Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[dcsobral]

Regarding the new sounds: it's a hit & miss. Some are improvements, some feel like they are about the same but unfamiliar, but some are absolutely awful, unsatisfying and unsuited to the action. I think the importance of being "satisfying" cannot be understated. Repetitive actions such as mining are satisfying in 7 Days to Die in no small part because the sound effect is satisfying, and it would be a terrible shame to lose that.

[meilodasreh]

• Suppressors attached to pipe pistols now suppress 
• Suppressors attached to .44 magnums now suppress, a little

I love the hidden humor in those patchnotes.

Especially because it's listed under "changed" and not under "fixed".

 

Whether suppressors should actually suppress or not is a debatable feature, not a bug

[GRITTY]

5 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

Regarding the new sounds: it's a hit & miss. Some are improvements

the wrenching sound, to me, fits but when that same sound is heard when mining, it just doesn't make sense because it's so "off".  i would love to go back to the old sounds or have something more...metallic.

[faatal]

32 minutes ago, LostBoy said:

Zombie spawning on the other hand has taken several steps backwards.

I had climbed into the Ceiling of a Working Stiff, looked around, all clear, took a step towards a Chest and suddenly three Zombies spawned right on me.

This is really bad, they were not hiding, there was nowhere to hide, they just popped in.

 

There other examples, but the above was the worst.

 

There have been no changes to spawn in distances. Sleeper volume positions/sizes and sleeper locations do vary by POI and are up to each designer to place. Vertical separation is strict to keep performance up, so climbing into a ceiling combined with nowhere to hide the spawn may be what you saw in that case.

[Maxi-King]

Hi, i dont know if this is  something new, but zombies not targeting small "pillars" and doors.

---

if they would have destroyed them:

Spoiler

 

[faatal]

42 minutes ago, retrogamingdev said:

Has anyone seen this occur? There is literally a clear line in the sky where half is blue cloudy sky, other half is like gloomy weather. 

Never seen. Does it happen again on game restart?

[schwanz9000]

39 minutes ago, suto2200 said:

i have 2 questions. 1st when will alpha20 be out of experimental? 2nd) how come it seems like me (and a couple others i talked to) have broken rwg no matter what names we put in the 6k, 8k, and 10k maps stay the same (6k is juvupe valley, 8k is west Xuyofu territory) 

You have to put a seed name in the text box.

[faatal]

22 hours ago, JoeDaFrogman said:

I know random world gen is and should be random, however since b231/b233 came out I have generated a high number of worlds and it "FEELS" like a change has been made to the forest city spawning in what I would consider a negative way.     I am using non default settings in an attempt to get larger/more cities using the logic that mountains and hills will interrupt to spread cities out.  To limit my expectations, I know that there can't be a "whole map city", that is NOT what I am expecting, hoping, or looking for.  Base on my results, 13 is the most cities that can be generated on a single map and those by necessity must be spread out somewhat.

It may be a bug, but I actually like it. A reason to get out of the forest and go some place. I'd probably also like it if the forest burned down on day 21 and you had to leave or die.

[doughphunghus]

6 hours ago, POCKET951 said:

There's has to be more than one solution to acid than just having the book. Take hunger for example. Many ways to solve it. Hunting,cooking, questing.

 

In a19 there were a handful of reliable ways to get acid.

 

In a20 you need 1 book(rng) and exact knowledge of what to hit. And wrenching medical cabinets for acid is just unintutivve.

 

Loot got tweaked and rebalanced. And I hope that acid being super rare  is just an unintentional consequence of all the changes and that it is something worth looking into and adjusting  before stable.  It takes acid to make chem benches for example, so shouldn't wrenching destroyed benches atleast yield acid? Or have a chance to have acid on then

 

Could acid also be a 50% chance thing at the trader like antibiotics except with a bit more variance in quantity?

 

A20 just lacks a variety of concrete solutions for acid atm compared to a19. 

 

It's also something you can't craft  or grow and farm.

 

Also acid seemed to be in a pretty good spot in A19, so it's odd that a nerf to its drop rate has never been mentioned or conveyed, and never has anyone from TFP said acid is too common or OP. So I suspect that this isn't intended unless a Dev says so.

 

One thing to also note is that the new loot system is a work in progress.i feel  TFP have got 95% of the new system nailed down pretty well. There however seems to be a few hits and misses that need observation,data and feedback so that it can be fine tuned.

 

Acid and beakers seem much more rare. 

In general  equipment for forges and campfires is far more rare.

 

Ammo and first aid bandaids/first aid kits are more common now than in A19.

 

I am sure the new loot system will get there by A20 stable though.

“Acid” is a pretty generic term, but likely its strong/concentrated acid. It’s not something you normally come across in a house but maybe in a hardware store or “business” , sure.

 

I feel if TFP really wants acid to be rare, then finding it should be rare… buuuut I think the “journey for crafting it” should be there just complex. I think it would feel good to have rare items gated (like they are today with rarity in loot, or trader purchase) but also with crafting. They’re kinda using these rare items to gate crafting anyway (as you need them for crafting some stuff) so why not make crafting a beaker or acid just “difficult and a lot of steps?”. Most of the crafting in the game is really basic (1-2 steps to make anything, even a 4x4) and that’s likely to make it “fun” but it wouldn’t hurt to make n item like acid take a lot of materials to craft something, that’s then used to craft something else, etc. and finally acid. It might even feel good to have to use multiple workstations to do it: render a large amount something on the campfire to extract a liquid (like flowers, whatever), then use the forge to craft a special apparatus (like a heavy glass container), and some electrodes. Build a containment tank and then add all this as a recipe with a battery to the chem station to do “electrolysis” on something to crank out 2-10 acid. Just a made up example but the beaker could be similar.   Just add a lot of effort when you can’t find it anywhere.

 

[spacepiggio]

Tandom Bicycle...Tandom Bicycle...Tandom Bicycle...Tandom Bicycle...Tandom Bicycle...Tandom Bicycle...Tandom Bicycle...Tandom Bicycle...Tandom Bicycle...

& Zip-----------Lining

[dcsobral]

23 minutes ago, faatal said:

Vertical separation is strict to keep performance up, so climbing into a ceiling combined with nowhere to hide the spawn may be what you saw in that case.

TIL! But that doesn't prevent spawning if the sleeper region actually extends further down (or further up), does it? Or if there's a linked region on the place you are coming from to activate the region you are going to?

14 minutes ago, faatal said:

It may be a bug, but I actually like it. A reason to get out of the forest and go some place. I'd probably also like it if the forest burned down on day 21 and you had to leave or die.

That would actually be a pretty cool mechanic. I find it so sad that wood doesn't catch fire in 7 Days to Die... But you probably doesn't even have to make it so you'd die if you remained -- I know a lot of people who hate the burnt forest biome above all others, with that constant smoke fog and dreary looks.

[faatal]

8 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

TIL! But that doesn't prevent spawning if the sleeper region actually extends further down (or further up), does it? Or if there's a linked region on the place you are coming from to activate the region you are going to?

They spawn as you get near the volume. Size does not matter. Distance to an edge is what it uses. Vertical is much closer than horizontal. Grouped volumes should spawn them together and trigger together.

 

Edit:
And network latency is important. You move, server receives, server spawns, server tells you, you spawn, then it gets rendered. That is 2x your latency plus the instantiate and rendering delays.

[Geoarrge]

6 minutes ago, doughphunghus said:

“Acid” is a pretty generic term, but likely its strong/concentrated acid. It’s not something you normally come across in a house but maybe in a hardware store or “business” , sure.

I tend to think it shouldn't be too rare to find 1 bottle under sinks, since several drain cleaners are acidic. Alkaline products are probably more common, to be fair.

[faatal]

3 hours ago, retrogamingdev said:

Just checking in, loving A20 so far. I saw a big performance jump when I disabled Dynamic Mesh all together. Until then, it was really bumming me out how bad the game was running. My CPU is older (AMD FX-6300), I suspect that is why it was hurting me so bad. 

 

And since I am coming in after a full line of complaints and suggestions, I have a couple small ones. Does anyone find it weird that you walk around with one hand in view when you aren't carrying anything? Like imagine a regular person walking around with one hand up? And on the same note, could you add a little movement to whatever you are holding? It feels very stiff, like if I was walking with an axe up, it would be swaying a little bit. 

I changed the default to land claim only. Full seems to be a noticeable drain on some computers.

 

Performance demands vary greatly in the game from in a forest looking up at the sky (a good best case test) to in a dense city surrounded by buildings and zombies (a good worse case test), blood moons even more extreme. Since we spawn you in a forest, people may think that is the typical FPS they will be getting for the options they chose, which is not the average or worse cases.

[hiemfire]

59 minutes ago, doughphunghus said:

Build a containment tank and then add all this as a recipe with a battery to the chem station to do “electrolysis” on something to crank out 2-10 acid. Just a made up example but the beaker could be similar.

Tatos, corn, water, a kettle, a bit of time covered on low heat, and a bit more time open but lightly cooled a bit. I'm not joking. I've had oldish soup eat teflon...

 

Edit: Just to be clear, it isn't the starch from those "veggies" that is acidic. It is the waste product produced by the bacteria who are having a feast on the carbs in the mix that is. We have in game 3 of the starchiest "vegetables" in existence, being corn, potatoes and mushrooms, which means with a bit of a bacterial seeder, some rotten flesh might work as an in game simile, a "mash" of the 3 heated then left to sit and filtered a bit afterwards could net some acid.

[khzmusik]

9 hours ago, bdubyah said:

There has been more than enough simplification over the years. They are new players, things are supposed to be confusing. Hell, we already have glowing symbols floating over rocks and nests. Why not just have the game autocraft what it thinks you need at that time as soon as you have the resources in your inventory. Why even have different resources? Just have everything scrap to "scrap material" and you can craft everything from frames to vehicles with this same resource. The game already progresses too fast as it is. If you don't even have to wait for things to smelt anymore, it just gets that much faster. I do not think that is a good thing.

 

I agree that TFP should leave in the mechanic where you have to smelt items into the forge to get materials.

 

I disagree that it's supposed to be confusing.

 

Complex game mechanics can, and should, be presented so that novice players can understand them.  For example, hover tooltips - when you hover over an area in the forge window, something pops up that says "add fuel here" or "add items to smelt here," and the output window could say "here are the raw materials smelted into the forge, use these to craft items" or similar. The game mechanics would be exactly the same, but new players would be less likely to look at the forge window and not know what the hell they're supposed to do.

 

That's what 7D2D should be doing IMHO - not making things simpler, but making things easier to understand.

[Juank]

1 hour ago, dcsobral said:

Regarding the new sounds: it's a hit & miss. Some are improvements, some feel like they are about the same but unfamiliar, but some are absolutely awful, unsatisfying and unsuited to the action. I think the importance of being "satisfying" cannot be understated. Repetitive actions such as mining are satisfying in 7 Days to Die in no small part because the sound effect is satisfying, and it would be a terrible shame to lose that.

 

Indeed. The metal sound was fine, now, it seems like we are hiting some kind of rubber-plastic-metal or something different that a metal sourface.

[Callum123456789]

this is my ultra safe base area with like a wall of steel then another layer of it to ensure safety its costly but really good also the light casting on metal seems noticeably better than a19 am i crazy or has that been improved? 

[retrogamingdev]

1 hour ago, faatal said:

Never seen. Does it happen again on game restart?

 

It happened on restart and after I started a new RWG game. I exited cleaned my game files (in the launcher) and now it seems good. 

[JoeDaFrogman]

2 hours ago, suto2200 said:

i have 2 questions. 1st when will alpha20 be out of experimental? 2nd) how come it seems like me (and a couple others i talked to) have broken rwg no matter what names we put in the 6k, 8k, and 10k maps stay the same (6k is juvupe valley, 8k is west Xuyofu territory) 

 

I have generated well over 600+ worlds in the past 2 weeks.  You are doing something wrong.  Open a dedicated thread with you exact steps(leave nothing out) and we can get you sorted.  

[retrogamingdev]

27 minutes ago, khzmusik said:

That's what 7D2D should be doing IMHO - not making things simpler, but making things easier to understand.

 

This 100%. At this point it is UX/UI type stuff vs actually changing the systems greatly. 

 

[Star69]

8 hours ago, MuffinMan said:

 

Just my own, basic XML edits. When your rig takes 2 seconds does that feel good to you? Would more regular calls of that "unload unused resources" be better maybe? I don't know but it doesn't seem good to me how it is performing right now. The game is otherwise smooth and over 100fps in most cases and then you push E and get lagged out. Or talk to a shop owner and get lagged out.

 

I've noticed in other Unity games due to my 64GB ram it has higher RAM usage than most people. Do you have 64GB of RAM?

 

I'll also add that I did add 4 other traders to the same trader just so I have some variety at the one trader I typically visit (f6 -> static spawn). Maybe that is causing an issue not sure. My base is somewhat close to them. Also most of the hitches are like .5 to 1 second like you mention. It is just every 30-60 minutes I get one of the long ones like the game is about to crash.

I have the same setup as you except I have 32gigs of ram and I’m not experiencing what you are, the hitches are so slight that I don’t even notice them anymore.

[Forgotten Memes]

Is there a way to disable weather effects? They nuke my framerate into the ground and I have to restart the game to fix.

[Gazz]

51 minutes ago, khzmusik said:

Complex game mechanics can, and should, be presented so that novice players can understand them.

 

That's the problem right there. It is complex, yes, but it has zero depth.

You have a forge so you can craft forged iron and other things as long as you have the iron.

 

The extra step of smelting adds nothing but more clicking. The time spent can just as easily be rolled into the crafting time.

Features that add complexity but no depth are nothing but bloat.

[dcsobral]

38 minutes ago, Callum123456789 said:

this is my ultra safe base area with like a wall of steel then another layer of it to ensure safety its costly but really good also the light casting on metal seems noticeably better than a19 am i crazy or has that been improved? 

There were improvements to a bunch of sources of light -- the campfire included, I believe -- very recently (b231 to be precise).