Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Guppycur]

So please inspire me as to what history you learned from? People learn by their own mistakes not by others and certainly not history books in school. I try to tell people how to live their lives all the time and they just keep making the same stupid mistakes and learn slow AF. "What did I say would happen" "uhh yeah you were right" then they do the same crap again or new crap and barely learn.

 

Maybe I had crappy teachers, but I don't recall learning anything from history classes. I find it more interesting now, but as a kid or teenager it was worse than watching paint dry. I am curious what you think a student can learn from it.

 

I found history boring af until I got into college and instead of repeating the same 200 years we were reading newspaper articles from back then, diaries, and getting a much better feel for the bias, and that woke me up to realizing the kinds of biasness we see in every day events.

[madmole]

But they do not release on PC, so its free game for the Master Race.

 

I can't understand that at all. I mean hey dude, all you do is upload a file and earn 500+ million just from one platform. Are you that lazy? I mean it is developed on a PC, it runs on potatoes, why not publish it on PC? Its not exclusive to any console AFAIK so it makes no sense. They put GTA on PC.

[madmole]

This is out of pure curiosity, not argumentative.

 

If I was assigning priority to bugs it would be hard for me to justify what seems to be minor vehicle sound issue as an MF for experimental, is it really THAT game breaking?

 

If thats an MF this release is gonna be pretty polished.

 

Some of the MF bugs are a little questionable, but Rick wants a soft landing, this was a 17 bug that never got fixed so I think its like hey lets finally get this one done too kind of thing.

[meganoth]

History was my least favorite class. Not only am I not built to absorb history (I'm more of a science guy myself), but the entire time I was asking myself "Why the hell do I need to know this?" And the truth is, there is no reason. It's just another question in the game of Trivial Pursuit. By no means is it necessary for you to function in society. I mean maybe you'll be a little uncultured, but Genghis Khan isn't going to get me a job.

 

My personal opinion: Elementary school should be more or less the same (i do think some history does you some good), but after that the education system should be 3 core principles: reading, writing, and arithmetic (to an extent, no one's doing trig). The rest of the credits are up to you to pick. Basically college but even more open ended.

 

I would disagree. In elementary school kids can only memorize dates and events. If there is a real gain from History class, then it is learning and understanding WHY something happened. And you need to be a lot older to understand that (and you need a good teacher to make you understand)

[madmole]

Word, I would rather buy most of my resources from the traders anyway.

 

200 zombies sounds like it could open the game up for things like followers, npcs, large npc towns. Maybe a charisma skill line for companions

 

I will make a radio tower and bringing a trader npc into my base... then i drop a blueprint like the forest or whatever and build his base for him and he moves in after i finish.

 

Also, dropkicks.

 

Exactly. With navmesh and static terrain, pathing costs would be nothing outdoors at least so that would make it easier to add followers. Its really about seeing the glass half empty or half full.

[madmole]

I haven't read the forum much lately but this sounds like dumping voxels?

 

Nope, just useless chatter about what could have been.

[madmole]

I’m with you on Adesanyas, if he can beat Whitaker then I’ll say he’s interesting. Whitaker is the man and that fight will not go the distance. I do not see a tall, skinny guy beating him. Gastallum, never been a huge fan. Other than that nasty haymaker he has, the rest of his game is average.

 

Yeah if Gastelum can close the distance, Whittaker will own him. I just hope he's full on and ready for war, he had some depression and surgery and has been out for a while.

[MechanicalLens]

Don't you have to be level 80 or something in A17 to make a 4x4?

 

EDIT: In A18 you'll be walking and have brown and orange stuff for sure on day 3, and be level 3.

 

You only have to be level 80/85 (can't remember) to CRAFT the parts. If you find the parts, you can assemble the vehicle at a working workbench with no levels or perks required.

[MechanicalLens]

Maybe a touch of the 18 code slipped through the last patch?

 

Huh. *Shrugs* I assumed it was a feature because you could do the same back in A16 with a minibike; the book was only need to craft (and repair?) the parts, but you could find the parts out in the wild.

[AtomicUs5000]

I found history boring af until I got into college and instead of repeating the same 200 years we were reading newspaper articles from back then, diaries, and getting a much better feel for the bias, and that woke me up to realizing the kinds of biasness we see in every day events.

 

I hated history and I still consider it the worst subject. Many history professors are passionate about teaching history, though. It was refreshing to learn history from different perspectives and to understand the why and how things happened... not just the what and when. When school teachers just throw books at you and expect you memorize events and dates, it completely diminishes any value of learning it in the first place.

[MechanicalLens]

I hated Fallouts lock perk. No chance, none? Screw you guys. Basically forcing everyone to buy lock picking or find an npc to do it kind of sucks. Give me options, but nope, they pretty much make everyone buy a few ranks of that or deal with wondering whats in the safe the rest of their game.

 

Right now lock picking is probably too easy but since you can mash through stuff it needs to be easier than breaking in. It needs some balancing yet.

 

What is your opinion on Skyrim's route? (As you level up lockpicking, you can lockpick more advanced keyholes with a lesser chance of the lockpick breaking.) If balancing is in order, do you think a simplified variant of this system would be an appropriate solution? Just curious.

 

Edit: For instance, as you level up lockpicking, you would be able to break into different tiers of safes. (Wall safes, then gun safes, and following that, hardened chests.)

[madmole]

While I can’t speak for him, I believe he meant post high school. The stuff you learn up to maybe junior/senior year is very important. At that point, if you aren’t university-bound, you should be learning trade skills. The problem with universities is they push classes on you so you are “well-rounded” and I think it’s over-rated. I spent 13 years at the university, I’m sure 3 years could have been cut out by not taking courses that weren’t related to my profession.

 

Yes I meant high school. Even college is a waste of time and money if you don't finish it and get into the field you study for. A lot of people go and get a degree in some fantasy field like Forensic science then never make a dime with it.

 

I managed to become self employed by the time I was 25 by taking a 9 month trade school course for auto body repair, I worked in the field 5 years then started my own shop. I started new businesses and they all succeeded. Obviously I'm not normal, I worked 7 days a week and many long hours to make it happen.

 

The thing that really annoys me is cosmetology. My oldest daughter went to school to become one. I told her why would you go into debt to make minimum wage and crappy tips? She's stubborn like me, did it anyway and after quite a few years of minimum wage, long hours and crappy tips, she quit that and started her own business unrelated to cosmetology. I told her the exact outcome, (my ex wife did the same thing) and she still ignored my 100% foresight into her future. So again, history here was kind of useless, people want to learn for themselves not hear about other people's failures. I mean yeah history could have been useful here, but she refused to listen. I had 100% logic and proof, yet... people have to learn for themselves, but that is ok, its all part of the process.

[Mechanimal]

Not with mods, I built an insane hotel/casino with elevators and a ton of parts, wired up electricty, juke box and a lot of settlers and it ran great. MY biggest pet peave is 1 block per meter, which means you can't put a bunch of small decorations on top of a single block, and you are stuck on a 1 meter square grid, you can't build a house on a cul de sac. You can't rotate 360 degrees. We have some solutions there though for the next tech we've talked about. Hopefully we can overcome them for our future games.

 

I have also wondered about this aspect of the 7DTD voxel environment, why does every entity need to dominate and entire block, especially with little things that you mentioned, like putting small things on shelves and so on. I have also played with other building systems, more than just minecraft, which has a similar restriction. A lot of those are building within a pure static environment, so that's one thing, but very few that let you build that freely within a voxel world.

 

One I should mention, worth checking out even if only as a technical example, is Medieval Engineers, though I would call it far more of a Tech Demo than an actual game. There is no game, and it's weird, and mostly abandoned now, but that's Keen for you, similar problems with their other project, Space Engineers, both are super promising and hold tons of potential that is never reached. Their weird, you guys operate very differently, far more focused on game play experience.

 

Anyway what makes Medieval Engineers so interesting is it's voxel engine, and it has SI too, unlike many others. However it can be a pain in the #%! when your castle crumbles because a single foundation block cracks under the load, so the way in calculates SI is quite different than 7dtd. It also has wall, floor, etc system that is very similar to engines like Ark, not set in 3' cubes, but still obviously using a grid, but those chunks are more like 8' cubes. But what does make it sweet is how well it lets you place smaller blocks, and even disengage from any kind of hard set world grid. The walls and such snap together, if you want them to, but very little else does, and it allows for some really really neat construction. You can even work with beams and planks, etc. When you place base stations they do not snap to anything, one has to totally freeball their placement. And I love their shelves, they work like storage when opened, but the things you place in them actually appear on the shelf. They also have neat crates that display what is inside them on the outside, and how much of that item is in it too, only catch is it only works when is just one item type. But I do love standing back and seeing all of my inventory at one glance without any menus or additional signs needing attached and filled out manually.

 

My point is I think it can be done, not sure what the major differences are between the 7DTD engine and that one, but it is the only example I have found with that range of flexibility in a voxel engine. Also the world is an actual globe, it is super neat how that works, it has no edges, at all. You can move infinitely on a finite plain(sphere), basically. But it has no POIs to speak of, and very little, and quite abysmal, AI. It is just a sandbox, but as a voxel enthusiast I highly recommend at least playing with it to see what is possible in this type of engine. Plus I highly doubt they will ever finish it, someone needs to pick up that torch and bring that level of flexibility into a voxel engine, but within an actual kickass fun game, which is something TFP has certainly excels at.

[madmole]

I hated school. Found out taking on a trade skill might not cut it in life, especially when it involves technology. I was a telephone guy... worked my way up to Avaya certified master technician one step at a time. Times changed, things went digital, wireless. Ended up in a kitchen cooking Greek food.

Went to school and now I write software.

 

I hated school too, except the stuff I wanted to do, like auto mechanics, art, etc. Good for you, school can be good if you apply yourself and have strong goals. Some people go to school and just waste their time and money is all.

[MechanicalLens]

Morloc cringed as the millennial slowly stuck their tentacle like cold slimy fingers outward to shake hands, and upon contact felt shivers go up his spine as the gelatin like fingers conformed to his grip.

 

LOL someday I might have to write some stuff, so I best practice.

 

I have never read a more accurate sentence in my life. XD All you forgot was the millennial's twisted and quite awkward smile.

[madmole]

@Roland, Can we add to the list of off-topic subjects the following?:

 

• Which one woman is hotter questions.
  
• Which fighter is better.
  
• UFC match results.
  
• Diet-related questions.
  
• Madmole's personal assets, including his enormous personal gym, his incredibly expensive custom made sofa, his Hellcat, his castle, and whatever else he has mentioned multiple times already.
  
• Madmole's views on the world that have no relation to 7 days to die, including education, people being sensitive, history being stupid, near death experiences and many others that I am forgetting.
  

 

I don't mean to be offensive here, but I've been holding back on this for a while now to see if things got better, and it's aggravating to see Madmole write posts in big letters announcing that a game-related subject that he doesn't like discussing in the a18 diary is now off-topic, and still answer every single question of random users on random topics in great detail time and time again, even in an ongoing conversation, like we're in the off-topic section of the forums. It's a very unfair double standard that he has.

 

I'm not against a developer sharing such things, but at least do it in the appropriate sections of the forum.

 

Like this thread is on topic, ever. Don't be a hypocrite. If I say something is off topic its because I can't read it all and questions won't get answered. I hope A18 buries your xp bar into the red for a couple of weeks.

[Mechanimal]

Yes I meant high school. Even college is a waste of time and money if you don't finish it and get into the field you study for. A lot of people go and get a degree in some fantasy field like Forensic science then never make a dime with it.

 

I managed to become self employed by the time I was 25 by taking a 9 month trade school course for auto body repair, I worked in the field 5 years then started my own shop. I started new businesses and they all succeeded. Obviously I'm not normal, I worked 7 days a week and many long hours to make it happen.

 

The thing that really annoys me is cosmetology. My oldest daughter went to school to become one. I told her why would you go into debt to make minimum wage and crappy tips? She's stubborn like me, did it anyway and after quite a few years of minimum wage, long hours and crappy tips, she quit that and started her own business unrelated to cosmetology. I told her the exact outcome, (my ex wife did the same thing) and she still ignored my 100% foresight into her future. So again, history here was kind of useless, people want to learn for themselves not hear about other people's failures. I mean yeah history could have been useful here, but she refused to listen. I had 100% logic and proof, yet... people have to learn for themselves, but that is ok, its all part of the process.

 

So true, I have no degree, an Art School dropout that just worked my way into certain fields by, well, working. My grade was getting paid and recommended to others, or not. I don't even apply for jobs, they come to me, from people at CMU, MIT, DARPA, NASA, and many others, like museums and various tech companies. I am hired by experts all the time, my real world experience is the shiny thing they care about, and it is much louder and meaningful than a degree. I've even worked in forensics, albeit only 3 times. I built scale models of homicide scenes, and ended up solving them in the process, even though I wasn't really hired to do that part, was more just a side effect of measuring everything in such detail. But again I have do degree in forensics, at all, I just good at making stuff.

 

I'm guessing your daughter made those decisions between the ages of 18 and 25... the final years of frontal lobe development. The part of the brain that controls that kind of decision making, it is deliberately loose and curious at that age. It craves direct experience above all other things, but doesn't actually start guiding choices until it ripens, around the age of 25... which is likely why she did not heed your warnings, but now she gets it. It is still a good idea to offer such advice and guidance, it does go in there, and matters, but our biologically forces us, in a way, to find out for ourselves, despite the advice we receive. I think college corrupts that final stage in ways by keeping people out of their fields and stuck in a room with books and lectures when they should be out doing things directly, especially in those final years before the frontal lobe kicks in.

[MechanicalLens]

One final issue I personally find with the current education system (namely high school) is the factory-based learning system. Strict routines, large class sizes, etc. While there are some aspects I can appreciate and understand - students having to raise their hand to request their permission to speak, for instance - but our world is evolving to where innovation has much greater value than in at least decades past. No, I am not a believer of every student having their own teaching assistant so they can aspire to chase their dreams and succeed (**I'll get to that in a minute), but some improvements can certainly be made to the system.

 

(In order for this system to work however, the school system would require an exorbitant amount of funding. An obscene amount of infrastructure would need to be risen, the amount of staff, both teaching students and those who educate other faculty members, would need to be increased exponentially, etc. None of these no country can afford, or even close to. Thus, this is but a pipe dream.)

 

(**What people also have to be taught from day one is they cannot look towards their "favorite hero" and proclaim that they will succeed. Kids these days are taught that nothing can stop them from chasing and catching their dreams (this all began with the "No Child Left Behind" movement, and with the introduction of participation trophies), but what they have to realize is that "the greats" are incredibly few and far between. Young people need to be taught to have a plan b or c, but they are not for the most part. It's very unfortunate.) This is not to mention that students need to cease being taught that they are somehow special, unique, a gift. Undoubtedly every human is, but in my opinion, it has come too far.

[Odetta]

Snip

 

 

My stepdad has a Degree in Medical Biology... He sells commercial real estate lol and makes far, far more. Almost everyone I know has a career unrelated to their degree. It's a crazy world.

[Sigil_Thane]

Exactly. With navmesh and static terrain, pathing costs would be nothing outdoors at least so that would make it easier to add followers. Its really about seeing the glass half empty or half full.

 

@MadMole: The glass is neither half empty, nor half full... It is simply too large for the amount of liquid contained within.

[Drithyl]

Like this thread is on topic, ever. Don't be a hypocrite. If I say something is off topic its because I can't read it all and questions won't get answered. I hope A18 buries your xp bar into the red for a couple of weeks.

 

It sure doesn't help it be on topic to discuss UFC's last match

 

I don't know how remarking on this makes me a hypocrite, though. I'd say it makes you more of a hypocrite to say that you can't read all and that some questions won't get answered, but apparently having the time to answer all those other absolutely unrelated questions, even in great detail, while telling other people off for writing walls of text that are more related to the game.

 

It's okay. Since Roland made it clear in his last response that he's not strictly moderating the thread then I'll feel free to debate you over off-topic things you bring up that I disagree with. I don't normally do it because I don't want to make it an off-topic conversation, but since it's allowed I'll just do that. It's the seeing posts of yours that I disagree with and not being able to respond to them that gets me.

 

And yes, I'm sure I'll get crushed many times in a18. I *hope* I will. That's part of the fun

[Star69]

Yes I meant high school. Even college is a waste of time and money if you don't finish it and get into the field you study for. A lot of people go and get a degree in some fantasy field like Forensic science then never make a dime with it.

 

I managed to become self employed by the time I was 25 by taking a 9 month trade school course for auto body repair, I worked in the field 5 years then started my own shop. I started new businesses and they all succeeded. Obviously I'm not normal, I worked 7 days a week and many long hours to make it happen.

 

The thing that really annoys me is cosmetology. My oldest daughter went to school to become one. I told her why would you go into debt to make minimum wage and crappy tips? She's stubborn like me, did it anyway and after quite a few years of minimum wage, long hours and crappy tips, she quit that and started her own business unrelated to cosmetology. I told her the exact outcome, (my ex wife did the same thing) and she still ignored my 100% foresight into her future. So again, history here was kind of useless, people want to learn for themselves not hear about other people's failures. I mean yeah history could have been useful here, but she refused to listen. I had 100% logic and proof, yet... people have to learn for themselves, but that is ok, its all part of the process.

Yup built my business into a multimillion dollar business. Worked 7 days a week, 60-80 hours a week for 25 years. It wrecked my health but the business runs with small inputs from me leaving me time to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

 

My son got BA & MA in communications and couldn’t get a job. I had told him that medicine was the field where you would always have a job. So after wasting 6 years and tens of thousands of dollars, he’s working on a masters in nursing to be nurse practitioner...guaranteed employment anywhere. It makes you want to strangle these kids for not taking our advice seriously.

[meganoth]

what are you guys talking about, stand on a barbed wire, you get bleed while you stand on it, and just walking on it dmages the barbed wire. I have never had barbed wire last all horde night

 

Sure, but that damage is rather small. I tend to ignore it and even walk on twisted wire when I have to do base repairs.

 

Naturally it depends on layout and amount of the wires, but I would say 2/3 of the twisted wire I usually put down at my horde base survives a horde night. Can't say the same about the spikes

[Star69]

My stepdad has a Degree in Medical Biology... He sells commercial real estate lol and makes far, far more. Almost everyone I know has a career unrelated to their degree. It's a crazy world.

 

 

So so true. I’m the only person I know who still has the job I went to school for and I’ve wanted to do since I was ten years old. A rarity.

[MechanicalLens]

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