Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Matt115]

17 hours ago, Adam the Waster said:

or questions about alpha 22!
that comes later...... much later 

after i came back faatal has been much more active than Madmole. Joel uses to be really active
i believe that me and @Matt115 drove him to insanity!

if your looking console play testers ill do it
 

I just hope for confirmation about more corpses variants - military, more civilians, old skeletons ( now skeletons are missing more of bones + looks fresh i mean something like ( check below)

) 😜

 

Edited August 22, 2023 by Matt115 (see edit history)

[Matt115]

19 hours ago, faatal said:

Yes, I generally do, but I have not been keeping up with this thread for about a month now, as I am busy elsewhere.

 

Some topics I am not going to say much about and tend to skip over, like art style or design directions as I don't make those decisions or contribute much to them. I may complain about them like anyone else on the team but those are not my call.

Okay i get it . @Roland wrote that most stuff were just placeholders so totaly there is no point to continue this topic. @Adam the Waster - i Could spam Madmole about artstyle but it coudn't have sense

 

[Roland]

3 hours ago, Matt115 said:

Okay i get it . @Roland wrote that most stuff were just placeholders so totaly there is no point to continue this topic. @Adam the Waster - i Could spam Madmole about artstyle but it coudn't have sense

 

 

Most art used to be placeholders but all of the new stuff in A20 and A21 are final product. Designs are not going to be final until gold though I wouldn't go so far as to call them placeholders currently. The current armor and clothing design could be called placeholder or legacy as it is going to be overhauled with the first iteration of the design that will be final. Most designs are generally in their final form but still needing adjusting and balancing.

 

Probably a better term than "placeholder" for most things in A21 is "Work in Progress"

 

 

Edited August 22, 2023 by Roland (see edit history)

[Adam the Waster]

Was literally going to make a post about that

 

Cuz I was at trader Joel and I saw that bear rug (first I want it) 

 

Second Damnnn the one in the wild looks so bad compared too the one on the rug. The rug looks so good!

 

hope we get a update on the animals as well 

Edited August 22, 2023 by Adam the Waster (see edit history)

[Matt115]

39 minutes ago, Roland said:

 

Most art used to be placeholders but all of the new stuff in A20 and A21 are final product. Designs are not going to be final until gold though I wouldn't go so far as to call them placeholders currently. The current armor and clothing design could be called placeholder or legacy as it is going to be overhauled with the first iteration of the design that will be final. Most designs are generally in their final form but still needing adjusting and balancing.

 

Probably a better term than "placeholder" for most things in A21 is "Work in Progress"

 

 

 

I'm mean "pre junk gun" period. Guns were totaly diffrent style compare what is now, this same what will be with armors. So - we know were it's going to ( art style) - so kinda artystyle is almost "set". 

 

7dtd have two period - pre junk guns and post junk guns update. about artystyle. 

pre junk - "classic" zombie game artystyle ( re, contagion, zombie panic! source, nmrih2,  and now... well... fallout mixed with mad max. That's what i was mean. 

 

I was @%$# off because it's change from classic zombie game into this... but as you said - it was just placeholders. I could wrote more about that but it would be waste of time

 

So - kinda we can see now ( we saw armors) it that what we can expect from artstyle in final version

Edited August 22, 2023 by Matt115 (see edit history)

[Roland]

If you mean that armors and outfits will look like they are jury-rigged together from scrap materials in the post-apocalyptic world then yes, the art style shift will be very much like how the guns  started out looking like regular modern day weaponry but then turned into guns that look like they were put together in a post apocalyptic world by working with whatever junk was at hand. Same with the workstations and same with the landclaim block and same with more things so that eventually you won't be able to say that the guns look out of place any longer. They will conform to the same art-style being used across the board. Breath of fresh air seeing as there's already a bunch of games you listed that seem to copy the same "classic" art style for a zombie themed game.

Edited August 22, 2023 by Roland (see edit history)

[faatal]

On 8/3/2023 at 4:46 PM, Mr. Perfect said:

@faatal What is the math behind the skill magazine bonus find from perks? How much does it increase with multiple points in a perk?

 

A friend has a new method in A21 where you max out the perk that adds a find bonus for a given magazine, then when you get up to 100 magazines use a Fergettin' Elixer and max out the next magazine perk. I thought that would just mean he'd be working on magazines in series instead of in parallel like I'm doing by spreading points around multiple perks, but he's blasted past me in every magazine. I've got about five magazines that are all middling in progression, but he's got five maxed out at the same level.

 

It certainly seems to work, so I'm wondering how the math scales. Linearly? Faster?

It adds 2 at level 1 and that number goes up to 10 at level 5 like so:
<passive_effect name="LootProb" operation="perc_add" level="1,5" value="2,10" tags="sledgeSkill"/>

There are some that only have 3 or 4 levels.

 

The base value is 1, so if there were 10 items in the list, each being 1 they would add up to 10, with each being a 10% chance. Adding 1 would make it a 2 out of 11, so now a 18% chance and so on. I think there are 23 magazines in the full list.

 

Your sample size of you vs them is not large, so randomness could be a big factor in what you saw.

[faatal]

On 8/8/2023 at 1:28 PM, 4sheetzngeegles said:

@faatal @TFP

 

I have a question regarding spawning. More specifically respawndelay within the biomes.

The respawn delay in xml has a decimal example 2.9. The type is Int, which doesn't include

a decimal. Doesn't it just automatically round up to the nearest whole number.

 

In order for it to work completely as intended would the int need to be changed to a float?

A long conversation passed, I played with the spawn timing for a personal mod, had to jump through

hoops to get float to be accepted in the place of the int. This came about because I was corrected

and shown the difference, that I had missed.

 

Is it possible for this to be changed by TFP? It would allow for the cascade onslaught in the city streets,

while keeping a check on AI generation.

 

4SheetZ

 

respawndelay is parsed as a float and multiplied by 24000 to convert to a world time delay. World time is a long, so the delay being an int is correct.

The x24000 gives it plenty of precision.

 

On 8/12/2023 at 6:48 PM, Adam the Waster said:

So with Alpha 22, i do wonder about the armor/outfits and other stuff @faatal

I think it is a 4 piece system with mods. Two other programmers are working on it, not me, so I don't know the details.

[faatal]

On 8/21/2023 at 2:37 PM, Jost Amman said:

Which for us regular players means...? 

...I could change the protection size or add new ones like the placement protection and not have to care that all your chunks have the wrong data in them.

On 8/21/2023 at 5:28 PM, meganoth said:

@faatal Tried out the new "loot container" command you had added.

 

There seems to be some strange bias. Try "loot container bookcase 50000 1 1" and you'll see that the vehiclesSkillMagazine always drops 60% more often than other skill magazines. And bookTechJunkie1Damage is always last with a similar difference to the most often found book bookArtOfMiningDiamondTools.

 

Is the command always reseting the random number seed? Or is is it the RNGs fault?

 

The seed is always 0, so you would get the same result each time. Count changes would give you more or less of that same result.

[Adam the Waster]

2 hours ago, faatal said:

 

I think it is a 4 piece system with mods. Two other programmers are working on it, not me, so I don't know the details.

Interesting

 

.I ask cuz of this post. 

 

Unless the armor comes shirtless 

Then it's 5 or so. I'm not trying to sound like a ass. I'm just interested about the whole system.  

 

In the old arts for the nerd armor and such it counted 4. Hat, outfit (chest and legs), gloves and boots. 

 

(Sorry for poor quality fokes I'm at work) 

Edited August 23, 2023 by Adam the Waster (see edit history)

[vergilsparda]

2 hours ago, Adam the Waster said:

Interesting

 

.I ask cuz of this post. 

 

Unless the armor comes shirtless 

Then it's 5 or so. I'm not trying to sound like a ass. I'm just interested about the whole system.  

 

In the old arts for the nerd armor and such it counted 4. Hat, outfit (chest and legs), gloves and boots. 

 

(Sorry for poor quality fokes I'm at work) 

 

My bet is that the gloves and chest will be one piece. so Hat, Gloves/Chest, Legs, Boots. Or it's Hat, Gloves, Chest, Legs/Boots. I still can't tell if the thing around his waist is a loincloth or a tied together sweatshirt, but that's just because the image quality is low and you can't make out details, even in the original video. It still looks really good, though. Love the spurs on the cowboy boots. Probably going to be my boots of choice regardless of the bonus they give.

 

And speaking of bonuses, has anyone from the dev team answered whether or not the bonus will only apply if you have the full set of armor, or if each bonus is tied to a piece (head, chest, legs, boots etc), and you can mix and match to get multiple bonuses? Really hoping it's the latter, because it would seem unfair given how rare the devs talked about the pieces being, and how early game would be mostly mismatched armor or incomplete pieces.

[Jost Amman]

6 hours ago, faatal said:

On 8/21/2023 at 9:37 PM, Jost Amman said:

Which for us regular players means...? 

...I could change the protection size or add new ones like the placement protection and not have to care that all your chunks have the wrong data in them.

Cool! Could you, let's say, also add protection to areas other than the traders? Just curious.

[meilodasreh]

6 hours ago, Adam the Waster said:

Unless the armor comes shirtless 

Then it's 5 or so. I'm not trying to sound like a ass. I'm just interested about the whole system.  

My guess would be 

-head

-upper torso/chest

-legs

-arms/gloves

 

The idea of armored feet is a bit odd anyway imho.

 

Of course you could divide it further, into upper leg and shin, or in arm plus glove, but in the end it doesn't matter.

It's just a thing of how many mod slots they want to be there overall, and how powerful they are, not on how many different parts they are distributed.

To oversimplify one could say there could be just one "general armor thingy" that has 12 (whatever) mod slots, it would also work and no difference in gameplay.

[Adam the Waster]

5 hours ago, meilodasreh said:

My guess would be 

-head

-upper torso/chest

-legs

-arms/gloves

 

The idea of armored feet is a bit odd anyway imho.

 

To oversimplify one could say there could be just one "general armor thingy" that has 12 (whatever) mod slots, it would also work and no difference in gameplay.

That's another think I'm wondering 

Maybe it will be a mix of clothing and armor and some stuff like armor pockets will be removed.  Instead it's pockets mods

 

Imo with the image and what faatal said (take it with salt cuz he doesn't know) with the armor Is (gloves and boots), chest, legs, and helmet.  

 

Imo as well. I think a better system would be like what you said

 

Helmet ,Chest ,Gloves,Legs/boots 

 

Would be better for customization, role-playing, and make sense. Like who's going to wear a skirt and cowboy boots. Unless your into that sorta thing 

Edited August 23, 2023 by Adam the Waster (see edit history)

[meganoth]

12 hours ago, faatal said:

It adds 2 at level 1 and that number goes up to 10 at level 5 like so:
<passive_effect name="LootProb" operation="perc_add" level="1,5" value="2,10" tags="sledgeSkill"/>

There are some that only have 3 or 4 levels.

 

The base value is 1, so if there were 10 items in the list, each being 1 they would add up to 10, with each being a 10% chance. Adding 1 would make it a 2 out of 11, so now a 18% chance and so on. I think there are 23 magazines in the full list.

 

Your sample size of you vs them is not large, so randomness could be a big factor in what you saw.

 

@faatalSo someone who puts two perk points into the sledge will get his 100th sledge magazine at the same time all other magazines are at about 20 (with exceptions). Did you (i.e. TFP) change the design criteria of the perk boost from being just a safety measure into a game mechanism?

 

If you wanted to speed up crafting without the player having to deal with hundreds of recipes, wouldn't it have been better to halve the amount of needed recipes? Or reduce the amount of different magazines, i.e. just one for all weapons of an attribute (like you already do it with INT).

 

Is the team ok with the consequence that by perking into other boost perks you are actually greatly slowing down the crafting progress in some perk you specced into?

 

Sorry for asking you about design, but atm you are the only one available.

 

Edited August 23, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Matt115]

14 hours ago, Roland said:

If you mean that armors and outfits will look like they are jury-rigged together from scrap materials in the post-apocalyptic world then yes, the art style shift will be very much like how the guns  started out looking like regular modern day weaponry but then turned into guns that look like they were put together in a post apocalyptic world by working with whatever junk was at hand. Same with the workstations and same with the landclaim block and same with more things so that eventually you won't be able to say that the guns look out of place any longer. They will conform to the same art-style being used across the board. Breath of fresh air seeing as there's already a bunch of games you listed that seem to copy the same "classic" art style for a zombie themed game.

Breath of fresh air you can say about Blight. Usualy games set in Medieval are fantasy - you know magic etc. while blight is going into sci fi ( The last of us fungus like) which is fresh air,  XIV century west europe aesthetic + zombies. Armors, Weapons etc in this same period.  

 

okay at first let's take Mad Max as example ( just game it will be simpler ) : this game artystyle is consistent.

place is seaside near nuked sea. So - water evaporated so there was a lot of salt in air :  so this caused rusting things + sand so covered building it collapsed. so hard to find things because a) most of them is rusted b) under sand yet in bad condition because of.. sand. Old people like Max behave like prewar ( clothes etc) while "post war" borned people do random things because they don't know how it was working. In Mad Max there is lack of guns or even clothes thanks to salt and sand. So using junk there is suitable because... everything else rusted -  workling V6 engine is treat there as almost saint relict. Bandits wear normal clothes while "civilians" literaly rags. So there is totaly nothing and nothing to go because are cut off because of radiation zone - just sand and totaly nothing else - happens maybe 20 years since nuclear war + lack of weapons can be caused that's Australia not USA

 

Walking dead - classic zombie art style. i don't have to explain.

L4D2 - outbreak period srtyle

 

7DTD - totaly lack of consistents

Armors and guns are like Mad Max - made with totaly junk or using part of junk- looks like nuclear war happend 300 years ago if there are living trees ( so zone wasn't destroyed) yet guns somehow manage to be totaly destroyed ( well still is in the use are pre ww2 artilery ammunition in our world so i think i secret bunker should have +- 1 000 guns at least : so even if it was long time looted then... there shoudn't be infected too + this is USA not Australia. ).

 

World -  you can find realy good condition miltiary trucks, electricity is working, vending machines too so situation about world is even closer to l4d2 that even walking dead - looks like this bombs was thrown month or week ago not 10  years ago.  So if there still exist such thing and are good condition that mean that rest of stuff should be too.

 

So  all of this games ar: to be consistent there is two options

 

a)

 

7DTD go "classic" way -  days gone, nmrih2 etc. - mostly  civilian clothes, armors are fabric - swat, army, firefighters, maybe a little bit rusted but "standard" weapons with standard attachments - ak , m16, scar

 

B) go totaly in mad max post apo - remove all  cars, most of map is sand or burning ruins, forests are realy realy realy rare,   almost no electricity, zombie go almost without clothes ( you know if civilians clothes doesn't manage to survive in city center then wound't survive on zombies either), 90% of POI should be change into almost destroyed ruins ( wasteland biom almost everywhere) , 

 

Because now it's not consistent at all

 

 

[Roland]

4 hours ago, Matt115 said:

So  all of this games ar: to be consistent there is two options

 

a)

 

B) 

 

Um.. no. The game can be internally consistent and be different than either of the two options you presented. Whether 7 Days to Die's art style fits into your two categories or defines its own has nothing to do with whether it is consistent as a game. More and more legacy art is being converted to the new style and so the game is increasingly becoming more consistent with what it wants to be. 

 

The choice is not binary to match existing IPs in order for the game to develop an art style consistency of its very own.

4 hours ago, Matt115 said:

Because now it's not consistent at all

 

Consistent with other games or consistent within itself? The first doesn't matter since games can pioneer new styles and designs and don't have to be consistent with other stuff in the industry. The second does matter and as the game closes in on Gold it will become more and more consistent in its art and style as we've been seeing big time with A20 and A21.

[DrunkZombie]

So did they remove the air drop with wood blocks in it?  As a solo player it was nice to get early game to make a base. 5000 less wood I gotta chop.  Over a dozen airdrops and haven't seen it.

[Matt115]

2 hours ago, Roland said:

 

Um.. no. The game can be internally consistent and be different than either of the two options you presented. Whether 7 Days to Die's art style fits into your two categories or defines its own has nothing to do with whether it is consistent as a game. More and more legacy art is being converted to the new style and so the game is increasingly becoming more consistent with what it wants to be. 

 

2 hours ago, Roland said:

 

 

Consistent with other games or consistent within itself? The first doesn't matter since games can pioneer new styles and designs and don't have to be consistent with other stuff in the industry. The second does matter and as the game closes in on Gold it will become more and more consistent in its art and style as we've been seeing big time with A20 and A21.

It's not consistent. I will give  you example : you make adventure game quasi realistic ( indiana jones vibes) set in 1940 -  you know berlin, egypt, mayan ruins etc. So let's say there is german army so what do you put? SCAR-H? M16? No. K98. 

While 7dtd is like take "typical german camp" - you know Panzer 2, messerschmitt, this red black and white booth etc. then put Scar for german soldiers (let's say it's not about time travel) and modern hazmats. 

 

I give you few times why logic for guns models doesn't have sense even from in-game perspective. It's set in USA not in Poland or Germany were guns are stricted. It's like texas so probably guns are everwhere. So using shovel handle ? realy - okay: so totaly no where was possible to find stock for AK47? i think it's would be so hard to find this or even make similiar - if it was possible to made in high number in CCCP pretty fast - here it would be problem at all. or use another gun stock. So totaly lack of consistent because this argument about junk don't work - if you can find in realy good conditon military trucks - then find boxes full of M16 ( newer guns need licenses to put in game). So there is not possiblity how all of them could be destroyed. Attachments? again - much easier to find military/civilian variants of most of them. 

Armors? - Well raider bandit armor looks cool and... is totaly useless why? nails it's would rather disturbing during some activites. I remember a guy who were explaining why such stuff in post apo design doesn't have sense. 

 

i could this all day. What is point of 7dtd? be serious? or parody? set years or shortly during outbreak? most things totaly doesn't have sense. 

 

7dtd now is like COD about style - one hand you have this detailed USA military helicopter when even details like where is medkit put is correct then you have SGT PSS (cat skin) and ghost rifle - totaly lack of consistent even if not compare to other games.

 

Where is a problem? it will take let's say 10 years at best before next 7dtd game. So i have to say what is bad now because after so many years can be too late

Edited August 24, 2023 by Matt115 (see edit history)

[Adam the Waster]

I think the artstyle is pretty good. Really the only thing weird is when the outbreak takes place.  Some parts feels like days ago and some look a few years old. But games like fallout do that as well.  So it's whatever.  

 

While I don't like some changes to models like the hunting knife and feral wight, they aren't bad just personally I don't like it. 

 

I wouldn't say it's a unique artstyle.  But like what Guns Nerd and steel said 

 

"They are definitely going for a goofy, grung aesthetic, where AK stocks are in less supply than shovel handled and replacement motorcycle seats are less common then toilet seats"

 

However the sense of humor in the game has always been one of my favorites and has gotten better.  Especially with in game brands. Stuff like "the boobie trap", "eye candy", Ohreally auto. Alot I see is like Dad jokes timed 20x and I love it. 

 

I personally can't wait to play it on console with my work buddies.  Cuz my PC is on its way out. 

 

3 minutes ago, Matt115 said:

I could this all day. What is point of 7dtd? be serious? or parody? 

 

[FramFramson]

I can see the difference between the Mad Max crafted stuff and the ordinary in-world stuff as jarring, but luckily we have mods, so if you want your cars and guns more realistic that's no problem.

 

One thing though was that the pipe weapons annoyed me at first, until I realized that despite their goofy appearance really, in practice, they're more like WWII "resistance" or "home guard" weapons, guns made not in a factory but in a workshop or basement but still made to fire existing available ammunition.

[Old Crow]

17 hours ago, Adam the Waster said:

That's another think I'm wondering 

Maybe it will be a mix of clothing and armor and some stuff like armor pockets will be removed.  Instead it's pockets mods

 

Imo with the image and what faatal said (take it with salt cuz he doesn't know) with the armor Is (gloves and boots), chest, legs, and helmet.  

 

Imo as well. I think a better system would be like what you said

 

Helmet ,Chest ,Gloves,Legs/boots 

 

Would be better for customization, role-playing, and make sense. Like who's going to wear a skirt and cowboy boots. Unless your into that sorta thing 

 

Or might be like Soulsborne games - Head, Chest, Gloves, Legs (pants/boots).

[Adam the Waster]

8 minutes ago, Old Crow said:

 

Or might be like Soulsborne games - Head, Chest, Gloves, Legs (pants/boots).

I don't think so cuz of the picture. Unless that's the leg armor.  In that casw that's silly. Then again they could have changed it they change a few things with armor 

 

Who knows I hope it's like what you say it makes the most sense 

 

[NukemDed]

On 8/23/2023 at 2:18 PM, Adam the Waster said:

Interesting

 

.I ask cuz of this post. 

 

Unless the armor comes shirtless 

Then it's 5 or so. I'm not trying to sound like a ass. I'm just interested about the whole system.  

 

In the old arts for the nerd armor and such it counted 4. Hat, outfit (chest and legs), gloves and boots. 

 

(Sorry for poor quality fokes I'm at work) 

where is his heart? his achy breaky heart?

[Old Crow]

3 hours ago, Adam the Waster said:

I don't think so cuz of the picture. Unless that's the leg armor.  In that casw that's silly. Then again they could have changed it they change a few things with armor 

 

Who knows I hope it's like what you say it makes the most sense 

 

 

Plus the image has the character shirtless, though it's also an early image.