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Alpha 20 Dev Diary


madmole

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1 minute ago, Roland said:

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

Why not use what you have instead of asking for things you don't need. We have lanterns and torches you can place. Generators you can hook up and place spot lights. The drone has a headlight mod. Flares can be modded in IMO, it is a waste of vanilla resources and dev time when there are 50 things that do the same thing. It seems about as valuable as adding pinto beans, black beans, northern beans, red beans etc... who cares we have corn.

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23 minutes ago, madmole said:

Why not use what you have instead of asking for things you don't need. We have lanterns and torches you can place. Generators you can hook up and place spot lights. The drone has a headlight mod. Flares can be modded in IMO, it is a waste of vanilla resources and dev time when there are 50 things that do the same thing. It seems about as valuable as adding pinto beans, black beans, northern beans, red beans etc... who cares we have corn.

Excuuuuuuuuse ME! they aren't called "northern beans" they are called GREAT NORTHERN BEANS!

Great Value Great Northern Beans, 15.5 oz - Walmart.com - Walmart.com

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4 hours ago, faatal said:

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.

This sounds really nice. I asked about something similar a long while back, but thought nothing came of it.

 

I'm guessing the new tinting shader will also be applied to weapons and tools? That was the big improvement I was hoping for.

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1 hour ago, madmole said:

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

Playing Devil's advocate here... The one thing that those lights don't do, is go out. Flares do. If they're commonplace (like, cheaper to make or loot than torches) it would add light management mechanics, which could be cool.

 

Also things look spookier in a red flickering lights, so it would add to the fear factor.

 

...Having said all that, I'm not married to the idea, and I'm sure you guys have a lot more to work on.

 

EDIT: Sorry for the two posts, I thought the forum software would "auto-edit" my previous post.

Edited by khzmusik (see edit history)
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3 hours ago, khzmusik said:

This sounds really nice. I asked about something similar a long while back, but thought nothing came of it.

 

I'm guessing the new tinting shader will also be applied to weapons and tools? That was the big improvement I was hoping for.

It could be used for it, but masks have to be made and hooked up, which takes time.

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Spoiler

 

When I watched Dev Talk one I saw the quest light repair system used in the Gas Station.

Since you have the primer already, does that mean that you may add that as a basic option
to the POIs.  I ask this because it could add to the general gameplay flow, promote Nomadic
POI takeovers, open up more active night play scenarios with out being exclusive to questing.

 

Examples: Single POIs, energy stations, Flickering street lamps.

 

Limiters
If limiters are needed to stop the over taxing of processing power, then have a governor level
limiter to how many additional energy resources can be used at a time.  Have working grids thet
governern an area, that can be associated with the city zones, or the Cells for poi placement.
A slmple but potentially trippy one is after repair, attempting to turn on too many grids at once,
causes blown systems in random locations, or catastrophic failures.

 

Example: Using a Downtown Zone, to repair a main power source, first it needs resources and tools,
including the wiring tool. Second you would need to repair localized connections to the grid. Third
it needs and uses limited fuel capacity Game tanks that can be repaired but not made to be infinite.
Any overreach of connections or flicking the wrong switch and "See limiters section above".

 

For $#!tzNGiggles you can add an RNG failure factor.

 

Madmole

 

The above is just a curiosity, As of 19 it has prompted me to use more systems in longer gameplay days.
I still play Nomadic, and turn lighting to 0, but the actual gameplay gives me more choices between
horde attacks. A new midrange pc plus your optimizations and my terrain tweaks allow me to play a 7 day
120min session and ignore the time on my day off.  

Thanks

Edited by 4sheetzngeegles (see edit history)
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So I watched the dev talk for A20, and I can't help but feel the outfit system is sort of a step backwards and not really forward. Your removing char slots for equipping stuff it seems. Not to mention the amount of inventory clutter this is going to cause when its already super cluttered as it is. You could have added these sets, and kept the current system as well, I don't get why you scrapped it. I mean it won't fix the inventory clutter either way but. It feels the whole thing is a case of: "The current equipment system was not broken and did not need to be "fixed"."

 

RWG stuff, I just hope the terrain is like a19.2 and not that horrorfest a19.1 was where even on seemingly flat ground there was mass variation in actual height of terrain which killed vehicle speed to the point it was often faster to walk on foot.

 

I'm all for new quest types.

 

The loot, the changes in A20 will help, but I still prefer the randomness of a18 loot, where you can get lucky and find something nice early. I've not played much of a19 because I play dead is dead, and the linear loot has completly ruined the game for me. Its made every game I start feel like the exact same thing as the loot is generally always the same.

 

Will Vehicle mods include one that increases speed? A mod I play Darkness Falls, has a mod that doubles vehicle speed when installed, makes a minibike go from 10 m/s to 20 m/s. Motorcycle goes from 14 m/s to 28 m/s. Its a game changer.

 

For the junk drone, how is its AI, if yoru trying to be stealthy I am going to assume having a drone out is a bad idea since I imagine its flying around would make a ton of noise.

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8 hours ago, madmole said:

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

According to my calculations A20 will reach b180 in the week of June 7 2021 if there are no real life accidents. You are doing 0.67/ 0.68 builds per day since 2 years ago. A build can be anything from a texture clipping fix to a WIP system change, so while that's no real variable to calculate dates,  it is a consistent and healthy speed indicator.

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7 hours ago, madmole said:

Why not use what you have instead of asking for things you don't need. We have lanterns and torches you can place. Generators you can hook up and place spot lights. The drone has a headlight mod. Flares can be modded in IMO, it is a waste of vanilla resources and dev time when there are 50 things that do the same thing. It seems about as valuable as adding pinto beans, black beans, northern beans, red beans etc... who cares we have corn.

This is very true IMO. To be honest, I don't see any reason to use any anymore resources on light as soon as I find a helmet light mod, which is usually within the first week.  In fact, I don't think I've ever once used a flashlight for light or use the resources to build light bulbs and hooking them up to a generator.  It just seems like a waste of time.

 

Helmet light mods and/or mining helmets(which usually come with a mod) are pretty easy to find.

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@madmoleA question:

 

Will there be any changes to flora? 

 

I love the new trees but would love to see someone try to do nicer performant grass. Every time I tell my brother about new updates he asks " have they fixed the grass yet?" The strands in the current grass look thick and too contrasting, sometimes too dark. I wonder can you do something a little finer and cohesive. Maybe closer in shade to the ground texture. I notice the old trees also having too much contrast compared to the new. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I love the game. Alpha 19 is amazing, I'm playing and enjoying more than ever.

 

Can't wait to see the what you guys do for the next updates. In particular I love the little drone, can't wait to have a little flying robo-buddy. I mean, the roboturrets are nice, but having one following me sounds great.

 

Also I was playing with electricity a lot lately. And I was wondering if in the future there will be a relay that could inverse the, ummm... polarity?, so the default state of the things plugged in is inverse. Mostly because I want to make a batcave automatic entrance and I would love to have a reverse dawnbridge.

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Hi, I'm back.

 

I have only one question (for now):
Will grass have an overhaul in A20? It would be cool to have different models and sizes.

Trees look great, lighting looks great, distant POI's, distant trees, distant terrain, hd textures, soon character overhaul and dynamic imposters will come...but it's the same old grass.
I think a new one would make sense in the overall looks of the game.

Thoughts? 

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18 hours ago, madmole said:

(Wanting an auto-run feature in 7DtD)

TES4 Oblivion has an auto-run toggle key, it's the Q key. there was also an update to Morrowind in 2015 to add the same.

 

strafing side to side doesnt interrupt the auto-run, but moving forward again manually or backwards, does.

 

(MMO's like guild wars 2 follow similar controls and follow similar behavior, but have A n D be turn left n right, or hold m2 to turn camera+turn, with Q n E be strafe as its a 3rd person mmo)

 

 

I hope sledge turrets get fixed when held in hand and are more aggressive when deployed in A20 or asap.

 

Held it feels like it has less range than a knife despite being able to see that the hammer extends quite far when its deployed.

Edited by Tellis Argonis (see edit history)
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20 hours ago, Scyris said:

Will Vehicle mods include one that increases speed? A mod I play Darkness Falls, has a mod that doubles vehicle speed when installed, makes a minibike go from 10 m/s to 20 m/s. Motorcycle goes from 14 m/s to 28 m/s. Its a game changer.

I did a test speed up. I think it made the official list. It is nowhere near x2 speed. The speeds are limited due to worst case chunk load speeds, else vehicles freeze while chunks load.

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56 minutes ago, faatal said:

I did a test speed up. I think it made the official list. It is nowhere near x2 speed. The speeds are limited due to worst case chunk load speeds, else vehicles freeze while chunks load.

I remember that happening back in old a15 and on the xbox, would stop dead while the next stuff loads, was kind of a pain haha

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9 hours ago, faatal said:

I did a test speed up. I think it made the official list. It is nowhere near x2 speed. The speeds are limited due to worst case chunk load speeds, else vehicles freeze while chunks load.

Depends largely on the persons pc, with my pc I can go 40 m/s in a modded car and it keeps up fine. Mod I use is darkness Falls and it has almost 5 gb of new content. I do understand though that you have to think of the average user which means limiting things in certain ways due to people with potato's for pc's. Even a 50% speed up would be nice, 15 m/s minibike, about 20 m/s motorcycle/4x4. would be good.

 

As for the autorun its real simple just have a keybind for it that user can switch in the options. Then they can set what ever key they want, its simple and it works which is why most games with a auto-run function have a user configurable key.

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On 10/28/2020 at 10:42 PM, madmole said:

They have been around forever. Screamer, fat cop, spider are all special. We have some new ones planned but are not sure when they will arrive. Tourist zombie will become a special infected once the code is in for him.

I would suggest making them stand out more. Like if they have mutations and more torn up clothes.

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@madmole, any news about that sweet hair tech that was shown ( in a Noah model I think) a few weeks back?

 

And the most important question : is your own hair using that sweet new tech lately? Also, that gorgeous 4k headbush of your younger self surely eats VRAM like crazy . 

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11 hours ago, Adam the Waster said:

@madmole


So what place will the hunting rifle have compared to the pipe rifle, will they both be single shot? or will there be a change?

I wanna know what the pistols animations will be like

 

id like to think we would load a pipe pistol in the rough way we would load the red9 from resident evil 4, through the top either with a track or one at a time

Edited by Phoenixshade35 (see edit history)
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  On 10/31/2020 at 7:06 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?

MM replied:  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.

 

SphereII and I coded and released a lockpicking minigame mod which your welcome to use as a starting point.   Its tied into the perk and inventory system, and resembles the one in Skyrim.  I'd love to see it added to the base game.

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