Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[MechanicalLens]

6 minutes ago, madmole said:

I am trying all game can spawn any time, every day or night now, with the larger game being really rare. Then there isn't ever a dumb blackout period of no chance of getting a stag which seems like a better design. One problem with the old setup was a guy joins a server on day 2 and all the other jerks cleared out all the meat so you are stuck waiting for 2 weeks before anything respawned. So I think this will actually be better the more I think about it, a constant supply of small game and very rare chance for wild game to spawn too, at any time, with only a 1 day delay.

Speaking of game, will there be any adjustments made to the Bob's Boars POI? To my current knowledge the boars respawn in that POI every 5 days, creating a very exploitable farm that could be alright for crowded MP servers, but if the player chooses to ruin their own experience by exploiting this... Again, all on their hands, but perhaps the boar spawns should occur much less frequently, or perhaps be a single occurrence?

 

I suppose the counterargument though would be that if the player finds this POI on day 1 (metaphorically or literally) then they are set for life with one trip anyway, and again, this could be a useful mechanic on MP servers.

[PoloPoPo]

3 minutes ago, madmole said:

I am trying all game can spawn any time, every day or night now, with the larger game being really rare. Then there isn't ever a dumb blackout period of no chance of getting a stag which seems like a better design. One problem with the old setup was a guy joins a server on day 2 and all the other jerks cleared out all the meat so you are stuck waiting for 2 weeks before anything respawned. So I think this will actually be better the more I think about it, a constant supply of small game and very rare chance for wild game to spawn too, at any time, with only a 1 day delay.

This sounds promising. 1 day delay for wild game, maybe not "very rare" but "rare"

Or very rare chance at daytime and a more common chance at night but you have to leave your base for that?!

[Gr.o.m.]

23 minutes ago, madmole said:

Here is what I'm testing locally now:

Small game spawns any time of day or night.

Large game spawns every 9 days at night.

Predator animals spawn at night only every 10 days.

So if you want lots of meat hunt at night, otherwise it won't spawn. Risk and reward. Otherwise work your butt off scrounging on chickens and rabbits.

Scared of predators? Stay indoors at night, they won't spawn except perhaps in your immediate area once every 10 days.

Great Idea!

I like it and can't wait until we can have that all.

Thank you MM

[madmole]

8 minutes ago, SnowDog1942 said:

When do the naked amazon women spawn?

 

Also, does Masvidal have a chance in hell??

Masvidal is going to wreck Usman and shock the world. He trains with Yoel, so he will be ready for any weak sauce wrestling Usman can do, and Usman doesn't want to grind him against the cage because look what Masvidal did to Diaz against the cage? He diced him open with elbows. His cardio might suck though since he took the fight on short notice. I'm hoping he can do some big damage early and get a finish, Usman is boring.

7 minutes ago, MechanicalLens said:

Speaking of game, will there be any adjustments made to the Bob's Boars POI? To my current knowledge the boars respawn in that POI every 5 days, creating a very exploitable farm that could be alright for crowded MP servers, but if the player chooses to ruin their own experience by exploiting this... Again, all on their hands, but perhaps the boar spawns should occur much less frequently, or perhaps be a single occurrence?

 

I suppose the counterargument though would be that if the player finds this POI on day 1 (metaphorically or literally) then they are set for life with one trip anyway, and again, this could be a useful mechanic on MP servers.

We want to overhaul spawning and properly reset chunks based on server preference.

[Laz Man]

44 minutes ago, Aldranon said:

Best use of the sledge turret I've seen to date.  The Zombies started to focus there attacks on damaged areas so the streamer put his sledge down perfectly!

 

 

 

Yeah it got a good boost in recent update.  There even better in a funnel and barb wire combo.

[Adam the Waster]

19 minutes ago, SnowDog1942 said:

When do the naked amazon women spawn?

 

Also, does Masvidal have a chance in hell??

they do!

 

there called stripper zombies!

[Laz Man]

35 minutes ago, madmole said:

Here is what I'm testing locally now:

Small game spawns any time of day or night.

Large game spawns every 9 days at night.

Predator animals spawn at night only every 10 days.

So if you want lots of meat hunt at night, otherwise it won't spawn. Risk and reward. Otherwise work your butt off scrounging on chickens and rabbits.

Scared of predators? Stay indoors at night, they won't spawn except perhaps in your immediate area once every 10 days.

Sounds like a good buffer for new players so they dont get wrecked too soon.  

[madmole]

I like this because it is pretty much the same for sp and mp. Everyone can hunt every day and not have these huge droughts of no meat in cleared areas.

I went with a high chance for small game, low chance for big game, spawning any time. every day.

For predators, they spawn only at night in the starter biomes, every 4 days like zombies.

(still tweaking things, but I think this is going to be what we do for the next patch)

 

[MechanicalLens]

1 minute ago, madmole said:

For predators, they spawn only at night in the starter biomes, every 4 days like zombies.

 

Will they immediately die off during the day like ferals, or will it be the same system as it always has been with animals despawning eventually?

 

Also, given that line of text, am I correct in assuming that nighttime predator spawns only occur in the forest biome, and mountain lions/etc. can spawn at any time in their respective biomes?

 

One more thing, have predator aggro ranges been changed at all? Often it feels like you have to boop their snoot before they come attacking. On top of that, occasionally if I am being chased down by a predator, it might lose interest in me sometimes only half a block away behind me, and they walk off like they had never seen me.

[SnowDog1942]

17 minutes ago, madmole said:

Masvidal is going to wreck Usman and shock the world. He trains with Yoel, so he will be ready for any weak sauce wrestling Usman can do, and Usman doesn't want to grind him against the cage because look what Masvidal did to Diaz against the cage? He diced him open with elbows. His cardio might suck though since he took the fight on short notice. I'm hoping he can do some big damage early and get a finish, Usman is boring.

We want to overhaul spawning and properly reset chunks based on server preference.

I hope you are right…. but I'm gonna have to get against you on this one

[Ayrton]

Good people, after a long time I return to the forum, and I really wanted to try the experimental and I have these graphics problems, I want to apologize if this is not the right place, I am very lost with the new forum, which is very cool by the way, I would like to know what I can do to solve this since it is very annoying, I already tried with the anisotropic x2 and it remains the same, I have all the updated drivers I leave here a video of what happens 
 

 

1 minute ago, Ayrton said:

Buenas personas, después de mucho tiempo vuelvo al foro, y realmente quería probar el experimental y tengo estos problemas gráficos, quiero disculparme si este no es el lugar correcto, estoy muy perdido con el nuevo foro, que es muy bueno por cierto, me gustaría saber qué puedo hacer para resolver esto, ya que es muy molesto, ya probé con el anisotrópico x2 y sigue siendo el mismo, tengo todos los controladores actualizados. Dejo aquí un video de lo que pasa 
 

 

 

you can notice how it flickers and changes the quality

[madmole]

29 minutes ago, SnowDog1942 said:

I hope you are right…. but I'm gonna have to get against you on this one

I'm being hopeful. Likely Usman will out grind him. Tuck his head down in a cage grind, or take him down and lay on him. But I'm hoping the knees and elbows will be too much. Usman's never fought a really creative striker like Masvidal though so it could be fun. Masvidal continues to surprise though, a few years ago he was a quitter/coaster. Now he brings it, so we'll see :).

[BadPlayer]

1 hour ago, madmole said:

I am trying all game can spawn any time, every day or night now, with the larger game being really rare. Then there isn't ever a dumb blackout period of no chance of getting a stag which seems like a better design. One problem with the old setup was a guy joins a server on day 2 and all the other jerks cleared out all the meat so you are stuck waiting for 2 weeks before anything respawned. So I think this will actually be better the more I think about it, a constant supply of small game and very rare chance for wild game to spawn too, at any time, with only a 1 day delay.

I think there are to many animal spawns now after the patch. In 3 game days I have killed 3 bears, 3 stags, 4 doe, 3 dire wolves, 2 regular wolves, a chicken and 2 rabbits. Seems a bit much.

 

I was thinking having bears spawn rarely, deer spawn at night, and the little critters during the day. Seems a little better.

 

On a side note, I love the localization pushed from servers now and in the last patch, I love the writable storage boxes.

Great work!!

[faatal]

18 hours ago, Adam the Waster said:

@faatal

 

i had this question for awhile and i didn't know how to describe it, but here it goes!

 

why do some zombie models spawn more then others? take the nurse for example, she spawns often in homes, businesses, horde nights and just roaming around, while some zombies like the Farmer and the stripper spawns less often then other zombies, even if you go to those areas you still won't find them there, i rarely see a farmer or stripper during horde night, but i see tons of nurses!

 

this also kinda goes in hand with biome zombies, i never see a burned zombie in a horde, and i don't see a lumberjack in a horde ether, and in those biomes in the wild, only those zombies spawn (say burnt zombies only spawn in the wild but no other zombies except at night).  any reason why?

 

if it didn't make sense, im sorry i don't know how to explain it.    

Because of data in XML. Designers make spawn groups with different types of zombies in the different groups for different use cases. That is how they set them. Randomness also is a factor.

[Adam the Waster]

51 minutes ago, madmole said:

I like this because it is pretty much the same for sp and mp. Everyone can hunt every day and not have these huge droughts of no meat in cleared areas.

I went with a high chance for small game, low chance for big game, spawning any time. every day.

For predators, they spawn only at night in the starter biomes, every 4 days like zombies.

(still tweaking things, but I think this is going to be what we do for the next patch)

 

i think it makes sense that animals are everywhere!

 

I mean in a world where humans are not as common, Nature will take over! and i think a Nice pack of Coyotes would kill a zombie easy!

 

Maybe in the forest Coyotes could spawn as a Weak hostile animal to kill. Still makes no sense why Coyotes just live in the desert? 

[max2k]

@Ayrton.

The Quality change is  "mode de resolution dynamica" or what is in your language. You have set it to automatical and 60 fps minimum. It trys to lower  all graphcis setings to hold 60fps. Turn it to 30 fps or off ...

[faatal]

6 hours ago, Khalagar said:

@faatal Excellent work with the Junk Sledge! Used it all night, it's really good in placement mode now. It's not amazing in handheld mode, but I went from carrying one as a meme weapon to carrying 2 and actually using them constantly late game to save ammo. Dual Junk Sledge + Steel Sledge can completely lock down a door. Mods now affect it in placement mode, and it's tracking and attack speed actually seem to scale etc and work well. 10/10, only thing else I can dream of is it being a bit stronger in handheld form, but my trusty sledge / axe gets the job done in the interrim and it's a lot more usable in handheld thanks to the knockback.

Nice. I tested and tweaked mostly with it deployed. Using them hand held is not something I would do, since it stops me from using another weapon. I see the sledge as a crowd control device and want the damage low, but who knows where the design will end up at.

[Henrique]

My 2 cents on animal spawning!!

Before this patch i had to search for animals to get meat and after the patch in one day got enough meat for the rest of the game!!

I personally think animal spawn is to high i know this is still exp hopefully this will change!

 

[madmole]

This is what I'm testing now which will be in the next build unless I change it again:

 

Changed: All small game (rabbits and chickens) and large game (boars, and deer) spawn every day or night at any time. Small game has a high chance to spawn, large game has a low chance to spawn.

Large Predator animals such as bears and dire wolves only spawn at night in the forests. Wolves have a very small chance to spawn in forests during the day

Changed: Enemy respawn time is reduced in the wasteland. At night, Zombies will respawn immediately, making the wasteland harder to survive at night

[faatal]

2 hours ago, Jay_ombie said:

Animations are still stiff for animals, also when they die there mesh mangles up to and deforms for some reason. 

MM is working on spawning, which is not going to make the anims better. Death issues are ragdolls. These have nothing to do with each other and are worked on by different people with different tasks and priorities. Hopefully, someday, the animators will improve the animal animations.

[Skippy5]

I have only created and restarted twice since B163 dropped, so maybe just bad luck, but I have made three observations since that have detracted or I feel need tweaked from the previous build... 

 

Spawn Location - Previous build I played 2-3 maps and I woke/started about 500 or so meters from the trader. Both my spawns in the newly create B163 maps were a long ways from the trader (1.6 km and 2.4km). 

 

Quests - Both newly created maps seems to be giving quests a lot farther away than it did in the previous build. There was a nice mix of close and distanced quests in the previous build - this time it seems like most are far away 1km+. That is okay for T3+ quests, but T1 and T2 should be fairly close - especially with the next discussed change. 

 

Animals - I assume the spawn rate will be adjusted based off other comments I read, but the mix needs adjusted too. The loot has been changed so we do not get quality weapons for a while. My Day 1 experience had me dodging a bear and wolf while running to the trader (I killed two deer and a two chickens on the way). While in the trader the traders building was attacked by 2 dire wolfs and a regular wolf (in the time I looted the containers, talked to the trader, got a quest, and looked at his inventory). Then while trying to build my starter base I was attacked by another dire wolf (ran to the trader and killed it from the wall) and then a bear spawned beside me while building (lucky it went the other way).  I don't like to cheese the game, but running to the trader is the only way I made it through without dying (and I only play hardcore, so death means restart). The resources just don't exist anymore to enable us to even stand a chance to deal with this many/types of spawns on day 1. Day 2 I spent building my base and looting some nearby houses for basic suppliers (cooking pot/grill). I only encountered one dire wolf, one regular wolf, and one deer during this time. On the flip side, the previous version - I was trying to find a bear to make a cigar from day 20-40 and couldn't find one - just think there needs a a bit of tweaking here. 

 

Overall I am really enjoying this alpha - thanks for the update! 

[faatal]

10 hours ago, Ayrton said:

Good people, after a long time I return to the forum, and I really wanted to try the experimental and I have these graphics problems, I want to apologize if this is not the right place, I am very lost with the new forum, which is very cool by the way, I would like to know what I can do to solve this since it is very annoying, I already tried with the anisotropic x2 and it remains the same, I have all the updated drivers I leave here a video of what happens 
 

you can notice how it flickers and changes the quality

Do not set min FPS to 60. The default is lower for a reason. That means within a short time of FPS going below 60, it will reduce your resolution. There are plenty of times playing the game where FPS will drop below 60, so it needs some padding, so you are not frequently jumping to different resolutions.

[Skippy5]

27 minutes ago, faatal said:

Nice. I tested and tweaked mostly with it deployed. Using them hand held is not something I would do, since it stops me from using another weapon. I see the sledge as a crowd control device and want the damage low, but who knows where the design will end up at.

Crowd control is exactly how I use the junk sledge. I thought it was worthless until I figure out it knocks them quite a distance. My horde base has a walkway that leads to the entrance of my main base - with another protected walkway running parallel to it where I fight from. I put the junk sledge beside the walkway and it punches several of them off the walkway while I club/shoot the others. Using this technique on day 35 only 4-5 Z's made it down the walkway 15 blocks total to the entrance (where they were dispatched by shotgun turrets). I love the sledge addition to the game - it is fun once you figure out how to use it.

[Laz Man]

31 minutes ago, madmole said:

This is what I'm testing now which will be in the next build unless I change it again:

 

Changed: All small game (rabbits and chickens) and large game (boars, and deer) spawn every day or night at any time. Small game has a high chance to spawn, large game has a low chance to spawn.

Large Predator animals such as bears and dire wolves only spawn at night in the forests. Wolves have a very small chance to spawn in forests during the day

Changed: Enemy respawn time is reduced in the wasteland. At night, Zombies will respawn immediately, making the wasteland harder to survive at night

Looks good MM.  I sometimes miss the infinite biome spawn of the wasteland of ole Alpha days.  I bet alot of old timers will like that change...

 

All is missing is an incentive to go to the wasteland...which I know will come at some point....:)

[Vintorez]

Is it an issue with certain PoIs or some other factor that sometimes makes stealth just seem completely nonfunctional?

 

Full padded armor, From the Shadows rank 3, Silent jumping book, avoiding/breaking trash, and no crouch sprinting. Sometimes I can weave through a house sneak killing every zombie outside of the occasional intentional ambush trap, but other times almost every room is immediately woken and on me as soon as the red dots from quest tracking shows up.