A20 Developer Diary Discussions

[Roland]

@bachgaman I like your avatar!

[bachgaman]

6 hours ago, Roland said:

@bachgaman I like your avatar!

 

Thank you, I call him mighty cockerel

Edited May 17, 2021 by bachgaman (see edit history)

[Matt115]

34 minutes ago, bachgaman said:

 

Thank you, I call him mighty cockerel

I thought that '90 ended long long ago XD

[dcsobral]

On 5/15/2021 at 12:30 PM, Adam the Waster said:

Yeah i had to find a few people who did it and wanted to share but..... 



Why is their a Shark model! the base game is set in Arizona. AKA a place with no ocean! a Gator would make sense but why is the shark not being uses?

  Reveal hidden contents

jaws theme!

 

 

Fun fact: Ravenhearst added a shark back in... alpha 17, I think. Vicious beast. Unfortunately, it was perfectly fine with leaving the water to chase players, which got it the nick "land shark". Sadly, it didn't make the cut for the public release... But we sharknado aficionados remain hopeful!

18 hours ago, faatal said:

There are actually multiple types of collision. The collision that would be disabled is the character controller collision checks. If something entered/changed the volume then collision mode would change. We do know how to make this stuff work and if it didn't, I'd have 5 testers telling me in 1.2 seconds.

 

These pesky testers, wrecking up perfectly good concepts with irrelevant considerations such as common sense and gameplay mechanics!

[dcsobral]

On the feral sense thing, I'm sad that it is just about how easily zombies detect you. When I first heard of it on dev stream I thought it was about how zombies approach the player. This sophisticated path finding being used has reduced the diversity of effective bases a lot, and it is a bit absurd -- not even google maps is that good!

 

The now-abandoned idea of player's making a "trail" would have been my favorite pathing solution, and my second favorite would be path to player through line of sight. I don't like how zombies will see you and then move away from you because they know how to path to you to avoid obstacles.

 

[Adam the Waster]

1 hour ago, dcsobral said:

Fun fact: Ravenhearst added a shark back in... alpha 17, I think. Vicious beast. Unfortunately, it was perfectly fine with leaving the water to chase players, which got it the nick "land shark". Sadly, it didn't make the cut for the public release... But we sharknado aficionados remain hopeful!

These pesky testers, wrecking up perfectly good concepts with irrelevant considerations such as common sense and gameplay mechanics!

i don't really play with mods so i can't say 

but that would be funny AF

[Matt115]

2 hours ago, 4sheetzngeegles said:

Faatal

 

"That is not as simple as it sounds. Is that a hill or a staircase or a bunch of blocks placed like a stair case or a combination of all of it. Should the AI beat the side of the hill because you are 5m up it? No. It would not make sense. So you have to looks at all those blocks, which is slow and try to figure out what the 3d cube of blocks around and between the zombie and you mean. Tons of edge cases for nonsensical behavior. "

 

 

This is a question brought about by your answer to the above question.

 

Basically it's a multiple behavior scenario.

 

The simplified version, I copied all of the zombie profiles multiple times
changed the name by a numeric at the end of the name. Each one I varied the parameters
of awareness "sight hearing", approach speed, and the volume of their voice like suppressed
magnum vs un-suppressed magnum, then added them to the spawns. They all use same models but
I never knew the reaction they would have. This included sleepers.

 

All blocks in the game can be categorized into groups or hierarchy. simplest "station created,
player placed, terrain, even prefab pois have a combination of those." Player placed can be
absorbed by station created.  

 

Instead of adding a weight or calculation. Can they be given a binary designation of I and O.
If that zombie is spawned, and follows the basic pathing to a specific x,y perimeter and z is
not equal. then any "I" block is destroyed, as they move more "I" blocks are within sphere to
be destroyed.

 

Call it the "Foreman Zombie" heat is generated at an expedited rate by this type of zombie's
activities, bringing next level zombies such as wights, cops, demolishers. These zombies favor
non line of sight, so it would draw a player from safety to get rid of them before the rest come.
The crew drawn by this zombie would be cloned models, but follow the same logic as the Foreman.
Destroy area.

 

Would this add a lot of overhead.

 

Well a random behaviour is good  : some zombie prefere jump over things, some of them will try to go around and some "feral" will destroy everything to get to you

[ShellHead]

Not necessarily, while randomness makes fighting out in the world more interesting it makes base building and trap setting a lot harder. This is where the tower defense elements and survival fps elements can clash if not dealt with carefully.

[Matt115]

28 minutes ago, ShellHead said:

Not necessarily, while randomness makes fighting out in the world more interesting it makes base building and trap setting a lot harder. This is where the tower defense elements and survival fps elements can clash if not dealt with carefully.

Yep, just make in logical. The biggest problem i see is water. Zombies can into water? it can look stupid. They can't? player will use this too offten ehh

[ShellHead]

2 hours ago, Matt115 said:

Yep, just make in logical. The biggest problem i see is water. Zombies can into water? it can look stupid. They can't? player will use this too offten ehh

Yeah, you can’t build around Every insane “meta” strategy the players come up with, the best you can do is make the optimal strategy a marginal improvement over just playing however.

i say this as a World of Warcraft veteran.

[Matt115]

27 minutes ago, ShellHead said:

Yeah, you can’t build around Every insane “meta” strategy the players come up with, the best you can do is make the optimal strategy a marginal improvement over just playing however.

i say this as a World of Warcraft veteran.

well this same problem with cod XD 5 sec to kill orda gg. So  7dtd need some "impromvents" with water or add drowned zombies

[meganoth]

6 hours ago, dcsobral said:

On the feral sense thing, I'm sad that it is just about how easily zombies detect you. When I first heard of it on dev stream I thought it was about how zombies approach the player. This sophisticated path finding being used has reduced the diversity of effective bases a lot,

 

Or in other words, base building was trivial then. So you could build anything and it would work if it just had enough HP to occupy the zombies long enough or left the zombies running around without attack vector (stilt bases and underground bases were practically out of reach of zombies). 

 

6 hours ago, dcsobral said:

 

 

and it is a bit absurd -- not even google maps is that good!

 

The now-abandoned idea of player's making a "trail" would have been my favorite pathing solution,

 

Which doesn't work because players would simply "remove" the trail by using a drawbridge or wood frames that they remove after entering the base. The trail was never described as a blood moon feature to my knowledge, it was always about some zombies following you when you were moving about.

 

6 hours ago, dcsobral said:

 

 

and my second favorite would be path to player through line of sight. I don't like how zombies will see you and then move away from you because they know how to path to you to avoid obstacles.

 

 

That is the old pre-A17 method. As I said above this AI can be trivially gamed.

 

[dcsobral]

1 minute ago, meganoth said:

That is the old pre-A17 method. As I said above this AI can be trivially gamed.

 

If pathing was decent pre-A17, I'd agree. Pathing was bad, and zombies went more or less in a direct line (unless running in circles). Pathing to a player that can be seen or to a location a sound is coming from but only through blocks that are within LoS of the zombie is not something that was ever done.

 

Regardless, this is a strawman argument. The AI was no more trivially gamed then than it is now, minus a few exploits that have been removed since. Furthermore, it doesn't matter how many exploit bases exist: if a single one exist within common knowledge, then any player who desires an exploit base will make one. The argument above boils down to "many exploit bases existed before, and now there's less exploit bases", to which I reply: who cares?

 

What I do care about is that there were many more ways of making non-exploit bases before than now, but I am not advocating going back to pre-A17 AI. Go back and read again without the "he wants A16 AI" filter on your monitor. The current AI leads to a single optimal approach, and one which becomes quite boring since 7d2d isn't going the way of Night of the Dead with multiple traps with which to design a killing maze.

 

Side note about the trail thing: yeah, players could remove the path if it was ever implemented for horde night, just like players could remove the path in pre-A17 AI and like players can remove the path on current AI. Absence of a path is a problem common to all pathing approaches.

 

[paulritik_09]

I think there will be some hints. It seems like there is normally a dot-4, so we should get 19.4 next. Then there will be some call for streamers to show off the 20 so they can submit their applications. Then after that we will eventually get 20-pre-experimental. They will release approximately one new build per week (on average).And after a couple of months of that, then we get A20.

[Vedui]

8 hours ago, dcsobral said:

Regardless, this is a strawman argument. The AI was no more trivially gamed then than it is now, minus a few exploits that have been removed since. Furthermore, it doesn't matter how many exploit bases exist: if a single one exist within common knowledge, then any player who desires an exploit base will make one.

 

 

 

I admit, I enjoy finding those edge cases where the AI breaks down and it becomes trivial.

 

That said, what I would like to see is AI being different for POI Sleepers VS Blood Moon Horde zombies.

 

Having a fancy "I can run the gauntlet in my POI" is cool, avoids swisscheese much more than what we had in the past. However, for a blood moon horde, a simplistic "We'll rush the player and destroy everything between us and them if we get stuck" would work a lot better (ie, A16 style) and avoid the suspension of belief when they go around the base, then up, then down, through a weak block and then circles around to the now open path to get to the player.

In my view, Alpha 16 was the last version where base builds were really fun and challenging. Yes it had the problem with above/below, but if you avoided that particular cheese, you suddenly had a much more interesting base design that looked like a real base, as opposed to a simple A17+ "platform path the zombie falls off on their own" or any other number of ways to treat them like lemmings

 

 

[meganoth]

9 hours ago, dcsobral said:

If pathing was decent pre-A17, I'd agree. Pathing was bad, and zombies went more or less in a direct line (unless running in circles). Pathing to a player that can be seen or to a location a sound is coming from but only through blocks that are within LoS of the zombie is not something that was ever done.

 

Practically this is an impossible wish at the current time because line of sight is an expensive operation to calculate, too much to consider for release of 7D2D

 

Theoretically speaking though that would be a lot more realistical. Whether it would be more fun, who knows.

 

9 hours ago, dcsobral said:

 

Regardless, this is a strawman argument. The AI was no more trivially gamed then than it is now, minus a few exploits that have been removed since. Furthermore, it doesn't matter how many exploit bases exist: if a single one exist within common knowledge, then any player who desires an exploit base will make one. The argument above boils down to "many exploit bases existed before, and now there's less exploit bases", to which I reply: who cares?

 

I'm not necessarily talking about exploit bases even though stilts were a major problem. My problem with pre-A17 AI was that you could simply build anything and the zombies would not really react to it but just to you. This made almost everything possible but it also REMOVED the need to build anything else but simple blocks. Why bother with some path for the zombies when they ignore it anyway? Why add trap doors when you would have to surround your base completely with trap doors for them to work? Simply said before A17 I didn't bother with doing anything special because special was ignored anyway. THAT is my problem with pre-A17 AI

 

Since A17 the zombies can be "exploited" BUT now the exploits are similar to the "exploits" in other tower-defense games. Or said simply since A17 7D2D had a real tower-defense subgame making the exploits not exploits but a game feature.

 

9 hours ago, dcsobral said:

 

What I do care about is that there were many more ways of making non-exploit bases before than now, but I am not advocating going back to pre-A17 AI. Go back and read again without the "he wants A16 AI" filter on your monitor. The current AI leads to a single optimal approach, and one which becomes quite boring since 7d2d isn't going the way of Night of the Dead with multiple traps with which to design a killing maze.

 

I never said you wanted to go back to it. But you implicitly compared the current AI to pre-A17 "This sophisticated path finding being used has reduced the diversity of effective bases a lot, ", i.e. you referenced how the previous AI was better in that regard, allowed more diversity, so it is only fair that I can compare with that as well. And denounce it as more arbitrary and very very low on tower defense mechanics

 

9 hours ago, dcsobral said:

 

Side note about the trail thing: yeah, players could remove the path if it was ever implemented for horde night, just like players could remove the path in pre-A17 AI and like players can remove the path on current AI. Absence of a path is a problem common to all pathing approaches.

 

 

Well, you are correct that it would have made tower defense paths possible AND whatever AI goes into effect once the path is away, so I change my mind on this, it would have been a nice feature for horde night.

 

[Adam the Waster]

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

 

Practically this is an impossible wish at the current time because line of sight is an expensive operation to calculate, too much to consider for release of 7D2D

 

Theoretically speaking though that would be a lot more realistical. Whether it would be more fun, who knows.

 

 

make the zombies able to jump 30 feet and then see how long people last
jk

but maybe some other zombies could jump higher to get people. like feral zombies, spiders, etc

Edited May 18, 2021 by Adam the Waster (see edit history)

[meganoth]

47 minutes ago, Adam the Waster said:

make the zombies able to jump 30 feet and then see how long people last
jk

but maybe some other zombies could jump higher to get people. like feral zombies, spiders, etc

 

I see spiders jump quite far and high already. 

[Adam the Waster]

1 minute ago, meganoth said:

 

I see spiders jump quite far and high already. 

they can reach you if your on the ground, not high up, they don't Hop on your roof and try to eat you.  the highest iv seen them jump is about 6 blocks. and it had to in a angle. not right up on the wall like other zombies


at least for me they don't for me

[Roland]

One of the most enjoyable aspects of the A17 streamer weekend was watching all of the oh @%$# moments when spiders unexpectedly jumped on and over everyone's walls. I think the jump distance was toned down a bit from the initial A17 settings. Come to think of it....everything was toned down from A17 settings...

[Roland]

7 hours ago, paulritik_09 said:

I think there will be some hints. It seems like there is normally a dot-4, so we should get 19.4 next. Then there will be some call for streamers to show off the 20 so they can submit their applications. Then after that we will eventually get 20-pre-experimental. They will release approximately one new build per week (on average).And after a couple of months of that, then we get A20.

We are already on 19.4 and 19.5 is in experimental so 19.5 going stable will be next. At some point that will be followed by weekly developer streams showing off the new features for A20. The streamer weekend will then happen to lead into the general Monday release of A20 experimental.

[AndrewT]

The three things im most excited for in A20 are the vehicle mods, the new model for the AK47 and the massive improvements to RWG

[Adam the Waster]

1 hour ago, AndrewT said:

The three things im most excited for in A20 are the vehicle mods, the new model for the AK47 and the massive improvements to RWG

the things im looking for. Aside from aside from playing 7DTD again (hope my PC does not go boom!)

is
new zombie models (brunt zombie mostly)
pipe weapons
new building blocks
and so many other things


THINGS i want to see!
new solder and wight model
new armors (i still don't know if its coming or not)

things I'm Kind of scared of! 


 

• Simplified upgrade path: Frame/Particle Board -> Wood -> Stone -> Concrete -> Steel. I hope they didn't FULLY kill my scrap metal build!

[enragedcamel]

Any news on A20 release date? Or are we still doing the "when it is ready" song and dance?

[Adam the Waster]

1 minute ago, enragedcamel said:

Any news on A20 release date? Or are we still doing the "when it is ready" song and dance?

*Climbs the Himalayas with a Large Speaker and battery bank, gets to the top and throw all those flags away, Plugs in Speaker, sets up microphone then i Say*


 

Spoiler

WHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNNNN ITTTTTTTTTTTSSSSSSSS DONE!

*then adam was killed by Zombie vultures*