Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[MechanicalLens]

deleted

[madmole]

9 hours ago, Laz Man said:

But a looting buff on 20 yellow loot bags might. 😅

Exactly. 100 dukes for better loot roll? Nah, nobody in their right mind will think of using candy.

7 hours ago, TheRani said:

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.  

Same thing I was saying but you said it first

I think people get in their "ruts" and maybe tried something early, it sucked and we tweaked it since then, or for whatever reason it didn't jive with them or they didn't have a good experience with it so they write it off as no good or not interested. Sometimes you have to mess around with various mechanics to get the most out of them.  I didn't like beer but now if you get the book that removes the shader its amazing for brawling and melee. I used it anyway because of the stamina boost but the effect was annoying. The brawler book removes it. I guess my point is sometimes people don't use something correctly or in a way that could really benefit them so they write it off. Others swear its the best way to play.
 

1 hour ago, MechanicalLens said:

Well, on a side note, at least A19 will encourage me to utilize the benefits that traders provide far less frequently, due to unbalance. I'm thinking... 2-3 quests per week, post T1 and maybe T2 quests. As usual, I'll refuse to purchase weapons from traders.

Regardless, it must be very a severely low percentage chance; something too trivial for anyone to get all paranoid about.

Also, something I noticed the week after this was posted... Is it just me, or is madmole's former base loading in at a far greater distance than it would if it were in A18?

Fun Pimps, any confirmation on this?

I am actually stumped by that, I don't think my new base renders that far, but I'll try to figure it out.

[MechanicalLens]

deleted

[Khalagar]

36 minutes ago, madmole said:

maybe tried something early, it sucked and we tweaked it since then

 

I think this is a lot of my problem / bias against most of the buffs in 7 days. A lot are objectively good, I just think meh and pass over them because of the one time I tried them. Like with you mentioning beer, I don't even pick it up, it's just auto ignore for me.  Most of the drinks are the same, I just default to Coffee or Goldenrod as those were the most useful when I compared them at the time, but stats have been tweaked a lot.

 

I guess I need to give them more of a try again

[Gazz]

When playing "a new alpha" it is a good idea to read the item stats and descriptions.

Even the journal entries although most would consider that Reading The Manual and therefore cheating.

 

It was fun to watch in A17 when the experienced players applied all their A16 knowledge and died horrible deaths.

[Damocles]

Noone reads manuals nowadays..

[Laz Man]

37 minutes ago, Damocles said:

Noone reads manuals nowadays..

I do! Especially ones involving assembling things.  Saves time and headache time and time again lol.  Perhaps its from my knowledge of assembly lines.  Most of the time, things are assembled in a specific order to save time and reduce error (look up the TPS principles that Toyota created if your interested lol)...

[DaVegaNL]

I would give up a few of my rocks from my rock collection if that meant TFP will actually start to introduce NPC's and the like into the game, instead of postponing them into oblivion.

Candy? Doesn't add much to the game imho.

12 hours ago, MechanicalLens said:

I'm a realist, not an optimist.  Hopefully A19 will be released sometime in June, possibly July.

Yeah hopefully A19 will be released before my daughter is born in August/September  Afterwards, I probably won't have much time.. Or energy.

[canadianbluebeer]

3 hours ago, Damocles said:

Noone reads manuals nowadays..

 

What's a manual?

 

(I read them, but as an ancient tech support weenie... well..

"I'm making progress! I got him to take the shrink wrap off the manual!"  )

 

[Annihilatorza]

The following is everything I can find that is coming to A19

 

• Linear Lighting
• Horizon Tech
• Fog Tech
• Some New Textures
• Updated Zombies
• New Weapons
• New POIs
• Candy
• Vastly Updated AI
• Swimming Zombies
• New Bookshelves
• Redone Cement Mixer
• New Zombies
• New Winter Trees
• New Creepy Mannequins 
• New Couch
• New Freezers
• New Drones
• New Driver
• New Beds
• New Stone Axe
• New Backpack
• New Trader Jen
• Rebalanced Game leveling
• Much slower progression of game
• Possible forest start?
• Reduced perk tree
• Vomiting removed
• Health + Stamina Bars
• Changes to eating and drinking

I can't think of anything else currently, feel free to add or delete as needed

 

 

 

[Worrun]

On 5/27/2020 at 4:54 AM, 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.

I'm not a huge fan of the candy thingy, I have never bothered with any of the potions, buffs etc like recog or the elixirs, it's a combination of being straight up lazy and just not being worth it.

But, +50 to loot stage, I will definitely be using that one.

As others have been doing it, I'll take part too:

 

Steroids: Have never bothered, I only pick them up to sell, that's when I have space
Mega Crush: I use this from time to time, for exmaple to rush back to my body when I have died 2km away and don't have a vehicle on me
Beer: Not worth it. Perhaps for a fist specced character but when the sledge hammer and baseball bat trump every weapon in the game I've not bothered.
Grandpa's Moonshine: Never used
Blackstrap Coffee: Never used
Fortbites: Never used
Coffee: I use this a lot, but only as a drink for early game
Yucca Juice Smoothie: I always spec in to farming, so getting the materials for this drink is easy, and it's an excellent mid to late game drink
Recog: Not bothered
Grandpa's Learn'n Elixir: Used a couple of times on horde night, but it lasts what, 2 minutes? If it lasted 10 minutes or 20, then I'd use it every single horde night. Raise the cost or rarity of it to counteract it's extended buff duration
Grandpa's Awesome Sauce: Only used when purchasing a Fergettin' Elixir

 

Red = Hardly use or never use

Orange = Sometimes use

Green = Use often

[Worrun]

12 hours ago, madmole said:

"if you build a 2 block wedge wall 4 blocks high the zombies cannot hit it and will just jump up and down it all night, you are invincible. i hope you fixed this in a19?"

Video?

If you haven't seen this I am quite worried tbh

[EffiJeffy]

@faatal Hello ,is it possible to fix this bug until a19 exp hits? Basically the bug is that traders get affected by the knockdown effect from sledgehammers/bats.They will fall to the ground after they are hit and they can bug under the ground.Players use this bug to sabotage traders on PVE/PVP servers.

[Hek Harris]

9 hours ago, faatal said:

Sounds like occlusion. Trees are in groups with a bounding box around them. If box is too tight, it can lead to edge trees being hidden. I have increased the padding before. Might need more.

You're right: I had the same problem with my turrets (they disappeared when I was close but were still working). I deactivated the occlusion and everything worked out.

[Guppys Fur]

2 hours ago, Worrun said:

If you haven't seen this I am quite worried tbh

Could you please write with the normal Text color?

I like it better when only Staff write in colour to recognize immidiatly what is important.

 

Thank you

[Jugom]

10 hours ago, faatal said:

Fixed

for ramps? because that was not a thing. Steep walls using wedges were the real issue. And if that's what you fixed, I need a new outher wall design for A19 then. x)

[madmole]

9 hours ago, MechanicalLens said:

As am I actually. All of my bases render outside of my view about 150+ blocks away, while they load in when I'm only 80-100 blocks out, which is not that far at all.

As a visual documentation, the top image (located below) displays the point at which my base would begin to visually unload. The image below that demonstrates what distance I would have to be before my base would fully pop into existence. (Ignore the Eric's Stuff and the bath house POI's; I tore those down ages ago.)



So @madmole I wish to ask you, in the image of yours that I had presented above, do you remember if were you actually driving your motorcycle back to your base from an outing, or were you taking your motorcycle out that far to get a good screenshot? If it's the latter, then it's case closed. Notice how my base and your base in the two images (yours, and the top image that I posted) appear to be about the same distance from the player; now yours may appear to be further, but that's probably because you are on an incline between a decline furthered by another incline, and in addition, my base is a fair bit larger than yours is.

But if you were indeed just returning from an outing, then this is indeed very fishy.

Oh yeah I left and came back.

We are working with a modder who's writing a distant POI update code that would render player bases and significant changes to the world and create new distant pois on the fly. Not sure how if or when that code will ever get used but it would be cool if we could. Then you could see your tower the same distance as other distant pois which would be amazing.

10 hours ago, MechanicalLens said:

Speaking of candy, will their effect duration stack to a maximum of 3x, if you were to consume that amount, like a lot of other buffs do as of right now?

Yes. But acquiring more than 1 would take some time/luck and hitting a lot of vending machines.

[MechanicalLens]

deleted

[madmole]

7 hours ago, Laz Man said:

I do! Especially ones involving assembling things.  Saves time and headache time and time again lol.  Perhaps its from my knowledge of assembly lines.  Most of the time, things are assembled in a specific order to save time and reduce error (look up the TPS principles that Toyota created if your interested lol)...

Yeah I scored top of my class in mechanical aptitude but learned the hard way to assemble things exactly by the instructions Whatever time you think you are saving not reading them could cost you big time.

2 hours ago, Worrun said:

If you haven't seen this I am quite worried tbh

So don't build a cheese base, problem solved. If you can post a video it would be 10000x more productive, some vague description isn't going to get our attention.

[Laz Man]

18 minutes ago, madmole said:

So don't build a cheese base, problem solved. If you can post a video it would be 10000x more productive, some vague description isn't going to get our attention.

I think faatal responded it was fixed so no matter. 😃

[Roland]

The steep wall design is fixed. The zombies can walk up and down and even stand on the slope. If you build a vertical wall at the top of the slope they can attack those blocks. When standing on the slope they will pound downward on it. It’s fixed. 

[meganoth]

46 minutes ago, Roland said:

The steep wall design is fixed. The zombies can walk up and down and even stand on the slope. If you build a vertical wall at the top of the slope they can attack those blocks. When standing on the slope they will pound downward on it. It’s fixed. 

Its not fixed. Zombies should climb up and then slide down using a rug shouting "Wheeeee"

 

[Jay_ombie]

12 hours ago, madmole said:

I am actually stumped by that, I don't think my new base renders that far, but I'll try to figure it out.

Wasn't this mentioned some time back that bases could in some sense be included in the landscape details to avoid pop in ?

[Roland]

12 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Its not fixed. Zombies should climb up and then slide down using a rug shouting "Wheeeee"

 

It’s actually a bit unfair to us now. We can’t just stand on that slope without sliding down but they can. The roof of that cabin with the super steep slope used to be a place of safety but no more. 
 

You swung the pendulum too far faatal. Too far.... 😉

[Blake_]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

The steep wall design is fixed. The zombies can walk up and down and even stand on the slope. If you build a vertical wall at the top of the slope they can attack those blocks. When standing on the slope they will pound downward on it. It’s fixed. 

What about the whining crowd design ? When will that be fixed ?Omg TFP should really look into it.