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%

  • Total voters
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iu

You're a bad man....a VERY bad man!

-Morloc
Holds up a mirror!

Besides , he's a mole...

 
If I had it to do all over again I would've bought this game during the kickstarter instead of off of steam during Alpha 6...
That's my only regret. Imagine what I might have done during KS if I have a bunch of mugs and shirts now... (btw - I didn't know about it then...)

 
Me - simple minded as i am - typed that into google, and one of the first hits was an interview with somebody called "Stuart Ralston"He's just some cook who created a fish meal with broccoli sauce, and probably doesn't even know there's a game called "7d2d".

...but guess what, there's a picture of him, and that guy is the 100% pure prototype meme for (quoting Roland):

"No one is going to get this one. heheheh...."

He must be Rolands long lost twin or something

Here you go and take a look yourselves:

https://foodies.co.uk/aizle-stuart-ralston-interview/
Wrong Ralston.... ;)

 
True, I'm doing that already. But I think there's a certain point of compromise where adding two extra weeks of dev time for just a few MFs seems like a waste of time. Also no one's considering that no matter how polished your baby is there will be bugs at launch. There are too many PC/Mac/Linux (is it on linux? not sure) setups to take into account, it's inevitable that a chunk of people are going to have problems at release. Less MFs help, yes, but it's important to keep in mind that a true bug free launch is kind of impossible. I think even the most unreasonable, demanding consumers understand that. Especially when they have to activate the alpha in the beta tab.
Maybe they already have a sense for what would happen if they released with some bugs still left to fix.

How many people read or stay up on the current known bug list?

How many people ignore existing bug reports and submit multiple for the same thing?

How many people choose to ignore the bug report section and post almost anywhere?

How many people submit "fix this" without any details or reproduceable steps?

How many man hours for testers/fixers have to spend on various fix management solutions to track all of this/those?

Jira administration anyone?

How many man hours spent to figure out what is happening just to find out it was really for something else anyways?

And how many times does fixing something break something else? Sometimes none. Sometimes a little...

I am sure they already know things are going to be found even after they fix everything on their list. They're just trying to handle the known ones efficiently first.

THAT, and generate some good perceptions. "...most unreasonable customers will understand..." - there certainly seem to be numerous examples of that not being the case. Like people who have claimed they have rights becasue they have 'invested'... And maybe not 'most' but some voices tend to be MUCH LOUDER than others...

And the passcode thing won't work. Everyone already 'knows' this is an Alpha. People will chose to ignore to be playing anyways, And now you have passcode administration, controls, etc. (not to mention another #StreamerGate...)

 
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Maybe they already have a sense for what would happen if they released with some bugs still left to fix.How many people read or stay up on the current known bug list?

How many people ignore existing bug reports and submit multiple for the same thing?

How many people choose to ignore the bug report section and post almost anywhere?

How many people submit "fix this" without any details or reproduceable steps?

How many man hours for testers/fixers have to spend on various fix management solutions to track all of this/those?

Jira administration anyone?

How many man hours spent to figure out what is happening just to find out it was really for something else anyways?

And how many times does fixing something break something else? Sometimes none. Sometimes a little...

I am sure they already know things are going to be found even after they fix everything on their list. They're just trying to handle the known ones efficiently first.

THAT, and generate some good perceptions. "...most unreasonable customers will understand..." - there certainly seem to be numerous examples of that not being the case. Like people who have claimed they have rights becasue they have 'invested'... And maybe not 'most' but some voices tend to be MUCH LOUDER than others...

And the passcode thing won't work. Everyone already 'knows' this is an Alpha. People will chose to ignore to be playing anyways, And now you have passcode administration, controls, etc.
People claim "rights" to 7DTD for investing because they did invest. It's pretty insulting to be told that your status as a customer is null because the package you bought had "Early Access" on it while also being told that putting money into an unfinished product isn't investing either. So which is it? Yeah, you accept the risks, but that doesn't make it okay to just forgo their investment. It's the reason why you see so many people upset about the streamer access--streamers didn't cause this game to exist and thrive, investors and customers did. Streamers didn't put funding into the Kickstarter that started it all, kickstarter backers did.

Honestly I think a decent chunk of any complaints out of this next alpha will be because of the time between A17 and A18. We're coming up to a year for a second time in a row, most people find that pretty detestable for an update schedule. I think the passcode solution will at least help in mitigating unreasonable critics, it's a decent compromise for releasing with 10 or less MFs. It's more reasonable than delaying for a whole 2 weeks over 10 or less MFs, anyway.

 
There isn't really a solution to this problem other than for the lower level to wait for the 200 level to leave the area so the zombies can despawn. It's a caveat of multiplayer games.
Enemy combat in Borderlands works just fine with players of different levels. I think enemies there spawn at the average level of all the players in the party.

7D2D multiplayer is a different situation, that's why shifting an enemy's stats toward the level of the player they are targeting would solve this.

Math can achieve great things for those brave enough to use it.

 
That would be a mess, but you misread my solution.
I suggested adjusting enemy stats based on who they are attacking, not who is attacking them. This makes a very big difference, as you have pointed out. Very trivial to code.
Yeah that'd be cool.

New bloodmoon horde base design:

-group up with a lvl 1 guy

-build steel bar cage in front of base

-lvl 1 guy inside cage as "bait" for the horde

-we (above lvl100) easily one-shot everything that comes for him

--&gt; surviving forever

@TFP: pls immediately start coding as proposed! :excitement:

 
People claim "rights" to 7DTD for investing because they did invest. It's pretty insulting to be told that your status as a customer is null because the package you bought had "Early Access" on it while also being told that putting money into an unfinished product isn't investing either. So which is it? Yeah, you accept the risks, but that doesn't make it okay to just forgo their investment. It's the reason why you see so many people upset about the streamer access--streamers didn't cause this game to exist and thrive, investors and customers did. Streamers didn't put funding into the Kickstarter that started it all, kickstarter backers did.
Honestly I think a decent chunk of any complaints out of this next alpha will be because of the time between A17 and A18. We're coming up to a year for a second time in a row, most people find that pretty detestable for an update schedule. I think the passcode solution will at least help in mitigating unreasonable critics, it's a decent compromise for releasing with 10 or less MFs. It's more reasonable than delaying for a whole 2 weeks over 10 or less MFs, anyway.
You are using a very very very loose definition of "invest". I "invest" like you are defining it in a package of Oreos monthly and the only growth I experience from my "investment" is in my girth....

 
...There are too many PC/Mac/Linux (is it on linux? not sure) setups to take into account, it's inevitable that a chunk of people are going to have problems at release.
Yes. I run my 7DTD on Kubuntu 19.10 with the latest propritory nVidia graphics Drivers...

(this is also why I've been asking about Vulkan Support so much.) :rapture:

 
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You are using a very very very loose definition of "invest". I "invest" like you are defining it in a package of Oreos monthly and the only growth I experience from my "investment" is in my girth....
Well what else do you call the buyers on kickstarter? They willingly gave a company money so the company could deliver a product and in exchange each buyer would get a copy of that product. Yeah you don't own stock or anything but you still laid the foundation so the dream of making 7DTD was possible in the first place. I am very doubtful we would have a 7DTD released on its own without the help of kickstarter. That's whole point of kickstarter, to gather investors.

I think of it like this: instead of having stock in a company, we get access to the game earlier than anyone else. That's your incentive to invest. Who would buy a copy on the hopes of maybe getting a game 5 years or so in the future?

 
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Well what else do you call the buyers on kickstarter? They willingly gave a company money so the company could deliver a product and in exchange each buyer would get a copy of that product. Yeah you don't own stock or anything but you still laid the foundation so the dream of making 7DTD was possible in the first place. I am very doubtful we would have a 7DTD released on its own without the help of kickstarter. That's whole point of kickstarter, to gather investors.
I call them buyers-- like you just did. Funding something on the promise of future delivery is closer to making a "Pre-order purchase" than it is "investing". They purchased the right to early access which was delivered. They also got a promise of the final version at no extra cost which will also be delivered.

What if TFP sent an advanced copy to a print magazine editor so he could have one of his journalists do a "first look preview" in their next issue? Would you be upset that the editor and the journalist never participated in the kickstarter? You want to make early buyers of the game and early access equivalent with investors in a company. In that case, I want to make streamers equivalent to media outlets that will give a first look of the game to their subscribers.

 
I call them buyers-- like you just did. Funding something on the promise of future delivery is closer to making a "Pre-order purchase" than it is "investing". They purchased the right to early access which was delivered. They also got a promise of the final version at no extra cost which will also be delivered.
What if TFP sent an advanced copy to a print magazine editor so he could have one of his journalists do a "first look preview" in their next issue? Would you be upset that the editor and the journalist never participated in the kickstarter? You want to make early buyers of the game and early access equivalent with investors in a company. In that case, I want to make streamers equivalent to media outlets that will give a first look of the game to their subscribers.
That's fair enough, I wasn't arguing against streamers getting it first, I was trying to explain why others get upset at that notion. It's important to get the word out, I understand the similarities of streamers and media outlets.

Also I'd again like to reiterate that 7DTD (as we know it at least) would not have been possible without backers (or buyers), just like how a company can't get anywhere if they can't get the money of investors.

 
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Yes. I run my 7DTD on Kubuntu 19.10 with the latest propritory nVidia graphics Drivers...(this is also why I've been asking about Vulkan Support so much.) :rapture:
I play 7 Days to die on Kubuntu 18.04. Runs fine but of course Vulkan support would be much better.

Especially when I think of services like Google Stadia. Every game you can play with this service has to support Vulkan. Google Stadia would be a good alternative for console players if they have the necessary internet connection.

 
I also understand and agree with you that without those early buyers it would've been tougher to get things up and running. TFP's true success and the reason for their continued existence has been excellent ongoing sales on Steam which has totally eclipsed the amount of startup funding they raised on Kickstarter. I'm glad you personally aren't upset about the streamer event but I know some people are. :)

 
For me voxels of 7DTD are one of the main selling points of the game. When I advertise the game to my friends, I always mention to them the fully destructible world. Also makes me play the game over Rust.

 
Yeah that'd be cool. New bloodmoon horde base design:

-group up with a lvl 1 guy

-build steel bar cage in front of base

-lvl 1 guy inside cage as "bait" for the horde

-we (above lvl100) easily one-shot everything that comes for him

--&gt; surviving forever

@TFP: pls immediately start coding as proposed! :excitement:
No, you're doing your math wrong.

First of all, horde spawned by you would be targeting you. If you can manage to get them to target lvl 1 guy, then they might nerf down to level 50, so not a one-shot for you, and not level 100 exp for you either.

But otherwise yeah, baiting the Z's could be a fun thing to try, but don't forget that every player spawns their own horde; you would still be hunted down by level 100 Z's.

 
If I could do it all over again I'd have thrown out the diggable terrain. Alpha 1 could have had static Unity terrain, a simple water plane, ran 30% better, used way less ram, console wouldn't have been so beat down, allowed faster vehicles, looked as good as 18's terrain does now, (Minus the Justin talent) and we wouldn't have wasted energy on mining, cave systems, multiple versions of trees, etc. Mining could have been mining POIs with respawning nuggets like rust/skyrim/subnautica with a nice model. We'd anger 10% and gain 200% new players that don't give a ♥♥♥♥ about deformable terrain and buggy water.
At some point we might release a static terrain option for 7 days just to see the performance gains. IMO most people would run it for the performance gains and better pvp, none of this wimpy underground base business, fight like a man like in TWD. You don't see those guys living in caves/mines.

What may have made us great has also slowed us down and kept us indy looking/performing. I think mining is ok but its not part of the secret sauce, we'd still have mining it just wouldn't be ugly 3d mining. At this point we'd kind of solved it mostly but it could have saved us a lot of time and headaches, allowing us to focus on cool stuff like we are able to now.
I know you'll probably get mad but maybe you can talk with Sean Murray and ask him if you could use his game engine, or at least ask him on how you could build your own for the next, or future games. No Man's sky is voxel or at least gives the appearance of voxel. You can manipulate the terrain (destroy or create), and almost everything is destroy able.

Please don't get angry, just saying you guys made all this headway with voxels, became leaders in it. Would be a shame to just abandon it after all that work.

 
Any chance for a rework of melee because all weapon is like poking with a spear instead of swing a club or sword u aim right next to the zombie head and u miss where the club or sword goes right through him

 
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