PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary

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Doomofman said:
Why short on time for A21? What's the reasoning (if you can say) for not waiting to release A21 until bandits are ready?
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I agree. What's a few more months at this point. Get them in now and expand on them in the next alpha. We're already, what, a month past when the dev streams were last year for A20? I honestly have been assuming A21 wouldn't be out this year with no dates for streams even mentioned yet. I figured maybe late Jan/ early Feb at this point.

 
bdubyah said:
Gonna be disappointing if they slip again. Would've thought getting them in now would be a good idea as it'd give a whole alpha for feedback on the basics. Guess there's always next year. Lol.
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I have no inside information. An interesting compromise might be if they could be enabled via XML (off by default) and only were in random spawns, not in POIs. Or, maybe POIs with placed Bandits in them, treat them as a standing zombie sleeper, instead.

meganoth said:
I agree. I would rate the importance of having bandits in A21 above releasing before christmas.
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I can see how that might be true. Of course TFP should go with whatever schedule is best for them.

For me, an EXP release between Thanksgiving and the Christmas holiday (and vacation) is much, much more convenient for converting a large pile of POIs from one major version to another. Once you get out into January work and classes ramp back up and my schedule gets tight. Otherwise, it might be May before I can free up a bunch of time.

 
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Laz Man said:
Okay, I will take a stab.  There was a recent NRE that would occur when using one of the ingame dev tools within the prefab editor.

I suspect it was caused by a recent commit due to the nature of the NRE mentioned in the unity error log.

I wrote up a ticket and passed it along to our QA lead asap as it was slowing down several teammates work.

Shawn comes to the rescue the very next day and fixes the bug almost immediately.  Rejoice!!!!
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It truly was edge of your seat stuff. The bugs, the raid, the splatter, the cleanup. High fives all around.

As I was saying.......

 
Doomofman said:
Why short on time for A21? What's the reasoning (if you can say) for not waiting to release A21 until bandits are ready?
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There are other reasons to want a release. Many people, myself included, have worked on other features. They want their work out there too and we also want feedback on those changes. Waiting on features often leads to a feedback loop of, while other devs waited, they did stuff, so you now need to wait for that to be done, so others do stuff and you wait. Where does it end??? I'd rather make dates and get new things out on some regular basis. If not done, then feature skips to next release.

 
faatal said:
3 Fixing bugs does not make for cool screenshots.
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Depends on the bug. 😁

Quillbeatssword said:
But if you're moving quietly and happen to get surprised and have to shoot it could get really bad. Really quick. With every zombie on the street now coming while you're corned inside of a house. 
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They do this already to some extent.  I'm always having a dozen zombies coming inside after I start a quest.  Bad enough when it is zombies, but when the bears start coming up multiple floors to visit, it is rather strange. Lol.

 
In regards to the new engineer(s) brought on board earlier this year to possibly improve netcode, I would love any insider knowledge there might be or to know if any updates exist on this subject since this post was made:



I realize changes to such things would likely be reserved to that of a full number update rather than a decimal one, so is there any hope in A21 carrying a treat for us who enjoy larger servers? The landscape is dire right now and much of the servers got killed off from 20.4.

 
faatal said:
There are other reasons to want a release. Many people, myself included, have worked on other features. They want their work out there too and we also want feedback on those changes. Waiting on features often leads to a feedback loop of, while other devs waited, they did stuff, so you now need to wait for that to be done, so others do stuff and you wait. Where does it end??? I'd rather make dates and get new things out on some regular basis. If not done, then feature skips to next release.
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Bandits delayed isn't a bad thing, there are lots of things to be done before they are ready. POI, AI, animations (big time spender and the brother of AI when it comes to delays). My wish is for them to have different unrepeating faces, but I guess not, by the looks of the twitter pics.

Btw. Can you show us something about water animations and stuff like that? 

 
Howlune said:
In regards to the new engineer(s) brought on board earlier this year to possibly improve netcode, I would love any insider knowledge there might be or to know if any updates exist on this subject since this post was made:

I realize changes to such things would likely be reserved to that of a full number update rather than a decimal one, so is there any hope in A21 carrying a treat for us who enjoy larger servers? The landscape is dire right now and much of the servers got killed off from 20.4.
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Those changes have been done for months. Our test servers are running fine with the normal number of players we test with. The changes mainly reduced the amount and frequency of network data sent and improved entity movement interpolation. As to how that would effect high player count servers, it might be better or the bottlenecks could be elsewhere.

 
faatal said:
Those changes have been done for months. Our test servers are running fine with the normal number of players we test with. The changes mainly reduced the amount and frequency of network data sent and improved entity movement interpolation. As to how that would effect high player count servers, it might be better or the bottlenecks could be elsewhere.
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Huh. I wouldn't suppose theres a way to see a full list of under the hood changes done on certain patches for the modding community to look more into at least? For the past year its felt like a constant investigation with only a few clues found so far.

For example, before A19.3 we could have 50 players on one server. Before A20.4, we could have 40 players on a server without major issue, now it can barely support 30. I would like to better find what happened to cause those things... I know this is not priority in the game's development, but theres many of us that would love to try our own hand through mods.

EDIT: After a recent conversation I realize theres many things that may not be mentioned in patch notes at all that could have been changed over the course of several patches... like the amount of ray casts in the game at any one moment and how much information clients share with each other constantly regardless of distance between each other in the game. Maybe its just not possible on a modders level.

 
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Howlune said:
Huh. I wouldn't suppose theres a way to see a full list of under the hood changes done on certain patches for the modding community to look more into at least? For the past year its felt like a constant investigation with only a few clues found so far.

For example, before A19.3 we could have 50 players on one server. Before A20.4, we could have 40 players on a server without major issue, now it can barely support 30. I would like to better find what happened to cause those things... I know this is not priority in the game's development, but theres many of us that would love to try our own hand through mods.

EDIT: After a recent conversation I realize theres many things that may not be mentioned in patch notes at all that could have been changed over the course of several patches... like the amount of ray casts in the game at any one moment and how much information clients share with each other constantly regardless of distance between each other in the game. Maybe its just not possible on a modders level.
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I'm pretty sure Faatal is referring to A21 and not A20.  You will have to wait until experimental to try it out.

 
Blake_ said:
I'm rooting for Christmas experimental, no bandits, yes new perk rework (obviously) and the rest of confirmed features from the OP. Maybe some RWG surprises. No more. That's a Kurzweil level prediction right there.
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Maybe them shouldn't repeat the mistake of last year and try to release a new alpha by some date?You won't stop loving this game if we don't see exp this year, will you?And I won't stop.I'd rather just wait.Let it come out when it's done.

 
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mstdv inc said:
Maybe them shouldn't repeat the mistake of last year and try to release a new alpha by some date?You won't stop loving this game if we don't see exp this year, will you?And I won't stop.I'd rather just wait.Let it come out when it's done.
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Releasing a build by a date can be done many ways. We are not doing a toss it out at some date regardless of how it works. We are doing what features can be done by a date (month/season, not an exact date) and then polish and bug fix THOSE features. If those features are not ready, then the date will slip until they are.

 
What I honestly think is that TFP should have moved this project into a new modern engine. As I play the game, it is still quite shocking to me that some aspects of the game are still so unpolished or feel clunky. This is even more noticeable on multiplayer, looking at another player model interact with the world. NO animations and movement is clunky. This project has been in Alpha for way too long. It's about time they "as developers" finalize this project. I've been calling it a project and not a game because their intention of making so many mayor changes proves they were not happy with what they previously did. Which is a normal thing on a 3-5 years Alpha, but this project will soon reach a 2 decade long stage in ALPHA. I only know of some MOVIE stop-motion claymation that have similar time in the making, but though out they mostly have a clear goal and passion. Here it sure feels like they are presenting this project and want us to play it, the exact way they envision the game.
And I'll be a bit salty here, specially with a project that started as a Minecraft Clone. Don't get me wrong I enjoy 7dtd, since I like survival games and zombies are always a nice theme, but truth be told, that's how it started, but was able to offer something new. Sadly Now we don't see that same "new" since it has been so long in Alpha and still feels incomplete, both from players point of view and clearly from game devs, if they still have the need to re-work the entire project.

 
Zoe Lycan said:
but this project will soon reach a 2 decade long stage in ALPHA.
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Not even close. We just celebrated the 9th year of its entire life span this past summer and are approaching the 9th year of it being in Early Access on Steam. Next year will mark 1 decade.  2 Decades is 20 years so you are way off. 

Zoe Lycan said:
And I'll be a bit salty here, specially with a project that started as a Minecraft Clone.
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Are you sure? Minecraft released in 2011 so if we've been in Alpha since 2002 (2 decades ago) then maybe Minecraft started as a 7 Days to Die clone...

 
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faatal said:
Releasing a build by a date can be done many ways. We are not doing a toss it out at some date regardless of how it works. We are doing what features can be done by a date (month/season, not an exact date) and then polish and bug fix THOSE features. If those features are not ready, then the date will slip until they are.
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Honestly I am fine with a buggy first release and I’d prefer to have it a little early even if that means it’s a little screwed up.

 
Zoe Lycan said:
What I honestly think is that TFP should have moved this project into a new modern engine. 
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I hate to say it since I like getting a new game for free ever since I started backing a decade or so ago (most alphas feel like a new game), but an engine change would be more of something I would expect for a "7 More Days to Die", or whatever the sequel will be called.

Sure, I would love to see endless Alphas to include engine changes and graphics updates without having to pay again.  But in realville, they need to make money and licensing a new engine would be expensive, not to mention all the code rework.

They should finish the game as good as it can be for the current engine and them move on to the next thing.  (As I understand, the next game is not a 7DTD sequel... I recall MadMole mentioning something about vampires a while back). That way the modding community can take over in earnest without having to worry about game changes that will break everything on the next Alpha.

 
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To those wondering about why it is still in alpha, the developers have stated that the game will go gold once all of the features mentioned in the kickstarter have been met. If you’re that curious, go read the features list in the kickstarter and you’ll have a good idea how close it is to gold.

 
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