Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[nickasaurus rex]

20 hours ago, mprojekt said:

 

That is not supposed to happen. The water-purifying attachment in my own headgear is working as intended, but if this a repeatable bug for you, please report it. Either click on the "Report an Alpha 21 Bug" red banner at the top of the forums or go to:

https://community.7daystodie.com/announcement/11-report-an-alpha-21-bug/

 

I have not run into the issue since restarting my game. So I guess it was just a fluke or maybe it was because I was freezing and drinking cold water? 

[Old Crow]

6 minutes ago, nickasaurus rex said:

 

I have not run into the issue since restarting my game. So I guess it was just a fluke or maybe it was because I was freezing and drinking cold water? 

 

I don't think water temperature is a thing, so that shouldn't be it.

[hiloboys]

Just a quick question to see if its just my computer that has this issue, but What does the fun pimps intro animation screen sound like? Since I first started all I heard was broken sound. (Imagine you heard the dolby digital intro but the speakers in your house blew out and all you can hear are bits and pieces of it) I never really cared since I thought all this time its just because my laptop is old. But a friend of mine who also plays that actually spent a lot of money on his PC says he also hears the same thing. I mean everything sounds great after that, but I still have no idea what the Fun Pimps Intro sound that plays (When the pimp cane is doing its little animation thing) sounds like. Anyone else get this issue or they are fine? Haha

[unholyjoe]

go to where steam installed your 7dtd folder... here is mine

 

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\7 Days To Die\7DaysToDie_Data\StreamingAssets\Video

 

[vergilsparda]

17 hours ago, Riamus said:

Yeah, I would never need to make so many antibiotics for the entire game from the number of sham sandwiches I've found.  The loot rate needs a severe reduction for these.

 

You don't get sick from them if you use a vitamin (100% disease resist) so if you're short on food but have some of them, they make for a good last-dish meal. Although in real life I'd probably just die of starvation because eating moldy bread is just about the most disgusting thing in the world (and that's coming from someone who has been in the unfortunate situation of being halfway through a moldy twinkie at one point in their life!)

 

As for gasoline—can't remember who was talking about it, but I'll throw my hat into the ring again—going into Salvage Operations tree is literally the best thing you can do—I'm currently running a Perception build and I maxed it out. It's crazy the difference in stuff you get between before I perked into it vs after. I wrench about 10-15 cars and have enough gas to fill more than half of my 4x4 tank (though my style of play is different than most and probably considered "cheating": I give myself a vehicle, have to carry it around until I can actually salvage gas, which still makes the early game extremely difficult in terms of rationing out your gas). Even now I'm still struggling to keep up, but I can keep my tank at about 30-40% for the majority of the time... it's the glue, water, and repair kits that are killing me!! I am a good driver I swear, but sometimes when you're off-roading your mind wanders and suddenly you've sent a tree into the stratosphere and only have 20% durability on your car left 😭

 

That being said be prepared to have a lot of inventory space if you do end up speccing into Salvage Operations. You fill up on engines, radiators and batteries like it's nobody's business. I had to start scrapping them as I get them because I have little use for them right now (I don't have generators unlocked yet, so I can't add power to my base, because the proper magazines are very scarce!).

 

Honestly I'm pretty happy with the changes, it's made the game significantly more difficult, even on lower enemy difficulty levels. It's getting closer and closer to the survival game it is meant to be (not that it wasn't before, it was just unrefined, you know?). I'm fighting for my life just to keep up with food and water demands; it's made using the new vending machines that much better too, imo. Never used to go to them before except to maybe grab a Yucca Smoothie or some candy, but now I'm scrambling for canned food and also finding Trader Rekt.

[Riamus]

2 hours ago, vergilsparda said:

 

You don't get sick from them if you use a vitamin (100% disease resist) so if you're short on food but have some of them, they make for a good last-dish meal. Although in real life I'd probably just die of starvation because eating moldy bread is just about the most disgusting thing in the world (and that's coming from someone who has been in the unfortunate situation of being halfway through a moldy twinkie at one point in their life!)

 

As for gasoline—can't remember who was talking about it, but I'll throw my hat into the ring again—going into Salvage Operations tree is literally the best thing you can do—I'm currently running a Perception build and I maxed it out. It's crazy the difference in stuff you get between before I perked into it vs after. I wrench about 10-15 cars and have enough gas to fill more than half of my 4x4 tank (though my style of play is different than most and probably considered "cheating": I give myself a vehicle, have to carry it around until I can actually salvage gas, which still makes the early game extremely difficult in terms of rationing out your gas). Even now I'm still struggling to keep up, but I can keep my tank at about 30-40% for the majority of the time... it's the glue, water, and repair kits that are killing me!! I am a good driver I swear, but sometimes when you're off-roading your mind wanders and suddenly you've sent a tree into the stratosphere and only have 20% durability on your car left 😭

 

That being said be prepared to have a lot of inventory space if you do end up speccing into Salvage Operations. You fill up on engines, radiators and batteries like it's nobody's business. I had to start scrapping them as I get them because I have little use for them right now (I don't have generators unlocked yet, so I can't add power to my base, because the proper magazines are very scarce!).

 

Honestly I'm pretty happy with the changes, it's made the game significantly more difficult, even on lower enemy difficulty levels. It's getting closer and closer to the survival game it is meant to be (not that it wasn't before, it was just unrefined, you know?). I'm fighting for my life just to keep up with food and water demands; it's made using the new vending machines that much better too, imo. Never used to go to them before except to maybe grab a Yucca Smoothie or some candy, but now I'm scrambling for canned food and also finding Trader Rekt.

Yeah, they can serve as food but I've never bothered in all my games.  They usually sit around doing nothing unless I need antibiotics and RNG isn't getting me any, which is pretty rare.  Now, with the increased drop rate, I have over 150 of them.  That's compared to half that by very late game in A20.

 

Yeah, salvage operations is pretty critical now for gas.  Even so, you still have to really scrap a ton of cars to stay mobile.  It just feels way too low when you can't make gas until either you get lucky on a quest reward or you manage to find enough magazines, which takes quite a while.  I think the chem station has to either be unlocked sooner or else there needs to be a way to make gas before unlocking the chem station, even at an inefficient rate.

 

I like A21 for the most part.  There are just certain things like the gas being too low and sandwiches being too high and other things I've mentioned in other topics that bug me.  The vehicle damage you mention is another and one I know I'll end up modding to be much lower.  I mean, I've lost maybe 12% just from driving over terrain in the wilderness that was bumpy on the pregen8k map.  No rocks, trees, bones, etc.  Just simply terrain that was fairly level but had enough bump to damage the 4x4.  You can't see such things when driving around.  Losing so much durability because of stupid things like that gets annoying.  Not to mention that I have gotten to where I don't even want to use the 4x4 because it takes damage way too easily.  It has just become an annoying thing to drive now.  So I'll mod the damage values and have an enjoyable driving experience again. 

[NBornkilla]

6 hours ago, Roland said:

Despite agreeing with your philosophy of play and let play, if a block is bugged then the devs need to know. If just a few players are basing their entire horde night strategy by exploiting a bug then it is better to get it fixed sooner rather than later as that will impact fewer people. 
 

TFP has no problem with people using blocks in creative ways but if something is bugged then they usually want to fix it. 
 

Especially if fixing it will harm the players….lmao. 

if its a bug i agree that the tfp should fix  but i see some people getting mad at others for   looking way  to either cheese the horde or hide from it  you know lol  

 

btw loving  the alpha 21.

[Aldranon]

If Zombies are supposed to be dead, then how does blood gush out a corpse when damaged(re-killed)?

 

Nope, the "zombies" are alive (probably 50% modified rabies virus and 50% demonic force straight from hell...)

That or we are back to the "having a bad coma dream", waiting on part 2 to start.

 

I'm with the "bad coma dream" for two reasons. 

1) It fits.  (Too many anti-logical things to list)

2) It adds a great plot vehicle into an expanded world that will be a part 2 when the player wakes up.

[Roland]

27 minutes ago, Aldranon said:

2) It adds a great plot vehicle into an expanded world that will be a part 2 when the player wakes up.

 

This would be a very clever ending/beginning from the original game to the sequel. Starting the game from one of the rooms in Navezgane hospital is a pretty fun challenge and would be an awesome way to start the sequel.

[Aldranon]

1 minute ago, Roland said:

 

This would be a very clever ending/beginning from the original game to the sequel. Starting the game from one of the rooms in Navezgane hospital is a pretty fun challenge and would be an awesome way to start the sequel.

 

Maybe a greatly expanded Navazgane, but I was thinking that the player could:

1) Start in the New York area (included the airport to indicate the scale)

2) Start in a hospital and the zombie apocalypse has:

A) Just started.

B) Will start in 7 days (Giving the player time to prepare). 

C) A nod to the start of "The walking Dead" or "28 Days Later".

[FinkPloyd]

Regarding the changes to the random world generation and POI frequency.

 

My map has 3 of the same trader 'type' in close proximity so my first 2 'Trade Routes' missions are to the same trader 'type'.

As the traders are now quite specialised this appears to have limited the items I can buy (combined with the RNG is not giving me the magazines to build a motorised vehicle to explore for more distant traders).

 

Does the POI frequency take trader 'type' into consideration?

If not could it?

[hiemfire]

2 hours ago, Aldranon said:

1) Start in the New York area (included the airport to indicate the scale)

"The city's land area is estimated to be 321 square miles (830 km2).[2] However, a more recent estimate calculates a total land area of 304.8 square miles (789.4 square kilometres)"

[lazdeuce]

13 hours ago, meilodasreh said:

nope, only catched a glimpse of it during what was shown as an example for an infestation quest.

You maybe right about the disadvantage of a "flat" design of the poi.

But still, heat generation is counted up within a chunk (independent from height as far as I know),

so you would trigger a screamer during the clearance of a big poi anyway, regardless of its geometry, when you go loud with your guns.

And the fact that the zeds can't reach you doesn't really matter in the end.

Because a screamer cycle, once it started to go bad, will kill! Maybe not you when you're unreachable high above, but your framerate, making it unplayable either way 😄

 

Maybe try a more silent approach at least at first, using bow&arrow or silenced guns?

 

And of course avoid resource harvesting in the area before you hit the quest marker.

E.g. when you find a nice ore deposit right next to the poi and collect a stack of iron, or maybe even "double dipped" all the nice cars in the parking lot,

you are likely to trigger a screamer relatively early during your run, because you raised the count pretty good already.

 

I wouldn't like your chances with a bow & arrow in the prison.  With the trigger system stealth is absolutely pointless and you're going to get swamped before you fire the third arrow.

 

That's the only thing I don't like about this alpha since I usually do a stealth build.  Everything else is fantastic.

[Aldranon]

2 hours ago, hiemfire said:

"The city's land area is estimated to be 321 square miles (830 km2).[2] However, a more recent estimate calculates a total land area of 304.8 square miles (789.4 square kilometres)"

 

Perfect!

By the time Part2 is ready, our great-great grandchildren would approve.

[Morloc]

9 hours ago, Riamus said:

I think the chem station has to either be unlocked sooner or else there needs to be a way to make gas before unlocking the chem station, even at an inefficient rate.

 

I like the amount of gas salvaged from vehicles, but perhaps gas pumps and barrels should have significantly more...or at least a random range with a high upper limit.

 

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc 💀

[zztong]

7 hours ago, Aldranon said:

Will start in 7 days (Giving the player time to prepare).

 

I've thought about this variant a few times. I thought "7 Days to Live" as a prequel. The world starts out with vague reports of zombies and the player is one of the very few who starts to take it serious. There are reasons to engage with civilization -- buy things -- but civilization is also the source of disease and going through checkpoints is going to eat up your time. Civilization devolves into panic, looting, then the mass of infected, the mass of zombies, a military response ... and if you live, launch 7D2D.

 

I doubt it would be a voxel/blocks game though.

[meganoth]

5 hours ago, lazdeuce said:

I wouldn't like your chances with a bow & arrow in the prison.  With the trigger system stealth is absolutely pointless and you're going to get swamped before you fire the third arrow.

 

That's the only thing I don't like about this alpha since I usually do a stealth build.  Everything else is fantastic.

 

Stealth is not pointless but quite challenging to pull through. Someone demonstrated how to restealth again, and with speed and run&gun the AGI player should be able to "run around" them and away in most situations.

 

In my SP game I am playing in the winter biome, at the moment with a quality3 pistol and wooden bow, against half of them being normal and half feral zombies with one above default difficulty.

I am just an average player with bad reflexes and not good at making decisions under stress. And I could still clear POIs with stealth. As long as I remembered the way back and ran far away I could always restealth and finally kill them, or gun them down in a narrow place. At one time I had placed a few spike traps in the way of my backtrack path and when two ferals were coming at me I killed them with arrows behind that trap defense.

It is intense and fun, but got me nearly killed a few times when I made the wrong decision or took the wrong turn or forgot to reload my weapon after changing a mod(!). Again and again I do this mistake, not reloading my gun and getting killed because of it.

 

I doubt someone who is just starting with the game though would survive most of this, but as I said it was winter biome and at a higher difficulty.

 

Stealth is in need of some changes and balances. But not pointless at all.

 

 

Edited June 28, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Aldranon]

37 minutes ago, zztong said:

 

I've thought about this variant a few times. I thought "7 Days to Live" as a prequel. The world starts out with vague reports of zombies and the player is one of the very few who starts to take it serious. There are reasons to engage with civilization -- buy things -- but civilization is also the source of disease and going through checkpoints is going to eat up your time. Civilization devolves into panic, looting, then the mass of infected, the mass of zombies, a military response ... and if you live, launch 7D2D.

 

I doubt it would be a voxel/blocks game though.

 

 

What the player does in the 7 days to prepare would be critical.

Also, starting wealth and residence location would be a difficulty setting, all the way up to being homeless!

Occupation could be important in helping the player survive.  Some occupations have more survival nature to them, but I can see driving a bus could be a big deal.

 

Yeah, no voxels for sure.

There should be enough natural choke points and evasive methods the player could use anyway.

Boats would be the easiest evasive method except for getting water.

The upper floors of some high buildings have pros and cons.

[nickasaurus rex]

Is it a bug if there is no randomly generated town next to a trader?

[RipClaw]

17 minutes ago, nickasaurus rex said:

Is it a bug if there is no randomly generated town next to a trader?

No. It's actually a feature of A21. In my opinion not a great feature but it is a according to the developers a feature.

Edited June 28, 2023 by RipClaw (see edit history)

[weldabar]

10 hours ago, FinkPloyd said:

My map has 3 of the same trader 'type' in close proximity so my first 2 'Trade Routes' missions are to the same trader 'type'.

 

On one of my games the first two 'opening trade routes' brought me to the exact same trader. So the first three traders were all the same! I understand how this could happen with RNG, but I don't think it should happen.

With a generated map I think

1) it must ensure that all the traders exist

2) adjacent traders should not be the same, or traders within a certain distance. It's "Trader Joel's" after all, not Starbucks.

[spacepiggio]

1 hour ago, RipClaw said:

No. It's actually a feature of A21. In my opinion not a great feature but it is a according to the developers a feature.

Kind of like a stray outpost & fits a single player or nomad playstyle, I like it

[Riamus]

11 hours ago, FinkPloyd said:

Regarding the changes to the random world generation and POI frequency.

 

My map has 3 of the same trader 'type' in close proximity so my first 2 'Trade Routes' missions are to the same trader 'type'.

As the traders are now quite specialised this appears to have limited the items I can buy (combined with the RNG is not giving me the magazines to build a motorised vehicle to explore for more distant traders).

 

Does the POI frequency take trader 'type' into consideration?

If not could it?

 

10 minutes ago, weldabar said:

On one of my games the first two 'opening trade routes' brought me to the exact same trader. So the first three traders were all the same! I understand how this could happen with RNG, but I don't think it should happen.

With a generated map I think

1) it must ensure that all the traders exist

2) adjacent traders should not be the same, or traders within a certain distance. It's "Trader Joel's" after all, not Starbucks.

 

There is a new XML parameter - ThemeRepeatDistance.  I only checked TraderJoel.xml, which was set to 1000, but I assume they all have the same value.  This might allow you to reduce the chance they appear near the same trader by raising the value.  On the other hand, it might mean that's the distance between any trader, which wouldn't help.  It might be worth trying, though.  The POIs have DuplicateRepeatDistance as a new parameter that seems to prevent the same POI from being within that distance from each other.  That isn't in the trader's XML, though.  It may be possible you could also make use of that parameter if ThemeRepeatDistance doesn't work.

 

Maybe a dev can confirm either of these to help you out with that?  Granted, it might be better for vanilla to keep the same trader more distance from one another in RWG without having to make these changes.

2 hours ago, nickasaurus rex said:

Is it a bug if there is no randomly generated town next to a trader?

 

It is a feature.  However, I do not think these traders should ever be your starter trader.  You should always have a starter trader near a town.  POI to quest at are just way too far away before having transportation to do much at these without spending a ton of time, food and water.  Having these wilderness traders isn't necessarily bad.  It can get you questing the wilderness POI that you might not normally quest.

[meganoth]

48 minutes ago, Riamus said:

It is a feature.  However, I do not think these traders should ever be your starter trader.  You should always have a starter trader near a town.  POI to quest at are just way too far away before having transportation to do much at these without spending a ton of time, food and water.  Having these wilderness traders isn't necessarily bad.  It can get you questing the wilderness POI that you might not normally quest.

 

If he never is the starting trader, he would be almost useless. For veteran players surely a feature. New players should start with Navezgane and there it should be impossible.

 

[Riamus]

6 minutes ago, meganoth said:

If he never is the starting trader, he would be almost useless. For veteran players surely a feature. New players should start with Navezgane and there it should be impossible.

 

Not necessarily.  He could be a special quest to find a trader and people might quest there.  Really, there's not much more chance of such a trader being useful right now.  Most players other than new players who don't know better will see there's no town and move on pretty quickly... often on day 1, or at least by day 2.  At the very least, they will as soon as they get a bike but I think most will go even before then.  Anyone who uses POI for their night base will almost certainly move on (at least to a wilderness POI) even though there is one tile next to these wilderness traders since it isn't necessarily a good place to hide out.  Right now, a wilderness trader as a starting trader is just a waste of time for most players.

 

And you state that new players should start with Navesgane but the game does not in any way indicate such a suggestion to players.  It might be the first choice (I'm not positive) in the list and so many might choose that for that reason but it isn't like it is listed as tutorial or something that might make a new player decide to choose that over a pregen map.  Not positive if pregen maps ever have the wilderness trader as the starter trader.  If not, then what they start with wouldn't matter as long as they don't make their own map, so you're right for new players even if they didn't choose Navesgane.

Edited June 28, 2023 by Riamus (see edit history)