Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Diragor]

13 hours ago, hiemfire said:

From what I've seen in vids so far it doesn't look like poi spawn screamers summon hordes. They do make for one heck of a jump scare and "Oh @%$#" moment though.

That's too bad Well it's still experimental. We could change that with enough crying xD

[Strengthinside]

I just noticed that some textures are flickering in the game, has anyone noticed it? I mostly see it on roads, crosswalk lines, but also noticed some wall texture flickering.

I don't know if this is something all people are affected by or just Linux, which I do use to play the game (Ubuntu) I am also on AMD card (rx 6650xt), everything set to high, except shadows turned off.

 

I managed to catch a case where it does that:
 

 

Edited June 15, 2023 by Strengthinside (see edit history)

[RipClaw]

35 minutes ago, Strengthinside said:

I just noticed that some textures are flickering in the game, has anyone noticed it? I mostly see it on roads, crosswalk lines, but also noticed some wall texture flickering.

I don't know if this is something all people are affected by or just Linux, which I do use to play the game (Ubuntu) I am also on AMD card (rx 6650xt), everything set to high, except shadows turned off.

 

I managed to catch a case where it does that:

Same here also on Linux. Seems to me like Z-fighting.

 

[Thaledwyn]

Quick question about glue (maybe it was already answered elsewhere):

 

Why is glue requiring clean water instead of murky water now? (I don't want to eat my duct tape 😉 )

At the moment we have a separate "glue camp fire" due to cooking times and we have to decide if we use our rare water for food or glue on the first days. That's a nice survival aspect!

 

It seems glue is the new acid 🙂

 

Edited June 15, 2023 by Thaledwyn (see edit history)

[Thaledwyn]

Oh and I found out what (at least for me) fixed the 5-6 minutes freezing on "Smoothing street tiles":

 

Had some undeleted compo pack prefabs sub-folders in my "7daysToDie / Data / Prefabs" folder.

After deleting them, creation of an 8k map went down from over 10 minutes to about 3-4 minutes and no waiting at all on "Smoothing street tiles".

 

Just to let you know in case somebody else finds this info helpful.

[RipClaw]

1 hour ago, Thaledwyn said:

Quick question about glue (maybe it was already answered elsewhere):

 

Why is glue requiring clean water instead of murky water now? (I don't want to eat my duct tape 😉 )

Yes, but the glue adheres much better when it is made with clean water.

 

The explanation is quite simple. You can only find murky water, but you can no longer craft it or fill up empty jar due to the lack of said jars.Therefore, it would be problematic for players who have a high consumption of glue if they could only use murky water.

 

I can, for example, build 5 or 6 dew collectors just for glue production and thus passively collect enough water for 100 glue per week.

 

Edited June 15, 2023 by RipClaw (see edit history)

[saltychipmunk]

I just like having more reasons to expand the footprint  of a base.  It may just be me but I have kinda gotten over building big structures just for the hell of it about 10 years ago. I want utility I want a reason.

 

And for all the great things 7d2d does for justifying making big durable defensive buildings ( Seriously its basically one of a handful that actually nail the justification with just pve content) it could do more with  filling those big chunky buildings with stuff to craft with, or maintain etc.

I was hoping the farming system would carry this. but honestly crops are so efficent in 7d2d and so quick to grow that you really do not need a large space to grow.  Usually throwing some planters on a roof solves this issue.  Which means they barely factor into my base design.
So having these water collectors  is weirdly attractive to me from a base design aspect.

Kinda also wish we have food spoilage just because of all the stuff that would add like . smokers, drying racks , juicers,  and actual need for refrigerators etc.  But hey I am sure If i bug a notable modder enough maybe that will go somewhere. 
 

[Games'n'Grumble]

2 hours ago, Thaledwyn said:

Quick question about glue (maybe it was already answered elsewhere):

 

Why is glue requiring clean water instead of murky water now? (I don't want to eat my duct tape 😉 )

At the moment we have a separate "glue camp fire" due to cooking times and we have to decide if we use our rare water for food or glue on the first days. That's a nice survival aspect!

 

It seems glue is the new acid 🙂

 

I think that's why the player was initially given 2 waters. I spent both of them creating duct tapes for primitive weapon, but I was lucky enough to find a pot and one murky water right away, so I wasn't too worried😉

[falloutcloud]

I have noticed a lot of the easy POIs will have a pot sitting out. Walked by one of the food trucks and there was one on the stove. Much better than relying on the RNG of opening cabinets.

[Teezer]

16 hours ago, hiemfire said:

Biggest critique I can give at the moment being as I've only been watching others play is the following: That is not how the human eye works TFP. Standing in a dark section of a room and looking into another area of the room or even another room that has light sources does not cause our vision to got to near pitch black and stay there, especially when there is a light source shining from behind us and regardless of if the sky gets cloudy or is clear. Our eyes adjust so that we can see. I've got a headache right now thanks to my eyes fighting to adjust to the lower light level.

 

Yes I know this is how they've had it programmed for ages but this update looks to have doubled down and made it even worse than the previous one.

You mean this ? lol (I just walked 1 meter in)

[meganoth]

5 hours ago, Belgarion32 said:

The main issue with the looting is the books tbh. Neither one of use is going to double check every book we get, there's simply too many to care about what it is, so often I'm just reading it then reading the prompt on the other screen that actually tells me what it unlocks instead of even slightly caring what the book refers to. And while we do also play shared storage, I play the quest, he bulldozes the quests to the objective if it's not 5k blocks.... and even then I've seen him still go through that too so if I want loot I don't even check containers anymore, I just spam r on the last half second through every container I want and let him have at it. There's two fixes in my mind, either loot rooms need to be 10k+ blocks or there needs to be more loot. I'd personally rather not play with loot abundance higher than default but I would like it to be higher in that scenario.

 

When I started playing co-op with 3 friends of mine they were at first rushing to the loot boxes and looting them as well. I observed this for a short time then I protested.

 

Me: "Hey guys, I don't like how I never get to loot any final room loot boxes because I am usually the last arriving there. I want a fair share of them"

 

Friend: "But it doesn't matter, you'll get any loot you can use, you know we share everything. If you want we can just leave the stuff in the chests after opening them"

 

Me: "It does matter, I want the thrill of opening the chests myself. I want to be the first to peek inside and be able to share any lucky find instead of getting told from someone else there is a quality 6 magnum in my chest. And that also means I want a fair share of the better loot boxes as well, not always get the cardboard chests"

 

Friends: "Ok"

 

From that time on we divided the boxes up. And even that everyone has his share of better and lesser loot boxes works quite well, without any specific rules.

 

And frankly, you should try the same method. Tell your friend you want a fair share. And if he protests and doesn't want to you have further options:

 

The "begging/compassion" route: "please, it frustrates me, I'm thinking of playing something else")

 

The "blackmail/coercion" route: "Hey, if you don't co-operate, why should I? I'll do my own quests now" or "I will just keep the food I cook for myself" or even "'ll just play wiith someone else or single player".

 

You know better what might work with him, usually it is better to try the compassion route first though.

 

In my opinion there is not much chance that TFP will change the loot boxes, because of time to implement it,  because it would need rebalancing and because it works well as it is. I know of groups who have a designated looter while other groups like mine divide the loot. And with magazines I'm sure there will be groups that will make rules who gets which type of box (i.e. electric boxes always for the INT player, ...). This flexibility would be gone if the game forced one particular method of loot sharing.

 

About the magazines: If you don't like to sort them out then just read them. As you say there are so many. You eventually will both get to craft everything anyway, it will just take a bit longer.

Edited June 15, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Morloc]

Heya Pimps!

 

Doppler shift....

 

 

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc 💀

[zztong]

1 hour ago, falloutcloud said:

I have noticed a lot of the easy POIs will have a pot sitting out. Walked by one of the food trucks and there was one on the stove. Much better than relying on the RNG of opening cabinets.

 

Yeh, there's some luck involved and single vs multiplayer advantages and disadvantages. I can't really decide based on my experiences if "cooking pots in T1 POIs" is a design priority, or if the design goal is to have the search for a cooking pot be an intentional complication.

 

One thing I could think of that might take the luck out of it (if that's desired) is to make it a quest reward from the trader, or perhaps just making a cookpot a common item found at traders. I could certainly sprinkle more cookpots into my custom POIs if I knew they were supposed to be common.

[Code6]

Are TFP using crowdin.com to manage translations?

I used OneSky to translate A19 and A20 into Esperanto, but they decided that they no longer want to support my small independent translation project for a reasonable price.  So I went looking for another site so I can get started on translating A21.  I went to Crowdin, but when I tried creating a 7 Days To Die project, it tells me that the project already exists.
https://crowdin.com/project/7-days-to-die

So I am wondering if this is the official effort of TFP or just another fan like myself.

If anyone could point me to a better place to engage with the translation effort for 7 Days To Die, I would be grateful.

[Phoenixshade35]

6 hours ago, Strengthinside said:

I just noticed that some textures are flickering in the game, has anyone noticed it? I mostly see it on roads, crosswalk lines, but also noticed some wall texture flickering.

I don't know if this is something all people are affected by or just Linux, which I do use to play the game (Ubuntu) I am also on AMD card (rx 6650xt), everything set to high, except shadows turned off.

I dont use linux but i have noticed some graphic anaomolies for me, like cop puke, when it fired at me it looked all blurry, which i found odd

[Laran Mithras]

Excellent work, FunPimps. Love all of the new changes.

 

Zombie AI does seem tweaked harder, with a seeming extension to A20 reach.
Magazines are great. No, not too many.
Flashing trees are gone.
With V-sync off, cities run just a little smoother.

 

On magazines... I expected to find them in every trash pile. Instead, I'm finding them much less than I anticipated. I'm almost always choosing the trader magazine box reward just to advance my skills. Tying seeds into magazines seriously slowed down farming: I like it. I think the magazines are fine as is.

Maybe zombie reach should be looked at. Stretch Armstrong 11-foot arms make me sigh...

[Laz Man]

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

When I started playing co-op with 3 friends of mine they were at first rushing to the loot boxes and looting them as well. I observed this for a short time then I protested.

 

Me: "Hey guys, I don't like how I never get to loot any final room loot boxes because I am usually the last arriving there. I want a fair share of them"

 

Friend: "But it doesn't matter, you'll get any loot you can use, you know we share everything. If you want we can just leave the stuff in the chests after opening them"

 

Me: "It does matter, I want the thrill of opening the chests myself. I want to be the first to peek inside and be able to share any lucky find instead of getting told from someone else there is a quality 6 magnum in my chest. And that also means I want a fair share of the better loot boxes as well, not always get the cardboard chests"

 

Friends: "Ok"

 

From that time on we divided the boxes up. And even that everyone has his share of better and lesser loot boxes works quite well, without any specific rules.

 

And frankly, you should try the same method. Tell your friend you want a fair share. And if he protests and doesn't want to you have further options:

 

The "begging/compassion" route: "please, it frustrates me, I'm thinking of playing something else")

 

The "blackmail/coercion" route: "Hey, if you don't co-operate, why should I? I'll do my own quests now" or "I will just keep the food I cook for myself" or even "'ll just play wiith someone else or single player".

 

You know better what might work with him, usually it is better to try the compassion route first though.

 

In my opinion there is not much chance that TFP will change the loot boxes, because of time to implement it,  because it would need rebalancing and because it works well as it is. I know of groups who have a designated looter while other groups like mine divide the loot. And with magazines I'm sure there will be groups that will make rules who gets which type of box (i.e. electric boxes always for the INT player, ...). This flexibility would be gone if the game forced one particular method of loot sharing.

 

About the magazines: If you don't like to sort them out then just read them. As you say there are so many. You eventually will both get to craft everything anyway, it will just take a bit longer.

 

I like your way of handling your friends....😅

 

I'd play alone too or do my own quests if my friends always gave me the leftovers after getting the enjoyment of opening everything...

[Riamus]

7 hours ago, Belgarion32 said:

I just found that setting in general and was about to edit my prior post but yes, thank you. But I'm still of the opinion they should default the behavior to be like other waypoints however.

 

The main issue with the looting is the books tbh. Neither one of use is going to double check every book we get, there's simply too many to care about what it is, so often I'm just reading it then reading the prompt on the other screen that actually tells me what it unlocks instead of even slightly caring what the book refers to. And while we do also play shared storage, I play the quest, he bulldozes the quests to the objective if it's not 5k blocks.... and even then I've seen him still go through that too so if I want loot I don't even check containers anymore, I just spam r on the last half second through every container I want and let him have at it. There's two fixes in my mind, either loot rooms need to be 10k+ blocks or there needs to be more loot. I'd personally rather not play with loot abundance higher than default but I would like it to be higher in that scenario.

 

The power attacks are all head hits, on a soldier it's 3 head power attacks and it drops once, it gets back up and another 2-3 power head attacks finish it. Mechanic, lady zombies, business men, and two skinny dudes seems are all ~2 power attacks on heads, biker and the thug are around the soldier. The big guy and lumberjack are about ~11 power attack head hits. Like I said, it was a t1 club but still, I guess that's just how it is with no points into it.

 

The bows are worse this round and I can feel it. I used the bow a lot in A20 and before what was a 70% for a true shot at 20m now feels like a 30%, before was playable and now it's just frustrating.

I was going to try a knuckles build but with the debuff's rn I'll wait on it.

Side note: what perk controls fire axes? I prefer to use them over the sledge and it's not blades but I don't see it listed elsewhere.

 

And I don't dislike the new models though compared to the army truck they look off, I just really liked the green sedan before, it was a nice color.

I'd agree that the default quest sharing settings should be off.  I guess they put them on so people would find out about them.

 

We really haven't had issues with the magazines.  I have a handful I know I'm reading, they have a handful they know they're reading and there are a handful we are just storing because they really have no value to us.  Regarding your issue with looting, I think that's something that just needs worked out on your end.  I don't think the game needs to fix group dynamic problems for us.  If they won't work with you and play it so differently than you do, then maybe it's better to run your own quests and let them run theirs.  Not ideal since you're trying to work together but if they won't slow down then there isn't a lot that can be done.

 

I haven't touched clubs so I'm not sure.  Seems odd that clubs are underpowered so much compared to spears.  I know they improved spears but clubs were very good early game before so it just seems strange that they'd be that far off now.  Might be a bug.

 

Keep in mind that hitboxes have been adjusted to match the enemy and object more closely, so what you could hit before isn't necessarily a hit now.  It may be that you're missing more due to the expectation that it worked before and so it "should" work now?  I know I miss a lot more with spears than I did before.  With practice, I'm missing far less than I was initially and given a little more time I should be back to rarely missing again.  I'm sure it's the same with bows and other weapons.  For example, I could aim so I was just barely grazing a head with the spear in A20 and it would be a direct hit.  In A21, this would be either a miss or a graze (less damage than a real headshot).

 

I would think fire axes are on the tool line as they are an upgrade to stone axe and come before battle axe.  Since stone axes are considered a tool, that probably is as well.  I don't use it as a weapon and so never looked into it.

[Laz Man]

24 minutes ago, Laran Mithras said:

Excellent work, FunPimps. Love all of the new changes.

 

Zombie AI does seem tweaked harder, with a seeming extension to A20 reach.
Magazines are great. No, not too many.
Flashing trees are gone.
With V-sync off, cities run just a little smoother.

 

On magazines... I expected to find them in every trash pile. Instead, I'm finding them much less than I anticipated. I'm almost always choosing the trader magazine box reward just to advance my skills. Tying seeds into magazines seriously slowed down farming: I like it. I think the magazines are fine as is.

Maybe zombie reach should be looked at. Stretch Armstrong 11-foot arms make me sigh...

 

It's not so much reach has been increased but network traffic improvements has changed how combat timing feels compared to last Alpha.  Will take a bit of muscle memory relearning.

 

However, Faatal in his wizardry has come up with a way to shorten the reach of smaller enemies such as crawlers which should make things feel better.

Edited June 15, 2023 by Laz Man (see edit history)

[Riamus]

Maybe not increased but it's still too much.  You can see this just by being near a closed door with a zombie crawling on the other side.  They can hit you without really any chance of reaching you if you're close.  I mean, if I can barely hit a zombie with a spear, there's no reason they should be able to reach me while on their hands and knees at the same distance.  Hopefully this gets fixed eventually but as it's been a long-standing issue, I'm not too hopeful of it being soon.

[Laz Man]

7 minutes ago, Riamus said:

Maybe not increased but it's still too much.  You can see this just by being near a closed door with a zombie crawling on the other side.  They can hit you without really any chance of reaching you if you're close.  I mean, if I can barely hit a zombie with a spear, there's no reason they should be able to reach me while on their hands and knees at the same distance.  Hopefully this gets fixed eventually but as it's been a long-standing issue, I'm not too hopeful of it being soon.

 

Yeah I don't think that's an A21 exclusive issue.

[OgreSlayeR]

I hope bows get fixed a some point especially the primitive bow. I mean I don't expect it to be a laser beam, but it feels bad and I don't know how many times I've had arrows go right through the zombies head and do nothing.

 

I also hope (prob in A22 or so) they fix the misaligned sights when aiming down sights and get rid of the crosshair when ADS.

Edited June 15, 2023 by OgreSlayeR (see edit history)

[outhous]

Pretty sure bows got some work this alpha, I find the Primitive Bow is much better this alpha than A20.  I have had the arrow thru the head thing happen some.

[zztong]

I use bows a lot and haven't noticed a difference with the primitive bow. That doesn't mean there wasn't a change. I can be pretty oblivious sometimes.

[Belgarion32]

56 minutes ago, Riamus said:

I'd agree that the default quest sharing settings should be off.  I guess they put them on so people would find out about them.

 

We really haven't had issues with the magazines.  I have a handful I know I'm reading, they have a handful they know they're reading and there are a handful we are just storing because they really have no value to us.  Regarding your issue with looting, I think that's something that just needs worked out on your end.  I don't think the game needs to fix group dynamic problems for us.  If they won't work with you and play it so differently than you do, then maybe it's better to run your own quests and let them run theirs.  Not ideal since you're trying to work together but if they won't slow down then there isn't a lot that can be done.

I guess what I'm thinking is, they already try to force you to do the quests as they were meant to be played and not go straight to loot so why not improve it. Either support the playstyle or don't.

 

Also regarding loot itself, Minecraft has a mod that implements basically the feature that I think would be a good addition to the game called Lootr.

Snipped from their mod description:

What does it do? Each container that has a loot table (supporting chests, trapped chests, barrels, shulkers and minecarts) creates a unique inventory for each player who opens it! These containers also have a distinct appearance, and their colour changes from gold to blue if a player has already opened the container.

With the addition of the looted containers that was recently added I don't see how it would take much more to implement something like this. Just make the looted state only change for the end chest/box for the player that opened it, then when the second player opens the container check player id and if it doesn't match the prior player's id then generate new loot in the container. I know I'm asking features here when there's still bugs but I think it would nice to have to make shared quests not a detriment in the first few days.

 

I haven't touched clubs so I'm not sure.  Seems odd that clubs are underpowered so much compared to spears.  I know they improved spears but clubs were very good early game before so it just seems strange that they'd be that far off now.  Might be a bug.

 

Keep in mind that hitboxes have been adjusted to match the enemy and object more closely, so what you could hit before isn't necessarily a hit now.  It may be that you're missing more due to the expectation that it worked before and so it "should" work now?  I know I miss a lot more with spears than I did before.  With practice, I'm missing far less than I was initially and given a little more time I should be back to rarely missing again.  I'm sure it's the same with bows and other weapons.  For example, I could aim so I was just barely grazing a head with the spear in A20 and it would be a direct hit.  In A21, this would be either a miss or a graze (less damage than a real headshot).

 

I would think fire axes are on the tool line as they are an upgrade to stone axe and come before battle axe.  Since stone axes are considered a tool, that probably is as well.  I don't use it as a weapon and so never looked into it.

I'm thinking maybe I'm hitting their hands more than their heads if they're swinging? Not too sure. I'll keep an eye on it more and see if a timing issue for me or what.

 

I'll look into the tools tonight for the axe, thanks.