PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

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MajorMunchy said:
i have a similar monitor 34in alienware 21:9 ultra wide 3440x1440p or whatever. I dont know what you are talking about, but whenever i play any game thats not ultra wide i just get more screen. ex: League of Legends. I just get more map on my screen. Ex: 7D2D i just get more screen on my er... screen! i dont have that issue you have, maybe its an actual monitor setting?
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I'm not talking about a monitor issue. I'm talking about an occlusion issue with the game itself. The view is limited so that we don't see objects and terrain popping in and out of existence at the edges. 

Whenever you play any game you say? Are any of those other games voxel worlds on the same scale and with the same detail, smoothness, and resolution as 7 Days to Die? I'm sure any of your games with static worlds and buildings that are just props and decoration can probably wrap your vision twice around your head for a 720 degree FOV...

 
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Vedui said:
But it's just one of the unforeseen side-effects of communication, questions are asked, answers are given, but people have their own interpretation on each side that happen to not be in sync :)
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Sure...and some of those people who misinterpret use those misinterpretations for click bait as "breaking news" to attract viewers for their channels... ;)

The devs certainly aren't starting bandits from scratch once A20 is stable but neither are they almost done with a few days work needed. They put bandits in previously and were not happy with them because they were basically zombies with guns and clubs and their animations were very poor. This time they want to make sure they are done well and that is going to take time. 

As to the raft...it IS practically done. Probably a weekend's work for faatal to touch up a few things or perhaps for the artists to bling it up and it is ready. Unfortunately....the water upon which it is supposed to ride will take more than that weekend to finish and without the water, why enable the raft?

 
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Vedui said:
I believe faatal DID say before Alpha 19 release, that melee bandits were pretty much done, and needed a few days of code to finish up. It was in one of the streams, along with that the raft needed a weekend of work type of thing to get into the game.

Now this might have been a super simplification, that certain aspects were ready but not the "final" vision of what Bandits were intended for, but it also likely has increased confusion as to why they are not in. People for instance see lotsa modpacks with bandits and survivors in, very basic sure, but then wonder why TFP "when it only needed a few days" haven't also put them in :)

But it's just one of the unforeseen side-effects of communication, questions are asked, answers are given, but people have their own interpretation on each side that happen to not be in sync :)
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You said melee bandits were nearly ready. If your recollection is correct the most interesting part of the bandits would have been still missing, gun toting bandits. And not even that is enough, bandits without organised camps and a story would have been just zombies with a different skin.

Imagine TFP showing off their bandits and those bandits being inconsequential like the bandits enabled in the mods. That would be a publicity disaster

 
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Vedui said:
I believe faatal DID say before Alpha 19 release, that melee bandits were pretty much done, and needed a few days of code to finish up. It was in one of the streams, along with that the raft needed a weekend of work type of thing to get into the game.

Now this might have been a super simplification, that certain aspects were ready but not the "final" vision of what Bandits were intended for, but it also likely has increased confusion as to why they are not in. People for instance see lotsa modpacks with bandits and survivors in, very basic sure, but then wonder why TFP "when it only needed a few days" haven't also put them in :)

But it's just one of the unforeseen side-effects of communication, questions are asked, answers are given, but people have their own interpretation on each side that happen to not be in sync :)
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Melee bandits are easy because zombies are melee. Ranged bandits are harder because they are not supposed to just come in your direction and shoot every now and then, like cops do.

 
faatal said:
I probably said they could be done fairly easily, not that they are, because you could reskin a zombie as a bandit, stick a weapon in his hand and say "look bandits!", but we are planning on doing something better than that.
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Roland said:
Sure...and some of those people who misinterpret use those misinterpretations for click bait as "breaking news" to attract viewers for their channels... ;)

The devs certainly aren't starting bandits from scratch once A20 is stable but neither are they almost done with a few days work needed. They put bandits in previously and were not happy with them because they were basically zombies with guns and clubs and their animations were very poor. This time they want to make sure they are done well and that is going to take time. 

As to the raft...it IS practically done. Probably a weekend's work for faatal to touch up a few things or perhaps for the artists to bling it up and it is ready. Unfortunately....the water upon which it is supposed to ride will take more than that weekend to finish and without the water, why enable the raft?
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meganoth said:
You said melee bandits were ready. If your recollection is correct the most interesting part of the bandits would have been still missing, gun toting bandits. And not even that is enough, bandits without organised camps and a story would have been just zombies with a different skin.

Imagine TFP showing off their bandits and those bandits being inconsequential like the bandits enabled in the mods. That would be a publicity disaster
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Honestly i have bad opinion about human enemies in zombies games and i will try explain why spend a lot of resources and time for them is pointless.

Okay : 1. Often human AI in games just do stupid things- i think everyone who play a lot of fps saw some stupid human enemies behaviour. In 7dtd it will be even harder - Because there is bandits VS zombie VS player - so there will be a lot of stupid sitations. One of the best example can be hospital in hl2 or days gone. In this games "human" ai just wait to be killed by zombie AI. @faatal don't blame me but Bend studio had a bigger budget , more employers and they coudn't do this good in indestructible world so it just can't work good in 7dtd. Honestly that's why we don't have human enemy in cod zombie ( Atlas Strike Team is exception but they are "invisible" for zombies so they just fight with player). Honestly i wish it could works good and the closed to achieve this is Dying light but is still far from being good (sometimes bandits ignore zombies and are focusing on player and zombie deal rly small dmg to them).

2. Balance problem - okay - in days gone most have guns. You have guns. Melee weapons are only "last stand" weapon not main for 80% of game.  In dying light most people use melee weapons and you use melee weapons most of  time. So everyone have similiar way of fight. In 7dtd you have more styles of fight - you can focus on few melee weapons, spears, few types of guns.  In diffrent games ofc you have this same sitation but simpler- in dead island  you have few melee characters , 1 throwing character and guns characters. They have diffrent "special" skills but finaly they are almost this same in playing. 7dtd is more complicated so this can be impossible to balance. in Dying light guys with guns can kill you very fast but when are this guys there is almost any zombies ( prison island). So there is a chance to be bandit  too easy or too hard. So it would need a lot of time to balance this - maybe 1 or 2 rly big fixes

@faatal i know you guys promise them in kickstarter so my advice is : just make it in bordelands style- melee bandits just behave like bordelands psycho, guns bandits just stay somewhere or just walk few steps and shoot.  And make them respawning in bandit camps - let them just sitting there similiar to bordelands 1 and that's all. I know you guys are ambitiouse and i appreciate it but a lot studios tried and failed so better not to waste time. In zombie game zombies works best- they can do stupid thing and people will forgive this because they are zombies. But reviewiers and players critize stupid human AI behaviour 

 
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meganoth said:
You said melee bandits were nearly ready. If your recollection is correct the most interesting part of the bandits would have been still missing, gun toting bandits. And not even that is enough, bandits without organised camps and a story would have been just zombies with a different skin.

Imagine TFP showing off their bandits and those bandits being inconsequential like the bandits enabled in the mods. That would be a publicity disaster
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This is exactly my fear. Bandit hype is off the charts and if they end up being anything but revolutionary as in we have never seen anything so great in a game the haters are gonna hate.

That is why I keep repeating Bandits will probably behave like smarter zombies that can shoot at you and *maybe* attack your base and *maybe* use explosives to break things...MAYBE.

Unity simply doesn’t seem to be capable of super complex things with tons of stuff on the screen. We need to be realistic as to what the bandits will be.

People are literally fantasizing about giving gifts to Bandits to befriend them and having a Bandit companion live in there base and follow them around on quests. I know for a fact (without having inside info on Bandits) they will not be your friends, they will not navigate the world as a real human player would, they will not make human like attack plans. No games AI has totally believable and mobile NPC characters.

I look forward to having Bandits to add another thing to fight. I do not expect more than that.

 
Fanatical_Meat said:
This is exactly my fear. Bandit hype is off the charts and if they end up being anything but revolutionary as in we have never seen anything so great in a game the haters are gonna hate.

That is why I keep repeating Bandits will probably behave like smarter zombies that can shoot at you and *maybe* attack your base and *maybe* use explosives to break things...MAYBE.

Unity simply doesn’t seem to be capable of super complex things with tons of stuff on the screen. We need to be realistic as to what the bandits will be.

People are literally fantasizing about giving gifts to Bandits to befriend them and having a Bandit companion live in there base and follow them around on quests. I know for a fact (without having inside info on Bandits) they will not be your friends, they will not navigate the world as a real human player would, they will not make human like attack plans. No games AI has totally believable and mobile NPC characters.

I look forward to having Bandits to add another thing to fight. I do not expect more than that.
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I share similar expectations.  Ranged enemy combat is a tricky thing to get right.  There is a fine line between infalliable aimbots and AI that can't shoot the broadside of a barn.  Time will tell what the vision the devs have for them in A21+.  I am all for more varied encounters so even if its not the best, I will most likely enjoy their presence.  Both as a fan and a level designer :p...

 
Fanatical_Meat said:
This is exactly my fear. Bandit hype is off the charts and if they end up being anything but revolutionary as in we have never seen anything so great in a game the haters are gonna hate.

That is why I keep repeating Bandits will probably behave like smarter zombies that can shoot at you and *maybe* attack your base and *maybe* use explosives to break things...MAYBE.

Unity simply doesn’t seem to be capable of super complex things with tons of stuff on the screen. We need to be realistic as to what the bandits will be.

People are literally fantasizing about giving gifts to Bandits to befriend them and having a Bandit companion live in there base and follow them around on quests. I know for a fact (without having inside info on Bandits) they will not be your friends, they will not navigate the world as a real human player would, they will not make human like attack plans. No games AI has totally believable and mobile NPC characters.

I look forward to having Bandits to add another thing to fight. I do not expect more than that.
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This is a realistic, levelled expectation. @Roland Can you sticky this somewhere?

 
Laz Man said:
I share similar expectations.  Ranged enemy combat is a tricky thing to get right.  There is a fine line between infalliable aimbots and AI that can't shoot the broadside of a barn.  Time will tell what the vision the devs have for them in A21+.  I am all for more varied encounters so even if its not the best, I will most likely enjoy their presence.  Both as a fan and a level designer :p...
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Yeah, another problem is : sometimes enemies are too much accurate and you don't have any chance to fight with them 😕 

 
Re: raft and new water

...would the new water even affect the raft physics?  There are plenty of m word boats, some of which I've worked on, I don't think it would be necessary to change them when water is reworked, but I'm only guessing... Faatal? 

 
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Guppycur said:
Re: raft and new water

...would the new water even affect the raft physics?  There are plenty of m word boats, some of which I've worked on, I don't think it would be necessary to change them when water is reworked, but I'm only guessing... Faatal? 
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You may be right... faatal?

:)

 
Guppycur said:
Re: raft and new water

...would the new water even affect the raft physics?  There are plenty of m word boats, some of which I've worked on, I don't think it would be necessary to change them when water is reworked, but I'm only guessing... Faatal? 
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Nope. Raft just needs to get water level. Old or new water blocks will provide that.

 
@faatal I'm no programmer, but I've read sometime ago on another game's dev blog that games often use a "decision trees" for the AI stuff.

You surely know better than me that, apparently, using those you can have "toons" do complex stuff (like simulating needs and different reactions to events and situations).

Is it possible to do something like that with Unity without going mad? And, most important of all, would that be a viable option for the new bandits AI?  :nerd:

(P.S.: I've willingly ignored the pathing problems because I don't consider that "true AI", but just an accessory to it)

 
@faatal or whoever wants to and/or can answer these questions and ideas, I'd love to know... Thanks to all TFP's for taking the time to share some info.

1) After the game finishes loading it'd be nice if it gave us a prompt to press a button to continue instead of just being thrown into the game, will that happen?

2) Will the anti-aliasing options be renamed to what they actually are, instead of low, medium, high, and ultra?

3) With TAA being added to Alpha 20, will we still have the option to use what ever AA Alpha 19 is using? There are plenty of people who despise TAA.

4) Assuming that the old setting, tree quality, was merged with object quality. Will those two options be separated again?

5) Shadows...

    A) I've noticed that at dusk and dawn the far shadows have a very big impact on performance. Will something be done about that?

    B) Can we get more shadow options? Such as being able to adjust shadow distance, shadow resolution. separately.

    C) Could we please get a little check box to enable grass shadows? There many people with good GPU's who could probably run it.

6) Could be please get an option to have snow covered blocks in the snow biome? That used to be a thing and it was so immersive.

 
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