Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[Demonoid74]

Am I weird in that even in late game...I always use melee and bows with flaming arrows being my go to ranged? I normally only ever use guns when I loot one and run into a tough clump of zombies early on...

[Gobarg]

Am I weird in that even in late game...I always use melee and bows with flaming arrows being my go to ranged? I normally only ever use guns when I loot one and run into a tough clump of zombies early on...

 

My endgame weapons of choice are usually the Machete and Sniper rifle.

Early game is the hunting knife and the hunting rifle.

It’s either up close and personal or headshots at 300 paces.

It will be interesting to see what effect the new weapon mods will have on my gameplay though.

Being able to craft a Machete was the best thing about A16!

There is something deeply satisfying about lopping the head off a Wight on horde nights.

[Gnomaana]

I thought Minecraft was very limited and unoptimized because of its engine, but when I looked at 7 Days to Die I immediately changed my mind and now I think it's one of the best games ever made.

 

Look up Alpha release. You don't optimize works in progress. It is wasted coding. Plus on my computer 7days runs as good as Minecraft and looks 1000x better.

[skullpoker]

One major problem with losing biomes is how it will effect mining. Currently 2 biomes have lead, 2 have nitrate, and 2 have coal. It's fairly balanced and it makes it fairly easy to find a good spot where 3 biomes meet so you can set up a mine for bullet materials. If they add in the ability to make steel casings that would be perfect, leaving brass for early game and switching to the much easier to find steel in later levels. But now we are losing plains, so will that make coal harder to find enough of? Will there be about the same amount of forested area to find lead? Or will we get back to having random ores everywhere?

 

As for merging the forests, that doesn't sound too bad as long as they decrease the types of tree seeds. Those are basically a waste of space.

[Guest Rust Buddy]

They try to break blocks now when a path says to go through a block, but the random hitting makes it flaky.

This is one of the next things I plan to address, like this week. Random block hitting has got to change to targeted hits when needed.

 

faatal!

 

Thanks for answering! Sounds rustastic. We should have more conversations.

 

Will there be priorities to the blocks they target? So if I destroy the stairs and sit on the second floor of a building will they start targeting wall support blocks so if ignored they'll eventually bring the building down? I've read that hordes used to bring down buildings if you were perched in them out of reach but ever since I've been playing their behavior when you are above them and unreachable has been random and pathetic and the second floor safety easily lasts the whole night .

 

Will they be able to target upward or downward to destroy hatches if they know I am above or below them? If zombies could have the ability to target and hit blocks below their feet or above their head I would stop playing Rust forever!

[Lonestarcanuck]

Will A17 allow me to dynamically change the radiation zone? for example I want to have it go from default to 100 block radius over 100 days. kinda of like PUBG/Fortnite

[petruherro]

Could we please get a at least small improvement on the weapons shader? right now it just look the same at any given light level on any place

[faatal]

Will there be priorities to the blocks they target? So if I destroy the stairs and sit on the second floor of a building will they start targeting wall support blocks so if ignored they'll eventually bring the building down? I've read that hordes used to bring down buildings if you were perched in them out of reach but ever since I've been playing their behavior when you are above them and unreachable has been random and pathetic and the second floor safety easily lasts the whole night .

 

Will they be able to target upward or downward to destroy hatches if they know I am above or below them? If zombies could have the ability to target and hit blocks below their feet or above their head I would stop playing Rust forever!

 

Pathing considers block health. Doors currently use 25% health, so they favor them.

 

Trashing nearby walls is on my list, to counter sitting above them.

 

Vertically damaging blocks I have not evaluated yet, but I will be looking at it.

[Crater Creator]

[POIs sitting on circular mounds or depressions] is a known issue (which means it is on the todo-list), but A16 won't get any further patches. It also seems more of a calibration issue of the RWG than just a single bug one can correct and be finished about it (this is just my personal impression though). If you see such occurances in a few months in A17 experimental/BETA, post the seed and coordinates in the relevant bug thread.

 

A known issue doesn’t mean it’ll be fixed. It just means “we acknowledge this happens, and we (probably) don’t like it.” The mounds generally aren’t a bug, they’re a feature. Notice where the ground comes up in a mound on one side of the building, the ground comes down in a depression on the other side of the building. The middle of the building’s floor hasn’t been raised or lowered (in at least 90% of the A16 POIs I’ve seen). Rather, dirt is added or subtracted in a radius around that center in order to level enough space to fit the building.

 

I would look for ways to reduce the size of that footprint, such as not rounding up to the nearest chunk if it does, and switching from a radius to a rectangular shape since that’s the shape POI plots take.

 

Concrete walls are enough.

I'm talking about a16 dungeon towers. For example, you can go through the huge "book tower" with just a stone axe on the first week. Once you follow the path you can access most of the loot without much resistance. It might be the case that you get all the "important" books on that single building and never have to look for books again.

 

It would be cool if there would be some bookshelves on the first 3 floors but past that you'd have to break down iron bar in a staircase or dig out some rubble to get to next floor.

 

It would feel too artificial if the best loot is always the most protected. So I favor a two-pronged approach: in addition to making some of the best loot hard to access, introduce randomization so that you can’t anticipate where the best loot will be after exploring the building once. Then, even knowing where the hidden rooms are doesn’t guarantee you can speed run the building, and not every building will need a strong room.

 

I also remember a video a few months back that mentioned work on smoothing roads but that may have been rendered moot with the height map changes now planned for A17.

 

Height maps are static, premade assets though (think Navezgane), whereas the roads are smoothed procedurally by the RWG. I don’t think one will affect the other.

 

On the subject of biomes... Is the wasteland biome an under-utilised area?

What reasons are there to even go there other than the challenge of surviving in such a hostile environment?

Cities in every biome are always worth visiting but what about the area itself?

I know there are always a lot of cars in the wasteland but cars can be found almost anywhere.

What is it about the wasteland that makes it attractive to visit?

What can be done to make it a must see area?

Am I missing something?

 

In short, in mid/late game the ground is effectively made of concrete mix and steel, and instead of tree stumps, you get desk safes. But I agree the risk versus reward doesn’t compare favorably to other biomes.

[Shado47]

Pathing considers block health. Doors currently use 25% health, so they favor them.

 

Trashing nearby walls is on my list, to counter sitting above them.

 

Vertically damaging blocks I have not evaluated yet, but I will be looking at it.

 

Perhaps breaking blocks below the zombies could be limited to mostly zombies in floor-near positions, like the spider zombie or the crawler or zombies that lost one or two legs, since other zombies dont have any animation of them bowing down yet and so to hit a block below them while standing... well that just wouldnt look right without matching mocap.

 

Good to see trashing nearby walls is coming back, I remember the 3rd Worth a Buy review of 7dtd I think it was, had a video where the zombies brought down a building this way which he had built for demonstration.

Breaking blocks above the zombies would also only make sense with a matching mocap animation or by allowing them to turn their torso in a fitting way. For spider zombies and zombies in crawling position, breaking blocks below them would be legit right now since their hitting animation is basically already on the ground, doesnt quite apply to any other zeds.

[Cazmyr]

My biggest hopes for pathing are:

 

Able to fit/ go where we can fit/ go.

 

This would counter the toothy and pillar 50 base designs.

 

Some basic jumping would be nice also. Nothing crazy, but able to jump a 1 or 2 block gap would

counter a lot of base entrances I have seen.

 

Not that every design needs to be countered, but these designs specifically take advantage of the

zombies inability to path through these obstacles even though a player can fit through them.

[naive1000]

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I miss the old old plains. Is there a way to make this again? Modders? Best base I ever built

 

Okay, I'm curious, what is that made out of sod? Dirt? Asphalt?

[Roland]

Okay, I'm curious, what is that made out of sod? Dirt? Asphalt?

 

That looks like stone back when breaking a stone gave you a stone terrain block instead of a bunch of harvested small rocks.

[TSBX]

Beehives, we need beehives.

[Phoenixshade35]

Beehives would be interesting, would also make hunting for bears more fun, what I would not mind seeing is lures, like one to lure in animals and another type for zombies, kinda like how the forge brings in screamers, thats fun just waiting to happen.

[Guest Rust Buddy]

Pathing considers block health. Doors currently use 25% health, so they favor them.

 

No change there. They always go for doors.

 

Trashing nearby walls is on my list, to counter sitting above them.

 

sounds great. Can you post the list?

 

Vertically damaging blocks I have not evaluated yet, but I will be looking at it.

 

it would change so much for the better. thanks.

[Guest Rust Buddy]

Perhaps breaking blocks below the zombies could be limited to mostly zombies in floor-near positions, like the spider zombie or the crawler or zombies that lost one or two legs, since other zombies dont have any animation of them bowing down yet and so to hit a block below them while standing... well that just wouldnt look right without matching mocap.

 

 

hey bro. lets let faatal take a look at it. He said he would and I bet he'll figure it out just fine.

 

k thnx bye

[The Gronk]

hey bro. lets let faatal take a look at it. He said he would and I bet he'll figure it out just fine.

 

k thnx bye

 

 

 

We generally let people throw ideas around in dev diary, most are discarded but sometimes good ideas arise out of the melting pot.

 

Fun stuff like that is the reason you now find human turds in the toilets, this was then expanded into the fertilizer we use to grow the crops.

 

The turds came first, the fertilizer was the excuse to keep them in :-)

[Gobarg]

We generally let people throw ideas around in dev diary, most are discarded but sometimes good ideas arise out of the melting pot.

 

Fun stuff like that is the reason you now find human turds in the toilets, this was then expanded into the fertilizer we use to grow the crops.

 

The turds came first, the fertilizer was the excuse to keep them in :-)

 

So someone threw turds around in the forums and the devs caught on huh?

Sounds like a Guppy thing to me

[Dagzambie]

So someone threw turds around in the forums and the devs caught on huh?

Sounds like a Guppy thing to me

 

Must... Not... Comment...

[Guest Rust Buddy]

We generally let people throw ideas around in dev diary, most are discarded but sometimes good ideas arise out of the melting pot.

 

Fun stuff like that is the reason you now find human turds in the toilets, this was then expanded into the fertilizer we use to grow the crops.

 

The turds came first, the fertilizer was the excuse to keep them in :-)

 

Well that's a fantastic general policy Gronky. But I was being specific to this guy who right away says why only spiders should break blocks downward and trying to put a limit on what faatal might wanna do right after faatal comes on and optimistically says he'll look at it. That's exactly what's wrong with these forums. Devs show stuff and people pick it apart. Devs give a plan and people say why it won't work. maybe they already got the animations for hitting up but haven't used em yet. anyone think about that? why would faatal even say he'd look into it if there were no animations to use?

 

when i think about ideas being thrown around i'm thinking about how can we do more and not less. its the tone of it. i prolly wouldn't say something if he was like "Spiders and crawlers and dogs would already be perfect for that ability" instead of saying it can't be done because of animations. And poop in the toilet? I thought that was the devs joking around between themselves and put it in as joke at first but then kept it in and then stole the fertilzier idea from Ark. who in the forums ever said poop?

[TSBX]

I'm just glad that we've all agreed YAY on beehives.

[The Gronk]

Well that's a fantastic general policy Gronky. But I was being specific to this guy who right away says why only spiders should break blocks downward and trying to put a limit on what faatal might wanna do right after faatal comes on and optimistically says he'll look at it. That's exactly what's wrong with these forums. Devs show stuff and people pick it apart. Devs give a plan and people say why it won't work. maybe they already got the animations for hitting up but haven't used em yet. anyone think about that? why would faatal even say he'd look into it if there were no animations to use?

 

when i think about ideas being thrown around i'm thinking about how can we do more and not less. its the tone of it. i prolly wouldn't say something if he was like "Spiders and crawlers and dogs would already be perfect for that ability" instead of saying it can't be done because of animations. And poop in the toilet? I thought that was the devs joking around between themselves and put it in as joke at first but then kept it in and then stole the fertilzier idea from Ark. who in the forums ever said poop?

 

Faatal is under no obligation to follow the suggestion, hell, he's not even under any obligation to read it. Naysaying is an essential part of teamwork, the ability to see future problems when other members of the team have still got their rose-tinted glasses on is a valuable skill.

 

As it stands, limiting digging to a select number of Z's was a hot topic of discussion quite recently. From that maelstrom it's quite likely that most of the pros and cons about the subject were thoroughly trawled over. Having too many Z's able to dig once led to swiss-cheese terrain which looked horrible, that's why digging Z's were removed in the first place.

 

Throwing turds at other players was the primary reason they were put in and if memory serves the forum generated the impetus for that.

[meganoth]

The mounds generally aren’t a bug, they’re a feature. Notice where the ground comes up in a mound on one side of the building, the ground comes down in a depression on the other side of the building. The middle of the building’s floor hasn’t been raised or lowered (in at least 90% of the A16 POIs I’ve seen). Rather, dirt is added or subtracted in a radius around that center in order to level enough space to fit the building.

 

What you are talking about is a feature. What DaVega was talking about was when that feature went overboard and formed round hills of varying heights, 5 blocks or more. While I liked the end result (I like weird in all forms) it unquestionably is not intended that way.

[Roland]

It’s moot whether they give vertical targeting to one or all zombies. Even if they give the ability to just the spider even I am good enough at modding to spread that ability around. It only takes one.