Version 1.0 (Alpha 22) Dev Diary

[beerfly]

From 7 days to die Twitter - This new building is coming to our 'Storm’s Brewing Update' later this winter but you can expect a patch before the holidays with major optimizations, RWG world creation on consoles, the Japanese PS5 version, many bug fixes and some secret features for all versions. Stay Tuned!

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Jost Amman]

Wow! That POI is a BEAST! 

[Uncle Al]

That's a revamp of a previous one isn't it? Looks amazing.

 

I think the original was the first big POI I ever did. I'd learned enough in a few hours of playing to know the level designers were twisted sadists, so when I got to the walk along the crane I was thinking 'vultures? or collapsing floor?' - it was land mines.  They take their anti-climb paint seriously in Arizona, it seems.

 

New version looks absolutely stunning.

[Uncle Al]

I have a passing comment on loot settings. I guess they're probably not a priority, as I'd assume the vast majority of players play on default, but less than 100% loot is even more whacky than usual these days. Toilets don't drop murky water, ever, on 50% loot. You get paper or nothing. That makes the early game punishing in the extreme.

 

Data is from a 25 day playthough on 50% loot, looting every toilet I came across. Easily a couple of hundred toilets. I started to get suspicious around day 3, but stuck with it to try to confirm what I was seeing.

 

I still don't quite understand the mechanics of varying loot level, but I do know that what you get is not what you expect. 50% loot should mean about half as much loot as vanilla, surely? The current implementation seems to be that items that can be found in multiples, but in very low numbers (1-2 or 1-3) only appear if you would have got 2+ items under 100% loot. That cuts some items way, way down under 50%, despite that being what you set loot to. I'd already noticed eggs almost ceasing to exist at 50% loot, and learned to live with it, but the water thing is a lot more impactful.

 

Coolers and cooler bottles occasionally produce murky water on 50% loot setting, but at much less than half the normal rate.

 

I confess I don't quite understand why loot settings were done in such a complicated way. I have worked on enough software projects to know there may well be a reason, though. Was there a technical constraint on not implementing it as 'number of items found is constant but chance of actually finding that number varies by loot setting' instead of 'number of items found varies by loot setting', which is how it seems to have been implemented?

 

'Number of items found is constant but chance of finding that number varies by loot setting' could work by rolling the loot percentage for each item and if you make your roll you get the normal amount of that item, if you fail the roll you get nothing. Instead of trying to do a calculation to reduce the number of objects found, you always use the 100% setting baseline amount, but you actually receive your 'standard amount' of items less or more often for lower/higher loot settings.

 

This approach would make non standard loot settings 'spiky', but I don't think that's a bad thing.  On 25% loot you could get nothing for ages then maybe get a decent haul, but that's kind of fun, no? For loot settings over 100% you get the normal amount of an item then roll at 'loot setting - 100' to see if you get a second helping.

 

If rolling per item is 'too many rolls' for some system reason, you could roll once per container, which would still mean you get exactly the percentage increase/reduction that your loot setting claims to offer, just even spikier than rolling once per item.

 

 

Edited 4 hours ago by Uncle Al (see edit history)

[Chaton Noir]

@Adam the Waster Have you written to me about UE? There is no message from you.

[beerfly]

...some secret features for all versions (consoles and PC), you Pimps say.

Hmm, I remember how @Roland gave a brilliant hint about a new feature, few years ago. 

 

Round two !

Go Mr. R

[Adam the Waster]

1 hour ago, beerfly said:

...some secret features for all versions (consoles and PC), you Pimps say.

Hmm, I remember how @Roland gave a brilliant hint about a new feature, few years ago. 

 

Round two !

Go Mr. R

Wrench mines