Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[Roland]

5 minutes ago, Forgotten Memes said:

This is not currently the case.

Dude. Yes it is. Officially. No modding required. The game remembers your setting. You literally just need to change brightness to your own personal preference one time and it is set. You don't have to make everyone else play with darker nights. I changed mine to 15% about 2 months ago and haven't changed it since. I also disagree that the default setting is the same as people cheesing the night by turning gamma up to 200% as was possible in the past. Artistically, the night looks really nice at default brightness. You and I prefer the challenge of darkness over visuals and thankfully it is simplicity itself to change brightness to 15%. You can even do it while in game if you want to see if for you 12% is better.

 

You sound about 3% more hardcore than I am in this regard....

[Forgotten Memes]

>  You literally just need to change brightness to your own personal preference one time and it is set.

 

Not really, the issue is that the night is almost as bright as the day.  I'd have to change it twice every in game day.  If it wasnt' for the sound effect that we all know so well I'd forget it was night.

 

If I was hardcore I'd be expecting the game on default settings (pic1) to look like what I see when I look out my window at 2 am (pic2)

[Roland]

2 minutes ago, Forgotten Memes said:

I'd have to change it twice every in game day.

Help me with this please. Why would you need to change it twice a day? You can't possibly think that 15% brightness makes daytime too dim....

5 minutes ago, Forgotten Memes said:

You call that dark? Lightweight! When I play at night I like it black coffee on the dark side of the moon dark. Your 2am picture burns my eyes....

[Freshmint]

The auto brightness adjuster that simulates indoor vs outdoor light intensity seems to work at night and could be causing some brightness issues, The effect also  adjusts slowly and could be tweaked.

[Forgotten Memes]

Just now, Roland said:

Help me with this please. Why would you need to change it twice a day? You can't possibly think that 15% brightness makes daytime too dim....

I don't know, never tried it.  I leave all the settings on default when possible with no mods.   I like to play the game as intended and give feedback to make that experience better.  Daytime looks great as is.  It's likely not bright enough because I expect they're using sRGB instead of ACES for color management so it's using <10 stops of dynamic range instead of >20.

[Roland]

Well, we can hope that everybody starts changing their brightness settings to 15%. Then when they look at their data collection they'll realize their setting is too high. But it will take everyone doing it and not just a couple of us speaking our preference on the forum. With the new telemetrics what you (and everyone) does is going to make a bigger impact than what we say about our own preferences. Keeping your settings on default to "play it pure" will send the wrong message.....

[wolfbain5]

8 hours ago, meganoth said:

That question interested me too, so I started a new game and made a test with miner69 at 0 and at 5. And yes, with full miner69 I needed only 2 instead of 4 hits to shovel off a cement pile.

 

that is for block damage, I meant increase gathering amount

 

edit: MM said it should, but was not a definitive yes or no. I will test it later.

 

edit 2: yay, motherload effects it for amount harvested.

[Jost Amman]

39 minutes ago, Roland said:

Well, we can hope that everybody starts changing their brightness settings to 15%. Then when they look at their data collection they'll realize their setting is too high. But it will take everyone doing it and not just a couple of us speaking our preference on the forum. With the new telemetrics what you (and everyone) does is going to make a bigger impact than what we say about our own preferences. Keeping your settings on default to "play it pure" will send the wrong message.....

IMO the problem is not much about the personal preference on brightness during the night... the problem is that the Stealth Bar and the zombies are not linked to that setting. If detection was directly connected not only to the in-game ambient light but also to the brightness setting I think many players would be in for a surprise.

 

Imagine I'm someone like Forgotten Memes and I like to play with lower brightness settings... during the night it would be more difficult for me to see anything but I'd also get the bonus of having a better stealth and zombies not being able to see me as much too.

 

On the other hand, if I was a player who likes to cheese the game by putting brightness all the way up, I'd easily see everything during the night but I'd also have a constant 100% visibility even during stealth and zombies would ALWAYS see me with that setting on.

[Black Hat]

We need an Icon On the map for our vehicles! Something that can be seen from miles away like any other marker that the player can put.

Not just when you are like 100m to your bike.

 

When the game crashes while on the bike it's a pain trying to find it. 

[PoloPoPo]

3 hours ago, Roland said:

The Navezgane map isn't random. It is handcrafted. What makes it terrible for you?

 

Also...change your brightness setting to 15% and it gets plenty dark at night.

I have explained very much with three screenshots added what makes that map boring for me. As this is the standard map most people new to the game play this shouldn't be the case.

 

As for brightness... well I absolutely don't agree with you. I don't want to make the game darker in general. I want nights to be darker again like they were in A18. What is the purpose of a day / night rhythm when night is still bright enough to do anything you can do outside during daytime? Sometimes you can't even tell whether it is night or day ingame if there was no clock displayed.

 

Saying that TFP have a look at what the playerbase changes in their settings does not make any sense at all neither. I am sure about most players playing the game pretty much on default settings so whatever TFP makes default will be the thing most players play with.

 

It is just common sense and something everyone expects for nighttime to be dark. Sometimes even too dark to go outside without a lamp. It was perfect in A18 and I don't understand why this has been changed.

[Netzah]

9 hours ago, madmole said:

What would be the purpose? Days don't really advance your GS much so?

I think the best approach would be that GS and moon nights sohuld be linked to your time in the server, so it would be every seven days (168hours timer) that you are in the server.

In parties the timer would tend to do the average of members.

 

This way everybody could have better hordes (seems not all of them are at the same time) and people wouldn'd skip them so easily (On purpose or not). 

[Gipothegip]

3 hours ago, Forgotten Memes said:

> Also...change your brightness setting to 15% and it gets plenty dark at night.

 

Then this should be the default.

 

3 hours ago, Roland said:

Why? Many people like being able to see at night. Others don't like to have such good vision without using a light. TFP has it set to what they like for visuals and gameplay. Players will come on and state all sorts of different preferences about it. All you do is change the setting to 15% once and you are good. If they make the default 15% for you and me then several other blokes will have to change it to 50% and come on here and say THAT should be the default...

Wouldn't this kind of depend on your monitor, as well as personal preference?

 

I have mine set to 40, and it looks about right to me. Not necessarily super dark, but having a light source is still useful.

[Guppys Fur]

51 minutes ago, Gipothegip said:

 

Wouldn't this kind of depend on your monitor, as well as personal preference?

 

I have mine set to 40, and it looks about right to me. Not necessarily super dark, but having a light source is still useful.

 

This thing called "personal preference" as well as the individual setup and surrounding is a concept new to some people.

 

"It is too bright for me, and my opinion counts only"

 

Meanwhile Player XY is in a room thats not pitch black and is thankful for the new Settings (aka me^^)

[FileMachete]

5 hours ago, Gazz said:

On the console, enter

showhits

Are there options for the "showhits" cmd? All I'm getting with it enabled (and in dm mode) is a single ~5ft line sprouting from the zed showing center of impact and angle...

Didn't matter if used a Rifle, Blunderbuss or Shotgun (tried all 3 shotgun ammo types though only the shells should have multiple projectiles)

 

Comparing passive_effects in items.xml for ammoShotgunShell & ammoShotgunSlug there's nothing obvious (to me) that would control the RoundRayCount of 10 for the Shell.

If I remember right the on-screen recticle reflects the SpreadDegreesVertical & SpreadDegreesHorizontal values.

And of course there may well be a built in function that assumes the muzzle as the starting point, and then uses the SpreadDegrees along with either MaxRange or DamageFalloffRange to calculate the cone.

 

I think I might be able to test if it's actually a cylinder.. change EntityPenetrationCount from 2 to 1, disable zed ai, get close to one with another behind then fire over first zeds shoulder, or something like that.

[meganoth]

7 hours ago, Forgotten Memes said:

May I suggest a "reverse progression" for food with game stage.  Low GS the cabinets are filled with canned food and later it's mostly seeds, empty cans murky water.  Only shamway crates have the coveted canned food late game.

 

I prefer to play as a survival game, not a questing rpg so I play permadeath with no traders/vendors or airdrops and most food crates and shelves on day 1 are just empty jars and drinks.  It's really just luck to survive long enough that you can clear POIs quickly, get a farm up or find a weapon that allows you to hunt since deer cant viably be killed with the base bow.   With the current design I don't think it's possible for the average player to get enough food without supplementing it from vending machines and buried treasure quests.

 

Additionally an option to disable traders and vending machines the way you can disable airdrops would be nice.

Deers can be killed with the base bow. If you hit the head its dead. It even rhymes 😉.

 

Even if not, especially in cities the deer often does not vanish over the next hill but runs around in circles for a while and then getting calm again. With a little patience and stealthed movement you can get in range for another round of shots.

 

4 hours ago, wolfbain5 said:

that is for block damage, I meant increase gathering amount

 

edit: MM said it should, but was not a definitive yes or no. I will test it later.

 

edit 2: yay, motherload effects it for amount harvested.

 

I was assuming that motherload works on everything miner69 works on. But reading the description of both perks again I'm not so sure of that anymore.

 

When I was testing miner69 yesterday the yield was fluctuating wildly (for example I could get from 41 to 61 cement out of one block). Which means you need a longer test series to get reliable statistical results (<--- implied question inside).

 

[MechanicalLens]

10 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Deers can be killed with the base bow. If you hit the head its dead. It even rhymes 😉.

 

Even if not, especially in cities the deer often does not vanish over the next hill but runs around in circles for a while and then getting calm again. With a little patience and stealthed movement you can get in range for another round of shots.

 

Or you can just run it over with your minibike and proceed to whack its head off with your baseball bat.  Totally not speaking from experience here.

[MechanicalLens]

Do the Rock Busters candy affect the quantity of stone mined, or is it just for ores?

[toores]

21 hours ago, madmole said:

It is just TOO OP to not balance it. The fact is you can save 3 perks and have all the benefits of STR 10 with that one item, without actually being STR 10. Should raise the price of it too, now that crafting it is difficult.

On a similar topic,
Every tree, except fortitude, has some "face-ware" that gives +1 to given tree. Can we please have fortitude goggles?

 

You only get 3 free perks if you max out STR tree. I don't go STR, so i get only one...

[toores]

And another thing, there should be some kind of medical pouch that I can craft or loot. Like a small medical inventory tab.

There is lots of medical stuff to carry arround if you don't want to get crippled in the other end of the map. Too much mandatory crap to lug around.

[Jost Amman]

9 minutes ago, toores said:

And another thing, there should be some kind of medical pouch that I can craft or loot. Like a small medical inventory tab.

There is lots of medical stuff to carry arround if you don't want to get crippled in the other end of the map. Too much mandatory crap to lug around.

That's a feature that I would really like to see implemented for many types of items but also balanced in game.

For example a (literal) Tool-belt that you actually need to craft, where you can put some of your tools without cluttering the quickbar.

Now that we have candies we could also craft some bag to put them in and pop it up with a hotkey or something to open a separate inventory from the backpack.

 

The list could go on and on, but I don't think they'll ever add something like this, takes too much time and time is precious...

[Adam the Waster]

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

Deers can be killed with the base bow. If you hit the head its dead. It even rhymes 😉.

 

Even if not, especially in cities the deer often does not vanish over the next hill but runs around in circles for a while and then getting calm again. With a little patience and stealthed movement you can get in range for another round of shots.

 

 

i guess in my game Deers went Brain dead so i could beat them with my steel club!

 

 

hey FREE FOOD!

36 minutes ago, toores said:

On a similar topic,
Every tree, except fortitude, has some "face-ware" that gives +1 to given tree. Can we please have fortitude goggles?

 

You only get 3 free perks if you max out STR tree. I don't go STR, so i get only one...

it could be a Face mask! like the nurses lol

 

Spoiler

Plus it would look cool for player!

[madmole]

10 hours ago, Forgotten Memes said:

I agree this needs to be tweaked.  Although it does get pitch black if you're in a mine.

 

The navizgane and random gen maps are terrible, the pregen maps are decent, here's pregen1 with the traders marked

What is so terrible about Navezgane?

[Aldranon]

52 minutes ago, toores said:

And another thing, there should be some kind of medical pouch that I can craft or loot. Like a small medical inventory tab.

There is lots of medical stuff to carry arround if you don't want to get crippled in the other end of the map. Too much mandatory crap to lug around.

 

If you're at the other end of the map you would have some motorized vehicle.

Once you get anything better than a bicycle, the game changes a lot.

[madmole]

10 hours ago, Forgotten Memes said:

> The Navezgane map isn't random. It is handcrafted. What makes it terrible for you?

 

I know it isn't random, but as the other guy mentioned Naveszgane isn't a fun map because it's fairly empty.   One of each major POI really isn't enough and random/pregen maps have a far greater density of POI typically with 8-10 towns whereas Navesgane only has 4 or 5 towns IIRC.   This makes it feel empty and boring.

 

As I mentioned in my bug report random maps aren't generating properly (at least for me) and are therefore pretty much unplayable.

 

 

 

The issue that I've run into with my current game is that I'm on day 16, but I've already explored both crack a books, all gun stores and all the church_01's yet I only have about 1/4 of the books.  I'm at that stage where I have a farm up, steel unlocked, iron/steel tools and some t3/t4 guns so my main progression is going to be through making/finding mods.  I'm not ready for t5 pois so I'm flying around looking for more book stores or places to get the schematics I'd like to have because the GS is only 50 so raiding poi for higher tier weapons/armor isn't an option.   My progression has stalled and it's even worse on navezgane because there aren't as many pois with interesting loot, it's only a 6k map with lower city density.   If the map were 4x larger with at least 4x as many more interesting pois it would be problem solved, but I'm already on an 8k map.

 

I don't feel like cheesing my GS by screamer baiting or building a massive concrete base, so here I am reporting bugs and whining on the forums that the maps are too small.

 

> Also...change your brightness setting to 15% and it gets plenty dark at night.

 

Then this should be the default.

Sounds like you are rushing things like crazy. Day 16 and you have top tier guns? You don't need any schematics to enjoy the game. Most people barely have iron gear by day 16. Are you playing longer days or something? Complaining about progression 16 hours in is the last thing I'd expect to hear with this build, I constantly get new stuff. I don't even have that many schematics unlocked but I don't care, they come when they come. I buy the ones that will complete the sets I really want like the club books because I'm a club guy this game, otherwise I get 1-2 book cases a day just going through normal POIs. I don't care about book stores.

Just my opinion but you might enjoy  the game more if you slowed down and smelled the chrysanthemum's. It isn't a race to the best of everything and end game for me at all. I do a bit of everything, building, mining, looting, I even waste time cleaning up my corner of the apocalypse like fixing roads, chopping up trash near my area, etc.

[Forgotten Memes]

5 minutes ago, madmole said:

What is so terrible about Navezgane?

As I and PoloPoPo said the issue with Navezgane is that it feels very empty.

 

Pregen1 has 15 cities (which is still too few) and navezgane only has 5.  Just look at the difference between these maps.  You can easily clear every single poi on navezgane in a few days.  Then what?