Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[Demonoid74]

As long as I can still punch the gas bags right in the $%#$%#^^ face and beat them to death its all good...doesn't matter if I have to wear special protection or not...

[JCrook1028]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

What? why!?  He said you won't want to melee them without protection. How is that forcing guns? 

 

Its like saying, you won't want to melee them without a weapon of some kind and then someone claiming that requiring us to need melee weapons instead of just our fists is forcing guns. What do you use the gas mask for right now? Nothing other than an alternate cosmetic headgear. Now it will have a purpose and you call it an option being taken away? Please tell me you read too fast and didn't notice the end of the statement.

Swapping out head/face gear depending on what zombies type I happen to be fighting at the moment is what this leads to and is not something I will be doing. What other type is going to need what other special form of protection? No thank you. Easy to work around tho if that turns out to be the case. As I said, IF it turns out that way I'll be "fixing" it in my games.

[DarlingCows]

Madmole I made a topic thread in General Discussion about unique zombies and weapons. I would like to know your thoughts on it.

[Gazz]

6 hours ago, JCrook1028 said:

Hmm, can't say I'm a fan of that at all. Forcing guns over melee. Another option being taken away. Another looter/shooter step. He'll be modded out in my games if that comes even remotely clue to being true.

It's fine. We get that all the time.

Players read some snippet of information and straight up blow a gasket without giving it any thought. =P

[Eko]

6 hours ago, Tmodloader said:

Though special undead are cool I really hope you guys dont make it a fart.

PLEASE MAKE IT FART AGHAHAHAHAHAHHA

Hey TFP

 

Just wanted to say that what you wrote about Uncle Jim brought tears to my eyes. I sit here with a lump in my throat as I type this. My condolences. I wish there was something better we could do for you, but my suggestion is not for TFP to implement. I think all players should dye their stuff black for a week or so to show support and love. Much gratitude to the man who inspired it all. I haven't played in a while, but I have linked the post to my little band of survivors, and when we get on next we will be having a Paint it Black event. 

Hopefully our silly demands as players don't put too much extra pressure on the team at TFP! I feel that calling a hiatus on our demands might not seem right, so instead we shall Paint it Black. 

[Eko]

On 8/1/2020 at 4:43 AM, madmole said:

Demolishers.. take mega crush, jump into the frey, lead them away from base, kill, run home. I keep a 7x7 steel tower for hordes demolishers might crack some blocks but its solid, it won't fall.

Heck yes! 

I am addicted to mega crush. I think its somewhere around the 30 day mark (my hordes are every 10 days, with a variance of 3) that I start doing this before the demo dudes even start showing up because its so damn fun!! I raid diners and other commercial buildings specifically for mega crush haha its my favourite thing to do. Run around like youre a tweaker on speed, shooting exploding arrows into the ground because you run so fast there's enough space between you and the horde. 

Mega crush is also extremely useful for when youre doing a POI and suddenly a damn Wight bursts out at ya. Chug one of those babies down and nope the @%$*#! out of there ahahahaha 

Side note, I made a recipe to make mega crush once, requiring eggs for them protein gains. It only unbalanced the game a little bit because eggs were in high demand already, but as we got to later in the game i admit it got a bit easy if i slammed mega crush all day. Shame, coz that was a lot of heckin fun!

5 hours ago, MechanicalLens said:

Makes sense. I was bringing it up not as a challenge, but just as a simple question, and since there are a couple simple answers for it, I respect the reasons for it remaining the way it is.

I tried out a game mod for it, but honestly the night vision effect is sort of annoying after a while. Its good for short bursts, but if you have it on all the time its like playing with your gamma set to 9000000000. I found myself turning the brightness down every time I wore them, then turning the brightness back up for daytime. If you wanna try the game mod way, you probably want to look into a game mod that also alters the NV effect. Still, it could just be my monitor and colour settings.

I dont see why you couldnt engineer a set of specs that combine your favourite eyewear effect with NV. I like the idea, but wonder if it gives too much of an edge on horde night? I noticed that I could see the Z's coming from much further off with the NV. As the vanilla game is now, you have to toss up between having sweet kick ass 10% extra XP and being able to see further. Unfortunately, this means almost everyone chooses the 10% XP and I rarely bother with the NV. My 2c

[Venom V.G]

Never Mind

 

 

[Eko]

2 hours ago, JCrook1028 said:

Swapping out head/face gear depending on what zombies type I happen to be fighting at the moment is what this leads to and is not something I will be doing. What other type is going to need what other special form of protection? No thank you. Easy to work around tho if that turns out to be the case. As I said, IF it turns out that way I'll be "fixing" it in my games.

Plenty of games use this kind of strategy and it seems to go well for them. Usually class based games. They will have a set of enemies of different classes and then a set of class roles for the players. As a player, you play to your class role's strength and that allows you to excel at destroying certain classes of enemies. However, this means you have to make sacrifices in some areas to excel at your preferred area.

 

Otherwise, we would all play the game in the same way, same gear, same perks. Boring! As I understand it, TFPs are working towards a more versatile game that allows players to choose a specific role in the apocalypse. Hence the perk trees! So yeah, you may have a slight weakness against this new class of zombie, but you can't expect your character to excel at EVERYTHING or else the game will become boring. Welcome the challenge and get creative with your environment/engagement strategies and not just your character build. 

2 minutes ago, Venom V.G said:

Hi Fun Pimps, its not essential but I thinks U.S. WWII M2-2 Flamethrower would be great for the game like for alpha 20. It would be able to hold 1,000 Fuel and also modifiable. Could you guys at least think about it? (Don't exactly have to be that model but just giving you guys an idea.)

 

.... you dont wanna quote the whole post. That's how you get ignored.....

[Tmodloader]

32 minutes ago, Venom V.G said:

Hi Fun Pimps, its not essential but I thinks U.S. WWII M2-2 Flamethrower would be great for the game like for alpha 20. It would be able to hold 1,000 Fuel and also modifiable. Could you guys at least think about it? (Don't exactly have to be that model but just giving you guys an idea.)

Any sort of flamethrower would be cool but then wood physics might be hard and system heavy

2 hours ago, JCrook1028 said:

Swapping out head/face gear depending on what zombies type I happen to be fighting at the moment is what this leads to and is not something I will be doing. What other type is going to need what other special form of protection? No thank you. Easy to work around tho if that turns out to be the case. As I said, IF it turns out that way I'll be "fixing" it in my games.

Maybe vitamins would give resistance or something. And ranged weapons are still an option as well as straight up just tanking the damage luckily. If it was an instakill aura with only one way to fight I'd agree with you, but at least there are several options/possibilities

[Annihilatorza]

3 minutes ago, Tmodloader said:

Any sort of flamethrower would be cool but then wood physics might be hard and system heavy

As cool as that would be, I dont see it happening Madmole has said on numerous occasions. Pipe weapons will be added and that will be all.

 

You will have to mod it in if you want it.

[Gazz]

29 minutes ago, Eko said:

Otherwise, we would all play the game in the same way, same gear, same perks. Boring! As I understand it, TFPs are working towards a more versatile game that allows players to choose a specific role in the apocalypse. Hence the perk trees! So yeah, you may have a slight weakness against this new class of zombie, but you can't expect your character to excel at EVERYTHING or else the game will become boring. Welcome the challenge and get creative with your environment/engagement strategies and not just your character build.

That should be obvious by now. 😃

Due to the cost structure of attributes it is slightly more efficient to favour one attribute but in a longer game this is completely irrelevant and you can simply get them all.

I would go for a more hardcore approach like having one primary attribute and all secondaries cost more... but that's the stuff of mods and super unlikely to be in vanilla.

 

The only real issue is that there are very few actual "special enemies" by now. They all have hit points, are affected by all weapons equally, have very few special abilities.

(there are minor adjustments for armor which only ranged weapons and spears/clubs have means to deal with)

That is going to get fleshed out. It's part and parcel of the whole Tower Defense bit.

[Blake_]

Hi @faatal

 

Well good news is that they don't glitch through doors nowhere nearly as much as before. 

But hatches.... aw hatches. Not only vault hatches apparently . Skip to minute 4:30.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMF94v2NX8Q

 

[Tmodloader]

The Attribute system is great and adds quite a lot of fun to group play

[Vundecat]

I've been playing a lot of A19 and I'm really digging it.  The PoIs look much nicer with the new art assets!  There's many things in A19 that I really like, the hunger/thirst bars were a much-needed addition, however, it's created a sort of guessing game as to how much food I need to eat to top my meters off now.  It's probably been suggested before, but would it be possible to implement a system where health/food/thirst bars are filled in with a lighter shade of red/green/blue whenever we're healing or eating/drinking?  So we know how much of our bar is going to be filled up and know right away if we need to drink or eat more, rather than having to wait for the bar to finish filling! 

 

It would make sense I think, at least for food/water, I know when I have room for seconds right after eating something!  It'd be a nice QoL improvement if the devs have time to implement it!

[pregnable]

Okay, I tried out a pure agility build and beat the day 7 horde... and while I thought I understood how it was supposed to work, after doing a quest on business_burnt_02, I don't get it.

 

First I thought having the sneak skill at level 4 and wearing only light stuff I would be able to sneak around and get mostly sneak kills, but then I noticed during the day time the zombies still seemed to aggro on me at the usual range. 

 

Then I figured okay, well I can sneak around during quests and can probably clear it out without aggro if I am careful... but then I am doing a quest and the zombies aggro on me while I am in full sneak mode, from a completely different room, with a wall or 2 between us. 

 

I did the POI twice and they seemed to aggro in the same spots no matter what I did. 

 

 

So I am just confused as to how it is supposed to work. 

 

It seems like, from playing my str/intel build, that the points I put into sneaking do not really do much of anything.  I can straight up just go into sneak mode on a non sneaking build and shoot a radiated zombie with a shotgun, with his buddies in the room, and everyone just keeps sleeping, lol. 

 

Like in most cases I could just do a POI just as sneaky with a pure str build and a shotgun.  Sleepers do not care, you can shine a light in their faces.  They do not care unless you hit a scripted spot where they wake up, or I guess almost touch them or are super loud. 

 

 

Honest question, how is it supposed to work?  If I have 5 ranks in sneaking and hit a forced aggro spot can I just sit there and then they will lose aggro and go back to sleeping?  Should I move away and hide somewhere else and they lose aggro?

 

I just seemed to have better luck sneaking by playing my str build and going into a building backwards breaking through a wall, cause I seem to bypass the scripted spots, although sometimes they spawn sleeping almost on top of me, lel. 

 

 

Now I am not ranting or anything.  I just finished my test run so it is just feedback.  I am curious if there is something I am missing, or if it is not working as intended.  It feels like something is not working right or I am missing something. 

 

I went pure agility and put all my points in bow, from the shadows and hidden strike.  I finished horde night at level 17. 

[Roland]

1 hour ago, Gazz said:

It's part and parcel of the whole Tower Defense bit.

Ain't never had a friend like Gazz!

[Jost Amman]

1 hour ago, pregnable said:

Okay, I tried out a pure agility build and beat the day 7 horde... and while I thought I understood how it was supposed to work, after doing a quest on business_burnt_02, I don't get it.

 

<snip>

Yeah, the stealth system is currently pretty messed up... hope they fix it in A20/21/22 or a mod does it. 

[bloodmoth13]

1 hour ago, pregnable said:

Spoiler

 

Okay, I tried out a pure agility build and beat the day 7 horde... and while I thought I understood how it was supposed to work, after doing a quest on business_burnt_02, I don't get it.

 

First I thought having the sneak skill at level 4 and wearing only light stuff I would be able to sneak around and get mostly sneak kills, but then I noticed during the day time the zombies still seemed to aggro on me at the usual range. 

 

Then I figured okay, well I can sneak around during quests and can probably clear it out without aggro if I am careful... but then I am doing a quest and the zombies aggro on me while I am in full sneak mode, from a completely different room, with a wall or 2 between us. 

 

I did the POI twice and they seemed to aggro in the same spots no matter what I did. 

 

 

So I am just confused as to how it is supposed to work. 

 

It seems like, from playing my str/intel build, that the points I put into sneaking do not really do much of anything.  I can straight up just go into sneak mode on a non sneaking build and shoot a radiated zombie with a shotgun, with his buddies in the room, and everyone just keeps sleeping, lol. 

 

Like in most cases I could just do a POI just as sneaky with a pure str build and a shotgun.  Sleepers do not care, you can shine a light in their faces.  They do not care unless you hit a scripted spot where they wake up, or I guess almost touch them or are super loud. 

 

 

Honest question, how is it supposed to work?  If I have 5 ranks in sneaking and hit a forced aggro spot can I just sit there and then they will lose aggro and go back to sleeping?  Should I move away and hide somewhere else and they lose aggro?

 

I just seemed to have better luck sneaking by playing my str build and going into a building backwards breaking through a wall, cause I seem to bypass the scripted spots, although sometimes they spawn sleeping almost on top of me, lel. 

 

 

Now I am not ranting or anything.  I just finished my test run so it is just feedback.  I am curious if there is something I am missing, or if it is not working as intended.  It feels like something is not working right or I am missing something. 

 

I went pure agility and put all my points in bow, from the shadows and hidden strike.  I finished horde night at level 17.

 

 

are you walking on trash? trash is like an alarm for sleepers to come and attack you, i think you can clear the trash silently with an axe, or you can get the perk that makes walking over trash silent from a combat manual, but otherwise avoid trash (its everywhere in PoIs) and you should do a lot better.

[Jost Amman]

13 minutes ago, bloodmoth13 said:

are you walking on trash? trash is like an alarm for sleepers to come and attack you, i think you can clear the trash silently with an axe, or you can get the perk that makes walking over trash silent from a combat manual, but otherwise avoid trash (its everywhere in PoIs) and you should do a lot better.

Yeah, sure... he's always walking on trash! Why didn't I think about it! Silly me! 

Except you completely ignored most of what he said.

[bloodmoth13]

30 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

Yeah, sure... he's always walking on trash! Why didn't I think about it! Silly me! 

Except you completely ignored most of what he said.

From the sounds of things he was walking on trash, he mentioned the zombies woke up every time he stood on a particular spot and spots that were scripted. I didnt ignore most of what he said, i did skim through it, but i got the impression that he was walking on trash spots that wake every zombie up in a large area.

He is talking about scripted spots, that is basically what trash is, if you step on it without the perk it doesnt matter how many sneak skills you have, you will wake everything up.

[Gazz]

2 hours ago, Vundecat said:

it's created a sort of guessing game as to how much food I need to eat to top my meters off now.

If you must have exact numbers, look at the character stats tabs in your inventory.

[Ezed]

10 hours ago, madmole said:

If you want night vision you have to give up something else.

 

Give up my faster crafting plus 10% XP Nerdy glasses?  I only switch them out to Lucky Looter goggles after I clear a POI.  It's be nice to take advantage of some of the other eyewear but they are mostly redundant next to Nerdy's.  Strength doesn't even have an eyewear buffer, though the Cigar goes nicely with the Nerd glasses to double dip and get +1 Strength and +1 Intelligence along with the bartering., crafting and XP bonuses.  I have to think all of the eye/face wear will get a polish at some point.  At least give Strength some eyewear and move the XP buff to the facial piercings or something.  Mods maybe.

[Adam the Waster]

6 hours ago, Tmodloader said:

Any sort of flamethrower would be cool but then wood physics might be hard and system heavy

 

ill just take flamethrower! idc if it damages blocks or not! i want to have a Bear BBQ without glass or wood!

 

 

[beHypE]

2 hours ago, bloodmoth13 said:

From the sounds of things he was walking on trash, he mentioned the zombies woke up every time he stood on a particular spot and spots that were scripted. I didnt ignore most of what he said, i did skim through it, but i got the impression that he was walking on trash spots that wake every zombie up in a large area.

He is talking about scripted spots, that is basically what trash is, if you step on it without the perk it doesnt matter how many sneak skills you have, you will wake everything up.

It doesn't have anything to do with trash. Sleepers work in a weird way that you can sometimes empty a full clip of your M60 in the doorway and not wake up anyone, but then you silently crouch into their detection range and they wake up for some reason.

 

It was made for gameplay reasons (not waking up the whole building and fighting them outside) but it makes being sneaky basically useless (or better said, it doesn't matter if you try to be sneaky or not, what matters is you crossing certain "wake-up checkpoints" or not)

[Adam the Waster]

8 hours ago, Annihilatorza said:

As cool as that would be, I dont see it happening Madmole has said on numerous occasions. Pipe weapons will be added and that will be all.

 

You will have to mod it in if you want it.

Pipe flamethrower...... duh!