Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[MechanicalLens]

Just now, unholyjoe said:

but.... try playing it with GodMode off... its a whole new game then. i was amazed

 

So you play with GodMode enabled. Gotcha.

[MechanicalLens]

I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but I'm going to add one final point to the "brass predicament". What is one the most inconvenient tasks in 7D2D? That would be babysitting brass as it smelts into your forge. At least with candlesticks, trophies, and doorknobs they stack up to, what is it? 500? Brass radiators are the main culprit here. Having to place 10 in at a time (max stack size is 5) and wait for 10 minutes before you can deposit more into the input slots is a far less elegant method than any other smeltable item in the game. I'm no game developer, but I don't see how increasing their stack size to 25 or even 50 would affect much balance wise. The constructive consequence of this is that instead of being forced to hang around your base tending to your forge in between tasks (this all depends on your current situation) we could simply plonk in a large stack of the suckers and let them smelt while we perform other tasks. What do you think @madmole?

[4sheetzngeegles]

Faatal:

This is a question regarding the Feral sense.

I am using prior alpha references, only as a reference.

 

In a prior alpha there was a visual screen indicator, the reactional eye.
There was also for a short period a LUT screen overlay.
Will there be an indicator as the feral sense is being active or inactive?

 

Potential thoughts along the lines of a tinted Lut, or using the music system;
the sound of a heartbeat. At a low volume it could be an auditory enhancement
consisting of whispers or chattering teeth or clicking claws.

 

References Infrasonic sound 18.98 - 19 HZ binaural beats, Friday the 13th movie
series, Aliens, resident evil, doom adrenal shot, TWD the whisperers.

 

Or is it intended to be an on\off parameter? My personal wish would be a temp
light level over-ride, combined with a black LUT overlay so no matter the \
brightness or gamma setting the closer you are to getting caught the darker and
less colored the screen.  Just don't use this theme or you'll cause
someone a heart attack.

 

https://youtu.be/9WcU_PrauOQ

[faatal]

3 hours ago, 4sheetzngeegles said:

Faatal:

This is a question regarding the Feral sense.

I am using prior alpha references, only as a reference.

 

In a prior alpha there was a visual screen indicator, the reactional eye.

There is no indicator other than zombies coming to kill you like they do any other time you are detected. Dynamic music would react when they target you like it does now.

 

The system simply gives zombie hearing and seeing distances a big bonus (defined in xml), so they hear and see you more easily. The Feral Sense bonus is either on or off depending on if set to day, night or both.

Edited April 9, 2021 by faatal (see edit history)

[4sheetzngeegles]

Ok I understand now, I was thinking it would be situational
Like horde night. Will they possibly have their own pulse
raising music, and will they detect you in a barrier and attack?

 

The reason I ask is because id like to attach a heat bloom to a
perimeter attack that draws other zombies if not dispatched quickly.

 

Thanks for the answer.

[Jost Amman]

2 hours ago, 4sheetzngeegles said:

Ok I understand now, I was thinking it would be situational
Like horde night. Will they possibly have their own pulse
raising music, and will they detect you in a barrier and attack?

What part of "he's not the music guy" did you not understand? 

[Blake_]

4 hours ago, faatal said:

There is no indicator other than zombies coming to kill you like they do any other time you are detected. Dynamic music would react when they target you like it does now.

 

The system simply gives zombie hearing and seeing distances a big bonus (defined in xml), so they hear and see you more easily. The Feral Sense bonus is either on or off depending on if set to day, night or both.

One thing I wanted to ask, are weather particles indoors still a thing in a20? I get that you can hear raining if you approach the window, but plain raining through the ceiling at the same "sound distance" is a bit off putting.

[Adam the Waster]

8 hours ago, Blake_ said:

One thing I wanted to ask, are weather particles indoors still a thing in a20? I get that you can hear raining if you approach the window, but plain raining through the ceiling at the same "sound distance" is a bit off putting.

same hope thats changed 

[faatal]

12 hours ago, 4sheetzngeegles said:

Ok I understand now, I was thinking it would be situational
Like horde night. Will they possibly have their own pulse
raising music, and will they detect you in a barrier and attack?

 

The reason I ask is because id like to attach a heat bloom to a
perimeter attack that draws other zombies if not dispatched quickly.

 

Thanks for the answer.

No special situations other than it being on or off. Like it is night, so those zeds can detect better. If they would hear you banging from 20m now they can at 50m or they would see you at 30m, but now 75m (made up numbers).

10 hours ago, Blake_ said:

One thing I wanted to ask, are weather particles indoors still a thing in a20? I get that you can hear raining if you approach the window, but plain raining through the ceiling at the same "sound distance" is a bit off putting.

Code dealing with what is indoors or out has not changed.

[Blake_]

57 minutes ago, faatal said:

Code dealing with what is indoors or out has not changed.

Oh. I hope you have the time to check it out someday in the far future. Not a huge task, but we (she, I ? ) shall be grateful. Right now temperature indoors has a range in which it "detects" that you are indoors, and so does sound. The main problem is that particles have the same range as those two, when they (the particles) should not have a range at all and just stop right when inside. I dare say that the code for "particle stops" is already there, though I suspect that it's not very... "moddable". 

Edited April 9, 2021 by Blake_ (see edit history)

[Promethean Winchester]

@madmole Honestly, I just want to be able to keep empty jars after boiling eggs. Not only that, but the College Jacket giving a +10% boost to running speed is my favorite jacket. Is that going to be removed? I play on Insane Nightmare, and a big part of the RNG responsible for whether I live or die is whether or not I find a sports jacket. Biker zombies on nightmare speed can, 30% of the time, be the end of your first week, you can barely even outrun them because they have nurse level speed and fat zombie power. Meleeing them isn't viable until you're really damn strong, because they typically hit you through the flinching animation; One of their flinching animations has them grab their face, and move forward toward you at an even greater speed than when they were sprinting. Combat against most zombies is manageable, I mean it's all about power attacking before the zombie reaches you, then sprinting toward them at the last second to connect it. Then, from there, you can power attack them again and knock 'em down during their flinch, making finishing them off an easy task. Especially if you got an archery sneak shot before the fight started. But two zombies do not allow this: Lumberjack, and Biker. They're insanely broken on Nightmare speed settings and somehow I feel like it's only their flinching animations which make it so.

Even that fat tank-top zombie does the face-grabbing animation where he speeds up and comes closer to you during the animation, it makes fights much more stressful, but that specific zombie is very slow and easy to hold off, you can typically turn around and sprint away in a split second if you see him grab his face. Any speed tier above that zombie though, and you see the problems unfolding. If a biker or lumberjack grabs their face, you're basically just going to get hit, no 2 ways about it. I always need a gun before fighting one of those zombies, if a wood frame in a doorway isn't an immediate option. The animations, perhaps, shouldn't be a "one size fits all zombie types" thing. Individual tailoring of animations based on the speed of the zombie type would be best, with Nightmare speed as the foundation of the tailoring, because whatever's balanced on Nightmare will be balanced on lower movement speed settings as well. The only inorganic aspect to melee combat, as far as I can see since alpha 19, is any situation where you strike a zombie in the face and it comes closer to you rather than flinching to be farther from you. That's the only confusing and immersion-breaking aspect to combat so far. Even if zombies don't "flinch" per se, no zombie is coming closer to us when we thwack their face with a sledgehammer or club or spear. Adjust maybe that one flinching animation, and those of us on Insane Nightmare won't need as many cheese tactics to get by. Mainly just that one flinch animation, where the zombie grabs his/her face and somehow speeds up to close the gap between you two. No impact to the face should see a zombie become more proximate to you, if anything it should always reliably have the opposite effect. 

Anyway I love the game, and although I didn't like the concept of magical candies at first, that was before I ate an Oh Shiz Drop and jumped off the top of the construction site POI to avoid certain death at the hands of a zombie horde sleeping up there. I see the appeal. It's wildly unrealistic, but it removes some stress from the game, and I value any game which allows the mitigation of stress through the preparedness of the player. Going up high? Bring an Oh Shiz to jump off. Harvesting lots of cobblestone and cement? Eat the rock busters. Got a killing corridor on horde night? Save up some skull crushers. The drugs idea, I totally get. They are drugs, they boost your character. One could easily associate Skull Crushers with PCP or Cocaine. But I just don't think there's a drug out there which could make me fall 300 feet and still be fine... Lol. Not complaining, not criticizing. I use it, I value it. But it does seem like a slightly wild departure from the rooted-in-realism approach you guys used to take with this game. Maybe just remove Oh Shiz Drops... I play permadeath, and it completely trivializes the threat some POI's pose. Compare the sleepers on the roof of a Shotgun Messiah Factory with, and without an Oh Shiz Drop. If you can just jump off to bail in a pinch, that's so unfair in favor of the player that it borders on a cheese tactic. It's the one drug-based candy that I just don't buy into. Anything else can be explained away: Atom Junkies makes you hyper focused, so you know exactly where to throw your explosive item for maximum effect. Let's call it a psychostimulant drug. Etc. But Oh Shiz is a really welcome and useful wild card, which I feel should be considered for removal by you guys. I love it, but it does trivialize a lot of the game's immersive stress in high places. Like that deadly construction site where you walk across the crane, that's what I'm talking about; I ran away from that horde by just jumping off. You can already fall down from there and survive with 2 HP and a broken leg, which is kinda unrealistic already, but surviving it with no harm done to the player at all is pretty stretchy. 

Edited April 11, 2021 by Roland
audience clarification (see edit history)

[GoldsharkROU]

Hello !, I turn around every so often, and I don't remember this topic was discussed, but since I don't read ALL the messages, I leave these two queries.
Today we cannot connect two sensors to a door, and we cannot use a sensor on one side to open, for example, a garage door and on the other to close it. This has a solution in A20?
Why can't we have an elevator? I'm not saying something modern like UL's, but something more basic? The Unity engine doesn't allow it or what? ever since FP "fixed" the fake hatch lift I wonder.

Thanks!

[Fanatical_Meat]

What is the expected benefit of the “Unity Update”?

[madmole]

1 minute ago, Fanatical_Meat said:

What is the expected benefit of the “Unity Update”?

For one the editor runs about as good as a build. For us that means more productivity. Faatal can go into further detail.

[Guppycur]

On 4/7/2021 at 5:33 PM, faatal said:

Added Feral Sense option (None, Day, Night, All).
 

I'm still tweaking it, but I expect to be playing with it set to Night and actually being afraid of the dark.

Would none remove it from horde nights?

[Blake_]

1 hour ago, madmole said:

For one the editor runs about as good as a build. For us that means more productivity. Faatal can go into further detail.

Nice. By the way, what are you working on at the moment ? when you disappear for a long time good things tend to happen.

[Matt115]

1 hour ago, madmole said:

For one the editor runs about as good as a build. For us that means more productivity. Faatal can go into further detail.

So that mean next alpha versions will be bigger or will coming out faster right?

[pregnable]

I am always game to hear more information about the other armor sets... or how the drone is coming along, or any interesting new information.  Hint, hint. 

[faatal]

2 hours ago, Fanatical_Meat said:

What is the expected benefit of the “Unity Update”?

There are productivity benefits for us like I can profile in the Unity Editor and get release mode timings similar to making a build.

 

Players will probably see a small performance improvement, but that depends on your particular hardware.

2 hours ago, Guppycur said:

Would none remove it from horde nights?

No. Blood moon code specifically targets players, so hear/see does not matter.

50 minutes ago, Matt115 said:

So that mean next alpha versions will be bigger or will coming out faster right?

The next alpha will be out .1% sooner.

[Matt115]

1 hour ago, faatal said:

There are productivity benefits for us like I can profile in the Unity Editor and get release mode timings similar to making a build.

 

Players will probably see a small performance improvement, but that depends on your particular hardware.

No. Blood moon code specifically targets players, so hear/see does not matter.

The next alpha will be out .1% sooner.

good enough 😆 I have a question : the armor will sometimes respawning with color modes or wil be always "default" in next alpha?

[madmole]

5 hours ago, Blake_ said:

Nice. By the way, what are you working on at the moment ? when you disappear for a long time good things tend to happen.

Working on another game, but I come back to 7 days as needed. Testing out feral sense in between things. I helped a little on getting the drone wrapped up and ready to test recently.

4 hours ago, Matt115 said:

So that mean next alpha versions will be bigger or will coming out faster right?

Funny man.

[SnowDog1942]

5 hours ago, faatal said:

 

The next alpha will be out .1% sooner.

Awesome, 3 months sooner sounds great!

[Matt115]

13 hours ago, madmole said:

Working on another game, but I come back to 7 days as needed. Testing out feral sense in between things. I helped a little on getting the drone wrapped up and ready to test recently.

Funny man.

i'm doing my best XD i know making a game irl hard but some solutions can rly help. If i good rember trees were a rly big problem for studios to create them looking good but speedtree help make it faster ,  Metahuman on unreal engine can reduce creating characters model time etc

[Fanatical_Meat]

16 hours ago, madmole said:

Working on another game, but I come back to 7 days as needed. Testing out feral sense in between things. I helped a little on getting the drone wrapped up and ready to test recently.

Funny man.

 

Two things @madmole

First how many hours do you guess you’ve played 7D2D? Don’t count development time unless it went way longer than expected

Second please drop a hint as to what the previously mentioned other game is.

[Beelzybub]

On 4/7/2021 at 3:33 PM, faatal said:

Added Feral Sense option (None, Day, Night, All).
 

I'm still tweaking it, but I expect to be playing with it set to Night and actually being afraid of the dark.

A biome specific setting would be cool. Like "All" in the wasteland, and "Night" for Snow and Desert.