed that and was just posting to troll. He said “too” Ironically meaning there is already a working clock made by modders. He was waiting for a dev to confirm that TFP’s clock is just a texture so now he hopes readers will make the connection that the things TFP add are NOT as good as what modders are doing.

 

Joel has warned about injecting mod chatter into this thread even casually but he keeps pushing it. But no more. 

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19 hours ago, madmole said:

You drastically over estimate the number of players who paint. Its a late game luxury for those who've mastered the survival aspects few ever do. The community is .0001% of the player base. You guys are hardcore and know every system in and out, the player base is water washing over the rocks, you guys are grains of sand stuck in the rocks, watching all the water pass by.

I don't know what point was made by the guy you are replying to, nor do I wish for more paint, as your reply is very valid.

However, I am here to represent the Paint Gang, we do be painting, and I personally paint every single base I make, as do all of my friends.

 

We are here, we are watching, we are painting.

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