PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[MechanicalLens]

delete

 

[Gazz]

@MechanicalLens

At least twice now you have posted about the complete removal of wilderness zombies.

No one even hinted at that. You just made up another scare story for readers to lose their ♥♥♥♥ over.

 

[MechanicalLens]

@MechanicalLens
At least twice now you have posted about the complete removal of wilderness zombies.

No one even hinted at that. You just made up another scare story for readers to lose their ♥♥♥♥ over.

My apologies. I tend to overthink things. Deleting them now.

Although I am not a developer, I am still very passionate about this game, and all I want is for it to continue to succeed. Just saying. *Sits awkwardly in the background*

 

[SittingDuck]

7 days to die release today:

that will be fun ^^

(yeah right, not A18 but still a release)

 

[falloutcloud]

Sure but unless I've misread what madmole said, it is an A19+ feature, thus leaving a huge void for A18. And we all know the length of an alpha release by now...

From what the people are saying that are currently playing a18 it's a barely noticeable difference except for improvement in performance. I wish the random encounters were here already but as long as it's a feature that's planned I'm willing to wait.

 

[meganoth]

Let's begin morning prayer with the mantra "Hommm, I have to experience it myself before commenting, hommmm", but overall I don't mind the changes. If they are detrimental, there is a long A19 dev cycle to complain about them.

I used to play with a friend of mine and she would much prefer base tending, clothing crafting, farming, and some mining with a little zombie hunting while I went about my business.

I think I've got a solution to this (and it seems yes, there are players who want grindy activities to "support" others and it might make sense to not ignore them). While it is absolutely too early to post this idea, well, before I forget it:

Basic farming should be like in A18, non-grindy and just costing materials. Because lets face it, most players probably see farming as a grindy necessity, nothing more (*). But there should be a further optional level where you get more resources from your field by regularily tending to your farm plots (watering or tilling).

It could work like this:

1) harvesting a plant produces a plant OR a seed (ration 5:1). The crafting of seeds from plants is either gone or a rare recipe.

2) Watering/tilling your plant produces more plants (and maybe gives a different ratio of plant versus seed).

Result: The majority of players will not see much of a change from now, a few will decide to be farmer and trade time and grind and get more out of the farm and be self-sufficient earlier in the game. "Farmville"-type players will rejoice, everyone else will not be bothered (except players with OCD)

(*) 4 players on a co-op server, none wants to be the farmer. Not a representative sample, just what I see.

 

[Genosis]

7 days to die release today:

Sweet! I knew it was today, didn't realize they setup a premiere. My wife and I were heavily inspired to make a YouTube channel from watching Neebs play 7 days to die, and aimed for a similar style except with a husband/wife dynamic. Unfortunately, I will have to wait until I get home from work to watch it

 

[Rassilon]

So what you're telling me is that I cannot plant crops in the ground, I can only plant into a box that I craft. Peoples complaints about simplification are valid. Why have different tier weapons? It's all about progression. Planting in soil was Tier 1, watering the soil, Tier 2, fertilizing the soil, Tier 3 to get better harvests. Yes, I know harvest is by perk points now, but you keep removing things that players like. No one is complaining about the farm plot blocks. Like most, it is an attractive addition for internal base farms, but I had fields and fields of farms with every type of plant.
It seems you are making an Action RPG. The Survival, Horde, Crafting game is losing those characteristics. RPGs are about choice, different builds play differently. Now your choice is less about play styles and more about which weapons to choose. Crafters, and survivalists, even miners are getting less and less each alpha until everyone is just a shooter. This is all my opinion of course, but I also find the reduction in complexity saddening.

Dude. They took away that cheesy Hoe and made placing a plant/pot more costly thus even increasing Progress-curve.

Dont jump onto the hatetrain before you could have had laid hands on it.

Give Madmole&Staff some credit here.

 

[toores]

I'm fantastic at the game,...

Consider me not convinced!

 

[KingSlayerGM]

Sorry to be that guy. but I really like the sleepers and dont need strays at all in the wild.
As it has been said: They add nothing. Just a inconvinience.

I do would prefer bigger/more frequent wandering Hordes, scaled in Size and strength to Gamestage.

But Sleepers? Now looting POIs is a real challenge.

Is this madmole second account?

 

[MajorMunchy]

If this starts a ♥♥♥♥ storm I'm going to ban everyone or close the forums down.
You can no longer boil water in a can. You can simply boil water from a jar of murky water now without a cooking pot, but it takes 4x as long as with a cooking pot.

Why? More sharp sticks. Only veterans knew about the canned water trick and it was only useful on a really bad day where you couldn't find a cooking pot. So we removed cans of water and you can just boil jars of water now. One way to do things is best.

OOOH CANNED WATER. Im talking about the buckets!

Sorry about that! I could give 2 ♥♥♥♥s about the can. yea that was a nifty trick but was stupid.

I mean the actual buckts. like to transplant water blocks froma river or lake so we can create a well or moat.

 

[SnowDog1942]

Method of farming? Who cares

Cans of water? Who cares

Even less zombies than the less zombies they previously reduced it to? Thats one I care about

I would have preferred wilderness spawn levels to be an option with their default at what they are planning, clearly stating increasing this setting will adversly affect performance.

In addition I would have preferred the reduction to coincide with getting random encounters. Instead of playing A18 for a year in a more lifeless world.

Its suprising to see with how much work went into things like occlusion culling and other optimizations and we still have to resort to this (reduce zombies). The root cause of the massive performance loss between A16 and A17 was clearly NOT the number of zeds in the wilderness. Was it ever identified?

I can honestly say this is the first bummer A18 news, but, I hope Madmole will prove me wrong and we see just how all the pieces if A18 fit together as a whole next month.

 

[blenna13]

Long time lurker, posted once or twice. Also kickstarted the game back in the day.

Just gotta say removing zombies from the wilderness makes me pretty furious.

Like farming who cares, probs for the better. But removing zombie spawns from the wilderness is some real dumb ♥♥♥♥. For what? Random encounters in a year for a19? That is BS TFPآ’s.

Guppy, I know you aint a dev but my god my dude Iآ’ve been lurking here for years and you damn well should be. You know what this game needs. Keep up the good fight brother, but Iآ’m afraid the ships going down.

I canآ’t wait for A19 when Joel is talking ♥♥♥♥ about A18, and how bad it was recieved, same thing heآ’s doing with A17 now.

Sorry but thats the way youآ’re heading removing threat from the world and forcing people to go into POIآ’s or BM to experience Zeds.

Sorry for the huge post, passionate and frustrated fan here who will probs get chewed out by MM as Iآ’ve seen him do to others.

Donآ’t care. Iآ’ve had enough.

 

[ZombieHorde]

It would be nice to have a version of the farm plot that was shaped like a plate as well. That way, we wont get that gap between it and the terrain.

Yes! That's exactly what I was thinking. The wooden textures themselves are nice, but what the boxes do to the land isn't nice at all.

 

[MechanicalLens]

Long time lurker, posted once or twice. Also kickstarted the game back in the day. Just gotta say removing zombies from the wilderness makes me pretty furious.

Like farming who cares, probs for the better. But removing zombie spawns from the wilderness is some real dumb ♥♥♥♥. For what? Random encounters in a year for a19? That is BS TFPآ’s.

Guppy, I know you aint a dev but my god my dude Iآ’ve been lurking here for years and you damn well should be. You know what this game needs. Keep up the good fight brother, but Iآ’m afraid the ships going down.

I canآ’t wait for A19 when Joel is talking ♥♥♥♥ about A18, and how bad it was recieved, same thing heآ’s doing with A17 now.

Sorry but thats the way youآ’re heading removing threat from the world and forcing people to go into POIآ’s or BM to experience Zeds.

Sorry for the huge post, passionate and frustrated fan here who will probs get chewed out by MM as Iآ’ve seen him do to others.

Donآ’t care. Iآ’ve had enough.

That's not going to happen. Gosh, if I created this ♥♥♥♥storm, then... *Kicks myself in the foot* :/

Unless you meant the reduction of spawns. Yesh, that will be a thing.

 

[meganoth]

The root cause of the massive performance loss between A16 and A17 was clearly NOT the number of zeds in the wilderness. Was it ever identified?

My guess:

Graphics bling-bling was my impression as one major culprit (more texture/shader passes). And the new buff system might be another (secret) cause. More complex AI surely cost as well. Flexibility (i.e. putting more options into the xml) did generally add cycles everywhere.

 

[Rassilon]

Is this madmole second account?

Nah, just someone who agrees with him in 2 of 10 topics where the other 8 i normally not agree^^.

Lets face it: What do the strainer-Zombies at all, besides killing Lowbies and making them ragequit?

Id rather have more screamers/wandering hordes.

And Pre A16 all POIs were empty and looted in 5 minutes. Boring af.

 

[meganoth]

And Pre A16 all POIs were empty and looted in 5 minutes. Boring af.

Hehe, imagine having one of the tier5 buildings put into A15, without any sleepers inside. What a completely ridiculous scenario that would be!

 

[Grymgem]

out of place for such a small rework of a 0.1% gametime feature.

One of the most appealing aspects of 7d2d for me is the simulation direction. I believe this game has essential infrastructure for our reality simulations. Westworld, the matrix etc.

I for one lament the decisions made to move this one of a kind gem towards obscurity in a genre that is quite saturated.

I understand this game will never be a 1:1 simulation of reality, and tfp have made some great decisions to reinforce fun over realism.

But so few games have the potential to be framework for a high fidelity simulation of reality. When systems that reinforce that uniqueness are pushed the other direction it moves this project closer to traditional games, and further from ready player one.

 

[ZombieHorde]

I don't understand how this is viewed as a backwards, not lateral, step in complexity. The hoe isn't removed, the gate of forging or looting one is. Fertilizer has actually returned and we don't need a cement mixer to make the stuff. (still, RIP turds) Teaching new players is as simple as telling them to search for the recipe rather than all the steps.
Old farming was never immersive in my opinion. The hoe was instantly useless(this isn't even a tool I use IRL-shovels and trowels are sufficient and serve more purposes. I avoid uni-task tools.). There wasn't any "working the land". You just hoed and planted, then you were done. No weeding, soil testing, pest control, pruning, training, adding supports, on-going fertilization, watering or anything else that I do and enjoy everyday in real life.

Additionally, they look ♥♥♥♥ing great. My favorite part is not needing the extra area for the plates to cover the density gap. I foresee myself using these in places where I already decorate with plants and now I don't have to be annoyed by looking at a voxel gap OR making space for the plates surrounding them.

Finally, I love them because in this whole mess Madmole mentioned tentative plans for the hoe returning as a tool to manipulate density. Have you ever made a winding dirt road climbing a mountain in this game? I have wasted so much time hoeing each block to a certain HP, then fine-tuning with a chainsaw, all while occasionally going too far with some blocks and having to replace them and start from full HP. God I want a block density manipulator so badly.

Anway, just wanted to add some more noise to the shout-fest before farming is off-topic.

It's backwards because the things you have to do is just more of the same as everything else. It's harder by making the recipe 1, 2, 3 and now 4. Great! Except I've already spent an hour collecting item 1, item 2 was a battle to find, item 3 is just more of the same and item 4 needs something so exciting..oh wait, no, it needs either looting or digging again. Great!

Whereas the difference in tilling the land was a different game mechanic that even that little difference made the game feel like it had in-depth processes in it. Even the fact it was much more natural to prepare the soil in real life and plant the seed in the natural environment. Not in boxes that, in my opinion, don't look good because of the terrain blocks next to them.

It this was added onto the old system, then great. Now you are adding realistic choices, too. Multiple ways to do things are great!

And as much as I love the game still, it's sad that the fan base that got the game off the starting blocks are slowly having things taken away that, in many of our opinion, isn't for the best. Similar to removing the moulds in the forge. That was a system that made sense and was sufficiently staged that it felt rewarding to finish that task so you could make bullet tips (or whatever). Now, just have the material and click go. So easy it might as well just not be there to begin with.

Sorry, Madmole. We do love you and we love this game but I think what you love about the game is maybe a bit biased and defensive because it's your game and you want it gold asap. And rightly so; you have a lot to be proud of and we all want it gold. But of course not at the sacrifice of what we love about the game.