Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[Alpacko]

3 hours ago, Roland said:

If bandits just run loops, I will be surprised and disappointed but I'm willing to keep some hope in my heart.

 

Do not trust in hope - it will betray you. Only faith and hatred sustains.

[Roland]

16 hours ago, Alpacko said:

 

Do not trust in hope - it will betray you. Only faith and hatred sustains.

 

meh...when you hope but then are disappointed you only suffer once. When you worry and then your worries are confirmed you suffer twice.

[Aldranon]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

 

meh...when you hope but then are disappointed you only suffer once. When you worry and then your worries are confirmed you suffer twice.

 

Do you hope next year your students will be better than the last?

 

I'm sure you heard this one: A teacher said he loves teaching, he just hates the students!

Don't worry my dad was a teacher, I know everything!

 

[beerfly]

2 hours ago, Aldranon said:

A teacher said he loves teaching, he just hates the students!

Nah, it is not a hate, but understanding and tolerate the human form in front of you.

 

Everyone have it`s moments, no matter age. Kids also, and they have many, minding the complicated world they grew up in, rather than many, for who is easy to just judge them and put them aside from their goals. Dad was a teacher also.

 

P.S. When are A21 release notes going out ? 

 

*running away* 

 

[Morloc]

On 2/3/2022 at 9:17 AM, doughphunghus said:

I feel the idea has already been solved: Scrap all the bandit work, and ... simply make the vehicles the bandits!

 

On 2/3/2022 at 9:17 AM, doughphunghus said:

From my perspective, all you would need to do is add the AI to the vehicles.

 

 

It may already be in place.

 

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc

[Blake_]

Fun fact: There's no video game out there with a vanilla non-scripted general-purpose bandit AI that seeks cover, surrounds, throws grenades, heals/retreats when damaged, communicates between each other, targets and follows the player through a Multiplayer voxel world in a believable manner.

 

Most advanced ones just move to the player and target him/her while following him/her with significant glitches, like Empyrion. There are also scripted ones , that have a bit of brain but within a very limited area. Some non-voxel games do achieve some of those features, like Rust, with scripted and area-limited NPC AI working in Multiplayer.

[Jost Amman]

@faatal : I think you guys might be interested in resolving this (minor) but flabbergasting issue!

(I linked a Steam discussion where the exploit/bug is explained)

[The-Walking-Dad]

It's been a long time since I played it, but half Life's soldiers seemed to make a decent effort at cover, etc. I know that wasn't a voxel game, though.

[Neminsis]

1 hour ago, Jost Amman said:

@faatal : I think you guys might be interested in resolving this (minor) but flabbergasting issue!

(I linked a Steam discussion where the exploit/bug is explained)

That's a lot of effort someone would have to go through for no gain whatsoever.  Of course, you can use the same knowledge of the spawn radius to control exactly where the Zs will spawn and where they won't e.g., a 30m long pier out into a lake, a 100x100 paved over area with soil cutouts surrounded by turrets to kill them the moment they spawn... I've built both and neither are particularly rewarding experiences other than knowing that I can.

I mean sure it's a little exploit-ish, but the obvious fixes would be game breaking. Allow them to spawn on top of player blocks and there's no longer any protection for crafting bases and everyone is forced to build them underground or well outside of the spawn radius. Allow them to spawn in the water and you end up with a lag fest as entire waves slowly swim through a much more complicated pathing scenario. Allow them to spawn in the air and LOL. Force more super vultures to spawn and you've got another easy turret farm. Make the vultures even more super and you break every base type that's not a pit drop. See the Succubi in Darkness Falls on max settings in the Wasteland for example.  Increase the spawn radius and you've got another ram chewing lag fest.

I'm a huge fan of the AI in this game, the 'intelligence' randomization [chefs kiss]. It's really quite good and I enjoy finding ways to exploit it, but all intelligences are exploitable. Which is why there were "killing corridors" in castles for thousands of years. I can tell you already that the more 'intelligent' bandit ai will also be exploitable because of similar spawning constraints, maximum pathing lengths per cycle, detection limits and lines of sight. Their only saving grace being the random spawn mechanic of wandering hordes and catching the player in the field unprepared.

There will always be exploits and I don't honestly think that it's worth the time and effort to attempt to address the ones that aren't super easy and convenient for the player to achieve like the "zombie force field" or the more common "drop loop", both of which can be built before the first blood moon and allow the player to profit in exp and loot in complete safety.  Building a 51m high platform is the equivalent of ticking off horde nights and doesn't allow profit, so why bother?

[doughphunghus]

5 hours ago, Morloc said:

 

 

 

It may already be in place.

 

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc

Holy BMX Bikeriding Murder Bike, Batman! It's alive!

5 hours ago, Blake_ said:

Fun fact: There's no video game out there with a vanilla non-scripted general-purpose bandit AI that seeks cover, surrounds, throws grenades, heals/retreats when damaged, communicates between each other, targets and follows the player through a Multiplayer voxel world in a believable manner.

 

Most advanced ones just move to the player and target him/her while following him/her with significant glitches, like Empyrion. There are also scripted ones , that have a bit of brain but within a very limited area. Some non-voxel games do achieve some of those features, like Rust, with scripted and area-limited NPC AI working in Multiplayer.

so close... other than the grenades and a few pesky voxels... never, ever give these things grenades

[Jost Amman]

6 hours ago, Neminsis said:

I mean sure it's a little exploit-ish, but the obvious fixes would be game breaking. Allow them to spawn on top of player blocks and there's no longer any protection for crafting bases and everyone is forced to build them underground or well outside of the spawn radius.

Weird, I thought normal spawns and BM spawn were handled separately.

If they are, though, it wouldn't be much of a problem to enable spawning on block players for BM horde zombies, wouldn't it?

[Neminsis]

5 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

Weird, I thought normal spawns and BM spawn were handled separately.

If they are, though, it wouldn't be much of a problem to enable spawning on block players for BM horde zombies, wouldn't it?

They are, the ai is even different now.

Sure, it would be easy to do, but it would only affect that small handful of players that paved a 100x100 area to see what would happen...and everyone else that had their crafting base within 50m of where they're standing when Zs start spawning or decided to build a castle out to the 41m range of a land claim block etc. and it wouldn't affect the guy that built the platform 51m in the air at all.

That fix would break the game for an incredible number of people just playing the game normally.

100x100 is 10,000 blocks and it's not even a 10th of my largest build in survival, and not even a drop compared to the billions of square meters of material available on an 8k map, but if I stacked it into a cube 22m on a side and stood on top of it during horde night and had it ringed with auto turrets I'd get the exact same results as I described with controlling the Z spawn locations, and you wouldn't even think twice about calling it an exploit. 

If I were to use only about 300 blocks and 9 electric fence lines to create a corridor to keep the Zs perpetually stunned while I shot them in the face would that be an exploit? What if I added auto turrets to increase my dps? Maybe a blade trap and a sledge turret? Same results with a whole lot less effort. No?

Obviously, what is and is not an exploit isn't going to be measured by how dominant a player is over the Zs or they'd never let you turn down the difficulty or block damage or turn blood moons off completely. It's going to be measured in the time it takes to achieve that dominance. I'd guess that TFP target is going to be around 60-70 hours playtime.

With the Z "forcefield" you can achieve that dominance on day 1. You can get the exact same effect as laying out 10k blocks but now it takes less than 100 and you can get by with less than 50. Literally, only 1 hour on default settings. See the difference?

[Jost Amman]

5 hours ago, Neminsis said:

That fix would break the game for an incredible number of people just playing the game normally.

Why? If they do it right, no it won't.

You're making a lot of assumptions there, but if the devs decide to fix it they'll find a way, I'm sure.

[Hapidedurva]

I think this alpha is the worst in many years. There is a horrible lag, even on best pc-s. Turrets and vehicles falling through the world (still after 4-5 years). The graphics and lightning are really outdated in 2022. The zombies are few, and boring, the overal graphic design is lacking. There are few new stuff, but many performance issues.

Only thing i can praise is the level design, it is fantastic. T think this game really need to be gold now, and lets all just move on to 7 days to die 2.

[Jost Amman]

34 minutes ago, Hapidedurva said:

I think this alpha is the worst in many years. There is a horrible lag, even on best pc-s. Turrets and vehicles falling through the world (still after 4-5 years). The graphics and lightning are really outdated in 2022. The zombies are few, and boring, the overal graphic design is lacking. There are few new stuff, but many performance issues.

Only thing i can praise is the level design, it is fantastic. T think this game really need to be gold now, and lets all just move on to 7 days to die 2.

If the game is so horrible for you, why are you still here discussing it?

Why aren't you playing one of the thousands of other games that are available out there?

Seriously.

[TSBX]

2 hours ago, Hapidedurva said:

 T think this game really need to be gold now, and lets all just move on to 7 days to die 2.

Hey, leave me out of this.

[Callum123456789]

2 hours ago, Hapidedurva said:

I think this alpha is the worst in many years. There is a horrible lag, even on best pc-s. Turrets and vehicles falling through the world (still after 4-5 years). The graphics and lightning are really outdated in 2022. The zombies are few, and boring, the overal graphic design is lacking. There are few new stuff, but many performance issues.

Only thing i can praise is the level design, it is fantastic. T think this game really need to be gold now, and lets all just move on to 7 days to die 2.

 

all i have to say is this games in alpha

 

things change 

things get better

give it time and youll appreciate it for what the game is 

i mean you could always play some other game right if you dont like it right?

[Matt115]

2 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

If the game is so horrible for you, why are you still here discussing it?

Why aren't you playing one of the thousands of other games that are available out there?

Seriously.

Well honk kong '97 and  dessert bus are horrbile bad but people play in this so... XD

 

But seriously. 7dtd don't have any rival - it is only voxel game with realisic graphic - the forest, conan, ark have very limted "building". So i understand this guy - there is no another alternative. Well i wish there were game similiar to 7dtd but with medival setting but i'm afraid that only TFP would do something like this 

On 2/4/2022 at 10:35 PM, Blake_ said:

Fun fact: There's no video game out there with a vanilla non-scripted general-purpose bandit AI that seeks cover, surrounds, throws grenades, heals/retreats when damaged, communicates between each other, targets and follows the player through a Multiplayer voxel world in a believable manner.

 

Most advanced ones just move to the player and target him/her while following him/her with significant glitches, like Empyrion. There are also scripted ones , that have a bit of brain but within a very limited area. Some non-voxel games do achieve some of those features, like Rust, with scripted and area-limited NPC AI working in Multiplayer.

Well stalker have rly good ai. BTW in my opinion in zombie games humans are the worst ( in meaning : the most boring/ annoing ) enemies.  Cod, dying light, dead rising etc. 

I hope bandits will be very rare enemies

[Neminsis]

2 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

Why? If they do it right, no it won't.

You're making a lot of assumptions there, but if the devs decide to fix it they'll find a way, I'm sure.

That's the thing though I just got done telling you why they're not going to decide to do so, and it really didn't take many assumptions to come to that conclusion as there's plenty of evidence to support it. 

Maybe if I put it a different way...

Every player has the ability to "break" the game with debug and creative modes a few keystrokes away. Why hasn't this ultimate exploit been addressed by TFP?

Even without using debug mode the player is offered the ability to lower the difficulty, increase their own block damage while lowering it for the Zs, set the Zs movement speed, how many Zs can be alive at one time, the frequency of blood moons or even if they happen at all, the frequency of air drops, the amount of loot etc. These settings can make the game ridiculously easy, so why haven't TFP done something about them?

Obviously, there's more to it than whether or not it breaks the game or makes it too easy, right?

Maybe, just maybe it's more about encouraging players to play longer, in more different ways, than it is about policing every possible way that the Zs can be defeated?

Every "exploit" that they've ever addressed has been because it discouraged players from playing any other way. if they were smart.

What's smart about building a platform 51m in the air when you could just turn off the blood moon? 

What's smart about laying out 10k blocks when you can achieve the same thing with 300 and a few fence posts?

Those aren't exploits, they're edge case novelties.

[Jost Amman]

2 hours ago, Neminsis said:

Those aren't exploits, they're edge case novelties.

Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear enough in my last reply.

It was about the "no spawn on player blocks" thing, not the 50 blocks pillars scenario...

[Neminsis]

3 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear enough in my last reply.

It was about the "no spawn on player blocks" thing, not the 50 blocks pillars scenario...

Since the 50 block pilllar scenario was the original issue that you were calling a bug/exploit and a minor but flabbergasting issue that the devs might be interested in resolving and the "no spawn on player blocks" thing was offered for comparison to it, because it utilizes the same spawn radius mechanic, to point out how ridiculous it would be for those same devs to spend time and lines of code on addressing I naturally thought there were the same topic. 

 

On 2/4/2022 at 2:22 PM, Jost Amman said:

@faatal : I think you guys might be interested in resolving this (minor) but flabbergasting issue!

(I linked a Steam discussion where the exploit/bug is explained)

 

[GoldsharkROU]

Happiness is never total in this game and especially because we all have different opinions on how to get there, in this last A20 I still need a story with more depth but hey, it has many good things, it still bothers the Zs hit me WITHOUT ANIMATION, it is VERY annoying to see those hits made in Flash! 🌠

[Red Eagle LXIX]

So, I'm going to complain about farming but not in the usual way.

The A20 Farming changes are fine - Except for the randomly not growing crops which increases the difficulty.

I've got a 10x10 farm (so 100 plots).

About half the time all of them will grow just fine.

 

The rest of the time one or more random plots will just not grow.  It is not the same plots either, or the same number.

Example my last planting , just one single potato never made it out of seed stage.

However in my current planting 14 Hops never left seed stage.

It has been increasing the difficulty of trying to raise my seed supply.

 

Here you can see the layout and the 14 that never left seed.  I waited till harvest (this screenshot was while growing forgot to take another with the full-growns) and they never grew.  Seeds were planted 30 coffee, 20 hops, 20 mushroom, 20 pumpkin, 4 coffee, 2  hops, 2 mushroom, 2 pumpkin.  As can be seen 14 of the hops in the middle were not growing but plants both before and after did.  It will be a different plots though so it is not like the same plot fails each time.  In the prior run only the very first (left, back) crop failed to grow.

 

 

[Red Eagle LXIX]

It should be noted that the seeds that failed to grow were not all in order.  I always plant from the back/far side to front/close side.  So in that screenshot the first 30 planted coffee grew, then the 10 planted hops failed, then 6 planted hops grew, then 4 planted hops failed, then the remaining crops grew.

Another way to say that, the 10 hops that failed to grow in row 4 were planted before the 6 hops that grew in row 5.  The 4 hops that failed to grow in row 5 were planted after the 6 hops in row 5 that grew.  It wasn't a case of consecutive planted crop failure.

 

Also, how about a drone whistle to call your parked nearby drone? 

[Star69]

For as long as we’ve had farming, there has always been an issue with some plants not growing past seedlings but it used to be pretty uncommon and isolated and usually fixed by not planting in the same spot again. Your issue is pretty darn common and definitely a concern especially with the increased difficulty added to farming. Hopefully someone takes a look at some point.