1.0 (A22) Dev Diary Overflow

[Lemmers]

3 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

You're mistaken. Trader-like NPCs are only active in the limited area (chunks) they're in, and they're "static" (they don't need to move around).

They don't have an AI, so they don't suck up resources because of pathfinding, and so on...

Yeah, town NPCs would have basic idle animations like a farming animation, workbench animation, etc. that they cycle through on a timer. Then give each faction one base in the world with unique faction quests and a reputation system and you have a barebone RPG game design. Any less after all this time waiting for bandits would be very disappointing IMO.

[Astronomical]

It would be cool to see the secret stash brought back in the form of a friendly npc that would randomly have a chance to show up for the day at a trader.

[Old Crow]

2 hours ago, Astronomical said:

It would be cool to see the secret stash brought back in the form of a friendly npc that would randomly have a chance to show up for the day at a trader.

 

It would also be cool if the rental vending machines worked better. I hate going 100+ days with nothing being bought.

[Matt115]

20 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

You're mistaken. Trader-like NPCs are only active in the limited area (chunks) they're in, and they're "static" (they don't need to move around).

They don't have an AI, so they don't suck up resources because of pathfinding, and so on...

Remember that near trader are POI too + zombie hordes. So if you have Base near trader ( which is pretty logical after change of water- you don't need to live near water anymore) - it will influence you

[Adam the Waster]

21 hours ago, Matt115 said:

i hope not for operators because... geez this became overused and... bored. it would be more sense to add national guard soldier

not realy - there is limit for NPC in 7DTD so - more friendly npc = less zombies

Just give me good nods, thats all I ask 

I want those alpha 16 nods

[Jost Amman]

5 hours ago, Matt115 said:

Remember that near trader are POI too + zombie hordes. So if you have Base near trader ( which is pretty logical after change of water- you don't need to live near water anymore) - it will influence you

It would have exactly the same impact traders have now.

[Zombiepoptard]

Is Roland here?

[Jost Amman]

2 hours ago, Adam the Waster said:

A winter set

I would like that too, but before that, why don't they FIX weather survival back to actually be ANY kind of threat? 

[Roland]

Side Quest! Side Quest! Side Quest!

[SylenThunder]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

Side Quest! Side Quest! Side Quest!

[FileMachete]

Just a couple thoughts on how to possibly control how high you jump, factoring in various max heights via Parkour.

1) Intuitive: hold down Space for as long as you want to be jumping Up; likely ok for single player games but likely not feasible for multiplayer due to network hiccups/delays.

2) Learnable but may cause initial confusion: tapping Space bar rapidly once for each meter you want to jump.

3) Or possibly just code for a single Space bar tap for an up to 2 meter jump and a double tap for the max, 3 meter jump.

    - thinking this might be simplest and couldn't cause issues for first timers until they're well into their first game?

 

That said, I agree it would be a very nice quality of life thing to be able to choose how high you jump.

I watch a couple YTers whos' series would be much shorter if they didn't max out Parkour  while I find myself often debating and choosing not to max it out due to then only being able to make max height jumps (and bashing my skull in most of the time).

... hmm, now that I'm thinking about it, wouldn't it be nice if not only could you choose the jump height, but to make maxing the perk out even more attractive, add to the perk that performing a 'short' jump would only cost 50% Stamina?

[doughphunghus]

Im not sure if ive missed this being talked about but:

Will any of the POis and look/feel (like placing blocks/different assets) of the "7 Days to Die Bloodmoons" that i have already wishlisted and is listed as "coming soon" "in 6 to 12 months" on Steam be in a22? 

[Outlaw_187]

15 hours ago, Roland said:

Side Quest! Side Quest! Side Quest!

Maybe the traders can have an escort mission.......we can deliver the old topless stripper zombie(maybe make her no longer a zombie) to the nearest Savage Country so we can put some darn clothes on her!

[GoldenFox]

21 hours ago, faatal said:

It could still happen someday, but it is not on a roadmap or anything.

@faatal speaking of things that may happen some day, please please please, consider adding a proper swamp biome for this game, or maybe your next game, it would be awesome!

[User]

A couple dumb questions: is there going to be a beta phase planned for the game? Or is it going to go straight to gold/full release after alpha? Purely being called beta or alpha doesn't matter to me, so I don't mind, but I've seen a lot of talk of features/ideas being put toward future projects after 7dt2, which sort of makes it sound like we're getting closer to some kind of "final" version or end goal. I'm not sure how I feel about DLC honestly, I generally give this game a lot of praise for being a 1 purchase game without any kind of gameplay dlcs, since I've seen some talk about dlc I just think I'd bring it up.

 

-There's a fair bit of qol stuff/balance changes that would be nice to implement that hasn't been yet, a couple on my wishlist is making looting big pois early more rewarding, as opposed to just giving a higher quality pipe weapon then a low tier house & making finding acid/wheels/water filters a bit less rng to find. There's also some more simply frustrating stuff, like zombies moving forward somehow after being bonked in the head and attacking me during said animation, or cupboards and appliances and safes becoming completely unsearchable after looting, meaning I can't put stuff back into a safe, or a cupboard if I loot all the items inside. As someone who isn't a builder, not having to make my own storage was pretty fun, and storing stuff into the house's storage made sense. (Not trying to be rude or anything here, sorry.)

 

I think the suggestion made above by chaton about a settings preview would be great for accessibility, probably not a priority, but might be a nice add post-release.

 

-Second dumb question: Is there any major changes planned for the skill tree? (a22 or beyond) I don't think its in a terrible state now, but sometimes it feels outdated, and like some skills are bloated with stat increases/perks, while some are kind of boring. Here's the pummel pete perk 1, as a sort of example:

 

+Clubs do 10% more damage

+Attacks do 40% more damage to stunned enemies

+Power attacks have a 60% chance to knock enemies down

+Stamina reduced by 8%

+Stamina cost reduced by 15% for Power Attacks

 

I much prefer perks like the animal tracker that provide a unique ability as opposed to perks like this. Perks with stat bonuses are good, parkour is a good example of a stat perk that I like, but some of them feel a bit too bloated or basic, and lack any kind of unique effects, which seem to be limited to the perk books.

 

I think unique perks would be more fun then purely stats, like maybe at lockpicking 2 you can pick locked wooden doors, and at max you can pick garage doors or something. It feels a lot more thematic and fun as opposed to only be able to pick police cars and locked safes and boxes, I don't know.

 

Just my thoughts, please don't take any of them seriously, not a game dev, but I would appreciate any insight from the devs on some of this stuff. Thank you! 😀
 

Edited March 17 by User (see edit history)

[Adam the Waster]

So my main question is. Sense blood moons is reusing content from the base game.  Does that mean all the new stuff in the trailer will be in Game.  I e

 

The wooden baton, pois, signs, scrap hammer. New lever action model. Etc. I might have missed more but it looked cool

[Riamus]

6 hours ago, Chaton Noir said:

Hello @faatal!

1. Can we see an improvement in TAA in the future? For example, the ability to select the smoothing quality. He's having trouble flickering at a distance right now. With the help of mods, this can be improved at the cost of some deterioration in the clarity of the appearance of ghosting. Why not give the opportunity to choose what is more important — the clarity of the picture and the absence of artifacts, or better smoothing, but at the cost of less clarity (you can fix it with sharpness) and the appearance of some ghosting?
2. It would also be good to see the name of the types of smoothing in the appropriate setting, and not just "high" or "medium".
3. How much could DirectStorage improve performance if implemented? I think it would be very useful in big cities and big buildings, and in general it would be more effective in 7 DTD than in other games.
4. Will hand lighting appear in A22 or ever again? It is not very pleasant to look at your hands, as well as weapons and tools in them, when, for example, you are underground, and the lighting of your hands does not differ from the lighting on the surface. There is a mod that corrects this situation. It has some problems, but it still looks much better. In addition, in the A22, you will see what you are wearing on your hands, and without normal lighting it may not look very good.
5. Will there ever be new first-person animations, or will they be updated only for the third person?
6. Will there ever be animations for eating and drinking?
7. Will transport-related animations appear? The 4x4 was shown with the doors open and closed. Or was it done just to demonstrate the model?
8. Can we ever see a first-person view in transport?
9. Will the dropped objects ever be displayed as their models, and not as bags?

10. How about in the updated interface, when configuring graphics, the player would see an image for each setting that clearly shows what a particular setting affects and how it affects it. This would be very useful when setting up graphics, especially for those who are not well versed in this.
11. Is it ever worth waiting for the return of Graphics Jobs?
12. Is it possible that Work Graphs will appear with DX 12 in the future?
13. FSR 2/DLSS is not in the game yet, but is FSR1 in the plans then? It works worse, but it would certainly be better than the current scaling, which would help people with very weak computers until FSR 2/3 appears, if it eventually will be at all.
14. Is it worth waiting for DLAA if DLSS appears in the game?
15. Why not add a wandering horde spawn near the air drop site? Or at least make sure that the zombies next to the cargo start walking towards it, so that the player cannot pick up the air drop so easily.
16. What are you working on now?

 

Not having seen work graphs in use and only reading up on them, I don't know that you would see any significant improvements.  They are for moving graphics related processing that is currently done by the CPU to the GPU, but in this game, my understanding is that most slowdowns are not graphics related.  Add in that there is an overhead to using work graphs and you could actually see a lose in performance in some cases with this game.  We are also near the end of development, so most of those changes you are asking about are unlikely at this point.

 

51 minutes ago, User said:

A couple dumb questions: is there going to be a beta phase planned for the game? Or is it going to go straight to gold/full release after alpha? Purely being called beta or alpha doesn't matter to me, so I don't mind, but I've seen a lot of talk of features/ideas being put toward future projects after 7dt2, which sort of makes it sound like we're getting closer to some kind of "final" version or end goal. I'm not sure how I feel about DLC honestly, I generally give this game a lot of praise for being a 1 purchase game without any kind of gameplay dlcs, since I've seen some talk about dlc I just think I'd bring it up.

 

-There's a fair bit of qol stuff/balance changes that would be nice to implement that hasn't been yet, a couple on my wishlist is making looting big pois early more rewarding, as opposed to just giving a higher quality pipe weapon then a low tier house & making finding acid/wheels/water filters a bit less rng to find. There's also some more simply frustrating stuff, like zombies moving forward somehow after being bonked in the head and attacking me during said animation, or cupboards and appliances and safes becoming completely unsearchable after looting, meaning I can't put stuff back into a safe, or a cupboard if I loot all the items inside. As someone who isn't a builder, not having to make my own storage was pretty fun, and storing stuff into the house's storage made sense. (Not trying to be rude or anything here, sorry.)

 

I think the suggestion made above by chaton about a settings preview would be great for accessibility, probably not a priority, but might be a nice add post-release.

 

-Second dumb question: Is there any major changes planned for the skill tree? (a22 or beyond) I don't think its in a terrible state now, but sometimes it feels outdated, and like some skills are bloated with stat increases/perks, while some are kind of boring. Here's the pummel pete perk 1, as a sort of example:

 

+Clubs do 10% more damage

+Attacks do 40% more damage to stunned enemies

+Power attacks have a 60% chance to knock enemies down

+Stamina reduced by 8%

+Stamina cost reduced by 15% for Power Attacks

 

I much prefer perks like the animal tracker that provide a unique ability as opposed to perks like this. Perks with stat bonuses are good, parkour is a good example of a stat perk that I like, but some of them feel a bit too bloated or basic, and lack any kind of unique effects, which seem to be limited to the perk books.

 

I think unique perks would be more fun then purely stats, like maybe at lockpicking 2 you can pick locked wooden doors, and at max you can pick garage doors or something. It feels a lot more thematic and fun as opposed to only be able to pick police cars and locked safes and boxes, I don't know.

 

Just my thoughts, please don't take any of them seriously, not a game dev, but I would appreciate any insight from the devs on some of this stuff. Thank you! 😀
 

From what had been said, it will be straight to gold and probably not more than a couple more alpha before that.  My guess is 2-3 years but that is just a guess and hasn't in any way been started by devs.

 

Most QOL they plan to do is likely to be coming in these last couple of alphas.  Considering they just made containers disappear when emptied, it is unlikely they will change that.  It is nice for some containers like that piles but I agree that it isn't great for furniture type containers.

 

I would not expect to see any changes to the skill tree that aren't required due to some other change.  For example, changes to clothing and armor could possibly require a change to the armor trees.  And then again, it may not.  But other changes aren't likely.  Unless or until they add legendary weapons, I wouldn't expect to see changes to the weapon trees before gold.

1 hour ago, FramFramson said:

Well part of that problem is the fact that how much meat is "one meat" is is pretty ambiguous.

This is very true.  However, they do have a point that if you can only make a could means it of a deer, it is strange.  But I personally don't care about realism in terms of something like that.  I prefer not to have an overabundance of meat but still be able to cook food.

[User]

6 minutes ago, Riamus said:

 

Not having seen work graphs in use and only reading up on them, I don't know that you would see any significant improvements.  They are for moving graphics related processing that is currently done by the CPU to the GPU, but in this game, my understanding is that most slowdowns are not graphics related.  Add in that there is an overhead to using work graphs and you could actually see a lose in performance in some cases with this game.  We are also near the end of development, so most of those changes you are asking about are unlikely at this point.

 

From what had been said, it will be straight to gold and probably not more than a couple more alpha before that.  My guess is 2-3 years but that is just a guess and hasn't in any way been started by devs.

 

Most QOL they plan to do is likely to be coming in these last couple of alphas.  Considering they just made containers disappear when emptied, it is unlikely they will change that.  It is nice for some containers like that piles but I agree that it isn't great for furniture type containers.

 

I would not expect to see any changes to the skill tree that aren't required due to some other change.  For example, changes to clothing and armor could possibly require a change to the armor trees.  And then again, it may not.  But other changes aren't likely.  Unless or until they add legendary weapons, I wouldn't expect to see changes to the weapon trees before gold.

Yeah, that makes sense. I do hope they make some skill changes at some point, though. For the containers, I just meant they still would empty, but we could still interact with them/put items in (specifically for safes, cupboards, etc), and once we put items back in, they could revert back to their unopened variant. I do agree it's a nice feature to have. Thanks for the comment!

Edited March 17 by User (see edit history)

[FramFramson]

1 hour ago, Riamus said:

Yeah, I think that would be preferred by most players for normal containers.  Not sure if they will consider that, though.

 

Probably depends on how difficult it is to implement that without losing the inventory. Right now they are actually different blocks, not different animation states of one block - the replacement effect isn't a problem right now because it only occurs once the container is empty.

 

Moving to a system where the container block can change repeatedly could add load or the opportunity for inventories to be lost and I don't see how this is fixed without swapping to a system where blocks remain the same but some have multiple states. This probably happened because originally a block swap was easier to implement over multi-state blocks, but now that people are asking for more advanced options that shortcut is holding us back.

[Adam the Waster]

Did anyone look at bloodmoons and think.  Is any of this coming to Alpha 22? Maybe it's shot number 9 but Heya How cool would it be, it would defeat the purpose of Bloodmoons but that's more of a pvp/E game while og 7dtd is pve. 

 

Nothing wrong with that.  I hope the Game does well hope funpimps best! Overlord armor 

 

Happy Saint parick day 

[FramFramson]

Def want to find out if any of those assets are coming to the vanilla game.

 

Also wondering like hell of that's going to be a sort of DLC in that it will work with or be attached to the base game, or if it's an entirely new iteration of the base game.

[Riamus]

30 minutes ago, FramFramson said:

Def want to find out if any of those assets are coming to the vanilla game.

 

Also wondering like hell of that's going to be a sort of DLC in that it will work with or be attached to the base game, or if it's an entirely new iteration of the base game.

The game isn't a TFP game, so chances of assets being added to this one are low, though not impossible.  And, no, it isn't a DLC.  It's a completely separate game made by another developer that just uses the 7D2D IP.  From what has been said, TFP is basically just there as advisors.

Edited March 18 by Riamus (see edit history)

[Laz Man]

1 hour ago, Adam the Waster said:

Did anyone look at bloodmoons and think.  Is any of this coming to Alpha 22? Maybe it's shot number 9 but Heya How cool would it be, it would defeat the purpose of Bloodmoons but that's more of a pvp/E game while og 7dtd is pve. 

 

Nothing wrong with that.  I hope the Game does well hope funpimps best! Overlord armor 

 

Happy Saint parick day 

 

There is definitely alot of new art assets in blood moons that is not in 7d2d.  There have been some talks of crossover assets but no concrete plans as of yet.

[Arez]

8 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

 

There is definitely alot of new art assets in blood moons that is not in 7d2d.  There have been some talks of crossover assets but no concrete plans as of yet.

What engine are they using for Blood Moons?

[Adam the Waster]

7 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

 

There is definitely alot of new art assets in blood moons that is not in 7d2d.  There have been some talks of crossover assets but no concrete plans as of yet.

Hell yeah! I want that wooden baton