PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[TSBX]

MM earned a bunch of XP flipping houses and invested that into the Game Design perk.

 

[Weazelsun]

Hundreds of hours on 17.2 - never once found the chassis for ANY vehicle whatsoever. Not once. Found parts. Only twice mind you and never in a situation where I actually got to use those parts. Even if it is on the loot list somewhere, that does not constitute you being able to assemble it.

Tip: Pass-n-Gas stations usually have boxes in them. Use an axe, and then you can loot them. Ok, yes... it isn't as simple as perking into "Grease Monkey" but if one doesn't want to perk into it. They do still have an alternate way of obtaining a vehicle. Traders I've found have minibike chassis and handlebars usually. It all depends on the player of course whether or not, they want to rely on looting to obtain a vehicle or using perk points into that particular skill. You do bring up a good point, either I can choose to rely on looting to eventually find a chasiss or go to a trader or perk into that skill and make one myself without having to rely on looting.

 

[Grue]

I'm starting to think that you're experiencing some kind of bug. Those textures are already accessible...

I would really like to get the bookshelf pattern back, I really miss that one for organizing my shelves that hold books and such.

BTW, someone please tell me they are getting rid of those retarded perk magazines?

 

[Gamida]

I do have my imagination of how I would like some of the game to work but no need to mention it now. My one thing about this game that I hoped to do and the main reason I bought it was for the co-op. My thought was join a server, join a little group and build a base and survive. Everyone contributing (as equally as possible), fighting off wandering hordes that happened by and getting together for the main one to defend the community. When it goes gold I hope that can still happen.

I just wanna play man, I just wanna play.

 

[khzmusik]

I am honestly saddened by the fact that it has come to this. What *is* the horde night? An event that spawns a bunch of zombies which you farm if you feel like it? Well, unfortunately, that's exactly what it is. It is optional.

I have no idea what you're talking about. Horde night in A17 is far, far less "optional" than it was in A16.

In A16 you could just go underground and avoid the horde altogether. (I did this pretty consistently.) Now that zombies can dig, you can't do that any more. You have to fight the horde.

Yes, there are ways to build a horde base that cheeses the AI and makes fighting the horde much easier. But that existed in A16 too, and it's not any easier in A17 (different sure, but not easier).

Also - not directed at you - but I feel the people who are complaining that zombies are XP farms, have too short memories to remember that zombies in A16 and earlier were mainly loot farms. Personally I think removing zombie loot in A17 was a step in the right direction.

Now, I do believe the game is still unbalanced, and that the XP from zombie kills still needs to be nerfed somewhat (yes, in A17.2 too, though it was worse in earlier alphas). But that doesn't mean the game is moving in the wrong direction.

 

[DaVegaNL]

faatal has posted that there was a bug that prevented zombies and animals from moving as fast as they should and he has fixed it. Not sure if that will be in 17.3 but for sure 18

Great! Doesn't matter if it's 17.3 or 18, since both will come out within the next two months, right?

 

[mr.natural]

..., the horde should be something which you have to defend against. .... [/b]

I see players on servers log off ALL the time when bloodmoon starts. You'll never prevent that from happening. So wishfull thinking, only with SP you already have to face bloodmoon.

 

[DaVegaNL]

A18 is looking to taste like good old 7 Days again...
But hunger continues as week after week goes by and we now into the third(ish) month since last major update ?

I thought the process of updating from here on wards was going to be swifter & easier etc. I can see a lot of art and coding being done (probably yet to be done as well) can not help thinking we looking at least 6 months till A18 hits us which feels agonising considering the year(and over?) we waited for A17 to land.

Yep. A18 was going to be released much faster. In the first half of 2019...

 

[AtomicUs5000]

I see players on servers log off ALL the time when bloodmoon starts. You'll never prevent that from happening. So wishfull thinking, only with SP you already have to face bloodmoon.

Good point. Even more of a reason to lean towards a reward for surviving horde night. If that reward is important enough to where it is necessary, or at least very important to progress, then nobody will be logging off.

 

[hotpoon]

I think it would be really cool if TFP could add a swamp biome, with things like moss-covered trees and overgrown decrepit mansions. And of course, gators.
And maybe we could get swamp zombies, living skeletons dripping with old flesh and rotted plants, and that's always cool.

And maybe a theme song:

These are great ideas. I wish you guys had seen my thread about other biomes a while back

https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?109060-Other-biomes

 

[Damocles]

My main grieve with the wasteland and burned forest biomes: they make absolutely no sense, and additionally have this annoying atmospheric fog effect.

Wasteland looks like an idea straight copied from Fallout (there it makes sense as the games name implies)

In 7DtD, there was some kind of biological outbreak. Where in world does the (nuclear) destruction come from?

Its a "Walking Dead" world, not a "Nuclear War" world.

The burned forest would make sense if it does not smolder anymore. Currently its displayed as a burned forest right after a fire, perpetually. It just makes no sense outside an actual dynamic forest-fire scenario.

Since there are technical limitations on how many biomes can be in the game, I would throw those two out and use more interesting and FITTING biomes for this worlds scenario.

 

[Poutre]

Since there are technical limitations on how many biomes can be in the game, I would throw those two out and use more interesting and FITTING biomes for this worlds scenario.

Wasteland makes sense dude, there are hazmat suits, radiaton and navezgane contains a city framework in a radiated zone.

Which says they have no intention of dropping wastelands. I think adding a new biome is a good idea, but removing these two is just bad. This game has no real story yet, how do you assume there was no nuclear explosion involved ? Maybe they just fought zombies by nuking infected countrys.

 

[Poutre]

Ravenhearst is good because it has more content, but i don't think i really care for a line of text appearing at the bottom screen, which means i just won a 0.5 bonus efficiency. I mean it's ok to have it, but is it a must-have ? I don't think so.

 

[Haidrgna]

Heh. I'm there part time (I have a real job, too. =) and I'm not complaining.It's certainly interesting because "design, technical design, game data and balancing" has me all over the place.

100+ book perks + the research / technical design to be able to task programmers with the required code to make it possible to do all the effects can be a daunting task until you break it down into manageable parts and a workflow.

If it was easy everyone would do it, right?

There are mathy parts like this that some people find off-putting but you need something like that or it would have been impossible to do any gamestaged spawns. Pre-generating this keeps the actual spawning code "simple" (there are plenty of gotchas as is) and separates the game data from the code so it can be changed (or modded) easily.

You should ask the coders if maybe the entitygroups.xml groups can work the same way as loot.xml or the rwgmixer.xml. Will save you a ton of mathy stuff and a ton of xml code if groups can list other groups so code does not need to be replicated. And while you are at it, maybe ask for the possibilty of an emtpy list so we can get rid of the dummy spawns as well.

 

[Sakurambo]

Wasteland looks like an idea straight copied from Fallout (there it makes sense as the games name implies)

In 7DtD, there was some kind of biological outbreak. Where in world does the (nuclear) destruction come from?

Its a "Walking Dead" world, not a "Nuclear War" world.

actually the flu-zombie pandemic appened after ww3 according to the little lore provided

so the wasteland make perfect sense

 

[RestInPieces]

I have no idea what you're talking about. Horde night in A17 is far, far less "optional" than it was in A16.
In A16 you could just go underground and avoid the horde altogether. (I did this pretty consistently.) Now that zombies can dig, you can't do that any more. You have to fight the horde.

Yes, there are ways to build a horde base that cheeses the AI and makes fighting the horde much easier. But that existed in A16 too, and it's not any easier in A17 (different sure, but not easier).

Also - not directed at you - but I feel the people who are complaining that zombies are XP farms, have too short memories to remember that zombies in A16 and earlier were mainly loot farms. Personally I think removing zombie loot in A17 was a step in the right direction.

Now, I do believe the game is still unbalanced, and that the XP from zombie kills still needs to be nerfed somewhat (yes, in A17.2 too, though it was worse in earlier alphas). But that doesn't mean the game is moving in the wrong direction.

Sorry for the long post. Don't worry I am not bashing A17 or anything. As I say in my A17 feedback posts, for me, it had both positive changes and negative changes, with flaws carrying over from previous versions (it's an alpha after all). This belongs to the 3rd category. (You could still hide underground in .0 if you went deep enough, haven't tried it in .2 don't think that changed since .0).

Of course it was optional in A16 too, god knows how many underground debates we had here and vehicles were still a thing after all (I think the only time when it wasn't optional was before they increased the voxel vertical space and zombies could also somewhat dig, just don't remember if blood moons had been implemented then).

Again in A17 you don't have to fight the horde - you really don't, if you can just sprint a little with the A17 player increased speed and get away. I didn't say a word because they said they will add more speed settings which I thought would alleviate this problem, but apparently now there is a speed bug which I hope will finally solve it when it's fixed.

I don't tend to complain about problems which are obviously temporary, but about what seem to be design decisions. For example the AI will be further refined and it's not something fixed on the spot, so there is no point in complaining about it, other than giving some feedback and be done with it. The horde being optional unfortunately seems like a design decision, since there are always ways to get away and not fight, like vehicles, which don't have any real cons or cost.

Removing zombie loot was definitely a step in the right direction. And making them not worth farming for XP, will also be one, imo. Zombies were XP farms in A16 only after zombie kill XP was added. Before that abomination was added, which turned the zombie apocalypse in a human apocalypse for zombies, you only gained weapon skills when you hit them, which was great, because it was rewarding, but not enough to make you actively hunt them.

Finally, people that are complaining about zombies being XP farms particularly in A17 don't always have such short memories. Even after zombie kill XP was added in A16 and zombies became XP farms, skills were compartmentalized and the game still pushed you towards different activities, as it was still not really worth to throw 100 points in e.g. mining without actually mining. This, with A17 changed, and with most recipes being tied to perks now and zombie kill XP enabling you to max anything (became more globally useful), it is no wonder people started complaining about having to grind zombies. Thankfully MM said they will balance XP sources further, and revamp some recipes so we can only wait and see.

I see players on servers log off ALL the time when bloodmoon starts. You'll never prevent that from happening. So wishfull thinking, only with SP you already have to face bloodmoon.

Gawd, this again! Ok.

First of all they recently added an option for blood moons. So balancing the game according to players that are "peculiar enough" to not choose a server without blood moons and STILL log out during blood moons is -guess what-, at best.

You can avoid events by logging out in countless co-op games. Do you know what developers do about it? Send goons to your house to rough you up if you log out? They do nothing of course - because they are co-op games. Should the devs make something optional for people while playing the game, because people can... stop playing the game and avoid it? And when you think that these people log out during an already optional thing, feel free to draw your own conclusions.

What you say reminds me of gazz - "we won't add POI events/exclusive loot because the game is voxel and players in MP servers may have destroyed the POIs". To balance the game for every single MP scenario, no matter how improbable it is, is madness imo. It is just not worth the sacrifice to give up things for that small of a probability. Except if you find a better solution to go about it.

 

[Pegasus]

Oh my god ... what mod is that????? Released or in development?

 

[Pegasus]

Probably why it's a mod and not vanilla. Couple that with the medieval mod or fantasy mod and you have a whole NEW game.
Post was intended to celebrate the awesomeness of 7days modability, no need to bunch your underwear that tightly.

You know, this post (and I know, I'm dealing with older posts from yesterday ... sue me) kind of encapsulates why we are all driving Mad Mole and crew nuts. None of us want exactly the same thing.

But, it also demonstrates the versatility of the game in its modded versions. Because the possibilities are nearly limitless.

If you don't like how the vanilla game plays, you want something more or less or different, that's where the modders come in. There's such a diverse, talented group of them that there's a good chance that whatever it is you're looking for is out there. And if it's not, well, maybe mention it, because maybe they just haven't gotten there yet. Or learn to mod, and make the game exactly what you want it to be.

This just highlights the importance of a solid base game, that's in a final version. Right now, the game is in too much flux, so the modders spend hours and hours and (God only knows how many more) hours making their version of the game ... and then the guts of the system changes and everything goes flying right out the window. I can only imagine how frustrating that is, because I know how frustrating it is from my side when a favorite mod stops working, and I'm not the one who spent a jillion hours making it in the first place. I'm just grateful that they somehow find the time and energy to remake it all again. And it's probably why some are getting a wee bit cranky.

But think how much nicer it will be once the guts of the game are stable, and they can maybe offer some actual modder support (whatever that means.... I'm envisioning vodka and snacks).

The more I think of it, the more I realize why Mad Mole and group talk about the first 20 to 30 hours ... because that's about how long a brand new player will most likely play before starting to hear about mods, and multiplayer servers ... and they drift away from the base game into the modded world. And never wander out again ... I think the mod community needs a slogan ... something like "Players check in, but they can never leave." or "Welcome to the dark side." LOL

I admit, I was insulted and hurt when that first statement came out ... but then I realized that it's mostly true, and mostly makes sense.

Anyway, I haven't had coffee, so I hope this made sense and wasn't snarky.

 

[Pegasus]

More players only mean that you can search the same area in a shorter time but not that more loot will be dropped.It doesn't matter if 10 players or a singple player loot a house. The loot stays the same.

As mentioned before, the best option is to use the zombie respawn in buildings like the Doggos. With "The Huntsman" on 5 you get up to 60 bones out of this building. That's 60 glue / tape. You would have to search a lot of trash cans and garbage bags to find 60 tapes.

Okay, I'm glad it works well for you. But you do not speak for everyone, or for every situation.

You have 20 to 40 people on a server. There are maybe five or so buildings that generate those bones every five days. Do the math on that and you'll see there's a problem. People have different game situations. Those who are saying it is a problem, whether it fits your definition of problem or not, are not wrong, lazy, or stupid. Just different.

You may not mean to sound that way, but you are giving off a definite I'm right and everyone who doesn't agree with me is stupid vibe.

 

[meganoth]

I don't tend to complain about problems which are obviously temporary, but about what seem to be design decisions. For example the AI will be further refined and it's not something fixed on the spot, so there is no point in complaining about it, other than giving some feedback and be done with it. The horde being optional unfortunately seems like a design decision, since there are always ways to get away and not fight, like vehicles, which don't have any real cons or cost.

Excellent post. But I'm not sure the last word is said on vehicles. MM has voiced his idea of buying your way out of horde night with a lot of money and such an idea would be ridiculous when you could just drive around for free. (Like you I see logging off as something outside of the domain of what a game should or can control)

Finally, people that are complaining about zombies being XP farms particularly in A17 don't always have such short memories. Even after zombie kill XP was added in A16 ...

small correction, zombie xp was in the game at least since A15.

Okay, I'm glad it works well for you. But you do not speak for everyone, or for every situation.
You have 20 to 40 people on a server.

Vanilla game is getting balanced for up to 8 players. If you go outside this range you should expect to have to rebalance through modding.