Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[Pegasus]

2 hours ago, Demandred1957 said:

True, I try to entertain people too. But it doesn't effect how I play. I just edit the boring stuff out.

But "showing off" doesn't really mean proving anything I think.

IMO showing off is more like "hey! look what I can do! Isn't that neat!?!"

LIke BMX guys doing tricks, Stunt pilots, Pool trick shot artist's, etc.

 

Or rednecks saying "Hey y'all, watch this!"

[STyK_]

18 minutes ago, madmole said:

You might want to elicit some of that self control you claim to be so good at then, but here on the forums instead of in game.

You want me to back down when @Pegasustries to get me into another argument when people are asking questions to an argument that I'm the source of? Honestly I think they were trying to get me band since the topic has been brought up. @MechanicalLensdelivered evidence to support this in a post of his.

[madmole]

11 hours ago, Laz Man said:

And in the same response he also said this....

 

"Everything takes 2-3x longer than estimated..."

 

...so yah....but i hear ya....😅

Do you have a repro? If so please submit a bug report as it will ensure it gets fixed faster.  If you don't want to, please keep the sparky comments to yourself lol...

And we still missed my conservative estimate of August 15th, so A20 is shrinking by the day, or getting pushed to spring/summer 2021. Most people are working on A20 though so there is that.

[Pegasus]

55 minutes ago, madmole said:

Nerd poling will not matter if you need a key from a zombie to unlock the loot chest. You'll have to go through the whole POI and hit a certain number of volumes before the special one spawns. We haven't done this yet, but it was talked about. Taking out nerd poling is a futile action because you can build ladders etc. Take out the incentive to nerd pole, problem solved.

I like that idea a lot.  I hope it can be added and it's not too much work to add.  I would think this would make almost everyone happy (presumably not the ones trying to cheat out the loot...). ❣️  

20 minutes ago, Kalen said:

So I do like the key idea some of the time.   It would get annoying if it was in every POI.   Additionally, you've built a pretty awesome, fully destructible, voxel world.   I'm a little disappointed that using the fact that the world IS fully destructible to, for example, break into a loot room is being categorized (by some people) as cheating or cheezing and that you're looking for ways to remove that ability.   

 

Personally, I do the dungeons following the intended path because I find it fun.... but, in my opinion, you shouldn't remove the ability to break your way into the loot room in every POI.  Use this key idea in some of them, not all.

 

That's a good point. 

 

Maybe only for the high end loot places ... which is actually kind of what I thought the discussion was about ... the big ones that have the super special loot rooms that some people are bypassing the entire poi to reach?  Maybe I'm confused (wouldn't be the first time) about what the intention was?

 

 

[MechanicalLens]

9 minutes ago, STyK_ said:

You want me to back down when @Pegasustries to get me into another argument when people are asking questions to an argument that I'm the source of? Honestly I think they were trying to get me band since the topic has been brought up. @MechanicalLensdelivered evidence to support this in a post of his.

It wasn't evidence to support your ideas, you're twisting my own words here. What I'm saying is what's been said a million times: remove nerdpoling, and people will just find other ways to get to the main loot of a POI. End of discussion.

[madmole]

24 minutes ago, Kalen said:

So I do like the key idea some of the time.   It would get annoying if it was in every POI.   Additionally, you've built a pretty awesome, fully destructible, voxel world.   I'm a little disappointed that using the fact that the world IS fully destructible to, for example, break into a loot room is being categorized (by some people) as cheating or cheezing and that you're looking for ways to remove that ability.   

 

Personally, I do the dungeons following the intended path because I find it fun.... but, in my opinion, you shouldn't remove the ability to break your way into the loot room in every POI.  Use this key idea in some of them, not all.

It would probably be for the highest tier POIs where there is a super chest involved. You could still grind your way through with a pickaxe, but it would be more obnoxious than just taking the intended path. I'd like to see auto turrets protecting loot myself, so even if you break in you get insta killed pretty much without deactivating them properly with a key card or something.

[STyK_]

Just now, MechanicalLens said:

It wasn't evidence to support your ideas, you're twisting my own words here. What I'm saying is what's been said a million times: remove nerdpoling, and people will just find other ways to get to the main loot of a POI. End of discussion.

No it was evidence to support trying to get me band.

[Pegasus]

19 minutes ago, madmole said:

Don't take things out of context. He probably left out the fact that he had hordes every night or two so that may be why he had block damage reduced significantly. Devs don't need to be good at the game they need to be good at their job. There is a portion of the team myself included that does play the game a lot but an animator needs to be good at animating, not knowing every in and out of the game design or being awesome at playing the game. It helps to some degree some more than others but is only critical for a few people on the team such as system designers and people doing balance.

Not only that ... but having people of different skill levels on the development team can only help the game.  If everyone on the team was an Ace then the game would be unbalanced for players like me who really pretty much suck at hand/eye coordination.  If someone on the team who is perhaps not as good plays the game and says hey, this xyz mechanic is really unforgiving for new players then they know that they may need to work on it a bit more or add some more notebook entries to help explain it.

 

The game doesn't have to be all laid out to a new player either.  People are mentioning that the way the AI works isn't going to be something a new players knows and that they'll build bases that get destroyed.  Isn't that kind of the point?  Don't you remember your first base that you built that got obliterated by the enemy on the first blood moon?  What a thrilling/scary/pants wetting/enjoyable time that was!  (For me more the pants wetting ... less the thrilling ... but I'm a pansy) So you learned to do something different the next time.  There are approximately a trillion videos out there on how to play 7 Days.  There are websites devoted to it.  New players can watch the videos ... or they can experiment with what works.  Isn't that the fun of a game?  Figure out what works and what doesn't, finding your own play style?

[MechanicalLens]

Just now, STyK_ said:

No it was evidence to support trying to get me band.

First, it's banned, not band. Secondly, I was just having some lighthearted fun, no offense intended.

[STyK_]

Just now, MechanicalLens said:

First, it's banned, not band. Secondly, I was just having some lighthearted fun, no offense intended.

sure

[Kalen]

18 minutes ago, STyK_ said:

'So the problem isn't necessarily nerd poling' - you described scenarios that would have costed you resources, at least it costed you something. In the current state it costs you nothing, nerd pole up, E pick up down. Even a ladder costs you resources. If you look later where I was talking with Toban there are ways that player made blocks can be cleaned up by the server every however many days. So it will cost you every time you want to go pull off your marble staircase to loot.

So again, its not nerd poling per se, it's not using resources that bothers you.   Cool, people could do the same thing with a solid wooden block, would that make it ok?

 

19 minutes ago, STyK_ said:

'not really a nerd poling issue, as this can be accomplished without nerd poling.' - The base you could do it with a gyrocopter but at the risk of losing your gyrocopter, again there is a cost instead of none. Also some of that is just general issues with the powers of the frame.

Or with a ladder, or side by side columns that you just back and forth to

 

19 minutes ago, STyK_ said:

'Ok, so this really clarifies your point' - I don't like anything you can stack and E pick up making no cost to the player. Again most games and survival games don't allow this at all. But of course single me out cause you think it proves your point.

Oh please, don't play the martyr card.... I'm not singling you out.   We're having a discussion that you are participating in.   I'm just trying to understand your dislike of nerd poling.... so far every argument you've made shows that it's not nerd poling thats your problem.

[beerfly]

10 minutes ago, STyK_ said:

You want me to back down when @Pegasustries to get me into another argument when people are asking questions to an argument that I'm the source of? Honestly I think they were trying to get me band since the topic has been brought up. @MechanicalLensdelivered evidence to support this in a post of his.

A real man knows when to stay silent. Just saying. 

[madmole]

I don't mind a healthy discussion but nerd polling is now off topic. It has been discussed a thousand times probably more than LBD so just stop already unless we officially make a change to it in a future alpha it is off topic in this A19 thread.

 

 

[beerfly]

@madmole, um hey man, what are the latest things you are working on for A19, every experimental update gives us really good new stuff and fixes, is there anything cool that we should be even more hyped of ? Even a tiny bit ?

[Toban]

@Madmole Are the new shapes you showed us going to be in A19 or 20? Thanks in advance.

[Demandred1957]

1 hour ago, madmole said:

Dead bodies float though, so all the other zombie fiction completely got it wrong.

Dead bodies that float are also broken down and squishy, because of the bacteria that are making the gases that cause them to float...

This zoms are doing hard reps at the gym..

Lame excuse.

[Trekkan]

4 minutes ago, Demandred1957 said:

Dead bodies that float are also broken down and squishy, because of the bacteria that are making the gases that cause them to float...

This zoms are doing hard reps at the gym..

Lame excuse.

Saying something is an "excuse" is making the assumption that he has to answer to anyone.

[Jugginator]

4 hours ago, RhinoW said:

Your best common sense is still staying on top of a building and waiting, getting on top of a building and shooting them down through your "floor" iron bars, or hoping on unrealistic killing houses that exploit the AI (which is not wrong and doesn't affect me, it's just a different playstyle that keeps getting more and more worshipped). 

 

My point is, the zombies are getting smarter and smarter, rendering a lot of previously decent bases, useless. And the player character is not even picking up the pace if the players want to play realistically (which forces people to use cheap tactics, bloodmoon "bases"  and those that don't want to use em, get screwed), again, staying on top of the roof is pretty one of the last few realistic and solid choices.

 

Oh and zombies now swim faster than you, let that sink in, because they won't anymore.

 

Pretty sure those previously decent "bases" that got rendered useless were because the AI was so terrible you had to work hard to NOT break the AI back then.

 

And I just tested my 4-corridor fortress build that you stand in the middle and shoot down whichever one the zombies are going down all lined up with electric fencing against 20 min day cycles min daytime horde night every night/max GS using a blunderbuss, iron crossbow, a DB shotty and a level 3 m60 for 9 blood moons in a row without needing much repairing. Worked well, no cheap tactics, so I don't know where you're getting at there.

[pregnable]

19 minutes ago, Demandred1957 said:

Dead bodies that float are also broken down and squishy, because of the bacteria that are making the gases that cause them to float...

This zoms are doing hard reps at the gym..

Lame excuse.

 

I mean, most people float in general because of body fat and stuff. 

 

Lungs full of water sometimes help you not float as well though.

[Demandred1957]

1 hour ago, Pegasus said:

Or rednecks saying "Hey y'all, watch this!"

Lol, sadly that's usually a rednecks LAST words...

7 minutes ago, Trekkan said:

Saying something is an "excuse" is making the assumption that he has to answer to anyone.

Don't care.

5 minutes ago, pregnable said:

 

I mean, most people float in general because of body fat and stuff. 

 

Lungs full of water sometimes help you not float as well though.

Ok, then big momma, and Hawaiian shirt dude should be the only swimmers.

I could live with that.

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, RhinoW said:

I used the world realistic to separate the base designs in cause from the slaughterhouses players build, I believe that was fairly obvious. As in, something that someone could live in (not necessarily real life) and have permanent entrances, not entrances that you get to by placing down 2 frames and removing them, but anyways.

 

Well, my first base in A19 was made from the destroyed house PoI with the water filled basement (has an ammunition box inside the water) and was holding up pretty well, until zombies "found" a weakness (literally the same blocks throughout the whole house, but these were slightly damaged) in the opposing side where they were originally coming from, and their hive mind AI simply sent them into attacking those 2 single blocks. 

 

And no, not everything has to work, but practical things that look good and are built to protect, should continue to be viable strategies. The example you said "pole sat on", is one of the things that in fact YOU SHOULD remove...Oh and i did have working designs on A17 and A18, otherwise I probably wouldn't be playing the game. The point here is not to see what works, but to ask yourself why don't the others work, when they obviously should? I'm not putting in cause the bases that work, that has never been my point, I merely questioned why do they keep working, but the others don't.

 

Oh and when you have double walls, triple, quadruple, you really SHOULD have it working. But as for someone who is putting concrete walls simply to direct them to the BIG *SS open entrance and mitigate focused damage, it's kinda frustrating when they prefer to break 2 blocks instead of going through an open area with traps (yes, zombies don't know what traps are) or each attack different spots at the same time.

 

But hey, each to their own, i'll make my own final judgments when the game finally comes out.

Ok, lets look at your two examples that didn't work:

 

One was where you had funnels built but the zombies didn't take it, probably because of lots of traps in there that looked like impassable blocks to the zombies. Now once you have seen that doesn't work you had many options:

1) Remove the traps

2) DIg one block down and have them flush with the ground

3) Make a ramp so they walk on the traps (plus increasing the height of the funnel, if necessary)

4) Make an obstacle course out of the traps so a zombie has to use a zigzag course to not walk into any traps

 

Did you do anything of above or a fifth option? Or did you just scrap your idea immediately and said "This can't work"? If I build anything in 7D2D or in real life I usually need to refine designs before they work perfectly. In principle I know the design works, so you really can't say this is not a viable strategy.

 

The other example was some POI you used and they broke through a wall you forgot to check. That happened to me on my current SP play as well by the way. Obviously this again is a viable strategy that is working in principle, because with the fixed and strengthened wall it would have worked, right?

 

Actually the only design problem or improvement I could see is that if the zombies find such an opening only a few run through and you get a chance to fix your mistake instead of imminent death because all zombies pour through that hole. Which is actually already in the game. Ask Fataal, zombies have different pathing ranges, so if you are lucky only a few get through and you might get time to react and repair. That happened in my current SP as well, after killing the zombies who got through (they didn't get through my safety door behind that) I actually had time to repair that hole. Might not always work out so well, you can't depend on it, but on that night in my SP it gave me the time.

 

 

[Phoenixshade35]

I am glad this game has structural integrity, it is fun, though im wondering if soon we can have buildings tip and fall over instead of fall down, i know it would be a pain to implement but could be so fun to watch

[FileMachete]

sooo... how ya'll doing?

 

Nice day here... might make some iced tea..

 

wanna talk about Vultures?

 

[MechanicalLens]

Just now, FileMachete said:

sooo... how ya'll doing?

 

Nice day here... might make some iced tea..

 

wanna talk about Vultures?

 

My iced tea. Mine. Mine own.

[betam4x]

It would be nice if item descriptions all mentioned the amount and type of material an item scraps to.