PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[Orclover]

At the end of my play through sure I could cook all the meat I wanted, but who wants to eat meat? It doesn't have any good bonuses. So I had fun mix and matching whatever I had to get decent bonuses but I wasn't OP with unlimited best foods. I bought 1 rank of living off the land, where normally I never get those perks and have TONS of food.

I'm going to reserve any judgement on the new system until after I get a few days into actually playing it.  I am of course going to be one of those old alpha players who will lament any loss of some survival elements for easier access for new players and more RPG elements.  But thats because I always really enjoyed the survival aspect of previous alphas in 7d2d, we get nostalgic trying to retrace that high of A15 or A16, it's gone and we have to adapt and not complain about it(and don't worry, we will.....eventually).  There is a reason I have far more hours in your game played than Fallout 4 .  In the end I loved the challenge of 7D2D,  It actually took some work to actually get good at, not grinding but learned skill.  And you are right, the farming system did make the survival aspect too easy with not enough effort.  I'm no fan of grinding your food out daily with watering and replanting (as some other games do) but to just plop down 20+ plants and never have to worry about food ever again was making players lazy.  That's ok, I preferred hunting to farming anyways.

 

[KhaineGB]

They have a block conversion tool included with a20 for converting older prefabs. I can't say exactly the process to use it, but they did something similar in a17 so I'd imagine it would be the same thing. Also no they most certainly did not rebuild every prefab from scratch, if they did a20 wouldn't show up until somthing like 2025. 

1) Press F1 to open the console.

2) Run this command: prefabupdater loadtable

3) Then run this command: prefabupdater updateblocks

 

[Jost Amman]

29 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:
Look at this A20 main feature summary, it's very well done IMO:



  Reveal hidden contents

@bachgaman : was it a "nay" because you don't like the video or just because you think I'm advertising someone?

(which is not the case since I don't even know those guys)

 

[Matt115]

26 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:
Look at this A20 main feature summary, it's very well done IMO:



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rad zombie need unique animations  but rest of zombies Tiles and props looks great - but i suggest " military " district- military base +barricades and checkpoints

 

[Laz Man]

From what I've seen of A20 on the streamer weekend so far, it's looking really good.

The one gripe I have with any of the new stuff is that the triggers for opening doors at the end of POIs are one and done, so once you open the door you can't close it again. I'd love to see that be an on and off switch, rather than a one use thing. Maybe that's not possible with however it's been done though

The door with buttons are primarily for level design purposes.  Think of them as quick save and/or quick exits for POIs so players don't have to run through an entire POI to get back in if they died or leave when they are done.

I believe we have a toggle switch as at our disposal as well for certain use cases.

 

[hiemfire]

The door with buttons are primarily for level design purposes.  Think of them as quick save and/or quick exits for POIs so players don't have to run through an entire POI to get back in if they died or leave when they are done.

I believe we have a toggle switch as at our disposal as well for certain use cases.

The 7 Days 2 Die "Skyrim Door". A fast way out of a "dungeon" you've completed.

 

[Laz Man]

Sorry, I don't know where else to ask this, but how can old prefabs be converted to new forms? I downloaded the location from A19, and it all consists of "lost blocks" and question marks. The devteam didn't rebuild all the prefabs manually, did they?

There is a fairly straight forward conversion process for A19 POIs.  Will see if I can find and post the info. later today.

Edit: see khaines post a few posts back.

 

[bachgaman]

@bachgaman : was it a "nay" because you don't like the video or just because you think I'm advertising someone?

(which is not the case since I don't even know those guys)

First. I am very annoyed that they are playing A20 right now, but I cannot

 

[Aldranon]

Possibly. But it also could be the case that single players not speccing into FOR will depend on continued food scavenging while supplementing and improving the canned food from hunting and small scale farming. If single players **need** a couple of points in farming instead of at most one I would view this as a serious balancing bug.

Well TFP have room to tweak it for sure.  Some people made suggestions some pages back.  I believe it was to add the size of the harvest or to lower the chance of losing a seed.

Balancing that to a very low decline in crops (thereby making a non-speced player find value in looted seeds) might be the ideal spot. 

 

[bdubyah]

I think the issue I saw with the switch doors is they stay locked after you open them. So Woodle was gonna base in that building for the night(a new police station I believe) and had hit the switch to get into the loot cell, which I guess also opened a metal door at the back of the building as a quick way out. But it was now locked open so he couldn't close it. Not game breaking by any means, but would be nice if the switches also unlocked them as well as opening them. Or could even just unlock them and you have to find the way out.

 

[Orville Tootenbacher]

Testers have tried the change and it is still possible to be sustainable when perked up.  Of course balancing is ongoing.  We will see where things land.

Please don’t change it back. Farming was way too OP and food way too easy to come by. This is a survival game and hunger should be just as much of a threat as the zombies. How often does anyone actually die from starvation? Or infection or weather for that matter? All the survival elements just seem like minor inconveniences rather than real challenges. So please don’t make it simple to farm tons of food again.

 

[Blake_]

There is a fairly straight forward conversion process for A19 POIs.  Will see if I can find and post the info. later today.

Edit: see khaines post a few posts back.

Really? In the dev streams they painted it like an unfathomable task full of hickups and hardships. I'm glad it's at least doable. Thanks for the hint.

 

[faatal]

There are several ways TFP could do bandits in my thinking and each one would require a smarter AI.

1) Bandits are just zombies with guns, very little changes needed.

2) Bandits have a "Shoot, Scoot, or Hide" algorithm based on damage done and received.

3) Bandits have the above 2 plus an "Elite squad" AI that tries to pin the player down with suppressing fire and flank the player for some kill shots.

1 & 2 would be a good guess.

 

[bdubyah]

Another random observation: there's new chainlink fence stuff, including a door piece. But you can't use the door. Would be pretty nice if you could...

 

[faatal]

I agree on the general idea that new features should be challenged by players depending on how fun or useful they seem to be.

However, there's still the balancing issue that the developer will need to address: we, as players, are of course all about keeping what is fun/convenient for us (e.g.: all cars should be drivable, crops should be a permanent source of food, pipe weapons should do more damage, the drone should be able to shoot zombies), but in the end most players will never make the hard choices which will effectively balance the game to make it more "fun" in the long run.

I'm not saying every choice the devs make is great, mind you, I'm just saying that we should at least give it a shot before taking up the pitchforks.

Many choices devs make are not great. Game development is a lot of experimentation. Dev teams internally often add or change features and later find them not fun or impractical or resource hogs. Early access just exposes this to the public, who then if they choose, get to experience all the back and forth of the design process. We try to minimize that with public releases, but there is only so much time to test things or else people complain you are too slow and don't release updates.

 

[Roland]

But random negative results are not the only issue. They've re introduced the tedium of replanting the farm every harvest.

heheh...I never really farmed very much at all during the era of regrowing plants so to me replanting is just the same as it ever has been and regrowing plants is just a rumor....

Back when the game was still a loose mess of placeholder features there was always the possibility that farming could be one of those aspects of the game that could be really developed and be a big part of the game. I remember imagining what it could become. But the devs weren't interested in making a farming game so farming has remained basic and uninteresting. What they have gets the job done and it isn't ever going to become an involved and detailed design.  I came to terms with that years ago. This is not a farming game. 

Some people treat it that way though and create huge sprawling farm fields that I can imagine would be extremely tedious to have to replant. But to survive you don't have to play farmer and I don't. My mom enjoys doing the farming and she just plants a nice garden sized plot that supplies our needs. Replanting the size of garden she does isn't going to be tedious.

But yeah, if you like farming and you like to do 100 plots then I agree that it is really tedious. I might get into farming like that if farming was more interesting-- like in a farming game.

 

[Jost Amman]

But yeah, if you like farming and you like to do 100 plots then I agree that it is really tedious. I might get into farming like that if farming was more interesting-- like in a farming game.

7D2D Farmer Simulator confirmed for A21!  :whoo:

 

[hiemfire]

like to do 100 plots

Teas, Stews etc (every recipe past the early game straight meat or meat + water requires crops) for 2+ players from one field with how quickly food and thirst bars deplete (without running constantly, it's even faster with running around like a YouTuber on crack with a deadline) and have the ability to have a sufficient stockpile to cover any game glitches that kill off the player planted crops or destroy the portion of the players base that has the crops can result in 100+ plots being necessary in A19 even for a small group.

 

[Jost Amman]

Many choices devs make are not great. Game development is a lot of experimentation. Dev teams internally often add or change features and later find them not fun or impractical or resource hogs. Early access just exposes this to the public, who then if they choose, get to experience all the back and forth of the design process. We try to minimize that with public releases, but there is only so much time to test things or else people complain you are too slow and don't release updates.

I can emphasize with that. I've been literally fighting in long discussions with some self-proclaimed "devs" on Steam, that come to the forum and say that doing what you just said is unprofessional! That it shows a lack of project management and so on and so forth... According to them, you plan something on paper, determine the time it will take and deliver at the scheduled date in time! When I ask them which successful game they developed, then they find any possible reason why they can't tell...

Geez! I'm so fed up with those self entitled braggarts!  :loco:

 

[Blake_]

@faatal there seems to be a bit of a problem with thin obstacles with Zds and animals (like street signs) and fence avoidance (also both, but that would arguably make sense with Zds, not animals, as they can perfectly avoid obstacles).