Jump to content

A20 Developer Diary Discussions


Roland

Recommended Posts

2 hours ago, Xtrakicking said:

Loyalty? Starting to sound like a cult to me. Lol.

 

I mean, I think it's perfectly reasonable that someone would quit if the devs take away what made the game fun for them, don't you think?

Is it though? :spy:

"Hello Fun Pimps? Yes, yes, I'd like to report a few names of unbelievers..." :phone:

 

31 minutes ago, Blake_ said:

Hi @faatal , happy new year. Can you throw some fish stick for us to chew? I have prepared a few blunt yet sensual and direct questions regarding a20, I hope you don't mind.

 

1.  What are you working on at the moment ?

 

2. Are you allowed to talk about special infected ? Specifically stuff like : how many are in the works, how far ahead is the AI ... etc.

 

3. Any news about RWG ? Anything will do.

 

4. Any info about POI, models, weapons or general stuff  that is curently being adressed by the programming team that you know of?

 

Thanks in advance.

All these questions can be summarized into: WHEN'S THE NEXT DEV STREAM!! I'M HUNGRY!! :mad2::hungry:

Edited by Jost Amman
spacing (see edit history)
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Zark said:

Unfortunately, A20 might be the update where I decide to quit because the climate survival I once enjoyed and loved has been stripped away.

 

I loved having the amount of clothing slots because I like tweaking the settings to also make it a winter survival game. Having 4 slots will ruin this mechanic and the game for me. Ever since A16 or A17, the "weather snow 0.4" command that added a layer of snow depth no longer worked. That disappointed me because I enjoyed playing with the weather settings to add a unique level of challenge for my friends where there would be cold fronts and snow in the desert or pine.

 

The old system could easily be simulated in a mod. Just create armors that have huge random variations in heat and cold resist (maybe this is even what TFP is doing with the 4 slots right now). Or even have seperate items "scrap chest armor with shirt", "scrap chest armor with duster", "scrap chest armor with poncho" (if the xml is generated with a small script it really isn't that much work)

 

I'm sure TFP is trembling now with fear since you threatened to quit 😄

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 hours ago, art1336 said:

a product that was never delivered.


How so when the product that was promised was a stand alone version of the game based on the Alpha 14 architecture and what was delivered was that PLUS elements of A15 as well. 
 

The truth is that console players got more than they were promised but just not as much as they erroneously expected (if they were expecting parity with the PC version for some reason)

 

I guess that’s why you said many of them FELT shafted. They weren’t. But they felt that way. Unfortunately, there’s no helping what people are going to inexplicably feel. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 1/4/2021 at 3:34 AM, 4sheetzngeegles said:

Faatal

 

I have a question regarding loot distribution and randomization. Actually it has to do with randomization in all aspects of the game.

 

<comprehensive description of loot rubber-banding snipped>

 

This has been brought up before and one problem is, what counts as "player hoard"? Every container in every location in the entire world? So you have 20 Meat Stew and 10 First Aid Kits at your base 7,500m away, but you ran into a spot of trouble and are now bleeding, infected, and hungry. Sorry, pal, you've got all that stuff on the other side of the map!

 

Or remember that one Shamway you were looting and there was too much stuff, so you left a bunch of canned goods in a random container somewhere in the store, intending to "come back later"? Well, that's now part of your hoard and the game will restrict your loot because of it.

 

Okay so maybe we just use the current player inventory. Well then everybody will dump their inventory into a chest before looting a POI, in an attempt to game the rubber-banded* RNG to produce better loot.

 

I think completely random loot - modified by gamestage, type of POI, biome, type of container, and difficulty setting - is the only method that is workable in practice. And gamestage is a proxy for "what does my hoard look like". It's an imperfect proxy, but it works well enough.

 

(*Dunno how common this phrasing is and I don't mean to confuse. 'Rubber banding' comes from racing games where, if you're losing, magically the cars ahead of you slow down or crash into each other. Or if you're winning suddenly they have double-turbo and impeccable cornering skills.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Roland said:


How so when the product that was promised was a stand alone version of the game based on the Alpha 14 architecture and what was delivered was that PLUS elements of A15 as well. 
 

The truth is that console players got more than they were promised but just not as much as they erroneously expected (if they were expecting parity with the PC version for some reason)

 

I guess that’s why you said many of them FELT shafted. They weren’t. But they felt that way. Unfortunately, there’s no helping what people are going to inexplicably feel. 

Gold was the intended version to eventually somehow be patched into console. That is truth. A company that bought the rights to the title went bankrupt and the collaboration that was going on between the Pimps and TT had to stop along with a reselling of the rights. That is also true. Selling the rights to get quick short term money was a moderate mistake . That is also, in retrospective, true. Somehow good design decisions prevented an abrupt end to this absurd, bumpy and amateur commercial handling even on PC. True that too. I'm thankful of learning experiences if they turn out like this though. Every game from my Steam library got its butt handed to them by this title since 2013.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Fair point. I did understand the reference i first saw it in Mario cart , then
NFS. I was just thinking of an AI alternative, to make the game a bit more of
a hunt for survival without modding.

 

When I up the difficulty the main thing that I notice is the Z speed and strength
I always adjust the spawns, because each play-through I take on a different role,
either in perks or the materials i covet to see how long I can last. That is always
a manual choice. Until you pointed out both sides of the mirror, I was wishing for the
game to force me out of a comfort zone, and make me rethink my strategies.

 

The scenario was more along the lines of what it would be like after. There are
only 8 or so other human entities, everyone else has turned, so food in basic areas
would be scarcer, hoards would be the saving grace, but they would need to be found.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

9 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

Ok. I have never played around with rwgmixer. I can't assess how much randomness would be in the old biome generation and how probable it was that you saw the same biome map.

 

1) Who knows, the generator might just select between 10 or 20 fixed versions of a biome map internally. Very unlikely since someone should have noticed this in A16 already.

2) Since all the rest of RWG is procedurally generated I would assume biome generation also uses the (user-provided) seed that is used for the rest of world generation. Are you sure that the other poster used a different name for WorldGenSeed AND GameName than you? Are you sure your biome does not depend on the WorldGenSeed or GameName?

3) A possibility is that your mod itself shrinked the possible biomes that can be generated by the biome generator.

4) Another possibility is that the old unused code that generates the biomes in your mod is buggy and removes all the randomness it would get from the random number generator.

 

I'm not saying you are wrong. This could be the basis of a proof, but at the moment this is just another weak indication there could be something wrong, with too much uncertainty what it really means. I'm sure you know more about this than I do and might be able to dismiss one or more of the possibilities I listed. But to dismiss all of them you would need access to the internal biome generator code and have analyzed it.

 

In summary, to prove it you have to give a lot more details and in this case only TFP internally could find out if this is a problem of its RNG in general or just some bug in old code that isn't used anymore. And how likely is it that they will try to follow any argument that leads to analyzing unused code that is probably on the way out of the code base? If you are really sure then you could make a bug report, but I suspect it likely will be ignored because of using old code.

 

If this were a murder investigation we would be at the point where we have a missing person that doesn't answer any calls. And we have a few suspects, one of them so old he will be dead before you can convict him. But neither do we have a dead body nor any proof of foul play at all. We need the dead body, not more people who tell us they didn't see him since yesterday. 😉

 

I checked again. Yes, i must admit that the example with RWG was really bad.

There were differences. They're small - but they're definitely not the same! I didn't notice them because of the tilt of the map.

In addition - i myself deliberately made it so that the differences were not very strong in order not to disrupt the desired balance.... and forgot :D

I'm sorry i misled you about this.

 

I now experimented on this. I'm not sure right now, but it looks like the whole generation is based on the seed alone.

Which, however, does not prevent this from getting non-repeating results (when changing the seed, of course).

 

Regarding the embedded stamps - stamps are now used to create relief.

It seems that stamps are not used for the distribution of biomes - but, i agree , this is exactly what it looks like.... it's all the same..... there are minor differences on the border.

(why statements were made for A19 that biomes are now random - is unclear... this is only purely formal)

 

After turning off the deterrent function, i began to get a variety worlds generated by procedural generation (based on the seed) in a way that - a real random would envy!!! :)

 

I was wrong - old RWG algorithms based on "seed" (pseudo-random) - work better than random now in the game !

Edited by n2n1 (see edit history)
Link to comment
Share on other sites

25 minutes ago, Blake_ said:

Gold was the intended version to eventually somehow be patched into console.

See how you had to use the word “somehow” in your sentence? Even you don’t fully believe it. The truth is that the full Gold PC version would never have been able to have been ported because there really was never going to be any somehow about it. They couldn’t even port A15 in its entirety and A16 was only going to be certain elements of it. 
 

Madmole did say they would try to make them as equal as possible but that is not the same thing as a promised delivery. The promised delivery was a standalone version of 7 Days to Die based on the Alpha 14 architecture period. Anything more was just gravy. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Roland said:

See how you had to use the word “somehow” in your sentence? Even you don’t fully believe it. The truth is that the full Gold PC version would never have been able to have been ported because there really was never going to be any somehow about it. They couldn’t even port A15 in its entirety and A16 was only going to be certain elements of it. 
 

Madmole did say they would try to make them as equal as possible but that is not the same thing as a promised delivery. The promised delivery was a standalone version of 7 Days to Die based on the Alpha 14 architecture period. Anything more was just gravy. 

Putting that aside Rick did say in a recent dev talk that there is a possibility of a Gold release in a future console, and he sure was vague about an absolute pinky promise confirmation. To the console players I say worry not, PS5 and its respective Microsoft competitor can handle 7dtd quite ok with little sacrifices, unlike THAT a15/16 standalone version. The only thing missing at the moment is both the Gold Version and a few console developers capable of porting it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Blake_ said:

Putting that aside Rick did say in a recent dev talk that there is a possibility of a Gold release in a future console, and he sure was vague about an absolute pinky promise confirmation. To the console players I say worry not, PS5 and its respective Microsoft competitor can handle 7dtd quite ok with little sacrifices, unlike THAT a15/16 standalone version. The only thing missing at the moment is both the Gold Version and a few console developers capable of porting it.

Rick is talking about a new product that will be created for new consoles. I was talking about the original product as was Madmole. If you read the full press release they say that the current version will get no further updates but that they hope to create a new version based upon the gold version. 
 

I highly doubt they will use any part of the one that was based off of Alpha 14 and somehow update that one into the PC Gold version on the new consoles. 
 

Any comments by Rick or Joel regarding future console versions are based on their press release and they are talking about hopes to create something new 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 hours ago, Outlaw_187 said:

On a side note, hopefully this post doesn't get moved, but do any of the devs know if there will be any additional experimental past 19.3? I actually haven't restarted since 19.1 and was considering restarting but I'll wait if there's gonna be a 19.4. 

Thanks Fun Pimps, love the game & look forward to Alpha 20!!

I just got word that there will be a 19.4.

Edited by Roland (see edit history)
Link to comment
Share on other sites

59 minutes ago, Games'n'Grumble said:

Hi, can anyone explain (maybe @madmole ) what is the Difficulty Bonus in the formula for calculating the game stage? And why is it always equal to 1.2 regardless of difficulty (although the name hints that it should be the other way around) ?

Difficulty has meant different things over the course of development. It used to control the pace at which player game stage would ramp up but now it no longer does. 
 

The reason it was decoupled from difficulty was that loot was tied to gamestage for the first time which meant that a multiplier to increase gamestage no longer made things purely more difficult. 
 

Currently, difficulty controls how much damage enemies can take and how often they go into rage mode. The rate of progression is fixed across all difficulties but can be effected for whatever difficulty you choose by adjusting xp gains and day length. 300% xp and 30 minute days will get the pace of your gamestage progression moving along quite rapidly. 

Edited by Roland (see edit history)
Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 hours ago, Arma Rex said:

What's the status on getting a stream? Surely there has to be enough content to present currently.

The team just barely got back from vacation and today was their first meeting to discuss tasks going forward. The studio has been closed since just before Christmas. There is no use asking for dates of future streams as they don't want to give a date and then have to postpone. It will happen when it happens usually with a few day's notice.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sorry if we sent you the same list, I put it in the wrong forum, this is the correct one and we already took the opportunity to put some more ideas.
We the fans and folks from some of the 7 Days to Die closed groups want to share a list of ideas and improvements chosen by vote for the game for the Alpha 20 or later Alphas.
If you are not going to implement some ideas, save the list of ideas for a future Alpha, we all want more content and love from 7 Days to Die.

 

- Swamp biome, Tundra biome.
- The return of the Plains biome. Less green perhaps.
- Helicopter vehicle: the next upgrade to the gyrocopter and final vehicle, it's cool to take off and land vertically. Two passengers maybe?
- 10 Vehicles in total in the game? That would be great, three marine vehicles such as a raft, a sailboat and a motor boat. From air vehicles the helicopter and a land vehicle can be another model of car or a quad for the mountains :)
- More graphical improvements of a burning entity, firearms firing, explosions...
- The player can become nervous in the presence of a zombie and causes the reload animation to speed up, can be slow or very fast. It can be removed with skills or simply remove clumsiness.
- More animations for each action, drinking with said soda, injections, lock picks...
- "Real" weight in vehicles.
- The concrete mixer has its animation continues while it is working.
- House blinds with real physics to the wind and the collision of entities.
- More elements and objects in 3d, pipes, plants, crops...
- Back to the scent system. But they are zombies and do not feel anything, but and their mutations what.
- "Read" in the books and "use" in the diagrams. It is wiser to read in a book.
- In each block painted by the player, show what material it really is. Red on the steel, mmm.
- Adhesive material for the walls to place the turrets in a more realistic way.
- In your game, when you open the map, a correct translation from spanish Spain "parece a temperatura". It can be a valid: "temperatura ambiental".
- The degrees Celsius and degrees Fahrenheit in game options.
- In the options, a new option to indicate until what time the blood moon ends on the day of the horde. Minimum limit at 22:00 and maximum limit at dawn.
- Option to choose a game in creative mode.
- In creative mode, a filter option to choose the quality level of objects, weapons... Always everything at level 6 or maybe at level 2 to experiment, mmm :)
- In each different house that has its unique paintings, more personality in each house.
- When a zombie is beheaded, its moans are cut off.
- Deadly poison when the snake bites you, although easy antidote to prepare, but what if you don't know, deaaddd.
- "Bestiary" of enemies and NPCs. When you kill an enemy or see a merchant, it is logged. Shows weight, height, description of origin, etc.
- New achievements. An achievement that you discover the entire Navezgane map, kill all types of zombies, complete a mission in no time...
- A game intro showing the beginning of the zombie apocalypse with the fighting of the people and the police and the army against the first zombies (example, the intro of the old game R3 Nemesis), and then, several years later, the end of the world with the protagonist.
- The story may be that a virus transforms people and animals into normal zombies (there are no wild or irradiated ones), then governments launch nuclear missiles in the most important cities of the world (explanation of the Destroyed City biome and the Highly radioactive Zone biome) , after several years the savages appear and those irradiated because of radioactivity. Normal zombies just because of radiation better not, first a pandemic and then radiation.
- Option to put various HUD layouts of hunger, thirst, health, stamina, experience bar.
- New zombies like the "Jugdment zombi" that is immune to normal bullets. Riot police zombie. Swamp zombie that is badly decomposed by the swamp waters...
- More lootable vehicles on the roads like police car, SWAT vans, motorcycles, trucks...
- More decorative and lootable elements in cities and roads such as traffic lights, traffic signs, highway, road tunnels...
- An airport with planes and helicopters destroyed to loot.
- More points of interest and more varieties of houses.
- Physical objects such as the shopping cart.
- Fishing system, a merchant who will send you missions to bring food to him or his people. Fish consumption and related recipes, prices and missions. Several models of fishing rods with their baits, how about a zombie eye or just worms haha.
- Improved agriculture: sunlight, UV bulbs, fertilizers, irrigation systems, watering can, cultivation plots for indoor systems and with the hoe for outdoor in the land...
- Livestock: cages for small and large animals, animal plots, advanced skills for husbandry...
- Domestication, a horse to ride (hey Rick), or a wolf to keep you company and carry some of the loot. Man's best friend is missing in this apocalypse and a "vehicle" that smiles at you :)
- More animals: Bats at night and caves, zombie crows in the forest, cows, horses, return of the pig, various models of fish.
- Rivers, waterfalls, plateaus, caves.
- More elements of nature like flowers and more plants.
- Crafting system for cables. Copper ore to make cable and electronic devices.
- Platinum nuggets to sell. The value is between the gold nugget and the diamond.
- 5.56mm ammunition for the Tactical Assault Rifle, is based on the M4 Assault Rifle.
- More weapons.
- Titanium and tungsten mineral. In some mods of the game, the tools, weapons and more, with these materials work wonderfully.
- With the skills, the gold, silver, platinum and diamond mines are more common.
- Modifications and paint for vehicles.
- Zip line.
- More food and sweets.
- More variety of missions.
- Thermal vision goggles. To see irradiated animals and zombies in the dark, normal zombies are dead without radiation and do not emit heat.
- Steel spike traps.
- Shields to protect you and you can only carry a pistol, club or small arms, you defend yourself but at the same time you attack a little more awkward. Wood, Iron, Steel and Riot Shield (cannot be crafted).
- More realistic system of supply and demand from merchants.
- New tool: sickle, to cut crops and more fiber blocks to finish earlier.
- We have found out that they are going to eliminate the blunderbuss, do not do it, no, we are very fond of it.
- Very distant islands and distant seas with unique content. There may be related advanced missions.
- More tools for painting, an example the roller for heights, heights that fear.
- The rest of zombies, animals, zombie animals and traders with old model bring it in the HD version.
- Physical in the hair of all zombies. Zombie with a helmet or cap, for example, a miner can drop his helmet due to a fall, blow, shot or explosion.
- Improved AI and search for zombies paths.
- More diseases.
- More skills for the new changes and game with more duration.
- HD graphics enhancement in the entire modeling of your character.
- Improved zombie and ambient sound. Although you can exaggerate to be more scary.
- Drone. And if i am not an animal lover and I prefer a machine pet hehe.
- Steam Workshop please, and steam cloud.
- Improved multiplayer and much more optimization.
- More styles of icons to indicate on the map.
- More designs for painting.

 

And there are many more ideas, but all of these are the most chosen by all users.


We all think 7 Days to Die still has a long way to go, but a single quality game is better than many short-lived games.


Some of the ideas on the Alpha 20 changelist are not on this list, because we know it brings them in the next A20.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 1/5/2021 at 2:32 PM, Blake_ said:

Hi @faatal , happy new year. Can you throw some fish stick for us to chew? I have prepared a few blunt yet sensual and direct questions regarding a20, I hope you don't mind.

 

1.  What are you working on at the moment ?

 

2. Are you allowed to talk about special infected ? Specifically stuff like : how many are in the works, how far ahead is the AI ... etc.

 

3. Any news about RWG ? Anything will do.

 

4. Any info about POI, models, weapons or general stuff  that is curently being adressed by the programming team that you know of?

 

Thanks in advance.

+1

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, Miguel94 said:

Sorry if we sent you the same list, I put it in the wrong forum, this is the correct one and we already took the opportunity to put some more ideas.
We the fans and folks from some of the 7 Days to Die closed groups want to share a list of ideas and improvements chosen by vote for the game for the Alpha 20 or later Alphas.
If you are not going to implement some ideas, save the list of ideas for a future Alpha, we all want more content and love from 7 Days to Die.

 

.....

 

Unfortunately for this very comprehensive list of ideas TFP have a clear and set goal toward the gold release of this game, as they should at this point. They have stated that they will not waver from this so any feature suggestions not already planned are sadly that much hot air. Steam workshop is supposed to happen with or after the gold release.

 

Sounds like a fun mod though. 🙂

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Your game was similar to Project Zomboid in the sense where it was a REAL and RAW apocalypse experience, with infinite potential and all of my faith. Now? It's a god damn arcade game. Candy super powers. Growing skills like farming, cooking, engineering and hunting by... Killing, and building. Locking people's progressions into limited lists of perks by boxing everything into neat little attributes. Looting a tool store and finding a stone shovel instead of an Iron or Steel one. Looting a gun store and finding an improvised Blunderbuss and some stone arrows instead of a pistol. You, devs, used to embrace chaos as both the nature of your game and the flavor of your game's progression. When you took the chaos away, you took the soul of 7 days to die away. You could have embraced the game's nature: Implemented more weapons, power attacks, kept and improved leveling by doing, kept and improved chaotic loot, implemented PERMADEATH, and balanced the game around all those elements of SHEER BADASSERY. Instead? Hell, you're catering to casuals, children, and beer drinkers. Inflating Jen's tits and putting super power candies into the game, taking away every chaotic element the game had, and boiling it all down into some orderly, linear, garbage fire. Go to your trader, base-up, do quests for them. Find stone tools and blunderbusses so often, that you may as well not even loot any POI's until after the first bloodmoon. Just do buried treasure quests repeatedly to get your gamestage up until there's actually something worth finding in POI's. Yeah you can play how you want, but if you don't follow the developer-selected path of trader focus, then your playthrough suffers for it. The game used to have way more soul, and way more options than that. Leveling is linear, item progression is linear, there's way too much order now. The sheer chaos was what made this game great back in the day. It was... Badass. 

Sales aren't everything; If the masses are idiots, then you can indeed make something simple, and sell it well. But the opinions that truly matter, like mine, will always be disappointed if you do that. Which you have, and seem content to continue to do. Yeah, making a thousand wooden clubs so you can make level 600 bows is KIND OF weird. But you know what's weirder? Building and upgrading a house so you can learn how to craft a bicycle, so that you can learn how to throw a spear better. Learning by doing at least made a modicum of sense. Candy that gives you superpowers... While I love that idea, on top of every other change to the game it sadly betrays what you guys think of your game now. It's no longer serious. It's a joke. You guys messed up. Alpha 16's skill progression and loot system was perfectly tailored to stimulate dopamine releases constantly. At this point you're just boiling the game down, into this... Linear garbage fire where every player is punished for choosing one attribute over another. I was never wrong about all this. I was simply your last island. I'm the reasoning, I'm the truth here. I'm the good sense, the thought, and the contemplation. You guys? I'm sorry, but the current iteration of your game tells me exactly how deeply you've thought about it. To redeem your game, polish Alpha 16's progression system, keep the chaos, and definitely keep the POI redesign and graphical enhancements from the latest alphas. I'm trying to talk sense into you guys but like I said, you're all the kind of captains who insist everything's fine as their hull slowly fills with water and their crew loses faith in them.

I watched Cobra Kai so, I know a thing or two about being badass. And the game was badass. It is no longer badass. You guys no longer seem badass. You seem old and irrelevant, because that's what you're making the game seem like lately. It's a boring cardboard cutout of many games I've played before rather than the unique experience it used to be. I level up by killing things in Dark Souls. In Pokemon. I won't even start that list, it's too long. But to sacrifice the leveling system you had, for the one you have now... Tsk tsk tsk, that's shameful. That's like taking the sistine chapel and drawing mustaches on the characters, just to make children who see it laugh. You dumbed down a work of art to satisfy the masses and sell more copies, just because your console port flopped. It conveys this horrible notion that the game's potential (vast potential) was wasted on you guys.  Like the game could have been given to EA Games, and ended up the way it is now. I'm sorry for these hurtful words. But my god are they ever the truth. I'm just trying to help. But you all seem remarkably closed off to good sense.

Edited by Crater Creator
discussion of previous moderation, personal attacks (see edit history)
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...