Alpha 20

[Silverjohn]

Just a couple of hours on A20 beta so far and it seems like a good upgrade to to A19.  So far the only bug I've run into was the inventory/character menu failed at one point (I couldn't use the right click interface to repair items when the cursor was active in the crafting menu description window and couldn't switch to the other tabs of the interface until I'd logged out and back in again). 

 

The new world generated a lot faster than A19 and it dropped me 3.4 km from the vendor for the last stage of the tutorial.  I'll try a few more game starts tomorrow to see if this was random or common on that map.  Once I got to the vendor the distance for the tier one quests was a lot shorter than A19.  Several were within 300 meters and I didn't see anything further than 600 m.  That seems like a lot more reasonable distance to me for tier one quests but that could just be personal taste.

 

I played a bit with the new pipe guns but don't have a real opinion yet.  I usually play a knife/crossbow character so I'll have to see if the noise is worth the trouble.  I will say the designs do look sufficiently "junky" for what they are supposed to be and the reload animations look practical.  

 

So far my only complaint is they seem to have taken wooden bars out of the build menu so my favorite design for a day one base doesn't work.  Again a matter of personal taste so a me problem not a dev problem;).

[Vaeliorin]

23 minutes ago, Silverjohn said:

So far my only complaint is they seem to have taken wooden bars out of the build menu so my favorite design for a day one base doesn't work.  Again a matter of personal taste so a me problem not a dev problem;).

Bars are available as one of the shapes for frames, so you can make wooden/cobble and presumable concrete and steel bars.

[Silverjohn]

20 hours ago, Vaeliorin said:

Bars are available as one of the shapes for frames, so you can make wooden/cobble and presumable concrete and steel bars.

Thank you for the tip.  I did a quick check and the bars start at 150 hit points but can be upgraded with wood to 500 hp.  Upgraded to cobblestone they are 1500 hit points so  I believe they match up with the hit points for the regular wall blocks.  You can also skip upgrading by going straight to making cobblestone blocks.

 

The new pipe pistol seems to be working quite well.  Even at low skills a head shot followed by a body shot seems to be enough for the basic zombies which is a reasonable damage output for a day 1 weapon.  I'm not that impressed with the pipe baton so far but the stamina cost is much better than the basic club.

 

So far it seems they've swung the infection hazard back to hard to deal with.  Stumps with honey are a lot harder to come by and antibiotics cost quite a bit from the traders.

 

The tab menu lock up I mentioned in the original post has only happened once more.  I haven't been able to work out what triggered it yet.

 

I've tried a few different game starts and I had another that started me 3.4 km from the first trader.  This seems a bit far but may be because they seem to be sending you to temperate zone traders.  More to follow as I try out more starts and maybe a different generated world.