Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[Scythe-Messiah]

1 hour ago, Code6 said:

A20 is severely restricting my ability to use a junk turret.  It frequently falls down through the block it is on. If I am up high it will fall to a lower floor. At ground level I have had it melt into solid concrete, forcing me to dig it out.
This used to happen occasionally in A19, but now it is crazily frequent.  This is especially frustrating during blood moons because I have an Intellect build and my junkie is my main defense.
 

I hope this is on the TFP radar.  I love this game and this is a killer bug for me.

 

Man, I feel you. My friend and I have experienced this bug as well, it's been especially brutal since I'm an INT main. He's had it as the host and I've had it happen as the client connected to his game. When he's reported his turret as having fallen, I was still seeing it still where he placed it, but inactive even while he was "standing next" to it.

 

We've had it drop through POIs and player made horde bases. I'm not completely certain why/when since it happens infrequently, but it's often enough it puts a damper on fun. It feels like it happens more often when zombies charge, I drop it, and it falls through floors leaving me scrambling. It was awful early game without auger/miner 69er when it sunk through POI floors to ground level. Sometimes if lucky, it only drops 10-15 blocks down and lands on a lower floor. It seems like it occurrs with busier POIs, chunk loading, and lower framerate situations -- skyscrapers, sleepers waking up, hordenight, players in different parts of the map, heavy zombie pathing, or leaving and returning to chunks where the turrets were previously deployed. I haven't been able to witness a connection between this bug and vehicles teleporting though. On hour hordebase, I have seen zombies fall, ragdoll, and then get knocked below blocks collision and get stuck in crawling animations in blocks below the top level. Not sure if that's directly related to turrets dropping or not though. 

[faatal]

20 hours ago, Blake_ said:

With all due respect, that's not true and not a good profiling test. I'll explain. Shadows are a task that is extremely hard not only on the GPU but on the CPU too. So it does impact CPU, therefore your profiling is not accurate. My guess: You might also using a ryzen 3900x (or a good CPU) which runs shadows like a breeze in a granullated way as it is a background task for which many CPUs rely on raw processing power to do. Your RTX2070 is  obviously good enough for every shadow task if you don't go crazy with the graphics (though I believe it could run ULTRA in the right circunstances, HIGH is preferred for GPU-related settings for that card at 1080p). So your system is stable and drinking a Mojito while running shadows. Use an old CPU and you will start to see the difference right away (Vsync Off is a must).

 

Zd shadows are not as impactful as tree shadows, as shadow area (size of the shadow in pixels) seems to matter the most. But shadows off do  increase entity fps in a noticeable way in crappy systems when entities are on you, so I believe a simple crappy circle shadow is worth researching, but just a thought. Tree shadows do hit fps A LOT. Tree animations do hit fps up to quite a bit too, but they need quantity (as I said,up to 60% performance hit on a quad core 2.7-3.2ghz cpu when 100 41m oaks are in front of you /no shadows) ,. Maybe increasing player-placed tree distance from each other by 1 or 2 blocks might help, like 1 planted tree every 4 or 5 blocks?

 

Recap:

 

Zd shadows increase fps when off and they even reduce the overhead when entities are hitting blocks, which makes the overall experience from  better (all the situations except "extreme block hitting" by many entities) to slightly better (specifically when extreme block hitting by many entities). Performance impact seems to be in the low 5-10% (edit: actually, minimum fps and fps drops went way up, so it's a 50% more in some cases) but way more stable and with lesser freezes and lag when facing screamers/horde with lesser CPUs.

 

The suggested methods for increasing performance based on my tests are:

 

-An option for having simpler shadows for trees and entities, like a simple circle or shape below the base (right below) of the model/entity,  or a simpler/light shadow processing, as that is the most effective way of maintaining some hint of a shadow and realist in the lowest settings while still having some shadows. So, below the NEAR option we could have SIMPLE, which would make Zds, trees and (I hope) other assets have simpler shadow processing, a lighter one like in those games of old,  one that does not result in moving squares like the current downsizing of shadow quality does (ugly). Downside is that it might have to be coded in. Not difficult nor a huge time hog though.

 

-An option for choosing simpler animations, not the expensive default ones that they have now. Like: Animations: OFF-SIMPLE-NORMAL.

 

-Reducing shadow area even further for trees , as it can be done without affecting quality of the game, and will improve fps to various degrees in all systems. I believe a 20% lesser shadow area can be done for trees like the biggest oak and some others.

 

-Increasing the separation between player-planted trees, like 1 or 2 blocks more would slightly improve performance even more in crowded servers

 

Turning the occluder off when outdoors in not a hack, but a good optimization move, in my opinion. Should it be ON outside though? Do you really believe a CPU-intensive task increases performance in a CPU-intensive area like a city ? The easiness on the Graphics Card load isn't worth it, and it's actually not a problem anymore (GPU options are plenty and well optimized). A voxel game burns CPU. newer and not-that-newer Graphic Cards run 7dtd graphics while drinking a capirinha on a beach at a summer party, unless you go for 2k or 4k right off the bat.

Sure, it was not a good test of a low end system, because it is not a low end system, but that is all I had the time to test.

 

We know tree high detail LOD complexity is an issue with gfx and shadow fill rate, but artists don't want ugly trees. We have a very capable programmer looking at trees and we shall see what he finds.

 

Yes, I've noticed that player trees could use more space between them.

 

I have no interest in spending time making old school circle shadows. Would rather people just turn shadows off on low end systems.

 

There is no clear cut indoor vs outdoor. Occlusion outdoors often hides objects behind buildings, which applies more so in cities, so I'm not spending time trying to guess which is better. Low end CPUs could have it default to off, but that needs research, which I am not spending time on that now.

20 hours ago, Games'n'Grumble said:

Yes, I agree that AI should react to any combination of blocks, but surely bandits should be smarter than zombies? I mean, when a player makes noise in a large location, zombies coming from outside usually just hit the walls under the player because they don't see a way to get to the player. And what will the bandits do? Or because of their small number (you won't have to design a horde of bandits from 64 units, right?) will the area of their path search be significantly wider?

Zombies have varying degrees of dumbness in their pathing based on a settings in xml which also covers a random range. They tend to abort long paths, put less value in block health differences and can't open doors. Bandits will try long paths, fully consider block health and open doors. They will also spawn in smaller numbers.

[doughphunghus]

14 minutes ago, faatal said:

Zombies have varying degrees of dumbness in their pathing based on a settings in xml which also covers a random range. They tend to abort long paths, put less value in bloc!k health differences and can't open doors. Bandits will try long paths, fully consider block health and open doors. They will also spawn in smaller numbers.

(squee!)

[faatal]

12 hours ago, Beelzebubs Ghost said:

Finally one of the last (but by no means least)  annoyances - the previously implemented zombie digging. This was a large amount of effort which added very little while taking a lot away, the ability to hide away from a horde night at the tradeoff cost of no kills or loot (though there are exceptions in design) - a system which is useless, since hordes are completely avoidable in certain POI's or bespoke player built bases anyway.

It was not a large amount of work. I was the only one who worked on it and I probably just spent a few days on it. I work on a lot of different stuff, so it gets hazy over the years. Digging is also not just for horde nights. It is useful to the AI in POIs when you get below them and down would be the best path.

 

We don't spawn hordes so they can do nothing. The intent is for them to reasonably try to get to you and you to reasonably try to defend against it. If you don't want to interact with hordes, then turn them off, which is why the setting is there. One of our devs was even playing a game with them off recently, since he was trying something different.

10 hours ago, PoloPoPo said:

I'm playing on survivalist with feral sense on day and night. No skill points into stealth or anything related. Like I have said, whenever I kill a Z with my crossbow completely SILENTLY the whole room wakes up. No matter how many other guys saying "this is not true", it definitely is. Yesterday I have cleared the T5 hospital and in every room it was the same, one free kill with the crossbow and the whole gang woke up instantly. If my bolts miss though Zs don't wake up, only if I hit (which always ends in an instant kill).

 

In A19 on same settings (except feral sense of course) and no skill points into stealth neither that was a whole different experience. Clearing a room silently with a bunch of Zs with a crossbow only was possible.

 

Edit:

Not saying it is bad. Sneaking around with a bow (without any skill points in stealth) and being able to kill lots of Zs always felt a bit too powerful anyway to me. Either this has changed with A20 or it does not work anymore due to feral sense ON. Or it requires a few skill points which would make sense.

Shooting a crossbow is quiet, not silent. Feral sense makes it 2.5x as loud to zombies (dog and zed bear are slightly different multipliers), so your quiet is not that quiet.

 

It was OP, so you should have to put points in stealth and use appropriate gear to be effective.

3 hours ago, Code6 said:

A20 is severely restricting my ability to use a junk turret.  It frequently falls down through the block it is on. If I am up high it will fall to a lower floor. At ground level I have had it melt into solid concrete, forcing me to dig it out.
This used to happen occasionally in A19, but now it is crazily frequent.  This is especially frustrating during blood moons because I have an Intellect build and my junkie is my main defense.
 

I hope this is on the TFP radar.  I love this game and this is a killer bug for me.

It is. Things falling through world and stability issues (half fixed) are my top two bugs.

[faatal]

2 hours ago, mle_ii said:

Awesome, is there an experimental build I can test?  Or do I need to wait for it to make it to the main public build?  Would love to help out testing things now and then.  Have a experience in software testing and want to help where I can as I really enjoy this game.

The main issue is fixed, but testers found some secondary recalc issues, so I'm going to look at it again.

 

There will be an experimental, but not until a collection of issues are fixed. It will be announced in the forums when released.

[doughphunghus]

16 hours ago, LastTugBoat243 said:

It feels like the game is changing and not all the changes are good. There have been weird removals of items such as Grain alcohol , Hoe's for land tilling , smell mechanic , cave systems , blunderbuss , Hub City , snowberry , separate animal meat , moldy bread , wood cutting bench , zombie looting ,  log spike traps , sliding jail doors , barbed wire , and the simplification of building tiers used to be Wood --> Reinforced Wood --> Iron Reinforced Wood --> Flagstone --> Cobblestone --> Concrete --> Reinforced Concrete --> Steel --> Stainless Steel This was a great upgrade path it wasn't that complex and it was rewarding upgrade slowly towards stainless steel in the end it was replaced by the current path Wood --> Cobblestone -- Concrete --> Steel. even farming has been simplified before you could till the land with a Hoe to plant crops and you could create fertilizer to speed up the process. Now you just use a farm plot. Another thing the new clothing system we have to wear limiting outfits to increase stats and completely toss out character customization. Sorry dude you can't look the way you want to anymore because you have to wear this specific outfit that you might not like in order to boost harvest percentage or be able to harvest crops effectively. You said in your post that the new system would fix armor clipping through clothing. Well it really doesn't. Removing clothing all together isn't really a fix, its a removal. NOT A FIX a removal you didn't wanna take the time to fix it. So you you removed the system entirely removing diversity in character customization. You could probably just add additional armor sets for mining farming etc and try to fix the clipping issue. But instead your removing all of them POOF and substituting it with this limited armor system. I love this game and want to be a fun like in previous alpha's.

 

If you do decide to remove all clothing do you think there's a way you could keep the clothing models for the Modding community. There are people who will want make mod's to bring them back. 

Sorry if a lot of this didn't make sense.

as I understand it (these are all my opinions, having read the forums for awhile)

- Cave systems: caused issues with "stability" as they could be under stuff and you not know it (even in POIs').  I don't know why but I find that a feature and not an issue . I'm hoping they come back, or are an option to turn on as I loved finding (falling/driving into) and exploring caves, even when they were empty.

- Zombie looting: People felt it as tedious, and I guess the corpse blocks/timers? ate up processing power or something.  Maybe it was the "swapping out" of corpses into corpse blocks?  anyway, the corpses stick around for awhile in game... it feels a little weird to not be able to chop/loot them for anything.

- Barbed wire: I heard it was too powerful, as in "too easy to craft as a trap" or maybe it had some weird cheese mechanic. Couldn't the damage be lowered then...?

- All other "removals": I personally love unique items, but its probably just a philosophy to not have "duplicate stuff" in the game... I hope its just during development to make testing/changing things easier so the "core" game is solid... but I do wish at some point a lot of "basic" items are put back for crafting looting, even if they are just a different icon and a few special recipes.  The snowberry is an example of "isn't really needed", but its nice to have special plants in a specific biome.

- Block upgrade changes: I sort of like the simplification effort, and I actually like the "no degrade" on block break (the more I play it), but I really do miss some of the ?challenge? in the longer upgrade path, especially the "reinforcing" of the wood and "concrete drying" mechanics. Having the extra steps made block types "special" and a little bit more work to upgrade/build with vs direct crafting of blocks... like "I don't want to put down wood as it takes so much time upgrading time, I'll burn the time forging brick blocks instead") but you could also do that for some things.  And it could make you base look a little more like patchwork when repairing (harder to keep nice looking)

- Farming: i heard it was am issue with performance or similar, so it was decided to "condense" the farming into a special block, maybe to target its specialness to that block type.  I do wish the farm plot could be "upgraded" like other blocks to nicer looking farm plot blocks by using the old hoe/fertilizer mechanic.  At least then you could put them in the ground and it would act mostly the same. And make farming a bit more "work" vs "perk"

- Clothing: oh please yes do NOT remove the existing clothes.  I'm all for having "sets" and set bonuses for special clothes.... but why not make the mods you put into the clothing determine the set bonus?  meaning: you can wear any shirt... add a special "farming" specific clothing mod to it (errrr... I can not come up with one for a shirt at the moment). The point is: if you put a single farming mod into all your clothing pieces, you get the set bonus, regardless of what you look like.  And you can only add 1 farming mod to each piece, and it blocks all other "perk like' mods from being added. Alternatively: maybe some clothing does not have the slot (like a  plain t-shirt/shoes, low level stuff) but higher tiers of the same stuff does. So you either "use the perfect farming jeans" that at level 1 allow the mod, or you have to get the tier 5-6 level shirt to be able to get the mod perk.  and it then makes you choose "do I add the farming mods, or the nerd mods?  It will burn a slot to add them...). Then the player can add the mods to whatever clothes they want, and store them as sets in chests if they want to swap out. Additionally: if you remove the clothing, a lot of the special mods for zombies die and get pushed to people who have time/knowledge to hook up the special models.

 

[LastTugBoat243]

42 minutes ago, doughphunghus said:

as I understand it (these are all my opinions, having read the forums for awhile)

- Cave systems: caused issues with "stability" as they could be under stuff and you not know it (even in POIs').  I don't know why but I find that a feature and not an issue . I'm hoping they come back, or are an option to turn on as I loved finding (falling/driving into) and exploring caves, even when they were empty.

- Zombie looting: People felt it as tedious, and I guess the corpse blocks/timers? ate up processing power or something.  Maybe it was the "swapping out" of corpses into corpse blocks?  anyway, the corpses stick around for awhile in game... it feels a little weird to not be able to chop/loot them for anything.

- Barbed wire: I heard it was too powerful, as in "too easy to craft as a trap" or maybe it had some weird cheese mechanic. Couldn't the damage be lowered then...?

- All other "removals": I personally love unique items, but its probably just a philosophy to not have "duplicate stuff" in the game... I hope its just during development to make testing/changing things easier so the "core" game is solid... but I do wish at some point a lot of "basic" items are put back for crafting looting, even if they are just a different icon and a few special recipes.  The snowberry is an example of "isn't really needed", but its nice to have special plants in a specific biome.

- Block upgrade changes: I sort of like the simplification effort, and I actually like the "no degrade" on block break (the more I play it), but I really do miss some of the ?challenge? in the longer upgrade path, especially the "reinforcing" of the wood and "concrete drying" mechanics. Having the extra steps made block types "special" and a little bit more work to upgrade/build with vs direct crafting of blocks... like "I don't want to put down wood as it takes so much time upgrading time, I'll burn the time forging brick blocks instead") but you could also do that for some things.  And it could make you base look a little more like patchwork when repairing (harder to keep nice looking)

- Farming: i heard it was am issue with performance or similar, so it was decided to "condense" the farming into a special block, maybe to target its specialness to that block type.  I do wish the farm plot could be "upgraded" like other blocks to nicer looking farm plot blocks by using the old hoe/fertilizer mechanic.  At least then you could put them in the ground and it would act mostly the same. And make farming a bit more "work" vs "perk"

- Clothing: oh please yes do NOT remove the existing clothes.  I'm all for having "sets" and set bonuses for special clothes.... but why not make the mods you put into the clothing determine the set bonus?  meaning: you can wear any shirt... add a special "farming" specific clothing mod to it (errrr... I can not come up with one for a shirt at the moment). The point is: if you put a single farming mod into all your clothing pieces, you get the set bonus, regardless of what you look like.  And you can only add 1 farming mod to each piece, and it blocks all other "perk like' mods from being added. Alternatively: maybe some clothing does not have the slot (like a  plain t-shirt/shoes, low level stuff) but higher tiers of the same stuff does. So you either "use the perfect farming jeans" that at level 1 allow the mod, or you have to get the tier 5-6 level shirt to be able to get the mod perk.  and it then makes you choose "do I add the farming mods, or the nerd mods?  It will burn a slot to add them...). Then the player can add the mods to whatever clothes they want, and store them as sets in chests if they want to swap out. Additionally: if you remove the clothing, a lot of the special mods for zombies die and get pushed to people who have time/knowledge to hook up the special models.

 

Thank you for taking the time to read my Comment. I feel as though if I or anyone questions the actions made by the Dev's we get attacked for it and It's nice to have a person just read through my message and reply.

[pregnable]

Hey, do you guys have any plans on nerfing the blocks that are larger than 1 voxel? 

 

They are kinda OP, but not really that big of an issue.  Mostly just really efficient for building large bases or fences. 

 

I just figured I would ask before I start using them a lot.  They are fine as they are, but if you do nerf them, it should probably only be to make them 2, or maybe 3 times more costly.  Otherwise they would probably be kinda useless, heh. 

[Doomofman]

2 hours ago, faatal said:

It is. Things falling through world and stability issues (half fixed) are my top two bugs.

 

Good to hear the stability fix is coming along.

 

Do you know if any progress has been made on the teleporting/disappearing vehicles issue? Had my furthest teleport today when I started my game. My bike was almost 700m away from where I left it when I quit previously

[Blake_]

4 hours ago, faatal said:

Sure, it was not a good test of a low end system, because it is not a low end system, but that is all I had the time to test.

 

We know tree high detail LOD complexity is an issue with gfx and shadow fill rate, but artists don't want ugly trees. We have a very capable programmer looking at trees and we shall see what he finds.

 

Yes, I've noticed that player trees could use more space between them.

 

I have no interest in spending time making old school circle shadows. Would rather people just turn shadows off on low end systems.

 

There is no clear cut indoor vs outdoor. Occlusion outdoors often hides objects behind buildings, which applies more so in cities, so I'm not spending time trying to guess which is better. Low end CPUs could have it default to off, but that needs research, which I am not spending time on that now.

Zombies have varying degrees of dumbness in their pathing based on a settings in xml which also covers a random range. They tend to abort long paths, put less value in block health differences and can't open doors. Bandits will try long paths, fully consider block health and open doors. They will also spawn in smaller numbers.

Thank you very much for the answer ! I understand the time hog of such changes vs smaller gains, and the most important ones that affect every system (trees) are really being worked on, so in this case going forward is better than pleasing backwards, as you said.

 

I'm not sure about the Occluder for higher-end systems, but I do indeed recommend it to be off (even by default)  in lower-end CPUs (when detecting a CPU that doesn't go above 3.6ghz). My system runs more stable when turning it off (and specially cities) and the world doesn't have the tree glitch nor the same "vanishing glitch" happening in some assets/interiors . I'm not even at the minimum requirementes (2.7-3.2 ghz 4 cores 8 threads, mostly all cores at 3.2 all the time).  When occluder is on, it does improve GPU usage by quite a bit, but at the cost of huge CPU freezes, bumps, and stutter magic. CPU is important for 7dtd gameplay . Also, a point to consider is that without CPU there's no way to put in more gameplay content or entities, assets or even block density without constant unstability. Only exploration and sights. 

 

That should conclude my tests for now. I'm looking forward to those tree optimizations ! Again, thank you for listening.

Edited January 9, 2022 by Blake_ (see edit history)

[Tmodloader]

How is progress on coding generic bandit AI going? This is my biggest worry for the game, as no other game has been able to pull off such a thing correctly. 

On 1/7/2022 at 8:35 PM, LastTugBoat243 said:

• Current 10 armor/clothing slots reduced to 4 slots for outfits that will merge both clothing and armor values. No more clipping issues of wearing clothing under armor. Better balance on number of mod slots available to use with outfits.

It feels like the game is changing and not all the changes are good. There have been weird removals of items such as Grain alcohol , Hoe's for land tilling , smell mechanic , cave systems , blunderbuss , Hub City , snowberry , separate animal meat , moldy bread , wood cutting bench , zombie looting ,  log spike traps , sliding jail doors , barbed wire , and the simplification of building tiers used to be Wood --> Reinforced Wood --> Iron Reinforced Wood --> Flagstone --> Cobblestone --> Concrete --> Reinforced Concrete --> Steel --> Stainless Steel This was a great upgrade path it wasn't that complex and it was rewarding upgrade slowly towards stainless steel in the end it was replaced by the current path Wood --> Cobblestone -- Concrete --> Steel. even farming has been simplified before you could till the land with a Hoe to plant crops and you could create fertilizer to speed up the process. Now you just use a farm plot. Another thing the new clothing system we have to wear limiting outfits to increase stats and completely toss out character customization. Sorry dude you can't look the way you want to anymore because you have to wear this specific outfit that you might not like in order to boost harvest percentage or be able to harvest crops effectively. You said in your post that the new system would fix armor clipping through clothing. Well it really doesn't. Removing clothing all together isn't really a fix, its a removal. NOT A FIX a removal you didn't wanna take the time to fix it. So you you removed the system entirely removing diversity in character customization. You could probably just add additional armor sets for mining farming etc and try to fix the clipping issue. But instead your removing all of them POOF and substituting it with this limited armor system. I love this game and want to be a fun like in previous alpha's.

 

If you do decide to remove all clothing do you think there's a way you could keep the clothing models for the Modding community. There are people who will want make mod's to bring them back. 

Sorry if a lot of this didn't make sense.

 

They should do what a lot of other games do, and they probably will. 4 slots for actual stat clothing, 4 slots for cosmetic overrides.

[spud42]

i appreciate the short distances for quests early game.  200 to 400 meters for the first quests is great. BUT i am now on day 38 and i keep getting the same POI's for the quests. the trader gave be a bike but still its the same POI's for quests. i have now done the same POI as a quest  level 1 2 3 and 4...a bit more variety would be nice. also as the levels increase so should the distance that the trader can send you.  Day 38 and i havent had a quest more than 500 meters from the trader. the only exception was the opening trade routes quests. My current tier 4 quest is 344 meters away and i am based 50 meters from the trader on the other side of the quest. 

 

my city is quite large. If you zoom right out it covers half the map.

[Roland]

9 hours ago, doughphunghus said:

Cave systems: caused issues with "stability" as they could be under stuff and you not know it (even in POIs').  I don't know why but I find that a feature and not an issue . I'm hoping they come back, or are an option to turn on as I loved finding (falling/driving into) and exploring caves, even when they were empty.

 

Also vehicles. There is a reason the top speed of the vehicles are where they are at and part of that reason is the calculation speed of rendering the chunk ahead of you as you drive so that you don't end up driving off the edge of the existing world. Cave systems add more complexity and would slow down vehicles even more.

 

9 hours ago, doughphunghus said:

- Zombie looting: People felt it as tedious, and I guess the corpse blocks/timers? ate up processing power or something.  Maybe it was the "swapping out" of corpses into corpse blocks?  anyway, the corpses stick around for awhile in game... it feels a little weird to not be able to chop/loot them for anything.

 

Also very much engendering a "meals on wheels" mentality towards zombies. Of course, XP for kills also does this....

 

9 hours ago, doughphunghus said:

- Farming: i heard it was am issue with performance or similar, so it was decided to "condense" the farming into a special block, maybe to target its specialness to that block type.  I do wish the farm plot could be "upgraded" like other blocks to nicer looking farm plot blocks by using the old hoe/fertilizer mechanic.  At least then you could put them in the ground and it would act mostly the same. And make farming a bit more "work" vs "perk"

 

The microsplat technology they switched to for the terrain carried with it some limitations. Terrain texture is now forced within a biome. If you place snow in the forest it will transform back to forest terrain texture once you leave and then re-enter the area. Therefore, farmed ground texture was no longer supportable and farming had to be done in containers which is why the switch happened.

 

9 hours ago, doughphunghus said:

- Clothing: oh please yes do NOT remove the existing clothes.

 

In my opinion they should make the outfit pieces all purely be clothing and make armor be mods that can be inserted "under" the clothing. Then there will still be some customizing and choice for light vs heavy armor independent of the outfit types you are wearing. I can wear a farmer outfit but have heavy armor insterted in the mod slots.

[LastTugBoat243]

2 hours ago, Roland said:

 

In my opinion they should make the outfit pieces all purely be clothing and make armor be mods that can be inserted "under" the clothing. Then there will still be some customizing and choice for light vs heavy armor independent of the outfit types you are wearing. I can wear a farmer outfit but have heavy armor insterted in the mod slots.

This seems like a much better system than what their currently pitching. Its a compromise you can have armor that can be equipped to clothing as a mod and wouldn't remove the cosmetic factor of armor and clothing. The only thing is hopefully armor would appear on the characters clothing.

Edited January 9, 2022 by LastTugBoat243 (see edit history)

[Burrfly]

6 hours ago, Tmodloader said:

• Current 10 armor/clothing slots reduced to 4 slots for outfits that will merge both clothing and armor values. No more clipping issues of wearing clothing under armor. Better balance on number of mod slots available to use with outfits.

It feels like the game is changing and not all the changes are good. There have been weird removals of items such as Grain alcohol , Hoe's for land tilling , smell mechanic , cave systems , blunderbuss , Hub City , snowberry , separate animal meat , moldy bread , wood cutting bench , zombie looting ,  log spike traps , sliding jail doors , barbed wire , and the simplification of building tiers used to be Wood --> Reinforced Wood --> Iron Reinforced Wood --> Flagstone --> Cobblestone --> Concrete --> Reinforced Concrete --> Steel --> Stainless Steel This was a great upgrade path it wasn't that complex and it was rewarding upgrade slowly towards stainless steel in the end it was replaced by the current path Wood --> Cobblestone -- Concrete --> Steel. even farming has been simplified before you could till the land with a Hoe to plant crops and you could create fertilizer to speed up the process. Now you just use a farm plot. Another thing the new clothing system we have to wear limiting outfits to increase stats and completely toss out character customization. Sorry dude you can't look the way you want to anymore because you have to wear this specific outfit that you might not like in order to boost harvest percentage or be able to harvest crops effectively. You said in your post that the new system would fix armor clipping through clothing. Well it really doesn't. Removing clothing all together isn't really a fix, its a removal. NOT A FIX a removal you didn't wanna take the time to fix it. So you you removed the system entirely removing diversity in character customization. You could probably just add additional armor sets for mining farming etc and try to fix the clipping issue. But instead your removing all of them POOF and substituting it with this limited armor system. I love this game and want to be a fun like in previous alpha's.

 

If you do decide to remove all clothing do you think there's a way you could keep the clothing models for the Modding community. There are people who will want make mod's to bring them back. 

Sorry if a lot of this didn't make sense.

Thank you for addressing this. I think The Fun Pimps are making some mistakes regarding simplification. The old build path was perfect, and now it feels meh. Also because it doesn't make sense for some blocks to be a wood or cobblestone variant. In the past there were wood, iron and steel ladders and wood and iron catwalks and now we can have cobblestone ladders, cobblestone planks, or cobblestone railings. It was perfect before. Only thing I would have changed with the old building was the ADDING of new materials, not removing.

 

Also fear this will be the case indeed for the simplification of the clothing system for a21. Currently I'm playing with friends and everyone of us has a different outfit, which is a lot of fun to make ourselves. I'm pretty sure that will change to people wearing the same outfits (less variety etc) when the simplification hits, with maybe the exception of some dyes, but that's it.

 

@madmole, yes, 99% of us love the new RWG and the new POI's as well as for example feral sense, but on the other hand we are losing great mechanics.

 

I'm sure most of us also like the new building shapes, but I personally think that these should specifically be BUILDING shapes, not for example ladders or catwalks. Catwalks and ladders should be a seperate 'block', like it was before, with a seperate upgrade path.

 

I just hope that some old features will come back (for example concrete drying, etc) and there won't be any more simplification, because it makes things more boring 😕 Sorry for maybe this negativity but it's how I feel. Thank you very much for reading.

[Doomofman]

6 hours ago, spud42 said:

i appreciate the short distances for quests early game.  200 to 400 meters for the first quests is great. BUT i am now on day 38 and i keep getting the same POI's for the quests. the trader gave be a bike but still its the same POI's for quests. i have now done the same POI as a quest  level 1 2 3 and 4...a bit more variety would be nice. also as the levels increase so should the distance that the trader can send you.  Day 38 and i havent had a quest more than 500 meters from the trader. the only exception was the opening trade routes quests. My current tier 4 quest is 344 meters away and i am based 50 meters from the trader on the other side of the quest. 

 

my city is quite large. If you zoom right out it covers half the map.

Just wait til you hit Tier 5 and the quests are all 3 to 5km away

[mstdv inc]

2 hours ago, Burrfly said:

Thank you for addressing this. I think The Fun Pimps are making some mistakes regarding simplification. The old build path was perfect, and now it feels meh. Also because it doesn't make sense for some blocks to be a wood or cobblestone variant. In the past there were wood, iron and steel ladders and wood and iron catwalks and now we can have cobblestone ladders, cobblestone planks, or cobblestone railings. It was perfect before. Only thing I would have changed with the old building was the ADDING of new materials, not removing.

 

Also fear this will be the case indeed for the simplification of the clothing system for a21. Currently I'm playing with friends and everyone of us has a different outfit, which is a lot of fun to make ourselves. I'm pretty sure that will change to people wearing the same outfits (less variety etc) when the simplification hits, with maybe the exception of some dyes, but that's it.

 

@madmole, yes, 99% of us love the new RWG and the new POI's as well as for example feral sense, but on the other hand we are losing great mechanics.

 

I'm sure most of us also like the new building shapes, but I personally think that these should specifically be BUILDING shapes, not for example ladders or catwalks. Catwalks and ladders should be a seperate 'block', like it was before, with a seperate upgrade path.

 

I just hope that some old features will come back (for example concrete drying, etc) and there won't be any more simplification, because it makes things more boring 😕 Sorry for maybe this negativity but it's how I feel. Thank you very much for reading.

I see that you consider railings, stairs and other blocks special, but do not say why?
Do you have an answer to the question “why should they NOT be like all other blocks?” Just because you are so used to it?
TFP have an answer. They brought all the blocks to a single standard, not classifying any of them as special.
What's the problem with pouring a cement solution into the form and making a concrete pillar, slab or a whole block? Nothing.
What then prevents from pouring the solution into the shape of the railing or stairs and making concrete railings or stairs? Nothing.
Ditto for cobblestone. If you draw parallels with real life, then you can start by crafting hundreds of perfectly straight frames in a minute in your pocket without a saw, nails and any measuring tools.
I am interested in the logic of people who classify certain blocks as special.
In my opinion, all blocks are equally valuable and useful.

Edited January 9, 2022 by mstdv inc (see edit history)

[Laz Man]

3 hours ago, Doomofman said:

Just wait til you hit Tier 5 and the quests are all 3 to 5km away

 

Restore Power quests as well can be quite a bit away.  It would be nice if the distance a POI is a variable in the duke or xp reward.

 

This might be a nice incentive for players to take the farther quest since it essentially would require more of their time to do.

Edited January 9, 2022 by Laz Man (see edit history)

[JCrook1028]

21 hours ago, Beelzebubs Ghost said:

t doesn't need to be in the game in order for any player to oppose such ideas even in the concept stage.

Read the title of the thread....

Alpha 20 Dev Diary

 

Not yea, if you wanted to make a new thread about a possible Alpha 21 feature change you're able to do so........ but here is just not the place yet.

[Hockallz]

4 hours ago, Burrfly said:

Thank you for addressing this. I think The Fun Pimps are making some mistakes regarding simplification. The old build path was perfect, and now it feels meh. Also because it doesn't make sense for some blocks to be a wood or cobblestone variant. In the past there were wood, iron and steel ladders and wood and iron catwalks and now we can have cobblestone ladders, cobblestone planks, or cobblestone railings. It was perfect before. Only thing I would have changed with the old building was the ADDING of new materials, not removing.

 

I've not looked too closely at the blocks themselves, but ladders are still craftable as a separate block as well as part of the shapes menu and follows the OG upgrade path. 

[Roland]

10 hours ago, spud42 said:

i have now done the same POI as a quest  level 1 2 3 and 4...a bit more variety would be nice.

I agree that more variety will be nice and that will take time for them to hook up additional POIs for quests. In the meantime you have some control over that by doing quests for different traders instead of only doing quests for one trader. I have three traders in my network  currently and they each have a different set of POIs for doing quests. 

Edited January 9, 2022 by Roland (see edit history)

[LastTugBoat243]

2 hours ago, mstdv inc said:

I see that you consider railings, stairs and other blocks special, but do not say why?
Do you have an answer to the question “why should they NOT be like all other blocks?” Just because you are so used to it?
TFP have an answer. They brought all the blocks to a single standard, not classifying any of them as special.
What's the problem with pouring a cement solution into the form and making a concrete pillar, slab or a whole block? Nothing.
What then prevents from pouring the solution into the shape of the railing or stairs and making concrete railings or stairs? Nothing.
Ditto for cobblestone. If you draw parallels with real life, then you can start by crafting hundreds of perfectly straight frames in a minute in your pocket without a saw, nails and any measuring tools.
I am interested in the logic of people who classify certain blocks as special.
In my opinion, all blocks are equally valuable and useful.

There is nothing wrong with pouring cement solution in the form of pillars slabs and whole blocks because that is logical and normal. What doesn't make sense is pouring cement solution into things like Frames , Ladders Catwalks and Railings. Those Items should have a different upgrade path one that makes sense. Those blocks should be separate from the "Everything Block" and have separate crating recipes in the inventory like the ladder.

Edited January 9, 2022 by LastTugBoat243 (see edit history)

[PoloPoPo]

Having all different shapes available from one block and therefore all having the same upgrade path feels convenient to me. In my current savegame I am crafting tons of forged iron since I am used to that for my bars and stuff but as they don't need any forged iron anymore I have most forged iron laying in my storage box without any use 😄

[LastTugBoat243]

37 minutes ago, PoloPoPo said:

Having all different shapes available from one block and therefore all having the same upgrade path feels convenient to me. In my current savegame I am crafting tons of forged iron since I am used to that for my bars and stuff but as they don't need any forged iron anymore I have most forged iron laying in my storage box without any use 😄

I know its convenient but sometimes in these survival games things aren't easy. That's what made getting all the forged iron worth it was making the iron bars. We don't have to get rid of the "Everything Block" or even remove Bocks from it. It really comes down to the upgrade paths. Certain blocks in the like ladders , railing , bars and catwalks should have different upgrade path's. ones that make sense. no cobblestone ladder's , railing , catwalks or there strange concrete counterparts. just a normal upgrade paths. like wood or metal maybe?

[mstdv inc]

51 minutes ago, LastTugBoat243 said:

There is nothing wrong with pouring cement solution in the form of pillars slabs and whole blocks because that is logical and normal. What doesn't make sense is pouring cement solution into things like Frames , Ladders Catwalks and Railings. Those Items should have a different upgrade path one that makes sense. Those blocks should be separate from the "Everything Block" and have separate crating recipes in the inventory like the ladder.

Doesn't make sense just because? Is there a reason?Are you against the convenience of construction?