Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[jorbascrumps]

13 hours ago, madmole said:

Any interactive icons "expand" when you hover over them. Perhaps a loading screen tip for that, and this specific issue would be a win.

With all due respect, I don't think a loading screen tip is the solution to this issue. The icon just needs to be adjusted to better convey its usage. For example, adding a down arrow beside the icon.

 

I have no particular dog in this race but I've seen quite a few responses to issues with "we should add a loading screen tip" - and I'm afraid that will become a bit of a crutch. You've often spoken of having simple designs that anyone can understand and the problem here is that people don't understand that they can click the icon. If the solution to that is a loading screen tip something is amiss.

[shorgan]

Just a question:

In some MMOs crafting is possible from reagents in inventory and storage.

 

I guess

a) this is hated by all who say inventory mangement is THE thing of 7Days

and

b) very hard to implement with a lot of boxes in the base?

 

Especially cooking the high end recipes feels very clunky.

(I dont say it is bad. Sure the good food needs to have a price and right now it feels the price is annoying inventory/storage management rather than difficulty getting the ingredients - at a later stage with farming.)

Crafting Vehicles is similar. (ok, I mostly build only one of each for me and my companion.)

 

-

 

Different question: Did the storage chest made from wood and nails get more slots?

I think in an old alpha we only build those, because putting signs on these was possible.

The normal cheap chest couldnt have signs but was the same size, I think.

[Gazz]

11 minutes ago, shorgan said:

In some MMOs crafting is possible from reagents in inventory and storage.

There are some nasty edge cases to consider, though, because of our crafting system.

 

You start a large queue, it pulls items from 3 different workstations. Someone fills up those workstations, then cancels the craft to do something else instead.

Where do all the items go?

 

What you describe really only works if a workstation has it's own large inventory.

[Adam the Waster]

10 hours ago, madmole said:

We are adding pipe weapons to the game, so a pipe baton could be crafted early game so INT players can specialize in melee right away.

and for tier 3?

[Ralathar44]

8 hours ago, Syrex said:

Until Demolishers.. then not so much, least from my experiences..

Welp, mulitple builds have issues with demos so they prolly need some overall tweaking.  But IMO that's when you switch off to your crossbow with flaming bolts and headshot them :P. 

 

30 minutes ago, Gazz said:

There are some nasty edge cases to consider, though, because of our crafting system.

 

You start a large queue, it pulls items from 3 different workstations. Someone fills up those workstations, then cancels the craft to do something else instead.

Where do all the items go?

 

What you describe really only works if a workstation has it's own large inventory.

TBH I'd be happy if a workstation had like a 2 row inventory of it's own.  It'd be an organized way to store things and it'd reduce some of the box/inventory clutter.  IIRC No Man's Sky did that with their food processor, they did it via giving you a UI buttom element you could hit while in the workstation crafting screen that would take you to the workstations inventory and that honestly worked pretty well so they'd be a good case study in case yall were leaning in the direction of pursuing that.


Also, I'd love to see the buttons to auto-stash things in boxes activated with better icons than the current commented out code.  It makes a huge QOL difference to be able to open a box, hit a button, and the relevant items already in the box auto deposit from my inventory.  I'll keep modding it in now I know about it, but it'd be nice to have it baseline a part of the game.

[Alpacko]

43 minutes ago, Adam the Waster said:

and for tier 3?

Spoiler

 

[LewZephyr]

Writable Storage Box  - this was added in the previous exp.  

 

I cant seem to find it in the crafting menu.

I can find it in the creative menu.

 

Had my wife look as well, since I often miss the snake right in front of me.

 

Are we not squinting our eyes enough or is it missing from the crafting menu?

 

Thanks.

[Adam the Waster]

1 minute ago, Alpacko said:

  Hide contents

 

snowdogs favorite exercises  

[Kosmic Kerman]

6 minutes ago, LewZephyr said:

Writable Storage Box  - this was added in the previous exp.  

 

I cant seem to find it in the crafting menu.

I can find it in the creative menu.

 

Had my wife look as well, since I often miss the snake right in front of me.

 

Are we not squinting our eyes enough or is it missing from the crafting menu?

 

Thanks.

I haven’t played since it was added to the game but here is where I would look: 

Search for storage box

Craft it

Put it on your toolbar

Hold “r” select it from the radial menu

[wolfbain5]

10 minutes ago, LewZephyr said:

Writable Storage Box  - this was added in the previous exp.  

 

I cant seem to find it in the crafting menu.

I can find it in the creative menu.

 

Had my wife look as well, since I often miss the snake right in front of me.

 

Are we not squinting our eyes enough or is it missing from the crafting menu?

 

Thanks.

hold r and select the storage you want, like wood frames

[LewZephyr]

4 minutes ago, Kosmic Kerman said:

I haven’t played since it was added to the game but here is where I would look: 

Search for storage box

Craft it

Put it on your toolbar

Hold “r” select it from the radial menu

Sorry I may of not been clear.

 

If you get it from the creative menu, it makes one of those square storage boxes.  But its names Writeable Storage Box.

You can give it a name after you put it where you want it, and while staring at it hold E and there is a write option.

 

The issue is we cannot find it in the crafting menu, to actually create it with in game materials.

 

EDIT - NM I see what you mean, its from the default storage box.   Thank you and @wolfbain5

[jdzane]

On 7/17/2020 at 5:49 PM, JCrook1028 said:

Are you trying to join a server that hasn't been updated?

sorry for the late response.  No, it was a single player game.  I ended up giving up and starting over....again

[Adam the Waster]

Damn i tryed to repair the walls outside of the destroyed Shameway Factory but i can't get the center 1/2 center block!

 

 

 

@madmole

will all the block shapes come to the Shape menu? 

 

[Laz Man]

2 hours ago, CarlCastello said:

With all due respect, I don't think a loading screen tip is the solution to this issue. The icon just needs to be adjusted to better convey its usage. For example, adding a down arrow beside the icon.

 

I have no particular dog in this race but I've seen quite a few responses to issues with "we should add a loading screen tip" - and I'm afraid that will become a bit of a crutch. You've often spoken of having simple designs that anyone can understand and the problem here is that people don't understand that they can click the icon. If the solution to that is a loading screen tip something is amiss.

I agree with your thought process.  A loading screen tip would certainly help but a more intuitive icon would be even better.  Hell, replace the icon with the word "sort" and call it a day.

 

Last I checked there was already 20+ loading screen tips which is probably reaching the too many to read zone for some folks.

 

Those tips would be great during the generating world screen for RWG worlds since that can take anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes depending on size for most newer PCs.

[Phoenixshade35]

Has anyone else found the grease monkey books?  or were they pulled till a20?  Been looking and havent found one yet.

[madmole]

10 hours ago, Blake_ said:

@faatal, is it remotely possible to spawn all POI sleepers as blocks and make the switch to entities on demand like, say when you make noise or hit them for stealth kills? 

 

 

The fps gains could theoretically be worth the trouble. Also, that might be A LOT of work and may affect texture limits depending on how you do stuff. 

 

About the backpack. It could also work to treat it as a block on death when far away from the chunk and as an entity if close. I might be spitting nonsense though. 

Zombies don't spawn until you are basically really close to a POI. Resources for them are probably all loaded at startup since you see them all the time. Textures are streamed to 1 pixel if they aren't in view.

9 hours ago, wolfbain5 said:

dumb is not knowing the definition of temp

 

I never said to push it out disabled.  run it on some machines that are having the issue, disable it, see if issue clears, if it does, then he knows if that is the cause.

Fixing the warnings and then testing does the same thing without writing special code to fix warnings that need fixed anyway though is my point. One step instead of two.

5 hours ago, Thecolours said:

How's the progress on the flying junk turret coming along? 

It isn't coming to A19 any time soon. Probably A20, we can't introduce a new feature like that in a stable build (going stable any day now).

23 minutes ago, Adam the Waster said:

Damn i tryed to repair the walls outside of the destroyed Shameway Factory but i can't get the center 1/2 center block!

 

 

 

@madmole

will all the block shapes come to the Shape menu? 

 

Highly unlikely. IF we do the sweet block overhaul there could be more, but I doubt we would want to clutter the player shape menu with stuff that would be useless to most builders.

5 hours ago, Thaledwyn said:

@madmole

 

General questions:

- Is there an updated list of all weapons for A19 B169 showing their different tiers? The WIKI page is outdated

- Why do some armor items only have hot/cold resi on it and others armor etc.? Comparing these makes no sense. There should be ONE template for all.

 

Some things that don't work as I would expect:

- Unfortunately coloring bikes/motorcycles doesn't work. It only chanegs icon color in bag.

 

Some QoL improvement hints:

- Please let us confirm quest cancelation or move this button to the end of the line (NOT next to the sharing button) 🙂

- A mini map would be helpful (only show it when on a bike/truck so you don't have to stop to look on the map)

- Let us access trader's trade window simultaneously

- Compare stats of armor/cloth to the one you wear instead comparing with the last selected item (this is EXTREMLY confusing). Or do it by pressing ALT or something

- Let us directly drag&drop mods to/from selected items instead to have to do one step more by pressing "adjust/change" first

- Maybe add the slot type to armor description

- A calculated "DPS" display for weapons would be cool (below dmg and attacks/minute) for direct compare

- Let us pick up placed storage containers

- Add a "Search" bar to bags / containers

 

No to everything. Sorry.

[Phoenixshade35]

i do want those half blocks though, they would make for some good looking walls, better than the plates, they just look better to me.

[madmole]

3 hours ago, CarlCastello said:

With all due respect, I don't think a loading screen tip is the solution to this issue. The icon just needs to be adjusted to better convey its usage. For example, adding a down arrow beside the icon.

 

I have no particular dog in this race but I've seen quite a few responses to issues with "we should add a loading screen tip" - and I'm afraid that will become a bit of a crutch. You've often spoken of having simple designs that anyone can understand and the problem here is that people don't understand that they can click the icon. If the solution to that is a loading screen tip something is amiss.

How is a down arrow more intuitive than a backpack icon? What is wrong with a loading screen tip? Maybe a pop out box that says "sort" when you hover the mouse over the backpack would work. At any rate maybe when we put the item sorting storage in while we're there we can improve it somehow.

4 minutes ago, Phoenixshade35 said:

i do want those half blocks though, they would make for some good looking walls, better than the plates, they just look better to me.

They are already in the build menu.

[Phoenixshade35]

weird, i couldnt find the 1/2 centered blocks i wanted, i know recular half blocks are in the game, but the centered ones i havent found in any build menu for blocks

[Galifrey1965]

20 minutes ago, madmole said:

, we can't introduce a new feature like that in a stable build (going stable any day now).

 

So are we gonna have to live with the huge lag spikes while Prefabs load then? It pretty much kills all the modded games tbh.

[jorbascrumps]

14 minutes ago, madmole said:

How is a down arrow more intuitive than a backpack icon? What is wrong with a loading screen tip? Maybe a pop out box that says "sort" when you hover the mouse over the backpack would work. At any rate maybe when we put the item sorting storage in while we're there we can improve it somehow.

Down arrows next to icons are pretty standard for sort buttons. Checkout the attached image for a quick Google search for "sort icon":

 

Spoiler

 

There's nothing wrong with loading tips. The issue is you guys have created an unintuitive situation where most other UI panels have an icon beside the title that is purely decorative. Why would players know to click this specific one? It's an issue of affordance. Players simply don't know to click or hover on the icon because nothing has taught them to do this.

 

The requirements for perks have a similar behaviour but I would also argue that that isn't very intuitive either. They are slightly better because the first row is usually available and shows a shopping cart so that may lead players to wonder why the following row shows a lock. Relying on a tooltip is still a little dicey here though because players may not mouse over the lock to notice.

[Doomofman]

For the love of god do something about the animal spawns in the snow biome...

 

Started a game, on my quest to the first trader which was like 1.3km away, in the first 500m or so I came across 5/6 mountain lions and a bear. I could even see them being spawned in on my path in front of me...

[Kosmic Kerman]

6 minutes ago, CarlCastello said:

Down arrows next to icons are pretty standard for sort buttons. Checkout the attached image for a quick Google search for "sort icon":

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

There's nothing wrong with loading tips. The issue is you guys have created an unintuitive situation where most other UI panels have an icon beside the title that is purely decorative. Why would players know to click this specific one? It's an issue of affordance. Players simply don't know to click or hover on the icon because nothing has taught them to do this.

 

Arguably the requirements for perks have a similar behaviour but I would also argue that that isn't very intuitive either.

What  you are missing is that some people will look for interactable UI elements and others won’t. Putting a down arrow isn’t going to have any effect on the people who don’t look for UI or who don’t pay attention.  On a regular basis people ask for a UI element  that they have read a book. That UI element is in the game, it is clear, and it is intuitive. Some people still don’t notice it because that is just the way some people are. For those who do pay attention, look for UI elements, and care about sorting items, they are likely to click on the sack to see what happens. I don’t care if a down arrrow is added but it’s not really going to change how accessible this feature is. 

[Matt]

11 minutes ago, Doomofman said:

For the love of god do something about the animal spawns in the snow biome...

 

Started a game, on my quest to the first trader which was like 1.3km away, in the first 500m or so I came across 5/6 mountain lions and a bear. I could even see them being spawned in on my path in front of me...

Nothing needs to be changed.  It's been stated before tougher bioms will have greater challenges.  You don't have to do the trader quest right away.  You just have to wait until you have the weapons needed to traverse the snow biom.

[madmole]

23 minutes ago, Galifrey1965 said:

So are we gonna have to live with the huge lag spikes while Prefabs load then? It pretty much kills all the modded games tbh.

No, Faatal is looking into it. We can't go stable with lag spikes.

10 minutes ago, Doomofman said:

For the love of god do something about the animal spawns in the snow biome...

 

Started a game, on my quest to the first trader which was like 1.3km away, in the first 500m or so I came across 5/6 mountain lions and a bear. I could even see them being spawned in on my path in front of me...

Stay out of the snow, it is going to be a very hard biome in the future, this is just the beginning of that. Just cancel the quest and get another one.