Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[BFT2020]

4 minutes ago, Games'n'Grumble said:

But you will agree that this bright texture of wallpaper... too provocative?🤪 Okay, shall we agree on adding new textures (as if the decision of the developers depends on our opinion 😅) ??

 

That's the wallpaper in my bedroom - game, not real life  😆

[zztong]

Just now, Games'n'Grumble said:

But you will agree that this bright texture of wallpaper... too provocative?🤪 Okay, shall we agree on adding new textures (as if the decision of the developers depends on our opinion 😅) ??

 

Yes, its a style of wallpaper I think one of my aunts/uncles probably had in the 1970s. The red part is probably raised felt. It works great in old houses, but yeh, not what I'm going to hang on my real life home's walls. Well maybe the... basement. Err, never mind.

 

Sure, I can agree on adding new textures. I think that would probably get everyone's vote, but I assume there's a technical limit hiding there and addressing it probably hasn't bubbled up to the top of somebody's priority list.

[BadPlayer]

8 hours ago, unholyjoe said:

 

When are cities going to make it in the sliders?

[Jost Amman]

16 minutes ago, BadPlayer said:

When are cities going to make it in the sliders?

Cities/Towns, same.

[schwanz9000]

42 minutes ago, Games'n'Grumble said:

*snip* Texture question

 

There will be a lot of work done with textures at some point between here and Gold. Probably won't make it to A21 though.

[Syphon583]

1 hour ago, Games'n'Grumble said:

@schwanz9000 perhaps you can answer? Are there plans to add new textures for coloring? Or replacing some old textures? For example, this one (in the screenshot) I can't imagine in ordinary POIs, except for some... specific. Because it is too... what should I call it... too expressive. If a farmer, a football player and several other zombies were removed from the game because they could be too rare in the world, according to this logic, and such a texture should be replaced with something? Maybe add more wallpaper for living spaces? (please) You can also consider some other textures (for example, 3 types of awning). What do you think?🙏

This reminds me of the carpet in almost ANY hotel in the US. Horrendously busy and ugly, and I'm convinced that the only reason hotels choose hideous carpet patterns is to hide dirt and spills so they don't have to clean/replace the carpet as often. Not sure what this texture is called (if it's specifically referred to as 'wallpaper' but I think it would make more sense as a carpet or drape pattern.

Edited August 4, 2022 by Syphon583 (see edit history)

[Doomofman]

Has there been any changes to "zoning" in RWG for A21? One of my only gripes with the new RWG in A20 is that everything always felt too close together like farms almost right next to the city centre etc, don't suppose anything has been done to make that a bit natural feeling?

[Laz Man]

18 minutes ago, Doomofman said:

Has there been any changes to "zoning" in RWG for A21? One of my only gripes with the new RWG in A20 is that everything always felt too close together like farms almost right next to the city centre etc, don't suppose anything has been done to make that a bit natural feeling?

 

Yes, the team is aware of rural tiles running against some downtown tiles at some places.  Hopefully that is something that gets improved for A21 but no promises on that.

[Star69]

2 hours ago, Games'n'Grumble said:

@schwanz9000 perhaps you can answer? Are there plans to add new textures for coloring? Or replacing some old textures? For example, this one (in the screenshot) I can't imagine in ordinary POIs, except for some... specific. Because it is too... what should I call it... too expressive. If a farmer, a football player and several other zombies were removed from the game because they could be too rare in the world, according to this logic, and such a texture should be replaced with something? Maybe add more wallpaper for living spaces? (please) You can also consider some other textures (for example, 3 types of awning). What do you think?🙏

Needs a felt picture of Elvis and a table with a lava lamp.

[Rabbitslovecactus]

On 3/16/2022 at 2:02 PM, Roland said:

 

• Drinking Water Rebalance
  • Murky water is only water found in loot
  • Empty Glass bottles removed from game
  • Dew collector work station added
  • Players can drink directly from water sources with empty hand
  • Pot is now required to boil murky water

Can someone please elaborate on how this will work? So we boil water in a pot, or take it from the dew collector. What do we put it in if there are no empty bottles? Will there be a canteen or bladder of some sort that we can refill?

[Fanatical_Meat]

4 minutes ago, Rabbitslovecactus said:

Can someone please elaborate on how this will work? So we boil water in a pot, or take it from the dew collector. What do we put it in if there are no empty bottles? Will there be a canteen or bladder of some sort that we can refill?

Easy from what I understand there will be dew collectors that collect three “jars” worth of water per day. We can also find water as loot. When you drink the water there will be no jar or can. There will no longer be any boiled water that we drink.

Overall I like the idea, water is currently so trivial to find it may as well not exist. This will also reduce the clutter inventory of stacks and stacks of jars or murky water jars or empty cans.

Edited August 5, 2022 by Fanatical_Meat (see edit history)

[Rabbitslovecactus]

1 minute ago, Fanatical_Meat said:

Easy from what I understand there will be few collectors that collect three “jars” worth of water per day. We can also find water as loot. When you drink the water there will be no jar or can. There will no longer be any boiled water that we drink.

Thanks for the reply. Their post does mention requiring a pot to boil though. So the waters shows as being in a bottle, but when you consume it the bottle disappear? LOL

[Blake_]

@Laz Man do you know how many new POI are in a21 as of right now vs a20?

[Fanatical_Meat]

2 hours ago, Rabbitslovecactus said:

Thanks for the reply. Their post does mention requiring a pot to boil though. So the waters shows as being in a bottle, but when you consume it the bottle disappear? LOL

Yes, the bottle represents a unit of water not necessarily a bottle of water.

[unholyjoe]

2 hours ago, Rabbitslovecactus said:

Can someone please elaborate on how this will work? So we boil water in a pot, or take it from the dew collector. What do we put it in if there are no empty bottles? Will there be a canteen or bladder of some sort that we can refill?

its simple... really it is...

 

the dew collector creates the water from the dew it collects (you do nothing in this process except go do something else), when it creates the water the moisture creates a jar from dust (hey i can speculate) but seriously, it just makes a jar of drinking water up to 3 pending how much time passes.

 

as for boiling, you still boil murky water when/if you find some and only if you have a cooking pot.

 

no more hunting down jars and or no more crafting jars from sand and stuff. this gives you time to go looting to find more crafting magazines and hopefully in the process you might find some more murky water.

Edited August 5, 2022 by unholyjoe (see edit history)

[Astronomical]

6 hours ago, Syphon583 said:

This reminds me of the carpet in almost ANY hotel in the US. Horrendously busy and ugly, and I'm convinced that the only reason hotels choose hideous carpet patterns is to hide dirt and spills so they don't have to clean/replace the carpet as often.

 

That's exactly why they do it.

 

Also, what kind of hotels are you staying in? Are you sure they're charging by the night and not the hour? 🤔

[Laz Man]

2 hours ago, Blake_ said:

@Laz Man do you know how many new POI are in a21 as of right now vs a20?

 

Not exactly sure.  Personally, I have created / overhauled over 20 for A21 so far.

 

 

[Cinnel]

Will you add first-person view of arm armor and gloves?

[RipClaw]

5 hours ago, Rabbitslovecactus said:

Thanks for the reply. Their post does mention requiring a pot to boil though. So the waters shows as being in a bottle, but when you consume it the bottle disappear? LOL

Yes, just imagine your character eating the jar after drinking from it. 😉

 

2 hours ago, unholyjoe said:

when it creates the water the moisture creates a jar from dust (hey i can speculate)

Just assume that a replicator is built into the dew collector. Works for Star Trek every time. 😁

[meganoth]

10 hours ago, Rabbitslovecactus said:

Thanks for the reply. Their post does mention requiring a pot to boil though. So the waters shows as being in a bottle, but when you consume it the bottle disappear? LOL

 

Ever wonder where the gas cans go after you filled up your motorbike ? The same place. 

 

 

Edited August 5, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Janarah]

The whole idea of not being able to get water from water seems rather. . .dumb to me. If we're talking post apocalyptic the rain isn't going to be any better than the river water wise with nukes having been dropped, which is obviously the case with the ruined/burnt forest areas, though boiling it wouldn't make much of a difference in safety/quality either in regards to rads. It seems like the game is simply moving in a direction to combat the players rather than add any real survival element, i.e. still needing to eat a whole bear and being hungry an hour later. . .how dead is the food horse by now and still no research or changes on that front? Maybe five minutes should be used to actually balance out the 'survival' aspect of the game so it actually makes sense instead of tossing it in random directions and over inflating it's numerical requirements and timers. 
Something such as new and interesting traps which can be used in new ways would be more useful, or an actual improved zombie ai which doesn't ignore the player or pathing to beat on a tree or random block, or I dunno, not making zombies superman when they fall. . .or having zombies with different talents work together to overcome obstacles. If coding for such ai could be done in nwn it can be done with unity.  Or instituting a hardness scale for blocks so that normal zeds break their hands rather than blocks when it comes to concrete and reinforced steel unless some sort of evolved type. If you think that bone and flesh can break through such things I'd like to see a video of you trying it with out falling off a building to do so.
Or how about edit the furniture blocks so that they can fit in tiles with half blocks and what not, it can be done. Or deco that can be placed on tables or counters with out a cup or plate taking up a whole block space?
Or even allowing passengers to shoot out of vehicles, or adding a gun placement on top of vehicles for passengers to use. 
Or even maybe (and I do believe new farming is in the works), more plants and cooking recipes. To include but not limited to animal farming as well. 
Or perhaps boats for the water which will no longer be able to be collected from. . .water. Just saying, mine craft got the water right, maybe take a page from there. . .
Honestly though, traps need some love. . .or the lack of traps to be fair. Since the log spikes were removed we're stuck with blade traps that break easily, turrets which seem to half arse work, and electric fences. . .that's it. How about spikes for drop pits that impale zombies and hold them in place, or swinging blade traps for halls, or floor spike traps that shoot up, snare traps, fire traps, etc. etc. It's not hard to use a modicum of creativity and the unity asset store for some simple things. . .and code them in. Well, it shouldn't be if you have access to the games core files and know c#. 
Adding new texture to the paint pallet would be great too, as well as allowing people to use the majority of the ones already in game instead of locking or hiding them. Yes, it can be done. I've seen it done repeatedly since A16, so the excuse that there's not enough memory or that it's not possible literally doesn't 'hold water', much like the game is soon to be.

[Laz Man]

15 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

Ever wonder where the gas cans go after you filled up your motorbike ? The same place. 

 

 

On that note maybe they should replace the water jar icon with this one...😅

[Matt115]

51 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

On that note maybe they should replace the water jar icon with this one...😅

Well.... water is just gas for people 😛

[Neminsis]

7 minutes ago, Janarah said:

The whole idea of not being able to get water from water seems rather. . .dumb to me.

Yes, and it's not impossible to balance either, but they really need this new system to be tested in isolation first.
 

9 minutes ago, Janarah said:

If we're talking post apocalyptic the rain isn't going to be any better than the river water

It has to be assumed that the game is set at least 5 years after the nukes fell because of the clear skies. During that time the most radioactive materials, those with the shortest half-lives, will have decayed becoming harmless and those with longer will have settled out of the water. It would be more dangerous digging in the dirt or walking around kicking up dust.
 

22 minutes ago, Janarah said:

Something such as new and interesting traps which can be used in new ways would be more useful, or an actual improved zombie ai which doesn't ignore the player or pathing to beat on a tree or random block

More bells and whistles would be nice, but the Zs were deliberately dumbed down because players were complaining about how smart they were. If I'm not mistaken, you're more likely to get those really dumb Zs if your cpu is busy doing something else when it comes time to update their pathing. I see them a lot more when people are streaming or recording than I ever do when I've only got the game running alone.
 

32 minutes ago, Janarah said:

Or instituting a hardness scale for blocks so that normal zeds break their hands rather than blocks when it comes to concrete and reinforced steel unless some sort of evolved type.

The fact that they're Zs already assumes that they're the product of some crazy mutations and making the blocks any more difficult for the Zs to destroy would make the Zs trivial to defeat. Narrator: He said knowing they are already trivial to defeat.
 

44 minutes ago, Janarah said:

Or deco that can be placed on tables or counters with out a cup or plate taking up a whole block space?

Sure, just increase the resolution by using much smaller voxels and increase the overhead by a factor of at least 10, or maybe just allow voxels to overlap, and then figure out how to do so without z fighting etc. I barely know wtf I'm talking about here, but I do know that if it was that easy someone would've already done it.
 

56 minutes ago, Janarah said:

Or even allowing passengers to shoot out of vehicles, or adding a gun placement on top of vehicles for passengers to use.

There is a limit to how fast the game can load new voxels, if you want to add player interaction while moving then any vehicle will have to be slowed down to a player's run speed. I mean at some point they could add a non voxel imposter layer that they could swap in and out for those action sequences. but I don't think they're going to.
 

1 hour ago, Janarah said:

Honestly though, traps need some love. . .or the lack of traps to be fair.

Well since you can already set up enough traps to completely defeat the horde without lifting a finger to the trigger what would be the point beyond visual spectacle? Not that I'm against visual spectacle, but I think you're underestimating how powerful the existing traps are.

[Janarah]

42 minutes ago, Neminsis said:

Yes, and it's not impossible to balance either, but they really need this new system to be tested in isolation first.
 

It has to be assumed that the game is set at least 5 years after the nukes fell because of the clear skies. During that time the most radioactive materials, those with the shortest half-lives, will have decayed becoming harmless and those with longer will have settled out of the water. It would be more dangerous digging in the dirt or walking around kicking up dust.
 

More bells and whistles would be nice, but the Zs were deliberately dumbed down because players were complaining about how smart they were. If I'm not mistaken, you're more likely to get those really dumb Zs if your cpu is busy doing something else when it comes time to update their pathing. I see them a lot more when people are streaming or recording than I ever do when I've only got the game running alone.
 

The fact that they're Zs already assumes that they're the product of some crazy mutations and making the blocks any more difficult for the Zs to destroy would make the Zs trivial to defeat. Narrator: He said knowing they are already trivial to defeat.
 

Sure, just increase the resolution by using much smaller voxels and increase the overhead by a factor of at least 10, or maybe just allow voxels to overlap, and then figure out how to do so without z fighting etc. I barely know wtf I'm talking about here, but I do know that if it was that easy someone would've already done it.
 

There is a limit to how fast the game can load new voxels, if you want to add player interaction while moving then any vehicle will have to be slowed down to a player's run speed. I mean at some point they could add a non voxel imposter layer that they could swap in and out for those action sequences. but I don't think they're going to.
 

Well since you can already set up enough traps to completely defeat the horde without lifting a finger to the trigger what would be the point beyond visual spectacle? Not that I'm against visual spectacle, but I think you're underestimating how powerful the existing traps are.

Typically I don't play vanilla, usually darkness falls. But you are right that in vanilla the zeds and game play with traps are pretty trivial and unchallenging. Hell, half the time in vanilla the zeds are more interested in a tree and beating on it than they are me. . .not sure why that was ever done. I do agree that zeds should be pretty much dumb across the board in regards to thinking, but if we use current media as an example of what could be considered zed staple behavior, they will always choose the path of least resistance to their meal before randomly just banging on stuff for no reason. 

So far as rads go, Chernobyl is a good example to look at, five or so years isn't going to do much for radioactive decay, but that's a rather mute point when I am pretty sure radiation isn't even a real threat in vanilla so far as I've noticed. 

I can understand mutations, like on the behemoths for example, having denser bones and possible thickened skin and what not, but plan zed marry who's barely keeping her head on shouldn't have the same outstanding mutations and be falling apart and breaking through something which would obviously break her trying. 

So far as deco, I do understand that changing the block/item type is difficult in a voxel based game, though not impossible with c#. It's more of a factor of getting the two different types of things to work nice together given the diverse coding. But it should be doable. 

I have noticed the game has greatly improved on voxel loading, and I personally have no issues driving at full speed across the map, unlike previous alpha's where you could fly off the map due to loading. So, I don't think adding in ground vehicle features should be an issue other than the slow zed spawn in times, though even with that I haven't notice much of an issue and see them poping up a good distance before I get to them. Flying however is a different story, there is still a good amount of lag with that when high up and traveling, probably due to the sheer amount of what needs to be loaded at once. 

So far as traps, yeah, they are kind of just nice bells and whistles, but a variety allows people to make up their defenses in unique and different ways. A wall trap that closes and squishes zeds would be a good one to put in to protect halls. Simply tossing up a bunch of turrets, electric fences, and maybe some barbed wire can get old fast and it's to the point that defensive bases begin to fall into a small hand full of effective designs. I was quite excited with the introduction of electricity, and had hoped there would be all sorts of neat things. . .and was left disappointed. A flame thrower trap behind bars or a chain link fence could prove effective.  There are of course the dart traps, but so far as I can tell they aren't terribly effective, though they are quite neat with seat up if you can maintain a constant power supply and ammo. Or a floor trap which launches zeds away from the base, but this would only work if zeds actually fall dmg (well more than they do now) and didn't rage and begin slamming what ever tree they land against. There are some very simple traps which could be used that would offer a host of options and improvements with out over powering the player. I mean, at the end of the day 7dtd is more of a tower defense and building game than anything else.

I wouldn't mind seeing a host of new zeds, animals (ones that don't look like half animated blocks, sorry, the animal models are horrid as are their animations), and other mutated things in the wild. Though, that may or may not be in line with the funpimps vision forward? Walking through the woods and being attacked by some odd half zed mutated tree thing would be pretty horrifying if you didn't notice it till you were on it. 

In the end I'm just tossing things out there.