Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[dcsobral]

I'm not sure if there's an alpha 20 seeds thread already or not, but here's my top three so far. The preview images have a suggested base location which is scored based on prefabs within 1km of it.

 

Version: Alpha 20 b218
 

Seed: NumidiaCambist
Size: 8192
World Name: West Gojuzi Mountains
Pros: Almost all downtown buildings and 3 traders within 1km on suggested base location in the desert biome (increased loot stage).
Cons: Only three unique tier 5 prefabs in the whole map.
Preview: https://imgur.com/Y8BNo5h

 

Seed: OccidentalistBetaine
Size: 8192
World Name: Xeruye Mountains
Pros: All but one downtown building and 2 traders with 1km, split forest and desert.
Cons: Least amount of unique prefabs among the seeds I generated.
Preview:https://imgur.com/Y84mJqr

Seed: CastelessCygnets
Size: 8192
World Name: Riciyuco Territory
Pros: Five tier 5 prefabs and 2 traders within 1km, on snow.
Preview:https://imgur.com/F2w1JaX

[BFT2020]

6 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

I'm not sure if there's an alpha 20 seeds thread already or not

Pssstttt…..check out General Discussion

[Guppycur]

28 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

 

I found out that the decals are not simply decals... you can destroy them like blocks: after that you'll be able to build there! 

Yeh that's the issue.  They're what, 1500hp blocks, that you can't really just change either because it will change all concrete.  Still learning the new system though, but this seems to be an oversight.  Would have preferred a "decal material" you could build on, like you can do grass. 

[MechanicalLens]

37 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

I'm not sure if there's an alpha 20 seeds thread already or not, but here's my top three so far. The preview images have a suggested base location which is scored based on prefabs within 1km of it.

 

Version: Alpha 20 b218
 

Seed: NumidiaCambist
Size: 8192
World Name: West Gojuzi Mountains
Pros: Almost all downtown buildings and 3 traders within 1km on suggested base location in the desert biome (increased loot stage).
Cons: Only three unique tier 5 prefabs in the whole map.
Preview: https://imgur.com/Y8BNo5h

 

Seed: OccidentalistBetaine
Size: 8192
World Name: Xeruye Mountains
Pros: All but one downtown building and 2 traders with 1km, split forest and desert.
Cons: Least amount of unique prefabs among the seeds I generated.
Preview:https://imgur.com/Y84mJqr

Seed: CastelessCygnets
Size: 8192
World Name: Riciyuco Territory
Pros: Five tier 5 prefabs and 2 traders within 1km, on snow.
Preview:https://imgur.com/F2w1JaX

 

Thank you so much for this. I've been generating seeds for tens of hours at this point, mostly on and off, and I've yet to find a decent one... Either there's only 1-2 tiny villages in the forest biome, or entire biomes are lacking towns, or there are no cities at all in the world... I'll check these out.

[TWORDY]

Hello. I just wanted to thank you for the next A20 update.

 

Simply put, the new tile system is amazing and the towns/cities look dope. I haven`t checked thoroughly sewers and underground systems yet, but they do fit the 7DTD genre amazingly well. My expectations were exceeded by not 1 mile, but like 7 parsecs in the galaxy. Well thought... well thought.

 

The amount of adjustable settings in-game options is incredible - good work on that! The performance and optimization on high-end PCs seem better as well at a first glance. Well done and keep going in that direction. Every owner of mid-range PC who I spoke to is waaay happier... I don`t know how about dirt cheap potato users.

 

The Weather system and many other aspects of terrain look way better. Except for small grass also small weeds, flowers, etc. might be added in the next updates. Think of creating vast spaces that may be covered solely with grass (no trees for even several hundred meters) especially around the cities - this might even help with overall performance in certain parts of the map. I wish to see someday different terrain specifically dedicated to the forest. Forestation might be denser in some parts of the map, also having in mind performance in the first place. Please, think of creating a more creative, organic, and believable world overall devs. New art and objects look absolutely gorgeous.

 

New shapes and the way players build nowadays are absolutely terrific!

 

Nice addition of having some traders rewards after accomplishing some set of missions.

 

The biggest problem when it comes to balancing - pipe weapons. Why - reload timings of the pipe hunting rifle and shotgun.

 

Animations are an absolute blast the quality of reload anims is solid 4.1/5. Reload animation of pipe shotgun takes forever and must be shortened by at least 1/3rd or even slashed at half. 1 shell is loaded at a given time dear devs. Hunting rifle animation takes too long in my humble opinion. Instead of bashing twice the barrel in order to open a chamber, once would be just fine. It`s safer to use pipe pistols and pipe machine guns in POIs and other danger zones. These are my first impressions at least. Animations perfectly show the struggle of the player, well done!

 

Weapon ADS improvement! Finally, I have the option to hold my weapon zoom mouse key. I`m uber-ultra satisfied in that matter. But now, I need an automatic weapon reload option after a mag is depleted. Think of adding a single fire mode except for automatic fire for the AK and SMG. Single fire, burst mode for a Tactical Rifle. Devs - these are basic mechanics weapons in 2021.

 

I probably forgot about a few things. Anyways so far I`m impressed. The soldier and crawler models look god damn triple-Aish! I can sense some DOOM 3 dev vibes also here and there around the map. Well done again, can`t wait for more to be discovered.

[MechanicalLens]

So I'm curious, what settings is everyone playing on currently?

[faatal]

1 hour ago, Jost Amman said:

I think most of us are around 3GB VRAM.

But regardless I can't understand why we could use the High texture detail settings for objects in A19 and it worked! 

You were probably using some system RAM.

 

Lowered the max texture quality VRAM requirement to 3 GB (from 3400 to 2400 MB).

[Khalagar]

1 hour ago, MechanicalLens said:

Thank you so much for this. I've been generating seeds for tens of hours at this point, mostly on and off, and I've yet to find a decent one... Either there's only 1-2 tiny villages in the forest biome, or entire biomes are lacking towns, or there are no cities at all in the world... I'll check these out.

 

Where do you preview city placement for your seed? I've been having to bike around trying to find a decent base spot on my current one

[faatal]

1 hour ago, Guppycur said:

Yeh that's the issue.  They're what, 1500hp blocks, that you can't really just change either because it will change all concrete.  Still learning the new system though, but this seems to be an oversight.  Would have preferred a "decal material" you could build on, like you can do grass. 

I'd like to improve those at some point. Replaceable like grass may be a simple fix.

[MechanicalLens]

29 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

 

Where do you preview city placement for your seed? I've been having to bike around trying to find a decent base spot on my current one

 

It's under advanced generation, available at the bottom left hand corner of the screen when you are creating the world itself.

[Khalagar]

1 hour ago, MechanicalLens said:

 

It's under advanced generation, available at the bottom left hand corner of the screen when you are creating the world itself.

 

Hmm I noticed it showing the terrain but didn't notice city placement. For some reason I thought there was a tool where you could just  give it your seed and it would tell spit out results

[MechanicalLens]

52 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

 

Hmm I noticed it showing the terrain but didn't notice city placement. For some reason I thought there was a tool where you could just  give it your seed and it would tell spit out results

 

You have to zoom in to see city placement. If that doesn't work, log out of 7D2D, log back in, and try again. Occasionally it glitches out, or even crashes the game.

[Laz Man]

8 hours ago, Roland said:

 

Maybe the choice could be given at the respawn screen instead of at the top menu. Players could choose to Continue the Struggle or Start Refreshed. That way if they felt they were in an inescapable loop they could choose the Start Refreshed option which would be what we have right now. Continue the Struggle would just maintain all stats you had at the time of unconsciousness so you wouldn't have to try and figure out which debuffs might be too punishing. It would be the player's choice to keep trying to recover or give up.

Maybe continue the struggle keeps the debuffs while start refreshed removes them but gives some sort of timed rez sickness debuff which would also help prevent pvp abuse.

[MechanicalLens]

Day 1. After battling back and forth in my mind, I decided to settle on 90 minute day length. This would give me ample time to walk around, immerse myself, and explore the world instead of sprinting 24/7.

 

I spent the early morning harvesting resources. I ended up gathering 2k wood, a couple hundred stone, 150 feathers and some eggs, and a couple hundred cotton and chrysanthemum flowers alongside a splash of goldenrod. I spawned in between two cities, right in view distance of each other, which was awesome. Trader Joel was to the Southern city about 300 meters away, so that was my first pitstop. I looted his compound (didn't get anything fancy) and I accepted a fetch quest from him.

 

The quest was across the road - an old ranch house - and luckily for me the supplies were on the first floor, so I busted my way through a couple section of wall, retrieved the goods and hauled myself back to the trader. I wasn't going to clear the POI yet if I wasn't going to get paid to do so. After placing a drop off chest the opposite side of the road from the trader compound, I handed in the goods and in return I was rewarded with 10 molotovs. I immediately accepted a second fetch quest, this time a couple hundred meters away.

 

I approached the office building and, to my luck, the supplies were basically beside the front door. I looted the satchel and much of the parking lot and the first floor of the building before returning to the trader to accept another 10 molotovs as a reward.

 

Deciding at the last minute to make this a base day 1 playthrough, I accepted another fetch quest for tomorrow - this one at a fast food joint - and purchased a wood splitter mod for my stone axe before leaving the compound and heading down a country road in the opposite direction. After finding a suitable location I immediately began construction on a 13 L x 7 W x 5 H wooden shack, making use of the new shutters in various locations. I dropped down my bedroll and storage. It was already getting late and I was dying of thirst and hunger. I returned to my initial drop chest in front of the trader and hauled my loot back to my shack.

 

First thing I did upon my return is I dumped everything off and began cooking up some charred meat. While it was cooking I filled up some jars with murky water in a nearby pond and began boiling up that as well. Deciding to loot one final POI before the day's end, I made my way to a nearby motel. Big mistake.

 

Thanks to the Feral Sense, I was detected as soon as I entered the bounds of the POI. To my absolute shock a feral Boe came rushing out of the back end of a trailer right in my direction. Almost out of stamina at this point, I hobbled my way to a nearby Working Stiff Tools service truck and attempted to nerd pole. Boe got three good hits on me, bringing me down to 44 total health, before I was successful in getting to higher ground. Boe responded by rushing up a flight of stairs and attempted to bash down a door, attempting to path to me. I place a couple frames in front of me and leaned over to one side. Boe immediately changed course and began bolting towards me. I backed off a tiny bit and Boe returned to the door. Completely out of stamina and with no hope of escape, I realized my opportunity. I leaned around the corner, waiting for Boe to make his move, and pelted an arrow at him. 20 arrows later (most of them missing) Boe fell down to the bottom floor and proceeded to begin bashing on another door. A few more arrows dropped him.

 

Thinking that my trials were finally over, I crawled over to an open part of the wall on the first floor and I noticed... a dog was inside. Declaring it a lost cause, I slowly slunk my way back to my shack, where I am currently holding out until morning.

 

Incredible stuff. Sure I could have done better by sprinting more and looting more POI's, but nothing could have prepared me for that day 1 feral and that potential dog fight. I'm now perfectly in love with A20. You and your crew have crafted a near perfect game @madmole.

[MisutoM]

I'd like to recant my previous comment against farms. After using them for about ~15 hours in game, I actually like them much more. I'm big enough to admit when I was wrong. 

 

 

The math for new farms is in the player's favor enough that they are definitely still worth using. Level 1 LOTL yields ~1.5 per seed and level 3 yields ~3.5. If you have no points in living off the land, they are quite bad, but uh... That makes sense, if you don't know what you're doing, why would you expect to succeed infinitely on farming? 

 

 

There are also a lot of interesting choices created for the player with the new system. Every time you harvest you end up with a blank slate of empty farm plots and need to decide how much you want to plant of each crop. Never once in 1000 hours of play time in alpha 19 did I rearrange my farm in a world. I estimated how much I'd consume, then math out how many to plant + a few extra to be safe. After doing that work once early in the alpha, every other game was just set and forget; 10 corn, 10 potatoes, 15 coffee, etc. Every single game reliably the same, it was efficient and easy, but boring and repetitive. Replanting does take time, but it's very little time, and it's time spent at your safe base so you aren't under pressure or anything but you are making more game choices about what crops to plant and how many of them.

 

 

In alpha 20, sometimes I high roll on seed returns and I have to decide if I invest in extra farms and/or seeds or if I just take the profit now and be happy and full. Heck, even low rolling is weirdly fun - do I give up nearly all my crops to keep the farm going or am I hungry enough now that I need to eat this, plant a smaller farm, and hope my luck turns around next time. Based on that choice my decisions elsewhere change, maybe I need to spend more dukes on food and stop to check more vending machines. Maybe I don't go mining today because I can't afford the extra calories yet so I need to make what minerals I have last a little bit longer. Difficult player choice in a survival game forcing you to adapt to the current game state is interesting and engaging, Choice is fun, even if they are tough choices, go figure. 

 

 

I still maintain that farmBundle_03 needs a rework, 1 super corn seed and to a lesser extent 1 hops seed both feel bad. Hops is used in a lot of things now with grain alcohol being replaced by beer, and super corn can be important for duct tape heavy builds (like an archer spamming explosive arrows or perception bomb builds). 1 seed leaves a straight coin flip of being able to get things off the ground, and that feels bad when other rewards of the same tier at traders include an entire set of military armor or steel armor, or 500 concrete blocks, etc. Having played with the new farms for a while, I feel like the best change for this would be to make the bundle give 4 farms, 2 super corn seeds, and 2 hops seeds. It's not a huge change and doesn't require entire systems to change, but it lowers the chance of failing your farm to 1 in 32 vs 1 in 2 which is massive considering how small the buff to the bundle would be. 2 seeds is still going to be a very slow start to get two niche crop farms off the ground and expanding, and it still requires that you find the recipe for said seeds if you aren't speccing into higher LOTL levels. 

 

 

Aside from that tiny niggle, 10/10 update all around, even the farm changes grew on me. Sorry @Gazz for whining so much, but I listened, gave them a fair chance, and you and the other devs were right. Player choice is fun, and choices shouldn't be easy in a survival game. 

 

 

To others still down on the new farms: give them a chance. You might end up liking them more, and if you don't, you've still got all the other options. You can roll the dice trying to loot food. Roll the dice trying to hunt animals. Roll the dice to see if food is in stock in a vending machine or trader. Or roll the dice that your farm harvest is good this time. Whichever option feels more fun to you and matches your playstyle. The only thing we lost was a boring and consistent source of infinite food/duct tape, but we gained a more interesting system with a better average potential for those who invest in the skill, but also the chances to create interesting points of friction forcing us to make more choices. 

[beerfly]

I am not stupid, but going to wasteland not well prepared is. And on a bicycle.

 

Shouldn't be underestimated anymore. Lots of fun and cold sweat.

 

This alpha is the best, indeed. 🤘

[Aldranon]

Maybe a bug?:

Uninfected bears can infect you.

If that's how its suppose to be, will chickens and rabbits get you infected or just anything that bites?

If its in the air, does beathing air have a chance of infecting you?  That would make the gas mask head piece the most important thing in the game. 

 

Suspicious behavior:

Two vultures waited until I started reloading then BOTH attacked immediately.   I had waited for them to come in for about 15 seconds, as they were attacking the out hanging right above me.

 

That was an anti-fun moment.

As in not conducive to enjoyment.

As in "Trollish" behavior (for a modern vernacular).

 

The answer is, of course, to play the "Circus" theme song during all combat. 

 

[unlike them]

6 hours ago, dcsobral said:

The preview images have a suggested base location which is scored based on prefabs within 1km of it.

Where do you find these previews? Is it a 3rd party program?

[Jost Amman]

4 hours ago, faatal said:

You were probably using some system RAM.

 

Lowered the max texture quality VRAM requirement to 3 GB (from 3400 to 2400 MB).

Thank you so much! 

[n2n1]

It was stated that the lootcontainers would not use the id.

For now - everything seems to be the same. Will this appear in future patches?

[BFT2020]

1 hour ago, n2n1 said:

It was stated that the lootcontainers would not use the id.

For now - everything seems to be the same. Will this appear in future patches?

Id was left in but ignored.  Loot containers uses the names field now.  That’s why any Alpha 19 mod that changes loot containers doesn’t work.

[jdifran]

9 hours ago, faatal said:

I'd like to improve those at some point. Replaceable like grass may be a simple fix.

 

See also:  Road striping.  Please either make it like grass, or change it so it can be destroyed in one shot, not a 150 hp "block" that harvests to stone. 

[Rizno]

Anyone else having performance degrade after a couple of hours or so of play? I'm mostly around the city biome which runs smooth up until that point, 60 - 90FPS. Then suddenly I go down to 30 - 40FPS if I'm looking towards the city. (which previously wouldn't drop my FPS at all)

 

It may be weather related I guess? Never had sudden drops in previous versions unless it was a crazy Blood Moon.

 

i5-9600K, GTX 1660 Ti, 16GB RAM

[Morloc]

15 hours ago, Frost78 said:

I would love to see the Trader Exclusion zone made a little smaller. It can be frustrating not being able to harvest items that are outside the perimeter but still inside the Trader Zone.

 

Oh God, this. Please.

That friggan metal-grating noise. Argggh!

 

Allow the stuff on ~top~ of the blocks (grass, trees, nests, rocks) in the protected zone be taken, destroyed, etc. Don't allow the ground blocks blocks to be changed or built upon obviously. I'm guessing that the way the protection is coded makes this difficult, but it'd be nice someday.

 

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc

[outhous]

You can find all those things elsewhere outside the trader zones. I agree the sound is just horrific but there is nothing around a trader that you have to have, same stuff is usually found within a few hundred meters of the trade. Leave the traders stuff alone, do you go stealing flowers out of your neighbors yard?