Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[faatal]

1 hour ago, Khalagar said:

 

Whoa, that's one of the biggest changes of A19!

 

Can we get Night Vision Goggles to go back to how they were before they were nerfed into uselessness? I loved them in the past, but for a while now they are basically unusable.

 

I think nerfing the Gamma settings so people actually *need* to use flashlights and lights is a great change, currently there is no reason to ever really use night vision or a mining light even in a dark mine shaft . . .kinda odd. Super excited to see this lighting in action, you should show it on your stream night!

If NVGs have a problem, they will get adjusted at some point.

 

Brightness can still go up fairly bright, just not the insane amount gamma did and how it brightens is not quite the same as gamma worked.

[Khalagar]

11 minutes ago, faatal said:

If NVGs have a problem, they will get adjusted at some point.

 

The gamma / lighting changes might help, but atm in A18 the NVG basically just blind you. The filter / tint make it so you can barely see anything and they limit FoV pretty bad too. Even on like a completely pitch black night with lowered gamma they are still not really usable. I think it was A17 that reworked them. The older ones were great imo, they just let you see in the dark, but in A17 onward they essentially just blind the crap out of you without actually letting you see anything useful.

 

Found a good post showing the issue with them in A17 onward

 

 

 

Quote

 

Here's a comparison from A16.4 to A17.2.

A16.4

POI in darkness

 

POI with mining helmet light

POI with NVGs only (can see everything unlike first two pics)

A17.2

POI in darkness

 

POI with mining helmet light

POI with NVGs only (worse than the first two pics)

 

 

 

 

 

 

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, Khalagar said:

 

Whoa, that's one of the biggest changes of A19!

 

Can we get Night Vision Goggles to go back to how they were before they were nerfed into uselessness? I loved them in the past, but for a while now they are basically unusable.

 

I think nerfing the Gamma settings so people actually *need* to use flashlights and lights is a great change, currently there is no reason to ever really use night vision or a mining light even in a dark mine shaft . . .kinda odd. Super excited to see this lighting in action, you should show it on your stream night!

If you don't need a light in a mining shaft you might have gamma turned up from default or a the contrast of the monitor turned high. In that case it would also be no surprise that the NVGs don't work for you.

 

On my monitor a mining shaft and even some parts of the night are completely dark, and the NVGs work acceptably

 

[faatal]

27 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

The gamma / lighting changes might help, but atm in A18 the NVG basically just blind you. The filter / tint make it so you can barely see anything and they limit FoV pretty bad too. Even on like a completely pitch black night with lowered gamma they are still not really usable. I think it was A17 that reworked them. The older ones were great imo, they just let you see in the dark, but in A17 onward they essentially just blind the crap out of you without actually letting you see anything useful.

 

I had to adjust them for linear lighting. They should be fine.

Dark basement:

[MechanicalLens]

deleted

[faatal]

[Khalagar]

8 minutes ago, faatal said:

I had to adjust them for linear lighting. They should be fine.

 

Thanks!! Another image with that mysterious Battle Axe in the hotbar too, one day we will find out what weapon tree that even belongs to since it doesn't seem to be in the machete tree as you also have a machete.

 

Quick, accidentally leak unintended details!

[strask]

5 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

 

Thanks!! Another image with that mysterious Battle Axe in the hotbar too, one day we will find out what weapon tree that even belongs to since it doesn't seem to be in the machete tree as you also have a machete.

 

Quick, accidentally leak unintended details!

My assumption is that's the new high-level club, the steel mace.

[Dethar]

19 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

 

Thanks!! Another image with that mysterious Battle Axe in the hotbar too, one day we will find out what weapon tree that even belongs to since it doesn't seem to be in the machete tree as you also have a machete.

 

Quick, accidentally leak unintended details!

MM has said its the new steel axe from what I remember.

[Khalagar]

Ooo Fire-axe is my favorite end game melee weapon, so I hope it is. I really hope Fire-axe gets some love and gets it's own dedicated perks, ATM it is only affected by Miner 69

[falloutcloud]

5 hours ago, Sigil_Thane said:

Ooo... this gave me a interesting idea for a "Special Infected" who, when is within a certain range makes the lighting fade out a bit more, so that Outside would fade to inside ambient, and inside ambient to maybe a darker set still. I would hope the effect could not stack however or late gamestage horde nights could be hard as hell.

 

Additionally, does the transition away from Gamma mean that the issues with maps being blown out bright (likely due to the Gamma system) has been solved?

The idea of a special zombie that only comes at night and makes all ambient light get darker is so creepy that I can feel the hair on the back of my neck rising just thinking about it.

[MechanicalLens]

deleted

[strask]

34 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

Ooo Fire-axe is my favorite end game melee weapon, so I hope it is. I really hope Fire-axe gets some love and gets it's own dedicated perks, ATM it is only affected by Miner 69

I wonder if anyone has extensively playtested making axes count as bladed weapons as well as mining weapons? I thought they did at one time, but maybe that was unbalanced because you could also use it instead of your hunting knife/machete etc. (edit: for harvesting) But yeah, the fire axe as melee weapon needs some kind of additional love.

[Guppycur]

3 hours ago, faatal said:

If NVGs have a problem, they will get adjusted at some point.

 

Brightness can still go up fairly bright, just not the insane amount gamma did and how it brightens is not quite the same as gamma worked.

So can pvper's still cheat? 

 

Be cool if servers could force certain settings... 

[TSBX]

Speaking of mining helmets being made less of a must have item, maybe they should add an effect similar to that mining book that gives you less damage from falling  blocks.

[MechanicalLens]

deleted

[Jost Amman]

2 hours ago, TSBX said:

Speaking of mining helmets being made less of a must have item, maybe they should add an effect similar to that mining book that gives you less damage from falling  blocks.

That's already accounted for in the armor value.

Anything more would probably be OP IMO.

[Roland]

This is with Brightness turned down to zero. (I like the game darker)

 

 

I think the NVG work perfectly in A19. However, if you keep brightness at default you won't ever need them. Nighttime is pretty but visibility is always as though there were a full moon out on a clear night. If you want to be able to appreciate getting the NVG then you'll want to reduce the brightness. Over 15% is too bright IMO for a tense night experience but the default setting is probably best for new players.

[Matt 1977]

No white washed colours , can't wait 😀

[Matt 1977]

Youtubers get so touchy when they say going mining and i reply "gamma mining, your full" . Then try to have a gameplay discussion about how its taking away from the experience. I just give up and don't watch again. Plenty of up and coming people that are not  " youtube fame " gone to there head. 

[Adam the Waster]

9 hours ago, faatal said:

damn zombies eating nuclear waste! thank god we don't have UV light! i can imagine all the "stains" on them! 

[SMiThaYe]

10 hours ago, faatal said:

If NVGs have a problem, they will get adjusted at some point.

 

Brightness can still go up fairly bright, just not the insane amount gamma did and how it brightens is not quite the same as gamma worked.

Certainly a step in the right direction! Adjusting brightness was always there to help out those with budget or older monitors but it's never needed to go to max brightness - turns the dead of night into daylight. If there are some that struggled you still have some old tricks to work with or slap on ReShade or Nvidia's Freestyle etc. You'd use these to adjust tint and weak saturation and I make do with default lighting due to the huge variation in environments to get perfect. With the desert for example, it feels like bloom is on even though it's not which in turn washes out the nice detailed textures. For years these shaders have gave me some options to get it looking natural on my setup with default values using Ultra. If the new lighting system helps with higher peaks and addresses tones then great, look forward to not using any 3rd party solutions.

[7daysLichti]

Hi 

 is fixed in the A19 the class name = "vehicleJokeblimp" ?

 

[Gazz]

1 hour ago, 7daysLichti said:

Hi 

 is fixed in the A19 the class name = "vehicleJokeblimp" ?

Yes. It does not show up on the menu.

[madmole]

On 6/12/2020 at 3:06 PM, Laz Man said:

Love the little details MM!  Plus points for the use of those wood trellis frames and those thicker wooden quarter blocks. 😎👍

 

 

 

Thanks, I like to make each base a little different and if I can't do something I feel should be a staple in the game I add it in. Like we couldn't make half stairs (the main shape minecraft uses for everything cool) so I had Gazz add that in. Eventually we want a new system that builds the blocks and upgrade chains for us so we don't have to define everything by hand.