Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[Jugginator]

Feedback/balance issue: punishing me for wanting to mine and build? Single Player perspective.

 

I feel like a17 208 is punishing me for choosing to want to mine and build up my base. at first i felt like the game was encouraging us to slay and explore, and it is...but when i want to build, mine, and gather resources for the purpose of just wanting to build things, try a base early-mid game base, and so on...

 

i feel like i'm being forced to instead level exploration perks and other things. we don't get much of any XP for mining, building, upgrading, and i don't even get XP if i'm not watching the forge or workbench.

 

I get a ton of XP from upgrading and building. I think it's just lower for wooden blocks, upgrading iron or concrete I see my XP going up by the tens of thousands.

[Aurelius]

The tatical challenge to choose the activitiy is with all activities you can do in 7D2D: Do I go to the trader or first find more stuff to sell? Do I cook some food or go immediately out to cut wood?

 

So what changed? Farming time was cut in half. This doesn't change the decision making, it just means farming takes less time once your garden is done. Instead of hunting fertilizer you are hunting seeds themselves. Because 1 seed alone needs 5*3=15 days to generate another one, 2 seeds need only 2.5*3=7.5 days. 5 seeds need only 3 days. So checking traders or looking around for plants in the wild will occupy a farmer for a long time.

 

And then you have tactical decisions: You have 3 potato plants in your garden. You get a 4th plant even if you use one potato now for food and you might be very short on food. But if you keep it you would get a 5th plant in 6 days instead of 9.

 

Replanting is gone, that's what changed - that's the decision I'm talking about. It was a task you had to perform, and couldn't do anything else while doing it.

 

It's now gone, ergo, a less fun game mechanic.

 

All the examples you list are things that could have been done in A16. Increase the crop:seed ratio. Remove fertilizer as an object in game and make seeds rarer as drops.

 

I get the changes were made to improve performance (no more SI calculations when the crop block is harvested/replanted); I just wish they would have come up with an improved farming minigame, and not what we have now...

 

-A

[faatal]

Sounds like from that, that you guys are basically tossing the old code and are planning on creating a newer up to date fancy code for bandits like how you guys rewrote the code for zeds for a17

 

I see no use for the old bandit code. They will just become an extension of the zombie/animal AI.

[faatal]

My adventures started in 14.7, when I discovered the UMA zombie. I set it up as a friendly zombie, even though it's textures were messed up lol. Then in A15 I got them to function in a limited sense. They roamed around, and attacked zombies and aggressive animals. When the new ai stuff came, and the ranged variants arived, I got them to wander and attack too. They even fired their weapons, but some things didnt work with them(crossbow, bow, shutgun using slugs). I gave them an NPCID so they could get hit and not give an error in the console too. Now, suddenly they dont move or attack though. Must be the new system...anyway, thanks for your reply

 

Oh yeah, and in A17 the zombies are skating and drifting around...I dont know what the cause is...just that if they are running(this happens to animals who want to kill something too). Basically, any time something wants to kill something and it runs after it..the run gets janked with drifts and strafing. I out ran a bear by just walking, due to the drifting and strafing lol. When they walk/move slow, they can path fine for the most part. This only happens if they pursue the target and run after it.

 

Was the server running over 20 FPS? Below that and velocities will start over shooting AI distance checks, since AI code and a lot of other code slows down below 20 FPS.

[Kelor]

This is a epic update, way more than i anticipated. With that being said there was a couple things im not sure about. Was curious if anyone else agreed or knew of fixes in the works.

 

The new random gen really went down hill in my opinion. Always having desert and snow biomes spawning in specific areas just limits all the maps, especially with a biome being taken out. The roads even seem to be different, more predictable, always at an angle across the map. Im aware of a bug with skyscrapers and big cities that im sure they are working on. Its something thats certainly noticeable. I get not wanting desert next to snow but can it at least be taken back to a16 spawning till something better is put in to place? Im just not nearly excited about exploring as i was in the last update, to the point where i just havent been playing the game.

 

Id like some early level mods. Early game there is really no reason for me to care about quality of a weapon or armor.

 

I really dont like that schematics are used as an ingredient. If you want to make them harder to get then they can be a quest reward only or maybe you would need to collect pieces of a schematic or something. A schematic book of some sort would be pretty epic, you get the satisfactions of collecting them, but not the completion feeling when you get them. They kind of just vanish after use.

 

Vehicles seem... very slow, or is that just me?

[faatal]

Thats kind of the point of infections no? Hopefully the wink is sarcasm and not "dont worry guys faatal is here to make it easier for you"

 

b214 - Infections now buff loot chances. Go out and grab dem infectionz boiz.

 

Having an infection where you can't do anything is pointless. You would be better off dying, which is what I said to Gazz, "so I should kill myself" and indicated it should not do that.

[saintones]

Screen effects were all changed. Night vision is just a green tint now. Not done.

 

Thanks Faatal

[Melthe]

What are these?

 

I found these things at a camp and am curious what they might be:

 

 

They look like huge green boars but not sure?

[beerfly]

I found these things at a camp and am curious what they might be:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]25924[/ATTACH]

 

They look like huge green boars but not sure?

 

Use the wrench and you can pet them

[Melthe]

ROFL!

 

I really want to shot them with an arrow but haven't been reckless enough to try yet.

[meganoth]

Replanting is gone, that's what changed - that's the decision I'm talking about. It was a task you had to perform, and couldn't do anything else while doing it.

 

That's was a rhetorical question that I answered immediately in the paragraph. So practically the most repetitious task was cut in half. The part of farming that isn't just grind is still there in a changed form.

 

All the examples you list are things that could have been done in A16. Increase the crop:seed ratio. Remove fertilizer as an object in game and make seeds rarer as drops.

 

Not really. Problem of A16 farming was that the "explosion" of seeds you could generate made food irrelevant in a few iterations of the farming clycle. Food scarcity on day 10, food bonanza on day 19. If you had 300 potatoes in your boxes, what's the use of more potatoes?

[SnowDog1942]

This is a epic update, way more than i anticipated. With that being said there was a couple things im not sure about. Was curious if anyone else agreed or knew of fixes in the works.

 

The new random gen really went down hill in my opinion. Always having desert and snow biomes spawning in specific areas just limits all the maps, especially with a biome being taken out. The roads even seem to be different, more predictable, always at an angle across the map. Im aware of a bug with skyscrapers and big cities that im sure they are working on. Its something thats certainly noticeable. I get not wanting desert next to snow but can it at least be taken back to a16 spawning till something better is put in to place? Im just not nearly excited about exploring as i was in the last update, to the point where i just havent been playing the game.

 

Id like some early level mods. Early game there is really no reason for me to care about quality of a weapon or armor.

 

I really dont like that schematics are used as an ingredient. If you want to make them harder to get then they can be a quest reward only or maybe you would need to collect pieces of a schematic or something. A schematic book of some sort would be pretty epic, you get the satisfactions of collecting them, but not the completion feeling when you get them. They kind of just vanish after use.

 

Vehicles seem... very slow, or is that just me?

 

Yes, Random Gen worlds are garbage compared to A16.. and yes the vehicles are SLOW as crap, but that's easy to mod. I wonder why they are so slow. I mean is that the fix for them falling through the world? All this new vehicle code and they had to slow them to down to a crawl to get them to not fall through the ground?

[meganoth]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]25922[/ATTACH]

 

Found this POI for Day7, had so much fun in it I've decided to make it home-camp. Having an absolute blast with A17 -- thank you Pimps! Need to lay out more spikes, and luckily a trader right next to me has a cement mixer so concrete blocks are going up. Those cars are rather tough for walls, and are rather cool for atmosphere. Dug myself an entrance/exit tunnel. Hitting gamestage 85 or so, no deaths so far; gonna see if the new difficulty can keep up with me

 

Are you sure the cars don't explode if they are hit often enough?

[Gareee]

Faatal: We ran into a weird pathing ai issue you might be able to address. We saw it repeatedly over and over again on a horde night, so we know its a "thing"

 

We were up on top of the mausoleum in the cemetary on day 14 horde night. After the zombies break down some wall sections, they climb up on the walls and run along the top of them trying to get to us.

 

Thats great, BUT something we didnt see in the last experimental, was when we hit one along the wall. We would see them fall down to the ground, but when they got back up, they were magically back up on the top of the wall, 3 blocks tall.

 

Either the fall off collision is wrong, or if they are knocked off they should repath back up to the point where they can access the wall again.

 

I didn't post this in a bug report, because its not so much a bug, as one of the plethora of pathing issues I'm sure you are looking at.

 

Day 14 horde night with two players felt balanced better now.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Are you sure the cars don't explode if they are hit often enough?

 

I think they will, because as I recall, some are wrenchable.

[NukemDed]

ok - saturday and have just finished a good go at this alpha. until this build it was basically unplayable for me due to the missing left stick toggle run, so thank you very much for putting it back in :-)

damn those zombies are good at finding a way in! had a wandering horde get way deep into a poi and corner me. luckily i was able to duck around the fast ones that were deeper in and get out just before the slower ones came in. its been a while since i have felt pure panic in a game.

seems the guns are coming at the right tempo this build. day 6 L25 and just got a magnum, have sub and sniper and a few pistols and hunting rifles. i so hope i get a rocket launcher before bm horde ...

im a bit nervous about the coming bmh. resource gathering is going to be an issue. got a chainsaw from an air drop so should be ok (thats a good way to level fast btw)

normally the first few bmh i will take them on in the open with a few rows of spikes or barbed wire and try to take them out with arrows. i havent been thru one yet but think the vultures may be an issue. i think i need to build a roof.

and have a few backup plans.

is it just me or would the exploding xbow bolt be an extremely effective way of dealing with the zombies as they line up to be executed in such an orderly fashion? aint that high in levels yet to try.

♥♥♥♥ its raining and my clothes are on the line...

[wildaxeman1]

I found these things at a camp and am curious what they might be:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]25924[/ATTACH]

 

They look like huge green boars but not sure?

 

they should not be in b208. you need to wipe all your game fails. meanwhile, find safe spot and kill them 1 by 1. those boss boars give insane amount meat, also at least 26 stonearrows to kill (headshots)

[faatal]

Ah very nice ty. Yeah, I wouldn't want the game to get any more strenuous on CPUs than it is already. They didn't notice me at first. They were just doing it to be doing it lol, part of the group which were just haulin ass and haven't noticed me yet. Nice on the sidestepping, it sounds like that would be rather tax-free on cpu usage. Thanks for the info!

 

Pretty much no game logic is free unless you stole it from something else, but a lot of logic is cheap, so no noticeable difference or moderate, but run infrequently and also not noticed.

[faatal]

Interesting, and good to know. What I was doing was digging straight down. Stealth meter showing the noise so taking a couple few swings then pause for stamina (and listen) and meter would go back down to 2. Was about 20 blocks below surface when I thought I heard an angry z, but sound was very faint so waited and listened. Meter back to 2. Waited & listened a good 30sec, seemed quiet. Dug again pause, z sound a little louder then started to sound like more than one so I started to nerd pole up, which makes a racket. As soon as I stood z sounds clearly indicated they were mad & coming. Got up 3 frames when they started landing on me head, heh. They weren't able to hit me from there but the smart ones dug down on the sides and I was zombie chow. Most of this happened in pitch black since I hadn't found a mining helmet. At very end I switched from club to flashlight, just in time to see the snarling faces of my killers

 

The stealth meter tells you the noise and light you are making now, not if someone detected you. If you hear them coming, you want to stealth walk away. Waiting does nothing but get you found, since they are already coming to where they heard you.

[Gobarg]

yikes... am I supposed to be getting a cop on a tier one clear out quest?

 

Second day and most of it has been with the grim reaper buff after a pack of dire wolves also sorted me out good and proper.

 

HA! Bring it on you dastardly Devs!

[faatal]

@faatal, have you seen this Steam thread: Passive Base Challenge?

What are the thoughts on some of those designs people have put forth (I especially liked the chain lightning stairs of wire traps one person put up. Looked like it would be a nice night of fireworks.)

 

I had not seen that thread. Interesting.

 

I expect there will be many block combinations for bases that will give the AI problems. My goal is not to fix all of them, since that may not even be possible, since the game will probably be gold before I could even find every situation. I don't even want to do that, since short of making tough flying AI that drills through everything, you should get the upper hand at some point.

[Jugginator]

Are you sure the cars don't explode if they are hit often enough?

 

Yeah some of the ones up top are. I thought about that mornign of day 28 haha. I wrenched the explodey ones. Telling ya that place is a blast of a time fighting hordes, just did 28 and man it was white knuckling! Not enough spikes were gone from 21, so only a little concrete went up and half way through the night they got smart and dashed around to a weak spot and poured inside. Thankfully I knocked the ladder off the little watch platform deal and had some spare bars to plug up enough gap to prevent wrights from getting to me. Rad wrights, rad cops, soldiers -- was bleeding but kept my no-death streak going. The non wrenchable cars have like 3k HP a piece.

[faatal]

I'd also like to see a scaled down version of the behemoth make a return. Maybe 1/5th bigger than current zombies, with reduced damage capability? I'd hate to see the work on him wasted, and I could see him fitting in better now.

 

That would be cool and allow it to fit in the current pathing size limitations. Baby behemoth.

[Jugginator]

That would be cool and allow it to fit in the current pathing size limitations. Baby behemoth.

 

Awww! Can I keep him? But really though, that would be awesome.

[Guppycur]

That would be cool and allow it to fit in the current pathing size limitations. Baby behemoth.

 

Call him the jugginator.

[faatal]

The AI might be better now, but it has become more predictable. Instead of taking the shortest path now they run around through a doorway. This can be exploited on horde night.

 

Predictable, yes it has. Why would you bash through a wall if there is an opening?

 

Variety is polish and polish is not done. Just today we were discussing doing a variety of zombie speed and block damage types, but that takes time to implement, test, tweak and retest, so you won't see it tomorrow.