PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[Roland]

Pros:

....not really there yet.

Pros:

.... lacking in decoration diversity.

When the only two pros listed are actually cons as well there’s either a problem or Tin’s being a jerk...

 

[Tin]

When the only two pros listed are actually cons as well there’s either a problem or Tin’s being a jerk...

Hey.. well.. I tried to give them a positive.

Kind of hard when one of the owners says its in a good spot right now, and they don't understand why its starting to get picked apart again.

(my non jerky out) -> OFC I did say as of A18.4. So who knows except them, how it is looking for A19 and whatnot.

 

[Gamida]

I normally run the game un-modded but nitro-gen looks interesting.

I like the larger lakes and fewer big cities

Looks to be a fairly complicated install, are there any sample maps I could try to see how they play before I try installing the whole Mod ?

Be nice if it was integrated into 7days.

I wouldn't call it a mod but more of a standalone. Also it is not that large of an add. Whatever the size though to me it was well worth the download.

 

[Blake_]

Hey.. well.. I tried to give them a positive.

Kind of hard when one of the owners says its in a good spot right now, and they don't understand why its starting to get picked apart again.

(my non jerky out) -> OFC I did say as of A18.4. So who knows except them, how it is looking for A19 and whatnot.

There's A LOT of work to be done yet to 7 days to die. For instance, we've never seen a fully content-focused alpha yet because of all the core systems being worked on.

When that happens (a21 2021) , then "sheet" will get real. I don't mind the 11 years in development scope. Why? One answer: Kenshi. Let your dreams become a reality, doesn't matter the time it takes. The only deadline is death (Jeez that's gloomy).

 

[madmole]

MM, can you explain a little more about the super filling foods? I see that there is 0% food poisoning, but does it just give many food points or does it slow down the rate of loss food during activity? I hope I’m saying this right.

Its a lot of calories.

 

[madmole]

I'm very grateful that Pimps like faatal do have an interest in closing or at least transforming specific AI exploits, even when it's not his primary assignment. It'd be a major disappointment, in my humble opinion, if this game were declared finished while known exploits remain.

There is only so much you can do though. Cut one head off, two grow back. Players who spend that much time learning exploits can easily NOT use them so that they can have a bigger challenge.

 

[madmole]

Granted, Haidr and many others do have a point. The terrain, the roads, the mountains (more gentle, not just Mt Everest or nothing) - the world in general just felt smoother in A16 RWG. And last but not least we had 2 more biomes, but I am aware these are not coming back.

On the other hand, apart from maybe iconic POIs, I don't see a problem with a building appearing more than once. On the contrary, I am afraid that avoiding duplicates will be limiting to world size and many people, me included, like big worlds, especially for MP.

That said, as most people on here, I have learnt to love Nitrogen. The inclusion of a comparable map editor could greatly benefit vanilla.

I think most objective people if they played 16 now, would see its nostalgia and it actually wasn't as great as they remember it to be, like watching an old movie that was badass in the 80s and now its like what is this low grade cheese?

We're not avoiding duplicates, we are making sure everything spawns first, before a duplicate can spawn.

 

[madmole]

Bigger maps...8x8 is very limited if you have 4 or 5 players on the map. The old 16k maps offered a lot more area to spread out and scavenge. Basically now you pick a city and camp. The game lost the search and explore concept it always had. Its more loot a city rinse and repeat. Its not just me saying this either. Ive been playing since A5-6 with a group and everyone of them asks...when are bigger maps coming back?

you have to expand the playfield..vehicles are useless when you can drive across a map in 5 minutes. Make each biome a map or something that we can load up each time you move into a new area.

You hit the preverbial brick wall on these smaller maps.

Make it so number one...otherwise i dont see late game being anything but boring.

Coughs* Airport Poi* Coughs

Just turn off loot respawn, and then you have to travel further. Map size won't fix that. Besides I thought you guys have 16k working already with nitrogen?

 

[madmole]

Do some Zombies get a special Item drop changes? like a worker Helm for the worker, military stuff for the military, seeds for the Farmer dude etc.?

I don't think we're going to go there, after the 50th mining helmet from a worker you will be disappointed I think. Random is better.

 

[madmole]

I hope the trader change doesn't reduce the amount of things they sell, but just adds a extra category for what they specilize in. Would suck if I have to drive/run all over the map looking for a specific trader if I wanna say buy a motorbike.

There is still a chance they have what you want, but they do have less quantities of some non specialized goods to some degree to make room for the specialized goods. Don't expect the mother lode of guns and ammo from Trader Jen though or you will be disappointed.

 

[madmole]

Perfectly explained. By using NitroGen map generator I managed to get the dream maps...way better than anything vanilla has offered (not to say vanilla RWG is bad, but it can be improved a lot). I just hope Madmole won't just be like "Well, then continue to use the NitroGen map generator, no need for us to add so many map gen options if modders can do it already".

It seems like a no brainer though. I hold no animosity against Bethesda for not making CBBE models in the vanilla version, even though they are clearly superior in every way.

We'll add what we want to make it shippable, but trying to keep up with a third party tool that specializes in terrain gen is out of the scope of what we need to do. If its amazing and easy to integrate then sure, we'd have a look at some point, but in the mean time its more about baby step improvements until its shippable.

 

[madmole]

There's A LOT of work to be done yet to 7 days to die. For instance, we've never seen a fully content-focused alpha yet because of all the core systems being worked on.

When that happens (a21 2021) , then "sheet" will get real. I don't mind the 11 years in development scope. Why? One answer: Kenshi. Let your dreams become a reality, doesn't matter the time it takes. The only deadline is death (Jeez that's gloomy).

A18 was a lot of content. There is no such thing as a pure content build. There is always supportive code needed for content.

 

[madmole]

As far as the code goes it is a deliberate change to the decoration manager. Certain objects that before were tagged to be able to decorate slopes are now ignored because the slopes are all tagged as no-decoration, rather than to allow small decorations at least. This means not even grasses, bushes and rocks can spawn there.

As far as I know the way decoration worked prior to A18 already did a good job preventing steep slopes from getting decorated by large objects such as trees, but did place some if there was a plateau higher up. I hope they can take a look into the code and check if the current behavior is the intended behavior (and if intended to reconsider or allow more control through xml somehow). The completely barren slopes created by cities when the terrain is flattened for example look really bad.

I recently attempted to resolve this in xml but the results were not satisfactory. We do want to get some more decorations on slopes.

 

[Adam the Waster]

I'd love it back as well, but sadly that exploit is how the zombies were able to also glitch thru doors, so them fixing the zombies kinda killed our hatchevators.

REAL MEN! Use Ladders!

i mean you uses your Brain to Just Levitate yourself up places! but only with ladders!

 

[Adam the Waster]

There is only so much you can do though. Cut one head off, two grow back. Players who spend that much time learning exploits can easily NOT use them so that they can have a bigger challenge.

Mr Madmole. Thats not how it works, if so then zombies would have hundreds of heads. lol

 

[Lo-X]

I confirm that there is a huge difference between the default generation and NitroGen.

It's simple. In random generation an 10K takes about 2 hours, for an always similar rendering, little chance of having space on the dish and in forest biome. And above all, impossible to play because the distant rendering was not the same as the close rendering (I erased the old save, everything. I tried several times. I even reinstalled my OS). I spent one night finding a solution. I took a PREGEN for the start A18. When I wipe a month ago, same thing. I asked for help on Admin Coalition and I was directed to the NG.

With NitroGen for a 10K it took me just under 4 minutes. It's not buggy, more coherent generation, the POIs are grouped together by "theme", there are rivers and crevasses, craters in devastated biomes, etc ... Everything is configurable. This app should be part of the game.

I will never use anything else. Damocles' work deserves to be looked at in my opinion.

I'm not spitting on your work. I support you and defend your work in the face of the most pessimistic when it comes to the progression of the game, from the start.

 

[madmole]

Hey.. well.. I tried to give them a positive.

Kind of hard when one of the owners says its in a good spot right now, and they don't understand why its starting to get picked apart again.

(my non jerky out) -> OFC I did say as of A18.4. So who knows except them, how it is looking for A19 and whatnot.

Maybe I'm just an unobservant oaf, but I had lots of fun on all the seeds I played. 8k is huge, so the size card doesn't mean anything to me. Aside from that, how can you pick it apart? Generation time? PFFFT, that is one little 15 minute time then you are set for 100 hours. Rust takes longer than ours. Not really high on our list.

The only thing that caught my eye was two identical pois close to each other, and a few dead end roads that could be better. We already improved biome generation, so what else is there?

 

[Snowydeath]

I confirm that there is a huge difference between the default generation and NitroGen.
It's simple. In random generation an 8k takes about 2 hours, for an always similar rendering, little chance of having space on the dish and in forest biome. And above all, impossible to play because the distant rendering was not the same as the close rendering (I erased the old save, everything. I tried several times. I even reinstalled my OS). I spent one night finding a solution. I took a PREGEN for the start A18. When I wipe a month ago, same thing. I asked for help on Admin Coalition and I was directed to the NG.

With NitroGen for a 10K it took me just under 4 minutes. It's not buggy, more coherent generation, the POIs are grouped together by "theme", there are rivers and crevasses, craters in devastated biomes, etc ... Everything is configurable. This app should be part of the game.

I will never use anything else. Damocles' work deserves to be looked at in my opinion.

I'm not spitting on your work. I support you and defend your work in the face of the most pessimistic when it comes to the progression of the game, from the start.

Jesus christ dude, if it takes that long you need better hardware or an SSD. at MOST it takes 20 minutes to generate for me.

 

[faatal]

After searching through the forums a bit, it seems this isn't a common issue, but why do I have a problem with my backpack disappearing after death? I just started a new play-through in which I died twice (once by a pig even), I rushed back to the site of my death, and my bag vanished both times on me. The compass/map icon remains but there's nothing there.

Check your console/log for backpack messages. Changes were made in A18 to make it more obvious what is going on with it.

Is that a local game, where you are the server or are you logged in to a server?

 

[meganoth]

I don't think we're going to go there, after the 50th mining helmet from a worker you will be disappointed I think. Random is better.

Is there much of a difference to getting the 50th mining helmet from loot boxes in general? Since only every 50th zombie has loot at all, you would need to kill 2500 workers before getting there even if every loot bag had a helmet.