Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[madmole]

I know you'll probably get mad but maybe you can talk with Sean Murray and ask him if you could use his game engine, or at least ask him on how you could build your own for the next, or future games. No Man's sky is voxel or at least gives the appearance of voxel. You can manipulate the terrain (destroy or create), and almost everything is destroy able.

 

Please don't get angry, just saying you guys made all this headway with voxels, became leaders in it. Would be a shame to just abandon it after all that work.

 

As I said we've mostly solved it, and the gains we'd make now might be pretty minimal. 7 years ago though when we started? Would have started with smooth static terrain to begin with, and then figure out how to mine it later or how to do destroyable terrain later.

[madmole]

Any chance for a rework of melee because all weapon is like poking with a spear instead of swing a club or sword u aim right next to the zombie head and u miss where the club or sword goes right through him

 

Any chance you can follow the thread? Brand new melee system.

[madmole]

How much FPS would you save if you could only go down 10-20 blocks?

 

None. You'd save a bit of data and ram.

[madmole]

So the idea I suggested some pages back wasn't crazy at all. That's awesome, I wonder how much performance you got out of that change alone?

 

Not much because we used to have a static mesh rendered anyway. What we did get was much better distant mountain fidelity for the same cost basically, our distant terrain doesn't look like melted ice cream any more.

[TundraWolf42]

Pre orders were doing fine before Kickstarter. We were reluctant to do a kickstarter because we were already extremely successful in pre orders. Kickstarter might have actually hurt sales because we had a key distribution problem and disabled sales for over a week when sales were booming, so we maybe have lost more revenue than gained. We greenlit on Steam, KS was just a tiny fraction of revenue and it had a bunch of ambitious features we were forced into, honestly we might have been done and by now and done better without it.

 

I'm sure you guys are doing fine with sales and employees, do you think an extra bit of income from something like a patreon page would help to get things done faster/better?

 

I'm sure there would be alot of people that would continue to donate each month to help out TFP on this game and future ones.

[SnowDog1942]

True. Most warriors never wore armor in the first place in battle (depending on the region/culture); typically only cloth and linen outfits, mostly used for arrow deflection. But there were far more "brutes" (as society calls them today) back then

 

Those "Brutes" were about 5 foot tall and pudgy with a carb diet.

[MechanicalLens]

Those "Brutes" were about 5 foot tall and pudgy with a carb diet.

 

And mostly disease stricken, as well. Medieval warfare was we know it is mostly Hollywood's interpretation.

[Blake_]

Its nothing we'd do to 7 days except as an option.

 

Exactly. You seem to underestimate greatly the childhood feeling of playing with blocks, but I'm good as long as 7dtd keeps being this way. It is the only game of its tipe. If you take the voxels out it will be a wannabe everything with a cool horde night.

I remember voxels being the only thing I loved in alpha 1. The emotional feeling is WAY bigger than you think.

 

 

The setting for lower end Pcs wouldn't be bad though. For marketing purposes only.

There's a good bunch of people that wants the cake to be smooth on their atari and if it isn't they knee jerk and shout "why can't I play below system requirements? omg BS uninstall, burn!".

[madmole]

I wouldn’t have purchased if not voxel.

 

What this offers is ground-breaking.

 

Here’s a problem going static though. Most static games with building, even if they don’t specify limitations, have limitations on how much can be built.

In 7D2D the build limit is the world itself.

All those people who fill up a world with a dozen mega structures, and base their videos on it, would never be able to do what they do if not voxels.

 

I think you are confused as to what I was saying.

 

I'm saying if we just made the terrain static and still had fully buildable destroyable voxel houses/pois it would have saved us 3-4 years of headaches. 2 minimum, and the game would be more successful because it would look great, run great, and do 95% of the things you can do now in 1/3 the development time, then think about what we could add without the time wasted on water and voxel terrain. IMO we would have had a better game. How does 500 zombies on screen sound compared to mining, at 200 fps?

[madmole]

Finally, someone else who gets it first-hand. There is little to no fun in taking advice from everyone, copying this from x build and that from x build and building THE most efficient base possible. Sure, you might be guaranteed to be safe, but there's no freedom in that. No tinkering, experimentation, trial and error... And in A18, unlike previous alphas, I'll be completely winging my base.

 

Yeah its not a rubiks cube where you NEED a guide to win.

[Roland]

I'm sure you guys are doing fine with sales and employees, do you think an extra bit of income from something like a patreon page would help to get things done faster/better?

 

I'm sure there would be alot of people that would continue to donate each month to help out TFP on this game and future ones.

 

lol...the only people who are concerned about the speed of the development process are certain customers (who, btw, have a version of the game to play while they wait) TFP isn't concerned or worried about their pace and are happy to get it done when its done.

 

There are also a lot of customers who are just fine with the development timeline.

 

This is a proposed solution for a problem that doesn't exist

[madmole]

Won't all this learning make your head 'splode...

 

Its not learning, its being a mindless robot copying someone elses design. I want to try stuff myself, to me that is where all the fun is, and people are trying to steal my fun.

[Guppycur]

I think you are confused as to what I was saying.

 

I'm saying if we just made the terrain static and still had fully buildable destroyable voxel houses/pois it would have saved us 3-4 years of headaches. 2 minimum, and the game would be more successful because it would look great, run great, and do 95% of the things you can do now in 1/3 the development time, then think about what we could add without the time wasted on water and voxel terrain. IMO we would have had a better game. How does 500 zombies on screen sound compared to mining, at 200 fps?

 

I'm sure you're quickly getting tired of the conversation, but I disagree. You basically initially created Minecraft with Zombies, and latched onto the success of Minecraft at a perfect time by using voxels, because people were at the time, looking for additional voxel games.

 

If you had gone static your game could have easily fell by the wayside against giants like L4D and whatnot. The world may never know. =)

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Its not learning, its being a mindless robot copying someone elses design. I want to try stuff myself, to me that is where all the fun is, and people are trying to steal my fun.

 

Well hurry up and catch up to us. =)

 

(kidding, I get it)

[MechanicalLens]

Yeah its not a rubiks cube where you NEED a guide to win.

 

Exactly. I'll happily take small tips here and there ("Try raising that part of the wall by one block", or "Try placing a hatch above there"), but that's it. SoonTM, it will be time for the artist to go to work.

[andrough]

Those are som really terrible choices to make. 1.) leave your base and get rewarded for surviving a 7 day horde 2.) play like a normal base defense and lose 80% of the rewards. (either by despawn or destroying the loot).

 

You sure you cant have a mechanic so that the land claim block just loots the bags in its area or something? (of course i know easier said than done)

 

They last all night unless destroyed, so I don't see a problem. Risk and reward are good. Auto bag harvest? Sorry get off your ass and loot them yourselves, there isn't a scientist in the world that could create that economically in an apocalypse.

 

Fishing pole!

[Blake_]

I'm sure you're quickly getting tired of the conversation, but I disagree. You basically initially created Minecraft with Zombies, and latched onto the success of Minecraft at a perfect time by using voxels, because people were at the time, looking for additional voxel games.

 

If you had gone static your game could have easily fell by the wayside against giants like L4D and whatnot. The world may never know. =)

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

 

 

Well hurry up and catch up to us. =)

 

(kidding, I get it)

 

I agree with this. While there's apparently no bussiness reason to do voxel, Minecraft says otherwise. Playing with blocks is in our childhood memories. And bethesda is also in someone's childhood memories. Join those two together and you will be good to go for 30+ years.

[madmole]

TWD zombies a glass door will keep you safe for a long time. Stand at a chain link fence and kill 20 z's. A steel wall? Game over. If zombies there did the damage they do here you'd see much different housing on TWD.

 

I'm just saying they don't hide in mines.

 

That said, the writers are so stupid I cringe any more when there are obviously easy ways to survive. Like oh there's 100 walkers... big deal they are on the other side of the fence. Stand there and poke holes in their heads through the fence for 15 minutes, problem solved.

 

On fear they used ladders on trucks to walk a tight rope to a fence to exit... when in some shots there was clearly like 10' of clear space with walkers only every few meters... it would have been easy to just jump down and run past them and leave unless you were crippled.

 

Its like they create these problems that aren't even problems at all. Now if there were 10000 zeds or wall to wall zeds behind the fence or in the truck scene, sure, but there simply wasn't. Like what happened to the zombie guts trick? Put some on and walk out of there, but really anyone who could jog would have easily escaped, let alone sprint with a loaded gun.

[Haidrgna]

Not much because we used to have a static mesh rendered anyway. What we did get was much better distant mountain fidelity for the same cost basically, our distant terrain doesn't look like melted ice cream any more.

 

Having better distant terrain is going to be another game changer, it was already quite decent and I am sure this will knock it out of the park. Did it also solve the weird stuff where it sometimes would stay as overlay where you dug out or where a POI is deep in the terrain? And how does it do water, currently for water it seems limited, deep water gives a lot of holes where there is no distant terrain at all.

[madmole]

Mining is now dishonorable? I'm with those people. If 7dtd wasn't voxel it would be on the same level as all the other shooters, a game I wouldn't waste a minute of my time on.

 

Again why is everyone taking the black and white on this? I said if we made the terrain static, and had voxel buildings we'd have saved tons of time and had 60 fps on potatoes and 500 zeds on screen. Yeah lets cling to mining instead of take the game where it needed to go.

[madmole]

MM can you do a video on the Mods like what's new and whats changed?

 

also will I still be able to look cool with my Cigar and Nerdy glasses?

 

Nope. I have no idea whats new. There might be 2 new mods? Heck we deleted more than we added I'd venture.

[madmole]

My one question: Will there be a variety in zombie damage against various materials depending if it is a weak, medium or strong zombie?

 

For example, i could imagine zombie nurse hitting for less than a football player, cop or biker, so having less power to damage stronger blocks. This could be incorporated in a manner that "weaker" zombies will deal 60% damage to metals, 80% to bricks/cement and 100% to others. Stronger variants could deal 90% to metals, 100% to bricks/cement and 110% to others.

 

Values can be tweaked in any way, but i know the mechanics are there, as i tweaked it in a modlet in A17. This could make a fine addition in general, making early game a bit easier, but late game harder (stronger Zs more easily messing up the base).

 

Is this from 2012? Its this way forever.

[SnowDog1942]

Again why is everyone taking the black and white on this? I said if we made the terrain static, and had voxel buildings we'd have saved tons of time and had 60 fps on potatoes and 500 zeds on screen. Yeah lets cling to mining instead of take the game where it needed to go.

 

If u could remove underground mining as an option and get anything near 500 zeds on screen id be very happy, but without being vulgar about it.

[MajorMunchy]

If u could remove mining as an option and get anything near 500 zeds on screen id get a massive stiffy.

 

id go for mining to a shallower depth. maybe 20 blocks? idk i love my cave bases and mountain shacks

[andrough]

I'm just saying they don't hide in mines.

 

That said, the writers are so stupid I cringe any more when there are obviously easy ways to survive. Like oh there's 100 walkers... big deal they are on the other side of the fence. Stand there and poke holes in their heads through the fence for 15 minutes, problem solved.

 

On fear they used ladders on trucks to walk a tight rope to a fence to exit... when in some shots there was clearly like 10' of clear space with walkers only every few meters... it would have been easy to just jump down and run past them and leave unless you were crippled.

 

Its like they create these problems that aren't even problems at all. Now if there were 10000 zeds or wall to wall zeds behind the fence or in the truck scene, sure, but there simply wasn't. Like what happened to the zombie guts trick? Put some on and walk out of there, but really anyone who could jog would have easily escaped, let alone sprint with a loaded gun.

 

Yeah it feels so silly when games force you into inorganic sequences or puzzles that just feel like some dev's special baby that had to be included.

 

Speaking of guts, I can't really think of any items that reduce heat or 'add stealth'. That could be another fun way to enhance the agility player's abilities above nonstealth players. Blending in could be interesting, as long as it's not op.