PC A20 Developer Diary Discussions

[Guppys Fur]

I absolutely wouldn't mind Christmas 2021 if it meant character system and basic npcs. It is loooooooooooooooooooooo(...)ng overdue.

Same here. From what i read ( or rather, from what i not read) its a long Road to go down still.

They shall take their time and make an Alpha with a landing as smooth as A19.

Would like to see the Streams picked up again. Doesnt have to be just A20 Material but a deeper look into their roadmap, whats to come and with what kind of probability... that would be dope and sweeten the months of wait to come.

Anyhow: In Pimps i trust again, im willing to wait for nice features, and of course: The Drone

 

[Khalagar]

I hope it goes not come out on May, cuz ill be Hooked to Genesis 2.

Oh snap, forgot Genesis 2 was that close. When A20 comes out Valheim might have died down a bit too, although I'm not sure 7 Days can attract the super casual crowd well enough to snag much off them

 

[meilodasreh]

Dear Mr. Mole, i hope you guys reconsider here.

I was really looking forward to this, as im sure many others too.

Just imagine the level of satisfaction, having this icon of progression in your lategame. Positivly forcing you to re-design your craft room to create place for that Beauty

I second that.

Was hoping workstations would become upgradable to adapt to the „ages“ progression system.

For example the current model of the forge represents stoneage and when you have all three tools (bellows, crucible, anvil  ) then you can buy an upgrade kit at the traders for a good amount of money. With that you upgrade the forge to ironage. 
same thing but new model (maybe twice big, looking like a blacksmith‘s fire, with actual anvil next to it, and fume hood above. And faster production of course.

that one would have another set of tools to add, and then next upgrade to modern age.

Again new bigger model maybe with hydraulic hammer or so.

and of course very fast at smelting and producing.

Same thing for workbench. Wooden table is stoneage, ironage could be a metal desk with some gears, clamps  and stuff, modern age with drill press, anglegrinder,...

would require reintroduction of the workbench tools (e.g. tap and die, calipers) from former alphas (I liked that system a lot)

 

[Khalagar]

what's one more that adds awesome jumpscares at the cheap cost of a couple of weeks of dev time tops

Devs make anywhere from 25-50+ dollars an hour minimum

Two weeks dev time = 80 hours x $30 an hour (lowest realistic minimum you are going to get a veteran dev at and even that is pretty low) = $2,400 worth of dev time solely devoted to adding and programming a zombie shark and trying to make it work in engine etc. Not even getting into the graphic design team having to actually make the visuals

7 Days to Die goes on sale like non stop for under 10 dollars, so they would need to sell 240 copies of the game, solely because of the new shark enemy, to actually justify adding the shark. That just isn't the kind of feature that is going to make a potential buyer go "Whoaaa I was on the fence but it has a shark, must buy!" compared to just spending those two weeks adding more content. Like wise, a shark isn't going to bring old players back. If the entire patch notes for A20 just says "added a shark" nobody is going to start a new playthrough and get their friends to play just to see it.

Obviously the figures above are super simplified and it's just napkin math that doesn't account for stuff like Steam's cut of the profit etc. You would almost certainly have to double the actual cost and time investment to add something so different from the other game entities, because everything always costs WAY more than you budgeted for.

Not to be blunt, and you may have been joking, just wanting to try to explain some of the business side since dealing with customer's feature requests to the dev team is basically half of my current job haha

Simple is great

Valheim selling over 5 million copies in like a month is 100% undeniable proof of that. One of the biggest things I see people praise it for is that it's not focused around PvP like most of the other survival games, and that everything is much simpler and it's easy for casuals to pick.

I definitely prefer complex survival games and ones that are actually hard, but it's pretty hard to argue with the stats sadly

 

[irontusk341]

Will there be more Tiers added and Rare items themselves like finding, ("Farmer Jack's long Double Barrel" with increased Range, and damage but slower reload?) or (Boiled bob's metal baseball bat, with bonus damage headshot damage.) or (Stevensons Oil dipped Crowbar, with added fire damage, bonus headshot damage and bonus damage to locked doors, and chests but degrades faster)? I was thinking about the Tiers, and thinking instead of tier 1-6 we would have a quality tier like, 

Tiers

0. Fragile (Gray)

1. Defective (Brown)

2. Poor Quality (Orange)

3. Rusty (Yellow)

4. Normal (Green)

5. Well built (Blue)

6. High Quality (Pink)

7. Immaculate (Red)

8. Flawless (Gold)

9. Nearly indestructible (Purple)

True.  The simplifications you have made to 7 days have been great.  Really like the repair kits.  Not that hard to make, but could lead to disaster if you forget to bring one. 

I am interested in your next unreal game. 

I would love to see a 3rd person game that borrowed heavily from what diablo 2 did right, with their skill system and loot system. 

I would also probably copy the combat and spell mechanics from Dragons Dogma with that game.  Dragons Dogma had some great combat, and is one of the few games that really nailed playing as a mage. 

A Diablo 2/Dragons Dogma hybrid game with survival and building elements, based on dota mechanics, where building requires gold, which you primarily find dungeon crawling and fighting in the open world. 

How close am I?

Sounds like Diablo 3D,

 

[pregnable]

Sounds like Diablo 3D,

Watch that and tell me if you can see my vision, heh. 

 

[Blake_]

Devs make anywhere from 25-50+ dollars an hour minimum

Two weeks dev time = 80 hours x $30 an hour (lowest realistic minimum you are going to get a veteran dev at and even that is pretty low) = $2,400 worth of dev time solely devoted to adding and programming a zombie shark and trying to make it work in engine etc. Not even getting into the graphic design team having to actually make the visuals

7 Days to Die goes on sale like non stop for under 10 dollars, so they would need to sell 240 copies of the game, solely because of the new shark enemy, to actually justify adding the shark. That just isn't the kind of feature that is going to make a potential buyer go "Whoaaa I was on the fence but it has a shark, must buy!" compared to just spending those two weeks adding (...)

I'm sorry, I can't read you over the sound of aquatic threats. Speak to my manager .

 

[Gazz]

Have you been on Steam lately?? They're already ranting about how long it takes between alphas... can't imagine how worse it'll get in a few months.  :fear:

But they do this with every alpha so that's nothing new.

 

[Jost Amman]

Watch that and tell me if you can see my vision, heh. 

I played that game... for some time. Then I got bored and uninstalled it.

Great graphics and animations mind you, but absolutely repetitive after a while.

 

[Jost Amman]

But they do this with every alpha so that's nothing new.

Yes, but maybe it's the pandemic or whatever, they started early this year.

Also, the more years pass, the more the argument "it's taking too long" gains traction, if you know what I mean.

That means people will start giving bad reviews and the game's rating will go down.

IMO The Fun Pimps should make a statement in which they officially say they're going to use a business model like (e.g.) Minecraft did, releasing new versions of the game periodically, but never really declaring the game finished for good. Kind of an "ongoing development" model.

 

[AtomicUs5000]

We had that talk already at some point or another...

 
Thanks. Sounds reasonable.

 

[Sucksi]

First of all, really love the game, started playing on PS4 a couple of years ago and now on PC started over and can't get enough.

Anyway, not a big issue, but I have the game trophies at platinum on PS4, the PC versions steam trophies don't work, for example can't get the one that's about crafting your first stone axe. Will these be fixed at some point?

 

[Roland]

First of all, really love the game, started playing on PS4 a couple of years ago and now on PC started over and can't get enough.

Anyway, not a big issue, but I have the game trophies at platinum on PS4, the PC versions steam trophies don't work, for example can't get the one that's about crafting your first stone axe. Will these be fixed at some point?

I believe they are working properly now. Make sure you have EAC enabled and are not using creative mode. I'm not sure whether the use of mods affects earning the achievements or not.

 

[pregnable]

I played that game... for some time. Then I got bored and uninstalled it.

Great graphics and animations mind you, but absolutely repetitive after a while.

Yeah, the story was kinda meh, but the combat was good. 

Playing as a Sorc was pretty fun, and the magic was done really well. 

The pawn system was actually kinda cool, but they did it wonky so you could only have 1 save file, which was kinda annoying. 

The game would have probably been a lot bigger if it had multiplayer, and if it was not only for consoles for a while.  Dragons Dogma 2 probably coming in 2022 though.

 

[bilibili-wayne]

已经确认A20已完成。玩家放置的方块以及被破坏的游戏生成的方块会动态更新并在遥远的地形中表示。摧毁一栋建筑物，走出大块，它仍然不见了。向现有的POI添加增强功能，然后走出大块，而它们仍然存在。不是计时器，也不是立即关闭或重新启动。

IMO，A20最重要的令人敬畏的新功能之一

What if A20 has confirmed the finished, then begin to anchor the testing authority and certified?
Machine translation, forgive me

 

[Roland]

What if A20 has confirmed the finished, then begin to anchor the testing authority and certified?
Machine translation, forgive me

A20 is not finished. One of the planned features for A20 is finished. Sorry if translating my post into your language caused confusion. There is still a lot of work to be done before A20 will be ready for release.

 

[bilibili-wayne]

A20未完成。A20的计划功能之一已完成。抱歉，如果将我的帖子翻译成您的语言会引起混乱。在准备发布A20之前，仍有许多工作要做。

So that's it. Is my translation software is not good enough. By the way, in China, almost daily 7 d2d players to leave a message to my account to ask A20 development progress and an open test of time. Ask every day. Our passion is too high.
 

 

[SnowDog1942]

So that's it. Is my translation software is not good enough. By the way, in China, almost daily 7 d2d players to leave a message to my account to ask A20 development progress and an open test of time. Ask every day. Our passion is too high.
 

 
I love asian women.  Can you hook me up?

 

[Diragor]

 
I love asian women.  Can you hook me up?

who doesn't. Would be cool to have some asian zombies as well

Jokes aside. Wanted to ask is the work on 1 block height pathing done. once asked if it only works like crawling through a 1 block high hole on the ground or does it also work when the hole is 1 block higher like a window. would be awesome if they can break windows and crawl over the window sill

 

[Blake_]

A20 is not finished. One of the planned features for A20 is finished. Sorry if translating my post into your language caused confusion. There is still a lot of work to be done before A20 will be ready for release.

Roland, as a player, how does a20 feel in terms of performance ? is it directly comparable to a19.4  in terms of fps or is it definitely better?