Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[faatal]

36 minutes ago, Beelzybub said:

A biome specific setting would be cool. Like "All" in the wasteland, and "Night" for Snow and Desert.

Settings are nice and all, but they also clog up the UI and can be confusing to a lot of players, so there is a line. I already had to move 3 settings from tab 2 to 1 to even make room for this one setting, since we don't really have room for more tabs. Maybe someday we will overhaul the UI and get more room in general.

[Roland]

6 minutes ago, faatal said:

Maybe someday we will overhaul the UI and get more room in general.

 

3/4 of the internet reads "Maybe someday" as "We promise and if we don't, you're entitled to a full refund if you can get an online petition going and spam Twitter with your demands"

 

Just FYI

[Beelzybub]

17 minutes ago, faatal said:

they also clog up the UI

What about having it as a server option in the serverconfig.xml?

[mstdv inc]

23 minutes ago, faatal said:

Settings are nice and all, but they also clog up the UI and can be confusing to a lot of players, so there is a line. I already had to move 3 settings from tab 2 to 1 to even make room for this one setting, since we don't really have room for more tabs. Maybe someday we will overhaul the UI and get more room in general.

Perhaps it makes sense to make 3 presets in the world settings when creating it:
1. I'm rookie (Default settings) Without the ability to change the settings
2. I am experienced (medium or complex settings) Without the ability to change the settings
3. Where's my shotgun? (sound of angry laughter)
Full customization.

[faatal]

19 minutes ago, Roland said:

 

3/4 of the internet reads "Maybe someday" as "We promise and if we don't, you're entitled to a full refund if you can get an online petition going and spam Twitter with your demands"

 

Just FYI

We are planning to redo/improve/change/something with the UI someday, so it might actually happen, but to be safe we can just say there is a 1000000% chance it will never happen. Is that good?

[AtomicUs5000]

32 minutes ago, faatal said:

Settings are nice and all, but they also clog up the UI and can be confusing to a lot of players, so there is a line. I already had to move 3 settings from tab 2 to 1 to even make room for this one setting, since we don't really have room for more tabs. Maybe someday we will overhaul the UI and get more room in general.

 
Why are games always so absent of scrolling? I can understand avoiding long pages of scrolling while playing a game, but for set it and forget it things, it's pretty useful... says every browser and most applications.

[Blake_]

52 minutes ago, faatal said:

Settings are nice and all, but they also clog up the UI and can be confusing to a lot of players, so there is a line. I already had to move 3 settings from tab 2 to 1 to even make room for this one setting, since we don't really have room for more tabs. Maybe someday we will overhaul the UI and get more room in general.

I would add an advanced settings tab button that  switchs to a new page with scrolling if needed with all of the new options. It really isn't a problem. But as you say, it needs a bit of code/redesign

 

BTW, every once in a while it gets mentioned here the infamous fast travel.  While I'm opposed to a cheap mechanic like that in general, I, as a player, would be partial to a fast travel method between traders for a hefty fee (like 1000 dukes per km to next trader and of course instantaneous for multiplayer reasons ). Could be unlocked after completing TIER V. Late game it is a chore to travel, even in a 4k map and with a helicopter. Sometimes you might choose to pay a kidney or two to travel in a limited fashion.

 

Did something like that came up during the meetings ? 

[Games'n'Grumble]

I don't want to say that 7D2D has bad animations, but maybe the developers are planning to use something something like that to improve or diversify them? Or maybe in future projects?

 

[madmole]

I tried out feral sense with zombies on run during the day and it was intense! There are actually a lot more zombies in the world than people think, they were coming at me from all over the place. I had to repair my club several times there were so many of them, and you really have to pace your battles. I was playing dead is dead and night time came and I was in a house and suddenly a fat tourist and biker and arlene stormed my bathroom door so I bailed, ran around a nice pool fighting them and just killed the arlene and a wolf came into the fight and finished me off even though I hit him twice in the head I just didn't have the stamina to keep up.

Even on jog it kind of reminded me more of the walking dead where you run away and somehow these slow ass zombies are still coming. It's a great feature I think people will like. Zombies just don't see or hear very far so it takes advantage of that and leverages probably nearly every zombie that is out there to come at you. Reminded me of the earlier alphas where there were more zombies because it was just non stop fighting or running.

[beHypE]

That sounds promising! (my wife won't like it) 

[starscream]

3 hours ago, faatal said:

Settings are nice and all, but they also clog up the UI and can be confusing to a lot of players, so there is a line. I already had to move 3 settings from tab 2 to 1 to even make room for this one setting, since we don't really have room for more tabs. Maybe someday we will overhaul the UI and get more room in general.

settings are gold in a sandbox game like this. especially for veteran players where always running nightmare zombies have become easy mode. we need new challenges and don't necessarily want to use 3rd party mods.

[MechanicalLens]

5 hours ago, faatal said:

Settings are nice and all, but they also clog up the UI and can be confusing to a lot of players, so there is a line. I already had to move 3 settings from tab 2 to 1 to even make room for this one setting, since we don't really have room for more tabs. Maybe someday we will overhaul the UI and get more room in general.

 

Exactly. While more options are great and all, the last thing we need is another ARK Survival Evolved.

4 hours ago, Roland said:

Fast Travel between traders has come up before as a discussion point. I won't say who was for or against but I will say there was not a unanimous feeling about it. 

 

Would it be by choice, or would Trader Rekt shoot you with a tranquillizer dart the moment you enter his compound, strip you of all valuables that you carry before tying you up and stuffing you in a brown bag and ordering a henchman to carry you off and deposit you as far away as humanly possible out in the middle of nowhere?

 

Perhaps this is the real way how the player woke up with no gear. Man Rekt is an douchecanoe. 😜 

[Morloc]

13 hours ago, madmole said:

Even on jog it kind of reminded me more of the walking dead where you run away and somehow these slow ass zombies are still coming. It's a great feature I think people will like. Zombies just don't see or hear very far so it takes advantage of that and leverages probably nearly every zombie that is out there to come at you. Reminded me of the earlier alphas where there were more zombies because it was just non stop fighting or running.

 

So it's like the old zombie smell system? The game was terrifying back then (at night). I'd build my workshop/fort and always surround it with a perimeter wall so nothing wandering by would be within the agro radius. Sound travelled a bit further as I recall...so opening a chest or forge would sometimes get you in trouble. You couldn't walk around willy-nilly at night and expect to easily run and hide.

 

 

-Morloc

[Ricowan]

15 hours ago, starscream said:

settings are gold in a sandbox game like this. especially for veteran players where always running nightmare zombies have become easy mode. we need new challenges and don't necessarily want to use 3rd party mods.

Um, there's no difference between editing the XML config files and clicking an option in the UI settings...  other than a tiny bit of convenience.  A modlet is just an automated way to edit the XML configuration, so you don't have to do your changes again after a Steam update.

[Adam the Waster]

I am Dummy thicc and the clap of my Butt cheeks are destroying your base walls
https://twitter.com/7DaystoDie/status/1382359396924071939

Looking pretty cool but... why does he have a Western revolver? idc It looks great. i want to see what the feral and the spider zombie look like

 

[Roland]

The most horrific part of this is that only half of his shirt is untucked. Killin' me!

[Adam the Waster]

2 hours ago, Ricowan said:

Um, there's no difference between editing the XML config files and clicking an option in the UI settings...  other than a tiny bit of convenience.  A modlet is just an automated way to edit the XML configuration, so you don't have to do your changes again after a Steam update.

i think it would be best if the devs gave you the option to do what you want, via basic settings. so more people can enjoy the game

[Jost Amman]

12 minutes ago, Adam the Waster said:

I am Dummy thicc and the clap of my Butt cheeks are destroying your base walls
https://twitter.com/7DaystoDie/status/1382359396924071939

Looking pretty cool but... why does he have a Western revolver? idc It looks great. i want to see what the feral and the spider zombie look like

 

Thanks Adam! I'll post this on Steam! 

[Guest]

@faatal, What is the probability of DLSS appearing in 7 Days To Die? DLSS will be in Unity!

 

[Blake_]

I just saw the new model of the zombie cop on twitter. Proportions are good, clipping avoidance for the animations is finally achieved and the attention to colour and detail is arguably good enough.

 

PROS: 

-Excellent colour choice makes cops more distinctive vs the old one.

-The upper body/face is disgusting. Lovely.

-Good body-arm separation avoids future clipping issues.

 

CONS: 

Spoiler

What can definitely be improved is the lower half, which might need a bit more filth . Shoes (and arguably shirt and trousers on non-damaged areas) are a bit too clean even for a recently turned one. It might not even need extra sculpting and just a bit of dirt. Exposed toes on one foot could have solved it, but oh well.

 

Conspiracy theory: If the gun is holstered, then he died shortly after the infection started due to him being "not ready". As a Zd though, he managed to wax his shoes every day for the last 5 or so years with the best radiated wax in the wasteland. Not only did Carl's Corn facilities made mutated boars, but also supercorn paste for keeping your shoe locker shinny ! 

 

 

Overall I think this one is an improvement, even if nothing is touched .

 

 

[Adam the Waster]

3 hours ago, Blake_ said:

I just saw the new model of the zombie cop on twitter. Proportions are good, clipping avoidance for the animations is finally achieved and the attention to colour and detail is arguably good enough.

 

PROS: 

-Excellent colour choice makes cops more distinctive vs the old one.

-The upper body/face is disgusting. Lovely.

-Good body-arm separation avoids future clipping issues.

 

CONS: 

  Reveal hidden contents

What can definitely be improved is the lower half, which might need a bit more filth . Shoes (and arguably shirt and trousers on non-damaged areas) are a bit too clean even for a recently turned one. It might not even need extra sculpting and just a bit of dirt. Exposed toes on one foot could have solved it, but oh well.

 

Conspiracy theory: If the gun is holstered, then he died shortly after the infection started due to him being "not ready". As a Zd though, he managed to wax his shoes every day for the last 5 or so years with the best radiated wax in the wasteland. Not only did Carl's Corn facilities made mutated boars, but also supercorn paste for keeping your shoe locker shinny ! 

 

 

Overall I think this one is an improvement, even if nothing is touched .

 

 

i wonder what the spider zombie looks like.......
 

Spoiler

 

[faatal]

7 hours ago, Kirill_226RUS said:

@faatal, What is the probability of DLSS appearing in 7 Days To Die? DLSS will be in Unity!

 

Low. I just read a Unity is getting DLSS article and it seems to just be the hi def render pipeline getting it, which we are not planning on updating to, since it would be months of rewriting gfx code and shaders.

4 hours ago, Adam the Waster said:

i wonder what the spider zombie looks like.......

From what I've seen. A lot different. Much less human.

[bachgaman]

Hi @madmole

First of all many thanks to you and your team for this game, 7DTD is really awesome! Me and my friends got a lot of pleasant emotions and memories associated with this game, thank you

 

I read the list of changes in alpha 20 and was pleasantly surprised how much these changes corresponded to my expectations, I literally voiced many of these points during the game, but I would like you to know what features could improve the game in my opinion (sorry for maybe not perfect english)

 

this is just my subjective opinion, of course I do not demand, but I convey my opinion and I understand that my vision of the game most likely does not coincide with yours

 

1. Hardcore mode - yes, I mean that game mode with one life as a checkmark in the settings before creating the world. Someone will say that I can decide for myself whether to continue playing after the first death or not, but you must agree that it is very difficult to abandon the progress achieved wanting to play perfectly, but at the same time there are players who, for this very reason, do not try to survive. Many people generally abuse the ability to die (replenishment of food and water, zeroing of negative statuses, and so on) and honest players do not use this just in order not to lose interest in the game. I am not asking to make such a mode mandatory, but possible without mods

 

I have seen videos on YouTube where people are proud to withstand very dangerous waves directly using their death as a survival tool, this is absurd

 

In addition, an intermediate option is possible, along with this, you can add the ability to preserve peace and progress. Suppose players play a hardcore mode with 1 life, they can save before the bloody moon or a dangerous mission and in case of failure, death, roll back the world to the time of saving and try again. This will save you from annoyance after accidental death, but it will leave joy from a flawless victory

 

2. Increase penalties for hunger and thirst up to the death of a character - I don't really understand why you can't die of exhaustion in a survival game, again, to be honest, you don't really care about food in this game , maybe it's even beneficial not to waste time looking for and creating food (again, you can die to replenish satiety) Even if you can't die from it, the penalties for hunger and thirst should be significantly more substantial than a slight decrease in stamina.

 

3. Death Penalties - based on the first two points, it is quite obvious that players do not consider death losses, especially if they do it on purpose (items can be put in a chest) Did you think that the 10% experience penalty from the current level is prohibitively small? Perhaps an eternal (or very long) decrease in maximum health/stamina or an increase, instead of decrease in difficulty, to make it harder and harder to play if the player dies too often, and not vice versa

 

4. Zombie intelligence - literally in the first days of the game, it so happened that without any guides I calculated the optimal (in my opinion imbalanced) defense system in bloody moons. The thing is that during bloody moon zombies, obviously, calculate the shortest path to the player and follow only it (maybe they still trigger on the doors because instead of breaking a concrete block with a strength of 2500 they hit a reinforced door with a strength of more than 7000).

 

Therefore, as soon as the player digs a moat around the base and makes an exit from it leading to the door behind which the player is hiding, the player becomes almost invulnerable with a proper supply of ammunition to destroy them behind the door through the holes (I played at all difficulty levels and only demolishers can oppose something to this, and then by mistake of the player who shot the bomb)

 

I think all experienced players follow this tactic and it's very boring. Dont you think it is necessary to lay some randomization in the choice of path for zombies? For example, with some small probability, some zombie would choose not most optimal path. For example, they would not run out of the moat, but start digging under the shelter or attack not the door, but the walls. This change would not affect the physics of the game, I'm not talking about they have to act smart, but sometimes they have to act unpredictably

 

It is about this point that zombies act too predictably. This makes it easy and boring to defend.

 

5. Nerf of electric fence and explosives. This is incredibly helpful in defending the base during the blood moon. The electric fence slows down the zombies very strongly and it will not break even if 500 or 1000 zombies pass through this thread per night (because parts of the electric fence can stand very far from the combat zone) I understand that it may not be possible to make some kind of victim counter on the fence, but maybe you just need to weaken its effect?

 

But what does explosives do? It's not even about too strong a grenade launcher, but pipe bombs are incredibly powerful, even at the highest level of difficulty hordes of zombies are ground to powder from some small pipes with gunpowder. It's imbalanced

 

6. Nerf repairing blocks and doors in battle. Another reason it is very easy to defend is repairing doors during a siege. Is it okay that with a nail gun you can repair thousands of durability on a door in a matter of seconds? With the proper supply of steel, you don't even have to kill them, you can just stand and repair the door (I haven't tested it, but it looks like this)

You can simply add the condition that if the block is attacked, then it takes more time to repair it or repair is not available at all

 

7. Rework some perks, especially on weapons and armors - you yourself should know that there are completely useless perks in the game, it's sad to see them realizing that they could be better and then the player would have a choice. I'm talking about completely dead branches of weapons (in fact, all melee weapons are almost dead and make no sense, all these spears, bows, crossbows, electric batons and brass knuckles are just too weak and unnecessary weapons partly due to weak perks) The creation of armor is simply useless because it is not difficult to find or buy. Now, if the perk for creating armor would give bonuses when wearing it, it would be a completely different story.

 

In general, many perks look boring. Most often, when improving them, you do not receive any special bonus, you just receive, conditionally, 20/40/60/80/100% damage and that's it. There is no motivation to upgrade many of them, even for the sake of fun. It seems to me that the developer's task is to make any kind of weapon playable, but now in the game, in fact, there is only a grenade launcher, an automatic shotgun and, possibly, a machine gun (for which you will get tired of creating bullets). The rest of the weapon is a deliberate loss.

 

8. First aid bandages - what do you think player should be doing during the first days of survival? I don't think he should be looking for the desert on foot to collect the aloever. Otherwise, he will not have the simplest way to heal himself. Either he must abuse death or seek out the desert with a stone axe and a grassy tunic. It might be worth adding a new type of grass for the green biome from which you could make at least some medicine, say, a mini-bandage that replenishes 5 or 10 health points. In addition, you write that the desert will become a more harder biome. In this case, why do you need bandages in the game if you can only craft them when you get a truck and a supply of first-aid kits? (I'm exaggerating)

 

9. Loot from regular zombies - It would be nice to be able to find a few dollars after killing a wandering zombie. Why not? True, it is difficult to think of what they can find useful besides money

 

10. Useless dropped loot from an airplane - is a fact. Most likely there are a couple of cans of food and a few cartridges. Almost always not worth the time. It seems that it does not depend on the gamestage. Then why is it in the game?

 

11. Challenge Quests - you spent time developing note assignments, but I don't understand what they are for? For completing them, you get about the same experience as for killing one zombie, 350 dukes are not worth this time absolutely. Perhaps it is worth at least making the reward dependent on the gamestage, this would be enough for the motivation to chase rabbits with a nail gun.

 

Perhaps it is worth using the mechanics of the quest chain and then the reward will depend not on the stage of the game, but on the number of completed challenges, thus some players can diversify the routine cleaning of factories and hospitals

 

12. Vehicle - why is the truck so slow? why is a motorcycle as slow as a truck? why is there only two places in the truck? (I saw about modifications, that's great, thanks)

By the way, in addition to the modifications you specified, I would add a modification for the damage when knocking down zombies (so that you can destroy them as in carmageddon but it may affect the balance in the bloody moon)

 

13. Infection - you need to do something with it, I actually did not notice its influence for 300 hours in the game. Yes, after zombie hits, I got an infection many times, but I have never experienced problems with curing it, so I never knew what would happen if it rises above a few percent

 

14. Zombie "tank" - Since there are "special" zombies in the game, why is there not one among them who would break down walls and smash doors? After all, this is obvious. Let it be large and slow so that it can be destroyed from afar, but this would greatly diversify the defense process during the bloody moon and, by the way, would make sniper rifles necessary. I understand that at this stage of development the game, this most likely will not happen. Just a question

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

This is all the main things that I could remember at the moment, please note that I have not written anything that requires work on game physics or models and textures (almost), basically just change some numbers.

Anyway thank you very much for your attention and the time spent if you had the strength to read everything. Many thanks to you and your entire team for the game. And please add ability to build a railway in the game, I'm tired of driving transport on the way to the merchant (just kidding)

[wolfbain5]

@madmole how does feral sense work in regards to stealth? does it shorten up the range? completely negate stealth play?

[Matt115]

22 hours ago, Adam the Waster said:

I am Dummy thicc and the clap of my Butt cheeks are destroying your base walls
https://twitter.com/7DaystoDie/status/1382359396924071939

Looking pretty cool but... why does he have a Western revolver? idc It looks great. i want to see what the feral and the spider zombie look like

 

Anywho know what software TfP to make characters models? i was thinking how much time it takes to create one zombie and maybe try to make  some zombie models 😅