Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[Gazz]

The problem with your argument is that users are complaining about almost everything. ANY change done by TFP can therefore be atrributed to users complaining. In the same paragraph you talk about them listening too much you complain about them not listening to complaints about end game (there have been lots of users complaining about end game)

Some people need to write "correlation does not imply causation" 100 times.

 

Thing that is obviously not working very well is being worked on said local man.

[meganoth]

There is a lot of quirks and thoughts needed for spoilage to be done logically. From a gaming perspective, really need to ask if the effort is worth it. Would the majority of players find spoilage fun? While I thought it was fun in concept, in Starvation it turned into more of annoyance to deal with then a fun challenge.

 

The problem with these minigame concepts is that often it is just grindy micro-management without any complexity. See the weather/temperature minigame in A16, where the decision to change clothes when you got hot or cold was absolutely trivial and because of that not fun. In A17 at least it involves a small decision whether you want to be more resistant to heat or cold. And less grindy micro-management. And consequently there have been much less protests about the weather system.

 

Food spoilage as a balancing tool for food has a use, I really don't see where non-trivial decisions can be placed though to make it a "fun" mechanic

 

I really hope they are trying to update Unity to 2018.3 because new terrain system sounds too good:

They claim more than a 50% reduction in CPU costs plus big improvements in quality

 

before-after, identical triangle count:

 

Are you sure that would work with Voxels? Are you sure the 50% reduction is in game play, not generation?

[OzHawkeye]

The problem with these minigame concepts is that often it is just grindy micro-management without any complexity. See the weather/temperature minigame in A16, where the decision to change clothes when you got hot or cold was absolutely trivial and because of that not fun. In A17 at least it involves a small decision whether you want to be more resistant to heat or cold. And less grindy micro-management. And consequently there have been much less protests about the weather system.

 

Truth that. This is the first Alpha since the weather system was introduced that I didn't just turn it off in the console or mod it out of the XML's. Now, I deal with it early game, knowing that I can perk into (and gear up) to eventually more or less eliminate it (I still have one item of clothing to swap around if I go Desert-Snow or back).

 

A17, for me, massively improved weather, by making overcoming it a legit goal and spec choice.

[ltbrunt]

As a long time 7DTD player and at 4000 hrs I feel with this latest build the game is almost perfect. Outside of the bandits is 7 days to die close to being finished?

 

I know there are tons of things you guys are working on but right now the game feels like a near finished product.

[Wardronex]

Truth that. This is the first Alpha since the weather system was introduced that I didn't just turn it off in the console or mod it out of the XML's. Now, I deal with it early game, knowing that I can perk into (and gear up) to eventually more or less eliminate it (I still have one item of clothing to swap around if I go Desert-Snow or back).

 

A17, for me, massively improved weather, by making overcoming it a legit goal and spec choice.

 

When I am Hot I take off clothing.

When I am cold I put on more clothing.

Previous weather just needed a tiny bit more tweaking and it worked just like end game(after spending points in) does now.

All I needed was to add or remove a coat. which Is why I reintegrated it back into this alpha.

I do not see this as a legitimate thing(skill/perk) to be forced to waste points on.

To me it is common sense.

[crossed]

The problem with these minigame concepts is that often it is just grindy micro-management without any complexity.

They should give no options to deal with food spoilage = no micro management.

Except of course for getting off your butt and finding some fresh food every now and then, instead of living off your gigantic stack of food that you hoarded up months ago.

 

But I agree that as long as there are vending machines, traders and you can make a living as a woodcutter there's not much point introducing new mechanics to make the survival aspect more challenging.

[Gareee]

2000+ hours, and only used a vending machine once.. for water when I couldn't find any in a desert day one.

 

We DO however use the traders now more often with the quest system and buying htf items like a tool n die set.

 

It might be good to nerf the trader payouts a LITTLE though, and increase the buying cost of produced items to encourage those types of gameplay, selling the higher tier crafted foods for significant amounts.

 

...and we want more quests! They are a good way to stretch out the mid/end gameplay, doing something significant. Maybe delivery quests in the higher quest tiers, picking a fetch/clear up a few miles away, and delivering it to another trader to get the reward there (and discover the other trader locations)?

 

Or a quest to craft something and deliver it, like electrical components, or vehicles? (Like deliver 5 bikes, 3 power generators, or 10 spotlights)

 

A reason to scrounge more for parts to fullfill quests.

 

It could even be food delivery to a static npc in a building somewhere.

[HeLLKnight]

Are you sure that would work with Voxels? Are you sure the 50% reduction is in game play, not generation?

 

Let's read:

 

UNITY 2018.3

On the performance side, we added a GPU-instanced render path for terrain. In most cases, instancing yields a dramatic reduction in the number of draw calls issued. Many of our tests saw more than a 50% reduction in CPU costs (though, of course, actual numbers will depend on your platform and use case)

 

They talk about render path, so for me this means ingame, not generation. Also the performance improvement comes from a dramatic reduction in "Draw calls" which is one of the most expensive cpu tasks at any game. If you have to many draw calls, you end very cpu bottlenecked. And we know 7d2d is cpu bottlenecked for sure, but only a dev can tell us how important would be to reduce terrain draw calls in this particular voxel game. Even if 7d2d is not pushing draw calls too much now, as far as I understand jumping to Unity 2018.3 would allow devs to put a ton more objects on screen and not killing our cpus.

 

On the other side, we know that 10-20 zombies on screen annihilate fps even on the best machine in the market, and Faatal talked a few times about they are trying to improve the character controller. Also we know Unity has occlusion culling system, but madmole confirmed the game doesn't have this implemented yet.

[Silbendy]

2000+ hours, and only used a vending machine once.. for water when I couldn't find any in a desert day one.

 

We DO however use the traders now more often with the quest system and buying htf items like a tool n die set.

 

It might be good to nerf the trader payouts a LITTLE though, and increase the buying cost of produced items to encourage those types of gameplay, selling the higher tier crafted foods for significant amounts.

 

...and we want more quests! They are a good way to stretch out the mid/end gameplay, doing something significant. Maybe delivery quests in the higher quest tiers, picking a fetch/clear up a few miles away, and delivering it to another trader to get the reward there (and discover the other trader locations)?

 

Or a quest to craft something and deliver it, like electrical components, or vehicles? (Like deliver 5 bikes, 3 power generators, or 10 spotlights)

 

A reason to scrounge more for parts to fullfill quests.

 

It could even be food delivery to a static npc in a building somewhere.

 

What about a quest to deliver to POI where you have to restock the vending machines. That would then answer the question of how do they constantly get restocked.

[Genosis]

What about a quest to deliver to POI where you have to restock the vending machines. That would then answer the question of how do they constantly get restocked.

 

+1 for this, that's actually kinda awesome to take some unexplained things and make a reasonable player-made excuse for it. Same could be said of traveling between one trader to the next as a caravan quest, which would both explain how they restock, as well as aid in finding other traders on the map.

[Inmyh3ad]

Are here still people playing A16? I think i'm switching back until A17.2 drops.

[Royal Deluxe]

+1 for this, that's actually kinda awesome to take some unexplained things and make a reasonable player-made excuse for it. Same could be said of traveling between one trader to the next as a caravan quest, which would both explain how they restock, as well as aid in finding other traders on the map.

 

I work on a idea for a questrow to "Support" a trader. Inclusive deliver him vehicles.

Sadly i have no idea how i could make a "Clean the road" quest to the next trader

(Except kill x Zombies and move to next trader )

And i have no idea how i can make a upgrading questrow, i hope its possible (will arrive at that modpart in a few weeks)

to respawn a tradercompound, but a upgraded one.

 

I like the idea that a trader is only a npc on a small improvised tent camp that sells 2-3 items of his personal equipment and if you make quests for him his "Trading POI" and his offering upgrade.

[Genosis]

I work on a idea for a questrow to "Support" a trader. Inclusive deliver him vehicles.

Sadly i have no idea how i could make a "Clean the road" quest to the next trader

And i have no idea how i can make a upgrading questrow, i hope its possible (will arrive at that modpart in a few weeks)

to respawn a tradercompound, but a upgraded one.

 

I like the idea that a trader is only a npc on a small improvised tent camp that sells 2-3 items of his personal equipment and if you make quests for him his "Trading POI" and his offering upgrade.

 

I like that idea as well; make it more of a "server achievement" perhaps, taking several quests per tier upgrade. Have the stock availability improve (much like secret stash does now) as the tiers increase.

[meganoth]

When I am Hot I take off clothing.

When I am cold I put on more clothing.

Previous weather just needed a tiny bit more tweaking and it worked just like end game(after spending points in) does now.

All I needed was to add or remove a coat. which Is why I reintegrated it back into this alpha.

I do not see this as a legitimate thing(skill/perk) to be forced to waste points on.

To me it is common sense.

 

And when I need to sh** I go around the corner, that's common sense too. Doesn't mean simulating such a trivial IF THEN automatism is beneficial to a game. (Not that I want to prevent you from modding the game in any direction, please do).

 

I also don't see A16 and A17 being equivalent in end game. In A16 changing clothes every 5 minutes was continuing add infinitum.

in A17 eventually the weather problem is either solved (if you spend perks points) or reduced to minimal problems in just one climate zone if you put mods into the armor (I assume, don't have full environmental mod-collection yet).

 

They talk about render path, so for me this means ingame, not generation. Also the performance improvement comes from a dramatic reduction in "Draw calls" which is one of the most expensive cpu tasks at any game.

 

Thanks for the info, it is indeed ingame. The other question is still a little bit open but from the sound of it the performance gain might really work (hard to judge from outside, maybe TFP does not use a special render path for terrain that could be changed to this, because: voxels. Maybe they do). Anyway not a subject I know enough about to make sensible guesses.

[Wardronex]

And when I need to sh** I go around the corner, that's common sense too. Doesn't mean simulating such a trivial IF THEN automatism is beneficial to a game. (Not that I want to prevent you from modding the game in any direction, please do).

 

I also don't see A16 and A17 being equivalent in end game. In A16 changing clothes every 5 minutes was continuing add infinitum.

in A17 eventually the weather problem is either solved (if you spend perks points) or reduced to minimal problems in just one climate zone if you put mods into the armor (I assume, don't have full environmental mod-collection yet).

 

First I would not call it common sense when you just go around the corner to do your business. More like a lack of...

Common sense is going into the the bathroom and using the Toilet.

Second I do not know if it would be trivial or beneficial to have it in the game.

But heck nothing worse then being caught with your pants down.

 

I did say a few minor tweaks was just like end game.

This statement may have been a bit of an understatement. From start coat on when going into Snow or coat off when going into Desert

All other zones it made NO difference.

 

But lets take the Every 5 minutes coat on off to what we have now...Which is instant cold or hot.

 

Now lets stretch this out with okay your instant cold or hot Until you reach w/e level you need to unlock the stat then all those points spent in that stat and the perk to be okay....even though you have the same clothes on.

 

But just encase the game throws a RNG colder or hotter then normal area at you.... well now you need specific mods to be okay in those zones. Even though once again you are still wearing the same thing.

 

So now end game 17 you can be where ever wearing what ever and your okay. Winter coat and Denim jeans with a Hoodie in the Desert...OR

Shorts and a T-shirt in the snow...

No problems...Cause I spent points and have mods in my pockets that make me impervious to such things.

[Boidster]

+1 for the idea of an in-game explanation for vending machines. My rainbow-farting unicorn would code it like this:

 

• At start of game, public vending machines are all disabled
  
• Along about gamestage X, a quest becomes available to "restock" (carry a special supply item and interact with) 5 vending machines. Trader says he's got a team of "hardy survivors like you" (Joel)/"almost entirely useless sacks of crap like you" (Rekt) helping to get machines working again
  
• Complete the quest, from then on vending machines have a chance of having stuff
  
• Extra credit: vending machines go empty after a while and a repeat quest becomes available
  

[Odetta]

Gaff

[HeavensDoor405]

This I wouldn't necessarily classify as a bug, but it may be an oversight, or intentional, but the garage doors are too short for the 4x4. It's 3 blocks high. Is there any plans to change that?

[tin33cro]

I make a garage under house and a ramp to park a vehicle but the problem si that vehicles damage that ramp..damage blocks.

Can someone fix that or make some kind a mod ?

Thanks

[Royal Deluxe]

This I wouldn't necessarily classify as a bug, but it may be an oversight, or intentional, but the garage doors are too short for the 4x4. It's 3 blocks high. Is there any plans to change that?

 

There is a decent garage door in CM menue

(sadly not buildable, i guess because exploitable)

[FileMachete]

The weather thing was borked from birth due to the lack of biomes & the instant temp changes.

 

Even if more biomes are never added, adding a temperature gradient map so the polka-dot biomes at the borders are smoothed would be a huge win.

 

Though I'd much rather see more biomes -&- a temp map influenced by height. The current "desert", based on coloring, would actually be a temperate climate; quite livable. The 'real' desert in the valley floor of Arizona is where you see multiple 110+ degree days. Sedonas high desert is typically 20+ degrees cooler.

 

So could use the red-rock, current desert as a border biome: can touch Snow, Forest & "real" or 'low' Desert (old model). But Snow would never touch "real" desert but could touch Forest.

 

Burnt Forest & Wasteland could be anywhere and their temps set by temp-gradient map & height map.

[LibbyA]

Are here still people playing A16? I think i'm switching back until A17.2 drops.

 

There are some servers that are still on A16 yes, and I don't think it will be long at all until A17.2 drops.

[Royal Deluxe]

if you want a guess in the blue 7-21 Days until 14.2 experimental

 

Based on.... nothing XD

[sillls]

While the Machete is a cool weapon, it is really hard to use against vultures. Trying to fight a vulture with a machete is like trying to hit a house fly with a hammer.

[The-Walking-Dad]

if you want a guess in the blue 7-21 Days until 14.2 experimental

 

Based on.... nothing XD

 

I think 14.2 is come and gone...