PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Blake_]

Its more about adding scope for something you can already do in the game, break blocks. There are thousands of doors in the POIs and going through and adding a lock difficulty to each one would add tons of scope and we're going gold ASAP so anything that doesn't fulfill a KS goal isn't getting added. Level designers spent a lot of time designing dungeons and the locked doors are locked for a reason, they best experience is following the path we made for you. Sure you can break the door and go another way, but we're not going to make it easy for you by adding lock picks.
At the end of the day I agreed it added scope without adding much to game play. Sorry we've been in alpha too long, we need to finish 7 days so we're not those guys in alpha for 10 years. Maybe the next game can have locks, we will have the basics in it would be easier then.

I disagree. Kenshi is an example of a game that stayed in alpha for 11 years and, while it has 5 times less buyers, the final result is good and the line drawn was good enough. 7dtd needs a 2021 release/dlcs. It is the best of the genre, and the very first of its kind. With great power comes great responsibility, which, in this case, is adding the good stuff, and more good stuff, and deeper good stuff until it becomes fun to a guy/gal to play alone for hundreds of ours and I repeat completely alone (no streaming).

Guppy is not in my explanation. That guy would not be bored playing alone 7dtd for 29487659823745 days.

 

[Roland]

Well, it's better to know sooner than later, right?

Here is what he said 2 weeks ago.

No we're not Bethesda... yet. Coding in followers in a fully destroyable world is a nightmare, and would subtract from the total entities alive in the world and the people (in general) want more zombies and more players not crappy NPCs that get stuck on stuff. I'd love to have followers but until we get believable bandits its not on the table at all.

yep, I said probably not followers, but will have npcs, or already do with traders. I'd rather say probably not and then suddenly we have it than promise it and never deliver.

Yes, bandits and enemy NPCs will come for sure, but friendly npcs you can recruit and follow you around? Thats a lot harder to deliver at an acceptable quality level so probably not this game.

 

[Aurelius]

Once again people are hating on adding content through modding like it's a bad thing. Instead of bemoaning that lock picks will have to be added by modding be glad that lock picks CAN be added by modding. It isn't that the devs are too lazy to add your own personal most wanted feature. It is that they created a framework that allows for many personal most wanted features to be added by creative individuals who also want them.
Lockpicks aren't going to be a vanilla part of 7 Days to Die. Go go Modders!!!

Maaaaybe.

That's assuming the hooks are still in there with A17 and moving forward. With A17 you guys have yanked a lot of code that modders were relying on...

-A

 

[Jackelmyer]

Hey Madmole,

Can you speak to a general feeling that A17+ is pushing more towards incremental progression system and coming away from a RNG momentary instant boost as 16- was? For example, finding a Mini Bike book or a Hunting Knife book when speaking of momentary instant boosts. Is 7 Days pushing more towards incremental game play in your opinion?

And if you feel the momentary instant boost feeling is still present, can you talk about what in A17+ gives you an equivalent feel to finding Armor Books, Weapon Books, and the mini bike book, and so on?

 

[Roland]

Maaaaybe.
That's assuming the hooks are still in there with A17 and moving forward. With A17 you guys have yanked a lot of code that modders were relying on...

-A

If he makes an acid bomb that quietly removes the lock then that should be the easiest thing in the world to change into being a lock pick. I think I could practically do it on imagination alone by squinting so that the acid bomb icon blurs out and I can tell myself it's a lock pick. Modders should have no problem with it.

 

[Roland]

Hey Madmole,
Can you speak to a general feeling that A17+ is pushing more towards incremental progression system and coming away from a RNG momentary instant boost as 16- was? For example, finding a Mini Bike book or a Hunting Knife book when speaking of momentary instant boosts. Is 7 Days pushing more towards incremental game play in your opinion?

And if you feel the momentary instant boost feeling is still present, can you talk about what in A17+ gives you an equivalent feel to finding Armor Books, Weapon Books, and the mini bike book, and so on?

 

[Jackelmyer]

Talked about them, but in a game where you can break any block fairly easily, it just doesn't make much sense.

For what it's worth, I'm with TFP on this. Considering what is still left on the "Core Game" list to do, lock picking is a bit of a daunting task. Any one of the prefabbers out there knows how challenging it is to go through and tweak all their prefabs because of a game change. A16 to A17 wasn't exactly a small example of this.

I'd rather see those static NPC's, Bandits, AI improvements, RWG improvements, more in game content, more quests, factions (which I believe is something you've mentioned), and so on. Lots left to do. Lots to improve upon.

And I'm pretty sure lock picks are already a modded thing in some of the Overhauls (at least one).

- - - Updated - - -

knock it off Trolland. lol. It is not. I'm not going to fight. I'm just looking to re-orient my thinking. If A17 isn't also a test bed for some features, then fine. But if the overall game play is changing, it's probably a fair thing to talk about. Get all the pissing and moaning on it over with, which, yeah, it will come. But just get it all out, get expectations reset, and we can all move on.

 

[ParaSyt]

Will that M60 add a walk speed debuff? I think it should. I see so many games cough *Far Cry* that make their machine guns fully auto sniper rifles that a malnourished 11 yr old can run around with no consequences.

 

[mr.devolver]

Here is what he said 2 weeks ago.

Thanks, I didn't catch those posts. So it's a very small chance that there will be NPC followers, I don't take it as a promise, but chance is still a chance. I wouldn't mind crappy NPC followers as long as they do the trick. Followers made by Bethesda had to be fixed by modders and everyone still loved it. Many things were crappy and then got improved over time. Remember disappearing minibikes? That required a lot of time and patience to fix. We are all patient as long as we know that the good stuff is actually on its way even if it takes its sweet long time to arrive.

 

[madmole]

Quick question for you Joel, because I think I'm ready for getting my dreams stomped on once and for all today... Will we ever get friendly NPCs besides traders, who can actually walk and shoot and accompany us like in Fallout games or was it just my wishful thinking this whole time?

Probably not because everyone on a server would want a companion, which would double the expense. Unity's character controllers eat CPU like crazy, so unless we write our own / license the source / pull some amazing optizations out of our butts I don't see it happening. Plus its one thing to make a bandit look good a follower might glitch bad on ladders or getting to player bases. I would say no but maybe down the road. We've hired some amazing guys so I'm starting to see the impossible become a reality which is a great sign. Why not just play MP?

I agree it would be really cool, but I don't know that our small team is up for that with this game. We are working towards it though.

 

[madmole]

Maaaaybe.
That's assuming the hooks are still in there with A17 and moving forward. With A17 you guys have yanked a lot of code that modders were relying on...

-A

LOL I don't think so. I'd venture to say that the new codebase can do 98% of what the old did, but the old could do 10% of what the new can.

 

[Aurelius]

If he makes an acid bomb that quietly removes the lock then that should be the easiest thing in the world to change into being a lock pick. I think I could practically do it on imagination alone by squinting so that the acid bomb icon blurs out and I can tell myself it's a lock pick. Modders should have no problem with it.

Your argument is predicated on the false assumption that an acid bomb behaves the same as lockpicking does! Similar (NOT identical) result, and completely different mechanics.

Not a deal breaker, and hopefully modders can rescue the concept.

-A

 

[madmole]

If he makes an acid bomb that quietly removes the lock then that should be the easiest thing in the world to change into being a lock pick. I think I could practically do it on imagination alone by squinting so that the acid bomb icon blurs out and I can tell myself it's a lock pick. Modders should have no problem with it.

It would be super easy to just make a lock pick model (gun) that does high damage to blocks with a certain tag (coming soon in a build near you). THe harder part is having it UNLOCK locked doors. And to deal with that in MP raids. But breaking a secure to an insecure one is just damage. You just have to make sure it doesn't deal big damage to entities/stone etc.

 

[madmole]

For what it's worth, I'm with TFP on this. Considering what is still left on the "Core Game" list to do, lock picking is a bit of a daunting task. Any one of the prefabbers out there knows how challenging it is to go through and tweak all their prefabs because of a game change. A16 to A17 wasn't exactly a small example of this.
I'd rather see those static NPC's, Bandits, AI improvements, RWG improvements, more in game content, more quests, factions (which I believe is something you've mentioned), and so on. Lots left to do. Lots to improve upon.

And I'm pretty sure lock picks are already a modded thing in some of the Overhauls (at least one).

- - - Updated - - -

As would TFP and most players IMO. There is always going to be 500 "wouldn't it be cool if" features but we need to stay focused on finishing. Not adding another way to skin the cat. Theres 500 ways to break blocks in this game we don't need another. Not that it isn't cool, but confusing wants and needs here.

 

[madmole]

Will that M60 add a walk speed debuff? I think it should. I see so many games cough *Far Cry* that make their machine guns fully auto sniper rifles that a malnourished 11 yr old can run around with no consequences.

It adds a full emcumbrance to a str 10 character and breaks both legs if a skinny str 1 noob picks it up I don't know yet, we're just getting it in but yeah if not a speed debuff a stamina debuff to aim like the others, if not both.

 

[madmole]

Thanks, I didn't catch those posts. So it's a very small chance that there will be NPC followers, I don't take it as a promise, but chance is still a chance. I wouldn't mind crappy NPC followers as long as they do the trick. Followers made by Bethesda had to be fixed by modders and everyone still loved it. Many things were crappy and then got improved over time. Remember disappearing minibikes? That required a lot of time and patience to fix. We are all patient as long as we know that the good stuff is actually on its way even if it takes its sweet long time to arrive.

I'm pretty sure modders can add followers very easily. Just change their AI in xml on who they target. The thing is we can't ship "crappy followers", but modders can. We need everything to be high quality as possible and there is about 50% of the game that isn't good enough yet, so we have a lot of polishing to do. Time flies so fast too we need to be realistic.

 

[unholyjoe]

Time flies so fast too we need to be realistic.

R e a l i s t i c?

in a gaming world?

your last part is the realistic aspect... "time flies so fast"

 

[stallionsden]

I'm pretty sure modders can add followers very easily. Just change their AI in xml on who they target. The thing is we can't ship "crappy followers", but modders can. We need everything to be high quality as possible and there is about 50% of the game that isn't good enough yet, so we have a lot of polishing to do. Time flies so fast too we need to be realistic.

For that to happen tfp must re add the ai task follow which tfp removed in a17. So yes followers are stupid at the minute lol and just stand there. Sometimes shoot sometimes don't. You can change the ai to target different things but they don't move as we have tested.

 

[mr.devolver]

Probably not because everyone on a server would want a companion, which would double the expense. Unity's character controllers eat CPU like crazy, so unless we write our own / license the source / pull some amazing optizations out of our butts I don't see it happening. Plus its one thing to make a bandit look good a follower might glitch bad on ladders or getting to player bases. I would say no but maybe down the road. We've hired some amazing guys so I'm starting to see the impossible become a reality which is a great sign. Why not just play MP?
I agree it would be really cool, but I don't know that our small team is up for that with this game. We are working towards it though.

Thank you very much for explanation. Honestly, I used to play online a lot, but I was discouraged by hackers who ruined the game and then I started playing alone in singleplayer and I really enjoy that every time when we get a new major update, but SP does get lonely after some time. Sometimes I play private coop game with my niece, I also got an extra copy of the game which I'd like to give to my other niece if she's interested. Admittedly it's more fun in multiplayer when you play with people who actually don't want to ruin the game, but unfortunately my nieces don't have that much time like they used to have before.

I think those performance issues wouldn't be that much of a problem in these environments like singleplayer or 2-3 coop multiplayer hosted on my pc if we had couple of NPC followers, they would be like couple of extra players, that wouldn't really kill the game, right?

Just an idea, but to counter the performance issue, maybe to convince NPC to follow a real person, the player would have to hire them with duke coins and there would be a limited amount of allowed companions at the same time on the server which could be a server option so that server admins could easily set it up to match the possibilities of their hardware.

Either way, I would love it if your amazing team could do this magic for all of us, I believe you guys could make it happen eventually and I'm sure everyone would love it too not just you or me. You already admitted that when you said "everyone on a server would want a companion". :smile-new:

 

[Guppycur]

re: Lockpicking

...it'd be a simple matter of holding an item and if focused on a locked object, having a %chance to unlock it. 3 stages of locked:

Locked - can be picked

Locked - can't be picked

Unlocked

...and quite frankly, the middle one is optional... just make it take time and a lot of noise picking the lock, to prevent people from trying again should it fail.

No sense in worrying about damages. If the lock is in an LCB area, it's unpickable. Dumb, like LCB's are, but whatever, that's part of the game, so needs to be accounted for as well. <Shrug>