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Alpha 19 Dev Diary


madmole

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29 minutes ago, madmole said:

Why did to bedrock when the ore is right where you are?

 

Well I start the mine early and if I go at a 45 degree angle it is only 1 block in my floor to go down and I can easily walk up and down the ramp, and can see with just a torch moved every so often.  Then hardly any of the actual mine is under my base, but is protected by it. 

 

I am usually just after stone so I just keep going down and end up hitting bedrock. 

 

After that I will start mining in straight lines at bedrock and if the game lasts long enough they will become underground tunnels across the map to other bases, heh. 

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3 minutes ago, MechanicalLens said:

Take a look at my builds and you'll understand why. I've got to have some method of feeding my 4+ forges dedicated to stone around the clock. And before you suggest anything, what works for me works for me, alright? :)

I'm not saying you are doing it wrong, you can play how you want. I got annoyed grinding stone to sand, and then smelting it to cement, and chucking all the wood in the furnaces, etc etc etc. So I changed how I do it, here it is:

I do dig quests and that gets me a surplus of clay. (for a while at least)
I mine coal and nitrate ASAP every night, and that gives me a surplus of stone.
I shovel up the cement mix, and the blue tarps which gives me all the cement and cobblestone rocks I need.

I do mine the rock pallets at POIs, because its faster tahn killing a zombie for about the same XP and I get what seems like a lot of stones for it compared to stone mining, but I could be wrong. I think it is more because XP is given per quantity, so that tells me that one pile has more harvest than a regular stone block does.

I shovel sand in the desert or at const POIS, because grinding stone to sand takes too long and is a waste of stone.

 

That said, if you are semi patient you don't need to melt stone to cement and you don't need to mine stone once you stop smelting cement you end up having plenty. I have my 7x7x however tall it is solid r concrete with 5000 cement to spare by day 35, on normal day length.

 

7 minutes ago, manni44 said:

Ever needed 100.000 Concrete mix  for a building ? i guess not....but some of us do ;) 

ull never find that much in pois in a short time.

No I don't need 100k because I'm not burning it up in forges and grinding sand. I'll buy it from the trader if I'm short of mats, 200,000 dukes in my safe isn't helping me.

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6 minutes ago, madmole said:

That said, if you are semi patient you don't need to melt stone to cement and you don't need to mine stone once you stop smelting cement you end up having plenty. I have my 7x7x however tall it is solid r concrete with 5000 cement to spare by day 35, on normal day length.

 

 

Buwhahahahaha ... 7 x 7 ...  my base has closets bigger than 7x7 ... :D

 

You play a zombie game with some building.  I play a building game with inconvenient zombies.   Speaking of which, that new crawling one gives me nightmares.  You guys need therapy....  and drugs.  I wish I'd recorded my reaction the first time I saw one.  You guys would laugh til you peed your pants.

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1 minute ago, madmole said:

I'm not saying you are doing it wrong, you can play how you want. I got annoyed grinding stone to sand, and then smelting it to cement, and chucking all the wood in the furnaces, etc etc etc. So I changed how I do it, here it is:

I do dig quests and that gets me a surplus of clay. (for a while at least)
I mine coal and nitrate ASAP every night, and that gives me a surplus of stone.
I shovel up the cement mix, and the blue tarps which gives me all the cement and cobblestone rocks I need.

I do mine the rock pallets at POIs, because its faster tahn killing a zombie for about the same XP and I get what seems like a lot of stones for it compared to stone mining, but I could be wrong. I think it is more because XP is given per quantity, so that tells me that one pile has more harvest than a regular stone block does.

I shovel sand in the desert or at const POIS, because grinding stone to sand takes too long and is a waste of stone.

 

That said, if you are semi patient you don't need to melt stone to cement and you don't need to mine stone once you stop smelting cement you end up having plenty. I have my 7x7x however tall it is solid r concrete with 5000 cement to spare by day 35, on normal day length.

 

Hey, to each their own, right? :)

 

Now unless I'm next to a desert, I can't be bothered to drive all the way there and back every 2 days; instead, I just turn a third of my stone into sand after every mining expedition.

 

Unless it's been changed, the stone pallets actually reward you with LESS stone than conventional stone blocks after a certain point down the Mother Lode tree. For XP purposes though, yeah, it's quite attractive, but by that point in the game I'm never carrying stone on me when I'm raiding POI's anyway, so I just leave them behind. I have enough frowny moments of tossing out glass every time I pick it up as it is. ;)

 

I suppose one reason for my method is I often bite off more than I can chew. By day 21 I already have the foundation and much of the walls in place that I would otherwise realistically have constructed by day 35+

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1 hour ago, madmole said:

We're alienating who exactly? The game has a higher review score than it has in years and sales are better than ever. Seems like we are on track if you ask me. We focused on building and crafting for years, and finally give guns a little love and not even 10% of the effort that went into building and somehow you view that as abandoning the builders? We still have great things to come to building. I like to build so its not likely we'll leave building as is, we have some great ideas to improve it, it is just a matter of somehow squeezing it on the roadmap, then bandits and other stuff gets pushed back, further, again and again. Eventually we have to save some @%$*#! for the sequel, we can't stay in alpha forever and someone is going to feel like they got screwed.

 

As a long time player and builder I just wanted to comment on the number one issue some of us have and this is the inability to lock down the map. Yes I know why it has to happen but eventually you guys will have to just say enough is enough and leave the map elements in place and move on to BETA. Well over a year ago you guys said that the map was locked and nothing new would be added and yet we still have mandatory map wipes. Now before you get all defensive, LOL, let me say that I'm glad you re-opened the map because you've done some great things. I guess, as a builder, it's frustrating to see hundreds of hours of work wiped every few months and yes I know that no one is forcing us to move on to a fresh alpha. I also know that the wipes do help keep the game fresh but you never know when the next patch will be out that requires a wipe. It just would be nice to be able to move from alpha to alpha to beta and while elements of the game may change, the map would be stable and you could keep your world intanct.

 

So why am I bringing this up now? Well you mention that you can't stay in alpha forever and talk about a sequel. I'm all for that! Lock down this mother, move to beta, polish up the game, squash the bugs and start working on the sequel! Turn this over to the modders who will have a finished, complete game to mod while you work on the next game. I can only imagine some of the things you have planned for an entirely new game planned with everything you have learned over these past few years. A game designed for faster computers, more RAM, better GPU's and wicked AI.

 

Where do I send my money? :)

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8 minutes ago, Pegasus said:

 

Okay ... I do have a question though ... and I've not seen an answer to it.

 

Why does being dead give these zombies superhuman senses?

 

How is it possible that a zombie can sense me when I am sitting at bedrock under a mountain?  It can somehow hear me/smell me/sense me through 3,000 feet of dirt and rock.

 

By the same token, I can't figure out how rain can get through a vault hatch either, and sunlight get through that same 3,000 feet of dirt and rock.

 

But seriously, how do the zombies sense you that far underground?  I mean a tried and true method of zombie avoidance in zombie films is to find someplace to hide and stay really really still.

In the lore it is something like "on the 7th day on the blood moon the zombies have heightened senses and can find you anywhere".

The simple answer it is because the game is boring if you are safe. So our main design goal is to not ever have the player be 100% safe, without a boat load of work anyway. Obviously 20 meters of steel in every direction and you could AFK several hordes and laugh about it, if that is what you call fun.

Undead cannot be explained by science, so their abilities don't need explained, it just is.

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8 minutes ago, madmole said:

No I don't need 100k because I'm not burning it up in forges and grinding sand. I'll buy it from the trader if I'm short of mats, 200,000 dukes in my safe isn't helping me.

No, but having a million plus dukes in stock is mighty satisfying. Even then, I'm rather pinchy with my spendings.

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13 minutes ago, Toban said:

I bit of kind advice. If you like building, this is the game for you. There is many ways to make your base look awesome. I build all the time and mainly for the look. I am a vanity builder and I have no problem making my base look good. If you see something you want and you cannot craft it in the normal menu, take note of a similar item's resource cost and throw it on the floor then put one in from the cm.

I'm a vanity builder too on some builds. I was talking about extreme vanity, like every block made available cannot be done for performance reasons, coffee pots are 14000 triangles and players cannot be trusted with them :)

But hey install a mod and have at it, or use the cm. We might be able to add more down the road, we'll see.

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5 minutes ago, madmole said:

In the lore it is something like "on the 7th day on the blood moon the zombies have heightened senses and can find you anywhere".

The simple answer it is because the game is boring if you are safe. So our main design goal is to not ever have the player be 100% safe, without a boat load of work anyway. Obviously 20 meters of steel in every direction and you could AFK several hordes and laugh about it, if that is what you call fun.

Undead cannot be explained by science, so their abilities don't need explained, it just is.

Okay, that makes sense.  Which also explains why on the blood moon they go all weird and nutso.

 

It just always seemed weird to me that they could find me no matter where I hid.  

 

Is the lore part of what is being worked on with the backstory campaign y'all are working on?  I can't wait for that to come out.

 

But can y'all maybe work on making it so hatches and windows don't let in the rain and snow?  I mean I can understand a regular window maybe leaking a bit ... but a steel vault hatch?  Or bullet proof glass?

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6 minutes ago, Pegasus said:

Buwhahahahaha ... 7 x 7 ...  my base has closets bigger than 7x7 ... :D

 

You play a zombie game with some building.  I play a building game with inconvenient zombies.   Speaking of which, that new crawling one gives me nightmares.  You guys need therapy....  and drugs.  I wish I'd recorded my reaction the first time I saw one.  You guys would laugh til you peed your pants.

That is a great way to see it. I do both btw, my castle is huge, but I have a 7x7 down the road. Just saying :) Most builds get broke and I have to start over so I don't get the time to build a proper beast base.

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Just now, madmole said:

That is a great way to see it. I do both btw, my castle is huge, but I have a 7x7 down the road. Just saying :) Most builds get broke and I have to start over so I don't get the time to build a proper beast base.

 

I usually play multiplayer, so we usually have a 'horde' base somewhere ... and I build my base for my tastes.  But I also give it general defenses for regular zombies, not for horde nights because I don't spend horde nights at home because it makes me sad when they break the pretties.  

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3 minutes ago, Pegasus said:

Okay, that makes sense.  Which also explains why on the blood moon they go all weird and nutso.

 

It just always seemed weird to me that they could find me no matter where I hid.  

 

Is the lore part of what is being worked on with the backstory campaign y'all are working on?  I can't wait for that to come out.

 

But can y'all maybe work on making it so hatches and windows don't let in the rain and snow?  I mean I can understand a regular window maybe leaking a bit ... but a steel vault hatch?  

That is faatal territory. Probably.

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4 minutes ago, madmole said:

That is faatal territory. Probably.

Faatal, I will send you cookies if you will fix the hatches and windows not letting in the rain and snow any more.  And you tell me where you are so I can send them.  :)

 

Or a bottle of rum.  Or both.

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37 minutes ago, Pegasus said:

Some people are hacked off because there not recipes in the vanilla game for every possible block combination and decoration known to man.  The devs have stated that they cannot add those recipes right now because 1) it would take away from developing key features of the game and 2) because having that many recipes in the crafting menu would cause significant lag.

 

Has everyone forgotten the crafting menu lag from around a16?  Have you forgotten the approximately 857 billion posts from hacked off players because every time they opened their forge menu their game crashed or stuttered? 

What some people like to gloss over is that while the number of recipes has gone down, the number of craftable blocks has gone up more than ever.

There are a bunch of variant blocks that fold out into a lot of things.

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9 minutes ago, madmole said:

I'm a vanity builder too on some builds. I was talking about extreme vanity, like every block made available cannot be done for performance reasons, coffee pots are 14000 triangles and players cannot be trusted with them :)

But hey install a mod and have at it, or use the cm. We might be able to add more down the road, we'll see.

I agree. On a server with others it wouldn't be fair to have someone like me on it haha. I build big or not at all haha. I completely understand why you guys have to limit players. You have a responsibility to protect your players. That's why we have our own server so I can build whatever I want without making life tough for others, and like I said, if I see something I like the look of, I add it from cm. I would advise anyone like me to do the same and get your own server and set your own rules.  

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53 minutes ago, madmole said:

I'm a vanity builder too on some builds. I was talking about extreme vanity, like every block made available cannot be done for performance reasons, coffee pots are 14000 triangles and players cannot be trusted with them :)

But hey install a mod and have at it, or use the cm. We might be able to add more down the road, we'll see.

35 minutes ago, Toban said:

I agree. On a server with others it wouldn't be fair to have someone like me on it haha. I build big or not at all haha. I completely understand why you guys have to limit players. You have a responsibility to protect your players. That's why we have our own server so I can build whatever I want without making life tough for others, and like I said, if I see something I like the look of, I add it from cm. I would advise anyone like me to do the same and get your own server and set your own rules.  

He's not kidding with the big builds. We had an island on ATLAS and we had people complain because we made them lagg out with how big the base was. 

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Unlike modders the devs have the challenging task of making sure the game is performant across a wide range of computer specifications.

 

Out of all of the devs I have watched play in the streams, Madmole is the only real builder ive seen so I believe that he wants to do more for builders.  Let's give them some time to work their magic.

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8 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

Unlike modders the devs have the challenging task of making sure the game is performant across a wide range of computer specifications.

 

Out of all of the devs I have watched play in the streams, Madmole is the only real builder ive seen so I believe that he wants to do more for builders.  Let's give them some time to work their magic.

Yeah. I don't envy having to keep everyone happy. 

Tbh though, I'm 98% happy so it's all good for me lol. I doubt anyone can buy or even make a game they are 100% happy with.

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5 minutes ago, Laynie said:

The thing everyone on here has to remember is, you can't please 100% of the people 100% of the time. No matter what TFP's add to the game or take out, someone will be unhappy. 

 

Very true.  Because everyone has their own idea of how to play the game ... and some of those ideas are completely opposite each other.  

 

But, they've made the game moddable ... so each person can do their own little tweaks to make the game how they want it.  :)

 

I just want the next release... it's been forever (two weeks ... but it's like the two weeks before Christmas)...  LOL

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6 minutes ago, Pegasus said:

 

Very true.  Because everyone has their own idea of how to play the game ... and some of those ideas are completely opposite each other.  

 

But, they've made the game moddable ... so each person can do their own little tweaks to make the game how they want it.  :)

 

I just want the next release... it's been forever (two weeks ... but it's like the two weeks before Christmas)...  LOL

Haha 🙈🤣 yeah same. I personally love the game. I've played over 2000 hours and yet to get bored. However I do understand other people wanting more in the game. I'm a mindless zombie killer, so I'm easily pleased🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️🧟🔫🔫😅🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️🧟

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MM, Gazz, just curious here; there are a few 'missing', "normal" block shapes, not decos, are those on the roadmap for a20 maybe?

(and I caught the bit about cleaning up the current R Shapes, just curious) (and Eymprion has spoiled me, soo many block shapes)

 

One I was looking for in a19 was a full block that has a clip out of it so if you used 1/2 blocks against it at 90 degrees the transition/clip is a 45.

 

 

7dtd_Clipped block outline.jpg

 

Edit: realized I might be confusing how "deco" is being used. I was thinking it was the high triangle count stuff like coffee maker. If it also included additional shapes then my bad.

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9 minutes ago, FileMachete said:

MM, Gazz, just curious here; there are a few 'missing', "normal" block shapes, not decos, are those on the roadmap for a20 maybe?

(and I caught the bit about cleaning up the current R Shapes, just curious) (and Eymprion has spoiled me, soo many block shapes)

 

One I was looking for in a19 was a full block that has a clip out of it so if you used 1/2 blocks against it at 90 degrees the transition/clip is a 45.

 

 

7dtd_Clipped block outline.jpg

The only one I know of like that is a cabinet/cupboard corner.

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2 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

The only one I know of like that is a cabinet corner.

doh! yep, exactly that. :) I went looking for it as I just barrely couldn't focus the wire tool on an e-fence, so needed just a wee bit off the top, heh. Edit: it's a block the zeds would beat on so wanted a "normal" upgradable to r-concrete block.

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