Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[jorbascrumps]

31 minutes ago, Roland said:

It is a passive station. It just does it’s thing once you place it and the interface is only to collect water from it. It isn’t a crafting station and it doesn’t unlock new recipes. But when you have three set up it makes your base look cool and you always feel happy opening it and removing pure water. 

 

This will definitely do wonders for my immersion.

 

35 minutes ago, Roland said:

No longer possible. You can drink straight from a river or lake but you won’t be able to fill up a stack of empty bottles. There are no longer any empty bottles in A21. Bottles only exist as long as there is a liquid contained in them. They simply represent one unit of that liquid and not a literal bottle any longer.
 

Murky water is now the standard drink of the apocalypse. You will only ever find murky water when looting containers that have  water. You will always have to boil your own pure water. But dew collectors generate pure water so they are very nice. 
 

The struggle for water lasts longer than three days now. I’ve actually found myself resorting to drinking murky water at times. Murky water works like the spoiled sandwiches. It recovers your thirst but damages your health slightly just like the sandwiches recover your hunger but damage your health. Makes for some interesting choices. 

 

Thanks for the info! I'm looking forward to water being more of an issue to deal with.

 

31 minutes ago, Roland said:

I don’t know. I hope so. I think they should only work outside. Putting the plant property on them to force them to have open sky above them would be a great idea if it isn’t already implemented. I could never bring myself to build one inside and go against the theme. Plus they are humongous. They look awesome on the exterior of your base. 

 

Obviously these should only be built safely on rooftops, regardless of their implementation. How humongous is humongous?

 

  

1 minute ago, Roland said:

Rekt swears by it. He prefers murk to anything else. 

 

Trader Murk.

Edited July 22, 2022 by jorbascrumps
lame joke (see edit history)

[BFT2020]

35 minutes ago, Roland said:

No longer possible. You can drink straight from a river or lake but you won’t be able to fill up a stack of empty bottles. There are no longer any empty bottles in A21. Bottles only exist as long as there is a liquid contained in them. They simply represent one unit of that liquid and not a literal bottle any longer.
 

Murky water is now the standard drink of the apocalypse. You will only ever find murky water when looting containers that have  water. You will always have to boil your own pure water. But dew collectors generate pure water so they are very nice. 
 

The struggle for water lasts longer than three days now. I’ve actually found myself resorting to drinking murky water at times. Murky water works like the spoiled sandwiches. It recovers your thirst but damages your health slightly just like the sandwiches recover your hunger but damage your health. Makes for some interesting choices. 

 

I actually like this change.  In the modded game I am playing, I removed all liquid except murky water from loot containers so you always have to plan ahead.  You can't just go with no food and water and expect to find edible food / drinkable water as you clear out a POI.

[Roland]

12 minutes ago, BFT2020 said:

 

I actually like this change.  In the modded game I am playing, I removed all liquid except murky water from loot containers so you always have to plan ahead.  You can't just go with no food and water and expect to find edible food / drinkable water as you clear out a POI.

I definitely feel it’s an improvement. Before, you would often find enough pure water in cabinets and water tanks to keep your hydration up without consequence. Now, it’s only murk anytime you have a chance to find water. When your hydration slips below 50%, suddenly you start considering slurping on some murk to trade a bit of health to avoid stamina loss.  
 

The nice thing is you can find a nearby water source and drink directly from that to save your bottled murk to take back to your base and boil it.  
 

1 hour ago, Guppycur said:

Oh.  Dew, not rain.  Yeh okay I'm fine with that.  Good call whoever decided to say dew and not rain... Good call indeed. 

 

I look forward to your chicken coop reimplementation. 

Edited July 22, 2022 by Roland (see edit history)

[BenZ0]

53 minutes ago, Roland said:

It is a passive station. It just does it’s thing once you place it and the interface is only to collect water from it. It isn’t a crafting station and it doesn’t unlock new recipes. But when you have three set up it makes your base look cool and you always feel happy opening it and removing pure water. 
 

Nope. You can’t craft empty jars, find empty jars, or wind up with empty jars. Go craft up 1000s while

it’s still A20…. 😜

 

I don’t know. I hope so. I think they should only work outside. Putting the plant property on them to force them to have open sky above them would be a great idea if it isn’t already implemented. I could never bring myself to build one inside and go against the theme. Plus they are humongous. They look awesome on the exterior of your base. 

So how will this be now with crafting glue? Do you still need murky water? And if yes that would kinda suck tbh cuz in the later game stage you kinda want to mass produce murky water since you need later ALOT of glue/duc tape. Since you cannot craft glas jars anymore to fill them up is there a way to get murky water easy or are we left alone with collecting murky water while looting?

[NekoPawtato]

2 minutes ago, BenZ0 said:

So how will this be now with crafting glue? Do you still need murky water? And if yes that would kinda suck tbh cuz in the later game stage you kinda want to mass produce murky water since you need later ALOT of glue/duc tape. Since you cannot craft glas jars anymore to fill them up is there a way to get murky water easy or are we left alone with collecting murky water while looting?

psssst -- keep reading

 

[Beelzebubs Ghost]

1 hour ago, bdubyah said:

Don't your ever tire of being such a negative nancy?

 

Not when listening to Realistic Robert. My opinion doesn't require your validation, Totalitarian Tony. Just waiting for Orwellian Oliver and Last-Word Luis to step in.

Edited July 22, 2022 by Beelzebubs Ghost (see edit history)

[bdubyah]

31 minutes ago, Roland said:

I definitely feel it’s an improvement. Before, you would often find enough pure water in cabinets and water tanks to keep your hydration up without consequence. Now, it’s only murk anytime you have a chance to find water. When your hydration slips below 50%, suddenly you start considering slurping on some murk to trade a bit of health to avoid stamina loss.  
 

The nice thing is you can find a nearby water source and drink directly from that to save your bottled murk to take back to your base and boil it.  
 

 

I look forward to your chicken coop reimplementation. 

I feel it will be a good change overall, just seems odd to remove the jars completely.

 

7 minutes ago, Beelzebubs Ghost said:

 

Not when listening to Realistic Robert. My opinion doesn't require your validation, Totalitarian Tony. Just waiting for Orwellian Oliver and Last-Word Luis to step in.

A simple no would have sufficed.

[Roland]

21 minutes ago, BenZ0 said:

So how will this be now with crafting glue? Do you still need murky water? And if yes that would kinda suck tbh cuz in the later game stage you kinda want to mass produce murky water since you need later ALOT of glue/duc tape. Since you cannot craft glas jars anymore to fill them up is there a way to get murky water easy or are we left alone with collecting murky water while looting?

Glue uses pure water now. So build lots of dew collectors to support your glue production. 

[Syphon583]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

No longer possible. You can drink straight from a river or lake but you won’t be able to fill up a stack of empty bottles. There are no longer any empty bottles in A21. Bottles only exist as long as there is a liquid contained in them. They simply represent one unit of that liquid and not a literal bottle any longer.

Nice to see that the glue recipe will be altered to accommodate the change, but what about molotovs? Will those still craftable?

[IzPrebuilt]

*eye roll* really guys? beaver AND box? really? this game is gonna make me take up drinking

 

[beerfly]

3 hours ago, Roland said:

It slowly collects three bottles of pure water (irrespective of biome or weather sorry Gup).  Drinking water has been completely rebalanced for A21. 

For how much time though.

 

If Snowdog keeps the pace of converting golden snow into pure water faster than this, I`ll keep calling him. 

[Survager]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

Glue uses pure water now. So build lots of dew collectors to support your glue production. 

What about the snow. Can we get murky water from snow to make clear water?

If it is not possible to make water from snow, where will the player use the snow that he gets when he searches for treasures in the winter biome?

Edited July 22, 2022 by Survager (see edit history)

[Jost Amman]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

Glue uses pure water now. So build lots of dew collectors to support your glue production. 

Speaking of which... how costly are the dew collectors to build? 

[Survager]

On 3/16/2022 at 8:02 PM, Roland said:

Murky water is only water found in loot

Will the mineral water, which can now be found in coolers, be removed from the game?

[Roland]

Snow can’t be crafted into murky water

 

I don’t know about Molotov Cocktails and can’t check for a couple more days. 

 

Mineral water is a rare find. Most of the time you’ll find murky water.

 

Dew Collectors take quite a bit to build. You won’t be whipping several out in the first couple of weeks. 

 

[Survager]

Just now, Roland said:

Snow can’t be crafted into murky water

 

 But, where will the player use the snow that he gets when he searches for treasures in the winter biome?

[Jost Amman]

26 minutes ago, Roland said:

Snow can’t be crafted into murky water

[faatal]

19 hours ago, Blake_ said:

@faatal I have a few questions regarding bandits.

 

1. Will bandits be able to loot tailored containers for something specific for them or pick up dropped weapons?

 

2. Will bandits be able to jump obstacles and crouch as well as the player ? In those lines, do you plan on giving them also 1m 'egression' like future zds?

 

3. Do you plan on giving bandits sneaky behaviour towards us? Meaning silent night assaults with surrounding and stalking and the like, or even just passive camouflage at any given time (there's a costume already in for hidden sniping I believe).

 

4. How will bandit speed work?

Will they be faster or slower than the player? More or less stamina? Will they actually spend it?

 

5. Will bandits be capable of facial expressions? Blinks, eye movement, grins, ect.

 

6. Have you guys planned any means of transportation for hostile npcs going forward? (Pun intended?)

 

7. Will we be able to talk our way out from a dangerous situation regarding bandits? Like giving them X amount of dukes and then they let us go on for a few days?

 

Thank you very much for the patience.

1 Not planning on them looting anything. If time permits, they may get some fun bonus abilities, but that is a big if.

2 They move like zombies, so jump/crouch and any future modes of movement.

3 Not decided.

4 Both. Lite ones fast and heavies less fast. Stamina use is not planned.

5 Don't know if art has plans for that.

6 Feet.

7 No. If they could loot your corpse, they would take your dukes, but as it said....bonus.

9 hours ago, Naz said:

definitely object quality is one of the only expensive options i try to keep as high as possible to stop blocks getting culled as often in sight. That's great news to hear it already does it, if i'm understanding correctly the object setting controls how far away objects will go through their lods before getting culled? and after a certain distance the object the object will stop switching out lods and get completely culled? i assume then it's too expensive to maintain the lowest quality lod at the same distance as a players view distance?

Yes. Chunk distance is quite far. That final LOD culling is important to performance, else you are paying for a lot of draw calls, even if it was just a billboard.

[faatal]

I've been doing some overall play testing lately. My current game (8k RWG and default settings) is starting day 4. The water struggle is real. I've had to drink about 5 bottles of murky water so far and managed to not get dysentery. I can boil water now and make 2 kinds of tea. I've never been so excited to loot a red tea. Tea is +4 water over boiled, so definitely making tea. Got my water back up to 90%, but the only drink I currently have is one golden rod tea. Trader so far has had no water. I know how to make the dew collector, but don't have the filter. Hopefully I can find a filter at a trader.

[BenZ0]

4 hours ago, Roland said:

Glue uses pure water now. So build lots of dew collectors to support your glue production. 

Oh yes baby thanks for that answer, in that case I really like this change with the dew collectors. I was worried that they would be "just" a water source but since they also have other uses like for glue this makes the new workingstation fit really well into the game. Such a big brain move from the fun pimps there.

[POCKET951]

how will this new system work with things like buckets? why cant we take a cooking pot to the lake, carry it back full of water and then cook it to get a few bottles of mukry water? 

It just doesn't make sense that we cant turn snow into water though.

why can't we fill a cooking pot with snow, put it over the fire and get water?

Shouldn't we be able to bring back buckets of water to a fire to make water? 

it would be weird if things that worked in real life didn't work in a gamified way in a game.

I like the idea of making water more challenging, but  then doing it by  not allowing sensical ways to get water in a video game seems like nonsense.

I like the idea of water being a challenge after day 3, but the solution doesn't make sense based on the info we have been provided so far

Will there be a late-game way to automate water supply so that it becomes trivial other than building a farm of low tier dew collectors? or will there be a lategame version thats more expensive but also easier to manage?
 

54 minutes ago, faatal said:

I've been doing some overall play testing lately. My current game (8k RWG and default settings) is starting day 4. The water struggle is real. I've had to drink about 5 bottles of murky water so far and managed to not get dysentery. I can boil water now and make 2 kinds of tea. I've never been so excited to loot a red tea. Tea is +4 water over boiled, so definitely making tea. Got my water back up to 90%, but the only drink I currently have is one golden rod tea. Trader so far has had no water. I know how to make the dew collector, but don't have the filter. Hopefully I can find a filter at a trader.

do vending machines have Beverages in A21?

Edited July 23, 2022 by POCKET951 (see edit history)

[Guppycur]

5 hours ago, Roland said:

I definitely feel it’s an improvement. Before, you would often find enough pure water in cabinets and water tanks to keep your hydration up without consequence. Now, it’s only murk anytime you have a chance to find water. When your hydration slips below 50%, suddenly you start considering slurping on some murk to trade a bit of health to avoid stamina loss.  
 

The nice thing is you can find a nearby water source and drink directly from that to save your bottled murk to take back to your base and boil it.  
 

 

I look forward to your chicken coop reimplementation. 

It's not new tech so could already be done but I appreciate seeing your visionary side.

 

...now big is that sucker, 3x3? 

I've been watching a lot of "alone".  A full pot of snow melts down to less than a cup of water so I get that.  

 

...I don't get the removal of jars.  How do you carry water? 

[POCKET951]

11 minutes ago, Guppycur said:

It's not new tech so could already be done but I appreciate seeing your visionary side.

 

...now big is that sucker, 3x3? 

I've been watching a lot of "alone".  A full pot of snow melts down to less than a cup of water so I get that.  

 

...I don't get the removal of jars.  How do you carry water? 

you still carry it in jars, you just don't get empties after you have consumed it I think

Edited July 23, 2022 by POCKET951 (see edit history)

[Laz Man]

7 hours ago, bdubyah said:

So when you drink something you don't get the jar back anymore?

 

How people drink in the apocalypse... 😅

[jorbascrumps]

2 hours ago, BenZ0 said:

Oh yes baby thanks for that answer, in that case I really like this change with the dew collectors. I was worried that they would be "just" a water source but since they also have other uses like for glue this makes the new workingstation fit really well into the game. Such a big brain move from the fun pimps there.

 

They are "just" a water source - they do not make glue themselves, just provide the water to make glue elsewhere.