Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Matt115]

4 hours ago, Blake_ said:

 

3- Can you give us a cool a21 screenshot? It would ignite the hype train and give us something to talk about.

 

He always can but not always want 😜

[unholyjoe]

2 hours ago, Doomofman said:

 

So you're saying there's a date for A21... 😏

😁😇🥺

[Jay_ombie]

Not been about for ages as like everyone else now highly expecting A21.

 

Without reading 84 pages prior, I just want to feel happy in knowing and hoping lots of time has been placed into the fine tuning of the games performance specially when zombies (the games main protagonist) are on the screen.

 

That's all, nothing more....

[beHypE]

I don't know if that's something that might be revealed but I wonder how the team is split up regarding the development of the game. The new "LBL" system amongst other things seem very interesting but rather small features regarding amount of code involved. As a fellow developer I wonder how much work is being done on stuff that is not on the OP. Specifically bandits which are, I suppose, a nightmare (or dream) feature to tackle properly.

 

Looking forward to all of it, great game that only gets better !

Edited October 16, 2022 by beHypE (see edit history)

[Moonflower]

3 hours ago, unholyjoe said:

😁😇🥺

Here is what this means

😁 of course there is a release date

😇 im feeling extra kind today, so ill tell you

🥺 it will be done when its done

[RussianMafia]

I wonder if Dekogon Studios is still working on the new assets for the game or they are already done with their work 🧐

[Snowydeath]

6 hours ago, Jay_ombie said:

Not been about for ages as like everyone else now highly expecting A21.

 

Without reading 84 pages prior, I just want to feel happy in knowing and hoping lots of time has been placed into the fine tuning of the games performance specially when zombies (the games main protagonist) are on the screen.

 

That's all, nothing more....

As usual, the game will be properly optimized when all features are in the game and it is in the final stages of development. It would be worthless to optimize it now when more core changes will render the optimization pointless.

[schwanz9000]

On 10/15/2022 at 4:05 PM, bdubyah said:

Obviously photshopped. The grenade disappears when it would normally hit the door. I call hax.

Gonna need you to show us more of this supposed "new tech" to convince me...

[Gamida]

56 minutes ago, schwanz9000 said:

 

Can't really tell anything from those gifs. Just to be sure you could PM me the code to download the a21 test version and I could try it and then confirm that it is working as shown. Am sure everyone will appreciate that.

[bdubyah]

4 hours ago, schwanz9000 said:

Well played. 

 

Snowdog, she's all yours...

[Doomofman]

12 hours ago, schwanz9000 said:

 

I spy with my little eye a new stone spear model and animation

 

Is that the power attack?

Edited October 17, 2022 by Doomofman (see edit history)

[Quillbeatssword]

On 3/16/2022 at 7:20 PM, Doomofman said:

Outside of the stuff already mentioned by others (bandits, water etc) I'd love to see a bit of love given to making the world outside of the tiled towns/cities feel more real to match the level of detail we see in cities now.

 

Particularly the the transition between tiled sections and the RWG biomes is quite jarring (the difference in the roads is a good example) and, aside from the current wilderness POIs, the biome stuff outside of towns is very empty/repetitive.

 

Maybe some sort of sub-biomes are needed like sections of pine forest with less trees or something similar to the old plains for the desert and so on

Yeah. Would definitely be nice to have some subtle transition between biomes. Stepping 5 feet out of a sunny summer day immediately into a fridged, dark, windy waste is very jarring. Needs a slower and more subtle shift ti make the environmental shift seem more organic for sure 🙏

On 3/17/2022 at 3:04 PM, meilodasreh said:

If the future water includes a somewhat sufficient flowing behavior,

I would love to see some kind of pump system introduced into the game.

 

I can imagine some nice use cases of this,

starting with just decorative handpump water fountains for my living base,

over water filled traps to emergency-flushaway zombie hordes, or water jet defense turrets,

til just idle sandbox fun in creative mode when I want to set a complete POI under water with a massive setup of high-power electric water turbines.

Fish. Fishies, Fishes, Le Fich. 🤘

[Quillbeatssword]

On 3/21/2022 at 10:27 PM, faatal said:

I don't know what the average POI designer typically does for rooms, but they should already be able to include the wall inside the volume. Now volumes are not meant to include the full 1m wall thickness plus all of where you can stand beyond them (just a little) as we don't usually want you beating on walls and waking up the volume.

Why though? The inability to do that is literally my least favorite immersion breaking part of this game 🙃 "Yeah, Lemme just yehaw into this buildin full er sleepin Zambers"

 

Uh? Hell no. Slap the wall. Wake them up. Group them. Frag out. Survive. 🙄

 

At least give us an option toggle to turn that off 🤔

 

Don't get me wrong. I respect the hell out of the time people put into their POI development. But I can only deal with Zombies nonsensically standing on top of trusses or hiding in closets when they aren't even smart enough to open a door so many times before I want to headbutt my tv.

 

There's a reason some of us mod the sleepers out or at least minimize the volumes to wake them up quicker. 

 

I'd rather have an option to turn sleepers off completely and replace them with normal spawning zombies.

Edited October 17, 2022 by Quillbeatssword (see edit history)

[Quillbeatssword]

On 3/25/2022 at 9:16 AM, Crater Creator said:

 

Hmm.  That's actually disappointing, to me.  Bandits that don't care about loot wouldn't be very bandit-like.

 

Perhaps the spawning of bandits could be affected by loot, even if their targeting/pathing isn't.  The game could (infrequently) add up the EconomicValues of the player-placed items in every container in the chunk, and ever so often this value could add to an 'economic activity' map.  When the economic activity reaches a threshold, the game spawns a scouting party of bandits.  In other words, it's a rinse and repeat version of the activity map that generates screamers.

 

That, and air drops, seem like two targets in which bandits should be dynamically interested.

Very solid idea! I love it! Make Zombies use heat map, make bandits use both heat map AND economy value!

[Laz Man]

13 hours ago, Quillbeatssword said:

Why though? The inability to do that is literally my least favorite immersion breaking part of this game 🙃 "Yeah, Lemme just yehaw into this buildin full er sleepin Zambers"

 

Uh? Hell no. Slap the wall. Wake them up. Group them. Frag out. Survive. 🙄

 

At least give us an option toggle to turn that off 🤔

 

Don't get me wrong. I respect the hell out of the time people put into their POI development. But I can only deal with Zombies nonsensically standing on top of trusses or hiding in closets when they aren't even smart enough to open a door so many times before I want to headbutt my tv.

 

There's a reason some of us mod the sleepers out or at least minimize the volumes to wake them up quicker. 

 

I'd rather have an option to turn sleepers off completely and replace them with normal spawning zombies.

 

We sorta had that many alphas ago when we didn't have sleeper volume grouping.  Was cool the first couple of times but was very one dimensional and not very performant. 

 

Chances are very slim at this point that there will be major POI redesigns across the board apart from art updates.

Edited October 18, 2022 by Laz Man (see edit history)

[Jinx_DG]

On 10/16/2022 at 4:38 PM, schwanz9000 said:

Someone: Whatcha doing?

 

Me: Watching the Party Girl get Poked on Repeat.

 

Someone: .........

[bdubyah]

Are wandering sleeper volumes still on the radar at all?

[faatal]

55 minutes ago, bdubyah said:

Are wandering sleeper volumes still on the radar at all?

Yes, since we will want bandits doing some idle movements, but it will probably be confined to their volume or part of the volume. Zombies would just use it too.

[faatal]

On 10/16/2022 at 2:56 AM, Blake_ said:

@faatal, good day to you sir !  I have a couple of questions :

 

1- Any news about bandits? Specifically, do you know if they are in and working at some level?

2- What are you working on at the moment? 

3- Can you give us a cool a21 screenshot? It would ignite the hype train and give us something to talk about.

 

Thanks in advance!

1 I have done AI, anim controller and weapon work for them, and have them spawning as wandering bandits, but there is a lot more work to be done.

2 General bugs.

3 Fixing bugs does not make for cool screenshots.

[bdubyah]

20 minutes ago, faatal said:

Yes, since we will want bandits doing some idle movements, but it will probably be confined to their volume or part of the volume. Zombies would just use it too.

That's actually good. Means they can be in different places each time but you don't have to worry about them all ending up in one room or something if they could move freely. Nice. 🙂

[wolfbain5]

39 minutes ago, bdubyah said:

That's actually good. Means they can be in different places each time but you don't have to worry about them all ending up in one room or something if they could move freely. Nice. 🙂

just dont make the mistake of having 1 massive volume with them wandering, odds are they would all group together as if looking at one of snowdogs nudy magazines.

would be nice if we could say set behaviors, such as patrol so they wander the volume, like the parking lot or the yard. linked volumes and they wander around it as if patrolling, while others can nap, tinker around a work station, or pretend to be snowdog.

[Jost Amman]

I wonder why volume control is so difficult... why don't just use the one from windows? 

[Blake_]

6 hours ago, faatal said:

1 I have done AI, anim controller and weapon work for them, and have them spawning as wandering bandits, but there is a lot more work to be done.

2 General bugs.

3 Fixing bugs does not make for cool screenshots.

Does that mean that they are confirmed for a21 as basic "wandering" ones for now? Please do tell. I gather it's a tricky question as their full surrounding behaviour isn't yet finished, but can we get a yes? lol.

 

I made a poll with my closest friends. And they all answered the same thing with different words: they want to kill something that is fully human and not invulnerable (traders), that has pain feedback. The reason? to watch them die. And hear them. That made me very uncomfortable for two reasons: first is that I probably should think carefully about my choice of partners in the future, and secondly, let's forget about the first one because I kinda totally agree.

[meganoth]

10 hours ago, faatal said:

3 Fixing bugs does not make for cool screenshots.

 

Factorio developers found out that this is not true. And their stellar reputation partly comes from them even talking about minute details of their bug fixing with  or without pictures before and after. For example they once made a blog post about them fixing alignments lines in their UI with pictures and forum users were happy to read about that. Another blog post just narrated the search for a very elusive bug.

 

Naturally the detail they went into resulted in a lot of work for the one doing the blog post, but lets say an explanation of a bug and optionally two pictures of an interesting* bug could be done relatively fast and still keep Blake_ happy 😉

 

 

* interesting either in the result, the search method or how hidden he was. Factorio devs even posted the code in question and a lot of forum users were tech-savy enough to get entertainment or knowledge from that.

 

Edited October 18, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Laz Man]

10 hours ago, Quillbeatssword said:

Well. Sort of. Certain mods already make up for that in other ways. Other gameplay mechanics could also.

Instead of houses full of ambush zombies. Sitting and nonsensically waiting for you to enter a certain room even though you just shot off 30 rounds outside the front door

You'd just have houses full of potential zombie spawns. That could and would enter any fighting they hear. Now couple that with increased hearing/sight ranges for zombies. Then things like random wandering hordes.

I'm not saying you couldn't still spawn zombies in closets and on trusses but they wouldn't be completely oblivious to the outside world. So yeah. If you shoot a gun every zombie in any house on the street might come for you.

But if you're moving quietly and happen to get surprised and have to shoot it could get really bad. Really quick. With every zombie on the street now coming while you're corned inside of a house. 

Now Imagine that happening as a random horde of 5-60 zeds are close too. Now Imagine that at night..

There are plenty of ways to keep zombies dangerous and random WITHOUT turning it into a weird dungeon crawler 🙄

 

But like I said. I do also enjoy the suspense of exploring a new poi. Just not all the time. Sometimes I just wish it was more organic. 

That's why a toggle would be ideal.

 

Wouldn't be that hard. Just a toggle to replace all sleepers with static zombie spawns. You could even make those spawns have a 100% chance of occurring so then a poi with 14 sleepers would still jave 14 zombies in those 14 spots. They just wouldn't be oblivious. 

 

Imagine firing a gun in a city and waking that many pois at once. Can you imagine how crazy that could get and fast? 🤔

 

I hear ya.  However, it's not as simple as you make it.  I'm sure with enough R&D and time anything is possible.  Even if there was a desire to redesign that system, we just don't have the time anymore.  

 

Game has to remain performant for up to 8 players minimum.  I know there are a ton of folks out there that have servers who try to accommodate more then that as well.

 

 

7 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

Factorio developers found out that this is not true. And their stellar reputation partly comes from them even talking about minute details of their bug fixing with  or without pictures before and after. For example they once made a blog post about them fixing alignments lines in their UI with pictures and forum users were happy to read about that. Another blog post just narrated the search for a very elusive bug.

 

Naturally the detail they went into resulted in a lot of work for the one doing the blog post, but lets say an explanation of a bug and optionally two pictures of an interesting* bug could be done relatively fast and still keep Blake_ happy 😉

 

 

* interesting either in the result, the search method or how hidden he was. Factorio devs even posted the code in question and a lot of forum users were tech-savy enough to get entertainment or knowledge from that.

 

 

Okay, I will take a stab.  There was a recent NRE that would occur when using one of the ingame dev tools within the prefab editor.

 

I suspect it was caused by a recent commit due to the nature of the NRE mentioned in the unity error log.

 

I wrote up a ticket and passed it along to our QA lead asap as it was slowing down several teammates work.

 

Shawn comes to the rescue the very next day and fixes the bug almost immediately.  Rejoice!!!!

 

 

Edited October 18, 2022 by Laz Man (see edit history)