Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Zombiepoptard]

We need a three animated hit combo primary attack to make melee combat acceptable. It's below average as of right now. Your hits don't flow into each other and it makes combat fill unnaturally interrupted. I know exactly what my friend is talking about when he said the combats bad and it's the main reason why he won't play the game. I hope that is on some type of road map. If not I'd highly would consider it. I know this isn't a combat game and to temper expectations for an ambitious game that tries to tackle so much but I know this game could do better with an effort to improve how the core combat works.

[BFT2020]

I know I am strange, but I am eagerly waiting the first time I attempt to throw a grenade through the hole in the door only to have it bounce back at me.  I also know it will be when I am getting swarmed by zombies and desperately trying to get out of that situation  🙂

[Cr0wst0rm]

15 hours ago, faatal said:

1 I have done AI, anim controller and weapon work for them, and have them spawning as wandering bandits, but there is a lot more work to be done.

2 General bugs.

3 Fixing bugs does not make for cool screenshots.

Glad to see some work done there, are you planning to make them behave just like any player would do? (Basebuilding, driving vehicles, etc?) I think that is what most of the players expect, it would be kind of stress feeling you get in rust, only difference that you can stop anytime you can, unlike online...

[jorbascrumps]

1 hour ago, Cr0wst0rm said:

Glad to see some work done there, are you planning to make them behave just like any player would do? (Basebuilding, driving vehicles, etc?) I think that is what most of the players expect, it would be kind of stress feeling you get in rust, only difference that you can stop anytime you can, unlike online...

 

I wouldn't expect any of that. From what we've heard the goal is basically "zombies with guns". No shade intended for the devs, any implementation will be welcomed with open arms.

[Roland]

They're pretty stealthy. Always seem to sucker punch me when I'm chopping trees...

[bdubyah]

2 minutes ago, Roland said:

They're pretty stealthy. Always seem to sucker punch me when I'm chopping trees...

Uh oh. Gonna be the whole ninja dog/wolf thing all over again...

[faatal]

11 hours ago, Blake_ said:

Does that mean that they are confirmed for a21 as basic "wandering" ones for now? Please do tell. I gather it's a tricky question as their full surrounding behaviour isn't yet finished, but can we get a yes? lol.

Nothing with bandits is confirmed. They need to reach a certain functionality and quality level before initial release and we are short on time for A21.

[Roland]

5 minutes ago, bdubyah said:

Uh oh. Gonna be the whole ninja dog/wolf thing all over again...

 

4 minutes ago, faatal said:

Nothing with bandits is confirmed. They need to reach a certain functionality and quality level before initial release and we are short on time for A21.

 

Case in point.

[Doomofman]

48 minutes ago, faatal said:

Nothing with bandits is confirmed. They need to reach a certain functionality and quality level before initial release and we are short on time for A21.

Why short on time for A21? What's the reasoning (if you can say) for not waiting to release A21 until bandits are ready?

[bdubyah]

6 minutes ago, Doomofman said:

Why short on time for A21? What's the reasoning (if you can say) for not waiting to release A21 until bandits are ready?

I agree. What's a few more months at this point. Get them in now and expand on them in the next alpha. We're already, what, a month past when the dev streams were last year for A20? I honestly have been assuming A21 wouldn't be out this year with no dates for streams even mentioned yet. I figured maybe late Jan/ early Feb at this point.

[jorbascrumps]

33 minutes ago, Doomofman said:

Why short on time for A21? What's the reasoning (if you can say) for not waiting to release A21 until bandits are ready?

 

My guess is so they can have a big update to advertise for the Steam holiday sale.

[zztong]

1 hour ago, bdubyah said:

Gonna be disappointing if they slip again. Would've thought getting them in now would be a good idea as it'd give a whole alpha for feedback on the basics. Guess there's always next year. Lol.

 

I have no inside information. An interesting compromise might be if they could be enabled via XML (off by default) and only were in random spawns, not in POIs. Or, maybe POIs with placed Bandits in them, treat them as a standing zombie sleeper, instead.

 

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

 

I agree. I would rate the importance of having bandits in A21 above releasing before christmas.

 

 

I can see how that might be true. Of course TFP should go with whatever schedule is best for them.

 

For me, an EXP release between Thanksgiving and the Christmas holiday (and vacation) is much, much more convenient for converting a large pile of POIs from one major version to another. Once you get out into January work and classes ramp back up and my schedule gets tight. Otherwise, it might be May before I can free up a bunch of time.

Edited October 18, 2022 by zztong (see edit history)

[faatal]

6 hours ago, Laz Man said:

Okay, I will take a stab.  There was a recent NRE that would occur when using one of the ingame dev tools within the prefab editor.

I suspect it was caused by a recent commit due to the nature of the NRE mentioned in the unity error log.

I wrote up a ticket and passed it along to our QA lead asap as it was slowing down several teammates work.

Shawn comes to the rescue the very next day and fixes the bug almost immediately.  Rejoice!!!!

It truly was edge of your seat stuff. The bugs, the raid, the splatter, the cleanup. High fives all around.

 

As I was saying.......

[bdubyah]

3 minutes ago, faatal said:

It truly was edge of your seat stuff. The bugs, the raid, the splatter, the cleanup. High fives all around.

 

As I was saying.......

Always so humble...

 

[faatal]

1 hour ago, Doomofman said:

Why short on time for A21? What's the reasoning (if you can say) for not waiting to release A21 until bandits are ready?

There are other reasons to want a release. Many people, myself included, have worked on other features. They want their work out there too and we also want feedback on those changes. Waiting on features often leads to a feedback loop of, while other devs waited, they did stuff, so you now need to wait for that to be done, so others do stuff and you wait. Where does it end??? I'd rather make dates and get new things out on some regular basis. If not done, then feature skips to next release.

[Riamus]

20 hours ago, faatal said:

3 Fixing bugs does not make for cool screenshots.

Depends on the bug. 😁

12 hours ago, Quillbeatssword said:

But if you're moving quietly and happen to get surprised and have to shoot it could get really bad. Really quick. With every zombie on the street now coming while you're corned inside of a house. 

They do this already to some extent.  I'm always having a dozen zombies coming inside after I start a quest.  Bad enough when it is zombies, but when the bears start coming up multiple floors to visit, it is rather strange. Lol.

[Howlune]

In regards to the new engineer(s) brought on board earlier this year to possibly improve netcode, I would love any insider knowledge there might be or to know if any updates exist on this subject since this post was made:

I realize changes to such things would likely be reserved to that of a full number update rather than a decimal one, so is there any hope in A21 carrying a treat for us who enjoy larger servers? The landscape is dire right now and much of the servers got killed off from 20.4.

[Blake_]

5 hours ago, faatal said:

There are other reasons to want a release. Many people, myself included, have worked on other features. They want their work out there too and we also want feedback on those changes. Waiting on features often leads to a feedback loop of, while other devs waited, they did stuff, so you now need to wait for that to be done, so others do stuff and you wait. Where does it end??? I'd rather make dates and get new things out on some regular basis. If not done, then feature skips to next release.

Bandits delayed isn't a bad thing, there are lots of things to be done before they are ready. POI, AI, animations (big time spender and the brother of AI when it comes to delays). My wish is for them to have different unrepeating faces, but I guess not, by the looks of the twitter pics.

 

 

Btw. Can you show us something about water animations and stuff like that? 

[faatal]

3 hours ago, Howlune said:

In regards to the new engineer(s) brought on board earlier this year to possibly improve netcode, I would love any insider knowledge there might be or to know if any updates exist on this subject since this post was made:

I realize changes to such things would likely be reserved to that of a full number update rather than a decimal one, so is there any hope in A21 carrying a treat for us who enjoy larger servers? The landscape is dire right now and much of the servers got killed off from 20.4.

Those changes have been done for months. Our test servers are running fine with the normal number of players we test with. The changes mainly reduced the amount and frequency of network data sent and improved entity movement interpolation. As to how that would effect high player count servers, it might be better or the bottlenecks could be elsewhere.

[Howlune]

3 hours ago, faatal said:

Those changes have been done for months. Our test servers are running fine with the normal number of players we test with. The changes mainly reduced the amount and frequency of network data sent and improved entity movement interpolation. As to how that would effect high player count servers, it might be better or the bottlenecks could be elsewhere.

Huh. I wouldn't suppose theres a way to see a full list of under the hood changes done on certain patches for the modding community to look more into at least? For the past year its felt like a constant investigation with only a few clues found so far.

For example, before A19.3 we could have 50 players on one server. Before A20.4, we could have 40 players on a server without major issue, now it can barely support 30. I would like to better find what happened to cause those things... I know this is not priority in the game's development, but theres many of us that would love to try our own hand through mods.

 

EDIT: After a recent conversation I realize theres many things that may not be mentioned in patch notes at all that could have been changed over the course of several patches... like the amount of ray casts in the game at any one moment and how much information clients share with each other constantly regardless of distance between each other in the game. Maybe its just not possible on a modders level.

Edited October 19, 2022 by Howlune
Added more info after talking to knowledgeable people. (see edit history)

[Cr0wst0rm]

I mean what is currently the main struggle, if the bandits just need to behave like shooting zombies? Just override functionality of zombies in base class and you are set right? Is that the current goal now?

[Laz Man]

8 hours ago, Howlune said:

Huh. I wouldn't suppose theres a way to see a full list of under the hood changes done on certain patches for the modding community to look more into at least? For the past year its felt like a constant investigation with only a few clues found so far.

For example, before A19.3 we could have 50 players on one server. Before A20.4, we could have 40 players on a server without major issue, now it can barely support 30. I would like to better find what happened to cause those things... I know this is not priority in the game's development, but theres many of us that would love to try our own hand through mods.

 

EDIT: After a recent conversation I realize theres many things that may not be mentioned in patch notes at all that could have been changed over the course of several patches... like the amount of ray casts in the game at any one moment and how much information clients share with each other constantly regardless of distance between each other in the game. Maybe its just not possible on a modders level.

 

I'm pretty sure Faatal is referring to A21 and not A20.  You will have to wait until experimental to try it out.

[mstdv inc]

11 hours ago, Blake_ said:

I'm rooting for Christmas experimental, no bandits, yes new perk rework (obviously) and the rest of confirmed features from the OP. Maybe some RWG surprises. No more. That's a Kurzweil level prediction right there.

Maybe them shouldn't repeat the mistake of last year and try to release a new alpha by some date?You won't stop loving this game if we don't see exp this year, will you?And I won't stop.I'd rather just wait.Let it come out when it's done.

Edited October 19, 2022 by mstdv inc (see edit history)

[faatal]

19 minutes ago, mstdv inc said:

Maybe them shouldn't repeat the mistake of last year and try to release a new alpha by some date?You won't stop loving this game if we don't see exp this year, will you?And I won't stop.I'd rather just wait.Let it come out when it's done.

Releasing a build by a date can be done many ways. We are not doing a toss it out at some date regardless of how it works. We are doing what features can be done by a date (month/season, not an exact date) and then polish and bug fix THOSE features. If those features are not ready, then the date will slip until they are.

[Zoe Lycan]

What I honestly think is that TFP should have moved this project into a new modern engine. As I play the game, it is still quite shocking to me that some aspects of the game are still so unpolished or feel clunky. This is even more noticeable on multiplayer, looking at another player model interact with the world. NO animations and movement is clunky. This project has been in Alpha for way too long. It's about time they "as developers" finalize this project. I've been calling it a project and not a game because their intention of making so many mayor changes proves they were not happy with what they previously did. Which is a normal thing on a 3-5 years Alpha, but this project will soon reach a 2 decade long stage in ALPHA. I only know of some MOVIE stop-motion claymation that have similar time in the making, but though out they mostly have a clear goal and passion. Here it sure feels like they are presenting this project and want us to play it, the exact way they envision the game.
And I'll be a bit salty here, specially with a project that started as a Minecraft Clone. Don't get me wrong I enjoy 7dtd, since I like survival games and zombies are always a nice theme, but truth be told, that's how it started, but was able to offer something new. Sadly Now we don't see that same "new" since it has been so long in Alpha and still feels incomplete, both from players point of view and clearly from game devs, if they still have the need to re-work the entire project.