Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[faatal]

26 minutes ago, enragedcamel said:

So when is A20 coming out? Is it still "when it's ready" or is there an actual release date now that official streams have started?

There is no date. We just feel we are getting close.

22 minutes ago, Games'n'Grumble said:

Hello @faatal! Thanks for the great stream! But I need to ask - where is the water? I mean, Lathan was traveling on the Navezgane map, and on it there is a river between the forest and snow biome. Even the bridge is visible. Will there be water in the A20? 😄
(sorry if I missed the answer on the stream or forum)

There is a water bug currently. In Nav and maybe RWG too, it is floating high in the sky.

[Jost Amman]

52 minutes ago, faatal said:

There is a water bug currently. In Nav and maybe RWG too, it is floating high in the sky.

Let it rain then! 

[Khalagar]

2 hours ago, faatal said:

There is no date. We just feel we are getting close.

 

Breaking news, Faatal denies that it's a date, but does admit we are getting closer to each other.  Reports are coming in that passersby heard Faatal saying "I-i-it's not like I l-l-like you or anything, baka!" 

[Alloc]

8 hours ago, Guppycur said:

Loot containers are now referenced by names and not ids. Hard coded UI parts being in xml. Logging issues regarding xml patches are fixed. Support to load mods to the clients natively.

 

...or so I'm told. 😃 ( Thanks Chiko!)

Yeah, that's basically what was in the Stream. Logging isn't "fixed" in any way though but extended

Also obviously that's not all of it, but I didn't want to list everything, even more so as I wasn't around and couldn't have answered anything or explained myself. Suppose the only bigger change that I forgot was XUi binding formulas.

Anyway, everything will be in the changelog, but don't expect anything bigger other than what's listed here.

[Matt115]

10 hours ago, Roland said:

 

Then our task will have been a success.

 

Developer Acheivement Get:  Blake Goes to a Shrink

Well so TFP change 7dtd into some cthulhu's artifact. another simple day on 7dtd forum XD

[Guppycur]

Loot containers is big, it'll eliminate loot conflicts (mostly) between mods and give us a lot more to use. 

[retrogamingdev]

15 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

You forget 7D2D world is post-apocalyptic.

Weather could be different and more extreme or varied, on average, than the standard (this could be some lore explanation for that).

 My two cents on the weather conversation (though I haven't actually seen it in action yet). But, I do think it should be limited to 1-2 shifts in a game day at most. I recognize that time passes faster in game - with 60 minutes real time being a day in game (swaying a bit on settings of course). But, from a 'feel' stand point, I think if a 'day' was a rainy day, it would be better in the long run. I don't like the idea of having it shift 5+ times in a game day, that sounds really weird feeling. 

[spacepiggio]

Just thinking out of the box, it would have been nice to let a player ride on the handle bars of the bycicle. We've all done it & its possible & being an early vehicle shouldn't matter, riders still do it. It would actually be fun while drinking Beer while your mate rides the handlebars drinking Beer blasting away at Z's while your view is blocked partially & drunk. I think we can even make that Box even Bigger, we've brought it up before, where are the Z kids? This would be a great time to talk about Z Kids, whered they go, they all die off. We could add a new Profile Character & the whole family could play 7DTD, think about it. Now that we can add seats we cad add a Toddler seat to the Bycycle & you can play as a kid shooting from the seat while mom or dad rides. I think we can make that Box even bigger & what if youre pregnant during the Virus, HUH, Wow is this Box getting big, does this mean more Profile changes, yes it does. maybe we can come into the game with certain basic Skills. How about chosing from basic real life skills like, a Doctor, Construction Worker, Nurse, Security Gaurd, Vagrant, Laywer, a lot of these choices are already Z's in the game if you notice. I get to kill the Lawyer in the 1st PVP Game.

If that isn't the ultimate servival giving birth during a Z Apocolypse & trying to find the local hospital to do it in then what is? Riding around on your Bycicle protecting your new born from the Z's. Watching the child grow in game & becoming the next generation in a desperate struggle for survival, NAHhhhhhh, too good of an IDea, Takes BAlls!!!

Well I'm glad I got the Timer on the Forge though just wish it included Smelting time for Fuel Input, which is what I was asking for, but it's a small piece. I also quit giving predictions but the game is still where I thought it would end up at a HAlloween Realease & Stable by Xmas or Early 2022, Not Rocket Science, just have to read & played from the start. Well been nice giving a fresh take on the Game & can't wait to Survive in A20 & Bash some Brains in, speaking of Brains, Menu Item?

Let me get out of here before this Box gets any Bigger, so excuse me while I crawl back into my 1 Block Box & wait for A20, GJMM & Team

 

Edited October 8, 2021 by spacepiggio (see edit history)

[MajorMunchy]

Just watched the dev stream #5 and im sorry to say, some of the drones mods/features/animations/GFX  and so forth are a little...out of place.
1) Healing mod is redundant IMO. "automatically heals you" well, not really. first you gota go up to it, hold E, move over to Heal me, then go. By the time i did that i could of died from zombies. It is way simpler to just have a bandage or kit on your hot bar and scroll wheel smash. To me, just seems like a little bit of a gimmick. BUT in MP yes it is nice cause then a team mate can just walk up and do it as well. Second part is that in the stream it was said only bandages and First aid kits work, are we not able to add first aid bandages as well or is it in the coding to where if you have 2 of a HP healing item the drone would not tell which one to use? that makes sense.
2) Healing Animation: wtf is this red space swirling stuff? would be better (imo) to just have a sigh of relief audio from the player being healed, similar to when you are hot and cold how you pant/shiver or whatever.
3) Voice: simple, we dont need cortana lol 😛 give us MADMOLE LOL

[Jost Amman]

34 minutes ago, MajorMunchy said:

1) Healing mod is redundant IMO. "automatically heals you" well, not really. first you gota go up to it, hold E, move over to Heal me, then go. By the time i did that i could of died from zombies.

I agree. That makes sense... I didn't even think about it until you brought it up, honestly.

 

35 minutes ago, MajorMunchy said:

3) Voice: simple, we dont need cortana lol 😛 give us MADMOLE LOL

I don't think Joel identifies with a Teddy bear... 

They could actually add mods you can find with different voices (male / female / robot / trader Rekt lol). That would be great, IMO!

[WheezerAZ]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong. I'm sure this group is quite capable of that. *laugh*

 

Anyways, back in Alpha 19 I thought Madmole talked about them adding telemetry into the game where it would record all kinds of data like weapons usage, skills chosen, etc.... This was then going to help with refinement of the game like identifying overused or underused skills, weapons and materials.

 

Being a database guy all of this sounded fascinating to me but I haven't seen more about it. Are they doing this and is there any information that can be shared regarding that?

[crazywildfire]

1 hour ago, MajorMunchy said:

Just watched the dev stream #5 and im sorry to say, some of the drones mods/features/animations/GFX  and so forth are a little...out of place.
1) Healing mod is redundant IMO. "automatically heals you" well, not really. first you gota go up to it, hold E, move over to Heal me, then go. By the time i did that i could of died from zombies. 

 

 

Did I look at it wrong? I thought he looked at it and switched it to healing or something. So in the case you only have to do it once and keep the inventory filled. But maybe I looked at it wrong. 

 

I think they talked about more of what it can do and not do as well as  will come later  but I can't remember so will leave it at that. 

 

100% agree on the voice part lol

[Matt115]

3 hours ago, spacepiggio said:

Just thinking out of the box, it would have been nice to let a player ride on the handle bars of the bycicle. We've all done it & its possible & being an early vehicle shouldn't matter, riders still do it. It would actually be fun while drinking Beer while your mate rides the handlebars drinking Beer blasting away at Z's while your view is blocked partially & drunk. I think we can even make that Box even Bigger, we've brought it up before, where are the Z kids? This would be a great time to talk about Z Kids, whered they go, they all die off. We could add a new Profile Character & the whole family could play 7DTD, think about it. Now that we can add seats we cad add a Toddler seat to the Bycycle & you can play as a kid shooting from the seat while mom or dad rides. I think we can make that Box even bigger & what if youre pregnant during the Virus, HUH, Wow is this Box getting big, does this mean more Profile changes, yes it does. maybe we can come into the game with certain basic Skills. How about chosing from basic real life skills like, a Doctor, Construction Worker, Nurse, Security Gaurd, Vagrant, Laywer, a lot of these choices are already Z's in the game if you notice. I get to kill the Lawyer in the 1st PVP Game.

If that isn't the ultimate servival giving birth during a Z Apocolypse & trying to find the local hospital to do it in then what is? Riding around on your Bycicle protecting your new born from the Z's. Watching the child grow in game & becoming the next generation in a desperate struggle for survival, NAHhhhhhh, too good of an IDea, Takes BAlls!!!

Well I'm glad I got the Timer on the Forge though just wish it included Smelting time for Fuel Input, which is what I was asking for, but it's a small piece. I also quit giving predictions but the game is still where I thought it would end up at a HAlloween Realease & Stable by Xmas or Early 2022, Not Rocket Science, just have to read & played from the start. Well been nice giving a fresh take on the Game & can't wait to Survive in A20 & Bash some Brains in, speaking of Brains, Menu Item?

Let me get out of here before this Box gets any Bigger, so excuse me while I crawl back into my 1 Block Box & wait for A20, GJMM & Team

 

1. idea with bycicle - too rare sitation and too much work.

2. zombie kids - they can't add them because some countries have stupid law.

3 Most people prefer "skill tree" that classes. 

4. rest things sounds like joke

[Roland]

37 minutes ago, Matt115 said:

4. rest things sounds like joke

 

Pretty sure he was joking the entire time.

[Matt115]

3 minutes ago, Roland said:

 

Pretty sure he was joking the entire time.

Honestly hard to say : i remember when one guy what notironicaly want to change 7dtd into mix of 7dtd and medival dynasty so people ideas are crazy sometimes

[JCrook1028]

1 hour ago, WheezerAZ said:

Someone correct me if I'm wrong. I'm sure this group is quite capable of that. *laugh*

 

Anyways, back in Alpha 19 I thought Madmole talked about them adding telemetry into the game where it would record all kinds of data like weapons usage, skills chosen, etc.... This was then going to help with refinement of the game like identifying overused or underused skills, weapons and materials.

 

Being a database guy all of this sounded fascinating to me but I haven't seen more about it. Are they doing this and is there any information that can be shared regarding that?

Faatal mentioned one use of it during the stream. Only 55% of players ever change the video setting away from default so he implemented an auto detect system that will raise or lower the default according to your hardware. So, yes it is in and yes they use it.

[MajorMunchy]

2 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

I agree. That makes sense... I didn't even think about it until you brought it up, honestly.

 

I don't think Joel identifies with a Teddy bear... 

They could actually add mods you can find with different voices (male / female / robot / trader Rekt lol). That would be great, IMO!

even so, they used i believe jsut some generic unity voice. 99% sure that is the EXACT same voice for the game Ark:survivals robot that follows you in genesis,,,,,

[faatal]

17 minutes ago, MajorMunchy said:

even so, they used i believe jsut some generic unity voice. 99% sure that is the EXACT same voice for the game Ark:survivals robot that follows you in genesis,,,,,

Text to speech. Plenty of tools out there that can do it in a convincing fashion.

[MajorMunchy]

2 minutes ago, faatal said:

Text to speech. Plenty of tools out there that can do it in a convincing fashion.

Will we be able to change that ourselves easily? or will it take the effort/time similar to a mod

[faatal]

4 minutes ago, MajorMunchy said:

Will we be able to change that ourselves easily? or will it take the effort/time similar to a mod

The text to speech is not in the game. It was used to make audio files, so you would have to replace the files.

[MajorMunchy]

31 minutes ago, faatal said:

The text to speech is not in the game. It was used to make audio files, so you would have to replace the files.

can you tell us if the audio file type change in a20 and if so (or not so im stupid and dont know what they are) let us know? can't wait to put in whinie the poohs voice

[faatal]

7 minutes ago, MajorMunchy said:

can you tell us if the audio file type change in a20 and if so (or not so im stupid and dont know what they are) let us know? can't wait to put in whinie the poohs voice

Should be the same as our other audio files. Resource folder wave files that Unity imports and compresses to Vorbis.

[faatal]

Worked on vehicle camera and stutter bugs and decided to add this:

Added vehicle camera zoom in/out. Uses mouse wheel or controller d-pad up/down (30% to 120%).

 

First person driving, if I get to it, would be an extension of zooming in. 30% is close, but not the same.

[Arma Rex]

14 minutes ago, faatal said:

Worked on vehicle camera and stutter bugs and decided to add this:

Added vehicle camera zoom in/out. Uses mouse wheel or controller d-pad up/down (30% to 120%).

 

First person driving, if I get to it, would be an extension of zooming in. 30% is close, but not the same.

Could we get a before/after screenshot of the camera angle now? Since last stream would have been the time to showcase this feature

[khzmusik]

@faatal If you're OK to answer questions, could I bug you once again about the weather system? (I probably should have asked before the stream but didn't think of it.)

 

The weather system that was shown in the dev stream looked pretty cool. But, I was wondering about how much that is affected by the global temperature.

 

I did ask you previously about this, but was hoping for more details. How much is weather in a biome affected by the global temperature, if at all?

 

You previously said that it wasn't, at least not very much. But I don't know if that means that it is affected by global temperature, and it's just that the new code doesn't vary global temperature much, or that global temperature is simply ignored. Or for that matter, if global temperature is even still in A20.

 

I know this is pretty specific, but I have my reasons for asking.