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Alpha 20 Dev Diary


madmole

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On 10/28/2020 at 9:49 PM, madmole said:

 

Super excited for the new updates coming our way! I think these next updates (A20 and forward) will really be a benchmark in what the devs are trying to go for in the "final" version of this game. I put final in parentheses because the best games never are completed they need updates and what not. I said it when I started playing about a year ago and before that on console this game has the potential to be one of the best zombie survival games of our time.  

Super excited for the new updates coming our way! I think these next updates (A20 and forward) will really be a benchmark in what the devs are trying to go for in the "final" version of this game. I put final in parentheses because the best games never are completed they need updates and what not. I said it when I started playing about a year ago and before that on console this game has the potential to be one of the best zombie survival games of our time.  

Edited by dadbodandproud (see edit history)
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On 10/30/2020 at 7:54 PM, madmole said:

Nope otherwise the outside will be too dark and the inside will be too bright. This is the only way to have semi decent lighting indoors and outdoors with a dynamic world you can fully destroy.

Ok, I see.

Then, is there any way to make the inside of a building that is darker also appear darker form outside? (...so it wouldn't change when stepping in)

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Read the A20 roadmap and I'm very impressed. As always, he game is getting more awesome with each alpha.

 

But the clothes changes are not very clear to me. Are we still gonna have armor besides clothes? Or only chest piece? Also all the listed outfits were combined of helmet+outfit+gloves+boots, except for the nerd outfit, that didn't have a helmet but had goggles. Can we equip the nerd goggles with let's say the complete lumberjack outfit? Or the goggles go to the helmet slot? Or is it an early stage prototype and it is too early to ask these kind of questions?

Edited by unlike them
grammar (see edit history)
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I have quite a few take aways from the stream, but this is bar-none my biggest one. You guys clearly want to have some kind of class system. Why not just stop beating around the @%$#ing bush and implement one and leave the gear out of it. You would have so much more freedom with it and much less stupid "LeT mE pUt On My CoRn PiCkInG hAt."

 

ETA: Also, 10 (I think that's the right number) equipment slots down to 4 is a travesty. What a loss. I used to argue with the guys in the older alphas who said that removing complexity was becoming a problem.

 

I was wrong.

Edited by Ranzera (see edit history)
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1 hour ago, Danidas said:

They are replacing all the gear slots with a new 4 slot system so the days of wearing cloths under armor are gone. As a result the outfits they shown and the many others not shown yet will be all your character will be wearing. So if you want the complete set bonus for a outfit your going to have to deal with all the down sides of wearing it. Such as being forced to deal with freezing or over heating or radiation or light vs heavy armor for getting the perks that you want. As a result adding way more importance to the armor mods  that help in dealing with all that.

 

 

@madmole My only question about the New Outfits system is about "Nettle and thread" what will that serve? 

Too make new outfits?, to make Upgrades? just something iv been thinking about!

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I have a very dumb question, was it ever considered with the new zombie types to possibly enable an option to have both old and new zombie types in the world at the same time? I ask this as far as variety goes, the updated textures are awesome not gonna lie, this was just an odd question that popped into my head.

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Hi,

may i ask your audio guy in your developer team if you plan to insert spatialized audio / sound to Alpha 20 or a later version?

 

Ok it is only a thing when you play with headphones but it should be an option to activate. It will create much better immersion because

you know exactly where to look if you hear a noise. Above / under , left or right, behind or in front of you - you can say where they are (zombies, animals), ... with closed eyes.

 

I installed Unity just to play with that and it is very easy. I tried:

Unity´s spatializer,

Resonance Audio,

Oculus Spatializer Plugin

Steam Audio Spatializer.

You don´t need soundreflections or ambisonics or things like that, just the spatializer.

And then to make it "perfekt" bind the footsteps to the foots, the "Grrrrrrrr" to the head, the "swooshes and "swings" to the arm or hand

and the "gibs" or hits to the collision coordinates - done. 😀

 

 

And a second thing i recognized is that u use "Linear Rolloff" instead of "Logarithmic Rolloff" in most of

your "3D Sound Settings" for the creature sounds.

That cause the unnatural sense of distance to the sound source.

Please use "Logarithmic Rolloff" wether you go spatialized or not.

 

How do you as community and as developer think about these?

 

Regards

Yoghira

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Some tips that I was thinking, Retexturing the Skin Uma of the players because they look like texture from games of the year 2000, Being able to use weapons on top of the vehicles, Option of the Zombie AI that focus only on windows and doors would make the game more realistic maybe more fps will be gained.

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I'm excited to see random gen improvements, biome progression, and revisiting loot progression on the list. These three issues are huge for replayability. Hopefully they make a pass on the melee weapon balance (clubs seem way better than anything else) and the skill trees (strength has most of the good stuff) as well.

 

I really hope that the new random gen will get rid of the "forest in the middle" maps we have in A19 and bring back more randomness. Some sliders would be amazing, like if you wanted to generate a world with mostly snow or desert, or maybe city sizes and density.

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@madmole , a few quick questions:

 

1- Are you guys working on legendary tools and weapons as well for a20 ?

2- Is the animal rework in the works or planned on the shorter term ?

3- The breakable door system that you guys showed is awesome. Will it be applied to other surfaces, like those thin walls in some POIs?

4- On the same subject Have you guys thought about cheap/fast cloth simulation for curtains/dimmers on the windows instead of the current blocky ones?  

 

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1) Rechargeable batteries and AA (and other aaaaaa...) batteries for infinite working flashlights, head flashlights, weapon flashlights, car lights (headlights), reflex sights, night vision goggles and etc? (not as RepairTools, but like an extra slot)

2) Aluminum, manganese, magnesium, zinc, copper, chromium?

3) Several materials for one block/item? (Material2, Material3.. Weight2, Weight3..?)

4) Normal cartridge magazines instead of modGunMagazineExtender and modGunDrumMagazineExtender?

5Is something like this planned? Clean scopes, even with a lot of blur...

6) Dyes that apply camo texture (desert, forest, winter)? Will it be possible to paint vehicles?

 

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On 10/31/2020 at 8:48 PM, Zayah136 said:

Make sure to allow dyeing vehicles when you get to vehicle mods, it's really hard to tell who's bycicle is who's sometimes. That and I would loooove a purple bike.

A new tinting shader is already done and all vehicles now have a tint mask, which allows the dye color in the cosmetic slot to tint specific areas of the vehicles.

On 11/1/2020 at 1:51 AM, toores said:

Ok, I see.

Then, is there any way to make the inside of a building that is darker also appear darker form outside? (...so it wouldn't change when stepping in)

There was old code the put lighting into blocks, but did not work very well and added overhead, so was disabled.

 

Maybe someday we can find a better way.

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Got another Question for you guys :)

 

Do you consider adding Notes/Paper Clues to Prefabs?

 

The Flashlight Blocks in Prefabs were a huge step forwards in telling a narrative, followed by making many Prefabs Dungeon-Like with a Pathway.

I think Notes with Text, like Skyrim (and Fallout with the Computer Entrys)did it and many other Games would greatly benefit the atmosphere and Immersion.

Tiny Storys could be told that way, or clues of hidden treasures inside a Prefab given.

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On 10/30/2020 at 11:43 AM, madmole said:

Characters and animations are the biggest thing holding us back from becoming a massive success.

I'm curious why you believe that.  Do you guys want to be like EA?  Release games that are visually pretty, but fundamentally garbage?  If so please reconsider because almost nothing that AAA publishers @%$# out is worth the time, let alone money, to play.

 

This is just like, my opinion man, but the things that are holding you back are:

  • The lack of variety as well as the hard tiering of weapons and armor.  For example the sniper rifle is strictly better than the marksman rifle, and there are only 3 rifles total.
  • Bugs, especially the gamebreaking ones like vehicle duping, item loss in vehicles, vehicle loss, crippling FPS hitching during weapon fire, zombies' attacks clipping through walls, jerky zombie movement (the micro rubberbanding not the pathing that attempts to juke the player, that's cool), the game deciding that you don't have a bedroll or that your bedroll is actually someone else's, etc.
  • Things that perhaps aren't bugs, but are super irritating like the almost random autosort order, inconsistent reload and draw with bows, camera position not staying the same when exiting a vehicle so you are always disoriented, inability to consistently pick up a thrown spear, respawning "near your bed" can place you on the roof of a nearby POI (like a Shamway), the cancerous amount of I-beam debris in the wasteland making the 4x4 unusable there, gaining zero exp from cooking food or from zombies dying to traps/bleeding/fire.
  • Lack of special zombies.  Only the demo, and to a lesser extent the vultures, present a threat.  Everything else is a bullet sponge to one degree or another.
  • Game progression, especially loot not being better in harder POIs and harder biomes.  I understand you're working on this one, so this may not be valid for long.
  • Low worth/Worthless game content like stealth, gillie suits, knives, spears, batons, buried treasure perks, etc.
  • Terrible FPS, especially during BMs, even with the graphics turned way down.  My PC isn't a potato, but I never saw my frames break 30 on a BM after night 14.
  • Lack of features common in other FPS games such as different mouse sensitivity settings for different zoom levels, autorun, configs stored in a universal and portable .ini/.cfg file instead of the damn windows registry (really guys?), and changeable crosshairs.
  • Not enough "knobs and dials" to customize the game without mods.  For example you can't turn off the death penalty, nor can you remove the noobie weather protection.  There are a LOT of settings that should be configurable when creating a new world that aren't there.

These are the things keeping you from greatness, not how pretty your models are.

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On 10/31/2020 at 7:33 AM, beHypE said:

Well yeah, reading the official list of planned changes completely changed my mind on what I wrote on page 2. Alpha 20 looks amazing, moreso than A19 for my taste since A19 brought more eye candy and the loot progression was a fun killer. Hope the changes to that will be good. 

 

Damn I'm hyped! 😍 I know no dates, ready when it's ready etc... But earlier this year there were talks of A20 being a late 2020 update, is that still a possibility or is the A20 update way more ambitious than initially planned? 

We're looking at spring which always leads to more like summer. We'll see though, we're making good progress.

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On 10/31/2020 at 9:13 AM, Phoenixshade35 said:

With the  armour sets, are you guys thinking about tools or weapons that could go with each set for an added bonus?  Like for the farmer it could be the iron shovel as a special one to find and depending on how many pieces of the outfit you have could determine how many boosts the tool gives?

 

So for the miner as an example we could have a legendary Iron Pickax then say you only have the helmet it gives like a 10% extra block damage, gloves gives an extra 5% swing speed and stuff like that

Oh and not going to lie I would love to have a policeman outfit in the game, simply because it would be awesome haha

No the armor will provide standalone perks and not interact with other objects, other than itself for a full set bonus.

On 10/31/2020 at 10:05 AM, Danidas said:

For future versions of the game would you consider the possibility of re-adding cosmetic mods. Like the current hat mods for helmets to make them look like a cowboy hat, baseball hat, etc but for all 4 gear slots. In order to allow us to swap out the look of our gear to further diversify our characters appearance beyond the dye system. As one of the main complaints about the new gear perk system is that everyone will end up looking identical when doing a specific role.

 

I don't think so, but we might add alternate versions of specific sets at a store you can buy. Like if you found a miner outfit and purchased miner outfit variant, you could set the skin to the variant. I believe Rust does this too. I'm not saying we won't but it kind of doesn't make sense and in PVP might be misleading as to what you are up against seeing a soft ball cap on a guy actually wearing a steel helmet.

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I get goosebumps thinking about how good this game is going to be at the end of the run to Gold.

Let's face it, the game is already awesome (imo anyway)

Been getting right back into building again, which is always a good sign we are enjoying ourselves tbh and have been wondering if more textures is something being contemplated for the future?

Below is a comprehensive list of all my complaints about the game...

....

...

.

Yep... that about covers it I reckon.  Let me know when you have addressed all my complaints guys ;) 

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On 10/31/2020 at 2:48 PM, Guppys Fur said:

To the entire Staff.

I dont say it for the first time, i wont say it for the last time:
Thank you. Thanks for 4068 Hours of Joy, Thrill, Anger and Fear (of Big Momma breaking through the ceiling of my Base)

 

I had low expectations on A20 for some reason, but what i saw in the youtube recording of the Stream today left me in awe of whats to come.

Power Generator Quest, Biome Progression, Lootprogression, Quest Menu and your Intention to make someday Decoration available for Players too... If i were a Dog i would wag my tail... nevermind im wagging something else.

 

Another thing im really excited for is the Outfit System.

 

And for that i got a question.

Will we be able to alter their appearance, either by tinting, or Transmog?

For example in the current system we are able to let Steel Helmets appear like Cowboy Hats. It would give the Player more freedom and not be "forced" to look exactly like the Set he is using.

 

 

 

I do believe we will support tinting and it will be better then ever, i.e. using a tint mask. I doubt we will support cosmetic swapping, but we might. It hasn't been discussed and there is so much to do it feels like a can we will kick down the road at the moment.

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On 10/31/2020 at 3:06 PM, Tahaan said:

Is the vehicle collision system that was mentioned for A19 still a thing?

Not happening for A20. Vehicle mods are but the whole vehicle crit system has to wait because Faatal is swamped with other features.

 

On 10/31/2020 at 4:12 PM, BobbyLee298 said:

@madmole is there a chance that road flares will come in at some point?

It would be sick to use at night with the No Power Quest

We have flashlights and gun lights and helmet lights. Do we really need more lights?

On 10/31/2020 at 6:06 PM, FranticDan said:

Since there will be more loot containers that will be locked and require lockpicking to get into them, will there be or have you thought about adding a lockpicking minigame with progressively harder locks to pick depending on the loot container?

No, lockpicking is shippable as is. Sure a minigame might be better but we're a small team and we can do more quest types or redo features that are shippable already.

On 10/31/2020 at 8:48 PM, Zayah136 said:

Make sure to allow dyeing vehicles when you get to vehicle mods, it's really hard to tell who's bycicle is who's sometimes. That and I would loooove a purple bike.

That is already done.

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On 11/1/2020 at 1:25 AM, Guppys Fur said:

Question:
Did/do you consider a "Engineer" Outfit set?

 

Handy for Basebuilders.

Faster Block-place rate, higher Jump height ( yes i know, there is a perk too for it) less Costs when repairing Blocks and such things.

Not yet.

On 11/1/2020 at 1:51 AM, toores said:

Ok, I see.

Then, is there any way to make the inside of a building that is darker also appear darker form outside? (...so it wouldn't change when stepping in)

That would require some kind of concept of what is inside and what is out. Hard to do in a fully destroyable game.

On 11/1/2020 at 2:28 AM, unlike them said:

Read the A20 roadmap and I'm very impressed. As always, he game is getting more awesome with each alpha.

 

But the clothes changes are not very clear to me. Are we still gonna have armor besides clothes? Or only chest piece? Also all the listed outfits were combined of helmet+outfit+gloves+boots, except for the nerd outfit, that didn't have a helmet but had goggles. Can we equip the nerd goggles with let's say the complete lumberjack outfit? Or the goggles go to the helmet slot? Or is it an early stage prototype and it is too early to ask these kind of questions?

Goggles occupy the entire head slot.

On 11/1/2020 at 4:24 AM, Ranzera said:

I have quite a few take aways from the stream, but this is bar-none my biggest one. You guys clearly want to have some kind of class system. Why not just stop beating around the @%$#ing bush and implement one and leave the gear out of it. You would have so much more freedom with it and much less stupid "LeT mE pUt On My CoRn PiCkInG hAt."

 

ETA: Also, 10 (I think that's the right number) equipment slots down to 4 is a travesty. What a loss. I used to argue with the guys in the older alphas who said that removing complexity was becoming a problem.

 

I was wrong.

You are always wrong bro.

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7 minutes ago, madmole said:

We have flashlights and gun lights and helmet lights. Do we really need more lights?

How about make flashlights throwable? That's probably what he was wanting to do with the flare. Toss it ahead into a dark room...

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