Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[Roland]

2 hours ago, Ranzera said:

I do too! It was like an easter egg for me  

For comparison

 

I really don't think they are the same person but I could be wrong.

12 minutes ago, faatal said:

Blood Moon has a variety of uses:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Moon

And now 7 Days to Die is listed as one of those uses...thanks to me.

[MechanicalLens]

deleted

[Sigil_Thane]

Hey @madmole, will lockpicks ever be usable on locked doors? (...also what is up with doors that are locked open anyway?)

[Dethar]

18 minutes ago, Sigil_Thane said:

Hey @madmole, will lockpicks ever be usable on locked doors? (...also what is up with doors that are locked open anyway?)

I believe MM has stated no. Think it was concerns for MP.

[faatal]

8 hours ago, Khalagar said:

I think biomes still need a bit of re-work in general anyway, but not for realism reasons. Burnt Biome and Wasteland are just miserable to explore, and on every poll I've seen (on reddit at least) has had had those two be by far the least popular biomes, with all the comments mentioning how bad / unfun / ugly they are.

 

There's literally no reason to ever go to them, they are just vast expanses of nothing. No good distinct resources, ugly scenery, very few PoI since everything is destroyed etc. Winter, Forest, and Desert all are viable places to live and spend most of your time, but the only reason you'd ever go to a Burnt or Wasteland biome is for a challenge or change of pace.

Burnt Forest is actually pretty in a dark way in A19. I'd bet in a future version the artists will do some cool stuff with the Wasteland too.

[Aldranon]

8 hours ago, Roland said:

 

When you're convinced that everyone else is going by some crazy kind of logic it is time to start questioning your own...

 

Nobody is bending over backwards. The way it is makes sense. Your scenario could make sense if it was written that way. Bandits do tend to raid stuff-- so how could there possibly be anything left in the wasteland? Because they also tend to hoard and stockpile stuff-- just like we do. If you would stop bending backwards to try and justify the logic you are trying pass off as the only one that makes any sense you would be able to see other perspectives as well.

Yup.

Everything depends on the games story line, in which there is almost none.  

Without a narrative, it's like we are debating what kind of tea aliens prefer most!

 

The possible narratives are almost infinite!

From what things look like to me, a lot of the buildings and names could be from survivors of a first wave apocalypse: maybe (only) a nuclear war. 

The second wave apocalypse happening (years?) latter, appears to be more supernatural, just by looking at the BM night is a strong indicator.

 

Bandits could have just moved into the area, like locust swarms do, looking for more food/loot, maybe the player was a bandit!  Maybe that will be the actual story line even, adding late game threat to the player (who has a strange story line of his own!)

 

 

[Laz Man]

6 hours ago, MechanicalLens said:

Goodness, I couldn't imagine having to do a T5 fetch without the icon on the compass. 😶

6 hours later...

You know, there is some truth to what MM said about it being difficult to find the item to retrieve sometimes.  My brother and I had the hardest time finding the fetch item in the bear den POI one time. 

 

We literally had to tear up the floor between the 1st and 2nd floor.  And this is even with the damn compass icon lol...

 

Maybe my eyes have been desensitized from playing world of warcraft for many years lol...

 

...Maybe a good compromise is have it so the compass icononly show which floor it's on?  *shrugs*

3 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

You know, there is some truth to what MM said about it being difficult to find the item to retrieve sometimes.  My brother and I had the hardest time finding the fetch item in the bear den POI one time. 

 

We literally had to tear up the floor between the 1st and 2nd floor.  And this is even with the damn compass icon lol...

 

Maybe my eyes have been desensitized from playing world of warcraft for many years lol...

 

...Maybe a good compromise is have it so the compass icononly show which floor it's on?  *shrugs*

Just had a thought...what happens if the player stops tracking the quest as their active quest?  If it turns off the nav beacon then problem solved. Lol....they can search through every painting to their hearts content.

[hotpoon]

11 hours ago, mdf25 said:

Technically 5 biomes are axed, since caves, hub cities, water and other forest variant were also biomes too  I miss the plains though and hub cities.

Hub cities <3

I personally don't care for bandits.  In terms of a more satisfying goal-orientated end game, I would love to see a central hub city with a crapton of the most dangerous zombies and the best loot, surrounded by a rubble city with good loot and lots of normal zombies, and on the outskirts of that, country side with very little loot, and very little zombies. The player would start in the safer outskirts, and as they get stronger, they can start pushing their way towards the good loot.  No need for gamestaging then (which makes it feel like you never win) because it naturally gets harder the closer you get to your goal.

Maybe someone will (backstreet boys reunion tour) it in after it goes gold. 

[hotpoon]

9 hours ago, Khalagar said:

Yeah, there are a few things that not only stump new players, but even veterans often don't know about, like the ability to sort loot in your backpack and stashes by clicking the tiny, near hidden, auto sort button.

You're kidding me? There's an autosort button? When did that get added in and how have I not noticed? 
Just the other day on this forum, someone was @%$*#!ing about there not being a way to sort your inventory

[hotpoon]

9 hours ago, Khalagar said:

Problem with manuals was already mentioned, literally nobody reads them. Even getting people to do a tutorial is really hard, they would rather just struggle for 2 hours trying to figure it out on their own, fail, and then call it a bad product and leave a bad review. Just the nature of the beast (humans)

 

Tooltips, context menus, and super ridiculously obviously ultra user friendly UI is basically the only way to get derps to learn a system. I'm a great fan of gigantic red arrows in the guides I write for work, I've seen these being pretty common in modern games now days too. Where it pauses the game, and has giant arrows pointing at the button saying "CLICK ON THIS TO SORT YOUR INVENTORY" and "HOLD R WHEN PLACING A BLOCK TO ACCESS THE ADVANCED ROTATION AND SHAPE MENU"  and won't let you past until you demonstrate 2nd grade reading level skills

I recently played a game that did that. Wasn't a great game, but this kind of thing is really useful. So much faster to grasp than reading a paragraph of text.

The above game didn't seem to have a way of turning off the tips, so I assume it only happens for the first play through, but there can always be a 'switch off tips' button for veterans like Path of Exile has.

[dcsobral]

6 hours ago, Dethar said:

I believe MM has stated no. Think it was concerns for MP.

Players can't craft prefab doors, and player doors almost never show up on prefabs -- the exception being secure wood doors on broken shacks and vault doors. Clearly a compromised could be made where POI doors are pickable, and player doors aren't. Vault doors should never be pickable, prefab or not, and those few secure wood doors -- and I'm honestly having a hard time recalling if there's actually any on vanilla prefabs -- could be easily replaced, even by identical but prefab-only doors.

 

2 hours ago, hotpoon said:

You're kidding me? There's an autosort button? When did that get added in and how have I not noticed? 
Just the other day on this forum, someone was @%$*#!ing about there not being a way to sort your inventory

It's been there since I started playing, on alpha 15. It's the backpack icon next to "Inventory", and similarly on containers.

[unholyjoe]

5 hours ago, hotpoon said:

You're kidding me? There's an autosort button? When did that get added in and how have I not noticed? 
Just the other day on this forum, someone was @%$*#!ing about there not being a way to sort your inventory

here ya go

Spoiler

 

 

[Laz Man]

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

 

The suggestion was to have a hint in text form (as in "somewhere in the kitchen"). Way more immersive, not much more difficult, search space would be one room instead of a 5x5x3(?) block space, with a small potential to go to the wrong room.

 

Without a hint at all even "hardcore enthusiasts" would loose their enthusiasm.

 

 

That could work.  One draw back though is that quest POI would have the fetch item always in the exact same place unlike the current system where it can randomly place the fetch item in multiple spots.

 

I guess both types of quest could coexist as well.

[meganoth]

43 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

That could work.  One draw back though is that quest POI would have the fetch item always in the exact same place unlike the current system where it can randomly place the fetch item in multiple spots.

No. For each fetch location a different (fitting) text string has to be stored.

 

If currently the game has a list of fetch locations then that would just be another column in that list. If fetch locations are simply special blocks in the POI block data it would be more effort, as such a list would have to be added to the poi somewhere where name, dimensions and other nonblock data are stored, for example in the xml file that exists for each POI

 

Disclaimer: This is obviously not an idea TFP wants to implement, I just want to correct misunderstandings about a not too bad idea that could be implemented with reasonable effort.

 

[Gamida]

15 hours ago, Khalagar said:

 

Yeah, there are a few things that not only stump new players, but even veterans often don't know about, like the ability to sort loot in your backpack and stashes by clicking the tiny, near hidden, auto sort button.

New players also basically never know you can hold R when placing a block and access the shape menu and advanced rotations etc. Haybales negating fall damage up to 16 blocks of fall height is another useful one.

 

We probably need to make a list of "Helpful / hidden features new players don't know about". Some should even be part of the tutorial or get a tooltip pop up with info on them as they are quite useful once you know they exist

I watch new streamers some times to get the new game high and I will often mention to them that most people skip over a fairly good source of info in the journals.

[Trekkan]

On 5/28/2020 at 9:50 PM, madmole said:

That would be a hard no. Hopefully the sequel will be gold in 7 years.

If that was a Letter Kenny reference, +1 rep.

[MechanicalLens]

deleted

 

[FileMachete]

Good news that 'parts' will be more common in A19.

 

Not sure how/if the UI would handle it, but is there any way that we could choose to craft _lower_ Tier items?

 

Like when you buy high enough Int that you unlock Augers/Chainsaws, but you can only craft the highest Tier, because you're highly spec'd.

 

Both recent playthroughs I haven't had enough parts to craft an Auger when it got unlocked. I had a few Motor Tool Parts, just not enough for the high Tier.

 

Just my .02 cents but having an option to 'down-craft' might actually be more of a conundrum than current single option.

 

Example: this playthrough I was really jonesing for that auger. Think I had 9 parts but needed 12(?). Finally looted a green chainsaw. No-brainer, scrap it & make an auger.

 

If the option had existed to craft a lower tier, I likely would have done so, then would have regretted it upon looting that green chainsaw...

 

Would also add a wee bit of 'non-critical' complexity. Say you have 18 Steel Tool Parts & have spec'd to make blues; which take 15 parts(?).

Some might decide to down-craft two greens at 9 parts each(?) instead of the one blue, since one of those greens might have high enough stats to be 'better'.

[Adam the Waster]

i can't wait for spaghetti to be in game 

[Operator_Death]

1 minute ago, Adam the Waster said:

i can't wait for spaghetti to be in game 

I wanna see the new buff and debuff system in action 

[MechanicalLens]

deleted

[Adam the Waster]

1 minute ago, Operator_Death said:

I wanna see the new buff and debuff system in action 

to me it kinda seems like a toned down version of wellness.

i hope we can get some meds or even food that can help your max HP, yeah staim is good but i like to feel tanky!

[Operator_Death]

1 minute ago, Adam the Waster said:

to me it kinda seems like a toned down version of wellness.

i hope we can get some meds or even food that can help your max HP, yeah staim is good but i like to feel tanky!

I use the sledge. More mods for the hammer would also be nice. Like a spike mod for that. But thats Pimps dreams territory. I play like I'm a tank in the game so I agree max HP would be awesome, because I also die like a tank 🤣🤣🤣

[Laz Man]

2 hours ago, MechanicalLens said:

It does already. The satchel icon with have an arrow on top of or below it, indicating what floor the satchel is on.

 

Yes, I know that but I was suggesting that it ONLY does that and not hone in on the horizontal as well.  No matter though as Gazz suggested an even better alternative.

[FileMachete]

56 minutes ago, MechanicalLens said:

I believe Games4Kickz also asked for this, I think 7 months ago?

Haven't seen that, was probably pretty funny, heh.

 

Mulling over Augers a bit more realized that part of it is that they're pretty much always 'better' than even a purple steel pickaxe.

Might be more interesting gameplay wise if augers weren't so rare, but also that steel picks could be competitive.

Unless you luck into the schematic early on, then your first auger (blue) is likely the only one you'll ever need. Purples are basically unicorns right?

 

Not saying nerf augers, but maybe pump up steel picks a bit, or mods, enough that the trade off is like half burning Food vs Gas & the other main trade off is the heat map generation due to auger use. Again, a bit of non-critical complexity that vets might enjoy & newer players don't need to be bothered by.

(obviously saying this in a vacume; a19 changes, a20/gold plans, legendarys etc )

{hope we get a launch & everything goes well today! -1- minute!!}