PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

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Khalagar said:
Time for a baptism by fire and teach him the cruelty of adults. Soooooorry son, that's sooooo weird, your bedroll was destroyed somehow right before the horde night, oh nooooo.

I feel like kids now days aren't pranked enough honestly, they shut down hard the second they encounter any situation less favorable than "Completely and totally tailored to them". Gone are the days when your parents could prank you by pretending to leave you at the grocery store for ten minutes, you'd probably go to jail for that now
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You call it prank, I call it harmless teaching experience. Offspring needs to understand the what ifs of life. Only through graded struggle we prosper. Always within safety and controlled environments of course. A grocery store might not be the best "teaching" area for that, lol. Maybe a sharp cliff? The middle of a rainforest? Yas, better.

 
Khalagar said:
Time for a baptism by fire and teach him the cruelty of adults. Soooooorry son, that's sooooo weird, your bedroll was destroyed somehow right before the horde night, oh nooooo.

I feel like kids now days aren't pranked enough honestly, they shut down hard the second they encounter any situation less favorable than "Completely and totally tailored to them". Gone are the days when your parents could prank you by pretending to leave you at the grocery store for ten minutes, you'd probably go to jail for that now
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I refuse to read or follow what's new in A20. Part of the fun for me is not knowing anything and figuring it all out on my own when it drops. This is one of the things I liked about A17 after such a long gap in time.  

 
mstdv inc said:
I would love to be able to create a 2048x2048 map entirely consisting of a city.
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That has merit!

You could pack in the area with the big POIs.  Sort of a New York city test.

Or... Change that to 1kx1K (or smaller), then use a map loader that uses free CPU cycles to load adjacent maps.  (By using the Windows Interrupt Request Priorities (IRQ) to activate the map loader when the player is not surrounded by zombies, for example.)

A potential global map right there. 

You could extend that by making the users PC a Client and its only jobs are to paint the screen, collision detection and keyboard/mouse movement.  Player location is sent to the Map server (Edit every 5-10 seconds)

Then make a map server that can be the players PC, BUT could be a beefy server that  manages the small 1K map area (or 9 if the map blocks are small enough) per player. 

Other services can record the looting and damages done to the map and zombies and then would send to the map server anything that updates the maps state.

So to make sure everyone gets updated map information but not ALL the new, changed  map information:

1) Players current map is always updated as soon as possible (this would insure multiple people would see the same event that are in the same map in near RT)

2) To keep the map server "intelligent"  make a database with the map matrix current location being the primary key and the 8 other map locations as the data.

so on a 500 by 500 maps the primary key is the X Y coordinates.  key range 001001-500500.

OK that's enough, too much coffee I guess!  :)  

 
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POCKET951 said:
how come TFP won't add some kind of tool/vehicle for cutting /removing grass more efficiently or harvesting crops?
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there's a great modlet you should try to hook up.

fs22.jpg

Maybe I'm mixing up stuff, I'm not into modding...it says "available now", but also someting about A22 

Where are my pills anyway? 

Burrfly said:
We need a 16x16 map for a20 please (or smaller)
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I've had bases bigger than that

 
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Blake_ said:
We have already surpassed 18 and 19 combined in number of POI to come in a20.

a20 is similar to a17 in amount of content vs the alpha that came before. Downside (for me) is that around 30% of the richness within this tangible gameplay content comes from Twitch integration features, while a17 had exclusively 7dtd standalone gameplay content in the form of new UI, encumbrance and weather system rework, perks, some weapons, items, all of the current quests, new Zds, etc.

1+ year dev cycle? I just love it. Really. The size of the feature list cannot compare. Sure, I'm not cool with us not getting much to do aside for more exploration, 1 more quest and the primitive weapons, but this alpha was absolutely necessary. I hope we get 3 more alphas like this one. Thumbs up on my part. 2025 for gold? Just in time for the next console!
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While I don't really mind the 1+ year dev cycle, I can't exactly say that the content has me absolutely stoked. Vehicle mods are a nice plus but don't add much to gameplay, RWG and other HD assets are cool and all but it's really eye candy and I don't play the game for its graphics. Pipe weapons are going to be a week 1 thing so it doesn't add to the end game experience. 

Happy about the biome game stages as A19 was way too linear for my taste, and I'll finally have a reason to gear up to face snow/desert and its dangers. Regarding POIs well... it's never bad to have more of them but I'd rather have more reasons to loot than more places to find the same old stuff. 

Will play for sure but I can't help but feel like the past 2+ years have been lacking in terms of pure content for seasoned players. 

 
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Lord Morphleyes said:
To his credit though he did redeem himself later when night caught us in the hospital and me and my wife died.  With no headlights or weapon flashlights we got stuck trying to fight in the dark and couldn't coordinate fast enough who was going to hold the flashlight while the others fought.  There were still tears, but he pushed through and fought his way out, beating zombies with his torch.  
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So he's a trooper but the game was never made to be particularly child-friendly. The whole M rating and all, y'know?

 
beHypE said:
While I don't really mind the 1+ year dev cycle, I can't exactly say that the content has me absolutely stoked. Vehicle mods are a nice plus but don't add much to gameplay, RWG and other HD assets are cool and all but it's really eye candy and I don't play the game for its graphics. Pipe weapons are going to be a week 1 thing so it doesn't add to the end game experience. 

Happy about the biome game stages as A19 was way too linear for my taste, and I'll finally have a reason to gear up to face snow/desert and its dangers. Regarding POIs well... it's never bad to have more of them but I'd rather have more reasons to loot than more places to find the same old stuff. 

Will play for sure but I can't help but feel like the past 2+ years have been lacking in terms of pure content for seasoned players. 
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I think I understand what you mean, but sometimes an alpha just needs to be there for polishing or overhauling already existing systems, such as the RWG this time with all the new POI's. I definitely agree that graphics aren't as important as the core gameplay. A mistake a lot of game devs have made the past years is thinking good graphics can make up for lacking gameplay, but I don't think that's the case for 7 Days to Die.

They can't just ONLY add new content; they also have to update existing systems which they are doing very well in my opinion with the exception of the clothing system going from 10 slots --> 4 slots in a21 (but that's my opinion)

But also think about:

- The feral sense option for zombies (amazing gameplay addition (which is even configurable in 4 settings: disabled, enabled, only at day, only at night))

- The new city generation (which isn't just visually-wise cool but also gameplay-wise because we haven't discovered all those new POI's and tiles yet (and thus not knowing for traps or other things))

- The new weapons and items (which you noted indeed)

- New end-game zombies and zombies overall being able to crawl through holes exactly just like the player is able to do

- Loot and gamestaging being overhaled

There will probably be another alpha or gold where they will focus mainly on gameplay aspects :)

 
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I personally think currently the game really needs: legendary weapons and armour, water, quests (lots), random road/biome spawns with lore, water improvements and character creation system that results in varied npcs or even entities in future alphas.

From there, core systems will be finished for good. A way to make scripted and non-scripted quest-making easier for devs is also a must, I mean, 3 months per added quest might just be too much.

 
Burrfly said:
I think I understand what you mean, but sometimes an alpha just needs to be there for polishing or overhauling already existing systems, such as the RWG this time with all the new POI's. I definitely agree that graphics aren't as important as the core gameplay. A mistake a lot of game devs have made the past years is thinking good graphics can make up for lacking gameplay, but I don't think that's the case for 7 Days to Die.

They can't just ONLY add new content; they also have to update existing systems which they are doing very well in my opinion with the exception of the clothing system going from 10 slots --> 4 slots in a21 (but that's my opinion)
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The problem is that I feel that has been the case for a while now. I'm not sure I remember the complete change list of A18, but for sure A19 was already more of a polish then an addition of core gameplay aspects.

I fully understand we're at a time where the product is mostly 'done' and we're getting into a shipping state. But bandits to only name them have been postponed for years now, and honestly if you have played consistently it's getting quite redundant at this point. 

I know you can just 'have some time off' and 'skip alphas' but I've mostly skipped A19 already and I'm kinda disappointed that the only feature I'm truly happy about in A20 is what A19 should have shipped in the first place (tiered biomes). 

Oh well, maybe I might just love it anyways. 

 
POCKET951 said:
well if that could be done in a mod for an ancient alpha, how much of a stretch would it be to add it as part of the core game down the line?
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I think it was never released as it would put so much strain on most computers it would have made the game unplayable. Also if you think people were complaining of being griefed now...imagine if this were in the game.

I would have enjoyed this mod he made though. Am not sure if this one was ever released either though.



 
Is it too late to report on the bug tracker? I found an issue where if you enter the interface of a shotgun turret, SMG turret, dart trap, electric timer relay, motion sensor, or spotlight, the ability to nerdpole or pick up frames is severely crippled. In other words, your camera has to be in a very specific position to pick up or place frames, and sometimes it won't let you do this at all. A simple relog fixes this.

 
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