Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[alejandrozq]

ok, so punching plants to harvest, and it replants. um. seeds are harder to find/make. err..

 

SO what happened (or is happening to) that humungous corn field in Navezgane? Are the dead cornstalks (that became seeds when you hit them) gone? I never did clear ALL of those fields.

 

What if we don't want THAT crop to replant (said giganormous cornfield).

hmm thats a good point, maybe those dead crops does not give anything

[FM2009]

However I don't think it will be an issue if the zombies' AI is smart enough to find players even without the smell mechanic. This thing that always bothered me about smell is I couldn't hide on the other side of a three meter thick iron wall because they could magically "smell me" through the walls.

 

That is the problem though, instead of adding occlusion to smell, they cut it. Now it will just be magic zombie sense that auto-detects the player and has them home in. During a horde night that is acceptable, but non-hordes centering on the player is too immersion breaking. There needs to be some level of plausibility or gameplay suffers. Calling it heat detection is worse than not explaining it at all.

[Jiles111]

Food for thought..... When you harvest potatoes, wheat or anything (IRL), you don't pull up the entire plant and start anew. Do you do that for tomato plants, no. Corn is a non regen plant, I agree to a point there. It was stated that zombies will no longer be dropping by and delivering groceries as much as we (were) used to. Pease remember that you haven't player A17 yet.

You do realize that if you punch the crops now you get the potatoes and you leave the seedling. Don’t think corn and Yuca work this way but everything else does.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

That is the problem though, instead of adding occlusion to smell, they cut it. Now it will just be magic zombie sense that auto-detects the player and has them home in. During a horde night that is acceptable, but non-hordes centering on the player is too immersion breaking. There needs to be some level of plausibility or gameplay suffers. Calling it heat detection is worse than not explaining it at all.

Many alphas ago they use to hear you also. Open your backpack, forge, or a box and they would go nuts all around you.

[TylerDB]

That is the problem though, instead of adding occlusion to smell, they cut it. Now it will just be magic zombie sense that auto-detects the player and has them home in. During a horde night that is acceptable, but non-hordes centering on the player is too immersion breaking. There needs to be some level of plausibility or gameplay suffers. Calling it heat detection is worse than not explaining it at all.

 

 

The “heat” isnt about warmth, it’s about sound etc, all different senses mixed. That’s just the name of the system used.

[The Gronk]

Food for thought..... When you harvest potatoes, wheat or anything (IRL), you don't pull up the entire plant and start anew. Do you do that for tomato plants, no. Corn is a non regen plant, I agree to a point there. It was stated that zombies will no longer be dropping by and delivering groceries as much as we (were) used to. Pease remember that you haven't player A17 yet.

 

The technical terms you're looking for are annual and perennial. An annual plant will flower once and then die, perennials keep growing.

 

Annuals: Potato, wheat, corn, carrots, cabbage.

 

Perennials: Anything on a tree or bush generally, sometimes but rarely soft-stemmed plants.

[meganoth]

The technical terms you're looking for are annual and perennial. An annual plant will flower once and then die, perennials keep growing.

 

Annuals: Potato, wheat, corn, carrots, cabbage.

 

Perennials: Anything on a tree or bush generally, sometimes but rarely soft-stemmed plants.

 

So low level players hiding from zombies are perennials?

[The Gronk]

So low level players hiding from zombies are perennials?

 

They respawn when you harvest from them so yes, they're perennials. If they're young enough they're perennial millennials. If perennial millennials have a meeting once a year that would be the annual perennial millennial meeting...

 

I'll stop now. :-)

[wolffblood]

From another thread:

 

 

 

Im a little bit worried about "having all systems in place for the first time" -- and no "no brand new systems are needed" part of this quote.

 

So,

 

1) Water doesn't need a new system?

2) We don't have bandits, is that a new system? are they gone for good?

3) Block selection interface that were talked about a long while back, is that a new system?

4) Smell system is gone for good?

 

Roland, talk me down... please..

 

I'm thinking he means that all main systems are in place, most everything else can be built from these new systems.

 

1) They put in some kind of new terrain system or something that helps it a little, I believe, I could be wrong. However, if so, water would be built from this pre-existing system, just tweaked for it's own use since it's somewhat different.

 

2) New AI and enemy system in place. Just need to add them to it and tweak the AI a little on their end to be more human-like instead of zombie.

 

3) The Gronk answered this one well earlier, it's already in place, just needs tweaking and expanding.

 

4) Smell can be done by the new buff system in place. Food now has a smell radius (debuff), if zombie in area, goes for you. BUT, smell needs to be refined more than that based on type of blocks, etc. It just takes a lot of ray casting continuously since what's between you and a zombie changes second by second. I could see that taking a lot of resources if not carefully done. Be easiest to scan your bag any time it changes, find the one with the highest smell range, and only base smell detection off of that. If not done right, you could have many things looking for smell range that'd be pointless and taking resources the game could use elsewhere.

 

 

 

So yes, I'd say all the systems are now in place. They can then just be expanded into, lack of a better word, "subsystems". But without these systems, the subsystems wouldn't work, or at least not very well as they can be now. Just needs time. Get these systems out now, start refining later. I expect updates to be much faster now that everything is in place and easier to program than it once was. Why fix old code that will be thrown out and push the release date of this update even further back.

[Ouch Quit It]

Exactly. 17 months for a17..

And the power attack? Don't know how it will play out, but from the looks of it; meh.

 

Yes but what about the lighting?

[DaVegaNL]

Yes but what about the lighting?

 

The lightning attack? That depends, did they tweak the drop-rate of the mana potions from the zombies yet? Or will we have to harvest those from animals as well?

[Obsessive Compulsive]

Alpha 17 Stream Event Coming Soon - 4 weeks ago. What is soon to you guys? Is one month soon? Is two months soon?

 

It would be nice to get an idea of pimps time code. 1 day = 1 week. 1 week = 1 month. 1 month = 1 year. Soon = 4 weeks+

 

It is alpha and we get it, you do not want to get caught with your pants down but in your efforts to keep your pants up, we took your shirt off and stole your watch. We are alpha zombies clawing at more 7 days.

[wolffblood]

Alpha 17 Stream Event Coming Soon - 4 weeks ago. What is soon to you guys? Is one month soon? Is two months soon?

 

It would be nice to get an idea of pimps time code. 1 day = 1 week. 1 week = 1 month. 1 month = 1 year. Soon = 4 weeks+

 

It is alpha and we get it, you do not want to get caught with your pants down but in your efforts to keep your pants up, we took your shirt off and stole your watch. We are alpha zombies clawing at more 7 days.

 

That would happen no matter what. They stopped because of complaints, they started cause of complaints. Now it's just complaints, lol. I've seen in the business world, soon be a year to 2. The company I work for is an industrial electrical contractor. A lot of times, customers will send us everything to start, just need to wait for them to shut down their machinery, they say soon. 2 years later, they are ready x.x… One customer took 5 years after the plan was already made and basically paid for..... Just how it works

[Aldranon]

ok, so punching plants to harvest, and it replants. um. seeds are harder to find/make. err..

 

SO what happened (or is happening to) that humungous corn field in Navezgane? Are the dead cornstalks (that became seeds when you hit them) gone? I never did clear ALL of those fields.

 

What if we don't want THAT crop to replant (said giganormous cornfield).

 

 

I don't know if you remember when there was always two zombie dogs near the barn where the corn was. I wonder if they are back...

[deathless]

That would happen no matter what. They stopped because of complaints, they started cause of complaints. Now it's just complaints, lol. I've seen in the business world, soon be a year to 2. The company I work for is an industrial electrical contractor. A lot of times, customers will send us everything to start, just need to wait for them to shut down their machinery, they say soon. 2 years later, they are ready x.x… One customer took 5 years after the plan was already made and basically paid for..... Just how it works

 

Well I was expecting maybe a Halloween release but thats past so now its just a waiting game again. Maybe a xmas release for maybe even a new year release, Now its just disappointing because it just keeps dragging on, The Hype is pretty much gone for me.

 

Maybe they are adding RTX lol

[pluky]

if the bugs are fixed then release a17 if you wanna add new stuff in it then do it with little updates

[Ouch Quit It]

Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo* Cough * ooooooooooooooooooooooooon!

[faatal]

if the bugs are fixed then release a17 if you wanna add new stuff in it then do it with little updates

 

It is not about fixing every bug. Big games always have bugs, it is about reducing the important bugs and tasks to 0 for experimental.

 

Some of the new stuff, I consider a requirement for balance and to get proper feedback. If a new perk does not work yet, that is a feature that needs to be completed. If we released as is, you would call it a bug.

[faatal]

This week a ton of feature finishing, balancing and bug fixing has been done by the team and more continues.

 

Some of the work I did:

 

Improved zombie jumping (variable air time based on distance and height diff) and added different heights for different types of jumps.

Added AI JumpMaxDistance property and varied for a few zombies.

Added AI ? task and set Spiders to use.

Fixed AI so only jumps on a blocking entity, when that entity is blocked.

Added block DamageType property, EnumDamageTypes BarbedWire, set on barbed wire blocks and made it always cause a pain hit.

Fixed vomit attack firing an extra shot on release and not bursting correctly.

Added ranged attack getDirectionRandomOffset (an even spread) for the vomit attack.

Fixed AI RangedAttackTarget using a very slow attack cooldown and added cooldown to params.

Cleaned up AI RangedAttackTarget.

Added 4 round wide burst to feral cop.

Added 6 round slow wide simultaneous burst to radiated cop.

Fixed SDTD-8857 Vehicle in ground console spam (only check if local).

Changed vehicle net sync to use vehicle remote status, not driver's.

Changed SDTD-9043 Simplify zombie limb dismemberment (changed dismemberment calculations, hooked up tags for primary/secondary/head/arm/leg, updated debug info).

Added hunting knife power attack 50% chance to dismember.

Fixed perkHeadshot ranged requirement.

Changed environment audio to fade out twice as fast and finish when below 1% volume.

SDTD-8893 Zombies continue to attack when stunned (adjusted stun checks).

Fixed AI SetNearestEntityAsTarget alerting sleepers by setting an investigate pos.

Fixed SDTD-8946 Sleepers not waking easily enough. (Decreased wake thresholds (xml) and used random range. Decreased noise time on most sounds (xml) and a few volume changes. Increased quieter sound noise (power func) and decreased the distance attenuation.)

[Guppycur]

Fixed vomit attack firing an extra shot on release and not bursting correctly

 

 

...do they still not face the direction they're shooting or is this already solved?

[faatal]

Fixed vomit attack firing an extra shot on release and not bursting correctly

 

 

...do they still not face the direction they're shooting or is this already solved?

 

No. Seemed fine in testing. Never saw vomit from back of head.

 

The extra shot was always north, since it was after the look direction was cleared.

[CplCritter]

This week a ton of feature finishing, balancing and bug fixing has been done by the team and more continues.

 

Some of the work I did:

 

-snipped-

 

Thanks for the update, faatal! Since you have been working on the jumping mechanic, have you tested zombie parkour performance? Are they smart enough to jump on a block and use it to jump over a 1 block gap to grab a ladder that is 3 blocks off the ground if it is the path of least resistance to their target? I think it would be exciting if they can, but I wouldn't be mad either way. I'm just curious to see how complex their pathing abilities are when different obstacles are put in their way.

[Ouch Quit It]

AS per FAATAL..

 

STDs confirmed for a17!!! Hence the added medical supply !!

 

 

 

 

Coughs * It Burns * Coughs

[faatal]

Thanks for the update, faatal! Since you have been working on the jumping mechanic, have you tested zombie parkour performance? Are they smart enough to jump on a block and use it to jump over a 1 block gap to grab a ladder that is 3 blocks off the ground if it is the path of least resistance to their target? I think it would be exciting if they can, but I wouldn't be mad either way. I'm just curious to see how complex their pathing abilities are when different obstacles are put in their way.

 

They can jump off ledges in certain situations.

[Ouch Quit It]

This week a ton of feature finishing, balancing and bug fixing has been done by the team and more continues.

 

Some of the work I did:

 

Improved zombie jumping (variable air time based on distance and height diff) and added different heights for different types of jumps.

Added AI JumpMaxDistance property and varied for a few zombies.

Added AI ? task and set Spiders to use.

Fixed AI so only jumps on a blocking entity, when that entity is blocked.

Added block DamageType property, EnumDamageTypes BarbedWire, set on barbed wire blocks and made it always cause a pain hit.

Fixed vomit attack firing an extra shot on release and not bursting correctly.

Added ranged attack getDirectionRandomOffset (an even spread) for the vomit attack.

Fixed AI RangedAttackTarget using a very slow attack cooldown and added cooldown to params.

Cleaned up AI RangedAttackTarget.

Added 4 round wide burst to feral cop.

Added 6 round slow wide simultaneous burst to radiated cop.

Fixed SDTD-8857 Vehicle in ground console spam (only check if local).

Changed vehicle net sync to use vehicle remote status, not driver's.

Changed SDTD-9043 Simplify zombie limb dismemberment (changed dismemberment calculations, hooked up tags for primary/secondary/head/arm/leg, updated debug info).

Added hunting knife power attack 50% chance to dismember.

Fixed perkHeadshot ranged requirement.

Changed environment audio to fade out twice as fast and finish when below 1% volume.

SDTD-8893 Zombies continue to attack when stunned (adjusted stun checks).

Fixed AI SetNearestEntityAsTarget alerting sleepers by setting an investigate pos.

Fixed SDTD-8946 Sleepers not waking easily enough. (Decreased wake thresholds (xml) and used random range. Decreased noise time on most sounds (xml) and a few volume changes. Increased quieter sound noise (power func) and decreased the distance attenuation.)

 

Faatal,,,can you fix not being able to loot through iron bars and jail doors..

 

Regards

 

Ouch

[Doombringer101]

They can jump off ledges in certain situations.

 

Is being hungry one of those situations?