Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Morloc]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

There are some new loot containers that only appear during a particular type of quest and will never show up if someone clears a POI without the quest activated so this wish is at least partially fulfilled.

 

Could we tug the sleeve of the guy(s) who might bring back the randomization of containers in POI's?

 

If I get 12 working bookcases in a POI that's great, because I'm going to get that every time I see that POI as a quest again. If I get 2 working shelves however...that sucks permanently.

 

I swear I remember it being random at one time, but it's definitely not now.

 

 

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc 💀

[bdubyah]

So are there any pics of this danger meter? I'm a bit leery of even more stuff being added to the HUD. Or is it just maybe in the character screen like game/loot stage?

[NekoPawtato]

1 hour ago, Morloc said:

 

Could we tug the sleeve of the guy(s) who might bring back the randomization of containers in POI's?

 

If I get 12 working bookcases in a POI that's great, because I'm going to get that every time I see that POI as a quest again. If I get 2 working shelves however...that sucks permanently.

 

I swear I remember it being random at one time, but it's definitely not now.

 

 

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc 💀

faatal did mention this issue some time ago I believe. Fingers crossed that it got addressed as I know I did submit a bug report for that too.

  

On 4/20/2022 at 2:34 PM, faatal said:

 

There is actually a bug passed to me today about reset POI helper blocks not being random, so it could be effecting zombie spawns too.

 

 

Edited December 9, 2022 by NekoPawtato (see edit history)

[Laz Man]

48 minutes ago, bdubyah said:

So are there any pics of this danger meter? I'm a bit leery of even more stuff being added to the HUD. Or is it just maybe in the character screen like game/loot stage?

 

What we have now is a placeholder AFAIK so not worth critiquing yet.  Not sure if the final art for it will make it into A21 or not.  It's functional though.

[bdubyah]

18 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

 

What we have now is a placeholder AFAIK so not worth critiquing yet.  Not sure if the final art for it will make it into A21 or not.  It's functional though.

So it is on the main HUD then? Hmm, not sure about that. It's getting a bit cluttered to me already. Lol.

[Gronal]

I'm not gonna lie that was a very underwhelming thing to tease xD
I suppose it was just a bit of fun though with the cryptic clue and stuff.

Perhaps the C is for customisable HUD so you can turn off the danger meter

[RipClaw]

2 hours ago, Jarinex said:

I’m curious to know the reasoning for an addition like this. Maybe for new players it can be useful but it seems a bit unnecessary.

I can imagine applications where this indicator would be helpful for experienced players as well.

 

For example, the level designers could design particularly dangerous POIs for players who want a challenge. Instead of making these buildings obvious, players can use this feature to identify these buildings. 

[Doomofman]

3 hours ago, Roland said:

There are some new loot containers that only appear during a particular type of quest and will never show up if someone clears a POI without the quest activated so this wish is at least partially fulfilled.

 

To clarify, these are loot containers that contain something required to complete the quest, right? Not just extra loot that someone who isn't questing would miss out on

[Laran Mithras]

Dear DEV Diary:

 

When 7DTD is gold and the next project is discussed, please consider a fantasy survival-crafting, base building game.

You certainly seem to have the goods on modern zombies; I'd imagine you can excel at swords and sorcery sandbox versus orcs and goblins.

 

ETA: there isn't one on the market.

Edited December 9, 2022 by Laran Mithras (see edit history)

[Rabbitslovecactus]

4 hours ago, Roland said:

 

The POIs are pretty much locked in to what danger level they are by their level design so random danger leveling probably won't happen. Some POIs can be increased or decreased a tier by increasing or decreasing spawns but it won't be random.

 

There are some new loot containers that only appear during a particular type of quest and will never show up if someone clears a POI without the quest activated so this wish is at least partially fulfilled.

Awesome! Thanks Roland. 

[Roland]

47 minutes ago, Doomofman said:

 

To clarify, these are loot containers that contain something required to complete the quest, right? Not just extra loot that someone who isn't questing would miss out on

 

No they are loot containers that have extra loot and not simply quest objective items like the stash item that you have to take back to the trader.

[DanLW]

4 hours ago, rateds2k said:

This alone would be amazing. I never have to worry if that z is dead. I just glance to the bottom right.

 

For anybody interested, I figured out how to get rid of the XP popout while keeping all the other collected item notes.  Instructions are here:

 

I am super green to modding, so I don't know how to make it a modlet.  But if you don't mind diddling around in Assembly-CSharp.dll, have at it!  Note that it will probalby make EAC mad...

[mstdv inc]

4 hours ago, DanLW said:

Initial response to a danger meter that shows danger level of biomes and POIs...

 

As an experienced player, I would prefer not to have it, BUT I do understand that this would be a helpful mechanic for new players who aren't familiar with how the game works.  So I can see the reasoning.  It prevents new player frustration/rage quitting.

 

That said, I hope the C in the clue is a Customizable UI (yes, I know XML hacks will also do it, but a quick and easy way would be preferable).

 

Knowing the danger level as a player makes the game less scary.  If the meter says extreme danger, I won't be surprised when a group of radiated charge at me.  I will be expecting it and will be mentally prepared.  And so the pucker factor is dramatically lessened.

 

As the game gets more and more solidified, adding toggles to easily turn UI on and off would be a welcome addition.  The default settings would be TFP's "The way it's meant to be played"

 

An alternative suggestion would be to tie UI elements to game difficulty setting.  As an example:

 

Scavenger - All UI elements

Adventurer - No XP pop-up

Nomad - ...and no danejar meaterr 

Warrior - ...and no time & day

Survivalist - ...and no compass (though quest markers will still show since it would be almost impossible to find a quest without it)

Insane - ...and no health/stamina/food/water bar!

 

 

The best solution for everyone is to enable disabling some (or even all) interface elements.I don't like the idea of disabling XP display because it's the only quick way to find out if you killed an enemy or not.If you remove this, then you need to add a damage/kill indication to the crosshair.
When you are attacked by several enemies, it is very useful to immediately find out that you killed him in order to switch to the next one.

[beerfly]

37 minutes ago, Roland said:

 

No they are loot containers that have extra loot and not simply quest objective items like the stash item that you have to take back to the trader.

Will these new loot containers be spawned randomly in POIs, while in quest btw ? 

[meganoth]

32 minutes ago, mstdv inc said:

The best solution for everyone is to enable disabling some (or even all) interface elements.I don't like the idea of disabling XP display because it's the only quick way to find out if you killed an enemy or not.If you remove this, then you need to add a damage/kill indication to the crosshair.
When you are attacked by several enemies, it is very useful to immediately find out that you killed him in order to switch to the next one.

 

You are right that a death indicator is useful, but there is definitely no **need** for it. You may like it that way, but the fact that zombies have this way of playing dead in the middle of the fight should tell you that it was intended that you have to guess, make sure with another hit or always stay a bit away from fresh corpses. Since I have bad peripheral vision I still mostly get the accidental benefit of having to cope with un-dead undead 😉

 

For TFP the XP display seems to be more important than to keep players guessing, I don't think they will change the xp display. But there are many players who like this guessing game for the same reason they like feral mode.

 

Edited December 9, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[bdubyah]

35 minutes ago, mstdv inc said:

The best solution for everyone is to enable disabling some (or even all) interface elements.I don't like the idea of disabling XP display because it's the only quick way to find out if you killed an enemy or not.If you remove this, then you need to add a damage/kill indication to the crosshair.
When you are attacked by several enemies, it is very useful to immediately find out that you killed him in order to switch to the next one.

See, this I disagree with completely. There is no reason whatsoever that the game should indicate that any enemy is now dead. That should be on the player to know or find out. I am fine with a variety of options being available, but kill XP could go away and I'd be happy. You can leave crafting/looting XP, but the kill XP just makes it too easy to know if something died. And if they chose to remove the current style popup for it there is no reason some other mechanic should be added to take its place.

[DanLW]

6 minutes ago, bdubyah said:

See, this I disagree with completely. There is no reason whatsoever that the game should indicate that any enemy is now dead. That should be on the player to know or find out. I am fine with a variety of options being available, but kill XP could go away and I'd be happy. You can leave crafting/looting XP, but the kill XP just makes it too easy to know if something died. And if they chose to remove the current style popup for it there is no reason some other mechanic should be added to take its place.

 

I pretty much agree with this, but I also get that there are different playstyles.  For me, I would prefer to minimize UI information for things I wouldn't know if the game were real.  While I'm not hardcore enough to ditch the health and stamina meter, I may try to remove the compass UI along with the time/day UI.  Some people would be frustrated if they got lost and it was getting dark.  For me, that's part of the experience of trying to survive the apocalypse.  I would be all for a craftable clock and compass (like Minecraft).

 

Further, it would be great if the quest markers could be removed without breaking quests.  Sure, they can be removed, and they could work in Navezgane where the quests could be written around known locations.   But it would never work in RWG unless each town generated with a name, street names, and addresses coordinates that the quest controller could use to tell a player where to go.  But that would be a ton of work to satisfy a very small portion of the player base.  Not to mention the buried treasure quests would be impossible unless they contained coordinates.

[Riamus]

6 hours ago, Roland said:

As I understand it, it is for performance reasons to prevent too many high polygon objects from bogging down the game. But maybe at some point they’ll do a recipe pass and add most of them in. 

That doesn't seem right, though.  If the items are in POI and can be added to POI in the editor, you are going to see them in many more places in the game than if you put them in your base.  Besides, we can build things in our bases that are far more taxing (bulletproof glass and trigger plates, for example).  And unless we go crazy with those, they really don't have much impact.

 

I think allowing us to use them if we want without needing to use the creative menu would be a good thing.  Besides, not everything currently only available in the creative menu is high poly.  After all, we can make a barrel on fire, but not a plain barrel and I doubt that plain barrel (or group of four) is high poly.  And, in the end, if we can do it with creative menu, all you are doing by not allowing them in the main game is forcing people to use the creative menu and the result is the same whether the items are added normally or through the creative menu.

 

So it sounds like a good reason, but doesn't really hold water.

[zztong]

1 hour ago, bdubyah said:

There is no reason whatsoever that the game should indicate that any enemy is now dead.

 

I pretty certain they're all dead. Some of them even stop moving after being shot or hit with a club multiple times.

 

Okay, kidding aside, I agree with you. I'd be cool with a game option to show it, or not. I think that would be a good solution. The XP meter is a handy death indicator, but I would like the option of turning it off to make things more interesting. Combine that with the zombie AI playing opossum from time to time and they're likely to give me a scare. "Double-tap" might become a thing in game.

Edited December 10, 2022 by zztong (see edit history)

[bdubyah]

1 hour ago, DanLW said:

 

I pretty much agree with this, but I also get that there are different playstyles.  For me, I would prefer to minimize UI information for things I wouldn't know if the game were real.  While I'm not hardcore enough to ditch the health and stamina meter, I may try to remove the compass UI along with the time/day UI.  Some people would be frustrated if they got lost and it was getting dark.  For me, that's part of the experience of trying to survive the apocalypse.  I would be all for a craftable clock and compass (like Minecraft).

 

Further, it would be great if the quest markers could be removed without breaking quests.  Sure, they can be removed, and they could work in Navezgane where the quests could be written around known locations.   But it would never work in RWG unless each town generated with a name, street names, and addresses coordinates that the quest controller could use to tell a player where to go.  But that would be a ton of work to satisfy a very small portion of the player base.  Not to mention the buried treasure quests would be impossible unless they contained coordinates.

And that's why my mod removes the time. I left the day just because it can be mostly made useless info depending on what BM settings you use. And I have item mods that either add back the time UI or physically tell you the time. And working clock blocks as well.

The quest stuff is getting a bit out there even for me, but most of that could likely be done since the game already technically has coords. But the marker themselves are what activate the quest, so unless they made it to where they auto activate once close enough you still need the markers. And really, that could be done fairly easily by modifying the quests xml to remove the RallyMarker bits, though I'm not sure if that would cause issues with the satchels getting placed.

4 minutes ago, zztong said:

 

I pretty certain they're all dead. Some of them even stop moving after being shot or hit with a club multiple times.

 

Okay, kidding aside, I agree with you. I'd be cool with a game option to show it, or not. I think that would be a good solution. The XP meter is a handy death indicator, but I would like the option of turning it off to make things more interesting. Combine that with the zombie AI playing opossum from time to time and they're likely to give me a scare. "Double-tap" might become a thing in game.

Exactly. Options are always good, and it would be one I would certainly keep off if that wasn't the default. But I rarely check it while playing. I'm too focused on what's in front of me, not the bottom corner of my screen. Lol.

[zztong]

15 minutes ago, Riamus said:

That doesn't seem right, though.  If the items are in POI and can be added to POI in the editor, you are going to see them in many more places in the game than if you put them in your base.

 

I was puzzled by that point too. POI creators are going to put those advanced assets into POIs. It is hard for me to say if POIs will use them in greater density than player bases. I have certainly seen some impressive player bases that bogged the game down when you got near them.

 

However, POI creators might have some advantages, such as the Prefab Editor showing us the vertices and triangle counts. Many designers are already aware that certain objects cost more than others, such as vehicles.

[ROCKGENERATION]

Can someone explain the chunk reset option to me. What it exactly entails and why its default set to off. Thanks

[Laz Man]

31 minutes ago, Riamus said:

That doesn't seem right, though.  If the items are in POI and can be added to POI in the editor, you are going to see them in many more places in the game than if you put them in your base.  Besides, we can build things in our bases that are far more taxing (bulletproof glass and trigger plates, for example).  And unless we go crazy with those, they really don't have much impact.

 

I think allowing us to use them if we want without needing to use the creative menu would be a good thing.  Besides, not everything currently only available in the creative menu is high poly.  After all, we can make a barrel on fire, but not a plain barrel and I doubt that plain barrel (or group of four) is high poly.  And, in the end, if we can do it with creative menu, all you are doing by not allowing them in the main game is forcing people to use the creative menu and the result is the same whether the items are added normally or through the creative menu.

 

So it sounds like a good reason, but doesn't really hold water.

 

Imagine a player crafting 100 high poly deco blocks and placing them all next to each other.

 

On top of that place several light sources on them.

 

FPS will start taking a hit.  It snowballs pretty quickly.

 

In my opinion this is more important in multiplayer where unrestricted high poly placement leads to poor performance for others.

 

Not saying it will never happen since optimization is ongoing, but probably not a priority until all other core features are in.

 

 

[Roland]

1 hour ago, bdubyah said:

See, this I disagree with completely. There is no reason whatsoever that the game should indicate that any enemy is now dead. That should be on the player to know or find out. I am fine with a variety of options being available, but kill XP could go away and I'd be happy. You can leave crafting/looting XP, but the kill XP just makes it too easy to know if something died. And if they chose to remove the current style popup for it there is no reason some other mechanic should be added to take its place.

 

The xp notification doesn't really matter in the long run. In my 0xp mod the notification never showed up but it was still very apparent when zombies were dead for good because there was a death scream and animation that was different than when they were simply knocked back. So I removed the death stuff and made it so that they always just did the knock back animation whether it was because they were dead or because they were knocked back and it became truly ambiguous. Adding to that a variable timer for how long zombies would recover and there was no telling if they were finally dead or not.

 

But now TFP has invested not only in special death sounds, and animations, but also in gory final hits that really make it clear. WIth all that investment into signs of final death I doubt they would ever remove it all just so we have that ambiguous worry about whether they are down for good or might get back up again. Madmole has even said that he likes knowing at the time of the final hit that it is the final hit. 

 

The point is that with all the tells added to the game the xp notification is not the only way you would know.

10 minutes ago, ROCKGENERATION said:

Can someone explain the chunk reset option to me. What it exactly entails and why its default set to off. Thanks

 

A chunk that has not been visited by a player in X days and is not protected by a claim block or a bedroll is reset to how it was when it was first generated at the creation of the world. At first it was set to 15 days for default but after then there was a bug where the setting "disabled" meant the timer was disabled instead of the feature being disabled. This cause chunks to reset the moment the player left it and everyone experienced what it was like to have their progress reset when not expecting it.

 

After that the bug was fixed and the default was changed to off. lol

[bdubyah]

4 minutes ago, Roland said:

 

The xp notification doesn't really matter in the long run. In my 0xp mod the notification never showed up but it was still very apparent when zombies were dead for good because there was a death scream and animation that was different than when they were simply knocked back. So I removed the death stuff and made it so that they always just did the knock back animation whether it was because they were dead or because they were knocked back and it became truly ambiguous. Adding to that a variable timer for how long zombies would recover and there was no telling if they were finally dead or not.

 

But now TFP has invested not only in special death sounds, and animations, but also in gory final hits that really make it clear. WIth all that investment into signs of final death I doubt they would ever remove it all just so we have that ambiguous worry about whether they are down for good or might get back up again. Madmole has even said that he likes knowing at the time of the final hit that it is the final hit. 

 

The point is that with all the tells added to the game the xp notification is not the only way you would know.

True, but it's the worst and most blatant. If there is a small cluster of zombies it can be easy to miss certain sounds or animations. One on one it's pretty easy, but that's not a big deal. It's when you potentially have more than one knocked down and others still coming at you it can get tricky to navigate.

 

I certainly don't expect TFP to undo what they've been working on, but a simply toggle option for at least kill XP would be nice. And about those gory deaths, any new ones coming?