Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[zztong]

20 hours ago, Roland said:

Does ANYONE really care about the XP delay to the next level?

 

It really hasn't been a factor. The most likely time for me to die is day 1 when I have no armor, or in the first week when playing aggressively at night. There isn't an XP delay at those levels. Later in the game, when there is a penalty, death has been pretty rare and the time to wipe out the XP delay isn't really important.

[Morloc]

5 minutes ago, outhous said:

You can find all those things elsewhere outside the trader zones. I agree the sound is just horrific but there is nothing around a trader that you have to have, same stuff is usually found within a few hundred meters of the trade. Leave the traders stuff alone, do you go stealing flowers out of your neighbors yard?

 

Total protection inside the walls is fine, it's the area outside that's the issue.  Gore piles right near the entrance, or large rocks you clip when driving back to the trader. I don't want to take their stuff, I just want to clean up their yards.

 

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc

[overgoat]

Question:  Have the mechanics of feral sense vs. stealth been detailed yet?  Does stealth just reduce feral range detection or is more going on with light/noise/distance?

Anecdotally, I have found with only 1 rank in stealth I am able to do stealth archer with some success, but it is definitely more challenging than before.  The biggest difference feels like multiple zombies wake at once rather than the one at a time before.  I'm rather enjoying the extra challenge.

[outhous]

1 minute ago, Morloc said:

Gore piles right near the entrance

Ok so you leave the flowers alone, but take the Halloween decorations.🎃

[Morloc]

 

{I've noticed folks posting some technical/bug issues here, presumably for visibility with the new alpha. If this should be elsewhere, apologies, and please move}

 

Some random observations...

- I was having big "performance" issues when running on anything except the Low quality presets. My graphics card sounded like a hair-dryer. It's a 2080 TI and shouldn't have been seeing any major issues, but I couldn't hear the game anymore over the fans. Turns out, I was seeing 180+ FPS. I had Riva limit that to 80 and now back to running on Ultra with only the occasional fan surge.

 

p.s. What the hell happened to the price of video cards!?? I knew they'd gone up, but these things are more than double what I paid two years ago. Thanks for nothing Bitcoin! 😣

 

- I have a lot of hours in the game, and for the first time ever I got "stuck" in the architecture rather than on it. I fell through a trap and into a wall unable to move (I could turn). Three zombies were laughing at me, but it turns out they were having a difficult time hitting me. I survived without armor on Insane because of the weird bug. I had to remove all the surrounding wall before I could free myself (I was trying to avoid the console).

 

- I've noticed an increase in yellow bag drops. Maybe 20%? Cool!

 

- Sneaking seems less reliable than before...(feral is off). My imagination?

 

- Farming has changed, but I've looked everywhere and can't find a hoe*. Where to look for a nice ho, ho, ho?? ...Santa of course! 🎅🏻

*No, I'm not actually looking for a hoe. There's no need until I find enough fertilizer.

 

 

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc

[meganoth]

49 minutes ago, outhous said:

You can find all those things elsewhere outside the trader zones. I agree the sound is just horrific but there is nothing around a trader that you have to have, same stuff is usually found within a few hundred meters of the trade. Leave the traders stuff alone, do you go stealing flowers out of your neighbors yard?

 

If it is trader Rekt, sure I do. 😉

[saltychipmunk]

40 minutes ago, Morloc said:

 

p.s. What the hell happened to the price of video cards!?? I knew they'd gone up, but these things are more than double what I paid two years ago. Thanks for nothing Bitcoin! 😣

 

 

bit coin farmers really arent whats going on anymore.   the fact of the matter is that the demand is too high and they are simply selling for what the demand is.

 

And one thing to consider is that you can do far more with a gpu than just mine bitcoin or play video games.  hell we are already on track to get to a point pretty soon where we actually wont have enough energy production on the planet to handle all the computing going on. 

[Jost Amman]

19 minutes ago, saltychipmunk said:

bit coin farmers really arent whats going on anymore.   the fact of the matter is that the demand is too high and they are simply selling for what the demand is.

Yeah, but you didn't explain WHY demand is up... I know the answer, but I can't tell you here because it'd violate the forum rules.

Spoiler

China

 

[BFT2020]

There is also a major chip shortage going on right now.  Demand is higher across the board for anything dealing with electronics and there is just only so much chip capacity out there.  It is affecting everything, not just video cards and computer cpus / motherboards.

[FranticDan]

I'm loving the new Prefab mechanic of pressing a button or picking up the house key and it OPENS the door, my complaint is that the door remains LOCKED. Why? Can this please be changed so they get unlocked as well?

At the very least, the house door key should unlock the door.

[nielm269]

Made a random gen world and I can say it is amazing, I didn't watch any game play before the release so it was a epic surprise to see cities the are more modern, A20 is a huge step up from A19 I terms of how the lay outs are, keep up the good work guys.

[Ricowan]

This is the best alpha so far, great work!

 

I'm on my first play through still, on the morning of day 7.  I've found a cooking pot, two grills, and the bacon and eggs recipe twice.  I've found at least four acid, sold them all to the trader.  I play self-enforced hardcore, so no deaths yet.  I've been infected twice, but I have plenty of honey.  Lots of food, but eggs are too rare IMHO.  I have two stacks of meat waiting to be turned into bacon and eggs.  Wolves and a bear.  I'm playing mostly strength with some other trees scattered in.  Melee all the way, I don't have any kind of long-range weapon, only found a level 2 pipe shotgun on day 5, which works fine for most things.  I sell off *everything* I won't use immediately so I can afford some of the rarer items from the trader.  I bought a forge on day 6.  Still LOTS of pois I haven't explored yet within a km of my home.

 

Looting everything in site, doing about one trader quest per day, I don't seem to have any issues.  Random is random though, I might just be lucky with this map.  I have a good horde base set up so we'll see if this playthrough will continue past day 7.  I didn't know about the reward pack after 10 quests so I might do more of those now.

 

My only complaint is that the trader I spawned next to on day 1 is Rekt, and I can't forking stand that guy!!!

 

[DominionZA]

Dynamic music system doesn't work in A20, just me? Just silence all the time, despite it being on. no combat music, no exploration

[faatal]

9 hours ago, Aldranon said:

Suspicious behavior:

Two vultures waited until I started reloading then BOTH attacked immediately.   I had waited for them to come in for about 15 seconds, as they were attacking the out hanging right above me.

AI does not know if you are reloading, so bad luck?

[meganoth]

Just now, faatal said:

AI does not know if you are reloading, so bad luck?

 

Then regard it as a feature request 😁

 

[faatal]

4 hours ago, Rizno said:

Anyone else having performance degrade after a couple of hours or so of play? I'm mostly around the city biome which runs smooth up until that point, 60 - 90FPS. Then suddenly I go down to 30 - 40FPS if I'm looking towards the city. (which previously wouldn't drop my FPS at all)

 

It may be weather related I guess? Never had sudden drops in previous versions unless it was a crazy Blood Moon.

 

i5-9600K, GTX 1660 Ti, 16GB RAM

I've not seen that. Can you try it with Dynamic Mesh disabled or Mesh Distance shorter or Land Claim only on?

 

[BFT2020]

Day 2 - Survivalist, Feral Sense on all the time, a wandering horde detected me in my base (I think it was because I was opening chests to make pocket mods).

 

I survived....though I don't feel like I did  😁

 

https://imgur.com/a/Zo70fZQ

 

The horde size was larger than I would expect on Day 2 so I think my fighting / them banging on the walls brought in more that were curious.

 

Loving Feral Sense

[ssrjazz]

20 minutes ago, faatal said:

I've not seen that. Can you try it with Dynamic Mesh disabled or Mesh Distance shorter or Land Claim only on?

 

I have had this same issue.  Looking at the center of a large city will drop the frame rate into the 30’s and 40’s on my 2080 super even when running @ 1080p60 with gfx quality set to medium and motion blur disabled.  Look away from city center and it is back to 60fps. Will try experimenting with the suggested tweaks 

[icehot]

13 minutes ago, ssrjazz said:

I have had this same issue.  Looking at the center of a large city will drop the frame rate into the 30’s and 40’s on my 2080 super even when running @ 1080p60 with gfx quality set to medium and motion blur disabled.  Look away from city center and it is back to 60fps. Will try experimenting with the suggested tweaks 

 

 

Yes same here, when I first load the game I'm getting between 100 and 120 FPS on the outskirts of the city, even looking in.  But after a couple of hours of play it drops to around 80 fps, also start getting stuttering even though the FPS is still in the playable range.

[BlashaKente]

On 12/8/2021 at 8:39 AM, madmole said:

Nope, they completely bypass the natural progression that gives the player a feeling of accomplishment. WIthout needs and desires, the game is boring so I had them make them ALL broken. Now when you finally craft one or buy one you feel extremely rewarded instead of meh I'm already at late game tech because I found a trader with all the workstations intact on day 1. @%$# that.

 

Hmm didn't see functional stations removal in the patch notes, thanks for letting us know! I was about to go on a hunt for a workbench so I could craft an SMG (bought recipe for 2.5K dukes on day 7). 

A nerf that WAS in the patch notes however was Honey from stumps and good lord y'all were not messing around! Outdated wiki states 40% drop chance, looking in block.xml I see:
 

<block name="treeStump">

...

<drop event="Destroy" name="foodHoney" count="1" prob=".2"/>

Am I reading this right the chance is down to 20%? Feels more like 2%. Chopped maybe two dozen stumps before getting honey but may be bad luck. 

 

All great changes. Most of the fun for me is adapting to the game so long as the challenges feel fair and surmountable.

Long live the primitive age of Alpha 20!!

[madmole]

19 hours ago, Firecat said:

 

But how am I going to sustain my blackstrap coffee addiction now? Regular coffee ain't STRONK enough, bro! 🤠

Blackstrap uses gunpowder not acid.

[dcsobral]

10 hours ago, unlike them said:

Where do you find these previews? Is it a 3rd party program?

Well, third party as in I wrote it. It is publicly available on github, though it does take some technical expertise to install and use. If you are up to it, https://github.com/dcsobral/seedGen

4 hours ago, Morloc said:

 

Total protection inside the walls is fine, it's the area outside that's the issue.  Gore piles right near the entrance, or large rocks you clip when driving back to the trader. I don't want to take their stuff, I just want to clean up their yards.

 

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc

An alternative would be to not allow decoration on the trader protection area. That way there wouldn't be anything to clean up.

[madmole]

11 hours ago, Aldranon said:

Maybe a bug?:

Uninfected bears can infect you.

If that's how its suppose to be, will chickens and rabbits get you infected or just anything that bites?

If its in the air, does beathing air have a chance of infecting you?  That would make the gas mask head piece the most important thing in the game. 

 

Suspicious behavior:

Two vultures waited until I started reloading then BOTH attacked immediately.   I had waited for them to come in for about 15 seconds, as they were attacking the out hanging right above me.

 

That was an anti-fun moment.

As in not conducive to enjoyment.

As in "Trollish" behavior (for a modern vernacular).

 

The answer is, of course, to play the "Circus" theme song during all combat. 

 

Na, it's not a bug. Infection comes from wolves too and they aren't zombies.

[dcsobral]

Does anyone use recog or fort bites? Has anyone crafted recog or fort bites? It feels like there's no reason to ever go above Physician 1, and even Physician 1 is a stretch. Steroids is good but loses most of its value very early in the game. Fort Bite is just not good enough for its downsides and cost, and Recog is pretty good but awfully expensive.  Comparatively, grandpa moonshine is also very expensive but it is worth the cost. Higher level Master Chef brings way more benefits than high level Physician, which is truly strange when you think about it.

[madmole]

4 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

Does anyone use recog or fort bites? Has anyone crafted recog or fort bites? It feels like there's no reason to ever go above Physician 1, and even Physician 1 is a stretch. Steroids is good but loses most of its value very early in the game. Fort Bite is just not good enough for its downsides and cost, and Recog is pretty good but awfully expensive.  Comparatively, grandpa moonshine is also very expensive but it is worth the cost. Higher level Master Chef brings way more benefits than high level Physician, which is truly strange when you think about it.

I'm not sure if it was done but I told them to make steroids debuff all broken leg movement penalties so it has late game value. Maybe that didn't make it in?