Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[hiemfire]

29 minutes ago, Roland said:

Besides, you don't balance a game to cover the possibility of glitches. You design it for how it should work. The creative menu and console commands are available for when there are glitches but a farm doesn't need to be able to automatically and easily produce a stockpile of food just in case something glitches.

Hopefully they're able to find a way to stop the glitches from happening. I don't mean crashes either. I mean leave base for a few game days, come back and every plant is broken if not entire portions of the base. If "Just use the creative menu." ends up being their go to when it hits "gold" then they might as well have just cut the entire farming portion of the game instead of likely neutering in game steps that players can take to mitigate when it does happen.

Edited December 4, 2021 by hiemfire (see edit history)

[Khalagar]

11 hours ago, Laz Man said:

The end game has technically been pushed out more with the inclusion of more POIs especially since players can now choose lower tiered POIs even after progressing to the next tier.

 

Labeling some T4s as T5s would only speed up progression since those can be cleared faster and would deincentivize doing the "true" longer T5s.

 

FYI, there is also a new T5 factory.

 

Ah, I thought some of the new T4 were allegedly harder than t5, so labeling them t5 didn't seem like it would make it easier, but of course that depends on the difficulty of the new PoI.

 

Personally that frickin half destroyed grocery store added in A19 gave me more trouble than any T5 does lol, and I think that one is a t3 or a t4? Super excited to see the new A20 ones, I've been trying to avoid spoilers on the streams so it's hard to tune in only for the relevant testing stuff and then turn my eyes away when they start clearing a PoI I haven't seen yet

 

5 hours ago, Kalex said:

What do you mean it was wrong on drones? The drone was listed in the patch notes, and the drone is in the game. Just because you didn't read the patch notes carefully enough, doesn't mean it wasn't there.

 

As Roland says, the patch notes specifically says the Drone scales with Intellect perk, but it doesn't in the final permanent unchangeable experimental release that streamers got

 

 

 

Anyway as for my stance on the farming debate that everyone demands to know, I personally think it's a good idea to make the perks more impactful, so making farming less easy mode encourages using the perk so that's fine. My only issue is just that it will require replanting which is just tedious and takes more time for no real benefit, so I'd say rather than RNG which is dangerous, just making the plants take longer to grow and having the farming perks reduce grow time makes more sense and seems far simpler and easier to balance. You only have to deal with the "how does the plant know who planted it and if they have the perk" and "what happens if you plant a plant then get the perk to make it grow faster" issues, which are fairly easy to work around

 

[BFT2020]

3 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

 

(which is not the case since I don't even know those guys)

No bias opinion here, I thought the video was well done.  Good summary of the changes without going into too much details, I think they did a great job of combining all the information previously shared in the various dev streams.

[khzmusik]

1 hour ago, faatal said:

That only works when your feature takes 5 minutes to do or you are just copying someone else's idea. I exaggerate, but it is usually the case.

 

This is categorically not true. It's actually how development works in most major companies (Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc). I speak from some experience.

 

The gaming industry works very, very differently than other programming industries. I'm glad I don't work in it.

[littlegreen]

... so is there going to be a left-handed GUI mode? ... ever?

Edited December 4, 2021 by littlegreen (see edit history)

[Roland]

54 minutes ago, hiemfire said:

If "Just use the creative menu." ends up being their go to when it hits "gold"

 

Who said that was their philosophy?

 

I'm pretty sure that this phase of development is meant to solve as many of those glitches as possible so that the game can go gold. Relying on the creative menu and console commands is what you do when playing an alpha understanding that there will be glitches while waiting for those glitches to be fixed. That was the point of my post-- not to say that TFP plans to go gold with creative menu and console commands as normal recovery features for glitches that regularly occur to the point that players feel like they need to have stacks and stacks of food put away to protect against it.

16 minutes ago, khzmusik said:

This is categorically not true.

 

It is for the industry the conversation is about. I really doubt faatal was trying to speak for fields outside of his own experience.

 

19 minutes ago, khzmusik said:

The gaming industry works very, very differently than other programming industries.

 

I needed this a couple days ago when Mr. Program Manager of office software was trying to analyze TFP workflow according to the way things work in his background...

[Gazz]

9 hours ago, MechanicalLens said:

My only real concern about the farming is super corn. What if you get to the point where you run out of the stuff, seeds included? Therefore I have the following questions:

 

If you clear the entire map of super corn then you need to accept a quest to reset one of the Bob's Boars POIs.

 

If you are already farming it you only need 1 level in the farming perk to make a profit.

[MechanicalLens]

I'm loving all of the new visuals in A20, but from what I've seen the blood splatters that erupt from zombies when you attack them with melee/ranged seem a little bit too over the top imho. They were fine the way they were before I think. Now they just look like dirt clouds.

Edited December 4, 2021 by MechanicalLens (see edit history)

[Jost Amman]

@Roland : is there a thread for reporting A20 bugs yet?

I've already started something on Steam where we can link stream/YT videos where a bug was seen. 

[Roland]

1 minute ago, Jost Amman said:

@Roland : is there a thread for reporting A20 bugs yet?

I've already started something on Steam where we can link stream/YT videos where a bug was seen. 

 

The regular bug pool for now.

[khzmusik]

41 minutes ago, Roland said:

I needed this a couple days ago when Mr. Program Manager of office software was trying to analyze TFP workflow according to the way things work in his background...

 

Yeah, that's what made me think of it. Mr. Program Manager was entirely correct for the vast majority of large software corporations.

 

But, it seems like game development is more like working in a startup (which I've also done, briefly, while still in college). Basically, everyone is a cowboy, unit tests are considered a waste of time, "requirements" are just what developers believe customers will think is "cool," nothing is documented, everyone works 70+ hours/week, etc. (I do not speak from experience in the gaming industry, so I could easily be wrong.)

 

At the place where I currently work, they hired a boss who worked at (and sometimes founded) companies like this, and tried to bring that work ethic into our team. It was absolutely horrible. I started looking for another job not long after he took over, and do not ever want to work that way again. Fortunately, like a lot of cowboy bosses, he left the team for greener pastures, and the current boss is much better.

Edited December 4, 2021 by khzmusik (see edit history)

[Beelzebubs Ghost]

40 minutes ago, Gazz said:

 

If you clear the entire map of super corn then you need to accept a quest to reset one of the Bob's Boars POIs.

 

If you are already farming it you only need 1 level in the farming perk to make a profit.

 

What happened to the percentage chance of no seeds? Is that negated by investing in Living off the Land?

 

I hope so 🙄

[Gobarg]

Will no one think of the seeds!

We farmers are yet again under attack after all this time thinking that the protections of the seminal "Hoe V Spade" ruling of many alphas ago would prevail.  They have not!

Many thought they could relax under the visionary TFP ruling but here we are yet again at each others throats and blockading the local seed merchants and their poor employees as they try to go about their daily lives.

How many seed will be left to rot or be planted in the wrong soil.

Sad times indeed.  We should all come together in the spirit of the season (New Alpha) and speak harmoniously of seeds and their crucial role in our lives.

Bless the seeds and all you are touched by them.

 

 

Well that's the stupid out for the day.  Have fun and stay safe everyone

[wereMole88]

Sewers did not make it into A20?

[MechanicalLens]

3 minutes ago, wereMole88 said:

Sewers did not make it into A20?

 

Sewers are in A20.

[Khalagar]

8 minutes ago, wereMole88 said:

Sewers did not make it into A20?

 

Sewers are only under certain PoI / city generation sections, but they are in.  You won't find them everywhere, but there should be several in any city

[JoeDaFrogman]

I have checked the release notes via searching for "map" and noticed on a a few streams something that I assume to be a bug OR an undocumented feature in the release notes:

 

Specifically, on the in game player map, the icons assigned show up, but the labels no longer do in A20(as they used to do in A19).    Is this a feature(got I hope not!) that is not documented(or perhaps not well) in the release notes?  Or is this something to be considered a bug for fixing?

[khzmusik]

3 hours ago, Eromivus said:

I'm sorry if these have already been pointed out or this is the wrong spot for it, but a few things I've noticed watching Jawoodle's two videos:

 

1. Zombies on his horde night wouldn't climb ladders to get to him, so they just milled about and randomly swatted at stuff below him

2. Raining indoors again

3. This could be pre-existing behavior and I'm only noticing it because there's more stuff in the world, but zombies seems to be getting distracted and caught by objects that pose no threat. They just seem to be ignoring the player more to do inane things, but again I can't swear to this.

 

#1 and #2 existed in A19 too.

 

You can see #1 in action of you watch Glock9's Farmer Glock series. In his horde base, he had to add an open hatch to the ceiling above his ladder, even though it was maybe 5 blocks above the end of the ladder, or the zombies wouldn't climb.

 

#2 appears to only happen with POI blocks. Player-crafted blocks seem to block the rain. At least that's how it works for me in A19.

 

#3 seems to be an A20 bug, I've heard more than one streamer comment about it.

[Eromivus]

11 minutes ago, khzmusik said:

 

#1 and #2 existed in A19 too.

 

You can see #1 in action of you watch Glock9's Farmer Glock series. In his horde base, he had to add an open hatch to the ceiling above his ladder, even though it was maybe 5 blocks above the end of the ladder, or the zombies wouldn't climb.

 

#2 appears to only happen with POI blocks. Player-crafted blocks seem to block the rain. At least that's how it works for me in A19.

 

#3 seems to be an A20 bug, I've heard more than one streamer comment about it.

 

Thanks for the info. I haven't had rain inside of any POI's for A19, but I will say it doesn't rain much in general, so I guess it's possible the two just haven't happened concurrently so I was just assuming it was fixed.

[stallionsden]

45 minutes ago, Eromivus said:

 

Thanks for the info. I haven't had rain inside of any POI's for A19, but I will say it doesn't rain much in general, so I guess it's possible the two just haven't happened concurrently so I was just assuming it was fixed.

I had rain inside pois in a19  a18 a17 etc been around a while.

[faatal]

3 hours ago, khzmusik said:

 

This is categorically not true. It's actually how development works in most major companies (Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc). I speak from some experience.

 

The gaming industry works very, very differently than other programming industries. I'm glad I don't work in it.

Well, my post was specifically about the game industry. I don't care how long it takes to do other types of programming. We do tons of experimentation and deal with lots of unknown problems. You know how many times I have to fix a bug that can take 5 minutes or 5 days? A lot. How do you schedule how long it will take to fix an unknown amount of bugs that take unknown amounts of time to fix? You guess and guesses are often wrong.

[faatal]

2 hours ago, khzmusik said:

Yeah, that's what made me think of it. Mr. Program Manager was entirely correct for the vast majority of large software corporations.

 

But, it seems like game development is more like working in a startup (which I've also done, briefly, while still in college). Basically, everyone is a cowboy, unit tests are considered a waste of time, "requirements" are just what developers believe customers will think is "cool," nothing is documented, everyone works 70+ hours/week, etc. (I do not speak from experience in the gaming industry, so I could easily be wrong.)

 

At the place where I currently work, they hired a boss who worked at (and sometimes founded) companies like this, and tried to bring that work ethic into our team. It was absolutely horrible. I started looking for another job not long after he took over, and do not ever want to work that way again. Fortunately, like a lot of cowboy bosses, he left the team for greener pastures, and the current boss is much better.

I do not believe in working 70+ hour weeks or even 60 hours, except in rare occasions. Several studies over the years and my own experience tell me you get diminishing returns until you reach a point you are so burned out, you make extra bugs and bad decisions, subtracting from what you actually fix or improve. Meaning you could of just stopped at 50 hours and got the same net amount of work done.

[JoeDaFrogman]

13 minutes ago, faatal said:

Well, my post was specifically about the game industry. I don't care how long it takes to do other types of programming. We do tons of experimentation and deal with lots of unknown problems. You know how many times I have to fix a bug that can take 5 minutes or 5 days? A lot. How do you schedule how long it will take to fix an unknown amount of bugs that take unknown amounts of time to fix? You guess and guesses are often wrong.

 

Not in the game industry, but I am a developer by trade.     I can't tell you just how many times I estimated a problem to take 2 hours to fix and it took 8 days, or how many times I estimated a problem to take 5 days and it took 20 minutes.      When dealing with pretty much more than a singular programmer(and sometimes not even then depending on the size/age of the code base), you can't really estimate something you are not intimately familiar with.

 

 

Then, on the other side, there are times where I want to spend an hour in the code to create edit code to make it more flexible and easier to deal with in the long run, but would cause a massive set of regression cases that would take QA weeks we can't afford to spend.

 

 

 

 

[khzmusik]

21 minutes ago, faatal said:

I do not believe in working 70+ hour weeks or even 60 hours, except in rare occasions. Several studies over the years and my own experience tell me you get diminishing returns until you reach a point you are so burned out, you make extra bugs and bad decisions, subtracting from what you actually fix or improve. Meaning you could of just stopped at 50 hours and got the same net amount of work done.

 

That's exactly right IMHO.

 

Incidentally, I was not trying to diss you personally, nor The Fun Pimps. But it seems like everyone who works there had already worked as some kind of developer in the gaming industry, and that tends to skew your perspective, because the gaming industry is very exploitive of its developers and its workers in general.

 

My reaction was against the notion that doing things like "planning something on paper" - meaning, having written product requirements before starting development - simply can't work for anything more than a quick bug fix. That's not true at all, and in every place that isn't a game development company, they do it that way because developers work better that way. ("Better" meaning faster, with less overtime, producing fewer bugs, etc.)

 

If that's not how you work best, and it's not how you want to work, then that's fine. But thinking that it simply can't work any other way concerns me. To my outsider ears, it sounds like you're so used to working in an unhealthy environment, you believe you can't get the job done when working in a healthy environment. I hope I'm wrong.

Edited December 5, 2021 by khzmusik (see edit history)

[faatal]

19 minutes ago, khzmusik said:

That's exactly right IMHO.

 

Incidentally, I was not trying to diss you personally, nor The Fun Pimps. But it seems like everyone who works there had already worked as some kind of developer in the gaming industry, and that tends to skew your perspective, because the gaming industry is very exploitive of its developers and its workers in general.

 

My reaction was against the notion that doing things like "planning something on paper" - meaning, having written product requirements before starting development - simply can't work for anything more than a quick bug fix. That's not true at all, and in every place that isn't a game development company, they do it that way because developers work better that way. ("Better" meaning faster, with less overtime, producing fewer bugs, etc.)

 

If that's not how you work best, and it's not how you want to work, then that's fine. But thinking that it simply can't work any other way concerns me. To my outsider ears, it sounds like you're so used to working in an unhealthy environment, you believe you can't get the job done when working in a healthy environment. I hope I'm wrong.

I understand your point. There is value in planning and many people work better with a strong structure. I'm self motivated and just tend to like to jump around and work on multiple things. Brainstorm stuff and just do it. I actually get bored working on the same thing for more that a few days. Documentation also bores me, so I prefer to do the minimum to get a task moving along.

Edited December 5, 2021 by faatal (see edit history)