Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[dcsobral]

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

 

Sure, but when you compare crossbow to any gun you have to include firing speed as well. As long as you can get 7.62 ammo in heaps and waste 5 bullets per zombie without caring much a gun is still ahead in damage.

 

Well, no, you don't. First, if you one shot a zombie, you one shot a zombie. There's no need to keep firing at that point. Second, the zombies are sleeping so you can take as much time as possible. Third, if you woke up the other zombies firing these 5 bullets then you are not doing stealth.

[Aldranon]

My take on why Arizona has a lot of ammo is two fold:

 

1) Arizona has a lot of guns!  I'm not sure how many guns they have and I don't think anyone does!  The gun laws are "Wild west" there.

2) There are several Army bases there, one major one if memory serves.

 

SO, with that in mind, if the zombies attack, they will most likely have martial law in most states.  The military would be out in force with lots of ammo.  The solders got infected and didn't use all the ammo.

 

The End.  (Well, the end if the player's character dies, YOU are the last hope!) 

 

Edited November 18, 2021 by Aldranon (see edit history)

[dcsobral]

37 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

 

Shields are one of those "That'd be nice but that's a whole lot of work" things, while they are trying to content lock the game and push the full release out. Adding in an entire blocking system along with all of the animations and hit detection etc is a lot of things to add in, and shields would likely be pretty OP because of how easy it would be to block zombies attacks and club them down

 

  

 

 

Pretty much shuts any debate about whether the bow was under powered or not in A19 lol. I'd love for it to be viable again, but imo, they are fairly pointless as is. I wish they would make the crappy bow less crappy. The primitive bow is . . . . no. I used to always use the bow a ton in the first week, but after wooden bow was moved to t1, the t0 bow is pretty painful to use even compared to just using melee

I don't feel the bow is underpowered. It is very effective when you are hiding, and crappy when you are not. It is also silent. I can kill feral zombies at night on day 2 or 3 on Survivor difficulty (which I did this week) not because I do a lot of damage in a very short time, but because I shoot, move, then shoot again once the zombie is standing still near my previous location.

 

The fact that the wooden bow takes parts to craft, on the other hand, is what really screwed up the bow. The primitive bow is too weak and you just can't craft a wooden bow because the parts are too hard to find. Bows progression seams to be Tier 0, Tier 2, Tier 3, with the missing tier 1 because you can't find or craft a wooden bow, then you find a wooden bow but the blue/purple primitive bow is way better even before mods.

 

Will the bow kill the dog running in my direction? No. That's what pistols are for.

[Blake_]

@faatal how is life? Do you feel like talking about those MF? I wanted to ask, do you know if the Animal tracker sprites have already been fixed for a20 ?

 

It strikes me as a possible low priority that it really is everything but that for us players. I mean the code works, but we could only see map/compass sprites for chickens, rabbits and deers. Bear with me here. Snakey question right there. Down onto the rabbit hole. Let's not chicken out and answer me plz.

[Perlin_Worm]

I tend to look at balance by ability trees, not specific weapons. Agility seems to be in a good place but could use some fleshing out. Bows have good synergy with stealth but would like to see some bleed broadheads to compliment melee blade bleeds. Bows should not try competing with guns, so a bleed arrow would give a light armor stealther the ability to kite and inflict damage over time, then go in with the melee finisher. 

[IronClaw68]

On 11/15/2021 at 4:32 PM, unholyjoe said:

bout ready to kick 63 out the door so how young are you?

 

Pardon the interruption. I'll be 78 on Xmas Eve

[meilodasreh]

28 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

Will the bow kill the dog running in my direction? No.

Dude, you're doing it wrong.

 

Not the bow of course...but the exploding arrow? Oh YES!

 

 

 

...just mind the distance. safety first

[SenpaiThatIngnoresYou]

45 minutes ago, Aldranon said:

My take on why Arizona has a lot of ammo is two fold:

 

1) Arizona has a lot of guns!  I'm not sure how many guns they have and I don't think anyone does!  The gun laws are "Wild west" there.

2) There are several Army bases there, one major one if memory serves.

 

SO, with that in mind, if the zombies attack, they will most likely have martial law in most states.  The military would be out in force with lots of ammo.  The solders got infected and didn't use all the ammo.

 

The End.  (Well, the end if the player's character dies, YOU are the last hope!) 

 

It depends on how the outbreak happens. Lets consider the virus in game. if everyone was infected, and it was a slow incubation, then you would have just insane pandemonium where one day everything is nice then BLAMO zombie apocalypse. That would explain why we have the survivors, a destroyed society, but also a cure. 

 

It does not explain the bloodmoon. Why is the moon a weekly thing? don't know. Is it science or magic? don't know. 

[Mistwraith]

3 hours ago, JCrook1028 said:

Wait, you saw something about being able to do this? cause...they have always said that they are going to stay with the wires exposed model.

 

I am actually able to do this right now. Normal A19 with no mods. The wires just hang into the blocks if you do it right. I can also build blocks onto wires to hide them. If you put your generator in a generator room on top of your building, you can lay cables that go directly through the ceiling to the lamps and nobody will see them. I also use double walls with an empty space within to hide the electrical distributors. This also gives Zombies an additional wall to punch trough during blood moons.

[meilodasreh]

 ...btw, can't wait for the added levels of differently colored lootbags in A20.

 

Morning after hordenight will look as if a herd of giant unicorns took a dump against my fort. 😆

[meilodasreh]

20 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

Parkour.

Parcours is cool. I used to max that out later game.

Loved being able to jump over trader Joel's fort walls...but they nerfed that.

Still is fun though and often very useful when exploring or escaping from Zs.

[dcsobral]

1 minute ago, meilodasreh said:

Parcours is cool. I used to max that out later game.

Loved being able to jump over trader Joel's fort walls...but they nerfed that.

Still is fun though and often very useful when exploring or escaping from Zs.

I love parkour, but just for the fun. It doesn't really help with anything, except, well, combat.

[jorbascrumps]

15 minutes ago, Falcon197 said:

Redirecting, I wanted to bring up the new upgrade chain for building materials in A20.  Will it be possible to place fully upgraded concrete or steel blocks straightaway if you have the mats on hand, or would we have to place the plywood / corkboard frames first and upgrade from there?

 

Yes, you can directly place upgraded blocks if you have the materials. The only difference is they've simplified the upgrade chain and blocks no longer degrade to lower tiers when damaged.

[hiemfire]

37 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

I love parkour, but just for the fun. It doesn't really help with anything, except, well, combat.

I don't. Not being able to control when I jump max height/distance gets really annoying really fast and the perk has proven terminal to my characters more times than I want to bother counting.

[meilodasreh]

13 minutes ago, hiemfire said:

I don't. Not being able to control when I jump max height/distance gets really annoying really fast and the perk has proven terminal to my characters more times than I want to bother counting.

You can control it by the lenght you keep the key pressed.

...well at least to some degree. You're right it could use some fine-tune.

I myself was "ejected"/bounced off a wall several times because i jumped a little higher than I wanted and hit a window frame or sth.

[faatal]

7 hours ago, LewZephyr said:

@faatal

Not sure on your personal life, but make sure you enjoy the reason you work so hard.

I have worked in IT on the support / administrator side well over 25 years and you don't get that time back.

I'm 52 and it took the pandemic and me spending a bunch of time with my grand-kid (hes just over 2 now) during it to realize how much I missed pushing the envelope working. 

 

All the best to you and the team.  Stay healthy (especially mentally).

 

Thanks for your hard work.

I rarely do a heavy crunch, so a few weeks here or there is not a problem. I don't have a commute, so that is also bonus time.

 

Thanks

[AtomicUs5000]

Sometimes it's more work not to crunch, especially when coming back from a weekend and you need to figure out where you left off on something.

[Star69]

3 hours ago, IronClaw68 said:

Pardon the interruption. I'll be 78 on Xmas Eve

Seriously? Good for you! I hope I’m still gaming at 78. I’m curious as to how many of us 60+ years folks that actually play this game. I’m considering retirement this year which will allow more time for this game….I only have 5000+ hours so far lol. Fabulous relaxing game with unlimited replayability and I haven’t even tried any mods except Compopack. Here’s to the old people🍺🍺🍺

[SnowDog1942]

1 hour ago, faatal said:

I rarely do a heavy crunch

 

Thanks

No wonder why its not done yet! 

 

Kidding, thanks for everything you do!

[BFT2020]

1 hour ago, faatal said:

I rarely do a heavy crunch, so a few weeks here or there is not a problem. I don't have a commute, so that is also bonus time.

 

Thanks

Of course, this is all relative.  Most people won't survive one day doing a normal "faatal" day

1 hour ago, faatal said:

If the result you were looking for is an A on your report card. The result I look for in games is to have fun. Warrior is not fun to me, so why would I run around using anything on that setting. I actually prefer agility and stealth with some int, but I play with settings that make it fun for me.

This is why I have 3k hours in this game.  It is all about having fun.  Not trying to optimize my builds, not trying to do the min/max strategies.  Not doing the same thing over and over again.

 

It's why I am looking forward to A20.

[Aldranon]

12 hours ago, SenpaiThatIngnoresYou said:

It depends on how the outbreak happens. Lets consider the virus in game. if everyone was infected, and it was a slow incubation, then you would have just insane pandemonium where one day everything is nice then BLAMO zombie apocalypse. That would explain why we have the survivors, a destroyed society, but also a cure. 

 

It does not explain the bloodmoon. Why is the moon a weekly thing? don't know. Is it science or magic? don't know. 

 

Good points.

 

With the moon, I forget if its always full every 7 days.   If so it would be supernatural.

A biblical apocalypse would explain some things.  It does mention that people would "seek death but not find it".

 

My opinion on player infection is the player is immune to the virus (whatever) but not the host of (Edit Bacteria) in a zombies mouth.  So antibiotics cure the player.

Edited November 19, 2021 by Aldranon (see edit history)

[Yukkie]

Wasn't this place the Dev Diary for the Alpha 20?

[Doomofman]

Man, A20 cant come soon enough so I can stop checking in on this trainwreck of a thread

Edited November 19, 2021 by Doomofman
phrasing (see edit history)

[SenpaiThatIngnoresYou]

6 hours ago, Aldranon said:

 

Good points.

 

With the moon, I forget if its always full every 7 days.   If so it would be supernatural.

A biblical apocalypse would explain some things.  It does mention that people would "seek death but not find it".

 

My opinion on player infection is the player is immune to the virus (whatever) but not the host of (Edit Bacteria) in a zombies mouth.  So antibiotics cure the player.

 

Maybe? Or something wonky happened with the gravity and the orbit? It could go either way. I mean the blood moon is really cool, but it annoys me that it is a 7 day lunar rotation. I have set it to 28 days in the past and that is less annoying but i miss horde nights. I have tried modes where i put it on 3 days with a 3 day window and no warnings for random horde nights and those are fun. 

 

Did they remove dog hordes from vanilla? i don't recall seeing them in the vanilla game, but i do see them in some of the mods i play. I like dog hordes, and i would love to see  weekly bandit raids. 

 

 

[SenpaiThatIngnoresYou]

11 minutes ago, bachgaman said:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Nope

Ok,  it's weird because i don't see them as often as i used to. I used to get jumped by lots of dogs at the worst possible moments in vanilla, and in a few alphas i had to sneak every where on the dog days. Sometimes i noped away because there would be bears and dogs in a horde. Lately since alpha 17 i have not seen that many of them. Did they dial them down?