PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[madmole]

Hey Madmole, have you ever had thoughts on a power tool that is better than the wrench for speeding up harvesting cars? I did notice in A17 it slowed down and was curious, i've always wanted like a portable powered ratchet to tear stuff apart, i know not too realistic but i think it would help, and when it comes to electricity, I hope one day we can get a perk book to unlock bigger generators that only need gas and not engines inside of them to run.

Even a ratchet would be faster than a monkey wrench by a long shot. Yes we've talked about it, maybe A19 so the harvest guy has some progression.

 

[madmole]

Hey, just watched the video demonstrating the books. Well done! Correct me if I'm wrong, but things I immediately noticed different were cloud movement and the music. And was the bunny cuter? I think the animations were better as well? The perk tree seemed different as well? Not grouped like it used to be.And I'm liking the higher resolution icons.

Sometimes just replacing one thing makes other things look better. New sounds can make a game feel way more fun, even though its the same exact gameplay, new anims can make the AI seem smarter or combat more fluid, even though under the hood is the same. Its a lot of smoke and mirrors sometimes and a bit of code too.

 

[madmole]

I'd like to see the return of more wandering Z's in the biomes, and in the city POIs, plus the threat of a better targetted wandering horde... I rarely encounter those threats anymore.

A few more tier 5 quests would be good too, coz currently once you're fit for 5 it can get very repetitive very quickly.

I don't get this desire for more zeds in cities. I go break into a POI and every time half a dozen zeds from outside start trying to bust into the POI and its annoying as hell worrying about getting sandwiched.

Tier 3 is kind of nuts sometimes, the bear den is a no go without bullets.

 

[Roland]

Well, I’ll be. I have no memory of that at all.

ZombieHorde WINNER!

 

[Haidrgna]

That makes sense. diff prefab, diff name but the code is there, well, parts of it anyway. Whoops.

Well looking forward to see the real deal when we get to A18. Any chance of some lifting of the veil while we impatiently wait

 

[SnowDog1942]

I don't get this desire for more zeds in cities.

Because this is a zombie game and zombies are cool and fun to smash in the head. Also makes it bit more challenging.

 

[Roland]

I know the icon is there, but it doesn't appear until you're already very low (around 60ish I think). I'd rather know if I have "room" to eat right now so I can declutter my inventory. I don't think a couple little bars is really very much clutter. Plus, it's not clutter if the information it's displaying is important. Oh well, I guess I'll have to mod it in, though I still think it's a mistake to not include it by default, I think most players would want to know a basic piece of info like their current hunger/thirst in a survival game.

The blue stamina bar max = hunger. As long as your stamina max is all the way to the right you know your hunger is greater or equal to 100. As soon as your stamina max dips below and reads 95 or 90 or 85 etc you know your exact hunger by glancing at the screen.

Yes, a warning pops up when your hunger goes below 75 I believe but you’ll be able to tell immediately by looking at the stamina bar as soon as it goes below 100 (or whatever the max is later on)

 

[Guppycur]

I don't get this desire for more zeds in cities. I go break into a POI and every time half a dozen zeds from outside start trying to bust into the POI and its annoying as hell worrying about getting sandwiched.
Tier 3 is kind of nuts sometimes, the bear den is a no go without bullets.

Really? It made cities dangerous. Now they're just... Loot boxes closer together.

Honestly surprised you don't feel the same.

 

[madmole]

Just a thought... it can be problematic not knowing where the outer border of a "Stay Within" quest exists, for two reasons - you sometimes want to back away from a stream of Z's, but without terminating the quest by stepping out of the quest zone (yes, I'm aware of the changing colour indicator wrt this).Additionally, I've lost gear that I've stashed 'outside' of the quest building, but evidently within the border of a quest zone. A storage box I'd placed and partly filled with loot got wiped when I activated a quest without knowing the range of ground this quest covered.

From a looting point of view, it would be nice if we could stash loot somewhere in/within/outside the border of a quest zone without losing it once the quest is activated / reactivated.

Maybe a quest border can be shown, much like a Land Claim Block shows its area of effect... something to consider anyway.

Still my #1 game, and it's Beta ffs!

That would be immersion breaking to see a border of every house or even one house you are questing in. Its easy enough to NOT store things in POIs you aren't living at. I put my storage chests in the middle of the road in SP and mark it on my map and collect them later after I get a vehicle.

If you need to store things at a POI, put a bedroll down.

 

[madmole]

Yes, this! That's one thing that I like so much about 7 Days to Die, that the content and options drive me to devise an efficient plan of attack for achieving a growing list of personal objectives; when suddenly the game reveals some new distraction to me and I have to scramble to reprioritize my whole plan all over again! Great fun!

Yes I think time management with random distractions combined with impeding doom is a great formula for fun.

 

[madmole]

100%. The game is an amazing time sink and everytime you get something done there's 2 new things you wanna do and it never ends.
Damn, I honestly can't wait to play. Only thing that saddens me is that it will probably be a bugfest on early stages of experimental and the stable release will probably be at least one month later, which leads me to think i'll have to wait 'til september at the very least "to play seriously". :miserable:

I don't think so. I haven't experienced any serious bugs. I'm 26 hours into my current play test.

 

[madmole]

Back on pg 841 MM mentioned possible random stats for mods, post a18(?). Then SnowDog1942 asked how that might work for say the 8x Scope.
Couple really realistic variables could be Clarity & Accuracy.

Glass varies quite a bit between a $125 & a $1500 scope. So poor Clarity could be shown as slightly darker, or 'slightly fuzzy', or even possibly scratches/cracks. (thinking the 'overlay' that pops up when zoomed in could have a few different quality lvls)

Accuracy could have a large variance: poor mounts so every shot results in a shift, or just a banged up scope where it's internals are loose so again a shift after every shot.

$$$$ Please bring back the variable power scope! ... please?

I think that would be easy.

 

[madmole]

Ok. Fair enough. I'll have to play it for myself when its out to see. I think balance will become alot easier once you get a much larger play group putting alpha 18 through its paces.
I must say not seeing a feral till day 20+ will make the lack of levels, and i assume strong gear/skills more tolerable.

Sounds like in general your just stretching out early game. Can be a good or bad thing. Bad if it's the same early game we have already been playing. Good if the early game is a brand new experience, and I'm happy to say it sounds like it's going to be.

What about that armor though. 50% armor is grand but what does that do for bleeding? I have almost 60% armor in my alpha 17 game and bleeding happens too much and does, what seems like, full bleed damage.

Does armor help with bleed? In a17 or 18?

Armor greatly reduces chance for bleeding in A18. I'm a guy using fists so I'd be pissed if I was bleeding constantly. I think in general it was nerfed some to begin with as well.

EDIT: Its not the painful A17 early game we used to have. Its a fun early game, with loads of things to do and you are so busy doing stuff that it never truly feels tedious to me at all any more. You can stone axe all day without getting tired. Only two handed tools start to tire you out but its not bad at all IMO.

 

[Guppycur]

After 6 years working on the same project i believe you should know your stuff a little bit including the development time....but yeah...what do i know!?!

They do, but made a conscious decision to say "fuggit, we'll add what we want to and stop when we're ready".

Working great so far, imo.

 

[ExeBT]

hey @MM i saw in your video and test lives, we get a new car model, but i was wondering it will be like the old sedans or we have more car models?

 

[madmole]

Yes, but not every mod is equally suited for random stats.



There is nothing to bring back. It still works. At least on the x8 and I'm not going to check all of them.

Ah thats good, I wasn't sure.

 

[Blake_]

Really? It made cities dangerous. Now they're just... Loot boxes closer together.
Honestly surprised you don't feel the same.

I agree with you here. While the overall pacing of the roaming hordes and the amount of zds in POIS are just right, I also feel like

7dtd lacks a little in Zds. Maybe 20% more on top of the current count on threat hours (I was told day one/after horde and the horde day has a calm window before the storm).

The walking dead had , at times, more Zds that this. And npcs. Lotz of npcs and tribes. So I don't mind waiting for the full pack of threats before judging further.

 

[madmole]

According to Roland, books were at first only intended as placeholders for the perks and should actually be removed from the game after A17:
https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?121980-So-eager-for-A18e!-No-more-juice-for-A17-knowing-what-s-coming/page3&p=997347#post997347

Nevertheless, in the past they created whole POIs for the books although they only regarded them as placeholders.

Therefore, it is a legitimate question whether the books will stay in the game in the long run or not. The answer to this question is that the Fun Pimps have changed their mind and keep the books in the game to complement the perks.

A17 didn't have any books and we didn't have time to add the kind I wanted to, so Gazz slapped in those quick cheesy perk books (the ones with the tattered paper icons) as some filler content. THey were mostly meh and never really a planned feature so they were removed and we added in the ones I have been showing, which are here to stay and were properly planned out with nice art support, actual lore supporting localization and branding, etc. They will bring something extra to the game that is almost always welcome find and the completion bonuses are awesome.

 

[madmole]

Books (as they were originally put in) started diminishing in A15 when perks and skills started getting focused on more and fleshed out until finally they were almost completely gone in A17 where they became part of the recipe or were temporary effects on a timer. There hasn’t been books in the game like we will see in A18 for over 2 years.
For older players it will be a return to learning recipes and gaining new permanent abilities by finding and reading books much like we used to do. For newer players it will be like a fantastic new addition to the game.

It’s not just my claim that books were on the way out in favor of perks. That’s history. But TFP realized that books weren’t just a way to learn knew things, they were also a major reason to explore and loot and that’s why A18 will see books AND perks fully integrated with each other for the first time and with more books and schematics than ever before seen.

And they compliment builds in ways that would be hard to do in the perk menu. Its very rewarding to find the ones you want to complete your build. Looting is so much fun.

 

[madmole]

I just watched the video with Prime playing. Didn't lockpicking used to have a little mini-game with it?
Also, what's with those vultures on day 1, man? Were the risks tripled because there were 3 players? If not, I think if that was my first intro into the game, I'd be pretty frustrated at not being given a fair chance of survival so early in the game. A few more failed attempts like that and I think I'd be ready to give up on the game.

While I prefer the gameplay with guns, I'm not sure I like the idea of introducing them so early, as was demonstrated. Unless the loot was again tripled, you'd be swimming in ammo and guns in the first few hours and it bi-passes the need for bows, crossbows and spears.

But that's just my opinion off the demonstration. Still looking forward to giving it a try and hopefully it's just as promising as MM suggested.

Here is the thing with vultures. If you fear them they will own you. If you just realize its a fragile half dead POS and crack it with nearly ANY power attack it dies with one shot, or would once you get 1 rank of a perk IMO. So if you see them kill them. DOn't run or wait until they are clawing your back and you can't get a good view.

The only way you will swim in ammo is if you mine, buy every round and resource for ammo at traders.