Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[Khalagar]

6 hours ago, Khalagar said:

Was Stun Baton stealth buffed / hotfixed and nobody mentioned it in the patch notes? I feel like in A19 the perks didn't work at all and they suddenly do now, that's how much better Stun Baton is lol. It's actually a fairly viable mid game weapon now. I've been testing it vs Pipe Baton and it does way less damage but the shock seems to do some unspecified amount of DoT that feels way higher than it was in A19 so it ends up with the stun baton being able to actually kill stuff after enough whacks

 

Bigger issue is the animations, pipe baton is so beautiful I want to marry it and be beaten by it every day, the stun baton animations and model can't compare

 

I take it back, I think the issue is the repulsor mod is a trap and a DPS loss it seems. Adding that and it suddenly made it much harder to use the baton again. I'm honestly not sure if it's even worth using that repulsor mod on it, repulsor should probably just do what the shock kandy does instead.

 

I could have swore you used to be able to use the burning shaft mod on it as well, but I can't now. If you could bleed / burn / shock them with the baton would help on those stronger zombies

[Games'n'Grumble]

1 hour ago, bachgaman said:

I completely agree with everything you wrote. Just curious if anyone has ever died from infection in this game.

In A 20, the amount of antibiotics in the loot and honey in the stumps is significantly reduced, and the course of infection is accelerated. I think it's too early to say that this happens extremely rarely, the experience of 19 now does not count

[Jost Amman]

58 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

I take it back, I think the issue is the repulsor mod is a trap and a DPS loss it seems. Adding that and it suddenly made it much harder to use the baton again.

The honeymoon is already over I see... 

[Firecat]

Not sure why everyone always assumes that "infection" in the game means zombie virus. From context I always thought it was pretty clear it is just normal infection that happens when you get nasty bacteria etc. in your body. IRL being bitten by a wild animal is already a recipe for that. Do you know how many antibiotics etc. doctors put you on if you ever get bitten by a wild animal? It's a lot. Even domestic dogs and cats you need to be careful to clean it properly if you ever get bitten. I imagine having dead, decaying corpses poking holes in you would be a surefire way to get a nasty infection! Makes sense to me. Antibiotics really WOULD be gold in the apocalypse. (Speaking of, this whole "dukes" thing is not nearly as likely as a barter economy would be, realistically. You'd go to the trader and he'd be like, "ok, give me that gun, and you can have a few antibiotics as trade." Yes, you can sell them loot, but really, having the dukes currency as an intermediate step in all transactions is mostly there for ease of programming and consistency lol. I'm not saying they should change it, though, it's a good system to make the game work well. Just pointing out it's less realistic, barring the story we don't know with the duke faction changing things in that regard).

[Jost Amman]

@faatal I think someone found the reason for the hiccups that some people have been experiencing...

 

Quote

(Originally posted by Sgt.R.Lee on Steam) - The A20 half a second constant stuttering in cities is resolved by shutting off dynamic in-game music!. Give it a try next time it starts constantly stuttering and it goes away   Hope they resolve this for the stable version or I will just keep it shut off.

[Burrfly]

I remember my first playthrough in alpha 16 (I was like 14 years old back then), we were playing with friends and one of us got infected and thought we would turn into a zombie at 100% xD

[Khalagar]

1 hour ago, Jost Amman said:

The honeymoon is already over I see... 

 

Yep, was betrayed with a horde of zombies bearing down on me lol. If Pipe Baton accepted more mods and just scaled with the club perk, I'd use it lol

 

49 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

I think someone found the reason for the hiccups that some people have been experiencing...

 

Very much hope this is the case, me and a friend had sub 15 fps lag trying to do a quest in a big city earlier. He was getting under 9 fps with a 1080ti and task manager saying his GPU was maxed out, and my 6900xt was barely keeping above 30fps with drops to 24 sometimes. Gotta say, if a $1600 GPU is getting sub 30fps drops, something is really really wrong haha

[bdubyah]

4 hours ago, Blake_ said:

In theory you die at exactly 3 hours after first infected with no treatment. But the penalties from 15% onward are exponentially more severe. It would be nice if that time was halved. I've never died from infection either.

To me that's the biggest problem. Infection as it is right now takes 7 hours IRL to kill you. That's a long time. Yeah, getting hit adds to it, but not that much. It should increase at double the speed at least to up the danger. I've modded it to progress quicker myself.

[Doomofman]

1 hour ago, Khalagar said:

Very much hope this is the case, me and a friend had sub 15 fps lag trying to do a quest in a big city earlier. He was getting under 9 fps with a 1080ti and task manager saying his GPU was maxed out, and my 6900xt was barely keeping above 30fps with drops to 24 sometimes. Gotta say, if a $1600 GPU is getting sub 30fps drops, something is really really wrong haha

 

I don't think he was referring to FPS drops, there are these other micro-stutters that aren't reflected on the FPS counter which I assume is what he was referring to.

[Firecat]

Poked my head into the wasteland after I got my motorcycle... don't go there, guys. It scary! Gave me shivers down my spine, so dangerous in there. Love it! Couldn't wait to get back to my nice peaceful forest 😂

[Kosmos]

- Steam achievements dont count
- Mechanic weapons in coop game often falls through textures (and for one player it looks like not, but for another - it fell down), not sure but i guess it happens if you place near another player/zombie close

- Using splint or plaster clast at another player (via right click) will not have effect at his fracture, but you will lost item (as it didnt work at A19)

- Looks like quest-tiers don't has minimum threshold of gamestage, so you can do tier-5 quests without any radiactive zombies or without decent count of feral zombies, but reward was rebalanced and you can be already in steal-tier armor and weapons (?)

- Tier 3/4-quests look like broken and have less count of zombies than Tier2-quests in Coop (?), have no idea why some zombies should spawn only if you open door with button, it makes hard to find which room you skipped

- Picklock break chance looks too high, one time we spent 21 keys to open quest chest

- Game can eat from 4gb to 10gb RAM at medium settings, have no idea how to lower it and why difference is too high and at what depends

Sometimes game uses all RAM and close with steam without any error message

[unlike them]

1 hour ago, Firecat said:

Poked my head into the wasteland after I got my motorcycle... don't go there, guys. It scary! Gave me shivers down my spine, so dangerous in there. Love it! Couldn't wait to get back to my nice peaceful forest 😂

Yes, wasteland is very stressful, but the loot is so worth it, after you do one quest you will not want to do other biomes. I suggest going there after you think you can handle zombie bears.

[praekokion]

So, I was living in the forest and quested up to tier 5, found 4 traders and everything worked beautifully. Then the 5th trader is located in the wasteland and I wanted to quest there, since the higher lootstage seems worth it. But he only gives me T1 quests? Relogging doesnt help, doing a quest or 2 for him also doesnt help.

 

Is this intended? That I have to farm back up to tier V because wasteland traders are on their own or something? Didnt read about it and am a bit confused  

 

Thanks for answers!

[mstdv inc]

9 hours ago, bachgaman said:

I completely agree with everything you wrote. Just curious if anyone has ever died from infection in this game.

It's easier to die from a wild boar than from an infection. 😁

I would reduce the duration of the infection from 7 to 2 in-game days, so that the treatment of the infection becomes the first priority.
Even in A20 on day 11 I have 4 herbal antibiotics, 3 cans of honey and 1 regular antibiotics. The infection is no longer scary.

[Kosmic Kerman]

10 minutes ago, praekokion said:

So, I was living in the forest and quested up to tier 5, found 4 traders and everything worked beautifully. Then the 5th trader is located in the wasteland and I wanted to quest there, since the higher lootstage seems worth it. But he only gives me T1 quests? Relogging doesnt help, doing a quest or 2 for him also doesnt help.

 

Is this intended? That I have to farm back up to tier V because wasteland traders are on their own or something? Didnt read about it and am a bit confused  

 

Thanks for answers!

I'm not sure if this is intended or not but every additional Trader I have found in the forest has offered Quests at T1.  I have not taken any of them and am not sure what happens after you take the first quest and complete it. It's possible you only need to complete one quest at the lower level and then the quests reset to your current level.

[beerfly]

4 minutes ago, praekokion said:

So, I was living in the forest and quested up to tier 5, found 4 traders and everything worked beautifully. Then the 5th trader is located in the wasteland and I wanted to quest there, since the higher lootstage seems worth it. But he only gives me T1 quests? Relogging doesnt help, doing a quest or 2 for him also doesnt help.

 

Is this intended? That I have to farm back up to tier V because wasteland traders are on their own or something? Didnt read about it and am a bit confused  

 

Thanks for answers!

Every trader have his own territory where he gets his money coming from. 

 

There is this guy called The Duke and he rules out there 🎈

[mstdv inc]

1 hour ago, Kosmos said:

- Steam achievements dont count
- Mechanic weapons in coop game often falls through textures (and for one player it looks like not, but for another - it fell down), not sure but i guess it happens if you place near another player/zombie close

- Using splint or plaster clast at another player (via right click) will not have effect at his fracture, but you will lost item (as it didnt work at A19)

- Looks like quest-tiers don't has minimum threshold of gamestage, so you can do tier-5 quests without any radiactive zombies or without decent count of feral zombies, but reward was rebalanced and you can be already in steal-tier armor and weapons (?)

- Tier 3/4-quests look like broken and have less count of zombies than Tier2-quests in Coop (?), have no idea why some zombies should spawn only if you open door with button, it makes hard to find which room you skipped

- Picklock break chance looks too high, one time we spent 21 keys to open quest chest

- Game can eat from 4gb to 10gb RAM at medium settings, have no idea how to lower it and why difference is too high and at what depends

Sometimes game uses all RAM and close with steam without any error message

use at least 15GB of swap file
the game uses it as actively as RAM

[praekokion]

1 minute ago, Kosmic Kerman said:

I'm not sure if this is intended or not but every additional Trader I have found in the forest has offered Quests at T1.  I have not taken any of them and am not sure what happens after you take the first quest and complete it. It's possible you only need to complete one quest at the lower level and then the quests reset to your current level.

I tried that, did 2 tier 1 quests for him and it didnt change anything. Relogging also didnt change anything, and refreshing the quests via dm also didnt do anything. It's also not the case for every trader - some of them seem to be connected but I just checked again and in fact, out of the 5 traders I found, 3 seem to share the quest-stage, while the other 2 have me start over at tier 1. I didnt, however, check, if the 3 "connected" traders are "duplicates of each other" - like multiple trader Jen's or something. They are definitely spread out through the forest and desert though, while the "not connected" ones are located in the forest and the wasteland. So it doesnt seem to be connected to location..?

[JaxTeller718]

I'm personally all for harsher death penalties. I had an awesome experience yesterday while infected and hungry. Wandering horde was on top of me trying to get to me at night. When I died I was fine and it took all the fun and excitement away from the experience knowing that i can just die to fix it all. The XP penalty isn't large enough to really care as with a few zombie kills I was right back where I needed to be.

 

I did make a modlet for anyone who wants to test out what harsher death penalties would be like. It halves the food and water on respawn to 50 percent of your max, it  keeps infection and broken arms and legs on respawn but will clear infection when it reaches 100 percent and you die, and it raises the limit on XP deficit from 50 percent max deficit to 100 percent max so if you die 4 times it will no longer accumulate deficit.

I find this is harsher but not too harsh like it used to be in A17.

You can find it here  Jax Death Modlets Among Others

 

That said A20 has been amazing in my opinion. The sense of fear is back and I am not looking to mod things as fast as in other Alphas. This is a home run imo and the pois and danger present are amazing. Great work Mad Mole and the team! This is a huge step in the right direction!

 

PS - I love the farming now. It means something and it is not easy mode. You have to WORK to get a farm up and it feels like an accomplishment so put me in the camo of being a fan of the changes.

 

PPS - Yuck on the image with the link can we make it so theres no image?

 

 

[Doomofman]

28 minutes ago, praekokion said:

I tried that, did 2 tier 1 quests for him and it didnt change anything. Relogging also didnt change anything, and refreshing the quests via dm also didnt do anything. It's also not the case for every trader - some of them seem to be connected but I just checked again and in fact, out of the 5 traders I found, 3 seem to share the quest-stage, while the other 2 have me start over at tier 1. I didnt, however, check, if the 3 "connected" traders are "duplicates of each other" - like multiple trader Jen's or something. They are definitely spread out through the forest and desert though, while the "not connected" ones are located in the forest and the wasteland. So it doesnt seem to be connected to location..?

I think that all traders of the same type (Like Jen as you mentioned) share the quest tiers whereas any trader of a new type you find starts off on Tier 1

[Blake_]

5 hours ago, bdubyah said:

To me that's the biggest problem. Infection as it is right now takes 7 hours IRL to kill you. That's a long time. Yeah, getting hit adds to it, but not that much. It should increase at double the speed at least to up the danger. I've modded it to progress quicker myself.

7 hours? I didn't know that. Is it THAT much? 

[BFT2020]

On 12/8/2021 at 8:44 AM, bachgaman said:

0. It so happened that I started building a base on the POI territory called "part_trader_tile_filler_01". In some places of this territory, I cannot place blocks. Because of this, I have a funny hole in the ceiling of the bunker. I don't understand what it is.

 

 

The tile fillers look to be those very small POIs that were created to add character to the RWG and to add more elements to the game.  When I see the word trader, I wonder if they have the same protection settings as the larger trader tiles which is causing your block placement issue.

 

I tagged Laz Man as he is active in these forums and works on POIs (from my understanding, I might be confusing him with someone else)

 

@Laz Man

[meganoth]

For me infections biggest danger are the stamina debuffs and max health loss. In the early game you can die fast if stamina goes out in inappropriate moments. And sometimes you waste a lot of time hunting for honey to just delay the infection instead of really curing it.

 

In my current SP game antibiotics became available in week 3, before that I had to do with honey and one single herbal. As I was using knife for melee I was hit more often than I liked and additionally vultures proved hard to hit.

 

[SEDATIVE]

Umm, the Steel upgraded Sheet from wood to Steel Costs 8 Wood + 10 Cooble Stones + 10 Concreate mix and +10 Forged Steel, and got 350 HP!!! 

WTH?😐

[BFT2020]

46 minutes ago, meganoth said:

In my current SP game antibiotics became available in week 3, before that I had to do with honey and one single herbal. As I was using knife for melee I was hit more often than I liked and additionally vultures proved hard to hit.

 

From loot or does that include traders also?  I had to buy a pill from the traders in the first few days because I got infected and hadn't come across any from looting.  If that includes traders (who should have a 50% change of stocking some), then you my friend have the worst rng luck  😉