PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[Beelzebubs Ghost]

Just had a thought for A21 (or beyond.)

Perhaps traders could have station slots wherein survivors could gain special quests after completing a certain line.

The special quest could be one or more per trader - to unlock an npc survivor from the world who would take up the station in the trader.

The survivor npc could then provide you with a service, for example questing for food or charging dukes to cook special recipes that the player cannot cook, the same going for the work bench or an armourers bench to craft novel weapons or armour that aren't lootable or craftable.

This would populate the traders and give a little breath of life and also open opportunities for more quests and add a little extra something to the game. Thoughts? 

 

[Tmodloader]

Ok you removed fall damage from zombies this is true for dead flesh but why don't they get the debuff from fracture why don't they slow down?
Another nuance, why do zombies run around mines and other spikes?

Zombies are a car rushing straight without a driver - this is a blind thirst for killing all living things, and you made them damn geniuses who, after an improved block by you, switch their attention to a weak block. Are they telepaths? Why didn't they create a new civilization with such intelligence, because their IQ is clearly no less than yours!
Crawling zombies damage the player through closed doors, frames, and blocks.
That's not what you guys do.

I dont like that they focus on weaker points if that is true, but I'd prefer that they did have more chances at destroying structural integrity than they do now. I witnessed in A20, zombies focused on attacking the building next to the one I was in, instead of bringing down my tower. No damage done to my tower at all, they nearly destroyed a nearby building though

 

[JCrook1028]

Zombies are a car rushing straight without a driver - this is a blind thirst for killing all living things

Zombies in a game, or movie, or book are exactly and only what the artist making said thing decides they are. YOU do not define them. THEY do.

 

[Quantum Blue]

"... this is chained to the existing realities and known physical laws, ..."

Because zombies are real?  (and didn't I use the word 'hyperbole'?  That was to foster imaginative thinking.)

I have spent some thought on this since my last posting and I have my own story - hopefully without resorting to hyperbole...

A few years into the future a lab is working on nanorobotics (look it up - it's real) that augment the human body and/or mind.  And a nuclear war breaks out and hits the lab causing some of the living experiments (dogs, people, whatever) to become mutated versions.  And they break out and start infecting others.  Voila!

 

[PoloPoPo]

Is the vehicle teleport bug already resolved? If yes when will this be fixed for the players?

Can't play for a single evening where this does not happen. Now again my gyrocopter has been teleported 5 blocks below sand. Don't even know whether there was a hole there before or the gyrocopter replaced sand blocks.

I know "alpha... bugs have to be expected..." but as much as I wonder how such a game breaking bug (same with turrets falling through blocks) can find its way into a "stable" version I'd like to know when this is supposed to be fixed so I might just pause playing 7D2D until then.

Or is there a way to prevent that right now?

Edit:

21 minutes later next teleportation.

 

[Jost Amman]

Is the vehicle teleport bug already resolved? If yes when will this be fixed for the players?

Can't play for a single evening where this does not happen. Now again my gyrocopter has been teleported 5 blocks below sand. Don't even know whether there was a hole there before or the gyrocopter replaced sand blocks.

I know "alpha... bugs have to be expected..." but as much as I wonder how such a game breaking bug (same with turrets falling through blocks) can find its way into a "stable" version I'd like to know when this is supposed to be fixed so I might just pause playing 7D2D until then.

Or is there a way to prevent that right now?

Edit:

21 minutes later next teleportation.

For the time being, I suggest you always empty and pick up your vehicles.

Problem solved.

 

[PoloPoPo]

For the time being, I suggest you always empty and pick up your vehicles.

Problem solved.

Sometimes it is as easy as that but not always. When doint a T5 quest in Wasteland or Snow biome, both 3-5 km away from home, I take lots of ammo, medic and food stuff with me in my vehicle. Few days ago I was in the T5 crack-a-book building doing a quest, wanted to go out to my 4x4 fetching more ammo - 4x4 teleported away. I now have the option to either go to my vehicle nontheless and therefore quit the quest or continue the quest without ammo (which is impossible).

Sure you will say now "get some ammo from creative menu" and that is what I did, later tossed some ammo out of my vehicle... most of the times there is some kind of workaround but it sucks big times when you have to do that multiple times per session. That is why I am curious to know whether there is a solution already or not.

Btw I remember the vehicle teleporting bug from A18. Has been solved there eventually and now it is back but even worse.

 

[Jost Amman]

Sometimes it is as easy as that but not always. When doint a T5 quest in Wasteland or Snow biome, both 3-5 km away from home, I take lots of ammo, medic and food stuff with me in my vehicle. Few days ago I was in the T5 crack-a-book building doing a quest, wanted to go out to my 4x4 fetching more ammo - 4x4 teleported away. I now have the option to either go to my vehicle nontheless and therefore quit the quest or continue the quest without ammo (which is impossible).

Sure you will say now "get some ammo from creative menu" and that is what I did, later tossed some ammo out of my vehicle... most of the times there is some kind of workaround but it sucks big times when you have to do that multiple times per session. That is why I am curious to know whether there is a solution already or not.

Btw I remember the vehicle teleporting bug from A18. Has been solved there eventually and now it is back but even worse.

Ok, here's a suggestion: as soon as you get to the T5 building, craft a storage chest and empty the entire content of your vehicle into that.

Pick up your vehicle (or store it in the chest), then you can still go back to the storage whenever you need something additional.

 

[Star69]

In this thread a couple pages back, Fatal said he believes he has fixed the issue with some tweaking to do and should be in A20.1. Place a box to put your spoils in and pick up your vehicle until then or take a break until A20.1 is released. I always start the quest then place a box. By putting it right where the quest starts, I can go back & forth adding items when my inventory gets full without risking failing the quest by going out of bounds. An extra step but seems to do the trick until the fix is released.

Edit: @Jost Amman beat me to the post

 

[rildin]

(/sarcasm on...)

Know what I can't justify?  Egg Nests.  Everywhere.  In the forest.  In the desert.  In the snow.  In the wasteland.   And always having feathers.  My 'immersion' requires that my character have to climb every tree searching all branches to find one.  And it should take a couple hours in-game time and have all kinds of percentages to fall and break things and/or die.

Now if they could handle bird nests the way Donkey-Kong did, that would be great.

(hyperbolic reference to 'suspension of disbelief'.)

; - )

The best I can figure is this:  judging from the size of some of the trees I've seen growing INSIDE the fallen POI skyscrapers, the cataclysm occurred more than 30 years ago (being very conservative).  (/Imagination on...)

Chickens survived, but being at the bottom of the food chain, were ravaged by survivors, and the zombies for both meat and eggs (for the protein).'

The vultures, being cannibalistic, were under threat, so developed into building great quantities of nests with only one or two eggs, to give their offspring a greater chance to hatch and survive.

The chickens began to emulate that behavior.  Now, it's impossible to tell which is which (which is why even on the top of tall buildings, inhabited by vultures, you see what you think are chicken nests, containing eggs, but are in reality vulture nests, with vulture eggs.)  They are so similar, it takes a VERY close examination to tell them apart.

The only thing I'm not seeing here is this:

Because of their situation, the vultures are EXCEEDINGLY protective.  I would have expected that if I were inspecting nests, and vultures were in the area, I would be attacked, since the vulture population depends on every egg possible hatching.  I envision that it would be similar to what we see when we sit on a vehicle with vultures around.

Maybe I've just been lucky.

Which is why the chickens copied them, because predators would be "leery" of robbing the nests.  I think.

 

[pregnable]

Hey, is anyone else missing the max alive zombie count setting? 

I am playing 64, and while I know the number does not jump up super fast, my last video was only like 8 zombies, when I was expecting at least 12...

Then I go and look and I no longer see the max alive zombie setting...

Is it gone now or did I miss something?

 

[faatal]

Question: SMG Turrets and Shotgun Turrets no longer seem to set off demolishers, but junk sledge and junk turrets still do. I didn't see mention of this on either the patch notes nor on the Public A20 KI List yet. Is this a bug? a balance change? intentional difference between turret types?

I appreciate base turrets helping to kill demolishers, but if intentional, it seems odd to me that the *placed* portable turrets weren't also included. 

There should be no changes to that. They should just be firing away with whatever part they target and random hit variation each weapon has and possibly hitting the demo charge.

 

[faatal]

Is the vehicle teleport bug already resolved? If yes when will this be fixed for the players?

Can't play for a single evening where this does not happen. Now again my gyrocopter has been teleported 5 blocks below sand. Don't even know whether there was a hole there before or the gyrocopter replaced sand blocks.

I know "alpha... bugs have to be expected..." but as much as I wonder how such a game breaking bug (same with turrets falling through blocks) can find its way into a "stable" version I'd like to know when this is supposed to be fixed so I might just pause playing 7D2D until then.

What I posted before is about that issue:

"All or most of the issues with players/zombies/turrets/vehicles falling through ground appear to be caused by the world origin shift. It happens about 4 times more often in a20, so these bugs are more apparent. It seems to be a random Unity physics update problem after the origin changes, causing physics casts to fail. I've tried a ton of stuff and added a rapid origin shifting mode to repro it quickly. I now have the Origin code doing extra physics updating that reduces the problem to one frame and a raycast which detects when it happens, so I can try even more adjustments to fix it. "

This is not an easy bug to fix as it is an internal Unity engine issue with their physics values not updating after we shift the world origin. After a week of experiments trying to repro it and come up with fixes, it seems better, but it still is not 100% fixed, so come Monday I'll be trying more things. We have to shift the origin or you get jittering animations as you move away from the world zero point.

 

[spud42]

ahh the 7DTD equivilant of the Farlands.....    the jitter is annoying just watch some "Farlands or bust" youtube...

does the origin have to be shifted as often? i know its not a direct comparison but in minecraft the jitter didnt start to be noticable until you were like 100,000 blocks from the origin ??  

 

[faatal]

ahh the 7DTD equivilant of the Farlands.....    the jitter is annoying just watch some "Farlands or bust" youtube...

does the origin have to be shifted as often? i know its not a direct comparison but in minecraft the jitter didnt start to be noticable until you were like 100,000 blocks from the origin ??  

There was a reason the origin was changed to shift more often. Weapons shaking in hands. If we could do it less often, we would. Even if shifted much less, it still causes the physics bug, so still needs to be fixed.

 

[Damocles]

This is not an easy bug to fix as it is an internal Unity engine issue with their physics values not updating after we shift the world origin. After a week of experiments trying to repro it and come up with fixes, it seems better, but it still is not 100% fixed, so come Monday I'll be trying more things. We have to shift the origin or you get jittering animations as you move away from the world zero point.

Do you set the CharacterControllers enabled state to false before shifting the origin? The physics engine does not like moving a CharacterController around externally when its active.

 

[Jost Amman]

Do you set the CharacterControllers enabled state to false before shifting the origin? The physics engine does not like moving a CharacterController around externally when its active.

Interesting!

 

[Kalex]

Are blood moon zeds supposed to spawn in already in destroy everything mode? Because we are certainly seeing it happen.

And aren't they supposed to exit destroy everything mode after a certain amount of time? We are seeing ANY exit destroy everything mode once they get in it.

 

[Jost Amman]

Are blood moon zeds supposed to spawn in already in destroy everything mode? Because we are certainly seeing it happen.

And aren't they supposed to exit destroy everything mode after a certain amount of time? We are seeing ANY exit destroy everything mode once they get in it.

You may have set up your base so that the best choice for them is to go in destroy mode.

Try to "fix" the path they should follow to you so that they have the most clear and easy way to you.

Also, as faatal mentioned some time ago, there are different types of "AI levels", some zombies are very dumb, and they almost always go into destroy mode.

The "smarter" ones, instead, will path to you even if the path is longer and "complicated".

 

[Kalex]

No, there is a path to us. I had the AI view (whatever it is actually called dm mode Num 0) on and watched 10 zeds spawn in within eyesight and 9 pathed to us immediately but one immediately went into destroy mode (it was a duplicate of another zed that was out and was closer to the path to us than its twin who actually pathed to us). And every other zed that went into destroy mode for whatever reason stayed in destroy mode permanently instead of coming out of it as the xml indicates they should.