Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[Aldranon]

This week everyone has been doing the usual finishing and fixing.

 

My more exciting changes:

<Snip>

Increased path location duration to 4.

 

Well, path location duration to 4 is what myself and everyone else was waiting for! We were hoping for a 5, but 4 can be worked with.

 

You can release A17-E now just on of that alone!

[DaVegaNL]

Watching adults cry everytime they dont get their way isnt my thing. But hey cry a little harder and I'm sure they'll change the game to suit your personal preferences.

 

Well.. you can either discuss that what you don't like, and see what's the reasoning behind it, or you can blindly accept everything without questioning. Guess the latter attitude makes it easier to live in certain countries/regimes.

[Aurelius]

This post hit the nail right on the head for me.. I could not say it better myself..

 

 

"Gore Blocks gone, zombie loot all but gone, plants no longer need replanted, plains gone, gun parts and statistics on them gone, vehicle parts gone, lockpicking dropped . I mean the list of what is still in the game is getting smaller and smaller."

 

 

The game does feel like its losing its complexity and becoming very streamlined.

 

Don't forget the meats!

 

And cobblestone.

 

Oh, and my personal favorite - STICKS

 

-A

[faatal]

Nice work on getting the passenger issues fixed

So when you say screamers can see through walls, was that all blocks including terrain?

Did you consider making it a feature?

 

The clue was (added sight to woodBlock Collide), it was wood blocks they could see though. If you want that feature, you can remove sight from woodBlock in blocks xml, but we don't.

 

I like the mechanic of they hear you, claw their way to you, see you, get mad, scream. That gives me the chance to run away or stun/kill before they can scream.

[Doombringer101]

Don't forget the meats!

 

And cobblestone.

 

Oh, and my personal favorite - STICKS

 

-A

 

Don't you have Arby's?

I think they may have the meats

[danielspoa]

He's busy working on it. Taking longer than just the one day. Just waiting for someone to come on and say he broke his promise to tell us today...

 

Cmon I'm not the guy complaining you promised this or that, I was just curious :|

 

 

Also, saw the faatal answer, nice!

[Doombringer101]

The clue was (added sight to woodBlock Collide), it was wood blocks they could see though. If you want that feature, you can remove sight from woodBlock in blocks xml, but we don't that.

 

I like the mechanic of they hear you, claw their way to you, see you, get mad, scream. That gives me the chance to run away or stun/kill before they can scream.

 

Yeah I was not sure if you had added it to just wood blocks or all of them just thinking from a mod perspective.

[Aurelius]

Don't you have Arby's?

I think they may have the meats

 

Now that I think about it, we really shouldn't have different crops either. TFP should do away with potatoes, corn, and blueberries, and just have a plant that you harvest a generic foodstuff from.

 

-A

[Doombringer101]

Now that I think about it, we really shouldn't have different crops either. TFP should do away with potatoes, corn, and blueberries, and just have a plant that you harvest a generic foodstuff from.

 

-A

 

Now to come up with a catchy name for it

[Aurelius]

Now to come up with a catchy name for it

 

"Not Meat"? You get "meat" from animals, and "not meat" from plants!

 

-A

[Doombringer101]

"Not Meat"? You get "meat" from animals, and "not meat" from plants!

 

-A

 

We have a winner

[DaVegaNL]

Now to come up with a catchy name for it

 

'Food'. And with the right perk you daily get 2 of those items automatically in your inventory.

[Doombringer101]

'Food'. And with the right perk you daily get 2 of those items automatically in your inventory.

 

Now that's some serious optimisation right there

[Xeen]

@faatal

 

Thanks for making the vehicle passenger feature a priority I for one appreciate it very much.

[Vedui]

Seems like that could be easily accomplished with a crafting recipe even without the need for a special workstation for those that want it more...."Smarting it Up"

 

We used to be able to craft clay using cornmeal and water. Someone ought be able to come up with something better than that and include it into their game if simply sticking your shovel into the ground mostly anywhere for the same thing is undesirable.

 

Absolutely it can be modded. It's just that I, and most people I play with, all want a deeper, richer experience, not one that feels dumbed down just to make it faster. Clay is an interesting example, as before you'd have to go find a clay patch, dig it up, and then go back and use it. Now you presumably have it as soon as you dig wherever. Which is simpler, and it does remove the ugly clay patches everywhere.

 

But it does it at the expensive of a (slightly) deeper experience. And since you can make clay from top soil, but it isn't CLAY in by itself as you dig it up, combining a clay maker with using soil gives you best of both. It means while you can find soil everywhere, you also need to spend a bit of time (maybe it's slow crafting like fertilizer, just like it actually is slow to turn soil to clay IRL) to do it. So you need to plan, and you can't just do it on the spot and expect to have clay.

 

Fertilizer is another example. I plant corn. It grows. My friend has invested heavily in farming, and when he picks, he gets 5 corn as an expert farmer. I pick I get 2. This makes the experience shallower, as you no longer need to find, or craft or loot fertilizer, it's just skill based. That removes deeper game play of "Ok I need to make my farm, so let me spend some time on getting fertilizer or resources to make fertilizer AND crafting it." .. instead it's "skill up!". And it also doesn't make sense. I first picked corn when I was 8 from a nearby field, and I'm pretty sure I got 1 corn per corn, and the farmer if he had been there (and not chasing me) was getting 1 corn per corn despite his many years of experience

 

So shallower system, less planning and thought needed, and just "skill up".

 

Instead of a full day of gameplay to do something, it's go kill/dig, gain experience, then just skill up and you got it done. Some people say farming is tedious? Sure. We can just remove hunger and thirst entirely and it'll remove the tediousness, but it's a survival game, not an arcade game

 

Can it be modded? Sure. But I love vanilla as my main game. But the more it gets dumbed down to make it "smoother and easier" the less it is, and the more modding is needed to make it interesting more than for a few days of playing

[Vedui]

This week everyone has been doing the usual finishing and fixing.

 

What I hinted about yesterday was...

vehicle passengers is working.

My more exciting changes:

 

Fixed vehicle could be taken while it had a driver.

 

Love vehicle passenger being fixed! Yaay! Major thing there!

 

Vehicle could be taken while it had a driver? We can pick up vehicles? Or you mean the vehicle parts and dismantling it?

 

That sounds funny. Someone drives by and you quicky "access" and dismantle it before the game puts it out of reach, dropping the player into your inventory! Capture success!

[jdizzy2010]

Lol Roland must be going nuts with these posts. I think we are all on the way to a mental breakdown waiting for a17 and instead of getting closer it seems to be getting further away.

[WhiteLion]

It isnt the singular issue of clay patches being removed. Of course on its own its a non issue of sorts, but my chief concern is when you look at the big picture in conjunction with ALL the removals and changes.

 

Now youre looking at a stripped down system. A less complicated system and a system that promotes LESS activity, even if it is opening a map and moving 30 feet.

 

Most mods, heck ALL mods are adding complicated systems and gameplay mechanics. Starvation, Walkers, Valmod, Darkness Falls, UL, name it and it adds so much. Yeah Im going to work my magic as will all of these others. That does not change the fact I love this game for the game itself. I can sit back and have the attitude of "haha its ok ill just make it better". I want to love vanilla first and foremost. It is what I fell in love with first. NOT a mod.

 

Every time more news comes out about some changes or some tweaks it just feels like another door being shut on a mechanic or a feature that didnt really need to be removed. I mean, did someone at a meeting actually sit there and say "You know what, those clay patches they really need to go to take us to the next level". Its change for the sake of simplicity. Gore Blocks gone, zombie loot all but gone, plants no longer need replanted, plains gone, gun parts and statistics on them gone, vehicle parts gone, lockpicking dropped . I mean the list of what is still in the game is getting smaller and smaller.

 

Now Roland, you say all soil is just soil. No more burnt forest ground, plains ground etc. Does this mean ALL ground looks like the foresty one now except desert and snow?

 

Why are you guys so intent on taking away the uniqueness of what you took YEARS to build. Out of spite? WHY remove plains at all? So now most ground will also have simple looks to them? Where is the variety? Why strip away the games identity to become a plain jane survival clone?

 

You guys had this on lockdown. Sky was the limit. A13 seemed like the moment someone decided it was not a survival type game anymore. Its a sandbox game. Yet someone is removing a lot of the sandbox. Sure we will have the tools to make our OWN sand, but that sandbox is only so fun to play in if the box gets smaller and the park next door is building one twice the size.

 

But the have new tree models! - Hype hype.

You are so right. My fear is that they will not only dump down the vanilla game, but the system.

Next they will limit voxel destroyability ... and then tell you it does make sence from the disign view or bull$hit

[Vedui]

Id rather spend my time having productive conversations about the game but all I ever see is people demanding TFP given them info and then crying because the info isnt want they wanted to hear. If the crying went beyond "I no like change.", "I cant handle the world not revolving around me and my preferences" and "If TFPs dont do things my way they've sold out to the casuals!!1!" It might be worth debating but it never is. Its the same whining over every bit of into the TFPs give out.

 

That's fine that you do, we all do things differently.

 

I look at it this way. I talk to 10 people (which is not a statistical sample by any means), and 9 of them feel they'd rather have a richer, deeper experience, and feel removing clay, removing fertilizer, removing gun parts, and so on is the wrong approach. And this just happens to be my preference too. This makes it even more likely that I'll raise it up, as its important information to highlight to devs. Someone else can have the opposite experience and all they speak to say "Get rid of it, no hunger, 1 weapon that can do everything, 1 building block only" then that's something they can and should highlight to the dev. And the developers can then reconcile it with their preference and decide.

 

And that's how Early Access SHOULD be done. Not necessarily do everything players tell them. But to solicit feedback, consider it, reject or accept and modify, and then make the best game they feel like. If they hit the right balance, the game thrives and they make money. If they make the wrong balance, the game falters, and they make less (or lose money).

 

What I would love to see is the communication behind a change, perhaps even before its made. Roland's polls previously for game features were GREAT as we'd all vote, comment and provide feedback, and they'd be in a better position. Even something like "We find the clay ugly on the maps, it slows down gameplay, it makes crafting less accessible for new players, so we're considering changes such as removing it, modifying it, and whatever" and then let people provide feedback. Even a poll with options of "Keep it!" or "change to soil, but require a clay-maker to turn soil into clay" or "remove clai, remove dirt, it's all SOIL now baby!" .. if majority vote 1-2 then going for 3 can be done, but you're going directly against what your player base wants. Which has its own consequences.

 

Maybe TFP don't consider clay a big issue. But I suspect there's a large group who consider clay + gun parts + fertilizer + +++ a huge part, and it all points to making it more casual, more arcady, removing richness and depth. And ultimately undesirable.

[jdizzy2010]

That tweet by Joel bothers me a bit. He knows we are all waiting for it and that is kind of messed up saying just how good it is and now we are burning with anticipation only to wait who knows how much longer lol. Very sad....

[Gazz]

.. Roland and Team... are you getting rid of Clay Patches for the sake of just making it easier to get Clay, and stop the massive craters that form when focused..

Or is this just to free up a block ID?

 

"Clay" is just another snowstorm in a jar but I'll tell you anyway. Having one less surface texture saves memory and helps the poor Unity texture blender which can only handle 3 adjacent textures.

Since there was no actual gameplay benefit to clay patches, either, out it goes.

 

 

Every. Single. Time.

We still like our players even if they are salty.

[agrastiOs]

It is true that the game's been going to the streamlining direction lately. Removing Sticks, just Meat, no zombie corpses... While it does feel like they're removing a big chunk of what they were working on for years, this is natural for game development and some changes do make the game smoother. Also, the game as of currently is incredibly punishing for new players. The learning curve is enormous.

 

There needs to be a balance between survival/realism and gameplay. I'd like if they improved the balance and added some more survival features after A17 in the future. They should add some tools for new players to help them learn the game and be less frustrated, like a tutorial or something. Not spoon-feeding and handholding.

[KingSlayerGM]

This week everyone has been doing the usual finishing and fixing.

 

What I hinted about yesterday was...

vehicle passengers is working.

 

Well done faatal, Im very pleased about this good news. I think that the community would have been pretty disappointed if this wasn't added.

 

Again, well done

 

BTW how many passengers can we expect to be able to carry? Will they eventually be able to shoot while seated? (like pubg, fortnite..)

[Gazz]

BTW how many passengers can we expect to be able to carry? Will they eventually be able to shoot while seated? (like pubg, fortnite..)

The concept of one driver proved to be too constricting so everyone will be able to drive.

The vehicle will then choose the average of all control inputs or simply go slower if not all agree to go forward.

[The Gronk]

The concept of one driver proved to be too constricting so everyone will be able to drive.

The vehicle will then choose the average of all control inputs or simply go slower if not all agree to go forward.

 

With the game mechanics being simplified at an increasingly alarming rate I woudn't be surprised if you removed the driving altogether and had everyone get out and push :-)