Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[POCKET951]

25 minutes ago, vergilsparda said:

hey POI builders + shape creators, if you're here, with all the new POIs and the shape consistency being updated/added this alpha (hopefully), is there any new info that can be shown or explained without giving away anything huge or spoilery? I've seen that the new windows are looking great and work well, and the new POI traps are looking spiffy, but what about the new POIs that are being added? Any more high tier POIs, or maybe even what "groups" of POIs are being added/updated?

 

Also, where are you on the amount of new shapes vs the shapes in A20? Last I saw it was like... I think 50-100 new shapes, I think, or did I pull that out of my butt?

 

I'm super excited for all of the building blocks. I'm always looking for new shapes to renovate POIs I live in with lol

I sure hope one of the new blocks is exactly like the pink roof piece, but with the red/green highlighted triangle filled in with a tetrahedron attached to it

[Laz Man]

42 minutes ago, vergilsparda said:

hey POI builders + shape creators, if you're here, with all the new POIs and the shape consistency being updated/added this alpha (hopefully), is there any new info that can be shown or explained without giving away anything huge or spoilery? I've seen that the new windows are looking great and work well, and the new POI traps are looking spiffy, but what about the new POIs that are being added? Any more high tier POIs, or maybe even what "groups" of POIs are being added/updated?

 

Also, where are you on the amount of new shapes vs the shapes in A20? Last I saw it was like... I think 50-100 new shapes, I think, or did I pull that out of my butt?

 

I'm super excited for all of the building blocks. I'm always looking for new shapes to renovate POIs I live in with lol

 

I started a new large POI concept recently that will be a T4 bare minimum.  Its a pretty large 100x100 POI so its most likely going to be a side project I work on between other higher priority POI tasks.  Hopefully it gets done for A21 as it will have a lot of fun concepts we have been talking about for a long time now... 😁

Edited August 2, 2022 by Laz Man (see edit history)

[NekoPawtato]

are bandits able to be dismembered? (What happens to their weapons if so?)

 

will the interactive environment hazards be added to existing POIs? Or new ones only?

[doughphunghus]

6 hours ago, NICULL said:

ok its not THAT easy to add either XD there was actually a modlet a while back that let you zoom in really close but its broken now and it was not centered on the drivers side on the 4x4...

I played that modlet. I liked the first person driving that it offered, and it seemed it was just moving or zooming the camera in close. It felt a little wonky, and there were some bad effects you could hit while on the bicycle (see the inside of your head, etc), but overall the effect (of just moving the camera where your head was) was workable and fun. The bicycle seemed to also have a weird effect that made it sometimes hard to tell if you were turning or not at standstill speeds. 
 

anyway: another vote for “first person driving ability “

[schwanz9000]

1 hour ago, POCKET951 said:

I sure hope one of the new blocks is exactly like the pink roof piece, but with the red/green highlighted triangle filled in with a tetrahedron attached to it

Those look like standard ramps, correct? If so, you want something like this? Probably wouldn't hurt to have them for wedge60 too. 

[BFT2020]

53 minutes ago, NekoPawtato said:

are bandits able to be dismembered? (What happens to their weapons if so?)

 

They are going to be like Rust NPCs, attacking you with advanced weapons but all you get is scrap metal for loot  😉

[undeadsurvivor89]

To be honest, I think water should be left alone. While dew water collection is nice, there is no need to reduce immersion and realism by removing glass jar. Boiling water and collecting water with glass jar are actually fun factors of the game.

[Roland]

24 minutes ago, undeadsurvivor89 said:

To be honest, I think water should be left alone. While dew water collection is nice, there is no need to reduce immersion and realism by removing glass jar. Boiling water and collecting water with glass jar are actually fun factors of the game.

Well…it’s already implemented. You’ll get to try it out in A21 experimental and see if you think it is more or less fun than making glass jars. I’m sure there will be a thread or two to contribute your play-testing feedback. 😀

[Laz Man]

2 hours ago, NekoPawtato said:

will the interactive environment hazards be added to existing POIs? Or new ones only?

 Depends if we have time and if the mechanic doesn't feel forced.

[unholyjoe]

1 hour ago, undeadsurvivor89 said:

To be honest, I think water should be left alone. While dew water collection is nice, there is no need to reduce immersion and realism by removing glass jar. Boiling water and collecting water with glass jar are actually fun factors of the game.

i felt a little let down at first but now game play just seems better without having to scrounge around for resources to make stupid jars or having tons of them empty ones from everywhere.

 

for me less then 3-4 rl days i dont miss the jars at all... i adapted and over-came the hard ships from hunting for murky water until i got a dew collector.

 

now i prefer not having the jars and glad i have learned some new alternatives.

 

hint-

Spoiler

red tea and perks are better for the transition.

 

Edited August 3, 2022 by unholyjoe (see edit history)

[Blake_]

2 hours ago, schwanz9000 said:

Those look like standard ramps, correct? If so, you want something like this? Probably wouldn't hurt to have them for wedge60 too. 

Some weird ones that have been mentioned in my Mp gameplays as a wish:

 

.Snake/"curly"-shaped trims, diamond-shaped trims among others.

.Balls. small balls, column with a ball attached in all sizes, trims that end in small balls, or just small balls. It sounds like a manly feature because it is.

. Statues. Either full body, or just arms, legs or busts of any material.

. More fancy fences with different decorations and/or carvings.

 

Aside from this, there are quite a few wishing for some kind of elevator, electrical or otherwise. I suppose that's not exactly a shape.

 

 

 

[Laz Man]

37 minutes ago, Blake_ said:

Aside from this, there are quite a few wishing for some kind of elevator, electrical or otherwise. I suppose that's not exactly a shape.

 

You can have elevators already.  Just tell them to get more creative... 😁

 

[RipClaw]

3 hours ago, unholyjoe said:

i felt a little let down at first but now game play just seems better without having to scrounge around for resources to make stupid jars or having tons of them empty ones from everywhere.

It's not that bad. You only need sand, clay and a forge. And they stack up to 125.

But it is what it is.
 

3 hours ago, unholyjoe said:

for me less then 3-4 rl days i dont miss the jars at all... i adapted and over-came the hard ships from hunting for murky water until i got a dew collector.

 

now i prefer not having the jars and glad i have learned some new alternatives.

Adaptation is the name of the game. I think a meta will be found pretty quickly to get through the first days as smoothly as possible.
 

By the way, have the stacks of beverages been increased ? In A20 clean water only has a stacksize of 10 and for my large scale production of glue I need a lot of clean water and will probably have around 10 dew collectors in A21. 

 

 

Edited August 3, 2022 by RipClaw (see edit history)

[Uncle Al]

4 hours ago, Blake_ said:

Some weird ones that have been mentioned in my Mp gameplays as a wish:

 

.Snake/"curly"-shaped trims, diamond-shaped trims among others.

.Balls. small balls, column with a ball attached in all sizes, trims that end in small balls, or just small balls. It sounds like a manly feature because it is.

. Statues. Either full body, or just arms, legs or busts of any material.

. More fancy fences with different decorations and/or carvings.

 

Aside from this, there are quite a few wishing for some kind of elevator, electrical or otherwise. I suppose that's not exactly a shape.

 

 

 

One I've been pining for is a full thickness 1 block arch - would allow opening out the 1 block circles neatly.

 

Oh 1 block circles with built in ladders would be lovely.  It's a pain that the moment that you need a 3x3 tube to build an enclosed ladder.  Would want a full circle and half circle with ladder so you can create spaces to get off the ladder.

 

[maxousara]

How many  New shapes are preview for a21 approximatly ??

[Jost Amman]

@schwanz9000, @faatal: do you have any news about the drone? How is the next iteration of the drone AI coming along? Is the drone guy working on improving navigation, especially inside tight POI spaces? I'm asking because I read a lot of people are complaining about this on Steam. For example, every time the drone hits a wall it makes a noise, and if you're in a tight room it's very annoying to hear all that banging (some even think they're being attacked).

 

It would be a shame if the drone was shelved by most people just because of a few bugs/nuances.

Edited August 3, 2022 by Jost Amman (see edit history)

[Guest]

With regard to Bandits, can we lure the zeds to them so that they can do sme of the work and distract them us so that they can be head shot

[BenZ0]

14 hours ago, schwanz9000 said:

YUP! One of these days, I really want to rework that so the progression is ALWAYS forward when crafting. I don't want to see a high Q2 being better than a low Q4. That's just demoralizing. What's the point of progression if it's not progressive, right!? I still want to have a little randomization, but I want the quality levels to stay within their lanes.
Looted items will stay random 100%.
 

Probably you guys are already doing that but can you guys take a closer look at the loot tables of some objects? Cars in the wasteland for example give way too easy and often too good guns or tools away. I cant count anymore how many lvl 6 augers, m60 maschine guns or lvl 6 steel tools I found in them. My boys and me arent even using eye candys or any loot increase settings, after day 20ish. We agree on that the cars should definatly not give such good itmes so frequent.

Meanwhile there are also other loot containers that have just have... barely any loot and are barely anything worth like Army trucks, since alpha 20 the best thing I found there was canned food. I mean atleast a pistol could drop there or not? 

 

I already played for 400+ hours in alpha 20 so these are not assumptions from just a few games.

[Uncle Al]

I'm sure 'actually useful POI names visible on the quest choice screen' is a feature that's in a backlog somewhere. It's occurred to me that the new crafting system makes it a lot more desirable.

 

As described the new crafting system makes where we loot a lot more important again, which is fantastic.  That also gives meaningful choices regarding doing quests, as some days the trader is offering a bunch of houses as quest targets and we want to loot gas stations and hardware stores or whatever.

 

Inevitably though I, and I'm sure others, are going to check what the trader has that matches what we're looking for (any gas station quests today?) and then go and do our own thing once any suitable quests are exhausted for the day.  Having to open every single quest dialogue to see what the target is, and then exit out of the dialogue, isn't a great user experience.

 

A quest list that showed "Working Stiff Tools, 1.4km South" "Higashi Tower 2.1km North" etc. would be a hell of a lot better experience.

 

I appreciate renaming the POIs to have user friendly names is an undertaking, but even displaying their current names directly in the quest list would be a start.

[schwanz9000]

11 hours ago, vergilsparda said:

Also, where are you on the amount of new shapes vs the shapes in A20? Last I saw it was like... I think 50-100 new shapes, I think, or did I pull that out of my butt?

 

2 hours ago, maxousara said:

How many  New shapes are preview for a21 approximately ??

Closing in on 350 new shapes...so far. Most of those being the new windows and various roof/ceiling angle to angle transition shapes and trims.

[schwanz9000]

6 hours ago, Blake_ said:

*snip* shape requests

Unless it is something missing like @POCKET951's post, I'm not exactly taking shape requests, however, if you wanted to start a new post somewhere that has reference photos of what you're talking about, I'd at least take a look and consider it.
No statues. We'll leave that to the art guys to decide if they want/need to add those as art props. Shapes are basic geometry...mostly.

 

[schwanz9000]

2 hours ago, Uncle Al said:

One I've been pining for is a full thickness 1 block arch - would allow opening out the 1 block circles neatly.

 

Oh 1 block circles with built in ladders would be lovely.  It's a pain that the moment that you need a 3x3 tube to build an enclosed ladder.  Would want a full circle and half circle with ladder so you can create spaces to get off the ladder.

 

Not enough room for the ladder AND the player. I tried it early on in the shape menu design. The Cube Sewer Barrel shape that is currently in A20 is as close to 1m as I could get.

2 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

@schwanz9000, @faatal: do you have any news about the drone? How is the next iteration of the drone AI coming along? Is the drone guy working on improving navigation, especially inside tight POI spaces? I'm asking because I read a lot of people are complaining about this on Steam. For example, every time the drone hits a wall it makes a noise, and if you're in a tight room it's very annoying to hear all that banging (some even think they're being attacked).

 

It would be a shame if the drone was shelved by most people just because of a few bugs/nuances.

There are several fixes for the Drone in A20.6 Exp.
I too would like to see a change to the drone's collision sound. 

[schwanz9000]

1 hour ago, BenZ0 said:

*snip* Loot and car loot

Loot tables have been adjusted quite a bit in A21. Cars being too OP is one of those changes.

56 minutes ago, Uncle Al said:

*snip* POI names in quest list.

Yup! Would need some code/UI changes, but I'd personally like to see this change too. Hopefully we can get that polished up nicely between now and Gold.

[JamesKirk]

39 minutes ago, schwanz9000 said:

There are several fixes for the Drone in A20.6 Exp.
I too would like to see a change to the drone's collision sound. 

I found myself thrown of a platform into spikes below by my drone, because it tried to reach it's default position in front of me. Was that fixed or will it be fixed?

[Uncle Al]

2 hours ago, schwanz9000 said:

Not enough room for the ladder AND the player. I tried it early on in the shape menu design. The Cube Sewer Barrel shape that is currently in A20 is as close to 1m as I could get.

 

Thanks so much for playing around with the idea, really appreciate you trying.

 

I was thinking possibly having the 'rungs' as grooves cut into the wall of the pipe, so you wouldn't need as much space for the 'ladder'.  As long as it functions like a pipe with a ladder it would be useful.  Certainly a player can drop down the existing blocks, you just can't climb up them.