[CC_Left4Dead]

Thanks, Matt!

 

I'm now building out the underground parts from Death Toll: Riverside Tunnel and the sewers from rounds 1 & 2.  It'll be another deal like DT_Downtown, where it's deliberately not sprawling, but the memorable parts are condensed together to fit into one large POI.  So that'll be a Tier 4 I'm estimating, and then I plan to do some standalone buildings (Tier 1 or non-questable) from the finale.  At that point I believe one could almost, if they wanted to, string together all these POIs on a custom map and have a reasonably representative facsimile of the whole campaign.  I'm not saying it's a good idea, but you could.

 

The roof of No Mercy hospital may be Left 4 Dead's most iconic setting.  The roof itself wouldn't be too bad to make (I've looked), but it's on top of a skyscraper, where you never see the inside of most of the floors in L4D.  It's definitely not the lowest hanging fruit, but I'll keep thinking about how it could be feasible.

[7dtd X <something> crossover]

On 9/29/2021 at 6:11 PM, Matt115 said:

So my ideas : 7DTD X L4D2

I'm working on it. 

[What is 7 days to die?]

Adding to what’s been said, shifts in emphasis have been somewhat unavoidable while the game has and continues to be in development. You drop in a Minecraft-style crafting module one alpha, and suddenly 7 Days to Die is a game with a well developed crafting system.  You add random world generation the next alpha, and suddenly 7 Days to Die is a game with robust exploration and replayability.

 

It would be easy to construct a false narrative around these developments.  “The devs first thought this would just be a crafting game, but then they changed their minds and pivoted towards it being an exploration game.  Then they got bored with that, and hoped it could be a role playing game instead.  Then…” etc.  I see this feedback quite often on the Steam forum: that the devs must have no direction and can’t make up their minds.

 

But this ignores that the game is still being made.  A bake shop’s cookie dough might be tasty in its own right, but the bakers were never there to make cookie dough.  The fact that cookie dough was available first doesn’t mean that their plan A was to make cookie dough for everyone.  They were always there to make cookies.

[CC_Left4Dead]

Version 0.9 is now released!  It adds DT_Downtown, a Tier 5 POI and without a doubt the largest prefab I've built to date.  I've been putting as much time as I can into it these last few weeks, and now you can enjoy this newly finished centerpiece of the pack.

• Over 1 million vertices/triangles
• Over 100 sleeper spawn locations
• 40-45 minutes to complete (your mileage may vary)

 

DT_Downtown is an extra large conglomerate of Riverside's downtown buildings, reassembled into a creative yet familiar dungeon crawl.

 

Players should recognize many of the locations, encountering them in a fresh way.

 

Many areas are more detailed in shape, texture, and lighting than they were originally in Left 4 Dead.  And the variety to the combat encounters, only possible in 7DtD, should keep you on your toes.

 

Some areas are wholly original, like this stock room connecting several of the shops and offices.

 

Inspired by the original Death Toll, it all builds up to an energetic conclusion in the back alleys.  Can you reach the safe room in time, or will you be left for dead?

[Can we talk about how horrible it is to price the game at FULL PRICE while its borderline unplayable?]

Given these grievances, maybe console players could boycott the game.  If enough people do it, Telltale Games might even go out of business! /s

 

Okay, fine.  That's being terribly glib and sarcastic, but here's my point.  Telltale Games is a dead horse, and when you ask for updates to the existing console release, you're beating that dead horse.  Actually in this analogy, when you come here to do it, you're beating the jockey that was on the horse before it died.

[We shouldn't be able to pick up Vehicles]

6 hours ago, 12pack said:

Unless it respawned empty whenever you did that..

I mean loot go poof.. not backpack left at the scene..

 

I think that would throw the baby out with the bathwater, since the context of that idea was to "improve the experience with disappearing or stuck vehicles."  If players get mad about losing their vehicle, they sure as heck will get mad about losing the stuff in the vehicle.

[We shouldn't be able to pick up Vehicles]

3 hours ago, Roland said:

What about protection from your own dart traps....?

 

 

Ah, right.  On a totally unrelated note, I wonder if A20 will have a vehicle mod where you could, say, safely stow your bow on horde night.

[We shouldn't be able to pick up Vehicles]

13 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

It's just something I realized was "missing" in 7D2D by comparing it with a different game. It's a real shame for me, since 7D2D is so complete that it's kind of frustrating you have to play "pretend" with what you have like kids do ( I'm looking at you Roland!  ).

 

But even if your vehicle always occupied its full space in the world, you'd still be playing pretend: pretending that your vehicle is vulnerable and needs to be protected in a garage, when we all know your vehicles don't require any building at all (and this is unlikely to change at least until bandits are added).  You would still only really be building a garage for aesthetics rather than a functional purpose.  Meanwhile, I think quality of life overall would suffer from not being able to reset a vehicle that gets badly stuck in difficult terrain.

 

What if we take this parking space idea, and use it to improve the experience with disappearing or stuck vehicles?  What if a parking spot were like a bedroll for vehicles?  If your vehicle disappears or is stuck in the middle of nowhere, you can interact with your parking spot and it will respawn there.  If I recall correctly, other open world games with an emphasis on vehicles (e.g. Grand Theft Auto and Saints Row) have this feature.

 

There would be an exploit opportunity in respawning your vehicle to bring home loot instantly.  But this would be tempered by the fact that you have to get back to your parking spot to use it in the first place.  So abandoning your vehicle instead of just driving back is unlikely to gain you anything.  There'd be exploits with making your character suicide, too, but what else is new.

[CC_Left4Dead]

The next place I want to represent in this project is downtown Riverside.  But I'm running into a familiar problem.  The player's path in Left 4 Dead weaves in and out of many buildings.  You may only go inside a room or two of a given building, while left to guess about the rest of its interior.  That won't do for an open world voxel game, where a player can explore every nook and cranny.

 

My solution is twofold.  First, select the interesting, well defined spaces and smush them together to absorb the gaps of undefined or uninspired space.  This keeps the whole POI to a reasonable size (I hope).  And secondly, when there's a space that's undefined in L4D that's unavoidable, I'm borrowing and inserting rooms piecemeal from other parts of the map.  I'm still having to make a wholly original shop interior here and there.  But the point is to bring L4D locations to 7DtD, so I'm trying to keep the highest possible proportion of places you can actually see in Riverside.  And while the path is condensed, players should at times recognize that they're going through the same places, in the same order, that they're used to from playing Death Toll.

 

The gist is that this POI has snowballed and snowballed, and now it's a Tier 5 POI.  It'll be my first Tier 5 in fact.  I haven't added sleepers yet, but I truly think the Tier 5 classification will be justified.  Hopefully players will be pleased at this news.

 

For those more interested in content than my musings on level design, here is a teaser.

 

An office on Riverside's main street in Left 4 Dead:

[/img]

 

The same office in CC_Left4Dead, which I'd say is 90% done (not the whole POI, but this office):

[Subterranean military outpost]

On 8/15/2021 at 3:27 PM, weaponspec said:

 

I especially like the lighting/atmosphere of this pic.

[CC_Left4Dead]

Version 0.8 is now released, which adds the Quik Buy convenience store, again from Death Toll.  This one has a lot of detail & lighting work: more than the original had in Left 4 Dead.  It's the first commercial POI in the pack, and it's also my first time using grouped sleeper volumes.  There are a couple spots that look crude for now, e.g. the fallen light pole... I've made them the best I can for A19, but I'm already looking forward to some new shapes and decoration options in A20, which this POI can use as soon as A20 becomes publicly available.

 

Enjoy!

[CC_Left4Dead]

Thanks for the feedback, all!

 

It's been an interesting challenge to make some decorations, like a piano or a big old TV, out of the limited set of block shapes and textures.  Some people talk about constraints spurring creativity, and I think that applies here.  It's long been interesting to me how every world builder has their own take on how to make a fireplace in this game, for instance.

 

My next POI for this collection is the "Quik Buy" convenience store, which is opposite the church in Death Toll.  I can safely say it's most of the way done, but I do want to make more passes on it before it's ready for release.

[do you eat the dog food and the cat food you loot?]

I probably thought twice about it at first. As it stands now, eating canned food provides only advantages, other than the opportunity cost of not doing something better with it.  So... down the hatch.

 

As for the gross out factor, you have to remember that long time players saw a time when they were pulling “human turds” out of toilets and turning them into fertilizer (or worse, for the less practical and more childish/trollish among us).  For me, I’ve about decided that water is so ridiculously plentiful (e.g. you can live off of one water block forever), that toilet water is a waste of time.  Heck, at 100% loot you don’t even have to boil murky water - you find enough of the fresh stuff.

 

If I ever seriously pursue a more extensive mod, I plan to represent mental/emotional/social health factors as well as physical survival.  This would include qualities like ‘humanity’ or ‘comfort’ that would definitely go down if you eat pet food.  Then it wouldn’t be a no brainer, from a game theory point of view, to just eat it.  The player would actually have to weigh an upside and downside.  I’d also have an iffy version of each canned food (not just the pet food), where there’s a risk of food poisoning.

[CC_Left4Dead]

36 minutes ago, Cpt Krunch said:

Going to add these to the 2 Walking Dead prefab group I have in the current map Im doing.

 

Left 4 Dead in The Walking Dead? Sounds fanciful! But if it works, it works.

 

I've switched the primary link to a Google Drive url. Please let me know if anyone still has issues downloading the file.

[CC_Left4Dead]

13 hours ago, stallionsden said:

Oh nice work . Looks great

 

Ok to add to the compopack 🙂

 

Regards 

Stallionaden

 

Thanks! We chatted about it earlier, but to not leave your question unanswered publicly... sure! I'd be happy to contribute this to the compopack.  Thanks for asking first.

 

And thanks for bringing the download issue on Chrome to my attention.  I will investigate alternative places to host the mod.

[CC_Left4Dead]

>>> Click Here to Download <<<

>>> Alternative download link <<<

 

CC_Left4Dead
version 1.0
A collection of locales from Left 4 Dead, remade as 7DtD POIs.
by 'Crater Creator'
Last tested in A19.6 b8

 

There are two zombie games that, by a wide margin, I've played more than others. One is 7 Days to Die, and the other is Left 4 Dead 2. Like The Walking Dead and other series, Left 4 Dead has become a beloved classic of modern zombie fiction in its own right. This made it an easy choice to use as a source of locations to adapt to 7 Days to Die.

 

For the 1.0 release, I've focused on locations from Death Toll, my favorite Left 4 Dead 2 campaign. The pack currently includes 10 POIs:

 

Tier 5
DTDowntown: an extra large conglomerate of Riverside's downtown buildings, reassembled into a creative yet familiar dungeon crawl

 

Tier 4
DTTunnel: a largely underground journey through Death Toll's first two rounds, including the road tunnel, sewers/waterworks, and Hersch Shipping Company

 

Tier 2
DTChurch: Riverside's local church and adjacent cemetery. The L4D Survivors used it as a safe room after defeating 'church guy' and the horde he called with the church's bell.

 

Tier 1
DTCabin: a creepy forest cabin on the outskirts of Riverside

 

DTQuikBuy: a convenience store, just across the street from the church in Riverside

 

DTBoatHouse: a small riverfront building, where the survivors held out before John and Amanda Slater rescued them by boat

 

Non-Questable
DTTower
DTBungalow
DTPavilion

DTRiverCabin

 

All POIs are configured to work in RWG. They use all vanilla game assets and should work with other mods. They're meant to closely match the originals in terms of aesthetics, with changes to pathing, loot balance, and other gameplay as needed, especially to create entertaining 'dungeon crawls' in the questable POIs.

 

This collection may expand as time allows. Not all memorable/distinctive locations would work well as standalone 7DtD POIs, but others are viable.

 

To install, simply move the CC_Left4Dead folder into your 7 Days to Die installation's Mods folder.

 

Lastly, I love feedback!  Put it right here.

 

 

[What you prefer to eat or drink while playing game?]

I sip water, or occasionally whatever was left over from my most recent meal: tea, fruit juice, soda.  I have no problem with eating at my desk, but I typically don’t eat while playing, since both my hands are busy with the game.  I might take a swig while holding down the mouse to mine, or when my player character drinks something, for that extra little boost to immersion.

[How do I change from a Steam Account to a Non-Steam?]

Steam was hogging a ridiculous amount of CPU on my Mac, until I went to the friends list settings and turned on "Don't embed images and other media in-line" and "Disable animated room effects".  For some reason Steam does a poor job of handling chat windows with animated GIFs, videos, and similar doodads that've become commonplace, even if the chat window isn't active.

["I can't find 19.5 in the betas tab!"]

Alpha 19.5 went stable on May 28th, 2021.  That's five weeks ago today.  These are all comments made to the announcement on Steam.

 

How to update ah, why can't I update

Is anyone else having issues with 19.5 stable not showing up on the list? It still shows me experimental. I'm trying to play darkness falls but it wants 19.5 stable and that isn't an option for me on the list. Any clues on what I need to do. Thank you

Anyone have any idea why I can't get the 19.5 option?  The last one in my list is 19.4 even after updating steam

How do i enable aplha 19.5 stable? i dont see it in the beta tab.

I can't seem to get my game to update to this stable release and I don't understand why?

What happened to the update i can't see it.

I'm not getting the update 19.5

I checked the beta version still 19.4

Need help.. Thank you

Alpha 19.5 Stable is not displayed in the Beto version list What to do? The latest displayed version of Alpha 19.4 Stable, although many servers are already playing on New 19.5 Help

why cant i see the 19.5 version ?

...I would appreciate some help from someone who may actually know something on how to fix this.  I've done clean install.  Checked the beta tabs for both the game and my dedicated server and the most recent available opt in is the 19.4 stable.  I'm genuinely at a loss on what is left to do here. 

Thanks so much.

it's June 2nd and my game won't update to 19.5, it is stuck at 19.4. What am I doing wrong?

my steam account is not updating 19.5. i have tried to sign out of steam, to up date the clients and no download is showing. can anyone help

ːsteamsadː

I love this game but I'm new to playing early access titles...Does Steam update my game to 19.5 stable? Or do I just completely not understand how this works?

Thanks!

@7daystodie The Stable 19.5 are not showing up in Betas. Also the Last experimental version not showing up

how to have the update 19.5 it is not displayed in the folder

I've done what the instructions say to OPT in and it does not show in the drop down menu... whack.

19.5 is not showing up in my beta list on steam

i for some reason dont have access to 19.5?

So. when i do the normal thing to update 7D2D to the next version.. the List in the betas tab Does Not show 19.5 Stable , it only shows 19.4 stable as the latest version available...  am i missing something or is there a kerfuffle with Steam?

19.5 not showing as a available download/update? Only 19.4 shows in the list? What should I do?

I can't seem to switch betas to 19.5 it isn't there for me

when it will be updated -_- I am not receiving this update.

How come 19.5 does not show up in my beta list?

So why isn't this showing in my list of versions to select from?????

im stuck with alpha 19.4 and i cant get past any help plz

19.5 will not appear in my betas. What to do?

I don`t have the option to update to 19.5 stable in the beta drop down list?

please asssit.....

Not for me. Any one else having the issue where it is not in the drop down list on the beta tab?

its not showing up on properties for me plz halp

How can I get the 19.5 stable? Because the last version on betas is 19.4.. do not have the 19.5 option

i cant find the version 19.5 Stable to download on the Beta Tab

I still don't have the option to download or play 19.5. Big sad.

I do not see the latest alphas to download, only 19.4 and the previous ones appear to download .

please i need help

I only see the version 19.14 as the last one in Steam, how do I fix this?

I can't access 19.5. its acting as if it is unavailable....

I do not see 19.5 Stable on the list and my game shows I am 19.4 Stable. What am I missing?

 

That's a rate of more than one post a day, where a user needs help because they can't figure out how to play 19.5.  There's been confusion on this for a long time.  And anecdotally, I think it's gotten worse and worse with every alpha, as more people discover the betas tab and opt in to experimental versions of the game.  Each of these actual comments are likely representative of untold others that aren't commenting, but are likewise stuck on a past version and can't figure out how to play 19.5.

 

1. Would it be possible to change policy to just include the latest stable release in the list of betas?  I know it's not a beta.  I know from a development standpoint it makes no sense to put it among the betas.  But it's just not clicking for a lot of people.
2. Could @The Fun Pimp include a note in every announcement of a stable build, that players need to opt out of all betas in order to get it?

 

I know this is easy to dismiss, that people should know better or know how to search.  But it's hard to deny that under the current standard operating procedure, this is a frequent problem among the player base.

[Czech language translation - voluntarily]

On 6/16/2021 at 10:47 PM, Lucy101 said:

I speak multiple languages and Czech is one of them. Do you mean voice over translation for ingame or just the text translations? If voice overs are needed, I can help do Jen the trader voice translations for you. I dont think there are any other female NPC's ingame other than Jen?

 

That’s correct; she’s the only female that speaks in the game currently.  Though the trader voice lines are more ‘flavor’ than anything.  It would be more important to translate all the written text, so that Czech players can read journal tips, stats on items, etc.  Thankfully all of that is in one or two Localization.txt files, so it could be a compact mod to make.

[Your top priority for day 1, crowded server.]

For PvE/coop, the first thing I’d always do is group up, by which I mean physically huff it over to wherever the other players are in addition to allying with them.  I’ve never played on a server that big, but I presume a main group would quickly emerge.  I don’t see much point in joining a PvE server just to fly solo.

 

Then you’re a member of the community, picking some specialities based on need and what others don’t have covered as well.  If others have been on the server already, they may already have some better tools, weapons, etc., and it’d help the group’s success to share that with you.  Once the group has a roof over their heads and knows where a trader is, it’s usually off to do shared quests and advance in my own specialties.  Frankly it’s like being a good roommate: keep the fridge stocked, try not to be a mooch, respect other’s private property, and ask before reorganizing or redecorating things.

[Checking in]

If you post your computer specs and graphics settings, I imagine someone can point out where the bottleneck is and/or what settings to turn down.  Don't just give us the highlights - the details matter.

[is it possible to set really not (or late) bloodmoon alert ?]

1 hour ago, SylenThunder said:

🤦‍♂️

I blame the lack of coffee.

 

And at a time when the OP is literally asking for silent thunder, no less. 

[is it possible to set really not (or late) bloodmoon alert ?]

1 hour ago, SylenThunder said:

If you are running a dedicated server there is an option for this.

<property name="BloodMoonWarning"                value="8" />                <!-- The Hour number that the red day number begins on a blood moon day. Setting this to -1 makes the red never show.  -->

 

 

That looks like it affects the UI, but the OP was asking about the storm, e.g. the thunder and lightning effects that also serve as a warning.

[The irony of it all (thoughts on 7D2D and Caves...)]

7 hours ago, Boidster said:

 

User name checks out. Sort of.

 

I would not be surprised at all if the very early design phases of Minecraft included attempts to play with SI (beyond sand), but were abandoned because of the cave issue. And so it has outstanding underground caves, and also you can build your entire fortress in mid-air.

 

Well, what is "the cave issue" exactly?

1. Performance cost at world generation time?
2. Performance cost at runtime?
3. People surprised/mad when POIs built above a cave collapse?
4. People surprised/mad when their base built above a cave collapses?
5. Inconsistent SI results with cavities that span many chunks?

Did I miss anything?  If we dissect those...

1. The change from infinite worlds to generating the whole world at once bloated generation time way more than caves ever did.  One dev mentioned that if they were to do caves again, they'd use a Perlin worm algorithm.  It's a method of stringing segments together, and then you'd add decorations and cave POIs.  It's a lot like generating the roads, but underground, so I'd expect a similar efficiency.  In other words, I'd think optimizations for quick road generation would translate straightforwardly to quick cave generation.
2. I'm least sure about this one but I think the biggest factor for runtime performance was overdraw: rendering too much that you couldn't actually see.  Hopefully the occlusion system, added after caves, would mitigate this in caves now.
3. They're big worlds, with enough space to have cities, but also terrain features like mountains where you don't have cities.  There could likewise be a rule to not place POIs above caves.
4. As for player bases, I happen to think it's more interesting when the particulars of your build site can have more pros and cons.  But setting that aside, the UI could indicate when you're placing a block, if the block supporting it is on a solid column down to bedrock.  This would be a good feature anyway, since newer players are always digging under their bases with deleterious results.
5. I don't think this even matters with regard to caves.  The only effect is that sometimes you have a cavern that should collapse, but doesn't.  I can't recall anyone really lamenting that.  Besides which, player made mines have the same issue.

In fact, all but item 1 also apply to mines or whatever else players do underground.  Which I guess supports my point: caves are such a no-brainer thing to do when you're doing a voxel game anyway.  If it's all solid down there, why even have a hundred-block-deep layer of stone?  Might as well have higher mountains and let people reach bedrock in 20 blocks.  What a waste!  Yeah, it's a sandbox and people can use that solid space to make cool things... but there's all this effort to make the surface interesting, when there's nothing special about that. The surface looks interesting in regular, non-voxel games.

 

7 Days to Die really is, if you'll pardon the expression, just scratching the surface of what it could do with voxels.  And when voxels are one of the game's big selling points - the tradeoff for lower graphics fidelity and performance, in fact - that's disappointing.