Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[pregnable]

1 hour ago, madmole said:

You can build steel tables if you want or cloth tables, we don't care. Having a powerful build system you can get creative with is better than using realism to determine what you can and can't make.

Finally you can just build with wood, stone, concrete and steel. All the upgrades in between have been deleted, and wet concrete is gone too so less clicking and just build with steel if you want. Nothing downgrades to anything either, when the hit bar is gone the block goes poof. A fairly big change, but now each tier is meaningful and it won't be 1000 clicks to go from wood to steel now.

 

Oh damn... that is cool. 

 

How is this going to affect building and building experience gain?

 

Do you get exp placing them, or is there a frame of that material you upgrade?

[madmole]

1 hour ago, Blake_ said:

I don't completely understand, do you mean that upgrading is still there but you got rid of redundant ones like the frame to wood to nailed wood one and so on leaving only wood which upgrades to stone which upgrades to concrete which upgrades to steel AND if the block is destroyed at any stage it goes poof instead of downgrading?

 

 

Frames are there yet, as well as particle board (same thing) for experimental building with every shape available. That upgrades to wood, wood upgrades to stone, stone upgrades to concrete then steel. All blocks go poof.

41 minutes ago, pregnable said:

 

Oh damn... that is cool. 

 

How is this going to affect building and building experience gain?

 

Do you get exp placing them, or is there a frame of that material you upgrade?

You can build with any material but you only get XP for upgrading so if you want max XP start with particle board(frames) and then upgrade it all the way to steel. We haven't really talked about this, perhaps placing the block can grant XP for late game builders building with steel.

[pregnable]

5 minutes ago, madmole said:

Frames are there yet, as well as particle board (same thing) for experimental building with every shape available. That upgrades to wood, wood upgrades to stone, stone upgrades to concrete then steel. All blocks go poof.

You can build with any material but you only get XP for upgrading so if you want max XP start with particle board(frames) and then upgrade it all the way to steel. We haven't really talked about this, perhaps placing the block can grant XP for late game builders building with steel.

 

Okay, gotcha.  Sounds good.  Thumbs up. 

[Blake_]

4 hours ago, madmole said:

Frames are there yet, as well as particle board (same thing) for experimental building with every shape available. That upgrades to wood, wood upgrades to stone, stone upgrades to concrete then steel. All blocks go poof.

You can build with any material but you only get XP for upgrading so if you want max XP start with particle board(frames) and then upgrade it all the way to steel. We haven't really talked about this, perhaps placing the block can grant XP for late game builders building with steel.

I understand now and I like the change. The placing xp thing sounds good too.

Edited March 12, 2021 by Blake_ (see edit history)

[SnowDog1942]

32 minutes ago, madmole said:

Frames are there yet, as well as particle board (same thing) for experimental building with every shape available. That upgrades to wood, wood upgrades to stone, stone upgrades to concrete then steel. All blocks go poof.

 

 

Is reinforced concrete gone ?

[hiemfire]

2 hours ago, madmole said:

Frames are there yet, as well as particle board (same thing) for experimental building with every shape available. That upgrades to wood, wood upgrades to stone, stone upgrades to concrete then steel. All blocks go poof.

 

3 hours ago, madmole said:

Corrugated is still there

Corrugated = the upgrade line that starts with Iron frames?

[MechanicalLens]

6 hours ago, madmole said:

I adjusted the beaker and chem station a bit. Yeah I agree that in the grand scheme of things opening up the chem station is game changing so it needs to have a cost.

 

Excellent.  You might want to check the spawning conditions of beakers as well. In A19 at least, I've commonly found beakers on day 1 within lootable medical piles.

6 hours ago, madmole said:

It's entirely different. All the shapes are in categories now, and unified no matter what material you are building with. So if I want wedge 60, it's always in the exact same category and same position regardless of if I'm building with wood/stone/concrete/steel/cloth etc. All shapes now exist in every material and are in the exact same menu location when using a different material helper.

You can build steel tables if you want or cloth tables, we don't care. Having a powerful build system you can get creative with is better than using realism to determine what you can and can't make.

The cool thing is once you memorize the layout of where each shape is you'll never have any trouble finding it, and the categories are pretty good so even if you don't know where something is, you have a good idea on where to look.

On top of that all icons are now grey, shaded and rendered like art, similar to sketchup art. So they are very easy to read and tell what the shape is. The background of the icon has the material in it so you can tell what helper it is in your belt.

Finally you can just build with wood, stone, concrete and steel. All the upgrades in between have been deleted, and wet concrete is gone too so less clicking and just build with steel if you want. Nothing downgrades to anything either, when the hit bar is gone the block goes poof. A fairly big change, but now each tier is meaningful and it won't be 1000 clicks to go from wood to steel now.

 

You mentioned "stone". Did you mean flagstone, cobblestone, or both?

 

This sounds like an excellent change though. Although I am curious, what of frames? Have they been removed? If so that would be fairly unfortunate; working out a template with frames is how a lot of us plan out our builds.

 

Edit: Already answered the second section, nevermind.

Edited March 12, 2021 by MechanicalLens (see edit history)

[NinjaMoa]

Will there ever be a visual representation of block support / strength?

 

Valheim does this very well and leads to far less wasted time while building.

[Numberz]

On 3/8/2021 at 2:51 PM, madmole said:

We might change the forge to a normal workstation instead type of work flow and that will change everything

 

This would be an absolute travesty.  Please reconsider this.

[Brian9824]

9 hours ago, madmole said:

It's entirely different. All the shapes are in categories now, and unified no matter what material you are building with. So if I want wedge 60, it's always in the exact same category and same position regardless of if I'm building with wood/stone/concrete/steel/cloth etc. All shapes now exist in every material and are in the exact same menu location when using a different material helper.

You can build steel tables if you want or cloth tables, we don't care. Having a powerful build system you can get creative with is better than using realism to determine what you can and can't make.

The cool thing is once you memorize the layout of where each shape is you'll never have any trouble finding it, and the categories are pretty good so even if you don't know where something is, you have a good idea on where to look.

On top of that all icons are now grey, shaded and rendered like art, similar to sketchup art. So they are very easy to read and tell what the shape is. The background of the icon has the material in it so you can tell what helper it is in your belt.

Finally you can just build with wood, stone, concrete and steel. All the upgrades in between have been deleted, and wet concrete is gone too so less clicking and just build with steel if you want. Nothing downgrades to anything either, when the hit bar is gone the block goes poof. A fairly big change, but now each tier is meaningful and it won't be 1000 clicks to go from wood to steel now.

 

Just out of curiosity does that come with other balance changes like reduced zombie damage to higher tier blocks or increased hp?  The change would result in the higher tier blocks losing a massive amount of durability otherwise.  

[MechanicalLens]

@madmole What would you say about the fuel requirement for the chem station, forge, and campfire being removed? It adds no challenge and it just disrupts the flow. Sure it's realistic, but that doesn't help it from being an unnecessary extra step in my opinion. It's easy enough to gather wood for fuel anyway, so I don't see balance being an issue.

[SittingDuck]

On 10/29/2020 at 4:38 PM, madmole said:

I'm not working on balance so I'm not looking at that data.

If you look into PvP it would be cool if you look into pvp zones .  something like a combatzone where all the drops come down but it´s pvp, no claimblocks etc. And into factions only pvp... if you join a faction, the others are the enemy...

[Jost Amman]

Why don't they just remove wood, stone iron, coal, lead, KNO3 and shale and make ONE generic blob we can collect called "Material"?

It'd streamline the game and make every recipe so simple after all.

 

On a serious note... I'm all for streamlining "the process", but what about maintaining some "flavor" in the game?

@madmole Don't you think you've gone too far with this simplification process? 

[SGriggs]

On 3/8/2021 at 2:51 PM, madmole said:

Eventually you'll drown when swimming and you run out of stamina. Hopefully we can put some creepy water logged zombies in there that pop up and scare the @%$# out of you or something, zombie catfish.

 

How about a mutated lamprey? those eal things with a zillion teeth!  could get infection, bleed out or a number of things.  plus its not a commonly used thing like a shark or gator?  would be cool to have something there for sure but not the usual things. Conan and Ark have gators.  Just my opinion.   Anyway i love the direction this game is going. Im a PS4 convert and still play both believe it or not! lol Just hate the new vehicle controller setup. 

Edited March 13, 2021 by SGriggs (see edit history)

[Spatch]

22 hours ago, madmole said:

I think we punted on that, there are too many other unfinished tasks to start on it.

Dang I hope by "punted" this means its still possible as a future change!  I love this game and where it has gone from the A11/12 days when I first started playing it, but I really miss the horde night feel when I just didn't know where they would come from and had to protect everything.  Now, you either make a killing corridor or some type of elevated path to you that they are forced to follow by their AI rules or, if you don't have one, as soon as one block is damaged, all zombies go to that one block and smash it open.

I would be very happy for a horde night sense slider and a digging slider.

Regardless, keep up the good work!

[pregnable]

10 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

Why don't they just remove wood, stone iron, coal, lead, KNO3 and shale and make ONE generic blob we can collect called "Material"?

It'd streamline the game and make every recipe so simple after all.

 

Sounds good.  +1 for the idea. 

 

Seriously though, I am sure the changes will be fine.  There will just be more gathering and crafting, instead of gathering, waiting, then crafting. 

 

A lot of that stuff is just a time sink.  They can probably make it less confusing and get more players into the game as well. 

 

Hopefully we will have better stuff to do with that time, like random encounters, bandits, and more quests.

[Thecolours]

What exactly is the new trader to trader quests improvements listed on the front page?  We already have a trader to trader quest line, so what's changing in A20?

[STiM_Desario]

On 3/8/2021 at 1:51 PM, madmole said:

We might change the forge to a normal workstation instead type of work flow and that will change everything, so it's too early to comment on an industrial forge.

 

@madmole Can you elaborate on this? 

 

Are the plans to reconfigure the work flow, or axe the forge? 🤔

 

 

[Lonestarcanuck]

Any chance Signs will support player art?  maybe via a mod like in Rust, where I can edit and paint or give it a URL to an external PNG/JPG to post?  

the server would store all the player art in a folder so that Admins can review them in bulk and replace if needed. 

 

it allowed for game server sponsors for events or charities. 

[Lonestarcanuck]

Another A20 feature request - Traders and quest 
If I get a quest from one trader I should be able to turn it into another trader - maybe at a reduced reward or same - does not matter - would be nice

Also more chain quest like take this from trader A to Trader B and Take this - make "something specific" and bring to Trader C.

[Guppycur]

Will we lose support for the downgrade xml property entirely for this dumbing down change?  

[Blake_]

4 hours ago, Guppycur said:

Will we lose support for the downgrade xml property entirely for this dumbing down change?  

Interesting question. Leaving it commented would help a lot. If worst comes to be, as long as you can "downgrade" stuff like doors, the code can still be scavenged . Cars also have asset swapping  so while something remotely similar exists it can still be repurposed. 

[MechanicalLens]

13 minutes ago, Blake_ said:

Interesting question. Leaving it commented would help a lot. If worst comes to be, as long as you can "downgrade" stuff like doors, the code can still be scavenged . Cars also have asset swapping  so while something remotely similar exists it can still be repurposed. 

 

Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure Madmole or someone else said at some point that they plan for cars to only have one asset and no breakdown system.

[meganoth]

10 hours ago, Guppycur said:

Will we lose support for the downgrade xml property entirely for this dumbing down change?  

 

Since it is used in many other cases (plants, safes and lootable containers, doors, cars, traps) DowngradeBlock should be quite safe from being removed.

 

 

[Xtrakicking]

6 hours ago, MechanicalLens said:

 

Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure Madmole or someone else said at some point that they plan for cars to only have one asset and no breakdown system.

I believe the same was said for doors, was it not?