Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[Demonoid74]

In the words of that immortal scholar..."Can't we all...just get along?"

[Hellevik]

the zombie loot was great when it was only Navazgane on older version. the loot party made going to get stuff not quit necessary

[owl79]

Respawning sleepers? Seriously? A year ago this was blamed on "sleepers 1.0", but that was A YEAR AGO. I don't mind the loot and other changes, but not being able to maneuver beyond a door in combat really is a fun killer.

[Gilthanaz]

Hm. I really liked the gore bodies that dead zombies left behind and go through them or loot after horde night or just killing a wandering horde. It had a sense of victory and "spoils for the victor". While I feel good overall about A17, the sudden despawn - Zombies just go *poof* when they die - is a real mood killer. I can't really see any reason why this mechanic was changed, even with many corpses laying around I couldn't notice any FPS drop or the likes.

 

And I agree with many others that Headshot should do a lot more damage, either there's no reason to actually aim for the head and git gud with the bow/crossbow over larger distances. Zombies probably look like hedghehogs at the point they drop dead-dead

 

Sleeper issue (rapid POI respawn every time the player leaves the buildings for a second) and the bow-bugs are hopefully fixed before A17E or at least A17.

[DaVegaNL]

Respawning sleepers? Seriously? A year ago this was blamed on "sleepers 1.0", but that was A YEAR AGO. I don't mind the loot and other changes, but not being able to maneuver beyond a door in combat really is a fun killer.

 

^

 

This. Times a hundred.

[Damocles]

Suddenly despawning dead Zombies. (like in Mario, without the blinking)

Suddenly respawning Zombies in POIs.

 

I dont know if that is the best solution for immersion.

 

better: have the Zombie model convert to a low-poly/low resolution static version of the original model.

With some default "dead" position.

 

There is nothing better than having a battlefield covered by dozens of corpses.

 

Respawns: should only happen after a decently long timeout. (like a day later), simulating other Zombies moving into the place.

 

 

The dungeon POIs look like fun, but should not make up more than like 30% of the structures, as this design can tend to feel too "gamy" if overdone.

They should be reserved for the high-risk / high-reward loot. While still using standard POI buildings for the daily shopping.

 

 

Arrow retrieval: That CAN lead to an inflation of arrows, making them too abundant. The cost of making them needs to go up then. It could be a skill: "Steady Pull" -> % of arrows that break when picking them up again.

Looks like they could use a larger collision box too, to make it easier picking them up.

[Scavengers_son]

At the very least, (re)killed zombies should despawn in a puff of smoke. There, i fixed it.

[Kamouille]

Suddenly despawning dead Zombies. (like in Mario, without the blinking)

Suddenly respawning Zombies in POIs.

 

I dont know if that ist the best solution for immersion.

 

Respawns are the same as A16, if you leave a POI without clearing it the zombies respawn…

 

I was mad watching the video seeing him returning 4 times to the POI after fleeing from the first room.

 

Despawning dead zombies… still the same as A16 except they are not replaced by a gore block anymore. As long as it allows for more zombies that's good.

[Crater Creator]

Sorry I didn’t realize this was a run from and ignore the zombies because they are not worth the effort kind of game.

 

Apparently so. I mean, everyone can disagree on what kind of game this is or should be, but the person whose opinion matters most thinks it is.

 

I don't have time for him. It's kind of cool. It's a little bit different feel, for me at least. It's like, no, I'm not going to try and kill every zombie. It's more like The Walking Dead, where you don't always kill every walker. Sometimes you've got to just leave him alone and move on. You don't get anything good on him anyway, so why kill him.* -

 

* Madmole goes on to say zombies still have a chance to drop something good.

 

I just feel it's weird that zombies disappear upon death. Or was that caused by too much damage to their corpses? I hope it's the last..

 

Similarly, it's like you didn't even listen to the video.

 

...did so much damage to him he gibbed and just disappeared. ... So we’ve got to tweak the dead body hit point values so they don’t disappear so easily I think. -

[Dox2020]

brass? Just wrench up cars and all the light fixtures/faucets u can find. I never run out on my 30 player servers

 

This was the last answer to my question on a brass shortage over time. I never had those items re-spawn on servers I played. People go out and loot those things asap.

[mr.devolver]

Why does it feel like by the time this game is released, it will no longer be a game about zombies?

[4sheetzngeegles]

ThanX MM for the video.

 

You showed the differences between thematic play, and, a bull in china shop playstyle.

The differentiation in AI reaction, from, just bust in vs when it was strategic and

quieter was cool and subtle had to rewind to see it better.

 

The MT vs lootable cabinets. If you loot a cabinet leave and return does the graphic

change to open ?

 

When I scavenge, as i get further away from temporary base, presently, I store extra

items in existing lootholders, mark on map and return later if needed. Is that still

an option or after a lootholder is pillaged it becomes locked; Will I need to make

boxes for mobile inventory?

 

I liked the buzzard, following you, seemed more animalistic in its pattern, only

attacked when you became potential carrion.

 

I know it was day one, and the more itricate Gameplay come later, Like Craft, Horde,

Wamdering Horde, Screamers, etc. But kinda had a WD an movie vibe to it.

 

Is there a way for the Null bodies like the one in beginning, on the road, to just be

there, or is every model area treated as a sleeper spawn, based on distance? 0:50-0:53

 

Bobble head during businessman moving Nice. Similar to your legacy alphas. No direct look

but reminiscent.

[Damocles]

It's more like[/i] The Walking Dead, where you don't always kill every walker. Sometimes you've got to just leave him alone and move on. You don't get anything good on him anyway, so why kill him.*

 

It the Walking Dead they they dont kill every walker they see. But: they kill every walker that is in a house that they need to loot for supplies.

Mostly by making noise to make them run out.

They avoid confrontation if its not serving a purpose.

 

But if a "soldier" walker would happen to run around with an assault rifle, they would still try to take him down.

[Aldranon]

In the words of that immortal scholar..."Can't we all...just get along?"

 

Not before I've had my first cup of coffee! Here you see me, before my first cup and my wife calming me down with all the safe words...

 

https://youtu.be/sIaxSxEqKtA

[Crater Creator]

Being able to recover arrows is both realistic, and means that you aren't immediately screwed if you start off being a bad shot. - This also means you can practice.

 

That... could be a problem actually, now that I think about it.

 

In Alpha 16 at least, you gain skill whenever you fire a ranged weapon. Firing the wooden bow, in particular, raises your Archery action skill, but at least you burn through arrows in the process. Now that you can pick up the arrows, I foresee a new way to min-max.

 

 

Stand still, right in front of a wall, firing and retrieving the same arrow over and over to max out your Archery skill for very little time and effort (at least, less time and effort than intended).

 

MadMole mentioned that texture streaming is in, and means that a distant zombie has only a [128x128 pixel] texture vs being in your face with a full sized one now, rather than the entire texture loading when they load up.... As they get closer, do they dump the previous texture out of memory and load the next highest resolution, OR does the texture simply get updated with more resolution, becoming more sharp and distinct as it comes? ... How does that play out when I have five zombies around me, one in my face, the others spread out over 15 meters distant, and then thirty more come RUSHING at me. Will the variation in calls for texture loading cause performance stutters as each different zombie calls on different textures as they are dumping in and out of memory.. or does it simply update as they go, creating a sort of smooth incline so there's no noticeable performance hits.

 

I'm not really a graphics programmer, but I believe you've highlighted why garbage collection isn't the kind of thing you want to do every frame. In other words, just because a texture is no longer needed doesn't mean you have to drop everything and free up that memory immediately.

[mr.devolver]

It the Walking Dead they they dont kill every walker they see. But: they kill every walker that is in a house that they need to loot for supplies.

Mostly by making noise to make them run out.

They avoid confrontation if its not serving a purpose.

 

But if a "soldier" walker would happen to run around with an assault rifle, they would still try to take him down.

 

Now imagine fighting the zombie bosses he mentioned in the video, maybe some zombie boss on horde night. You die several times, your base practically destroyed, all naked you rush to your secret stash for emergency situations and grab some guns and ammo and finally take the boss down. It took you ages and full recovery will take even longer let alone rebuilding the base. So what did the boss have on him? Wait, what do you mean nothing?!

[NeferPitou]

First of all Thanks for 45 Min video @Madmole ...the game looks great no doubt with the new texture and the new ai for zombies thats great but honesly i think it s not worth the hype i don t know that my opinion i expected more not less features this is the cons and the pros i seen so far

Pros:

1 graphic looks awesome and feels not like mincraft that a step in the right direction

2 arrows now can relotted from zombies corpes that great and was very needed specially in the first days of the game

3 AI is working fine it s looks like zombies now not running in circles and know how to follow you

4 two lines more in the backpack is great always needed incase you go to a hub city to loot you can loot even more now

Cons :

1 sleepers when joel went to the farm house the zombies were spawning like crazy he just go away like 20 m away and comes back he found them there again i don t know if it a bug or it suppose to be like that pls change

2 loot is so rare like why ? the game is already so grindy i like the new zombie feature that will fix the duping glitch but loot should be like it was

3 performance..... joel is running the game is a high end Pc and everyone noticed that the game runs like crap FPS drops every now and then i hope it will get better in the final release

4 the new hp bar and stamina ....i don t understand it we will be able to get our hp up like used to have too 250 hp i am a pvp player and i wish that true

thanks for the hard work TFP cheers

[Jimmy_James]

So after I watched the video and going to sleep after watching my 2 cents.

 

Play style: PVE with my dudes (3-7 group) ; hardest difficulty ; 25%Loot and no respawn ; Horde night 64

 

1. Arrow recovery is awesome and a take all would be cool; Iam bad with the bow but godlike with crossbow

 

2. Redone loot from dead bodies is awesome, was a totally mess after horde night and from mid to late game-nobody wanted to clean the streets anymore. (Don’t know the despawn time)

 

3. New vitality bar and redone the system is something I have to test first and than make a conclusion

 

4. New graphics and how the game looks is awesome but I had to check out what the performance is like

 

5. New backpack redone is awesome, less storage from the beginning and more in the mid-game

 

6. Weapons quality redone is awesome

 

7. Sleeper respawn is a bug as far as I unterstand it. For me it would be nice if a cleaned up poi is cleaned up forever (maybe to change how you like it in the .xml)

 

8. Melee attack I have to test first and than make a conclusion

 

9. Break through blocks in the first floor is something I don’t really like and make less sense for me

 

10. Overall I had seen I am very exited to playing the experimental in a few days/weeks.

 

Sorry for my bad English; I hope that everybody understand the text and sorry for the lot of “awesome” using because we all will find out when we put our hands on that build... Now it’s something like a forecast theory and a pre-conclusion.

[Crater Creator]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned something potentially important from the new video yet.

 

 

Look at "Server Visibility." There's a white arrow on the left, indicating you can choose other options in that direction. There's a gray arrow on the right, indicating no further options in that direction.

 

Now look at "Max Players." There are white arrows to the left and right, which indicates you can choose other options in either direction.

 

As in, in the direction of fewer than 8 max players... and the direction of greater than 8 max players.

 

It's safe to assume whoever designed the new front end UI didn't make up numbers. He or she had the number of players the game will support in mind when creating this UI element.

 

So the video may reveal that Alpha 17 will officially support more than 8 players. I know lots of servers already exceed the stated 8 player limit already. But this would still be welcome news, if performance & optimization have improved so much that TFP are confident enough to say more than 8 players are now officially supported.

[DUST2DEATH]

 

So my question is this:

 

As they get closer, do they dump the previous texture out of memory and load the next highest resolution, OR does the texture simply get updated with more resolution, becoming more sharp and distinct as it comes?

 

And regardless of either answer, I have a further question.

 

Say a zombie at three hundred meters is 3 pixels high, does that mean they are only a few colors as there s NO way to tell distance but as they load in they take up more space. (Yes, of course.) - How does that play out when I have five zombies around me, one in my face, the others spread out over 15 meters distant, and then thirty more come RUSHING at me. Will the variation in calls for texture loading cause performance stutters as each different zombie calls on different textures as they are dumping in and out of memory.. or does it simply update as they go, creating a sort of smooth incline so there's no noticeable performance hits.

 

I ask because the changing ranges, and thus changing the level of detail on textures and high speed database calls and load times might be a problem. It's fine if they're all distant, or spread out even.. but if they're coming in so it takes more and more for the various textures might be a problem.

 

Long story short, how is texture streaming handled, and what kind of performance hits can we expect when being rushed by large nubmers of zombies spread out over a large distance?

 

 

Sorry for all the rambling. My head is still spinning hours later after watching the vid.

 

I interpretted what MM said as that mip maps were now working correctly.

[toores]

Thanks for watching the video! There was just so much to talk about and not enough time to explain properly everything. Its like we switched to unity 2018 and kind of had some broken ass graphics so there was video blackout for a while. Things are starting to look presentable again so and a lot of systems have been coming online during the video blackout so now there is just like so much new stuff to cover, I crammed 2 months of videos into one, but things will be explained as time goes on.

 

Oh so much stuff to cover!... of course you could do another video today

 

Anyways, since gore blocks are gone, there is no need for bodies to ever disappear from damage after "death". Just use the despawn timer.

[Genosis]

After watching the video and reading (a reasonable amount) of the comments since, I have to say I am actually in favor of the loot modification from the zombies. We didn't see any loot in the video, but I am ok with items from zombies being less common, and often a result of "boss" zombies which would give more an incentive to tangle with them.

 

Where I am coming from is this:

 

This was *one* of the chests of loot from one horde night. I setup a base with traps in a killing pit, and killed over 200 zombies that night (I think). As you can tell from the image, it took quite some time to clear out. Sometimes looting and base repair took until the afternoon of the next day. This may be an extreme case, but zombies should be a threat standing BETWEEN you and your objective, not being walking loot pinatas.

 

That being said, I am concerned about the bone/flesh situation. I use a ton of glue for making duct tape/paper, etc to feed my turrets and repair kits among other things, so I am hoping animals are not my only recourse unless we have animal trapping in the game.

 

Overall impression is that I am very much excited to play A17 when it is "finished", I look forward to exploring Navezgane with fresh eyes before heading out to random gen. I am impressed with how revitalized it looks, it must have taken a lot of man hours to go over all the minutia involved.

 

The refreshed POI's are a big departure from the cookie cutter homes I have looted a thousand times. Traversing through Diersville feels so engaging now, looks like a more more organic community instead of a grid of cut and paste homes. Can't wait to crack them all open!

 

Side note, love the sticky arrows. One of my favorite elements of Skyrim was the "vanity shots" checking out my accuracy after a battle.

 

Anyhow, I am choosing to stay optimistic despite some concerns. I look forward to seeing what experience the FunPimps have crafted for us and where their vision of the game is going, as well as what "secret features" have been teased earlier. (Are we finally getting "Zombie-Control" in multiplayer as mentioned in the kick-starter campaign? . )

[KingSlayerGM]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned something potentially important from the new video yet.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]24999[/ATTACH]

 

Look at "Server Visibility." There's a white arrow on the left, indicating you can choose other options in that direction. There's a gray arrow on the right, indicating no further options in that direction.

 

Now look at "Max Players." There are white arrows to the left and right, which indicates you can choose other options in either direction.

 

As in, in the direction of fewer than 8 max players... and the direction of greater than 8 max players.

 

It's safe to assume whoever designed the new front end UI didn't make up numbers. He or she had the number of players the game will support in mind when creating this UI element.

 

So the video may reveal that Alpha 17 will officially support more than 8 players. I know lots of servers already exceed the stated 8 player limit already. But this would still be welcome news, if performance & optimization has improved so much that TFP are confident enough to say more than 8 players are now officially supported.

 

Wow, nice finding! I hope it's true

[Tearstone]

I interpretted what MM said as that mip maps were now working correctly.

 

I wasn't asking about x or y working correctly. I was asking how it's implemented and under a certain set of conditions, how will it affect performance. I.E. Stutters and lag under certain conditions.

 

I'm asking how it functions 'correctly,' and how that is going to affect gameplay in worst-case scenarios.

[KingSlayerGM]

So I watched the new video posted today... well yesterday I guess now. And I noticed one thing when the chat box was brought up. Global seems to be in brackets. Does this hopefully mean that there will be possible channels? Local, or otherwise? Or is it just there to look pretty :-P. I know there's the party and whatnot. Just wasn't sure if a possible local or more coming with it or not!

 

Definitely a feature I've been hoping to see added in, but I also know you guys have a lot on your plates as is.

 

Yes, there are now Global, Friends and Party chats