PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[Kinyajuu]

I am going to drop a tiny bit of info since towns a tiles are being asked about.
Custom townships are possible now, not just city, town, and country. We made an "oldwest" township that has street tiles that match that theme.
In my dev stream in a couple weeks I will explain how that works and how modders can make custom towns using their own set of tiles.

 

[Matt115]

I am going to drop a tiny bit of info since towns a tiles are being asked about.
Custom townships are possible now, not just city, town, and country. We made an "oldwest" township that has street tiles that match that theme.
In my dev stream in a couple weeks I will explain how that works and how modders can make custom towns using their own set of tiles.

Do we will get new "oldwest" props too? ^^

 

[Kinyajuu]

Do we will get new "oldwest" props too? ^^

Wait for tonight's stream. The level designers will be talking about new prefabs, tools, and such.

 

[dcsobral]

@Kinyajuu Taking advantage of you reading the dev diary again, let me re-ask these questions: 

Random Gen questions:

1. Are there plans for wilderness tiles? Say, something like "house goes here, well or water tower goes here, one small crop here and one medium crop here", to be spawned in the wilderness?

2. And if there are no plans for that, would it work if someone created a rwg_tile_wilderness as a mod?

3. Will modlets work with rng, loading tiles and prefabs from modlets that have them before world creation starts?

4. Can one create a "wildcard" tile that may be used on any zoning?

5. Are there "no roads" tiles? For example, if I wanted to create a no-cars downtown tile.

6. Can we get a "save preview" option on the previewer to create a png or jpeg of the whole map? (I'll admit: that's not really a question )

 

[littlegreen]

I’m not sure what you’re asking. There has always been a tool for generating worlds. It now has some extra sliders for choosing things like more or less cities, plains, mountains, hills, rivers, lakes, etc but it is the same tool. You would then set up your dedicated server using that world the same way you always have. I don’t think there is a change to how you set up the server. World generation seems faster to me. 

@Swiftpaw @meganoth @dcsobral

I realize now I may have been doing things the wrong way, nevertless... :

I am talking about a dedicated tool - i.e. external application. Kind of like Nitrogen here on the forum. Upto now, I have always generated worlds using the serverconfig.xml on my linux dedicated server, which is very painful for the hardware - and only recently found Nitrogen ... unfortunately it is now a dead project. It had all the sliders you could wish for - and just exported the world without even launching the game. WIthout even having the game installed. And used A LOT less RAM to boot.

Obviously the way the world is generated will be changing vastly now, so I was wondering if we can maybe have something of that kind built into the game... 

EDIT: BTW, just saying - launching the game in windows, going to "Editing Tools" -> "Random Gen Previewr" lets me generate a map, but not use it... I mean I can see it in the World Editor, but I don't see any physical files with that name anywhere in the game directory.... it has always been like that for me - hence why I have not used it ever. As I said in the beginning - I may have not been doing some things the best way

 

[dcsobral]

@Swiftpaw @meganoth @dcsobral

I realize now I may have been doing things the wrong way, nevertless... :

I am talking about a dedicated tool - i.e. external application. Kind of like Nitrogen here on the forum. Upto now, I have always generated worlds using the serverconfig.xml on my linux dedicated server, which is very painful for the hardware - and only recently found Nitrogen ... unfortunately it is now a dead project. It had all the sliders you could wish for - and just exported the world without even launching the game. WIthout even having the game installed. And used A LOT less RAM to boot.

Obviously the way the world is generated will be changing vastly now, so I was wondering if we can maybe have something of that kind built into the game... 

There's KingGen which is active (link below). You don't need to start a game to generate a world, just click on Editing Tools -> Random Gen Previewer from the main menu. You can generate worlds on the dedi without changing serverconfig.xml too. For example, I have a set of tools to create and analyse seeds, and this is how it creates a seed using dedi:

7DaysToDieServer.exe -quit -batchmode -nographics -logfile "$(wslpath -w "${LOG}")" -configfile=serverconfig.xml -UserDataFolder=UserData -GameWorld=RWG -WorldGenSize="${SIZE}" -WorldGenSeed="${SEED}" -GameName=test -verbose -dedicated

(my tools are publicly available at https://github.com/dcsobral/seedGen )

KingGen forum post:

 

[samljer]

@madmole

@Roland

Guys, an important question regarding the random world generating:

Is there going to be a tool for generating worlds? I play with buddies online and because we're not in the same timezone, I tend to leave a dedi server on my home rack -  that way we can just join in at anytime, but the linux-based dedicated server has always felt a little weird to operate...

...so is there going to be a tool to use to generate a world which I can then just export and put the server to load it up? (or maybe a tool for the linux server that does not require a gazillion tetabytes of RAM to generate one )

Thanks!

Isnt there 3rd party map generators? Probably wait for those to get updated?

Im not sure on this... king generator, or something.

 

[JCrook1028]

Can you imagine Madmole doing that while building? ... I don't.

So if HE wouldn't like it, it's probably NOT like that.  :smokin:

It IS like that tho. rebar frames are gone.

 

[littlegreen]

Thanks!

I will look into both of those - hopefully both work with A20

Cheers!

There's KingGen which is active (link below). You don't need to start a game to generate a world, just click on Editing Tools -> Random Gen Previewer from the main menu. You can generate worlds on the dedi without changing serverconfig.xml too. For example, I have a set of tools to create and analyse seeds, and this is how it creates a seed using dedi:

7DaysToDieServer.exe -quit -batchmode -nographics -logfile "$(wslpath -w "${LOG}")" -configfile=serverconfig.xml -UserDataFolder=UserData -GameWorld=RWG -WorldGenSize="${SIZE}" -WorldGenSeed="${SEED}" -GameName=test -verbose -dedicated

(my tools are publicly available at https://github.com/dcsobral/seedGen )

KingGen forum post:

 

[MechanicalLens]

In A20 will the nail gun get a radial menu so we can select what material to upgrade with? (Similarly to how we change ammo types in weapons.)

 

[Roland]

you want to choose between nails vs nails?

 

[MechanicalLens]

you want to choose between nails vs nails?

No I meant to choose between upgrading wood, or cobblestone, or concrete mix, or steel.

Iron as well, if the iron shapes are staying in.

 

[dcsobral]

you want to choose between nails vs nails?

More like wood vs cobblestone vs concrete vs steel, with the nailgun no longer being a weapon. Sure, we'll lose the Nail Some Chicks quest but we can survive that.

Madmole mentioned that idea on a dev stream long ago.

 

[MechanicalLens]

More like wood vs cobblestone vs concrete vs steel, with the nailgun no longer being a weapon. Sure, we'll lose the Nail Some Chicks quest but we can survive that.

Madmole mentioned that idea on a dev stream long ago.

I'm not entirely sure how the particle board blocks will work but if we will be able to upgrade straight to steel instead of going through the upgrade chain, then how would the game decide what material to use? In this scenario I see a radial menu for the stone axe / claw hammer / nail gun being necessary.

That is unless you are "forced" to go through all of the upgrade stages in order and we'll just be able to craft the solid versions of each material type. (Ex. Steel blocks.) If this is the case, I'm curious if we'll get XP for placing them, and if so, how much.

 

[khzmusik]

I'm not entirely sure how the particle board blocks will work but if we will be able to upgrade straight to steel instead of going through the upgrade chain, then how would the game decide what material to use? In this scenario I see a radial menu for the stone axe / claw hammer / nail gun being necessary.

That is unless you are "forced" to go through all of the upgrade stages in order and we'll just be able to craft the solid versions of each material type. (Ex. Steel blocks.) If this is the case, I'm curious if we'll get XP for placing them, and if so, how much.

I was imagining that the particle board would replace the wood frames, but you'd still have to go through an upgrade path (which will be far simpler in A20).

So no going straight from particle board to steel, but particle board -> wood  -> cobblestone (I think? one of them is still there) -> concrete -> steel. Something like that anyway.

 

[Jost Amman]

It IS like that tho. rebar frames are gone.

I wasn't talking about that... maybe read again the post I replied to.

I was imagining that the particle board would replace the wood frames, but you'd still have to go through an upgrade path (which will be far simpler in A20).

So no going straight from particle board to steel, but particle board -> wood  -> cobblestone (I think? one of them is still there) -> concrete -> steel. Something like that anyway.

Unless they added a "different" particle board for each material type.

Example: if you have concrete blocks in your hand, you select the shape, then place the "concrete particle board" and the upgrade it to concrete.

Maybe I'm just dreaming, but if it's like that it would be great!  :cool2:

 

[MechanicalLens]

I wasn't talking about that... maybe read again the post I replied to.

Unless they added a "different" particle board for each material type.

Example: if you have concrete blocks in your hand, you select the shape, then place the "concrete particle board" and the upgrade it to concrete.

Maybe I'm just dreaming, but if it's like that it would be great!  :cool2:

There better be some very noticeable differences between them if that's going to be the case.

 

[rescue86k]

If they delay A20 for bandits then it will arrive at about the same time that A21 would anyway. So if you feel strongly about your suggestion you can keep playing A19 and ignore A20 and then when A21 releases you can pretend that that is A20 and it was delayed for bandits. It's not like bandits are almost done and they just need to delay things a month or two.

So no hate. You do you and we will play A20 this year.

I appreciate the info on the time frame to complete bandits. I don't feel strongly about it. I felt that the new features would be bandits and water overhaul and I saw both couped into 21. At the time it sounded like bandits could be sneaked into 20 if it was delayed a bit.

 

[Fanatical_Meat]

More like wood vs cobblestone vs concrete vs steel, with the nailgun no longer being a weapon. Sure, we'll lose the Nail Some Chicks quest but we can survive that.

Madmole mentioned that idea on a dev stream long ago.

I don’t think I have ever used the nail gun as a weapon. You always have something better on you.

Sort of like throwing rocks, sounds cool and fun mechanic but it simply never works that way.  

 

[Roland]

I'm not entirely sure how the particle board blocks will work but if we will be able to upgrade straight to steel instead of going through the upgrade chain, then how would the game decide what material to use? In this scenario I see a radial menu for the stone axe / claw hammer / nail gun being necessary.

That is unless you are "forced" to go through all of the upgrade stages in order and we'll just be able to craft the solid versions of each material type. (Ex. Steel blocks.) If this is the case, I'm curious if we'll get XP for placing them, and if so, how much.

 I answered this somewhere else but it bears repeating. There are only wood frames (particle board) left in the game as far as frames that can be placed and picked up. They upgrade to wood for 10 wood which upgrades to cobblestone for 10 cobblestone which upgrades to Concrete for 10 Concrete Mix which upgrades to Steel for 10 Steel.

There are no frames in the game that go directly to steel or concrete or cobblestone. You can craft those blocks and place them using the shape menu or you upgrade to them paying the cost of each resource as you go through the path. If you want to plan using particle board then you place it where you want and then pick it up to replace it with your concrete block but there is no rebar any longer just as cobblestone frames and junk metal frames are no longer.

wood frames(particle board) -> Wood -> Cobblestone -> Concrete -> Steel

That is the whole path and with a nail gun it would be 3 clicks and cost you 10 wood, 10 cobblestone rocks, and 10 concrete mix. There is no need to differentiate what you have in your inventory because you never have to choose this or that mat. It just follows the path.