Version 1.0 (Alpha 22) Dev Diary

[FramFramson]

8 hours ago, Adam the Waster said:

All I'm saying is. If I can't look like this then don't @ me

 

[Old Crow]

5 hours ago, Syphon583 said:

Sign me up!

 

Welcome to the fold!

[zztong]

21 hours ago, stallionsden said:

Hope not stealth needs a anti as others have already. I play stealth  because it is my style but without the trigger and attack stealth is too OP.

 

Perhaps, though the triggers seem too absolute. At least when it is stealth vs a sleeper there are factors that can play into if detection happens: your perks, your armor, the mods on the armor, the lighting, the trash on the floor, and proximity. With a trigger you're 100% detected.

 

Now we can do things to avoid some triggers. Bypassing a door trigger is easy if you're willing to go through a wall, but then you may not be able to clear a POI until you go back and open the door. The trigger volumes are the ones I find sometimes find disappointing.

 

I like the stealth game, but I do admit sometimes it is too easy. So...

 

23 hours ago, jjh5874 said:

Do the poi trigger improvements take in to account stealth stats? like lower chances of zombies triggering in a POI if you have a certain level of a certain perk?

 

• I could see configurable zombie volumes where we can adjust stealth.
• I also admit there are sleeper settings that I've never looked at that have something to do with how a sleeper perceives, I think.
• I could see configurable light settings that adjusted the light modifier for stealth.
• I could see adding a trip wire block that either made tin cans bang together or set off a grenade.
• I could see some zombies "screaming" when they died such that other zombies were awaken.

 

I guess my point here is things like a trigger volume can be overused, and while stealth can be OP it is at least a mini-game that can be adjusted.

 

EDIT: The trigger volumes and door triggers aren't immune to stealth, of course. If you plan an escape path, you can trigger, flee, hide, return and stealth kill the zombies. There's already a kind of penalty for stealth. You clear slower. On the other hand, you conserve ammunition.

Edited April 5 by zztong (see edit history)

[Adam the Waster]

12 hours ago, FidgetySlim said:

Will there be combat and movement improvements? 
Better camera control. I play on xbox and it feels very awkward moving the camera. 

When you stop walking your person kind of slides. They do not immediately stop.

Jumping is meh. It feels like gravity is high and you can hardly jump. Mantling would be neat. 

I would love a world setting to make zombies not get stronger and stronger where they just tank headshots. Keep it more simplified zombie survival. Maybe the special zombies are the only strong ones. 

I think some improvements too melee would be nice it's been the same sense alpha 8, and only with 17 they added the power attack. Some new animations from swinging the weapon side to side would be great. It doesn't have to be dying light levels but more like skyrim or fallout 3. Still simple but slightly better animations 

Attack, heavy, block. 

 

And in terms of zombies. I think they talked about this but. A headshot only setting would be really cool. Something the game Really needs is zombie variation and modifiers.  Maybe increase spawns, increase wild zombies difficulty and types like the wasteland all biomes. 

 

Have a special were he only dies when you chop all his limbs like a necromorph. Have a healing zombie, have a bomb/gas Zombie.  Ones that climb. With the new animations coming in for animals.  Seeing it for zombies would be great and even better if they added a climbing animations.  Doesn't have to be special.  Just Make it so he looks like he's climbing a ladder.  

 

[faatal]

On 4/3/2024 at 4:14 AM, Arez said:

@faatal

For those who like modding (and I'm personally talking about adding custom zombies, which I have just learned how to do) how much change is going to be needed to make A21 zombie mods work in A22?

 

Also, how can I make the bloody wounds on my zombies look wet and glistening like you guys do?

I don't think modding zombies will be all that different, but it is hard to remember a years worth of changes.

 

Textures? Artists make those.

[faatal]

On 4/3/2024 at 10:49 AM, Fifthgame2022 said:

Hi, just a question for the first bit of this answer. You say the limit would be 4 players like the current telltale version but will there be dedicated servers because one of the current issues with playing online with telltale version is if the host logs out, everyone playing also gets removed, I understand it may take longer for cross-play etc to be available but will that issue be resolved?

Console play is peer to peer without cross-play. Once cross-play is released then you could log on to a dedicated server running on a PC/Linux OS. I am not working on any of that, but I believe that is how it will be.

[SylenThunder]

7 hours ago, faatal said:

  

On 4/3/2024 at 11:49 AM, Fifthgame2022 said:

Hi, just a question for the first bit of this answer. You say the limit would be 4 players like the current telltale version but will there be dedicated servers because one of the current issues with playing online with telltale version is if the host logs out, everyone playing also gets removed, I understand it may take longer for cross-play etc to be available but will that issue be resolved?

 

Console play is peer to peer without cross-play. Once cross-play is released then you could log on to a dedicated server running on a PC/Linux OS. I am not working on any of that, but I believe that is how it will be.

 

From what I have been able to gather, the consoles will be peer-to-peer 4-player caps when it releases on the console. At a later date cross-play will be enabled, and the player cap on consoles will be increased to 8. The consoles will also be able to join any PC-hosted dedicated server. 

 

I have also heard that the available RWG map sizes on the consoles may be smaller than the PC. Which makes a lot of sense when you consider the memory limitations the consoles have.

[rateds2k]

15 hours ago, zztong said:

 

P

• I could see some zombies "screaming" when they died such that other zombies were awaken.

 

This would be a great idea. Make those decaps more valuable.

[Adam the Waster]

New heads for females! 

 

 

@SnowDog1942

[Callum123456789]

34 minutes ago, Adam the Waster said:

New heads for females! 

 

 

@SnowDog1942

After so long, it feels strange to see our player models actually look human like lmao the UMA play doughey models have been around since basically forever I kinds got used to them but alas I'm very happy that we're getting these great new high res ones at last.

[khzmusik]

On 4/3/2024 at 4:14 AM, Arez said:

@faatal

For those who like modding (and I'm personally talking about adding custom zombies, which I have just learned how to do) how much change is going to be needed to make A21 zombie mods work in A22?

 

Also, how can I make the bloody wounds on my zombies look wet and glistening like you guys do?

 

In general, it's up to modders to figure this stuff out. Hopefully when 7D2D goes gold, TFP will put together some kind of "official HOWTO" but there's nothing official yet.

 

Also, the "shininess" of a texture is determined by either the specular or metallic values in the shader. They are separate shader workflows in Unity. I'm not sure which one TFP uses, but you're not required to use the same shader as the game.

 

For these questions, it's better to ask other modders, not the game devs. You can ask in "Discussions and Requests" here on the forums, or join Guppy's Discord server and ask there.

[Laran Mithras]

Great work on making our characters finally look human and real.

 

Over on Reddit, they're triggered by the "fact" that all development has completely stopped on the game to push these new art features.

What a horrible, toxic environment over there. Gawd...

 

Hey, FUNPIMPS: Thank you. Nice art work. My wife might finally play again.

 

[Doomofman]

I'll kinda miss the jank of the current models

[cigarettelegs]

Quote

• Alpha 22 will be released for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S along with Windows/Mac/Linux.
• It will be the same game on PC and console, with the same features & content.

You didn't mention if cross play would be available at launch.  I plan to run a server on a dedicated machine but if my family cant join from console, there will be no point.

[Fifthgame2022]

Thank you @faatal and @sylenthunder for your replies, I guess online play won't be much good just yet on consoles but gives me time to play it single player and adjust to all the changes since the telltale version. I am happy to wait a little longer for the cross-play if it means it will work better

[cigarettelegs]

8 hours ago, SylenThunder said:

 

From what I have been able to gather, the consoles will be peer-to-peer 4-player caps when it releases on the console. At a later date cross-play will be enabled, and the player cap on consoles will be increased to 8. The consoles will also be able to join any PC-hosted dedicated server. 

 

I have also heard that the available RWG map sizes on the consoles may be smaller than the PC. Which makes a lot of sense when you consider the memory limitations the consoles have.

Where did you hear this information? I haven't seen anything about whether or not cross play being available at launch.

[Old Crow]

5 minutes ago, cigarettelegs said:

Where did you hear this information? I haven't seen anything about whether or not cross play being available at launch.

 

It's been mentioned by the team on Twitter and in these forums. I think they also said something about it during the A21 dev streams last year, too.

 

There's also the fact that ONE OF THE DEVS made a post about it on this very page.

4 hours ago, rateds2k said:

This would be a great idea. Make those decaps more valuable.

 

I'm surprised they don't already. Zombie dogs sound like freaking TIE Fighters when they die.

Edited April 5 by Old Crow (see edit history)

[faatal]

3 hours ago, Laran Mithras said:

Great work on making our characters finally look human and real.

 

Over on Reddit, they're triggered by the "fact" that all development has completely stopped on the game to push these new art features.

What a horrible, toxic environment over there. Gawd...

 

Hey, FUNPIMPS: Thank you. Nice art work. My wife might finally play again.

 

LOL

 

Yes, because the dozen programmers working on 7dtd are all needed to help artists get new content into the game. Some people...

[FramFramson]

It was of a laugh, but I wouldn't take it for anything since it's maybe half a dozen cranks posting that silliness at most.

 

And if you can't find half a dozen entitled loonies in any given game community, boy I got some real estate to sell ya. 😂

[faatal]

10 hours ago, SylenThunder said:

From what I have been able to gather, the consoles will be peer-to-peer 4-player caps when it releases on the console. At a later date cross-play will be enabled, and the player cap on consoles will be increased to 8. The consoles will also be able to join any PC-hosted dedicated server. 

 

I have also heard that the available RWG map sizes on the consoles may be smaller than the PC. Which makes a lot of sense when you consider the memory limitations the consoles have.

Yes, except the increase in players is not guaranteed. More players uses more memory in some cases, so additional memory optimizations may need to be found for it to run reliably.

 

8k RWG maps is the current limit. Also due to memory limits.

[SylenThunder]

2 hours ago, cigarettelegs said:

Where did you hear this information? I haven't seen anything about whether or not cross play being available at launch.

Been paying attention to the details coming out of the PAX event, and have heard from a few people who got answers to questions while they were there.

 

6 minutes ago, faatal said:

8k RWG maps is the current limit. Also due to memory limits.

Yeah, I figured that would be the case. I had hopes the upper-tier PS5 and X could manage 10k, but wasn't going to hold my breath on it knowing that their RAM is shared with the GPU. 

[Fanatical_Meat]

1 hour ago, faatal said:

LOL

 

Yes, because the dozen programmers working on 7dtd are all needed to help artists get new content into the game. Some people...

Looks like I’m going to have to head to Reddit and repeat what I too frequently have to say.

”If you want a finished game, don’t buy a game clearly marked as early access”

 

Internet whiners drive me nuts.

 

I also hate the good bye posts:

I stopped playing the game because of X (when X=water jars it was super irritating)

I am always like “okay see you later”

 

Why crap on a game others are having fun with simply because you’ve played it enough and want to do something else. So selfish to do that.

[Old Crow]

3 hours ago, faatal said:

LOL

 

Yes, because the dozen programmers working on 7dtd are all needed to help artists get new content into the game. Some people...

 

Question - Why are there so few programmers compared to the number of artists?

[faatal]

2 hours ago, Old Crow said:

Question - Why are there so few programmers compared to the number of artists?

There are about the same of each type.

[Old Crow]

4 minutes ago, faatal said:

There are about the same of each type.

 

Ah okay. I've seen it implied (on Twitter - stupid me) that there were far fewer programmers and way more artists. Good to know that's not the case.