PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary

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Mister Forgash said:
I'm largely in agreement with this- there's a few more things I'd really love to see, but if the feature/s just isn't projected to have the impact desired compared to the time that would be needed to be put in- That's where mods come in and it seems the Pimps have done a fantastic job in keeping their game accessible for those that feel savvy enough to experiment. 

I think it's a safe bet there will be tweaks, new ideas, or a phat megapatch or two of content post gold, and as much as I look forward to what the finished product of what 7D2D might be, I'm even more curious to see what the result will be with the lessons learned, the staff already in place, and the start up funds already available when TFP is ready to give us a taste of their next product.
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Well said.

Even in its current state it is a finished $20 game in my opinion. I believe the average selling price as of a few years ago was $18.

 
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Laz Man said:
I'm sure faatal has some ideas to make the wasteland harder.  For example make all zombies there demos....😅
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LOL!  I made a little mod that would scatter "shock rocks" and boulders in the wasteland.  The small stones would electrocute whatever walked into them, then self destruct after a few seconds -  unless you picked them up in time (also spawned them under water in the other biomes).  The boulders could be harvested for a handful of shock rocks.  These could be placed down again to slow zombies, or if you got enough (and skilled up in electocutioner) you could craft them into reusable barriers that would last longer  and could be repaired with fresh stones - great for placing in doorways.  ;)  (never did put it out - did it mostly for practice)

 
RipClaw said:
You realize that the engine is updated with every major release ? A21 is based on Unity 2021 LTS as far as I know. And A22 will probably then be based on Unity 2022 LTS.
 
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The engine is updated, but they don't (and can't) update to the newest features of the game engine. For instance, 7D2D will almost certainly never update its Unity render pipeline, because it would mean a huge chunk of the code would have to be rewritten.

So even if the engine itself isn't a "dinosaur," the game could be limited to only "dinosaur" features. Changing this would mean adding months - maybe years - to the development time, so it's not a bad notion that TFP try to finish the game before that "dinosaur" implementation becomes outdated.

Of course, I think TFP is aware of this and that's why they're trying to push for gold soon.

 
Fanatical_Meat said:
Sure do and it still cannot have a bunch of zombies on the screen at the same time.
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This is because a newer engine or different engine does not automatically solve all problems.

Games with a lot of enemies always have a static map. In 7 Days to Die, however, we have a completely destructible world. This means that an enemy must constantly recalculate its path.

In A21, the more distant enemies will recalculate their path less frequently. This should improve performance.
 

 
RipClaw said:
This is because a newer engine or different engine does not automatically solve all problems.

Games with a lot of enemies always have a static map. In 7 Days to Die, however, we have a completely destructible world. This means that an enemy must constantly recalculate its path.

In A21, the more distant enemies will recalculate their path less frequently. This should improve performance.
 
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Of course and obviously a newer game engine is more capable than an older game engine, that’s the whole point of newer ones otherwise there would be only one kind.

Point being what was posted above, lessons learned from 7D2D can be applied to a new game with a new game engine.

 
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khzmusik said:
The engine is updated, but they don't (and can't) update to the newest features of the game engine. For instance, 7D2D will almost certainly never update its Unity render pipeline, because it would mean a huge chunk of the code would have to be rewritten.
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I've worked with both of the new render pipelines and have updated test projects from the old pipeline to both URP and HDRP. You have to rewrite all of your custom shaders to use it, and you have to update the materials that use them, but that's about all that changes to "code".

Custom shaders aside the universal pipeline only takes a few minutes to upgrade to but it's also missing all of the fun toys that people would want with a new render pipeline like raytracing and advanced upscalers. If they wanted all of that they would have to go into HD which has a very different lighting model. Textures would require a little rework too.

Regardless of what they choose though the best path forward is to finish the game first. After that if they decide they want to have better graphics they can just pass it to a third party to do the work for them.

 
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