Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[meganoth]

2 hours ago, SeregaMP said:

Hello, I have a question. Why is the car sound disappearing in the passenger seat? This problem is already 2 years old !!

 

Well, that calls for a celebration

 

🥳🥳🎂  🎶  Happy birthday, little sound bug, happy birthday to youuuuu. 🎶

[Jost Amman]

25 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

This would be interesting. What if you got to choose one workstation to unlock as a tier completion reward? And to spice things up, have grill and cooking pot locked in the campfire (or a campfire-like workstation that does not need them) and have that also be one of the unlockable stations. And to reduce the op-ness of it, make it so you have to pay for every hour of use on top of that. I'd love such a system.

NOOOO! Please NO! The game is already trader-centric enough! 

Spoiler

 

 

 

[dcsobral]

Could someone explain the notations on aaa_poi_sizes?  Like this, for example, what does A37 and B22 mean?

 

[SnowDog1942]

1 minute ago, dcsobral said:

Could someone explain the notations on aaa_poi_sizes?  Like this, for example, what does A37 and B22 mean?

 

 

G-Ratio... no idea... I can explain G-Spot though.

[Roland]

11 hours ago, Scyris said:

Few things I feel need changing from experimental: Stealth perks at this point might as well be removed with almost every single room in a poi basically being a ambush with zombies in closets, cielings coming out/dropping down, they aggro no matter how quiet you are, completly negating anything spent in stealth, its stupid, as stealth already takes the longest to clear poi's, its bad enough how every damn zombie is always hiding behind a object so you can never get a clear shot, its just stupid that the poi's are like this now, if you plan to stay like this you might as well just remove the stealth perks so people stop wasting points in perks that don't even do anything useful anymore due to the poi design.

 

There are no auto aggro rooms any longer in the same way that we had them in A19. The game now rolls a check against your stealth to see if you pass or fail your stealth check for each zombie and not just against the volume in general. Just because a zombie falls out of the ceiling rafters or out of a closet does not mean they initially know where you are. Just yesterday a zombie fell out of the ceiling while I was crouch walking into the room. It stood up after ragdolling and walked right past me. It was aggroed from falling but unaware of me because I didn't fail my stealth. I shot it in the head with an arrow and got my stealth bonus. 

 

That said, there could be a bug with the check as it is brand new but it is not the intention that every room will wake up and target you immediately. I've been sneaking through POI's and not every sleeper is waking up and that is me being unperked into stealth at all. The intention is that as you progress in stealth you will successfully pass the stealth check more often and zombies will more often be unaware of you. 

 

We no longer have the eyeball that opens or closes to tell us if we are being noticed and targeted by a zombie so it is pretty scary to just crouch silently and have faith that the zombie is just wandering in our direction randomly and not coming to get us.

[dcsobral]

6 hours ago, Doomofman said:

Is it just me or would it be better if the search term reset when you leave the Shape menu or if we had a button to clear the search? It's annoying when you need to switch back to all the blocks to have to click into the search box and delete the text

Backspace should clear it if you are opening the shape menu.

3 hours ago, Kosmic Kerman said:

Definitely agree. It would be nice to have a reset button or some other "clickable" functionality to clear the text in search boxes for both shapes and crafting. It gets old quick having to select the text and then reach for the delete key.

You don't have to select it. Say you opened the shape menu and searched for something, then closed the shape menu. Next time you open the search menu, you type "f" and that will automatically select the text. Then you press backspace and it is cleared.

[overgoat]

Is anyone finding .44 ammo very very rare in loot?  I'm level 50 with game stage 130 and I don't think I've seen a single round from loot.  I can craft it, but it seems odd that loot has done.

[meilodasreh]

1 hour ago, bachgaman said:

 

Don't they have the same speed?

 Maybe if you compare them having a race directly next to each other down the road. 

If you want to take shortcuts, go cross country, over hills and bumpy stuff, between trees, rocks and alike...you will definitely reach your destination much faster with the motorcycle. 

...waaaiit a minute...what's happening here? Am I really telling bachgaman how to do things faster in this game?

You're trolling me right? 😆 

[dcsobral]

1 hour ago, Falcon197 said:

So for the new building system, I originally thought the reduced number of mats would be a bad thing and might compromise some of my building designs due to the absence of rcon.  This wound up not being the case for the final product (i.e. the A20 version of structures I built in A19 are just as hardened), so I happily digress my concerns there.  

 

The new building process, however, is something I have more feedback on.  I'll front-load by saying I've been hardcore base building since A11 and have a strong grasp of designing things in the game and managing the material logistics for my group when we get rolling:

 

First the good.  Overall, the construction process feels faster.  Being able to throw down finished concrete blocks without waiting for wet crete to dry or having to wait a second round for rcon is a big plus.  The absence of rcon also cuts the material cost of advanced builds in half, and the many MANY new shapes enhance the complexity and quality on structures - and made it possible for me to do stuff I couldn't in A19 or before.  Kudos all round here.

 

Now the bad.  While having all the new shapes available as frames is nice, the process of upgrading framed layouts into finished structures for advanced builds (concrete, steel) is now harder / more time consuming.  Previously, it was possible to do structural mockups for a hardened base with rebar, then just nailgun everything.  Now, I find I have to go back and remove the framing, then place the final crete or steel block or fully upgrade the frame - which requires additional materials and IMO creates waste if your goal is to initially build with higher-tier mats.  Yes, the XP gain from doing full-chain upgrades somewhat balances things if you go from frames up to crete or steel, but the layout phase of building just feels very different and harder, even if it also has the potential to be faster.

 

As my team's builder, I used to get most of my XP from building our base out of rebar and upgrading it to rcon.  Now getting comparable XP requires throwing a bunch of extra wood and cobblestone at framed mockups and then going up to concrete.  Admittedly it doesn't sound like a big change, but the base I'm used to building for a group of 6-8 players would typically involve 3 or 4 thousand blocks, all made out of rcon.  Managing logistics isn't an issue - it's still 2 materials, just wood and stone instead of wood and iron.  But managing 3 layers of upgrades instead of 1 is more difficult.

 

Also, accidentally placing a finished block can now be an expensive error if it's concrete or steel.  One more consequence of removing rebar.

 

Last, as someone who relies heavily on precise dimensions for my builds, I've found it tougher to perform measurements without painting or otherwise adding marker frames, whereas before just counting the number of rebar / rcon blocks made things simple.

 

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not railing against the decision to evolve the building system.  Treat the above as a knowledge exchange.  But I think one way to address everything I'm pointing out would be to bring rebar back in some form, even if only with the A19 system of shapes available for it, and just have it be upgradeable to finished concrete.  That would resolve the time and resource sinks for removing/replacing frames or fully upgrading them, and make it less likely for builders to have to destroy 5-10k HP blocks placed in error.

 

Sorry for the long post.  Nothing but praise from me otherwise on the changes to materials, shapes, and overall construction.

 

TLDR: I love the new build system but I miss rebar!

Why are you placing final blocks instead of upgrading from frames? A full upgrade is very fast with the nailgun. Sure, the single upgrade of a rebar was even faster, but replacing the frames is definitely slower than upgrading it all. Granted, load bearing blocks need to be placed as the final material, but that's a much smaller scale.

[pApA^LeGBa]

27 minutes ago, Roland said:

 

There are no auto aggro rooms any longer in the same way that we had them in A19. The game now rolls a check against your stealth to see if you pass or fail your stealth check for each zombie and not just against the volume in general. Just because a zombie falls out of the ceiling rafters or out of a closet does not mean they initially know where you are. Just yesterday a zombie fell out of the ceiling while I was crouch walking into the room. It stood up after ragdolling and walked right past me. It was aggroed from falling but unaware of me because I didn't fail my stealth. I shot it in the head with an arrow and got my stealth bonus. 

 

That said, there could be a bug with the check as it is brand new but it is not the intention that every room will wake up and target you immediately. I've been sneaking through POI's and not every sleeper is waking up and that is me being unperked into stealth at all. The intention is that as you progress in stealth you will successfully pass the stealth check more often and zombies will more often be unaware of you. 

 

We no longer have the eyeball that opens or closes to tell us if we are being noticed and targeted by a zombie so it is pretty scary to just crouch silently and have faith that the zombie is just wandering in our direction randomly and not coming to get us.

 

I didn´t try it myself yet, but there are several people saying that they could avoid that stealth check, wich i guess is still connected with the sleeper volume, by breaking walls and getting sneak kills easier than actually beeing silent using the intended way. That is a huge flaw in the stealth system.

 

Also so far i never had single zombies waking up so far. Either the whole room woke up or none of them. Feel very much like in A19 tbh.

[meilodasreh]

47 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

Could someone explain the notations on aaa_poi_sizes?  Like this, for example, what does A37 and B22 mean?

 

It's a hint for us on how the game development will progress further.

there are 37 planned alpha versions, followed by 22 beta versions. adding to whole 60 more years before gold (g-ratio).

 

[dcsobral]

1 hour ago, bachgaman said:

 

Don't they have the same speed?

Nowadays the 4x4 and motorcycle have almost the same speed, but that wasn't the case when the 4x4 was introduced. If @meilodasreh really has only driven a 4x4 on alpha 17, then he has no idea what a 4x4 feels like since alpha 18.

[beerfly]

Did few more seeds and ffs, RWG is gorgeous. 

 

Proud of you guys, legends. 

[dcsobral]

1 hour ago, Jost Amman said:

NOOOO! Please NO! The game is already trader-centric enough! 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

I'm all for a no-trader option, but, hey, playing the trader is a game, and many people enjoy it. 

49 minutes ago, SnowDog1942 said:

 

G-Ratio... no idea... I can explain G-Spot though.

That's what he said.

11 minutes ago, overgoat said:

Is anyone finding .44 ammo very very rare in loot?  I'm level 50 with game stage 130 and I don't think I've seen a single round from loot.  I can craft it, but it seems odd that loot has done.

Indeed. He's from a friend who only does melee:

6 minutes ago, meilodasreh said:

It's a hint for us on how the game development will progress further.

there are 37 planned alpha versions, followed by 22 beta versions. adding to whole 60 more years before gold (g-ratio).

 

Damn... and that's only for the medium-sized version of the game. You should have seen the stats for the tile-sized version!

5 minutes ago, beerfly said:

Did few more seeds and ffs, RWG is gorgeous. 

 

Proud of you guys, legends. 

This is the one I'm currently playing in: https://imgur.com/2IR1kB4

My base is within 1km of factory 1, factory 3, skyscrapers 1, 2 and 3 and the apartment building. Among a lot of other things. And three traders.

I was on day 10 when someone sent me that seed, and I decided to restart right away.

[Weazelsun]

@madmole was the grease gun an inspiration for the model of the pipe machinegun? Because that's what it reminds me of.

[beerfly]

7 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

This is the one I'm currently playing in: https://imgur.com/2IR1kB4

My base is within 1km of factory 1, factory 3, skyscrapers 1, 2 and 3 and the apartment building. Among a lot of other things. And three traders.

I was on day 10 when someone sent me that seed, and I decided to restart right away.

There is an awesome spot south of the lake in Wasteland, in this seed you gave, for a villa, a horde night villa if you got bored. 

[dcsobral]

And on the note of traders, how about adding an option where if you are inside when the trader closes you can choose to slip him 100 dukes to get a couple more minutes? 😂

[Kosmic Kerman]

40 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

Backspace should clear it if you are opening the shape menu.

You don't have to select it. Say you opened the shape menu and searched for something, then closed the shape menu. Next time you open the search menu, you type "f" and that will automatically select the text. Then you press backspace and it is cleared.

Same difference honestly. The difference between selecting it and hitting F is neither here or there for me. The issue is that it takes two steps to clear and more importantly I have to take my hand off the mouse to complete the second step.  A single or even double-click functionality would make the menus much more useable. Alternatively if double pressing F cleared the search window, that would work as well.

 

On a tangent, how do you clear the Red Waypoint from your map in A20? I'm pretty sure this was possible in A19 but can't figure out how to do it in A20.

35 minutes ago, overgoat said:

Is anyone finding .44 ammo very very rare in loot?  I'm level 50 with game stage 130 and I don't think I've seen a single round from loot.  I can craft it, but it seems odd that loot has done.

It's definitely rare, probably too rare. I'm on Day 36 (60min days) and have found about 100 rounds.  About half were found in the forest biome and the others from some trips in the Desert and Wasteland.

[hiemfire]

3 minutes ago, Kosmic Kerman said:

On a tangent, how do you clear the Red Waypoint from your map in A20? I'm pretty sure this was possible in A19 but can't figure out how to do it in A20.

Iirc clicking the flag symbol on the upper section of the map frame should remove the quick waypoint.

[meilodasreh]

23 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

Nowadays the 4x4 and motorcycle have almost the same speed, but that wasn't the case when the 4x4 was introduced. If @meilodasreh really has only driven a 4x4 on alpha 17, then he has no idea what a 4x4 feels like since alpha 18.

is it still stuck immediately when touching a too steep slope with rubble piles of burned wood or alike?

still slowed much when touching a tree?

much broader than the motorcycle?

has a bigger turning circle?

is generally more sluggish to maneuver/steer around obstacles?

Then my before statement is still valid.

 

I prefer to shortcut crosscountry. The 4x4 sucked when I tried last time. Did it get some love considering offroad ability?

If you say its worth a try I will give it a shot, but I guess I will teleport me one via creative mode then, not to waste time and mats.

I have the strong feeling that big clumsy thing still doesn't correspond with my driving style.

Last time I got that thing permanently stuck against ore deposits, rocks, trees and so on.

And it really should be like that if you ask me. Driving such a battleship through a forest and everything is just knocked aside would be fun only for a very short time.

[Kire]

Suggestion for screamers: 
Make them spawn zombies when taking damage, not just when they see you. right now they seem non existant to me, they spawn and run into a spike and die. would be more fun if they called for help when taking damage

[overgoat]

19 minutes ago, Kire said:

Suggestion for screamers: 
Make them spawn zombies when taking damage, not just when they see you. right now they seem non existant to me, they spawn and run into a spike and die. would be more fun if they called for help when taking damage

Screamers with feral sense turned on are way meaner.  They sometimes scream without 'seeing' you and often spawn additional screamers.  I had a 60-70 zombie screamer horde recently.  Felt like a mini blood moon.

[Khalagar]

2 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

I didn´t try it myself yet, but there are several people saying that they could avoid that stealth check, wich i guess is still connected with the sleeper volume, by breaking walls and getting sneak kills easier than actually beeing silent using the intended way. That is a huge flaw in the stealth system.

 

I can confirm this is the case, and it's why I still think stealth is a noob trap perk. I have zero points in stealth and will regularly clear the entire sleeper room by just crouching down outside it and picking them all off with an unsilenced rifle, or in many cases, literally pulling out a shotgun and just blowing their heads off from 30 feet away while their buddies sleep next to them.

 

You can still break a block to get a better angle into the room for more head shots and they zeds don't care, they only care if you step into the room or if you miss a shot and damage a block in the room, which seems to count as you being in the room with them, but it usually only applies to the floor and not the walls.

 

Stealth as a whole is always going to be a fairly awful skill because horde nights exist, which means your entire build is useless on the hardest night of the week. Especially in coop it's hard to compete with a dude who just holds Shift + W + M1 with a shotgun and clears the entire PoI before you have even crouch walked past the first floor

 

  

9 hours ago, MechanicalLens said:

So I just accepted the traps bundle for T1 quest completion in a creative test world and they are... really quite very horrible? 5 wooden spikes, 5 barbed wire fences, and 15 landmines? That almost feels like a trap, pun not intended. I was expecting a dart trap and/or a blade trap and/or electric fences but...

 

Constructive feedback time: Please TFP, please make this bundle type worth its weight, because currently... it's very bad. haha

 

 

Yep, my friend picked a level 2 or 3 trap one for some unknowable reason, and got like 5 metal spike traps and a couple of land mines. Meanwhile I was like . . .  but the farm plots / mods / vehicle parts dude wtf

[Gazz]

I have tried shotgun and machine gun when testing balance and yes, it's kinda true.

 

I just enjoy the stealth gameplay and there is no one I need to impress with x zombies killed per day. =P

[Frankencow]

On 12/10/2021 at 6:52 AM, JaxTeller718 said:

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?

 

 

I also would be OK with harsher death penalties, but I also tend to just start new games on death in SP. (I also enjoy TLD on Interloper.)

 

One idea for multiplayer that would cause a greater sting of death without changing gameplay would simply be to add some kind of social/badge element to zero-death play. On a fresh seed, as long as you have remained death-free (or configurable: "under X deaths" total; or perhaps average less-than 1 death per 200 game days; etc) the player screen and chat gives you some kind of trophy or hero/survivor indicator next to your name.

 

For a lot of people in multiplayer settings, the sting of losing the reputation and bragging rights is greater than anything the game mechanics themselves could impose.

 

If you then wanted to take it further, game mechanics could be tied to that status. Trading Lobbies  that can only be entered by "Survivors", speed, health, crafting bonuses, or whatever. But even just reputation alone would be a big incentive.