Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[dcsobral]

48 minutes ago, Blake_ said:

Nice stream. I loved everything in it, and I have some takes on the subject, if the team doesn't mind reading them.

 

  Hide contents

The gore bits from the dismemberment were a bit off (leg stump too big, brain and eyes-tongue too comical, etc). but the feeling will be awesome once polished. It would be cool to have some randomness to it (3 types of squashed brain and not the whole thing like if we were surgeons, some replacing with one eye for one-eyed Zds, some with both, etc). Gore+"jiggling gore" would be awesome.

 

The Vulture has the feathers too symetrical and well placed, easily solved when animated if some are jiggling parts. It's all about the jiggling. 

 

The clothing for the soldier Zd moves a bit too much, but that was a tech demo, I believe it will be tunned down a bit like the hip of the Lab girl Zd was for a better feeling.

 

The textures this time around are waaaay better. Byington shines when tasked with it. A lot of attention to detail. The rest of the team are also amazing at tech+rig+animation stuff. The Disney guy is such a nerd and so good with everything that I won't say anything to feed his ego, lol, BUT yeah, there are things like Arlene's hair (ponytail girl) that are a bit off. Some time ago her hair was perfect, now it's a tiny bit disarranged which is better, but I would put more dirt or blood or detail in it, plus/and/or a jiggling ponytail and some jiggling hairs (they are big lumps, they can be modeled and not treated in alpha-layers) . The guys are obviously in love with the game, like we are, and that shows.

 

 

Looking forward to the next stream!

 

 

One thing to consider regarding dismemberment is that we were seeing close ups of it on a steady camera in a loop. In game you'll be moving and probably not staying that close to the zombie and it will happen pretty fast. A non-exaggerated animation might just go unnoticed. I know most of the details they have shown on things already in alpha 19 are things I have never noticed in-game because of how subtle they are.

 

It's sort of like Hollywood sound effects. They are utterly unrealistic because they are meant to be noticed. This is what "artistic license" truly means.

 

It reminds me of a story I heard from a Civilization dev. People thought the computer was cheating and they were right but not in the way they thought: the game actually cheated in favor of the player because, otherwise, player's felt they were cheated to be point of outrage. So they had the game cheat in favor of the players just to make them feel a semblance of fairness. It's not about what things actually are, it is about players perceive them in-game.

 

[Morloc]

Will dismemberment (arms) affect a zombie in any non-cosmetic way?

 

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc

[iamnuff]

The pipe weapons look delightful. 

Very nice artstyle. Really fantastic. 

[Roland]

37 minutes ago, Morloc said:

Will dismemberment (arms) affect a zombie in any non-cosmetic way?

 

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc

 

like....hurt their feelings?

 

[Matt115]

49 minutes ago, Roland said:

 

like....hurt their feelings?

 

no hands= they can't attack you. they will just stalk you and watch where are you going for eternity 

[unholyjoe]

3 minutes ago, Matt115 said:

no hands= they can't attack you. they will just stalk you and watch where are you going for eternity 

its been known for a long time now... when zombie has no arms he/she BITES.

[Guppycur]

@faatal

 

...I was told I could tag you and ask this here.

 

The replacematerial XML property no longer works correctly we think due to a simple arrangement of children on *some* of the zombies...

 

...I know you told me last night something I can't remember, and basically I know you guys aren't using that property anymore, but it's great for reskinning zombies.

 

As an example, the method works on Arlene, but does not on Darlene.  These are a19 of course, no clue if y'all did everything from scratch for a20 versions and this question is moot.

 

Anyway it appears not to work for Darlene because the targeted child is further down the hierarchy than on Arlene, which indicates inconsistency in the models.

 

Arlene, boe, crawler, moe and yo works, the others do not.

 

Can we get that property fixed so that consistently, 0,1, and 2 point to body, hair and eyes?

 

...even when it did work, those numbers weren't consistent, but at least it was doable. 

 

Thanks for any consideration on this.

 

...really, it'd be fantastic if you could let us target the replacematerial by child name...

 

I know you guys are working on bigger stuff but I'm hopeful you see the potential in including this type of behavior earlier rather than later.  Heck, you guys could easily have your random color variances using this method... 

 

 

 

 

[faatal]

17 minutes ago, Guppycur said:

@faatal

...I was told I could tag you and ask this here.

 

The replacematerial XML property no longer works correctly due to a simple arrangement of children on *some* of the zombies, are there plans for uniformity in bone set up so things like the old system for radiating a zed will still work?

 

...I know you told me last night something I can't remember, and basically I know you guys aren't using that property anymore, but it's great for reskinning zombies.

 

As an example, the method works on Arlene, but does not on Darlene.  These are a19 of course, no clue if y'all did everything from scratch for a20 versions and this question is moot.

 

Anyway it appears not to work for Darlene because the targeted child is further down the hierarchy than on Arlene, which indicates inconsistency in the models.

 

Arlene, boe, crawler, moe and yo works, the others do not.

 

Can we get that property fixed so that consistently, 0,1, and 2 point to body, hair and eyes?

 

...even when it did work, those numbers weren't consistent, but at least it was doable.

Why not use names instead of index? The names may not be that consistent either.
Maybe tags? (Actually I added a E_BP_EYE tag on those last week).

What about LODs? They have multiple GameObjects for those, so if 0 they would be 0,1,2 or 0,1,2,3, since LODs vary in count.

[Fanatical_Meat]

@faatalwhen can we expect a stream showcasing your fabulous contributions to the game.

[Guppycur]

8 minutes ago, faatal said:

Why not use names instead of index? The names may not be that consistent either.
Maybe tags?

The property looks for indexes, if you would change it to work for names then I'd kiss you. 

 

Don't care if the names are inconsistent, we can rip them and get those.

[faatal]

4 minutes ago, Fanatical_Meat said:

@faatalwhen can we expect a stream showcasing your fabulous contributions to the game.

Probably Oct 6.

On 9/17/2021 at 4:25 PM, jeromeN7 said:

@faatal or whoever wants to and/or can answer these questions and ideas, I'd love to know... Thanks to all TFP's for taking the time to share some info.

 

5) Shadows...

    A) I've noticed that at dusk and dawn the far shadows have a very big impact on performance. Will something be done about that?

I increased the clamp by 5 degrees. That should help and still looks fine.

[dcsobral]

42 minutes ago, Guppycur said:

The property looks for indexes, if you would change it to work for names then I'd kiss you. 

 

I thought you wanted him to do that. Why are you threatening him?

[Blake_]

7 hours ago, dcsobral said:

One thing to consider regarding dismemberment is that we were seeing close ups of it on a steady camera in a loop. In game you'll be moving and probably not staying that close to the zombie and it will happen pretty fast. A non-exaggerated animation might just go unnoticed. I know most of the details they have shown on things already in alpha 19 are things I have never noticed in-game because of how subtle they are.

 

It's sort of like Hollywood sound effects. They are utterly unrealistic because they are meant to be noticed. This is what "artistic license" truly means.

 

It reminds me of a story I heard from a Civilization dev. People thought the computer was cheating and they were right but not in the way they thought: the game actually cheated in favor of the player because, otherwise, player's felt they were cheated to be point of outrage. So they had the game cheat in favor of the players just to make them feel a semblance of fairness. It's not about what things actually are, it is about players perceive them in-game.

 

That's deep. But quality is quality. And while a non-educated person might not be able to put the finger on it, it shows and produces enjoyment if done right. The latest Doom games would be crap without that ridiculously polished dismemberment system. TES: Oblivion on the other hand has ugly faces and that alone damages an otherwise amazing experience very dearly. It's all about the little things. Player's perception has its place, but not so much in this case IMO.

[Guppycur]

Well they were pretty clear about it being a proof of concept, and of course it would need to be scaled for each particular zombie; I imagine the skater punks gibs would be smaller than Mama June's gibs...

 

What we saw was just a mock-up. I would not read too much into it this early.

[Matt115]

3 hours ago, unholyjoe said:

its been known for a long time now... when zombie has no arms he/she BITES.

i don't thing so : one time i saw zombie running away from @SnowDog1942 basement. His hands were cuted. In mouth it had strange ball... and tears in this zombie eyes. i never saw before crying zombie. But 1 thing i'm 100% sure : never go into @SnowDog1942's basement without flamethrower

[bdubyah]

Has there been any thought to tweak the status effect area of the hud? Maybe lock it so it'll only show maybe 3-5 effects at once? As it is currently the whole left side of the screen can easily turn into icons and timers pretty easily.

[Roland]

2 hours ago, bdubyah said:

Has there been any thought to tweak the status effect area of the hud? Maybe lock it so it'll only show maybe 3-5 effects at once? As it is currently the whole left side of the screen can easily turn into icons and timers pretty easily.

Got hit that badly huh?

[hiemfire]

6 hours ago, unholyjoe said:

its been known for a long time now... when zombie has no arms he/she BITES.

 

Bully

Tired of being bullied by the undead? Zombies can't bite if you knock their damn teeth out! Craft quality 2 poor knuckled weapons and deal 10% more damage with fists. Punches to the head negate infection ability. Unlocks Iron Knuckles crafting.

 

Confirmed, A20 Fortitude is the new A19 Strength!   😜

[Khalagar]

Strength has been pretty wildly OP for a fair while, so they def might try to distribute the goodies around. I just want wrench perks to be in the same tree as mining ones, it's really weird that wrenches are under perception randomly instead of with all of the other builder perks. Anyone who's ever tried to take a wrench to a rusted old car knows it's not got anything to do with perception, and it's all just brute force strength to break everything loose

 

I could see strength being the building focused tree, while int is the crafting one

[bdubyah]

3 hours ago, Roland said:

Got hit that badly huh?

Listen, I don't wanna talk about it, alright? Lol.

 

But seriously, I can't. M-word and all...;)

[Burrfly]

Here's a little idea I thought about which could be very epic, but it is understandable if such a feature is very hard to implement. But, wouldn't it be cool to be able to place multiple non-building-blocks (like switches, torches, etc) in a single voxel, like this:

 

(It's an edited image)

[En_Dotter]

On 9/23/2021 at 2:54 AM, faatal said:

1 Handling when fullscreen exclusive fails and Unity plays pick some stupid resolution that I don't want.

Share the solution when you find it?

[Jost Amman]

1 hour ago, Burrfly said:

Here's a little idea I thought about which could be very epic, but it is understandable if such a feature is very hard to implement. But, wouldn't it be cool to be able to place multiple non-building-blocks (like switches, torches, etc) in a single voxel, like this:

 

(It's an edited image)

Spoiler

 

@Roland : it's the Gazillionth time I have to put the "afraid" reaction because there's no "surprised" reaction... *hint hint* 

[meganoth]

 

3 hours ago, Burrfly said:

Here's a little idea I thought about which could be very epic, but it is understandable if such a feature is very hard to implement. But, wouldn't it be cool to be able to place multiple non-building-blocks (like switches, torches, etc) in a single voxel, like this:

 

(It's an edited image)

 

As far as I can remember this was proposed a few times already and there was a reply by Faatal that there is no place for it in the current world data definition. So it would massively increase world data size and surely decrease FPS in consequence and make handling of world data a lot more complicated.

 

Josh, your memory must be even worse than mine.

 

[Trankitas]

I've been lurking for a long time, and i have to say that alpha 20 is looking fine A.F. 

 

I have a question tho, is player movement ever gonna change? It feels kinda clunky IMO (like you're floating or something), the game is reaching some insane quality levels (for a sandbox, random gen, fully destructible, etc. game) and I feel like movement is the same from Alpha 4.

Love you guys, can't wait to see what you have in store for us. 

Tranquitas.