Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[Operator_Death]

1 minute ago, Adam the Waster said:

i sit around and i get hungry every 1 minute 

Just reading these complaints about something we haven't even given a chance makes me hungry🤣🤣🤣

[Adam the Waster]

Just now, Operator_Death said:

Just reading these complaints about something we haven't even given a chance makes me hungry🤣🤣🤣

hell im eating right now! 

[Operator_Death]

Just now, Adam the Waster said:

hell im eating right now! 

So am I. I just want to play the game. See how it really is in Game and then make my choice based on the actual gameplay. Until then it is all speculation and assumption. But thats my 2 cents. 

 

What im really curious about is if @madmole has decided to keep the junk drone in A19 or it isn't ready yet and needs some more tweeking. 

[SylenThunder]

56 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

People get hung up on the dumbest things. Had to argue with one dude about why a "junk drone" isn't any more nonsensical than zombies, autonomous junk turrets that can differentiate between friend and foe, a gyrocopter taped together, drilling down to bedrock and making a cave full of forges and campfires sealed off with vault doors etc.

 

 

Complainers gonna complain yo

LOL  this is so silly it isn't even funny. We have drones now. We have automated turrets now.  In Real Life we have these things.  What we don't have is zombies.

[Guppycur]

My watch tells me that I burn more calories sleeping than I do during the day. Granted, I sleep a lot during the day too, but my point is everything burns calories.

 

And for the third freaking time, this is a non-issue. If you have a vehicle, you do not have food problems.  Unless having a vehicle means your crates full of food get destroyed, you will never notice the drain. 

[Gazz]

2 minutes ago, Guppycur said:

And for the third freaking time, this is a non-issue. If you have a vehicle, you do not have food problems.  Unless having a vehicle your crates full of food get destroyed, you will never notice the drain. 

But only people who played the game would know that. lol

 

It's a nudge towards food consumption. Not a complete rewrite of the game.

[Ranzera]

I can sorta get behind this calorie burn thing, but I don't think you're implementing it very intelligently. First off, merely driving on a specific kind of road doesn't necessarily impact your burn rate. Secondly, stress doesn't burn calories. Your brain uses a mostly fixed amount of calories. Thirdly, aside from the bike no vehicle is going to consume calories faster by "sprinting."

 

Now, I *can* see where what you're simulating makes sense. You absolutely will use more calories on a 2 wheel vehicle than you will in a 4 wheel (or 3 wheel for that matter). You'll have to sit up and support yourself with your arms rather than just resting in a seat. 60% is a hilarious amount though, which I think needs a tweak. Also, the bicycle is more efficient than sprinting on foot in real life, so I'd make an adjustment there.

 

That of course all flies in the face of what you're trying to solve with this and even exacerbates it. Smoothing out food importance during the game cycle. Realistically the bicycle would use the most calories, the minibike/motorcycle would use much less, and the 4x4 would, if anything, have a lower calorie consumption than standing. That reinforces the problem where food is mostly only an early game problem.

 

I do like this sort of thing though. Holding certain items in your hands should come at a calorie cost, for instance the M60.

[Damocles]

If you want to have a higher food consumption for high level players, there are better resource sinks, such as the the additional unlocked backpack slots, placing higher level blocks, using the auger, etc.

 

The even better solution would be to have food-recipes, that take an increasing number of food resources (looted, hunted or farmed) for better recopies that provide perks high level players dont want to miss out on.

So all the food stock CAN be used up meaningfully by converting it to really high level extra perk level foods.

 

By having a wide range of those recepies, there should never be an overstock of food items, as they could always be invested into a bit better recipe, adding some extra buffs.

 

Low level player can stick to their looted cans. High level players can craft some special stuff, that mighteven be needed in certain situations.

 

To simplify the recepies, a lot of the gathered food items could be considdered "classes", such as "protein", "carbs", "fats", "spices", "rotten".

-> a can of Spam or Beans would then be simply "Protein"

This way you can have a lot of funny specific items to loot, but not make recepies have to use too overspecialized ingrediences.

[Guppycur]

I think, but I could be mistaken, that doing harder activities already increases food consumption?  I could be wrong.

 

The only real and meaningful way to make food hard is the S word (that's right, I said spoilage).  Anything else is a waste of time.

[madmole]

19 hours ago, Guppycur said:

No, we have to hold the players hand and that means the vehicle can't tip over and can drive underwater.

 

As for the food, meh.  Who's in a vehicle that long anyway.  By the time you have a vehicle, you're crates deep in food.  

Depends how you play and what kind of drops you get, if on a mp server, etc. I barely had any food when I got my motorcycle but then my need for food fell off a cliff, thus here we are with some changes to try out.

[meganoth]

30 minutes ago, SylenThunder said:

LOL  this is so silly it isn't even funny. We have drones now. We have automated turrets now.  In Real Life we have these things.  What we don't have is zombies.

Saw a zombie today, staring at his smartphone

 

56 minutes ago, madmole said:

Most people are not logical. The logical thing to do is to hose people for just standing around in their base, but we went the friendlier way and are attacking the race car drivers as they are the ones with loads of food piling up and not the noob who is standing around reading the tutorial. As I said, 80% of calories (roughly) are used just breathing IRL. I can sit on my @%$*#! or work out, I get hungry every 3-4 hours regardless. Do you not get hungry when traveling? Sorry bro everyone else does.

But they aren't. The base calorie rate for being idle is really really low and below normal... and we tuned it since his post anyway and will continue to tune until it feels good. The end result is hopefully you don't go from eating 5x a day to once a week like it was when you got a motor vehicle. That is just bad. Food needs to be a slight issue even late game if you don't put effort in.

MM revealed the loophole: All who are not happy about this should hold their breath while driving --> You will save 80% of calories !!! 😉

 

 

[madmole]

9 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

Look, even if I don't agree with your knee jerking approach I'm not saying you may not have a point there... I'm just saying that theorizing about something and actually playing the game to get the feel of it are often two different things. Sometimes even when a plan sounds bad to you on paper it can still give great results when it plays out.

 

Also, as Gazz said, you don't have all the information you need to really understand the balancing behind it.

Minecraft sounded stupid AF about 20 times. Then I tried it. Now we are all here. Here's to bad sounding stuff turning out to being good fun.

[Vampirenostra]

43 minutes ago, SylenThunder said:

LOL  this is so silly it isn't even funny. We have drones now. We have automated turrets now.  In Real Life we have these things.  What we don't have is zombies.

This is only a matter of time now))) Let the fun begin!!!

[madmole]

6 hours ago, Perlin_Worm said:

Aboot the whole vehicle/food thing... What I am scratching my head about is vehicles have their own consumption mechanic which is damage/repair and it's way under utilized. Vehicles take practically no damage no matter how hard you drive it. Whouldnt it make more sense to tweak that mechanic instead of plugging it into the food system?

 

Perfectly willing to try this change, but just sayin..

A20 or 21.

5 hours ago, Laz Man said:

60% sounds like alot but imagine if the stam drain is 1 point per 10 secs (example only).  60% of that is not that much.  Were better off waiting to see how it feels instead of theory crafting the worse case scenario.

 

Even if it is 60% and that stays, you are traveling way faster... big deal you used up 1/5th a bowl of stew to drive a couple miles. Beats walking/sprinting.

[Vampirenostra]

and talking of food, for the ones ho remember: Fleash.... huuuunngeeerrrrr.... braaaaainnnsss.... Hunger! Hunger!

BTW brain activity consumes quite plenty calories, but these should be "fast carbohydrates", hope my translation here is good enough))), like sugar, you will rarely consume your fat thinking, but you'll throttle like my Mac under heavy load))) Thats why we always have some cookies or other sweets in the office, just to boost our brains when we get tired.

[Adam the Waster]

17 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Saw a zombie today, staring at his smartphone

 

 

ok boomer

[madmole]

3 hours ago, FileMachete said:

Hey @faatal, curious if you can/care-to share any tidbits on zombie pathing changes?

Vertical Wedges, zombie force fields (arrow slit block pathing), that kind of thing?

Or even just an intimidating vague statement, to juice the gossip mill? "Bases in A19 will need to be substantially different..."

(sry if asked & answered already)

The less you guys know the better. Pulling back the curtain and showing the tricks is forbidden! I enjoyed the @%$*#! out of A18's RWG because I didn't dissect it, I just played it. All the guys staring at map generation trying to see how it worked ruined the biome distribution. Just saying. Ignorance is bliss. As soon as you understand the code/mechanics it loses its flavor because you aren't imagining what horrors could possibly happen yet.

[Vintorez]

I suppose the food consumption will be fine for now until repair changes are in. I would like to see a sort of biofuel refinery that can take excess crops to make gas, and serve as an alternative to going to the desert for shale.

[madmole]

1 minute ago, Vintorez said:

I suppose the food consumption will be fine for now until repair changes are in. I would like to see a sort of biofuel refinery that can take excess crops to make gas, and serve as an alternative to going to the desert to for shale.

Supercorn perhaps. It can make 3 glue now though.

[Adam the Waster]

2 minutes ago, madmole said:

Supercorn perhaps. It can make 3 glue now though.

i thought it was going to be used for fuel?

 

 

 

but thats good too! I LOVE DUCK TAPE!

[SylenThunder]

49 minutes ago, Ranzera said:

I can sorta get behind this calorie burn thing, but I don't think you're implementing it very intelligently. First off, merely driving on a specific kind of road doesn't necessarily impact your burn rate. Secondly, stress doesn't burn calories. Your brain uses a mostly fixed amount of calories. Thirdly, aside from the bike no vehicle is going to consume calories faster by "sprinting."

In a modern vehicle maybe.  We're post-apocalyptic here. There isn't any power steering. Brakes are going to be real work as well. This is something you cobbled together from spare parts. Go find an older car without disk brakes and power steering. Then drive it on regular roads.  Now go drive it on some rutty back country roads. I guarantee you will notice the difference, and you may also be sweating quite a bit when you're done.

[quyxkh]

6 minutes ago, Adam the Waster said:

ok boomer

And proud of it.

[SnowDog1942]

11 minutes ago, madmole said:

All the guys staring at map generation trying to see how it worked ruined the biome distribution. Just saying. Ignorance is bliss. As soon as you understand the code/mechanics it loses its flavor because you aren't imagining what horrors could possibly happen yet.

As soon as I understood the mechanics of erections, I started having MORE fun, not LESS -- just saying.

[canadianbluebeer]

9 hours ago, Gazz said:

As so often people are freaking out over their own imagination.

 

And then they wonder why "the Fun Pimps never tell us anything!"

 

 

See, and THIS is why I'm outta popcorn! again! 

 

(cause I know what happens next...)

 

[The Gronk]

16 minutes ago, Adam the Waster said:

i thought it was going to be used for fuel?

 

 

 

but thats good too! I LOVE DUCK TAPE!

Duct tape, for wrapping around ducts.  Duck tape would probably be animal cruelty  🙂