Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[Crater Creator]

Or better yet, forget the dire wolf (3 canids are enough) and put that time to making a kickass shark, crocodilian, fish, or whatever water-based animal sparks inspiration.  I know zombies swim now, but I think we'll need something unique to the water 'biome' when that water overhaul finally comes to pass.

[Laynie]

8 hours ago, Demandred1957 said:

Mainly because i don't care about the blood moon horde... That is the least of my worries since i use a glock9 style base... The only time it's a issue is when i am up in the high hundreds days and i fall through a door/hole in the base right into the mob.

It's the rest of the time i have a issue with.

And the stupid op bears, mountain lions, and dire wolves..

I would like to, but a lot of the mods just make me feel like I'm "cheating" (not to crap on others gameplay).

But then again, I just play on default, so toning things down via settings just doesn't sit right either.

I am not Rambo, or JoJo, but I don't want to have to turn things down from default (which is what anybody should be able to play on hence the name) to get a fun experience.

kinda conflicted I know, but that's just the way it is.

Yeah, F explosives, except for the frag grenade.. And even then I have almost killed myself with those on more than a few times.

By the sound of it, your world is royally effing you in the butt with no foreplay. I would reset. Also I watch Glock 9 and he plays a tough game. He likes it, it's fun for him but not everyone will enjoy it as much as him.( P.s did you watch him on Needs Gaming lol. ) Maybe up the loot, and give that a go. Messing around with settings isn't a "dirty" thing, it's how you learn what you like for your play style. We've been playing it years and I can tell you my first time I refused to play without the ability to fly up if dogs came lol 😂🤣🙈 we play crazy settings now because sometimes getting murdered is funny. Not like you can enjoy that twice in real life 🤷 Find what's fun. Then post to us when you have that perfect play through!

2 hours 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 crazy good with this. 🤯🌷

44 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.

Zombie wolf could be exciting! I can imagine seeing it it running up to me as I bob in mi pants (Translation, do a little poo in my underwear!)🙈💩

[beerfly]

8 hours ago, Demandred1957 said:

Mainly because i don't care about the blood moon horde... That is the least of my worries since i use a glock9 style base... The only time it's a issue is when i am up in the high hundreds days and i fall through a door/hole in the base right into the mob.

It's the rest of the time i have a issue with.

And the stupid op bears, mountain lions, and dire wolves..

I would like to, but a lot of the mods just make me feel like I'm "cheating" (not to crap on others gameplay).

But then again, I just play on default, so toning things down via settings just doesn't sit right either.

I am not Rambo, or JoJo, but I don't want to have to turn things down from default (which is what anybody should be able to play on hence the name) to get a fun experience.

kinda conflicted I know, but that's just the way it is.

Yeah, F explosives, except for the frag grenade.. And even then I have almost killed myself with those on more than a few times.

Reminds me of exactly me in early weeks in 7dtd, I was curious to move on than survive. Of course, that had its effect, a bad one.

The main problem was I was in a rush, always, not giving time to take care of the details, strategy, plans, not for hours, but for days or week ahead.

 

No one is Rambo, but we act like we are better than him once we learn how the game works.

 

Keep kicking, even make a new safe, why not, you gonna have some fun sooner than you think

[Outlaw_187]

7 hours ago, STyK_ said:

is anyone else's primitive bow broken? and by broken I mean invisible arrows when drawing? and when you hit your target the arrows float in the air and twitch.

I'm assuming everyone is experiencing this? Most annoying bug I've seen so far. 

I'm kinda getting used to it now. 

 

Also is it just me or as of last patch/update b177 & obviously this current b178, does the primitive bow reload kinda suck now? It's very slow and just doesn't feel right.

[Jay_ombie]

Optimisation is wholesome delight to tackle I know, and I hope we can reach a place one day where we can really push this game to the max and fully utilise our PC's.

 

Vsync is off

Options on HIGH

LOD medium settings.

 

 

That situation above for instance I am outputting 77fps average stationary on a RWG map. Yet CPU, GPU are clearly way out from being pushed to any extreme and my system isn't top end by any means.

 

The headroom is profoundly encouraging with what we could achieve here if the bottle neck of 'some-kind' was pinched and streamlined some what.

[STyK_]

40 minutes ago, Outlaw_187 said:

I'm assuming everyone is experiencing this? Most annoying bug I've seen so far. 

I'm kinda getting used to it now. 

 

Also is it just me or as of last patch/update b177 & obviously this current b178, does the primitive bow reload kinda suck now? It's very slow and just doesn't feel right.

I feel like its different too but its likely just the arrow missing. One little thing like that and it all feels a little weird. Hard to tell when I have the bow fully drawn.

[Outlaw_187]

7 hours ago, STyK_ said:

I feel like its different too but its likely just the arrow missing. One little thing like that and it all feels a little weird. Hard to tell when I have the bow fully drawn.

I was feeling that as of b177 update too. It's like the bow didn't want to reload or something. 

Idk, it just feels off. You're right though, the arrow missing is just @%$*#!ed, lol. Plus how twitchy the arrows are that stick out of the Z's & some just float in the air. Some silly @%$*#!.

[Jay_ombie]

7 hours ago, Outlaw_187 said:

I was feeling that as of b177 update too. It's like the bow didn't want to reload or something. 

Idk, it just feels off. You're right though, the arrow missing is just @%$*#!ed, lol. Plus how twitchy the arrows are that stick out of the Z's & some just float in the air. Some silly @%$*#!.

Ironic that the knuckles got fixed only for us to now have broken bows.

I am wondering with the Spear changes in the latest build if it some how affected the Arrows... 

Either way, hopefully for a fast fix with this as bows are a foremost item that gets used a lot with a new game.

 

[AtomicUs5000]

2 hours 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.

 

2 hours ago, Crater Creator said:

Or better yet, forget the dire wolf (3 canids are enough) and put that time to making a kickass shark, crocodilian, fish, or whatever water-based animal sparks inspiration.  I know zombies swim now, but I think we'll need something unique to the water 'biome' when that water overhaul finally comes to pass.

I agree with all points made here.
Since A16 I think, dire wolves haven't really been that special to me. It was cool to come across, and initially I feared them, but a pack of wolves was and still is the real threat.
I too would rather see a wolf zombie or something completely different. Perhaps a wolf version of the screamer that summons a pack of wolves. White, not black... with a blood-stained muzzle and chest.

[madmole]

14 hours ago, n2n1 said:

@MM

For what reason is there no deterioration in the quality of the item after repair?

 

Why is this done? this makes the item eternal in the presence of repair whales.

We have talked about perma degradation but I'm not sure it would be fun replacing your gear constantly (which means swapping all your mods, dye), and when you finally got a legendary purple when those come out, to see it degrade away and become useless over time might suck. Imagine spending 90k dukes on a gyro and then you have to buy another one because it cannot be repaired any more times.

[Outlaw_187]

I also agree we have enough canine furry fellows but I also agree the extra meat is nice. 

Give us a whole new animal/threat like gators, monitor(spelling?) lizards, hell throw an ostrich at us, lol.

[Yopo]

13 minutes ago, AtomicUs5000 said:

 

I agree with all points made here.
Since A16 I think, dire wolves haven't really been that special to me. It was cool to come across, and initially I feared them, but a pack of wolves was and still is the real threat.
I too would rather see a wolf zombie or something completely different. Perhaps a wolf version of the screamer that summons a pack of wolves. White, not black... with a blood-stained muzzle and chest.

The howler

[AtomicUs5000]

18 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.

What happened to the event-driven encounter system? It seems to have been forgotten about... but that's supposed to be our replacement for the lessened outdoor zombies in the past few alphas. A21?

[RhinoW]

7 minutes ago, madmole said:

We have talked about perma degradation but I'm not sure it would be fun replacing your gear constantly (which means swapping all your mods, dye), and when you finally got a legendary purple when those come out, to see it degrade away and become useless over time might suck. Imagine spending 90k dukes on a gyro and then you have to buy another one because it cannot be repaired any more times.

To be honest that's one of the things that made A16's end game quite interesting, the whole taking care of your gun thing was pretty cool (finding better parts to repair and improve your weapon's statistics) and if you didn't build for weapon crafting, you would lose a lot of quality per repair. That's something i fondly miss, looting and mixing parts on the workbench, until you get the juicy purple quality ones.

[madmole]

13 hours ago, Demandred1957 said:

 

No, as a matter of fact, as a paying customer of yours, no I do not like everything you have done.

Crazy buffs to the animals..nope.

Magic swarms of vultures if I try to get away to regroup, or avoid the horde cause i'm more into light adventure and building..nope.

Improved graphics with a crippling FPS loss... maybe. But only cause you are working on it.

making looting/raiding pointless until you hit GS 30+ because all your going to get is blunderbusses and paper..Nope!

Why do you have to make so many "rules" for this game..

Frankly I was quite happy with 18.2

That's why I >bought< it.

I am not into the every moment is a harsh screaming fight to survive thing that it's turning into..

That's what you should tie the difficulty slider to.

On "default" I should be able to survive forever if I play smart, and don't make too many mistakes.. (minecraft crowd rep!)

On each "harder" setting, add more of your broken vulture swarms, literal tanks of wildlife etc..

I really get depressed with each "update" so I can see how much farther away from the game that I bought has strayed from the reasons I bought it...

Sorry if I am not "eloquent" or maybe just a low i.q. jerk, but that's how I feel since you asked...

 

 

You suffer the ability to adapt. A lot of folks do, and get hung up on specific changes we make. It changes constantly because the balance of one aspect changes another.

You can dig to bedrock from the top of a mountain and hordes will not be able to path to you if the chunk is unloaded above you. Or build a sky base from the lowest point, same thing, if you see the POI switch to distant POI version, you know you are far enough. This could change at a time where we let more chunks be loaded etc.

One of our core principals is to not have any easy ways to avoid the horde. Vehicles were just that, way too easy. It was simple for Faatal to make vultures catch up to you and slow your bike down so we are trying it out. It might be the gold solution, it might not. Once vehicle crits are in, it might be better to use that instead.

 

But my point stands, you can go back to 18.2, but apparently you think this version is better, despite its flaws in your eyes, which most players feel are good additions to the game, so we are moving in the right direction.

 

Turn down the difficulty if it feels too hard. Turn horde night off completely, then you only have to worry about wandering hordes, screamers, and when you are looting. There is nothing wrong with playing like that. Or play 18.2, or come back for A20 and see what we have changed, or mod it. There are plenty of settings because we know we can't please everyone, but this is a survival game first, and a sandbox second, unless you change the default settings at least.

13 hours ago, Adam the Waster said:

Da heck you talking about?

 

did you get it today?

Also! 

 

@madmole

 

 

i was wondering How the "pipe rifle" would work!

 

Sense it a Tier 0 weapon my question is about ammo! not the bullets but the Mag/Clip! would it have more ammo then a hunting Rifle? or would it have more!

 

because that would seam odd that a Makeshift Rifle would have a higher ammo count then a Old Hunting rifle.

 

(don't ask why i think of these things please)

It won't. It will feel like a nice upgrade when you get your first hunting rifle from the pipe rifle.

[RhinoW]

3 minutes ago, madmole said:

Once vehicle crits are in, it might be better to use that instead.

 

 

Being able to get the tires popped would definitely help and give some interesting choices for bloodmoon survival. Just get yourself on a motorcycle and trust your driving skills haha.

[madmole]

13 hours ago, Demandred1957 said:

yeah, no dude. I will leave that to all you squeaky wheels.

Whats so hard to understand about tying all the hardcore jazz to the slider?

Frankly I do not want stupid swarms of OP vultures,

Or bears that are as armored as a literal tank.

I like to build stuff, and have a adventure where I am in danger, but using my smart living human brains, I can beat the mobs of stupid undead zoms.

 

Lol calling the kettle black here a bit?

Anyhow, turn down the difficulty that should cover most of your concerns.

I don't think the difficulty should cover too many points, then that starts to muddy up what it actually does. Someone who's really bad with FPS wants it easier to kill the zombies, but might not want to cheese the horde on vehicles. Your tastes seem so rare you would best just wait for gold and then download a mod "no vulture swarms on horde night" after someone makes it. Anyone can mod bear health.. open entityclasses.xml and search for bear then edit his health on this line:
<passive_effect name="HealthMax" operation="base_set" value="1600"/>

[Laz Man]

@madmole getting closer...

 

 

[madmole]

13 hours ago, Phoenixshade35 said:

@madmole one question though, i remember back when we had placeable tnt, it was fun to use when knocking stuff down, i know we wont get tnt back, but alongside the timed charge are we able to have demo charges that can blow holes through walls?  it can use the same model as the timed charge just orange instead of yellow, or black even, could make for some fun times, just curious

Dynamite does that I think.

12 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.

This is a first pass at a primitive stage and all loot/trader rewards/etc will be tuned more in the future. We'll add pipe weapons so primitive play period helps all players get a primitive weapon of their specialization. It doesn't suck though, you can find purple cloth armor pretty fast, which is actually quite nice if you want to run full speed with no penalties, have 4 mod slots and get a bit of protection because that is your style. It sucks because you were spoiled with no primitive stage before, and weak sauce bears that stun locked when shot and they couldn't even get close to you let alone cause a problem. It was meals on wheels and it had to change. If you want safe food, farm, not go bear hunting.

12 hours ago, Demandred1957 said:

Well, guess RNJesus hates me, cause I am playing on permadeath (my limit ya I know) just hit day 15<<< and have yet to find anything good.. I had to buy a lvl 1 pump shotty and ak both to have something decent to fight the horde with..

I got a toolbelt full of single shot blunderbi, but seeing how they are kinda useless beyond point blank range..

The leveled loot, and everything being stacked against me at all times thing is what got's me down.

Not to be down on your play, but having the time upped makes all the difference in the world.

And yeah, having 100's of murkey water is great and all..

Maybe you should turn up the leveling speed, by Day 15 I've got blue tier 1 rifles, or yellow tier 2, but I gain 3-5 levels a day the first week or two. But you mentioned being a builder, I gain so many levels building it is crazy.

[Pegasus]

10 hours ago, FileMachete said:

 

LMFAO   Plz let us know if you ever write a book, I'll buy it!

I forgot about the time I accidentally collapsed an entire mountain.  Granted, it was a smallish mountain ...  but still.  It's a good tutorial in the definition of "adequate support columns".  And how to bring a server screaming to its knees.  

 

Me: "Uh oh ... small collapse ... need more support here I guess.  ... Umm ... it's not stopping ... @%#%&)( there's no where to run!   Uhoh."

 

Server admin: "What the @#%#^ did you just do??????"

 

Me: "Well, there's good news and bad news.... you can fill the crater with water and we'll have a lake in the desert ... no more searching for water...."

 

And that, my friends, is why i now strip mine from the top down.  Hehe

[Ricowan]

On 8/5/2020 at 10:39 PM, STyK_ said:

Do you guys just poke fun to avoid balancing your sandbox?

There's absolutely no such thing as a balanced sandbox game.  Period.

[n2n1]

1 hour ago, madmole said:

We have talked about perma degradation but I'm not sure it would be fun replacing your gear constantly (which means swapping all your mods, dye), and when you finally got a legendary purple when those come out, to see it degrade away and become useless over time might suck. Imagine spending 90k dukes on a gyro and then you have to buy another one because it cannot be repaired any more times.

Thanks for the answer, MM.

Oh, yes - i know what You mean ... you're talking about a fast and superficial gameplay which is now common.

 

But there is another side - some people still think when they get a purple things (that will never break) - that they have got the end result and they have nothing to do and nothing to strive for and everything becomes meaningless.

Previously, it was possible to avoid this and prolong the interest.

 

But, maybe.... introduce this - only for some selected things that it will be useful/adequately for?

[Darthjake]

My only gripe is the nerf to eggs in nests, and stealth not being nearly as good at low levels.  Seems like every POI I go into even watching my meter like a hawk and stopping to let it go down the Z's are coming at me in groups of 3, it's almost enough to say screw it and just go with 2 or 3 blunders on the bar and Leroy Jenkins on them.

[STyK_]

14 minutes ago, Ricowan said:

There's absolutely no such thing as a balanced sandbox game.  Period.

You know Arma 3 is considered a military sandbox. How do you think that game would have played out without balance? Oh is that different? Its a sandbox now are you going to tell be 7 days to die is different, or an exception? Seems to me a sandbox is a sandbox. Every game needs balance and rules.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/107410/Arma_3/
Experience true combat gameplay in a massive military sandbox.

[madmole]

6 hours 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.

Of course it does. Its 2 months, probably less dev time though. So unless we push A20 to next summer, it cannot be anything substantial. And that was a minimum list, there could be junk drones finally added, half a dozen reskinned guns, pipe weapons, etc. A proper random gen with quest destinations laid out nice distances and no visual glitches would be great IMO.

5 hours 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.

Very cool! I like the arched windows with the wood supports. The door way design is cool too with the wedges on the sides.

5 hours 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

Yeah I like having a horde base so my vanity base where I craft/live is separate so my time there is enjoyable because it looks cool. I spend a fair amount of time there crafting/smelting/cooking/storing so it might as well look nice

5 hours 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 😄

That would be me, originally at least. I put that in once we got the AI priorities, but we disabled it for many alphas because cpu was too much having animals fight zombies. Fortunately Faatal was able to add it back in after some optimizations.