PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

  • A18 Stable is Out!

    Votes: 2 66.7%

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    Votes: 1 33.3%
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[melee weapons will penetrate bars] As soon as zombies melee penetrates them.
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That would be so cool! Think about it. Bullets penetrate iron bars already. So you can hang back in relative safety and pick them off through the bars. Melee through iron bars would be more dangerous, more get-off-your-ass, than what we have now, especially if the zombies can reach through.

This is actually my biggest hope for the spear. It’ll be nice to have the better range and the ability to throw, but what I really want from the spear (or something) is to poke through iron bars.

 
Hey MadMole You mentioned vehicle mods for A19. Would this including more than 2 passengers? It woudl greatly help with groups to not have to roll out in a convoy, esp if zombies are attracted to sound (or will be?).

 
Hey MadMole You mentioned vehicle mods for A19. Would this including more than 2 passengers? It woudl greatly help with groups to not have to roll out in a convoy, esp if zombies are attracted to sound (or will be?).
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This would not be a good idea. It already has been discovered that passengers riding in jeep can xray. Untill that problem is fixed i wouldnt recommended adding any additional passengers to any vehicle. ATM on our server we made jeeps: driver ride only to prevent passengers from exploiting this bug to locate bases underground.

 
I'll let the cat out on this. Zombies can get aggro when hit and nearly run now. It can go from slow to a brisk walk to nearly sprinting. It makes combat a lot scarier because they can suddenly sort of lunge at you. Hitting them again seems to sometimes slow them back down, but it is very cool. Sorry if your an always walk guy. I mean they don't just turn feral if thats what you reading here, mostly its a small increase in speed, just enough to make you feel a little uneasy and cause them to close the gap and hit you a bit more.
On the plus side, (IMO both are a huge plus, zombies were zero threat before and I didn't need armor at all) players now have a glancing blow so as you swipe your sword across a guy it might hit his arm and then hit his face for the intended hit. If you miss by a milimeter you will get a glancing blow, so less missed head shots that result in nothing at all, and it kind of helps make combat feel less binary.
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This is fantastic news. Not only does both changes make the combat more dynamic, the glancing blow will help with the frustration of having to be so precise in frantic combat.

I really appreciate Dying Light's combat for the nuances like the glancing blow and speed changes you revealed here. I was hoping to see some of these systems brought into 7 Days.

Thanks for the hard work Fun Pimps.

 
Im starting to feel like buying perks for things u can find is useless. Dont get me wrong, id rather it be like that. I hate having to spend a point to get vehicles currently.
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All a matter of priorities. If you don't want to go deep into Intellect - don't. Just keep in mind that there are well over 200 readable things to find so it will take a while to find All The Things.

 
We won't make every LBD fan happy but I do believe that we've addressed a ton of concerns and the perk rebalance is playing great. It was criticized because there was no choice and too many must haves, now there is choice and specialization is a no brainer and a strong desire to loot. Perks augment abilities more than just unlock things and all the best gear is looted now. I think as a whole its the best version of the game by far, and I'm anxious to get it out. Balance is better than ever too.
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Semi-recent player (A13) long time lurker of the forums (and occasionally provider of mild sass) - this pleases me to see a redefining of perks and skills. Up until A15/A16 I had vast spreadsheets of "best spend of points for skills/unlocks" to encompass my partner and my play styles since we mostly play as a duo together. His superior experience and skill with killing and armour made more sense for him to spec into those perks whilst I, usually the cook/gardener/healer covered the bulk of the rest and other miscellaneous crafting with limited points for weapon skills.

A17 was a bit of a challenge with a new perk system It then instantly became 'boring' since as you say there were too many "must have" in order to progress better in game - although I did find that you get enough triple pocket mods you didn't need any points in Pack Mule so there was subtle differences in our builds but pretty much in order to progress the same way we both needed many of the same skills to do so.

I like the idea of spec'ing into a class - this was one of the great things about A16 Ravenhearst that I liked which fostered a bit more of a community play for MP servers. Each person had a role to play to make the survival work - builders, security guards, chefs, gardeners and medics. There is an option to pickup a second (and craft a third/subsequent) classes later on so that you could technically 'have it all' or be able to cook without the chef being online but it also helped spread the quests around when you need one of the bazillion extra weapons in the game.

I'm excited to see what A18 brings (although more paints/textures and the option to have a coloured/dyed vehicle plzkthx) and love everything that has progressed in my limited time in the whole process. Keep up the good work. ^_^

 
This would not be a good idea. It already has been discovered that passengers riding in jeep can xray. Untill that problem is fixed i wouldnt recommended adding any additional passengers to any vehicle. ATM on our server we made jeeps: driver ride only to prevent passengers from exploiting this bug to locate bases underground.
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Did you see where I said A19? Figuring they could address this issue in 2 alphas...

 
Did you see where I said A19? Figuring they could address this issue in 2 alphas...
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IKR hope for the best and expect the worse: 2 alphas really? Its been how many alphas and xray is not completely fixed yet?

sure whats 2 more... THEY GOT THIS.

 
I'll let the cat out on this. Zombies can get aggro when hit and nearly run now. It can go from slow to a brisk walk to nearly sprinting. It makes combat a lot scarier because they can suddenly sort of lunge at you. Hitting them again seems to sometimes slow them back down, but it is very cool. Sorry if your an always walk guy. I mean they don't just turn feral if thats what you reading here, mostly its a small increase in speed, just enough to make you feel a little uneasy and cause them to close the gap and hit you a bit more.
On the plus side, (IMO both are a huge plus, zombies were zero threat before and I didn't need armor at all) players now have a glancing blow so as you swipe your sword across a guy it might hit his arm and then hit his face for the intended hit. If you miss by a milimeter you will get a glancing blow, so less missed head shots that result in nothing at all, and it kind of helps make combat feel less binary.
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That sounds just like Guppycur's modlet. LOL.

 
Occlusion is coming along. Today I think I finally have it to the point of it being visually clean (little to no object popping, no shadow popping) and mostly performance neutral when tracking low amounts of objects (occludees).
The problem with occlusion is it adds some CPU and a little GPU overhead, so it can actually reduce performance in the worse case. If you are outside and can see most of the world, then not much is hidden, so the overhead will be higher than the gains from not drawing a few things. If you go inside or have a wall in your face and 95% of the occludees are hidden, the you get some FPS gains. The more objects that are tracked, the more lopsided the best and worst cases become, so a careful balance has to be reached for what it worth occluding.
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Thanks for the info faatal. I've read a lot of people in unity forums with performance problems implementing occlusion mainly because Unity documentation is scarce. It's possible to ask support from Unity crew? Do you expect better performance from occlusion in next builds?

 
Occlusion is coming along. Today I think I finally have it to the point of it being visually clean (little to no object popping, no shadow popping) and mostly performance neutral when tracking low amounts of objects (occludees).
The problem with occlusion is it adds some CPU and a little GPU overhead, so it can actually reduce performance in the worse case. If you are outside and can see most of the world, then not much is hidden, so the overhead will be higher than the gains from not drawing a few things. If you go inside or have a wall in your face and 95% of the occludees are hidden, the you get some FPS gains. The more objects that are tracked, the more lopsided the best and worst cases become, so a careful balance has to be reached for what it worth occluding.
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Yeah, it's not as easy as it sounds.

I was confused - the occlusion was implemented before A17?

As far as i understand, now there is a shortage of algorithms designed for games with a dynamic environment? Or is it related to some specific features of 7dtd?

 
I'll let the cat out on this. Zombies can get aggro when hit and nearly run now. It can go from slow to a brisk walk to nearly sprinting. It makes combat a lot scarier because they can suddenly sort of lunge at you. Hitting them again seems to sometimes slow them back down, but it is very cool. Sorry if your an always walk guy. I mean they don't just turn feral if thats what you reading here, mostly its a small increase in speed, just enough to make you feel a little uneasy and cause them to close the gap and hit you a bit more.
On the plus side, (IMO both are a huge plus, zombies were zero threat before and I didn't need armor at all) players now have a glancing blow so as you swipe your sword across a guy it might hit his arm and then hit his face for the intended hit. If you miss by a milimeter you will get a glancing blow, so less missed head shots that result in nothing at all, and it kind of helps make combat feel less binary.
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The Romero fans among the players will not like that. The zombies in Romero movies are slow and have no emotions. Accordingly, they can't get angry.

I know of players who have put the feral zombies on jog and still they are nervous every time they meet such a jogging zombie. They won't be happy about this change either.

In my game I kept the speed of the zombies at standard. I've got used to the running zombies but they usually don't show up in the game until I already have a good armor and points in pain tolerance. I need the armor and pain tolerance because I fight 90% of the fights in close combat to save ammo.

I hope that you can make armor in A18 as early as possible. Also, you shouldn't start bleeding because of every nudge from a zombie, as is currently the case in A17. That you constantly bleed although you have a full steel armor is really annoying.

One question I ask myself is how it behaves with the zombies waiting up in the ceiling and falling down when you enter the room. They get little damage because they fall from the ceiling. Do they get angry and run faster towards you ?

 
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I was thinking, would it be possible to implement a message when you successfully fight off or resist a disease? I feel like the disease system is a little opaque right now, and having some satisfying feedback when your immune system procs would be helpful and satisfying.

I feel that if you invested in the immune system perk, and it failed and you still got sick, you'd think "what a useless perk tree!"; however, if you saw all the times it DID work, it would be way cooler and you'd feel more comfortable about the times it didn't.

 
I feel that if you invested in the immune system perk, and it failed and you still got sick, you'd think "what a useless perk tree!"; however, if you saw all the times it DID work, it would be way cooler and you'd feel more comfortable about the times it didn't.
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The same applies to the intake of antibiotics. You never know if they will work or not. So it would be good to get more information about whether the infection is getting worse or better. I know of players who panicked and swallowed all the medications they had because they didn't get any information.

 
Other Unity based games have similar issues. Perhaps the problem is rooted there?
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This problem has also affected Space Engineers for years which uses an entirely different game engine, havok for physics and vrage2 for graphics to be precise. The problem isn't with unity but with lighting advanced voxel engines in general.

Reason for edit: Not enough coffee :-)

 
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