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Alpha 19 Dev Diary


madmole

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1 hour ago, Laz Man said:

 

Editing: Candy may seem out of place to some but its not much different then then items that give temporary buffs in other games (e.g. Fallout).  If it hurts people's immersion too much they always mod the items to something more realistic (e.g. Ginko Baloba Pills (perception)).  It is clear to me though that the devs want a certain level of humor in their game so the candies feel fine to me.

This actually touches on my main problem with the current direction of the game. It's trying to be too many other games. 7 days to die, despite its similarities to Minecraft, never felt like Minecraft (granted I played very little), and I never considered a Minecraft clone. It was its own unique game with its own unique features, but now it is filled with gimmicky items I can find in several other games.  When it comes to candy, I see no value add.  It brings nothing to the game except for a short term solution to a "problem" that also wasn't necessary to bring into the game in the first place (insert problems that candy solves here).

 

I get that this stuff sells and it's used in other successful games and I actually wholeheartedly back the pimps business decision to implement these "features", but I still like what I like, and dgaf whether or not fallout has them. :)

 

With candies specifically, I don't care... It'll just be another item to not pick up or use, as long as it doesn't become *necessary* to use.  But overall, introducing irritating problems (a merchant who doesn't want money and is only willing to sell you junk even though he has, somewhere, an entirely different store for the guy in line behind me) just so you can introduce gimmicky solutions (a candy that freshens my breath so much the merchant falls in love with me and wants to show me his wares) is not a value add.  It's why I *rarely* visit them.

 

/Giving guppy's two cents since 1971 

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I have no problem with the addition of the buff candy, it will probably just end up like buff potions in essentially every game where most players "save them for a tough fight" and then end up basically never using them or just sell them.

 

Doesn't hurt to have in the game, there's already several buff items that are nifty and definitely useful, just not used because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  

 

Me and my friend have been playing since before like A14, and neither of us actively carry or use buffs like steroids or basically any of them besides the craftable drinks. I'll use megacrush early game if I find it, and I do usually carry coffee instead of water because in A18 at least, Coffee is like, objectively the best drink. In A16 and A17 I always used Goldenrod Tea as my main drink, but I don't really see a reason in A18 to drink anything besides coffee or occasionally Yucca Juice for the extra hydration

 

 

I have no strong opinion either way on the candy honestly, not sure why people are being hung up on them. Just "use it if you want, ignore it and sell them if you don't want them" items to me. Probably took a ridiculously minimal amount of dev time as a side passion project, so it's not like it was stealing time from major features. Basically like the added food items. I don't care either way, so my stance is just "Why not?", more options and content is almost always a good thing

 

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All good points about temporary buff items.  Thinking of other games where they are used (ARPGs, MMORPGs, etc.) they are probably best used in systems where "Boss" type encounters are especially difficult without their use.  Alot of RPG games are like that (e.g. cast magic spell or use buff item to give them a higher chance of success over  a specific encounter).  Without encounter set pieces like that, they will probably be under utilized which might not always a bad thing for open world type games.  At the very least, they will provide an alternative option for some player builds which is a value add in my opinion.

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I also NEVER used any drugs , chems , alcohol in any of the Fallout or Elder Scrolls games...plenty of people did...I never wasted my time , was to busy punching everything to death...never needed any buffs the provided and did not want the side effects...Kind of like in real life!

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15 hours ago, madmole said:

Eye candy gives +50 to loot stage which is very significant. I take one to the top of the teir 5's to the loot room get a big loot bonus on every chest I open, then pop an oh @%$*#!z and jump down 200 meters and I'm out of there. Not to mention the health bars are amazing and boost max HP 25 plus give you faster crit healing,etc. They might not be everyone's cup of tea but for 100 dukes its a no brainer to me. Oh and one helps you get a nice barter boost too.

Meh, Seeing as how I barely bother with the Tier 5's at all that part really doesn't entice me. As for taking a candy to jump down 200m? No thx, that pushes me way too far out of reality. I stay away from the top end parkour for the very same reason. So, once again, I'd say your "guarantee" that I'll use it is false. :) Others will I'm sure tho so all's cool. Temp buffs just don't interest me, at all.

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8 minutes ago, JCrook1028 said:

Meh, Seeing as how I barely bother with the Tier 5's at all that part really doesn't entice me. As for taking a candy to jump down 200m? No thx, that pushes me way too far out of reality. I stay away from the top end parkour for the very same reason. So, once again, I'd say your "guarantee" that I'll use it is false. :) Others will I'm sure tho so all's cool. Temp buffs just don't interest me, at all.

one good way for candy use would be a single player game when your super far in and you have all rad zomibes. that crit boost or a recog would come in handy!

 

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I recently decided that traders currently bring more bad than good to the game, so I started playing without them. When we have more fleshed out NPC, White River clan, bandits, better quests, then traders would be justified. Currently they bring weird problems/mechanics:

- the concept of invulnerable blocks/POIs

- the magic POI restoration/loot respawn and gimmicky double looting of a POI, which became a new standard

- the magic teleporting after 22:00

- the 'problem' of too many foods in store, 'solved' by introducing magic 'candies'

- exploits of 'secret stash' (putting on/removing nerdy glasses)

- the current quests we have are beyond primitive, even by sandbox standards

- traders/quests make the game easier, so people often see no point to build a base anywhere but next to a trader

- the opportunity to buy the things you need, instead of looting it, results in a scheduled routine of visiting every trader after the restock cooldown.

 

We can argue about the last point, as having more than one way to gain things enriches the game. Maybe yes, but I decided that I prefer the old way of looting/crafting. So when I found that Nitrogen has an option to build maps without traders, I did it. But you also need to use a modlet to remove the 'find a trader' quest with this opiton.

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6 hours ago, The Gronk said:

The place ECS would be most useful for this game is in terrain generation.  Since, if memory serves, the code for that is a c++ library there would be little point in doing it.

 

What on earth does calculating the drag coefficient of a satellite have to do with pathfinding?  What is the "B*" algorithm in relation to pathfinding?

B* is a search algorithm, it's just not very common, and not really suited for 3D path finding.

 

It's a really cool algorithm and I'd highly recommend reading it. https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a059391.pdf

 

It's best used for optimizing decision making, and it works equally well for an optimality search as well as an adversarial search. It 'could' be used for 2D/3D path finding, however the special sauce that B* brings is a pair of values for each node. One is an optimistic search cost and the other a pessimistic cost. These values represent the bounds for how expensive a path that traversing through this node is. As the graph is explored, these values are updated when more accurate data is found. This can be beneficial if a nodes optimistic search cost is higher than the pessimistic cost of another, it can be excluded entirely because there is clearly a better path through the second node. This is really cool, but I cannot think of a good way to weight these values initially. Since the player can arbitrarily build structures, the pessimistic value would have to default to infinity, or some arbitrarily large value like 4 blocks of steel blocks. The optimistic value would be the difficulty of traversing the block contained in the node. So none of the special sauce B* has does anything except add overhead.

 

Further, I can't figure out a way to integrate the X,Y,Z heuristics like we can with A*, or similar greedy algorithms.

 

I'd love to see how B* could be adapted to 3D path finding, but I really don't think it's possible.

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18 minutes ago, unlike them said:

I recently decided that traders currently bring more bad than good to the game, so I started playing without them. When we have more fleshed out NPC, White River clan, bandits, better quests, then traders would be justified. Currently they bring weird problems/mechanics:

- the concept of invulnerable blocks/POIs

- the magic POI restoration/loot respawn and gimmicky double POI looting, which became a new standard

- the magic teleporting after 22:00

- the 'problem' of too many foods in store, 'solved' by introducing magic 'candies'

- exploits of 'secret stash' (putting on/removing nerdy glasses)

- the current quests we have are beyond primitive, even by sandbox standards

- traders/quests make the game easier, so people often see no point to build a base anywhere but next to a trader

- the opportunity to buy the things you need, instead of looting it, results in a scheduled routine of visiting every trader after the restock cooldown.

 

We can argue about the last point, as having more than one way to gain things enriches the game. Maybe yes, but I decided that I prefer the old way of looting/crafting. So when I found that Nitrogen has an option to build maps without traders, I did it. But you also need to use a modlet to remove the 'find a trader' quest with this opiton.

Not disagreeing with you as you make some good points.  Keep in mind RPG elements and a story has been planned since the beginning and the trader and the quest system are all important cogs in that long term goal.

 

It's difficult to have a semblance of progression for a story arch without a structured system to guide the player through it.

 

If anything it goes the opposite direction to open world non linear gameplay.

 

I commend the devs for trying to integrate both together into something that will be fun for as many as possible at the end of the day. 😀

 

Edit: Regarding buying loot, were you around when there were no traders? ForgeAheadBook gate?  Traders are not perfect but provide an alternate path instead of relying on loot RWG which was too one dimensional.

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35 minutes ago, MeatShield said:

B* is a search algorithm, it's just not very common, and not really suited for 3D path finding.

 

It's a really cool algorithm and I'd highly recommend reading it. https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a059391.pdf

 

It's best used for optimizing decision making, and it works equally well for an optimality search as well as an adversarial search. It 'could' be used for 2D/3D path finding, however the special sauce that B* brings is a pair of values for each node. One is an optimistic search cost and the other a pessimistic cost. These values represent the bounds for how expensive a path that traversing through this node is. As the graph is explored, these values are updated when more accurate data is found. This can be beneficial if a nodes optimistic search cost is higher than the pessimistic cost of another, it can be excluded entirely because there is clearly a better path through the second node. This is really cool, but I cannot think of a good way to weight these values initially. Since the player can arbitrarily build structures, the pessimistic value would have to default to infinity, or some arbitrarily large value like 4 blocks of steel blocks. The optimistic value would be the difficulty of traversing the block contained in the node. So none of the special sauce B* has does anything except add overhead.

 

Further, I can't figure out a way to integrate the X,Y,Z heuristics like we can with A*, or similar greedy algorithms.

 

I'd love to see how B* could be adapted to 3D path finding, but I really don't think it's possible.

Huh, that's a new one on me, well done.  It does seem as though the performance would be bad even next to A*'s clunky pace.  

 

Why not move into the millenium and use a navmesh?  You'll be using an A* variant behind the scenes in places but in the era of modern computing there's little to be gained from using outdated and slow algorithms.

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16 minutes ago, The Gronk said:

Huh, that's a new one on me, well done.  It does seem as though the performance would be bad even next to A*'s clunky pace.  

 

Why not move into the millenium and use a navmesh?  You'll be using an A* variant behind the scenes in places but in the era of modern computing there's little to be gained from using outdated and slow algorithms.

A navmesh in a dynamically changing voxel world, that has nicely defined block-shapes?

That would not be a senseful choice.

(prebaked) Navmeshes are better used in static levels.

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9 minutes ago, Damocles said:

A navmesh in a dynamically changing voxel world, that has nicely defined block-shapes?

That would not be a senseful choice.

(prebaked) Navmeshes are better used in static levels.

I'm not on about using the built-in unity version, they're not that hard to create from scratch.  What would be so bad about recalculating a section of the navmesh that wouldn't be equally bad for an A* implmentation?  You have well defined block shapes which makes polygonising the terrain pretty damn trivial.

 

The use of half-blocks negates any advantage of a grid.

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9 minutes ago, The Gronk said:

I'm not on about using the built-in unity version, they're not that hard to create from scratch.  What would be so bad about recalculating a section of the navmesh that wouldn't be equally bad for an A* implmentation?  You have well defined block shapes which makes polygonising the terrain pretty damn trivial.

 

The use of half-blocks negates any advantage of a grid.

You not only need the freely passable areas, but also a search though any obstacle, given its resistance (blockdamage costs). That needs to be know for all potential voxels in the area. I dont see a navmesh having any advantage here, compared to using the raw 3D voxel data, makinging some custom edits (to detect jumpable gaps for example), and running a pathsearch on that.

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4 minutes ago, Damocles said:

You not only need the freely passable areas, but also a search though any obstacle, given its resistance (blockdamage costs). That needs to be know for all potential voxels in the area. I dont see a navmesh having any advantage here, compared to using the raw 3D voxel data, makinging some custom edits (to detect jumpable gaps for example), and running a pathsearch on that.

It's not that either has an advantage on the calculation speed of the route.  With the grid-based A* we currently have zombies following chessboard movement where it's advantagous to align yourself with the world grid and quite a few exploits explicity derived from half-blocks appearing to be full-blocks to the AI.  Neither of these would be an issue with a navmesh and accounting for these loopholes is going to end up costing you more system resources with A*.

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5 hours ago, madmole said:

Because its grounded in reality? Do you not hear of "tainted supplements" in UFC? Supplement makers pump drugs into stuff all the time to get people to actually take it. Plus its in the future. Look at 5 hour energy. Its quite possible/plausible for candy/supplements to get added benefits in the future as a marketing ploy just like 5 hour energy. Why do you get more resources when you mine with rock crushers? Placebo? Maybe, but they jam a cocktail of stimulants in there and you go hit that @%$*#! harder than normal because the suggested effect and stimulant made you want to get a better result than normal.

Not a bad argument tbh, maybe ill end up giving them a shot.

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On 5/26/2020 at 1:40 AM, Sir Negan said:

also, speaking of vehicles, when i close a door, the motorcycle / minibike / bike fall over :') is that something that is being worked on as well? i know it is a super minor thing, but it caught my attention the other day.

Working as intended. They don't have kickstands.

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I actually do use the various buff items.  Every horde night, if I have recogs and learnin' elixirs, they're on my hotbar.  When I was doing a brawling playthrough, I happily brewed and guzzled beer and moonshine.  I love me some Megacrush, and if I'm encumbered, I will use steroids.   Recog is especially amazing because as long as it lasts, you're getting several bullets worth of killing power out of every bullet, so you use a lot less bullets.  I look forward to being able to just outright buy buffs I need out of vending machines instead of hoping against hope to find a rare recipe or spending several perk points to learn it.  

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