Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[Beelzebubs Ghost]

I'm pretty sure I responded to Gazz with a question regarding his statement about the Living off the Land perk, but it seems to have been deleted.

 

I will ask again.

 

Does the perk at level 1 negate the percentage based chance of getting seeds back and instead guarantee it?

[Roland]

4 hours ago, Beelzebubs Ghost said:

 

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

 

I hope so 🙄

 

59 minutes ago, Beelzebubs Ghost said:

I'm pretty sure I responded to Gazz with a question regarding his statement about the Living off the Land perk, but it seems to have been deleted.

 

I will ask again.

 

Does the perk at level 1 negate the percentage based chance of getting seeds back and instead guarantee it?

Both still there. Maybe Gazz will answer twice.

[Beelzebubs Ghost]

36 minutes ago, Roland said:

 

Both still there. Maybe Gazz will answer twice.

 

Spooky 👻

[Khalagar]

2 hours ago, Beelzebubs Ghost said:

 

Does the perk at level 1 negate the percentage based chance of getting seeds back and instead guarantee it?

 

No, but it should. I don't see any streamer that likes the RNG seed type, and they have a point that it basically just makes you not want to even touch farming until late game (if even then)

[Spuder]

@Laz Man Are there plans to add the switches/triggers to most existing POI’s?

 

Also roughly how many POI’s are questable with the restore power quest type? I noticed in a stream there were some from the trader, but were 3+ kilometers away… I’m assuming this will improve the more POI’s get this quest type?

 

P.S. love all the work you and team have put into the new POI’s. Can’t wait till Monday!!!

[Laz Man]

2 minutes ago, Spuder said:

@Laz Man Are there plans to add the switches/triggers to most existing POI’s?

 

Also roughly how many POI’s are questable with the restore power quest type? I noticed in a stream there were some from the trader, but were 3+ kilometers away… I’m assuming this will improve the more POI’s get this quest type?

 

P.S. love all the work you and team have put into the new POI’s. Can’t wait till Monday!!!

 

Switches will be added to existing POIs where they make sense (e.g. needs an easy exit, etc.)  Many should already have them added already.

 

Given how new the restore power quest is, we definitely need to add more per each tier.  Not sure what the target is but will inquire in our next meeting.

 

And....thanks! 😁

[hiemfire]

6 hours ago, Gazz said:

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

So the amount of crops needed to craft seeds has been reduced?

[Khalagar]

17 minutes ago, hiemfire said:

So the amount of crops needed to craft seeds has been reduced?

 

 I'm watching Misuto play now and he was looking into the crop stuff and after reading through it all, and checked and yep it's 5 plants  per seed craft. If you roll bad on your rng you are FUBAR. More than that, if you roll "meh" on your RNG you are FUBAR too and will run out of crops even with 1 point into living off the land. Even with max living off the land it seems like it would be stressful

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

[hiemfire]

2 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

 

 I'm watching Misuto play now and he was looking into the crop stuff and was definitely of the opinion that it's garbage after reading through it all, and checked and yep it's 5 plants  per seed craft. If you roll bad on your rng you are FUBAR. More than that, if you roll "meh" on your RNG you are FUBAR too and will run out of crops even with 1 point into living off the land. Even with max living off the land it seems like it would be stressful

Ya, 4 crops from a pick and a coin flip to be able to replant ain't "profit", unless Gaz was talking about another build they're fiddling with.

[Aldranon]

8 hours ago, MechanicalLens said:

 

1. There seems to be an issue with zombie pathing on ladders. If there is a block above the ladder, even if it's 100 blocks in the air, the zombies may no longer see it as a viable path to the player, even if the ladder itself touches the floor.

 

I hope that the Structural Engineer Zombie era, has ended.

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

[unholyjoe]

11 hours ago, bachgaman said:

First. I am very annoyed that they are playing A20 right now, but I cannot

finally... the reason he is @%$#ing... or i mean complaining  disagreeing about everything... he cant experience the joy until Monday. just like Christmas isnt it?

[Gazz]

4 hours ago, Beelzebubs Ghost said:

Does the perk at level 1 negate the percentage based chance of getting seeds back and instead guarantee it?

 

No. What I said is that you will make a profit from farming as long as you have 1 level of LOTL.

 

The system COULD have been simplified to leaving the seeds planted as in A19 and adjusting harvest to the same amount that we get now but no one asked me. =P

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

[Jost Amman]

11 minutes ago, Gazz said:

The system COULD have been simplified to leaving the seeds planted as in A19 and adjusting harvest to the same amount that we get now but no one asked me. =P

Well, then in tomorrow's morning meeting you could say, "Can anybody ask me what I think about A20 farming?"

(you can say that Jost Amman told you to say that) 

[Gazz]

That you have to replant is not a problem at all.

 

That the whole system became harder to understand could be improved. Not everyone is good at math and people are known to draw conclusions from small sample sizes. =P

[Aldranon]

 

7D2D survival (all survival really) = "Energy" management!

 

-You melee zombies (using food energy to power your attacks)

-Or shoot them (using chemical energy of the gunpowder)

-You need to gather food by hunting or buying from vendor/trader (Monetary energy)

 

So perks are there to leverage the energy you have:

-Spec'ing into combat perks, uses less energy to melee/shoot.

-Spec'ing into the physical energy optimizer perks, increases overall energy conservation.

 

What remains is the player and how they manage their energy (Wisdom) and how they go about optimizing said energy (Understanding)

... Yes... I want to play and I think I'm bored.  You never know what I will do when I get bored. 

[JoeDaFrogman]

16 minutes ago, Gazz said:

 

No. What I said is that you will make a profit from farming as long as you have 1 level of LOTL.

 

The system COULD have been simplified to leaving the seeds planted as in A19 and adjusting harvest to the same amount that we get now but no one asked me. =P

For me, the biggest kick in the balls here is the "I now have to spend time replanting these".   Now, honestly, it is with a bit of mixed feelings on this since in the very early game I tend to have random crap everywhere and having to replant is semi useful to group like things together(but that's an OCD thing), but in the late game it's just another thing I have to spend time doing.   I played on console(so A15??) and man, the time it took to replant crops was quite annoying, so when I got the PC version last year(A18 at the time) I was so pumped to be able to spend more time crafting/mining and less time futzing around with plants.

 

I can certainly appreciate the feeling of wanting it a bit harder for an unspeced person to grow food, but my gut says this is not the right way to nerf farming

 

 

[stallionsden]

14 minutes ago, JoeDaFrogman said:

For me, the biggest kick in the balls here is the "I now have to spend time replanting these".   Now, honestly, it is with a bit of mixed feelings on this since in the very early game I tend to have random crap everywhere and having to replant is semi useful to group like things together(but that's an OCD thing), but in the late game it's just another thing I have to spend time doing.   I played on console(so A15??) and man, the time it took to replant crops was quite annoying, so when I got the PC version last year(A18 at the time) I was so pumped to be able to spend more time crafting/mining and less time futzing around with plants.

 

I can certainly appreciate the feeling of wanting it a bit harder for an unspeced person to grow food, but my gut says this is not the right way to nerf farming

 

 

Those poor farmers lol who have to do this every time after they harvest and get the grounds ready for next harvest lol. 

[Aldranon]

28 minutes ago, stallionsden said:

Those poor farmers lol who have to do this every time after they harvest and get the grounds ready for next harvest lol. 

 

Maybe if a player uses fertilizer, the chance for generating seeds is greatly increased?

Have it based on a person's farming skill because too much fertilizer can kill some plants.

[stallionsden]

27 minutes ago, Aldranon said:

 

Maybe if a player uses fertilizer, the chance for generating seeds is greatly increased?

Have it based on a person's farming skill because too much fertilizer can kill some plants.

Could also make the player have to cultivate the plant to get seeds. Have em choose between they get  seeds or food from the plant 

 

1. Cut with  a knife.
2. Collect the ripe seeds and place on paper.
3. Allow the seeds to dry for about a week.
4. Clean the seeds by removing any husks or pods.
5. Place seeds in a container and ...
6. Sow the seeds in spring.

Or harvest seed from plant dry for a set amount of time and then have to plant with a huge chance the seed  fails to regrow 

[wereMole88]

10 hours ago, MechanicalLens said:

 

Sewers are in A20.

Thats great news.

9 hours ago, Khalagar said:

 

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

 

Very cool. Ive seen them in an older vidwo of A20 of a month ago. But I did not see them mentioned anywhere in the patch notes. I guess they are part of the POI or is it independent?

 

[Uncle Al]

8 hours 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.

 

Another day or two until A20's playable so figured I'd join the peanut gallery of non-game professionals.

I was really struck by Chriss Bourassa (Red Hook - developed Darkest Dungeon) saying in an interview 'Writing games isn't like writing finance software, everything takes three times as long.'  I got to speculating 'Why?'.

 

Probably it's because everything has to be fun.  You can take a requirement, build stuff that appears to fulfil it, and perfectly meet all the acceptance criteria except for 'is it fun?'.  Guess what, that functionality isn't fit for purpose, and you get to do it all again.

 

The same thing doesn't happen in business software development unless you've really screwed up your requirements elicitation.  Double entry bookkeeping hasn't changed much since 1494.  Sure you get late requirements and emergent requirements and the client does a radical business change that means a piece of functionality is no longer needed.  All that means is they don't need the functionality, it's still done (and you still get to charge them for it).  Game functionality that isn't fun, isn't done.

 

Try visualising what happens to business software project management techniques if you add in a rule that every time a piece of functionality is complete you roll a die, and on a 1-3 you have to bin it and replace it with something else.

 

Edited December 5, 2021 by Uncle Al (see edit history)

[Doomofman]

It's disappointing that the lever action rifle uses .762 and not .44 (which would be closer to the real life rounds they use). Was hoping it would give more of a reason for .44 to be a thing in the game

 

Also, is it true that the lever action rifle doesn't actually have a lever action animation? I haven't seen enough of it during the streamer weekend to know for sure

[Khalagar]

11 minutes ago, Doomofman said:

It's disappointing that the lever action rifle uses .762 and not .44 (which would be closer to the real life rounds they use). Was hoping it would give more of a reason for .44 to be a thing in the game

 

I mentioned this once before too, but if the intention of pipe weapons was to make it so all ammo had a relevant early weapon, they forgot .44 and junk turret ammo. Blow pipe for a t0 ranged int weapon could use junk ammo, but yeah it's weird you can't craft a crappy revolver something can use 44.  Getting .44 as your quest reward feels bad, I just sell it since I never use it anyway

[Doomofman]

3 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

 

I mentioned this once before too, but if the intention of pipe weapons was to make it so all ammo had a relevant early weapon, they forgot .44 and junk turret ammo. Blow pipe for a t0 ranged int weapon could use junk ammo, but yeah it's weird you can't craft a crappy revolver something can use 44.  Getting .44 as your quest reward feels bad, I just sell it since I never use it anyway

 

It's true. 9mm is kind of the same that it only has the pistol and SMG that use it but they are both far better weapons to use than the revolver and you generally don't get a desert vulture until much later in the game so not worth hording .44 ammo for.

 

I feel like the pipe machine gun should have used .44 as it looks like a Tommy gun as well. Then you would have at least had 3 tiers of weapons using the ammo (or 4 if the lever action had have used .44)

[meilodasreh]

I've watched a few of the streams now, and so far I'm pretty exited to start my own experience on - hopefully - monday evening.

The new stuff looks really cool! Love to try everything.

 

One thing that made me wonder:

The "arrow sticks in air" thingy is still not adressed (when you shoot at a curtain or something else that breaks on hit, the arrow "floats", still sticking in the no-more-existent surface)

 

That has been the case over so many alphas, I'm wondering:

Is it such a big deal to change it, so that the arrow will fall down, or even break in these cases?

Or is it considered as such a completely minor bug that nobody even bothers to take a look?

 

I mean, I don't mind if it stays (as I'm kinda used to it by now), but it's such an obvious thing.

So I guess there must be some "bigger" reason that this one stays?