Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[Callum123456789]

2 hours ago, Red Eagle LXIX said:

So, I'm going to complain about farming but not in the usual way.

The A20 Farming changes are fine - Except for the randomly not growing crops which increases the difficulty.

I've got a 10x10 farm (so 100 plots).

About half the time all of them will grow just fine.

 

The rest of the time one or more random plots will just not grow.  It is not the same plots either, or the same number.

Example my last planting , just one single potato never made it out of seed stage.

However in my current planting 14 Hops never left seed stage.

It has been increasing the difficulty of trying to raise my seed supply.

 

Here you can see the layout and the 14 that never left seed.  I waited till harvest (this screenshot was while growing forgot to take another with the full-growns) and they never grew.  Seeds were planted 30 coffee, 20 hops, 20 mushroom, 20 pumpkin, 4 coffee, 2  hops, 2 mushroom, 2 pumpkin.  As can be seen 14 of the hops in the middle were not growing but plants both before and after did.  It will be a different plots though so it is not like the same plot fails each time.  In the prior run only the very first (left, back) crop failed to grow.

 

 

damn thats an odd occurance i havent ever had this issue and i have a 500 plot farm

[Beelzebubs Ghost]

21 hours ago, Hapidedurva said:

I think this alpha is the worst in many years. There is a horrible lag, even on best pc-s. Turrets and vehicles falling through the world (still after 4-5 years). The graphics and lightning are really outdated in 2022. The zombies are few, and boring, the overal graphic design is lacking. There are few new stuff, but many performance issues.

Only thing i can praise is the level design, it is fantastic. T think this game really need to be gold now, and lets all just move on to 7 days to die 2.

 

Your point about zombie sameness is salient.

 

I drove through the snow biome just the other day playing with friends and one thing that stood out as same, same, same. The woodcutter.

 

Same ridiculous looking lumberjack again, and again, and again. Same mountain lion again and again. It really is boring and sort of lies at odds with the devs efforts to add new stuff; which granted, they have, but that repetition with the same zombie model is absurd.

 

Simply adding a little colour variation would work wonders, and perhaps size variation.

 

The previous lumberjack look like a towering menace and was genuinely intimdating, but this wretched little nothing of a model is an embarrassment.

 

Also the snow biome terrain should have an addition of some blending colour for these mountain lions. Them being beige prancing about in the snow means you can spot then a mile off. It's only the incidental tree density that hides them, unlike the snake which; whilst being pathetic, blends nicely with rocks and even grassy terrain.

 

More animals need to be added really, the idea of hearing birds everywhere and every day but never ever seeing one is something else that winds me up. This would really liven up the world and add more atmosphere and realism to the real world aspect of the game, zombies aside.

 

Maybe anti-venom could be a thing also, for snake bites.

 

I think other weapons should be added too, not like the Conan battle axe we have and bizzare drones that fly eternally and follow the player - but simple things like the ability to wallop zombies with lengths of pipe, and bricks. Just crude weapons, we already have rocks in the game and short iron pipes why not enable them as rudimentary weapons?

 

Mods exist yes, and I know you can knock ten bells out of the living dead with banjos and other nonsense, but I think a game where survival is key, themed like 7 days, the game has thusfar short changed itself in a way by not giving us the ability to go crazy with the aforementioned pipes and stones (which would break bones 😬 )

 

(Long post I know, but while I'm on the topic of weapons - the Mugiwara reach on the zombies is another thing that needs attention. I had my ankles taken off by one of those filthy crawlers, that hit me yet I wasnt able to hit it despite wielding not only my arms length, but the full extension of the baseball bat. Wtf? )

[Tmodloader]

This alpha is ok. There is a lot going for the game but it really needs some sort of push. The story and bandits should help, and there should probably be some additional endgame content or reset mechanic for gold. The fact that zombies scale to gamestage mostly makes it so that a good player can rush out and clear tier 5s by week 2 or 3 at the latest. Once you do all of those, there isn't much more to do.

 

Maybe lootstage could scale like it does now and zombie scaling could be time based? It doesn't solve the problem but it would give you incentive to see how far you can go and survive without encouraging afk.

[Jost Amman]

7 hours ago, Neminsis said:

Since the 50 block pilllar scenario was the original issue that you were calling a bug/exploit and a minor but flabbergasting issue that the devs might be interested in resolving and the "no spawn on player blocks" thing was offered for comparison to it, because it utilizes the same spawn radius mechanic, to point out how ridiculous it would be for those same devs to spend time and lines of code on addressing I naturally thought there were the same topic. 

Maybe you didn't understand. Allowing BM zombies to spawn on player blocks would also fix the first problem.

Basically, the BM horde would spawn on top of the platform.

[Tmodloader]

8 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

Maybe you didn't understand. Allowing BM zombies to spawn on player blocks would also fix the first problem.

Basically, the BM horde would spawn on top of the platform.

Wish I thought of this, next time I'll make bedroll zones tiny to encourage me to build my own base. I normally just hijack POIs.

On 2/4/2022 at 1:35 PM, Blake_ said:

Fun fact: There's no video game out there with a vanilla non-scripted general-purpose bandit AI that seeks cover, surrounds, throws grenades, heals/retreats when damaged, communicates between each other, targets and follows the player through a Multiplayer voxel world in a believable manner.

 

Most advanced ones just move to the player and target him/her while following him/her with significant glitches, like Empyrion. There are also scripted ones , that have a bit of brain but within a very limited area. Some non-voxel games do achieve some of those features, like Rust, with scripted and area-limited NPC AI working in Multiplayer.

Yes this is why I worry on the bandits. In a voxel game like this, it would be a feat of achievement to programming to get the ai done. Not that I doubt it could happen but with the desire to release 1.0 eventually, it may be extremely difficult to get bandits working without just using similar ai to zombies. 

[Blake_]

42 minutes ago, Tmodloader said:

Yes this is why I worry on the bandits. In a voxel game like this, it would be a feat of achievement to programming to get the ai done. Not that I doubt it could happen but with the desire to release 1.0 eventually, it may be extremely difficult to get bandits working without just using similar ai to zombies. 

Make no mistake. faatal can do it. Yes, it will take a while, but another fun fact, when faatal starts a feature, he finishes for the same alpha. The only bottleneck here is 3d models and animations, really. Now, I hope for healing, covering, surrounding, retreating, swearing, grenade throwing and miscellaneous loitering/eating, but we might not get the last 2. It depends on how many keyboards per finger he gets.

[Red Eagle LXIX]

2 hours ago, Star69 said:

For as long as we’ve had farming, there has always been an issue with some plants not growing past seedlings but it used to be pretty uncommon and isolated and usually fixed by not planting in the same spot again. Your issue is pretty darn common and definitely a concern especially with the increased difficulty added to farming. Hopefully someone takes a look at some point.

Guess I've been lucky, till A20 I haven't had this issue.  I can certainly plant in all those plots, in fact my most recent harvest was all 100 hops with no failures to grow.  Now have another round of corn in as I need some more stew.

[Jost Amman]

6 minutes ago, Blake_ said:

Make no mistake. faatal can do it. Yes, it will take a while, but another fun fact, when faatal starts a feature, he finishes for the same alpha. The only bottleneck here is 3d models and animations, really. Now, I hope for healing, covering, surrounding, retreating, swearing, grenade throwing and miscellaneous loitering/eating, but we might not get the last 2. It depends on how many keyboards per finger he gets.

This is @faatal when he starts to really get into the coding (he's also replying to forum posts and updating the MF bugs list in the meantime...)  

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Neminsis]

2 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

Maybe you didn't understand. Allowing BM zombies to spawn on player blocks would also fix the first problem.

Basically, the BM horde would spawn on top of the platform.

No, it wouldn't because the minimum distance that a blood moon will spawn from you is 30m and it really can't be much closer than that without putting the entire concept of building bases in this game in jeopardy.

Also, it wouldn't solve the second scenario either because you can use water blocks instead, and before you say it, in the case that you also allow spawns on water blocks then the player can still control the spawn location by filling that 30-50m ring to the build limit. It wouldn't even need to be solid underneath it. It could be made of stilted platforms.

Well then, I guess that you could allow spawning above the build limit by let's say reserving 2m of space as unbuildable but still spawnable, except now the player still knows exactly where the Zs are going to spawn and that they'll avoid falling, so they make strategic gaps and you get the exact same result. But then do you make them ignore falls or gaps?

Or I suppose you could also just allow spawning under player placed blocks to make it so that the player is forced to build the entire thing as a solid pillars, that still ends the same way. Or if you haven't also reserved that extra 2m of spawn space above the entire map and the player places soil blocks instead, do you then allow spawning under soil blocks or maybe allow spawning inside of blocks?...

If you don't see how ridiculous this entire exercise is by now, I'm not sure what else I can say, but do go on, I'm having fun with it.

 

[Neminsis]

8 hours ago, Red Eagle LXIX said:

So, I'm going to complain about farming but not in the usual way.

The A20 Farming changes are fine - Except for the randomly not growing crops which increases the difficulty.

I've got a 10x10 farm (so 100 plots).

About half the time all of them will grow just fine. ...

 

 

I've had this happen a couple of times, but it was always in the same spots. So, I figured out that it was happening because of the angle I was planting from, I was actually targeting the collider of an adjacent block rather than the empty planter, or so I think anyway. Being careful to target the planter does seem to have solved it though.

[Jost Amman]

1 hour ago, Neminsis said:

If you don't see how ridiculous this entire exercise is by now, I'm not sure what else I can say, but do go on, I'm having fun with it.

I'm happy you're having fun with all the ridiculous (those really are such) assumption you're doing. None of them matter here.

IMO, you're just talking to yourself, since you think the devs can't figure out a way to fix that reasonably.

 

I (me) don't have to give you a solution, sure I can try, but it's not my job.

What I'm sure of, and what you're assuming is impossible, is that the devs can find a way (if they want) to fix whatever exploits we players find.

That's because all the "rules" that you, so diligently, mention can be changed exactly by the same people (the devs).

 

But I'm sure you'll come up with a very complicated (and useless) reasoning where you prove that it's impossible.  

Actually, people like you make me laugh, because you're so focused on showing how "smart" you are that you can't think out of the box.

[Neminsis]

56 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

I'm happy you're having fun with all the ridiculous (those really are such) assumption you're doing. None of them matter here.

IMO, you're just talking to yourself, since you think the devs can't figure out a way to fix that reasonably.

 

I (me) don't have to give you a solution, sure I can try, but it's not my job.

What I'm sure of, and what you're assuming is impossible, is that the devs can find a way (if they want) to fix whatever exploits we players find.

That's because all the "rules" that you, so diligently, mention can be changed exactly by the same people (the devs).

 

But I'm sure you'll come up with a very complicated (and useless) reasoning where you prove that it's impossible.  

Actually, people like you make me laugh, because you're so focused on showing how "smart" you are that you can't think out of the box.

Actually, I'm talking to anyone willing to read what I write and/or respond to said same. When I talk to myself it's in a sexy and suggestive asmr tone that usually ends in me raiding the fridge or ordering pizza. 

No, it's not your job to give me a solution. Neither is it your job to say whether it actually requires a solution.

I never said that it was impossible. I was quite clear in saying that it's not worth the devs time to do so and although the devs can change the rules they're not likely to do so because they have time constraints, technical constraints and design constraints, and it really doesn't take some sort of super genius to infer what those are. I mean we could wake up one day and it's a game filled with magical flying ponies, but it's just not likely, but there I go again making assumptions.

I'm the one that can't think outside of the box when I've given multiple creative answers to multiple scenarios? I don't think that's how that actually works.  Maybe I am that smart, and maybe you shouldn't be taking it personally, nor getting personal in response to it?

I'm really quite open to be proven wrong. I am not all that open to personal attacks, however. Please, reign it in? Thanks. in advance.

[Jost Amman]

5 hours ago, Neminsis said:

No, it's not your job to give me a solution. Neither is it your job to say whether it actually requires a solution.

I never said that it was impossible. I was quite clear in saying that it's not worth the devs time

But I see it's your job to tell if it's worth the devs time.

 

5 hours ago, Neminsis said:

I'm really quite open to be proven wrong. I am not all that open to personal attacks, however. Please, reign it in? Thanks. in advance.

I always reply in kind to someone who treats me with contempt.

 

7 hours ago, Neminsis said:

If you don't see how ridiculous this entire exercise is by now, I'm not sure what else I can say, but do go on, I'm having fun with it.

 

[Neminsis]

1 hour ago, Jost Amman said:

But I see it's your job to tell if it's worth the devs time.

 

I always reply in kind to someone who treats me with contempt.

 

 

Of course, it's not my job to make the decision whether or not it's worth the dev's time but explaining to someone else why they'll probably make that decision one way, or another, well that's just a free service that I offer as a courtesy. 

Also, isn't giving the devs feedback and discussing the game exactly what this forum is here for? Although, in this case I'm quite sure they've already thought of every scenario that I brought up many years ago, as all of those scenarios have existed in this game as long as there's been a spawn radius.

There was no contempt at all until the following quoted post. I was genuinely enjoying the thought experiment and what I thought was a friendly conversation, but that's the problem with text, one tends to project one's expectations and emotions onto others. It was my mistake to make the 'assumption' that you were a friendly likeminded adult interested in the development arc of this game, and you have my apologies for making that assumption.

 

8 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

I'm happy you're having fun with all the ridiculous (those really are such) assumption you're doing. None of them matter here.

IMO, you're just talking to yourself, since you think the devs can't figure out a way to fix that reasonably.

 

I (me) don't have to give you a solution, sure I can try, but it's not my job.

What I'm sure of, and what you're assuming is impossible, is that the devs can find a way (if they want) to fix whatever exploits we players find.

That's because all the "rules" that you, so diligently, mention can be changed exactly by the same people (the devs).

 

But I'm sure you'll come up with a very complicated (and useless) reasoning where you prove that it's impossible.  

Actually, people like you make me laugh, because you're so focused on showing how "smart" you are that you can't think out of the box.

A final piece of advice, not everyone that disagrees with you holds you in contempt, but those you treat poorly surely will.

Have a wonderful day.

[Jost Amman]

11 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

If you don't see how ridiculous this entire exercise is by now, I'm not sure what else I can say, but do go on, I'm having fun with it.

The text you quoted was in reply to your own reply (quoted on top) that I had read as contempt... but maybe I was wrong, since you're telling me that wasn't your attitude.

As you have said, it's difficult to completely understand one's tone and attitude just by reading some text.

Now that I read it again, with your explanation, I see you were genuinely having fun at the discussion and, in that case, my reaction was out of place and I apologize.

 

2 hours ago, Neminsis said:

It was my mistake to make the 'assumption' that you were a friendly likeminded adult interested in the development arc of this game, and you have my apologies for making that assumption.

Since you've been so kind to give advice to me, I'll give some to you too. This reply, for example, could be read as passive-aggressive, since you're apologizing to me for thinking that I was a "friendly" / "adult". That means that you're either implying that I'm hostile (which is not the case until I thought you were treating me with contempt) or you're just saying that I'm a kid, which to a mature man will come as an insult. So, my suggestion is to not play around with words too much and just get right to the point.  

____

As for the general discussion we were having... I don't see much difference between making the Vultures superfast on horde night if you jump on a vehicle to flee, and having the zombies spawn around you, if the game detects that you're on a platform in the sky and the AI can't find you by the "normal means". That's what I meant by thinking out of the box, the devs can apply any punitive measure they like (like with the vultures) when the exploit is so evident.

[TSBX]

22 hours ago, Red Eagle LXIX said:

So, I'm going to complain about farming but not in the usual way.

The A20 Farming changes are fine - Except for the randomly not growing crops which increases the difficulty.

I've got a 10x10 farm (so 100 plots).

About half the time all of them will grow just fine.

 

The rest of the time one or more random plots will just not grow.  It is not the same plots either, or the same number.

Example my last planting , just one single potato never made it out of seed stage.

However in my current planting 14 Hops never left seed stage.

It has been increasing the difficulty of trying to raise my seed supply.

 

Here you can see the layout and the 14 that never left seed.  I waited till harvest (this screenshot was while growing forgot to take another with the full-growns) and they never grew.  Seeds were planted 30 coffee, 20 hops, 20 mushroom, 20 pumpkin, 4 coffee, 2  hops, 2 mushroom, 2 pumpkin.  As can be seen 14 of the hops in the middle were not growing but plants both before and after did.  It will be a different plots though so it is not like the same plot fails each time.  In the prior run only the very first (left, back) crop failed to grow.

 

 

Hey Red, can you do me a solid and post a report for me? I can try to look at this sometime today. Thanks man.

[meganoth]

17 hours ago, Blake_ said:

Make no mistake. faatal can do it. Yes, it will take a while, but another fun fact, when faatal starts a feature, he finishes for the same alpha. The only bottleneck here is 3d models and animations, really. Now, I hope for healing, covering, surrounding, retreating, swearing, grenade throwing and miscellaneous loitering/eating, but we might not get the last 2. It depends on how many keyboards per finger he gets.

 

The more interesting question to me is how will bandits be integrated in the game. If the result were that bandits are just sturdy zombies with guns, that would be sort of ok, but would not really need the player to adapt. To have a chance to compete against a player who can just build himself suitable defenses the AI would have to be able to build as well or (more conventinally) have the weapon that can neutralize that, the rocket launcher.

 

Now imagine an AI who builds a base near yours to kill you. That would be actually something new to adapt to and with the technique used for reseting POIs maybe possible (I imagine the base would be build up in multiple steps but for the player to be able to damage it while it gets built the reset would have to only add blocks, but never replace already placed ones.

 

 

 

[Guppycur]

They definitely won't be base building... 

[Lord Morphleyes]

16 minutes ago, Guppycur said:

They definitely won't be base building... 

Yeah that would require a lot of work without a huge amount of gain. But...

 

What about pregenerated bandit POIs?

Easy bandits could just have a regular POI that they have made there "clubhouse" with just a few changes. Hardest bandits could have a completely unique base made in the countryside somewhere complete with sentries and traps.  Think the military base POIs but now there is a sniper in the tower and the gates have been repaired, etc.

[meganoth]

24 minutes ago, Guppycur said:

They definitely won't be base building... 

 

I don't think it will happen, sure, that would be quite some effort.  But for example having an NPC always set down some standard blocks facing the player that constitute a defensable position, or faking that with a technique similar to POI reset, totally doable as scripted event. If you remember TFP (and you) discussing a copy and paste feature for building 1-2 years ago, such a feature would already be similar to the one needed and wasn't ruled out immediately.

 

 

8 minutes ago, Lord Morphleyes said:

Yeah that would require a lot of work without a huge amount of gain. But...

 

What about pregenerated bandit POIs?

Easy bandits could just have a regular POI that they have made there "clubhouse" with just a few changes. Hardest bandits could have a completely unique base made in the countryside somewhere complete with sentries and traps.  Think the military base POIs but now there is a sniper in the tower and the gates have been repaired, etc.

 

I think that feature is already implied by the (announced) end game goal of defeating the duke or the white river boss in their lair.

 

[dcsobral]

A size 8192 world takes 800 MB disk space. Can we get an option to delete worlds, please?

 

Also, now that we have a fantastic RWG it's time to brush up the UI. From both this forum and the Discord server of a major streamer I know that people have a lot of trouble understanding RWG. Here are some frustrations I've seen people comment on:

• Different settings having the same world name
• Being able to change the settings after the world was generated, but having no effect (unless you click generate world again)
• Not knowing in which version of 7 Days to Die a world was generated
• Finding the world for a seed
• Figuring out if the world is the same one that was shared by others
• Game Name vs World Generation Seed
• "New Random World" game world vs a previously generated world (ie, people re-generating the world every new game)
• Overwriting existing worlds
• Figuring out which world is which
• Deleting existing worlds to ensure a clean version of the latest alpha

I realize the vast majority of players are unaffected by these issues, but a bad UI is a bad UI. With all the talk of going gold that has permeated the whole alpha 20 dev diary thread, I hope polishing this UI gets some love.

[Guppycur]

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

 

I don't think it will happen, sure, that would be quite some effort.  But for example having an NPC always set down some standard blocks facing the player that constitute a defensable position, or faking that with a technique similar to POI reset, totally doable as scripted event. If you remember TFP (and you) discussing a copy and paste feature for building 1-2 years ago, such a feature would already be similar to the one needed and wasn't ruled out immediately.

 

 

 

I think that feature is already implied by the (announced) end game goal of defeating the duke or the white river boss in their lair.

 

Well we know there is a wasteland space carved out in nav for bandits, I'm assuming they will have specific pois; I'm just not sure how much they're going to put into their old bandit ideas because of gold fever.  They're ready to move on, so I think, and I hope I'm wrong, that we're just going to get the bare minimum features (albeit implemented well) for bandits.

 

Their existence, some ai, and some pois.  Aside from vr support and playing as zombies I think that would complete their Kickstarter list.

 

Oh yeh, the blueprint feature. Forgot about that.  Place a block that grows into other blocks to make a base.  Moddable but unfortunately also not likely to make it into vanilla.

 

It could though, it's just a spawn block that spawns a poi; if it brings the blocks in kinda slowly and the "poi" that spawns is relatively small, don't see why it couldn't be done.

[lug]

now that "parts" are a thing, the spawn block idea has a good jump off point

 

[Matt115]

7 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

The more interesting question to me is how will bandits be integrated in the game. If the result were that bandits are just sturdy zombies with guns, that would be sort of ok, but would not really need the player to adapt. To have a chance to compete against a player who can just build himself suitable defenses the AI would have to be able to build as well or (more conventinally) have the weapon that can neutralize that, the rocket launcher.

 

Now imagine an AI who builds a base near yours to kill you. That would be actually something new to adapt to and with the technique used for reseting POIs maybe possible (I imagine the base would be build up in multiple steps but for the player to be able to damage it while it gets built the reset would have to only add blocks, but never replace already placed ones.

 

 

 

Well this in not always true. it can be done in quiet simple way - i think  5 bandits with ak 47 could do a lot if they would get good accuracy

Honestly this  idea with AI who builds base near you sounds like hell xd i hope bandits will be simple just give them good accuracy and that's will be good enough

5 hours ago, Guppycur said:

They definitely won't be base building... 

 I hope it will be not

4 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

I don't think it will happen, sure, that would be quite some effort.  But for example having an NPC always set down some standard blocks facing the player that constitute a defensable position, or faking that with a technique similar to POI reset, totally doable as scripted event. If you remember TFP (and you) discussing a copy and paste feature for building 1-2 years ago, such a feature would already be similar to the one needed and wasn't ruled out immediately.

 

 

I hope TFP forget about that

3 hours ago, Guppycur said:

Well we know there is a wasteland space carved out in nav for bandits, I'm assuming they will have specific pois; I'm just not sure how much they're going to put into their old bandit ideas because of gold fever.  They're ready to move on, so I think, and I hope I'm wrong, that we're just going to get the bare minimum features (albeit implemented well) for bandits.

 

For me humans enemies are  the most annoing thing in zombies games.  Rly this nothing more annoing - if i would play something with humans i would prefere fallout , cod etc. 

They promise bandits so they have to add them. I don't complain about that just i hope it will be Bare minium. 

3 hours ago, Guppycur said:

 

 

Their existence, some ai, and some pois.  Aside from vr support and playing as zombies I think that would complete their Kickstarter list.

 

 

Well this good for me

[Demonoid74]

I have never had any issues with crops not growing...lucky I guess...or because I only ever do rooftop farms of 6 separated rows of 8 crops for most of my bases

 

Never those massive farms you guys are doing lol