Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Laz Man]

8 hours ago, vergilsparda said:

I know that one of the dudes on the level design team talked about it on the dev stream—finally got around to watching it and I'm so frickin' excited—about the different decoration and touch-up passes done to current POIs to make the interiors tighter and more realistic. The previews shown in the stream were incredible; y'all did a fantastic job at both reducing the footprint of the buildings while also adding so much more detail that the houses feel real and lived in. I think it was a house_modular with a new updated bandit-style design and one of the.... was it house_modern's? Might have been a bungalow, my memory is crap lol.

 

What I was wondering is how many of the less-"realistic" sized POIs got this treatment from the team as of current, and how many more are left before A21? (My mind immediately goes to the bungalow series, they're quite large for how small a bungalow is in real life)

 

And since I saw them shown off in the one cabin POI showcased, is it only the one hedge decoration block (the square-ish one), or are there a couple of variants to break up the monotony of it (similar vein as well: is the, I think it's an Azalea bush, been retired in favor of the newer, high quality hedges)?

 

Many of the older POIs received the "shrink" treatment which I believe the bungalows were included in that as well.  There might be a few we might need to circle back on as I don't think we had the time to do all of them.  All of them received the art update with the new art assets though, so there should be a big difference overall. 

[bilibili-wayne]

Looking forward to the arrival of A21 very much. My personal suggestions are as follows:

Can players make their own blocks that are not so dirty? If this increases the difficulty of game development, can the brush tool add some clean textures? I don't feel homesick and messy... it's not warm at all.

When can the water pipe system be introduced? I'm too lazy to run back and forth to fetch water myself. Since there are all survival bases in the end, why not make a water pipe to directly connect water from the lake and river? Firstly, it can irrigate farmland, secondly, it can boil water and cook, and thirdly, it can increase health and reduce the probability of infection.

3. I still miss my treehouse... When will the blocks still stick to the tree?

 

 

中文：chinese：

非常期待A21的到来。我个人有几个建议如下：
1，玩家自己做的方块能不能不要那么脏？如果这样增加了游戏开发的难度，那么刷子工具能不能增加一些干净的贴图？我不想家里脏乱差……一点都不温馨。
2，什么时候能引入水管系统？实在是懒得自己来来回回跑去接水。既然末日生存基地都有了，为什么不能做个水管从湖河里直接接水，一来可以灌溉农田，二来可以烧水做饭，三来还能增加健康程度，减少被感染的概率。
3，我依旧想念我的树屋……什么时候方块还能吸附到树上？

[Old Crow]

4 hours ago, Laz Man said:

 

Many of the older POIs received the "shrink" treatment which I believe the bungalows were included in that as well.  There might be a few we might need to circle back on as I don't think we had the time to do all of them.  All of them received the art update with the new art assets though, so there should be a big difference overall. 

 

From what I saw in the latest dev stream, the POIs look really great, and I'm excited to explore them in A21!

[vergilsparda]

4 hours ago, Laz Man said:

 

Many of the older POIs received the "shrink" treatment which I believe the bungalows were included in that as well.  There might be a few we might need to circle back on as I don't think we had the time to do all of them.  All of them received the art update with the new art assets though, so there should be a big difference overall. 

 

Nice, that's going to make having a home base absolutely incredible, it opens so many new POIs for my picky butt to squat in. Thanks again for answering my silly questions!

[MichaelL.]

I'm loving all of the new potted plants that have been added.  However, don't you think a lot of them would be dead in an apocalypse with nobody around to water them..? 

[Aldranon]

15 minutes ago, MichaelL. said:

I'm loving all of the new potted plants that have been added.  However, don't you think a lot of them would be dead in an apocalypse with nobody around to water them..? 

 

...and yet another piece to the puzzle!

 

My theory that the player is actually in a coma and is dreaming this, to awaken to a terrible reality in 7D2D part2 is becoming more probable!!!

To awaken like one of the guys in "The Walking Dead" or "28 Days Later".  (This would depend on how computer technology improves as 28 days would require a great computer).

[mstdv inc]

1 hour ago, MichaelL. said:

I'm loving all of the new potted plants that have been added. However, don't you think a lot of them would be dead in an apocalypse with nobody around to water them..?

What about zombies?They have to do something while waiting for the arrival of the player🤔

 

[Laz Man]

2 hours ago, MichaelL. said:

I'm loving all of the new potted plants that have been added.  However, don't you think a lot of them would be dead in an apocalypse with nobody around to water them..? 

 

Where do you think all of the water jars went? 😅

 

 

[MichaelL.]

1 hour ago, mstdv inc said:

What about zombies?They have to do something while waiting for the arrival of the player🤔

 

 

Maybe it's the same guy who's restocking the vending machines!  

 

[meilodasreh]

15 hours ago, hiemfire said:

Normally they're in groups of 3-5.

ok then it did happen to me.

Just never did recognize those as "a horde".

Always thought these are just normal spawns along with all these other random zombies that can clearly be distinguished from a wandering horde, just by their number and behaviour.

[drkstardragon]

7 hours ago, MichaelL. said:

I'm loving all of the new potted plants that have been added.  However, don't you think a lot of them would be dead in an apocalypse with nobody around to water them..? 

Maybe they are plastic.....

 

[zztong]

4 hours ago, MichaelL. said:

 

Maybe it's the same guy who's restocking the vending machines!  

 

 

And operating/repairing the electric grid.

[Riamus]

And cleaning up most spiderwebs and keeping grass from getting taller than knee height and vines from growing on buildings and food from spoiling (even canned food spoils or at least goes bad after awhile) and so on.  This isn't meant to be realistic but fun.  There isn't anything wrong with a suspension of disbelief in a videogame. 

[Professor-Pip]

9 hours ago, MichaelL. said:

I'm loving all of the new potted plants that have been added.  However, don't you think a lot of them would be dead in an apocalypse with nobody around to water them..? 

[faatal]

On 4/27/2023 at 12:33 AM, Blake_ said:

@faatal , now that we are approaching the programmer stream, I would like to ask if there are plans of making a few simplistic options for "player death" when creating a rwg or any map for that matter:

 

The thing is, the current death mechanic is a bit lenient on the food and water side, and while I'm not asking for rocket science, just more options with values like

 

SUSTENANCE PENALTY: "default no penalty/ 50% food&water/ 25% food&water /0%food&water" or something like that,

......coupled with another for diseases, like:

DISEASE PENALTY: "default no penalty/ maintain all diseases (but a bit reduced to allow for some time to heal)/ maintain all diseases with a lot of reduction,in the earliest of stages"

and another for XP, for example:

XP PENALTY: 25%/50%/75%/99%

 

While they are simple, they could work in avoiding the "I'm infected, let's die to cure my infection, abrassion, head injury and broken arms and legs, because it's too much work to find all the items to heal", Or even "I'm hungry and losing hp and thirsty and can't do things properly, let's eat glass to replenish, I'm only level 3 !!".

We have talked about death penalties, but there are no changes in A21. I'd prefer a simple you are 1% infected on res.

[Doomofman]

5 minutes ago, faatal said:

We have talked about death penalties, but there are no changes in A21. I'd prefer a simple you are 1% infected on res.

But then being infected isn't really much of a problem either. It's almost as trivial as the water pre-A21

[faatal]

On 4/28/2023 at 3:58 AM, Old Crow said:

Pretty sure they said they had animations and AI done, but not how they wanted them, hence why they got pushed back. Almost there though!

No, the AI is far from being done. There are no new bandits animations yet. They are using a combination of player and zombie anims, but player anims don't have root motion, so movement was hacked together and not great which leaves plenty of anim work to do.

[Jost Amman]

@faatal : speaking of animations... there's currently a bugged animation (or glitch) where sometimes zombies do a sudden crouch, without any movement between the standing and crouched positions. That's pretty annoying because sometimes makes it very difficult to aim. Is there any news on this in A21? Thanks

[faatal]

On 4/28/2023 at 8:36 AM, Neminsis said:

Not really and here's why, adding extra Z's to a small space isn't just a linear increase in difficulty, it's multiplicative e.g. 6 Zs in a small space is a lot more difficult than 3. If you screw up you can juggle 3 easily but 6 in a small space is more than you have stamina for early game and if you go loud then who knows how many you're going to call in. If they've done like I suspect that they have, and just allowed sleeper volumes to fully populate, that's a lot more potential Zs than you might think.

It increases the spawn counts and game stage. It also enables extra spawn locations if present in the volumes.

12 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

@faatal : speaking of animations... there's currently a bugged animation (or glitch) where sometimes zombies do a sudden crouch, without any movement between the standing and crouched positions. That's pretty annoying because sometimes makes it very difficult to aim. Is there any news on this in A21? Thanks

No news.

[Aldranon]

54 minutes ago, Doomofman said:

But then being infected isn't really much of a problem either. It's almost as trivial as the water pre-A21

 

You can play "dead is dead" like I do most of the time in A20.

I dont think I will do that in A21 for a while until I understand the new stuff.

[beerfly]

1 hour ago, Aldranon said:

 

You can play "dead is dead" like I do most of the time in A20.

I dont think I will do that in A21 for a while until I understand the new stuff.

Actually playing dead is dead with all the new stuff will bring lots more of cautious gameplay and cold sweat. And oh @%$# moments. 

[sillls]

Sometimes when I'm bored. I will run into a building that I'm sure is full of sleepers. Make a lot of noise and then hightail it out of there. 

Then hangout just to see all the mayhem that this will cause. 😁  I get a rush every time I do that. I keep thinking that I will be trapped. 

 

Other times, I will find a basement and drop a grenade though the window. 

It's funny watching the zombies looking for me and finding nothing. 

[khzmusik]

4 hours ago, faatal said:

No, the AI is far from being done. There are no new bandits animations yet. They are using a combination of player and zombie anims, but player anims don't have root motion, so movement was hacked together and not great which leaves plenty of anim work to do.

 

Is there any preliminary AI work done to find cover?

 

Also - any chance you guys could use interfaces instead of concrete classes, at least for AI targeting and/or spawning? (For example, the wandering hordes could spawn IEntityEnemy instances, and modders could create types that implement IEntityEnemy but descend from a concrete class that isn't EntityEnemy itself.)

 

Asking for NPC modders who may or may not be me.

[sillls]

What's with the short fences around houses? 

I keep seeing them and it's like those fences wouldn't keep a dog inside. They are more like hurdles for short people. 

 

[Zombiepoptard]

7 hours ago, faatal said:

We have talked about death penalties, but there are no changes in A21. I'd prefer a simple you are 1% infected on res.

I always think of death in 7dtd as a cure with affordable consciences. To have 1% infection on res would be more of an incentive to stay alive and look for antibiotics and healing items.