Version 1.0 (Alpha 22) Dev Diary

[Laran Mithras]

I had grabbed a mod that placed more cars, but it didn't effect the city. My thought had been, APOCALYPSE: everyone panics and gets in a car to jam the roads to go (somewhere) to "safety." As happens whenever something big hits America, suddenly the roads are packed.

 

I feel as if the city tiles for roads are very much empty in the way of cars. And almost as many police cars as others when looking at the aggregate.

The mod ended up solving the problem outside of town/city road tiles, but the cities still feel strangely empty.

[Laz Man]

Maybe we can create some more road/tile parts similar to what we do in intersections.  There is a careful balance we have to maintain in performance and spacing when it comes to POIs.  Especially in the downtown areas.

[doughphunghus]

19 hours ago, HB_H4wk said:

Bigger Gore Piles please and some sort of bloodstains for poi creators.

Yes please! Bloodstain blocks (flat on one side like road decals or letters) or something would be a nice way to set a tone for some areas.

[Adam the Waster]

45 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

Maybe we can create some more road/tile parts similar to what we do in intersections.  There is a careful balance we have to maintain in performance and spacing when it comes to POIs.  Especially in the downtown areas.

A few wouldn't hurt but I just thought they are just showing the main thing they are talking about.  

[Jost Amman]

2 hours ago, doughphunghus said:

Yes please! Bloodstain blocks (flat on one side like road decals or letters) or something would be a nice way to set a tone for some areas.

And then a way to make the block clear/clean, so we can play 7D2D + Viscera Cleanup Detail...  

[Arez]

14 hours ago, faatal said:

Each zombie adds rendering, animation, collision and character controller overhead. You can turn off AI and watch the FPS drop as you spawn more and more.

I can certainly attest to that. I had the AI off and spawned a ridiculous amount of zombies once, and with a 4090 and a 13900k, I was getting 9 FPS. 

[HB_H4wk]

6 hours ago, Laz Man said:

Maybe we can create some more road/tile parts similar to what we do in intersections.  There is a careful balance we have to maintain in performance and spacing when it comes to POIs.  Especially in the downtown areas.

Is the Game Engine part of the issue of "Performance"?

[Kosmic Kerman]

2 hours ago, HB_H4wk said:

Is the Game Engine part of the issue of "Performance"?

 

Game engines are always part of the issue because they are, you know, the game engine.  I could be wrong here but presumably the number one performance issue is that the game world is built on voxels/blocks. But without those blocks it wouldn't be 7DTD. That's why comparisons to non-voxel games are pointless. Games that are built on static backgrounds don't have the overhead created by voxels/blocks and their AI controllers don't have to account for players' ability to build or destroy blocks. And because the world is built from blocks there is only so much optimization that can be done.

 

[Laz Man]

2 hours ago, HB_H4wk said:

Is the Game Engine part of the issue of "Performance"?

 

Imagine if all the roads were filled with vehicle models.  That is more polys for the game to render when the player comes upon it.  Downtown is already the heaviest district verts / tris wise.

 

We also intentionally design spaces for players to drive their vehicles through in tiles and POIs.

[vom]

Acquire and wear the complete set for a bonus

 

This is bad game mechanics - you shouldn't be penalized because you don't like to wear a straw hat or blue coveralls.

[Adam the Waster]

19 hours ago, Viset4 said:

I would like to see new block shapes or better textures. Is there any plan to add the function of inserting your own textures?

What more shapes you want lol

 

 

I hope we get the decor parts like wooden log walls, metal panels etc

[beerfly]

2 hours ago, Laz Man said:

 

Imagine if all the roads were filled with vehicle models.  That is more polys for the game to render when the player comes upon it.  Downtown is already the heaviest district verts / tris wise.

 

We also intentionally design spaces for players to drive their vehicles through in tiles and POIs.

About cars on the roads, we had some issues while driving around to have them spawned just in front of us, not only them but different assets also.

 

Is the view distance gonna be reworked in A22 ?

[Makaroni95]

1 hour ago, Adam the Waster said:

What more shapes you want lol

 

 

I hope we get the decor parts like wooden log walls, metal panels etc

And those new Doors to build

[faatal]

4 hours ago, vom said:

Acquire and wear the complete set for a bonus

 

This is bad game mechanics - you shouldn't be penalized because you don't like to wear a straw hat or blue coveralls.

That is why many of the games that have clothing/armor with bonuses also have cosmetic slots to allow them to look different for the players that care about cosmetics.

 

Cosmetics is something we may do after a22. At this point most devs have their plates full for a22 and we are not doing additional features unless critical.

[faatal]

More RWG changes coming to A22:

 

Improved player spawn locations.

Added rwgmixer <prefab_spawn_adjust> biomeTags which limits to one or more biomes (requires partial_name).
Added trader types are each in their own biome (with a min of 2).

Improved town planning quality.
Adjusted township counts and sizes.
Added biome township count logging and trader logging.
Balanced lakes, rivers, craters, canyons, township and wilderness settings.
 

Added POI spawning limits based on surrounding density in world.
Improved POI spawning fallback to use a smaller size but ignore name restriction.

Added preview coloring for districts (3 brightness levels each) and traders.
Improved preview POI descriptions and added score.

 

This is the current default 8k map:

[faatal]

8 minutes ago, FramFramson said:

When you said added trader types for a second I thought you meant we'd finally get some new traders, till I re-read what you said.

(but maybe 1-2 more traders in future... mayyyybeeee????)

Well, if I added a colon as it would appear in our change log, it would be more clear:

Added: Trader types are each in their own biome (with a min of 2).

 

I don't think there will be more traders, but could happen in a DLC or sequel in a galaxy far far away.

[Vaeliorin]

11 minutes ago, faatal said:

Added trader types are each in their own biome (with a min of 2).

Does this mean that traders are restricted to certain biomes?  I usually make maps without Wasteland (I never go there, so there's no point in it being on the map) and I'll likely make maps without Burnt Forest as well.  Would this mean I would lose access to certain traders, or am I misunderstanding what you're saying?

[faatal]

2 minutes ago, Vaeliorin said:

Does this mean that traders are restricted to certain biomes?  I usually make maps without Wasteland (I never go there, so there's no point in it being on the map) and I'll likely make maps without Burnt Forest as well.  Would this mean I would lose access to certain traders, or am I misunderstanding what you're saying?

Yes. Future biome progression/survival/story will probably tie into specific traders, but that is all subject to change.

 

You can change it by modding rwgmixer.xml:

 <prefab_spawn_adjust partial_name="trader_rekt" biomeTags="forest" bias="20" min_count="2"/>

[Vaeliorin]

Well, if there's a reason to go there I don't mind having those biomes.  But I just don't find them particular compelling at the moment, so I never go there, and hence don't use them because they would just end up as wasted space on the map.

 

Thanks for the answer!

[Laz Man]

2 hours ago, beerfly said:

About cars on the roads, we had some issues while driving around to have them spawned just in front of us, not only them but different assets also.

 

Is the view distance gonna be reworked in A22 ?

 

Have you submitted a bug report?  If not, I encourage you to do so along with your game settings so QA can see if it's happening in A22.

[bdubyah]

54 minutes ago, faatal said:

Added rwgmixer <prefab_spawn_adjust> biomeTags which limits to one or more biomes (requires partial_name).

This is great news.

 

I'm not sure if it's your part of RWG or not, but do you know if there have been any new stamps added for things like rivers and stuff? What we have now is super limited and repetitive. Judging by your pic it seems to still be the same squiggly line for rivers, unfortunately. Any chance of them becoming procedural instead of using stamps?

[MichaelL.]

8 hours ago, faatal said:

Yes. Future biome progression/survival/story will probably tie into specific traders, but that is all subject to change.

 

You can change it by modding rwgmixer.xml:

 <prefab_spawn_adjust partial_name="trader_rekt" biomeTags="forest" bias="20" min_count="2"/>

 

Does this mean we will be able to do this with regular custom POI's as well?   (please say yes, please say yes.....)

[Adam the Waster]

11 hours ago, faatal said:

More RWG changes coming to A22:

 

Improved player spawn locations.

Added rwgmixer <prefab_spawn_adjust> biomeTags which limits to one or more biomes (requires partial_name).
Added trader types are each in their own biome (with a min of 2).

Improved town planning quality.
Adjusted township counts and sizes.
Added biome township count logging and trader logging.
Balanced lakes, rivers, craters, canyons, township and wilderness settings.
 

Added POI spawning limits based on surrounding density in world.
Improved POI spawning fallback to use a smaller size but ignore name restriction.

Added preview coloring for districts (3 brightness levels each) and traders.
Improved preview POI descriptions and added score.

 

This is the current default 8k map:

Looks really cool. I hope rivers will soon be able to connect and maybe bridges

[LordMiG]

Hi @faatal! Is there any chance that we'll have the option to generate larger RWG maps than 10K in A22? Maybe for singleplayer only? Back when the KingGen map generator was available, I always enjoyed playing on 16K maps, and they ran smoothly on my PC with 32 gigs of RAM. Could we possibly see this feature implemented? Pretty please! 🙃

 

The engine should be able to handle 16K maps. I play my singleplayer games without any traders, no loot respawn and 25% loot therefore loot gets really scarce after day 80. It would be nice to have a bigger map with more T5 buildings to loot. 😅

Edited April 17 by LordMiG (see edit history)

[Doomofman]

https://x.com/7DaystoDie/status/1780630922431275290

 

I spy a zombie bear model in the back 

 

Edited April 17 by Doomofman (see edit history)