Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[Phoenixshade35]

1 minute ago, Gazz said:

 

You can mod that in if you want. A bigger timed charge with the explosive properties of dynamite.

It being sticky makes it better at destroying structures.

 

Or you use the dynamite that you already have.

my favorite thing to do was lay down several tnt in a poi, around all lode bearing areas i could get to, then detonating the one at the entrance and seeing how it did, it was fun haha, i also don't know how to mod lol

[Blake_]

1 minute ago, Gazz said:

That's wrong instead of obvious.

Adding a new POI to random gen is 1 entry in the list of POI and it can be included on the next regen.

 

Yeah. Ezy pezy. No elevation problems whatsoever with just adding the entry to the "generation list" . There are more things to it for it to not be placed in a jarring way and you know it, and you argue nevertheless.

 

I feel like you are random generating me.

[JCrook1028]

8 hours ago, madmole said:

Because it was just dye and pure black and didn't look good. When you see the new wolf you will understand.

Well it sure looked better than having the two use the same model as they do now. Why not wait to replace it til the new model is done?

[JCrook1028]

5 hours ago, Demandred1957 said:

Why should I have to downgrade past "default" to get a balanced play?

I have tried a play where I dumped points in LL.. didn't get anything except more empty tin cans.

If I have to change settings past "default" i'm out. shouldn't have to do that to make it playable.

lol, thanks.. Demandred ftw!

I also have a >very< modest youtube channel under the same name where I play this game on permadeath if you are down.

Just a tip. You'll do much better not playing on a controller on the PC. Mouse/KB are FAR more accurate. Maybe that's part of why it feels so tough for you. Seeing you trying to aim the blunderbuss at a zombie 4 feet in front of you and missing twice I wanted to pull my hair out.

5 hours ago, Demandred1957 said:

90 min days...nice.

try lowering that to 60 first.

don't care about "difficulty" settings, since that just makes them more spongy as far as I can tell.

also tried getting LL to lvl 2 right off the bat, didn't get anything special at all..

It's kinda hard coded to suck now till you get to a higher stage.

I have video's up on my channel that shows what i am talking about.

lol, ok.

LL at low levels is a total waste. LL2 is 10%.... 10% of a low gamestage (anything under 200) is not worth the points. Fact.

5 hours ago, Demandred1957 said:

Default, pregen 01, 32 zoms per blood moon horde loot respawn @15 days.

My strategy is to use my brains to stay alive..

Don't know if it's a bug or not, but I burn through food like crazy just standing still..

like for real, watch it tick down every few seconds..

I loot some of the smaller poi's, since I have found out on a prev run how nerfed looting is.. but other than that, I just do new player stuff.

And yeah, I play super scaredy cat on top of that.,, I don't go into a fight unless I have a (small) chance of winning.

I literally don't find hardly anything except paper, and the few odd blueprints that won't help me NOW. Only one I know of is the pump shotty blueprint, which takes a bunch of forged steel and shotgun parts to make..smh

and single player.

ugh no.. Although I fully support your option to do it..

Nothing about anything you said sounds even remotely fun to me.

Yea, Default difficulty is actually one stage BELOW what the game is balanced for. It's balanced for Nomad, 100% damage to/from the zombies. They dropped default down to adventurer cause people were moaning in !8 it was too hard. So, you have more zombies but they're weaker than normal and you have loot respawning quicker.

[Aldranon]

2 hours ago, Blake_ said:

 

Yeah. Ezy pezy. No elevation problems whatsoever with just adding the entry to the "generation list" . There are more things to it for it to not be placed in a jarring way and you know it, and you argue nevertheless.

 

I feel like you are random generating me.

 

What are you talking about <user_name>, your opinion is very <thoughtful_statement> to us. We at Al's Marina TFP, care deeply about you significant view on <banal_topic>.  Have a free Breakfast Burrito on us at the low low price of <cost * 3>!!

[Gazz]

@Aldranon

I think what you mean is: We value your feedback and will continue to work with the community to improve your gaming experience.

[Yopo]

Honestly I’m quite fond of those wonky elevation problems that appear in RWG, always fun for me to find some crazy off the wall looking terrain. makes it feel like I’m really in a world that was wrecked by more than just a zombie Apocalypse outbreak. Will be kinda sad to see it get all fixed, but least the world will look a bit nicer I suppose, I’ll just have to find a mod to screw it all up whenever I feel like it. 

[Aldranon]

7 minutes ago, Gazz said:

@Aldranon

I think what you mean is: We value your feedback and will continue to work with the community to improve your gaming experience.

Sorry, I tried to modify the message our slot machines print out after the person losses 5000 dukes.

 

BTW, your good at this... Very good... Ever think entering politics?   Merkel could use some help with Trump I think.

[Jost Amman]

12 hours ago, JCrook1028 said:

14 hours ago, Demandred1957 said:

Seems like that's the direction it's heading. But the problem with your statement is how they are "re" creating the product that I liked and purchased.

I didn't pay to have broken vulture swarms, or all the fun taken out of looting at lower levels.

Seems like Mad and the rest do a lot of listening to the squeaky wheels here instead of the majority.

And there is plenty of group think here as well, that just chirp on about how every change is great and "they" love it. Blerg..

What you paid for was an incomplete game that you did not know how it would be when final releases comes. Fact.

Wrong. We actually had a very good general idea a long time ago how this game would pan out. Early Access is a Steam thing and has its rules, but The Fun Pimps took a "moral obligation" in the points they promised in the Original Kickstarter back in 2013.

 

That has nothing to do with the Steam development and distribution. However they've been living up to their promises (and more) up to now and the only missing points are Bandits and the Story (which makes sense since it's the last thing you'd add to the game).

 

As for the rest I disagree with Demadred1957 in that TFP are doing a great job listening to players... so much that they added the GameSpark (is that the name??) thing to have a better idea on what the players really like and (do most) and what they don't like (do less). As far as I'm concerned they rightly only listen to feedback that fits their own vision of the game, they're surely NOT going to change the core game vision based on feedback.

 

@Demadred1957: ss for the "fun" part, I'm confident if they find something's not fun they'll change it in the next patch or before release, rest assured.

[beHypE]

13 hours ago, madmole said:

All that stuff has been designed for a while, but there is no way it is going on the roadmap for A20. All hands on deck for RWG getting hopefully a gold version for A20, some new special infected, and new art sums up A20 most likely. We'll reveal stuff as it gets done.

Not gonna lie this sounds underwhelming to say the least. A19 is already mostly an eye candy release and provides less replayability value than the previous alphas due to the linear progression, I really hope those special infected will improve the gameplay.

[MechanicalLens]

3 minutes ago, beHypE said:

Not gonna lie this sounds underwhelming to say the least. A19 is already mostly an eye candy release and provides less replayability value than the previous alphas due to the linear progression, I really hope those special infected will improve the gameplay.

Just goes to show that we're getting closer and closer to gold.

[JCrook1028]

Just now, MechanicalLens said:

Just goes to show that we're getting closer and closer to gold.

Exactly. We'll see less and less "major" Alpha's. Bandits and the storyline are the only major's left to add. The rest is polish and balance.

[beHypE]

10 minutes ago, MechanicalLens said:

Just goes to show that we're getting closer and closer to gold.

Hmmmm I wish I could agree, but I don't. It shows that the real gameplay features are hard to develop and take the backburner yet again... I wasn't expecting bandits given the huge task at hand, but vehicle mods were supposed to make it in A19 initially, and legendary loot seems like one of those features that need mostly design and art, not any real development, so it's a bummer.

 

EDIT : gamestaged POIs/biomes is another much anticipated feature, especially since A19 made everything feel slow-paced and grind-gated.

[Jost Amman]

12 hours ago, Toban said:

Thank you. Yeah, I'm doing the same. I'm just in creative trying out different designs till stable drops. And yeah, I always do the same and make a little base to begin with hehe. The castles take so long to make safe lol.

Yeah, first and last castle on the hill to fight zombies in haha. Was fun though, not so fun watching the castle fall but...still fun.

Foundations! Dig deep foundations into the hill and you will never have to worry about that again! 

[Toban]

13 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

Foundations! Dig deep foundations into the hill and you will never have to worry about that again! 

Ah, okay. 

[Laz Man]

14 hours ago, madmole said:

Can everyone take their toxic little arguments down about 300%. Thank you.

 

Laz and Toban carry on with nice creative works that inspire us to do something constructive in our personal apocalypses.

Repainted the whole thing based on your recommendations and did a short video.  It is much brighter and closer to the reference photo.  Ill post it later once its done uploading.  Here are some comparison photos for now.

[MechanicalLens]

Has anyone else been encountering trees placed inside the large boulders upon world gen? Not a lot, I've only encountered this a couple of times.

[Jost Amman]

3 minutes ago, MechanicalLens said:

Has anyone else been encountering trees placed inside the large boulders upon world gen? Not a lot, I've only encountered this a couple of times.

That's the famous "Tree in the Rock", if you can cut that tree you'll become The King Lumberjack! 

27 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

Repainted the whole thing based on your recommendations and did a short video.  It is much brighter and closer to the reference photo.  Ill post it later once its done uploading.  Here are some comparison photos for now.

Spoiler

Amazing job! 🤯

[Toban]

11 hours ago, madmole said:

What baffles me is all these "experts" chime in on my twitter castles and act like they would be horrid for base defense. I've got two meter thick walls and so may oh @%$*#! towers they would never get to me. No it wouldn't be efficient and repair would take some work the next day, but I would survive without firing a single round if I wanted to IMO.

The glowing eyes are the dead giveaway because in first person a cow looks small.

Agreed. We've defended our castle builds before, it can be done. But we do the same as you, and many others and build 2 bases. A home and a battleground base. It just makes more sense to protect your stuff just in case. But I'd do that whether I build a castle or live above shamways. I always want to protect my stuff lol

[PoloPoPo]

Can we just once thank the guy who had the idea to let zombies fight against animals? I could watch frozen lumberjacks fighting against mountain lions or bears for hours 😄

[MechanicalLens]

21 minutes ago, Toban said:

Agreed. We've defended our castle builds before, it can be done. But we do the same as you, and many others and build 2 bases. A home and a battleground base. It just makes more sense to protect your stuff just in case. But I'd do that whether I build a castle or live above shamways. I always want to protect my stuff lol

Just keep all of your workstations and your storage on top of a tall, multi-block thick wood frame pillar next to your horde base. It'll all be fine.

12 minutes ago, PoloPoPo said:

Can we just once thank the guy who had the idea to let zombies fight against animals? I could watch frozen lumberjacks fighting against mountain lions or bears for hours 😄

Have you tried spawning in 50 strippers to do battle with 50 bears? The results are... interesting. 🤣

[Laynie]

9 hours ago, falloutcloud said:

Not just any cat. The undead cat from Pet Cematary. 

*Says in her best Gage voice* "Church!*

[Crater Creator]

11 hours ago, madmole said:

I love it when realism trumps feature requests. Uh no Arizona does not have polar bears, and computers do not have 100 gig video cards yet so we can't add stuff forever. We're lucky to have what we have, and we're not getting any new animals except maybe a dire wolf model.

If you're going to the trouble of redoing the art, might I suggest a change to a zombie wolf?

 

It's come up on the Steam forum recently that dire wolves don't fit well with the other entities.  You've established a consistent visual language where glowing eyes indicate a 'feral' zombie throughout the rest of the game... except for dire wolves, which have glowing eyes BUT give meat instead of rotten flesh.  Plus, dire wolves are the only extinct animal in the game.  Arizona doesn't have polar bears, but no place on Earth has dire wolves, and it's been that way for about 10,000 years.  I assumed dire wolves were added not because they're a logical choice for this zombie game, but because you wanted another animal and could get away with coloring and scaling the existing wolf instead of making a separate model.

 

Now, you could tweak the art, the lore, and possibly the name to make the dire wolf belong more.  But I think it'd be a better use of time to just follow the same path as the bear, and make an obviously zombified wolf with nasty gory chunks torn out of its hide.

 

I have to say the meat from all the dire wolves has been nice, though.

[MechanicalLens]

3 minutes ago, Crater Creator said:

If you're going to the trouble of redoing the art, might I suggest a change to a zombie wolf?

 

It's come up on the Steam forum recently that dire wolves don't fit well with the other entities.  You've established a consistent visual language where glowing eyes indicate a 'feral' zombie throughout the rest of the game... except for dire wolves, which have glowing eyes BUT give meat instead of rotten flesh.  Plus, dire wolves are the only extinct animal in the game.  Arizona doesn't have polar bears, but no place on Earth has dire wolves, and it's been that way for about 10,000 years.  I assumed dire wolves were added not because they're a logical choice for this zombie game, but because you wanted another animal and could get away with coloring and scaling the existing wolf instead of making a separate model.

 

Now, you could tweak the art, the lore, and possibly the name to make the dire wolf belong more.  But I think it'd be a better use of time to just follow the same path as the bear, and make an obviously zombified wolf with nasty gory chunks torn out of its hide.

 

I have to say the meat from all the dire wolves has been nice, though.

The 11th Commandment is as follows: Thou shall not touch the dire wolf's meat.

[Toban]

1 hour ago, Laz Man said:

Repainted the whole thing based on your recommendations and did a short video.  It is much brighter and closer to the reference photo.  Ill post it later once its done uploading.  Here are some comparison photos for now.

You did such a great job at recreating it mate. The bottom left pic looks so cool. Looking forward to the video.