Welcome to the Alpha 21 Developer Diary where members of The Fun Pimp staff will occasionally answer questions, post updates of what they are working on, and give us sneak peaks into the future of 7 Days to Die.
This is a focused thread meaning that any off-topic chatter or side conversations not involving a TFP staff member will be moved to an overflow thread in general discussions.
In addition, only Alpha 21 features that have been confirmed will show up in the list below. No longer will planned and hoped-for features be posted until they are actually a reality. This means that even though a developer might talk about their wishes for A21 in the body of the thread, those features will not be listed as official A21 features here until they are confirmed as already implemented.
A21 Release Target Date: June 12 2023
CONFIRMED A21 FEATURES
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Places of Interest
- 100+ New places to explore
- additional environmental storytelling in POIs
- 100s of classic POIs updated to current standards
- Many new T5 and T4 POIs
- All POI's have a proper name
- All trader compounds updated and enhanced
- Huge tunnel in Navezgane
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Art
- Cars, Minivans, Police Cars, trucks, tractors, Fire Engines, Semis, Heavy Machinery, Forklifts
- Improved glass shaders
- Light emissive color matching
- Improved reflections
- Many new props for indoor and outdoor
- A large variety of Posters and Pictures on walls
- New forge model showing upgrades as they are slotted in
- New workbench model shows visible indicator that crafting is happening
- New signs for trader compounds
- Lots of flavor art revealing backstories for the traders
- Lots of small pipe variations for decorative purposes
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Additional Advanced World Generation Options
- Biome Percent Sliders (included in Alpha 20.6)
- Option to hide map during advanced generation
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Learn By Reading System
- 23 new skills to govern crafting (photo in gallery below)
- 23 new magazines added to loot
- Perks no longer unlock recipes or govern crafting at all
- The only schematics that still unlock recipes are mod attachments.
- Crafting skill is increased by finding and reading magazines
- Skill increases unlock recipes at certain points as well as increase quality of crafting for items with quality
- Each tech level has a separate range in the skill spectrum so that you have to work up through primitive tech and then iron tech and then steel tech and being able to craft a blue stone axe no long means you automatically can also craft a blue iron axe.
- Some skills have 100 levels but others have less depending on how many unlocks there are for recipes and quality tiers.
- A new skill page showing your progress has been added to the player interface (photo in gallery below)
- Skill magazines can be found, bought, and/or received as quest rewards. The topic of the magazine matches the location you would expect to find it in the world.
- Perks slightly affect the probability of finding like-themed magazines and parts for those recipes. Perk into shotguns and you will notice more shotgun magazines and shotgun parts appearing in the world. It isn't a significant bonus but it does prevent the player from being screwed over.
- When you max out a skill, that slight probability bonus granted by perks for finding the corresponding magazine for that skill drops off. The magazine will still show up randomly in loot but no longer have a boost. The probability boost for finding matching parts will remain.
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Interactive Environmental Hazards https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0mgZ9zB9m4
- Flaming broken gas pipes blocking the way. A valve to turn off the gas flow is located elsewhere.
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Doors
- Double Doors
- Partially damaged doors with large holes can be shot/meleed through to damage enemies on the other side
- hundreds of door variations
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Water Simulation
- All new water coding--water is no longer a block but a water voxel
- Water voxels flow into neighboring voxels that are marked to allow it.
- Water can be in the same space as a block
- Water does not flow or fall continuously like a river or a waterfall
- Player movement in water has been enhanced
- Armor -Pushed to A22 with bandits and character models
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Drinking Water Rebalance
- Murky water is the only water found in loot and water sources.
- Empty Glass bottles removed from game to match all the rest of the containers in the game
- Dew collector work station added
- Players can drink murky water directly from water sources with empty hand by pressing "e".
- Drinking murky water causes 5 hp of damage and has a chance to give dysentery
- Pot is now required to boil murky water into boiled water
- Glue crafting taken into consideration
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Spears
- Spear damage increased
- Spear power attack is a thrust instead of a throw
- Throw attack for spears removed
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Chunk Reset Option
- Default is disabled
- Options for days all the way up to 70 days
- Chunk resets to its pregenerated state if no player has entered the chunk after the number of days selected.
- An active LCB or bedroll will prevent a chunk from resetting.
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Trader Changes
- New Trader compounds
- Trader inventories rebalanced with the new crafting progression
- Removal of Secret Stash
- Further specialization of traders and what they carry
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Electricity Changes
- Wires only visible when holding wire cutting tool
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Player HUD changes
- Danger Meter added to show danger level of biomes and POIs
- Crafting Recipe Tracker can be toggled to show on the HUD to help players as they gather materials needed for crafting
- When crafting, the player can select on the hud the quality level they would like to craft as long as it is equal to or less than what they've learned.
- An armor state indicator to warn when your armor durability is low.
- F7 now supports interacting with objects so the entire HUD can be removed for cinematic play.
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Perk Rebalancing
- Sexual T-Rex removed. Stamina improvement now incorporated into the separate perks for each relevant weapon
- Each attribute will get its own version of Flurry of Blows as an additional perk for the melee weapons within that attribute
- Grease Monkey now increases the amount of health that repair kits restore to vehicles. (One repair kit no longer restores a vehicle back to max health)
- The cooking perk speeds up cooking times
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Vehicle Changes
- Repair kits restore a fixed amount of health and each level of Grease Monkey adds 10% of the vehicle's total health to the amount restored.
- Increased vehicle damage to blocks, terrain, and entities by various amounts.
- Increased vehicle damage received from collisions by various amounts
- Improved vehicle block collision calculations
- Greatly increased damage given and received to and from block collision.
- Increased bicycle, gyro, and 4x4 health
- Vehicle spark effects on bigger self damage hits
- Vehicle blood splatter effects on high damage collisions with entities
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Entity Activity Throttling System
- Zombie pathing updates less frequently (server-side) based on distance from player
- Jiggle components disabled (client-side) based on distance from player
- Each player can always have some fully simulated zombies
- Helps with large numbers of zombies from Blood Moon & sleeper volumes
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New Terrain Tool
- Sphere-shaped brush with adjustable size
- Grows terrain in all directions instead of just upwards
- Can fill space with any block (including non-terrain)
- Undo function
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Graphics Improvements
- Shadows re-enabled on grass, based on quality settings
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Quests
- New quest type: Infested Clear
- Infested quests increase the Tier level of the quest by one level and greatly increase the number of zombies.
- T5 infestation quests are therefore considered T6.
ROADMAP TO GOLD AND BEYOND
- Bandits
- Armor
- Weather
- Factions & Story
- Steam Workshop Support
After Gold a small team will continue to support and update 7 Days to Die going forward. Bandits unlikely to be ready for A21 but should be good for A22.