PC v1.x Developer Diary

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Thank goodness we'll never see an "Eleven Years in Alpha!" post....

;)
Well, 10.5 years in Alpha on Steam (Alpha 5 and up), but if you add Alpha 1 to 4, you do get 11 years... Doh!

Great news on the video. Thanks to Richard and the full team. Bought the game when at Alpha 10, and it's still my favorite game.

 
Does the impending release of 1.0 this mean that TFP has worked out the optimization challenges?
I love this game, but performance has always been something that we excused as being something that would be addressed when it was time to leave alpha.
I agree. The performance can get espescially terrible with high zombie counts. I've seen discussions of various optimizations on the forums which I don't know much about, but at least I personally haven't seen any word on major named performance improvements. A couple ones of note I know of are something about jiggle physics being disabled at certain points, and the previously mentioned window interiors being obscured at certain distances, and unity updates, but as it stands there are still a lot of issues that I'm not sure are fixed for the release. Things like trader walls having horrendous pop-in even on good settings, and brightness turning grass white just to name a couple are some I've experienced. This kind of stuff hasn't really been mentioned, and the release is a month off or so, so performance is definitely a concern. Ideally it comes out performing great, though.

 
I'm glad we got a roadmap and 1.0 stuff, but I can't help but feel like it's a bit too soon? I thought the stuff was a roadmap to gold, not so much a post gold update cycle, but I guess thats pretty much the same thing. There's still a lot that's being/needing to be updated, so to me this almost feels like their releasing out of ea to help with a22 hype? That's probably not the case, but it feels like it a bit. Just considering how much stuff for the pre gold roadmap isn't in 1.0, I don't know. Just sort of confusing considering the previous roadmap? Could be wrong. I noticed outfit dlcs coming in the q4 2024 update. I don't really like that at all honestly, maybe I'm the only one. Not a fan of dlcs like that in general, but imo would be best to wait until all of the roadmap stuff is done before adding paid dlc, if they felt like it needed to be in the game. Having outfits locked behind dlc feels a bit bad to me, I just applaud games that don't have that kind of stuff.

I'm just a bit confused. Feels like this should be a road to 1.0 instead of a post 1.0 cycle, but I'm sure coming out of early access will generate a lot of attention. Does definitely feel too early for a price hike honestly though, espescially given how a22 isn't a particularily major release compared to the future patches purely based on the features that will be implemented. (outside of the console release) Looks like we're waiting another year for bandits.


This sudden release is obvious, its called placebo effect and throwing sand in your eyes (yet again). The 1.0 release is half of what alpha 22 was originally meant to be, but give it some pretty pictures and word it nicely and it looks like the next coming of christ. This is just to get your eyes off the fact it has been 11 years in alpha, so the word alpha is no longer present and they can finally call it "post launch updates". 

Truth is, they preferred spending time on HD assets and making the game more "twitch interactive" rather than focusing on what is easily the two biggest kickstarter promises, story and bandits. After making it all pretty for 11 years, they finally begin AI work for bandits instead of slowly doing it over time. (note that I personally don't care about bandits or story, I'm just pointing it out).

Could've worried about graphical fidelty as the final detail, and extra content as post-launch updates, since no one ever played 7 days for the graphics in the slightest.

And it's honestly hilarious that there's talk of DLC before the bandits even get into the game. I'm already expecting the hate train to this post, but greed once again is plaguing the industry, and The Fun Pimps are no different, no matter how much praise you give them. I love 7 days to die, I don't love the decisions and vibes that the team started giving after A16.

 
This sudden release is obvious, its called placebo effect and throwing sand in your eyes (yet again). The 1.0 release is half of what alpha 22 was originally meant to be, but give it some pretty pictures and word it nicely and it looks like the next coming of christ. This is just to get your eyes off the fact it has been 11 years in alpha, so the word alpha is no longer present and they can finally call it "post launch updates". 

Truth is, they preferred spending time on HD assets and making the game more "twitch interactive" rather than focusing on what is easily the two biggest kickstarter promises, story and bandits. After making it all pretty for 11 years, they finally begin AI work for bandits instead of slowly doing it over time. (note that I personally don't care about bandits or story, I'm just pointing it out).

Could've worried about graphical fidelty as the final detail, and extra content as post-launch updates, since no one ever played 7 days for the graphics in the slightest.

And it's honestly hilarious that there's talk of DLC before the bandits even get into the game. I'm already expecting the hate train to this post, but greed once again is plaguing the industry, and The Fun Pimps are no different, no matter how much praise you give them. I love 7 days to die, I don't love the decisions and vibes that the team started giving after A16.
Honestly, the twitch integration thing always seemed redundant to me. I don't know why they added it, seems more like something that should be added post release, if at all.

I agree about the dlc. Espescially given like you said- the game isn't finished. Doesn't seem very fair to add.

The art assets confuse me as well. I figured and hoped they would redo some of the old very noticeable textures, like some of the ground textures, textures transparent at certain angles, tree models & textures, etc, but it's been mostly pallets and crates and random props that I've seen so far. I also personally don't see why they needed jiggle physics on models in the first place but thats just me, having a floppy belly or gore pieces really don't add anything imo 😅

I think there was something to be said for the old graphics too. Something about lower detail models with the fog and sounds of the old versions made it scarier to watch and play imo.

I can agree with you there, I don't care a ton for bandits or the story, I just mentioned them since they've been pushed quite a few times now.

 
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Honestly, the twitch integration thing always seemed redundant to me. I don't know why they added it, seems more like something that should be added post release, if at all.

I agree about the dlc. Espescially given like you said- the game isn't finished. Doesn't seem very fair to add.

The art assets confuse me as well. I figured and hoped they would redo some of the old very noticeable textures, like some of the ground textures, textures transparent at certain angles, tree models & textures, etc, but it's been mostly pallets and crates and random props that I've seen so far. I also personally don't see why they needed jiggle physics on models in the first place but thats just me, having a floppy belly or gore pieces really don't add anything imo 😅

I think there was something to be said for the old graphics too. Something about lower detail models with the fog and sounds of the old versions made it scarier to watch and play imo.

I can agree with you there, I don't really play the game for bandits or the story, I just mentioned them since they've been pushed quite a few times now.
Twitch integration is also all about the money, it helps generating viewership which makes it more likely for people to buy the game and is more enticing for streamers to play. But again, 7 days to die livestreams never picked up, and never will. You have a spike when a new alpha comes out, and that's it, all the more reason to keep the game in alpha ;)

The art assets is part of the throwing sand, they didnt just "improve" things, they redid a lot from scratch into a completely new high definition style, as if the game didn't have performance issues before with the low poly stuff. This is to give you the same impact as a well designed announcement post, it's shining a pearl in front of your eyes distracting you from the lack of content with each update (in ratio to the time it takes for the update to come out).

These new assets like you said, make the game feel very different, pair that up with the weather/lighting changes, and you get a completely different vibe. I personally don't mind the new vibe, I love taking screenshots of atmospheric stuff, but it's not something I really needed in 7 days to die in the first place (I started in A12 for reference).

Unfortunately, they can do this because they don't have competition. Their competition is not survival games, no other survival game does the game loop as well as 7 days does, they're not competing with those games, they're competing with themselves. And they bring you and me back with every Alpha release on the thought of empty promises. It works, so why not do it? I'm just ashamed that they actually fell lower than before and this time tried to blatantly lie to us and shine a not so shiny pearl this time.

 
I'm quite interested to learn what this New Challenge System will be.  I don't recognize it from the reveals in the forum here.  

 
2 hours ago, Makaroni95 said:

This sounds so much like Microsoft or Sony are forcing them to have a 1.0 release to go along with console release.  It is just too unexpected.  If they had said this before making this A22 thread, then maybe you could say it was planned.  But the timing suggests that this was not planned or intended.  It certainly isn't a great move after pushing back bandits so now they won't Even be there for the 1.0 release.  Not to mention all the other things that should really be finished before gold - editor improvements, bugs, story, etc.  I think this is a bad move.  If they are being forced to do this, then so be it.  If not, then it is a bad decision by them.

 
Does the impending release of 1.0 this mean that TFP has worked out the optimization challenges?
I love this game, but performance has always been something that we excused as being something that would be addressed when it was time to leave alpha.
I'm sure there's been minor performance improvements. And there may be more in the future. But I don't expect there to be major improvements. There is only so much that can be done to optimize a game that is voxel-based.  Ultimately, this is all about expectations. If your hopes were the same amount of zombies/enemies you would get in a non-voxel game, that was an unrealistic expectation. 

 
If I'm not confusing anything, then the Twitch integration feature was created by Fubar Prime in his spare time and did not belong to the main development stream.


It was created in his spare time so he could pitch it to the team but after it was accepted and integrated, from that time forth work on it counts as work on the game. Lathan hasn't spent the last couple years only working on it in his spare time. It should also be noted that Twitch integration will also directly lead to the event system mentioned in the roadmap for Q2 2025 so it isn't a feature that was designed solely to appeal to a narrow margin of players who utilize Twitch. Eventually it will enhance random events that help the world feel more alive for all players.

 
This sounds so much like Microsoft or Sony are forcing them to have a 1.0 release to go along with console release.  It is just too unexpected.  If they had said this before making this A22 thread, then maybe you could say it was planned.  But the timing suggests that this was not planned or intended.  It certainly isn't a great move after pushing back bandits so now they won't Even be there for the 1.0 release.  Not to mention all the other things that should really be finished before gold - editor improvements, bugs, story, etc.  I think this is a bad move.  If they are being forced to do this, then so be it.  If not, then it is a bad decision by them.
I imagine it was either this, or they didn't want to pull an Ark and sell DLC before the game was out of alpha.

D'oh! I spoke too soon!
Here's a 12 years post for you.
 




 
After making it all pretty for 11 years, they finally begin AI work for bandits instead of slowly doing it over time.
And here we go again with this false assumptions... I'm not a programmer, but even I, after all these years, know that the guys working on graphics are not the same ones that are working on AI. Look, I too am eager to see everything come to fruition, but the reasons this is taking this long are probably not what you're un-educately guessing.

Why the comments are turned off? Are you afraid of negative reception?
Why are you so inquisitive... were you planning on giving negative comments?  :heh:

 
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All my interest in A22 just evaporated.  Not feeling any interest right now in the next release.


Oof. Why? The version numbers and "Gold" and that were always just arbitrary labels. A22/v1 whatever they call it is still the update we've been expecting for the past 9 months or so.

 
Oof. Why? The version numbers and "Gold" and that were always just arbitrary labels. A22/v1 whatever they call it is still the update we've been expecting for the past 9 months or so.
No.  By jumping into full release before the game is ready, it just puts a bad taste in my mouth.  I don't like games being released before they are ready. And clearly this game still has things that should be finished before gold.

Also, making/versioning is important.  If they released alpha 1 as gold and said, "Don't worry, we plan to release a lot of updates and new content over then next decade.", do you think that would be just as good as calling them alphas, which they clearly were?  It is one thing to release patches and DLC after gold.  But the game itself should be finished before gold.

 
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