Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Jost Amman]

10 minutes ago, meganoth said:

I could not find or access it. But steam discussion board seems to have had problems half an hour ago, maybe that had something to do with it.

Yeah, Steam has been acting weird for hours now... but the topic is there: just try to run the link more than once until it works.  

[faatal]

11 hours ago, Riamus said:

They also said A20.7 will come out Thursday, which I guess is later today now, to fix a bug that will occur when swapping between experimental and A20.  Can we get verification if updating to A20.7 will affect saves?  It sounds like it only is there for that one fix and so *shouldn't* affect saves, but I want to check.

A20.7 has a few minor changes to reading the world file header. It will not effect existing saves.

6 hours ago, DocRussel said:

My favorite part was Rick going against the others' wishes and actually giving a rough estimate of early-mid May for the A21 experimental release.  Of course that can change, I'm just thankful for even an educated guess on their part as of right now.

As I said a few times in the stream's chat, it will be x amount of weeks. Rick gave a more specific guess, but really it could be 3 weeks or 5 weeks or more and comes down to fixing any bugs that we do not want in even an experimental release once we finish features and polish we are doing right now.

 

There are 63 must fix tasks right now, of which maybe half need to be done to release experimental and more will be added as we go.

[Survager]

52 minutes ago, Survager said:

Sorry if this questions has already been asked, I'm having a hard time finding an answer.

1. Will the 20.7 update that was announced on the stream break old saves made in version 20.6?

 

2. Will players need to create a new game after Alpha 21 is released if they start a new game after 20.7 is released?

@faatal Can we get answers to these questions from you? if you know what to answer, of course )

[faatal]

2 hours ago, Cr0wst0rm said:

Like the single blocks that very sticking out... I would expect it would flatten the center and fill surroundings... 10% height of a block? Almost I am feeling like if the solution that Niagara uses in Unreal Engine 5 (volumetic simulated water) would be better in conjunction with the voxel collision stuff... But performance issues would probably come with that....

They showed the worse use case. The current water is meant to be contained, not dumped on flat ground. Neither RWG or POIs have water dumped on flat ground.

The water mesh generator is the old mesh code with some cleanup and the programmer working on it is still making changes. The mesh generator makes meshes at a fixed height, which does not tapper off currently.

18 minutes ago, Survager said:

@faatal Can we get answers to these questions from you? if you know what to answer, of course )

 

1. Will the 20.7 update that was announced on the stream break old saves made in version 20.6?

2. Will players need to create a new game after Alpha 21 is released if they start a new game after 20.7 is released?

1 - A20.7 has a few minor changes to reading the world file header. It will not effect existing A20 saves. It will simply show A21 saves in the list without throwing errors.

 

2 - A20.7 saves are the same as 20.6 saves. A21 will not read those saves due to many changes that are not compatible.

[Jost Amman]

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

I could not find or access it. But steam discussion board seems to have had problems half an hour ago, maybe that had something to do with it.

Update: you're right! Someone apparently deleted my post!

I don't think it's been moved since I checked the other sub-forums and even some other discussions to check if it was merged. 

I asked help to the mods, I hope they find out what happened because I put a lot of effort in it. 

[Riamus]

55 minutes ago, faatal said:

The water mesh generator is the old mesh code with some cleanup and the programmer working on it is still making changes. The mesh generator makes meshes at a fixed height, which does not tapper off currently.

Does that mean you still cannot full a pool or similar enclosed space with water in game more than about 1/4m high?  That is unfortunate.

[Roland]

3 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

Update: you're right! Someone apparently deleted my post!

I don't think it's been moved since I checked the other sub-forums and even some other discussions to check if it was merged. 

I asked help to the mods, I hope they find out what happened because I put a lot of effort in it. 

 

You got flagged by Steams auto moderation bot and the post will be hidden until a steam mod can check to make sure it contains nothing malicious. The 7 Days to Die mods can't do anything until steam verifies it is okay and then makes it visible again.

[Jost Amman]

11 minutes ago, Roland said:

You got flagged by Steams auto moderation bot and the post will be hidden until a steam mod can check to make sure it contains nothing malicious. The 7 Days to Die mods can't do anything until steam verifies it is okay and then makes it visible again.

Thanks for the info... that's too bad. And to think that they want to use Bots and AIs to control important stuff! 

Edited April 13, 2023 by Jost Amman (see edit history)

[Riamus]

3 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

Thanks for the info... that's too bad. And to think that they want to use Bots and AIs to control important stuff! 

People don't want to have to think for themselves. ☹️

[Jost Amman]

3 minutes ago, Riamus said:

People don't want to have to think for themselves. ☹️

And worst of all, businesses don't want to give people a job to earn a living anymore!

[Callum123456789]

I am quite frankly blown away from what I've seen from yesterday's dev stream the amount of excitement I got from seeing the new alpha in action cannot be contained lol everything looks to be coming along well.

 

the new art is gorgeous and the sounds of the new progression system is something I've been waiting for since forever in 7 days it finally seems like a system that can prolong the game for a lot longer not to mention all the many other smaller features.

 

I must give thanks to those at the fun pimps putting their time and effort into this magnificent game hats off to you guys!

[faatal]

50 minutes ago, Riamus said:

Does that mean you still cannot full a pool or similar enclosed space with water in game more than about 1/4m high?  That is unfortunate.

No. That is the water surfaces level in a voxel, not how many voxels deep. We have bodies of water of a variety of depths. The water mesh is only created for the top, otherwise you would have layers upon layers of meshes, leading to visual issues and slow rendering.

[Doomofman]

Sounds like that would get a little.... meshy 😎

[Abunai]

I just wanted to contribute with an idea. It would be great if missions could indicate which POI they're in without having to go through the whole missions dialogues. Also, I feel like vehicles should make some noise when they take damage, you know what I mean?

I'm feeling worried about the endgame in this alpha after so much time in development, because there doesn't seem to be much to look forward to. I find it disconcerting that there's only one new type of mission and it's just "one level harder" (infestation = more zombies = one tier extra).. I understand it's an alpha focused on art and performance, but more variety in activities and missions along with a story should be the top priority by now (we didn't see anything).

 

In the endgame (the early game seems fantastic), the lack of progress is starting to make me concerned.

[dwallorde]

Where's Hitler?

[POCKET951]

so we saw the strength and agility tree changes for alpha 21, will @madmole show off the new intelligence skill tree in a future dev stream or will that be something we will have to see and experience for ourselves when streamer weekend/experimental branch launches?

[Laz Man]

10 hours ago, Doomofman said:

The streamer I would have watched on A21 streamer weekend is getting married one of the May weekends so it's almost definitely going to be that weekend just out of spite from the universe

 

He can always make it a 7d2d wedding stream...as long as his wife approves of course....😅

16 hours ago, Riamus said:

I have to say that the worlds look so much better with the wider range of vehicles instead of basically just cars, buses and utility trucks.  That gas station POI and checkpoint part are great.

 

Agreed, so many environmental storying telling opportunities with all of the new vehicle decorations.

16 hours ago, Riamus said:

I am curious about what they mean by "country tiles"... are we getting tiles for wilderness?

 

Nice catch.  There are certainly some new additions outside of towns/cities which I assume will be further detailed in an upcoming stream.

[Fanatical_Meat]

5 hours ago, Mumpfy said:

 

.

oh i think he did in fact. One chance is that, the other chance is that im just way wrong and into conspiracy theories.

 

 

but judging prime's face i may be right. lol

cant believe nobody else noticed it.

Oh do tell, what did he say and what did you think of it?

[Mumpfy]

well.... he first called the helipad a "teleport" and thats when prime made that face that to me realy translated to "damn he @%$#ed up" then he corrected himself and called an helipad but again he said that it had some feature involving alpha 22 and they werent going to talk about that quite yet.

 

Also i noticed the helipad has a nice little "station" near it which would make sense if that is some sort of teleport thing.

 

I could be wrong tho, but i guess that helipad is a teleport station somehow. maybe even thats why i saw some trader POIs having a T flag on them and some others dont and just had a white flag.

 

again.... just my thoughts from what i saw.... i could be wrong. lol

[Gronal]

16 minutes ago, Mumpfy said:

well.... he first called the helipad a "teleport" and thats when prime made that face that to me realy translated to "damn he @%$#ed up" then he corrected himself and called an helipad but again he said that it had some feature involving alpha 22 and they werent going to talk about that quite yet.

 

Also i noticed the helipad has a nice little "station" near it which would make sense if that is some sort of teleport thing.

 

I could be wrong tho, but i guess that helipad is a teleport station somehow. maybe even thats why i saw some trader POIs having a T flag on them and some others dont and just had a white flag.

 

again.... just my thoughts from what i saw.... i could be wrong. lol

That uh... makes a frightening amount of sense. Fast travel between traders? Costly, at least in some regard, I'd hope.

[Mumpfy]

well as i said.... its just my little conspiracy theory for now. maybe some pimp wants to confirm or deny that. we'll see.

 

Also i had the advantage that i didnt watched that live, i saw the video this morning, so i checked that a couple of times after i noticed it.

 

I also think... and i may be pushing my imagination here... that prime intentionally avoided that radio station near the helipad. my though is that maybe if you aim at it you could read something like when you aim to a storage thing or bench.

 

idk.

 

Edited April 14, 2023 by Mumpfy (see edit history)

[Mumpfy]

I mean.... worst case scenario... if im wrong at least we had something interesting to conspire about. if im right then we have some sort of fast travel i guess. it a win either way, at least for me. lol

what would be REALLY funny is that im correct but they actually talked about it on the stream later on. LOL, now that i think about it i should have watched the entire thing.

[khzmusik]

Two questions.

1. Does the "learn by looting" mechanic also affect food recipes? I didn't see this mentioned in the first post or in the stream.
2. Are we getting a dedicated forum topic for these dev streams? It kind of sucks having to dig through all the posts here, and/or wade through Twitter, to get details about when they start and on whose stream.

Also, I like what I saw so far. The extra art assets look great and were sorely needed, and the ability to attack through doors is a huge win. EDIT: Also the ability to pin recipes looks a lot better than I thought it was going to be.

 

I still might have reservations about the "learn by looting" system - but then I realized that it could be turned into a "learn by doing" system by modders, with a lot less effort than what they had to do previously. So I think on balance it's a good thing no matter what crafting progression system you like.

Edited April 14, 2023 by khzmusik (see edit history)

[Mumpfy]

also... and way more important than my teleport theory... I liked the background and the windows with the names below, looks nice, its the first time i see that on the streams (tho i must confess i dont watch them all) but the windows are not aligned properly and that kind of triggers me. i think thats the reason i was paying quite some attention to the video to be honest  😅

Edited April 14, 2023 by Mumpfy (see edit history)

[Ayrton]

I really waited a lot to see Alpha 21, and I am really disappointed, after more than 4,000 hours of offline play and 2100 hours on Steam, can I say that I expected more from this Alpha 21 more than 15 months to just add aesthetic parts? (we appreciate it very much) and to add a water collection system that nobody asked for?
Each Alpha was exciting when the release date arrived, what happened to the bandits? they are late from alpha 15! 6 alpha and several years have passed and we still don't have it, I don't know if the community is enthusiastic, but I'm not, I expected much more, apart from the double doors, the fire and missions we don't have anything new

Prime's face on the streamer represents me!

 

--------------------------------------------------------

 

Realmente espere mucho por ver el Alfa 21, y realmente estoy muy decepcionado, luego de mas 4.000 horas de juego offline y 2100 hs en Steam puedo decir que esperaba mas de esta Alfa 21 mas de 15 meses para solo agregar parte estéticas? (lo agradecemos mucho) y para agregar un sistema de recolección agua que nadie pidió? 
cada Alfa era emocionante cuando llegaba la fecha de salida que paso de los bandidos? vienen atrasados desde el alfa 15! ya pasaron 6 alfa y varios años y aun no lo tenemos, no se si la comunidad esta entusiasmada, pero yo no lo estoy, esperaba mucho mas, aparte de la puertas doble, el fuego y misiones no tenemos nada novedoso

La cara de Prime en el streamer me representa!