Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Darthjake]

2 hours ago, beerfly said:

Also, the much shorter generation time of random maps is quite impressive. Props to everyone involved 🤘

 

Yeah, but you note he didn't say how big the map was, I mean 4k maps can be ready in 5 min or so depending on how many cities you've got programmed in.

 

[Matt115]

no new zombies ;/ at least much more cars looks good. But still not enough corpses props ;/

[Old Crow]

I'm still curious what the two new quest types are. You can't count Infestation as "new" because it's just a "harder" Clear.

[Uncle Al]

11 minutes ago, Old Crow said:

I'm still curious what the two new quest types are. You can't count Infestation as "new" because it's just a "harder" Clear.

It's more than just an increased spawn count, though. Was mention that the zombies in an infestation are 'faster and harder to kill' so it appears there's a few difficulty tweaks to what you're facing.

[Old Crow]

4 minutes ago, Uncle Al said:

It's more than just an increased spawn count, though. Was mention that the zombies in an infestation are 'faster and harder to kill' so it appears there's a few difficulty tweaks to what you're facing.

 

Yeah but.. that's it. It's just a harder Clear type quest. There's really nothing new in it.

[Riamus]

Well, I don't think they said completely unique quest types would be added.  This is still a new quest type even if it is just a harder version of clear.  Unique would be great, but I'm fine with this.

[Old Crow]

Hoping the other type is some sort of defense quest.

[Crypted]

They said two more quests are coming to Alpha 21 one of which is the infested quest, But what's the other one?

A list of quests I think It might be is:

 

• Defend a specific item or protect one of the traders
• Gather a specific item for the trader 
• Give supplies from one trader to another
• Something similar to a clear quest but with just bandits like at a (Bandit Camp)

 

      I would love all of these to get added in the game. 

Edited April 15, 2023 by Crypted (see edit history)

[Old Crow]

1 hour ago, Crypted said:

 

• Give supplies from one trader to another

 

 

See, this is what the Opening Trade Routes quests should be.

[Nimeni]

Just finished watching the stream,  one question (for now): Water is much harder to find now, and i like it, but what about food? there is almost no point to use the farming system for food,  scavenging and hunting is very rewarding, especially hunting , one trip to a nearby town and back,  you find plenty of hunting.

[Syphon583]

2 hours ago, Crypted said:

• Give supplies from one trader to another

 

25 minutes ago, Old Crow said:

 

See, this is what the Opening Trade Routes quests should be.

So, aside from having to carry a physical item in your inventory, what exactly are you expecting here? Because if that's it, cool, I guess?

[Riamus]

30 minutes ago, Nimeni said:

Just finished watching the stream,  one question (for now): Water is much harder to find now, and i like it, but what about food? there is almost no point to use the farming system for food,  scavenging and hunting is very rewarding, especially hunting , one trip to a nearby town and back,  you find plenty of hunting.

Food could definitely use some adjustments, but as far as hunting vs. farming, it's really up to your preferences.  Yes, you can hunt and then make a bunch of low level food that you have to eat repeatedly, or you can farm and make high level food that you only have to eat once or twice a day.  I definitely prefer farming.  Others prefer hunting.

 

20 minutes ago, Syphon583 said:

 

So, aside from having to carry a physical item in your inventory, what exactly are you expecting here? Because if that's it, cool, I guess?

I think more for immersion.  You're opening a trade route... by going and saying hello vs. by bringing something to trade to the trader.

[Crypted]

1 hour ago, Nimeni said:

Just finished watching the stream, one question (for now): Water is much harder to find now, and i like it, but what about food? there is almost no point to use the farming system for food, scavenging and hunting is very rewarding, especially hunting, one trip to a nearby town and back, you find plenty of hunting.

When It comes to hunting I think that It should stay the same because you know there are almost no humans to hunt, so the animal population will go up. To me It just makes sense, but this Is just my opinion. 

Edited April 15, 2023 by Crypted (see edit history)

[Jost Amman]

7 hours ago, Matt115 said:

no new zombies ;/ at least much more cars looks good. But still not enough corpses props ;/

Didn't you see that open trailer full of body bags where you get ambushed by the corpses? 

[Crypted]

I hope TFP add more zombies after all It's a post-apocalyptic world with zombies. I think they're going to add more zombies when everything is done or almost done, I hope anyway. 🙂

Edited April 15, 2023 by Crypted (see edit history)

[Beelzebubs Ghost]

1 hour ago, Crypted said:

I hope TFP add more zombies after all It's a post-apocalyptic world with zombies. I think they're going to add more zombies when everything is done or almost done, I hope anyway. 🙂

 

This will be my final post re: Content.

 

Just as I suspected, mostly fluff that no-one needs, such as text lore on in game paper for a game that doesn't have any sense of coherent story, and no new zombies.

 

The game has gone to the dogs in my opinion, whether or not Rick Huenink was exaggerating when he said 1000 doors/variants updated (even a paltry number such as 100 new ones added) while new zombies has been neglected is just pathetic.

 

Clone army was a tiring turn off in the previous alpha - and as long as there's no inclusion of new zombies in this iteration, neither I; nor the bunch of friends I got into this game, will touch it.

 

I also share the sentiment of the 'Omg wowzers a new quest!' criticism.

 

Increased density of the same clones in any given area may be new in the sense the density wasn't the same as previous alphas, but that is little different to adding 'new' forest biomes by simply placing more grass and trees. Yeah, no.

 

Now bring on the hate, disapproval, dislikes, and la de dah. I will keep an eye out for A22 but as for A21, no thanks.

 

For those wondering why I'd post then not play, it's in hope that any dev reading this can relay the overbearing sameness up the chain and maybe they can dedicate the time to adding more zombies, even a few new ones would make all the difference.

 

 

Edited April 15, 2023 by Beelzebubs Ghost (see edit history)

[HeLLKnight]

After watching the stream, in my opinion the new assets and POIs in the game look very nice and a huge job has been done. Don't kill me but... precisely this makes the outdated graphical parts of the game engine more visible than ever. The poor lighting system, very outdated effects like ambient occlusion or not so good anti-aliasing, lack of upscaling, and many many more that we are missing. In some respects 7d2d is still a game that causes rejection at first glance for new buyers. Every time I try to introduce friends on Lan parties showing 7d2d at 4k/ultra settings, the reaction is the same: "man, feels like a ps3 game", "my god that pop-in". Not my opinion, but there it is.

 

As a very long project I understand the implications, and all this would not matter so much to me if the game were to be finished in a year or so. In the next TFP game I bought I know that all this would no longer be a problem. But how many more is left until release? Does it make sense not to invest time to update such an old engine now that a standalone version is coming out for PS5 and Xbox series? I can't stop thinking of the huge leap Rust took when they moved to HDRP years ago... they told about how many hours of development saved because of this.

 

In case @Faatal you say again no to HDRP, some people are about to release in a few days a functional FSR 2.2 support working in Classic/Built-in pipeline to Unity Asset Store. This would be a big win for all of us.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/boost-your-fps-with-amd-fidelityfx-super-resolution-2-0-fsr-2-support.1357190/

[NukemDed]

1 hour ago, Beelzebubs Ghost said:

Yeah, no.

no!

its "yeah nah..."

yes?

[DuHast_Play]

3 hours ago, Crypted said:

I hope TFP add more zombies after all It's a post-apocalyptic world with zombies. I think they're going to add more zombies when everything is done or almost done, I hope anyway. 🙂

I liked the setting for the number of zombies in Undead Legacy. and that they wander erratically most of the time. Annoying while you make your base, but I think that's how it should be in real life?

[unholyjoe]

23 hours ago, Gamida said:

 

How do you set up the Blood Moon Count now?

maybe... just maybe... that setting was moved to a different tab... maybe

 

 

6 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

Didn't you see that open trailer full of body bags where you get ambushed by the corpses? 

no he didnt... he was busy looking for those non existent skeletons at the news stands.

 

this screen is for Gamida's question.
 

Spoiler

 

 

Edited April 15, 2023 by unholyjoe (see edit history)

[Jost Amman]

4 hours ago, HeLLKnight said:

After watching the stream, in my opinion the new assets and POIs in the game look very nice and a huge job has been done. Don't kill me but... precisely this makes the outdated graphical parts of the game engine more visible than ever. The poor lighting system, very outdated effects like ambient occlusion or not so good anti-aliasing, lack of upscaling, and many many more that we are missing. In some respects 7d2d is still a game that causes rejection at first glance for new buyers. Every time I try to introduce friends on Lan parties showing 7d2d at 4k/ultra settings, the reaction is the same: "man, feels like a ps3 game", "my god that pop-in". Not my opinion, but there it is.

How can I put this in words without sounding too "fanboy-ish"... those who play 7D2D don't play it for the graphics.

For me, Priority n.1 is gameplay. Anything they can improve on the graphics side, is icing on the cake. But the cake is a lie! :P

 

5 hours ago, Beelzebubs Ghost said:

Spoiler

 

This will be my final post re: Content.

 

 

Just as I suspected, mostly fluff that no-one needs, such as text lore on in game paper for a game that doesn't have any sense of coherent story, and no new zombies.

 

The game has gone to the dogs in my opinion, whether or not Rick Huenink was exaggerating when he said 1000 doors/variants updated (even a paltry number such as 100 new ones added) while new zombies has been neglected is just pathetic.

 

Clone army was a tiring turn off in the previous alpha - and as long as there's no inclusion of new zombies in this iteration, neither I; nor the bunch of friends I got into this game, will touch it.

 

I also share the sentiment of the 'Omg wowzers a new quest!' criticism.

 

Increased density of the same clones in any given area may be new in the sense the density wasn't the same as previous alphas, but that is little different to adding 'new' forest biomes by simply placing more grass and trees. Yeah, no.

 

Now bring on the hate, disapproval, dislikes, and la de dah. I will keep an eye out for A22 but as for A21, no thanks.

 

For those wondering why I'd post then not play, it's in hope that any dev reading this can relay the overbearing sameness up the chain and maybe they can dedicate the time to adding more zombies, even a few new ones would make all the difference.

Party pooper! 

 

Edited April 15, 2023 by Jost Amman (see edit history)

[Matt115]

7 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

Didn't you see that open trailer full of body bags where you get ambushed by the corpses? 

 yep body Bags on one car with crawlers but  i mean just random corpses on streets, more in bulidings etc.

[Cr0wst0rm]

14 hours ago, Matt115 said:

no new zombies ;/ at least much more cars looks good. But still not enough corpses props ;/

I only hope this is intentional with the new player customization coming up. They should hook it up with this system (make it very scalable) and make zombies randomized. I would LOVE to see that.

5 different head variations, 5 different tops, 5 different pants... That would make up to 125 possible unique zombies. Just imagine that!

If any of you guys have seen leak of GTA 6, they use very simplified mannequins that have their own skeletons. Why they do it? Because every skeleton is UNIQUE with unique set of animations (here it would translate to HEAVIES, MUSCULAR, SKINNY etc, you could use @%$#load of categories), and every body mesh collection is unique for THAT skeleton. After they are happy with the shapes, anims, colors, they start using very high detail models. I think such iteration process is the most safe way to approach such thing and would make a @%$# ton of unique experiences. Add this with streets polluted with hundreds of cars in traffic jams (GPU instancing), it would make it the next walking dead movie but in a game  

[Ricowan]

I understand the criticism about textures, especially the "clone army" of identical zombies.  But this game's system requirements list 2gb of graphics memory.  Adding all of the textures some of you guys are requesting means requiring more graphics memory for the game to store those textures.  I would absolutely love to see a dozen more variations on the zombie textures, etc.  But it would seriously suck if adding them meant thousands of people who already own the game can't play it any more because they meet the minimum requirements now, but don't if those requirements are increased.

[Matt115]

8 minutes ago, Cr0wst0rm said:

I only hope this is intentional with the new player customization coming up. They should hook it up with this system (make it very scalable) and make zombies randomized. I would LOVE to see that.

5 different head variations, 5 different tops, 5 different pants... That would make up to 125 possible unique zombies. Just imagine that!

If any of you guys have seen leak of GTA 6, they use very simplified mannequins that have their own skeletons. Why they do it? Because every skeleton is UNIQUE with unique set of animations (here it would translate to HEAVIES, MUSCULAR, SKINNY etc, you could use @%$#load of categories), and every body mesh collection is unique for THAT skeleton. After they are happy with the shapes, anims, colors, they start using very high detail models. I think such iteration process is the most safe way to approach such thing and would make a @%$# ton of unique experiences. Add this with streets polluted with hundreds of cars in traffic jams (GPU instancing), it would make it the next walking dead movie but in a game  

They were working on random generated zombie but they give up

 

5 minutes ago, Ricowan said:

I understand the criticism about textures, especially the "clone army" of identical zombies.  But this game's system requirements list 2gb of graphics memory.  Adding all of the textures some of you guys are requesting means requiring more graphics memory for the game to store those textures.  I would absolutely love to see a dozen more variations on the zombie textures, etc.  But it would seriously suck if adding them meant thousands of people who already own the game can't play it any more because they meet the minimum requirements now, but don't if those requirements are increased.

 2  GB is... funny low.  You know that requiremnts was higer few times? It's not 2013 anymore. So it's expected technological progres. it's new consol generation of consols etc. so rest of games get highly improvment. Yes - nobody expected that 7DTD will be developed so long - they could without problem finish in 2015-2016 when they were close. But they decided to change thing over and over so..... but standards changes sop they have too add more zombies variants if they want too keep high quality. Will this mean some people can't play? yeah but rly low %