PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary

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Blake_ said:
@faatal I have a couple of questions:

1.How many options does the Chunk reset option have? I mean I'm curious if there are just simple ones like 10,25,20,50 days (and disabled) or if more advanced ones like "enable only on chunks without player-made blocks (resets if all player-made blocks get destroyed" or things like "do not reset land claim areas", etc, are a thing.

2. How better does 7dtd perform in a21 vs a20? did you noticed significant gains near trees, water, Zombies and/or Blood Moons in general? 

Thank you in advance. 
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1. the options are very simple at 10,20,30,40,50,75.100 days. chunk reset follows player bedroll placed and or land claims placed. if player does not wish their structures reset then either place down bedroll and or land claim or turn of chunk reset. also system watches if player is or has been in the chunk as it did before and will merely reset the timer and start the count again.

2. is a loaded question and not fair to state something that will get thousands of new eyes to test it and report back about how the game holds up because not everyone will have the same perspective.. what i can say is so far with our devs and testing teams, things are looking good.

so the true answer for #2 will depend on what transpires after a21 experimental drops for the public. and for me, the game is running very nice and looks better then a20 did for me. i have an intel I9-11900K with 2TB nvme m.2 main storage drive windows 11 pro installed. 64 GB DDR4 memory. RTX3060 with 12 GB video ram playing on 28" 120 MHz led monitor.

:) thats the best i can do for safe answers.

 
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khzmusik said:
I think you are talking about the zombies using UMA (Unity Multipurpose Avatar). That is the same system that is currently used for player characters. It is also used by some modders (ErrorNull, Snufkins) to make custom zombies.

They were talked about in a dev diary for one of the earlier alphas (can't remember which). TFP didn't "give up" on them, and the issue was not that they "looked bad." The issue was performance. The resources needed to render UMA characters on screen meant that the game could have about half of the number of zombies that it can have now. TFP decided (probably correctly) that players would rather see a greater number of zombies than a greater variety. (But also, yeah, the UMA assets didn't age well.)

UMA is also a third-party tool, so there wasn't much that TFP could do to optimize it.

I am also hoping that the new player character system can be exploited to make custom zombies (or human NPCs). Even if TFP don't do it themselves, it would be cool if modders could use it in a way that is similar to using UMA now.
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Thanks for explanation. i hope for that too. i think it would be possible to made but after HD models it would be too costly 😕

Roland said:
Okay, you make a good point with the 50 unique zombies. I think there probably were 50+ unique zombies at one point but things changed and the website didn't get updated. @Crater Creator can probably bring that up with Rick at some point now that you've brought it up. Just understand, that it will be the number that changes and not the game. Or maybe they will change it to "over 50 unique enemy archetypes including bandits, animals, zombies, and special infected" because once they have all the bandit types in it may be back up to 50.

It isn't false advertising, it is outdated information and while it is still important to get it updated it isn't the same thing nor does it have the same intentions. The screenshots and video clips of the game on Steam were outdated for years before they swapped them with more current footage and pictures. Its not best practice but it happens and when it is known it should get fixed.
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kinda could agree : bandits can be count still but not animals

Farm or Hunt – Plant and grow gardens for sustainable resources or head out into the wilderness and hunt over a dozen unique wild animals.

Hm.... sounds like specialy exctracted from rest of creatures. 

but this will be fine - i was only angry because well it was still as actual thins on this page. If this will be changed it will be good enough :)  

 
Blake_ said:
@faatal I have a couple of questions:

1.How many options does the Chunk reset option have? I mean I'm curious if there are just simple ones like 10,25,20,50 days (and disabled) or if more advanced ones like "enable only on chunks without player-made blocks (resets if all player-made blocks get destroyed" or things like "do not reset land claim areas", etc, are a thing.

2. How better does 7dtd perform in a21 vs a20? did you noticed significant gains near trees, water, Zombies and/or Blood Moons in general? 

Thank you in advance. 
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1 It is just a reset time in days. It works at the POI/chunk/region level. The engine does not track player made blocks.

2 Hard to say. So many things change that you can't just load an old world and stare in the same direction and see if it is x FPS faster, because that world won't load and if it did, POIs have changed or new blocks and some blocks converted to props. A lot of it is situational with where you are, what you are doing, your hardware and your options. The simple answer is it runs a bit faster and RAM use is a fair bit less.

 
faatal said:
Friday, I started on the forge mesh showing/hiding each tool and it seems to be working. This will probably make it into A21. Code supports all workstation types, so will be simple enough to do the rest as new models/features are added.
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That would be amazing!  Any time you can show changes when adding mods/etc. to things is a good thing.  For instance, I played Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous and it showed not only all armor and weapon changes (including showing secondary weapons), but it also showed items that are placed in the quick slots around the character's belt.  That little detail really made the characters look great.  I don't expect 7D2D to include all of that, especially when you can have so many things in the quick slots and it would look bad to see 10 weapons or tools hanging off your character, but things like workstations, vehicles, weapons, and armor would be great.  Of course, some are already done - drone mods and most weapon mods.  But I'll gladly take more.  :D

 
SnowDog1942 said:
This is in no way a dis,  but i find it fascinating how different people care about different things.  For every hundred  hours of game time we are in the menu for ??? 5 minutes of that time?  Whoop dee doo.  Lol
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No offense taken, lol, I enjoy the little details more than most!

Keeping my reply semi-on topic but for anyone on the dev team who sees this and feels like answering, is painting still an issue going forward, with regards to the texture limit, and if so, are there going to be custom blocks for POI builders that feature new or different textures than that in the painting menu?

 
Having played this game since the early alphas, graphics were never the first attraction. Aside from the skill rebalancing, with the latest Dev video we have seen more and are due to see more art that will simply save the game from death by bad graphics. The biggest note for this game is horde night.

However, bandits, the story and character customisation will be the substance that defines how the game gets beyond its current state into a truly complete experience. IMO bandits and story could both be game breakers or game makers. Alpha 21 is a safe alpha. As much as we want them, it's a good thing the Devs take their time to get bandits right. I certainly feel there is a lot at stake with the next alphas.

 
beerfly said:
I hope you know you are a legend, sir. 
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You're right!  :heh:

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vergilsparda said:
Keeping my reply semi-on topic but for anyone on the dev team who sees this and feels like answering, is painting still an issue going forward, with regards to the texture limit, and if so, are there going to be custom blocks for POI builders that feature new or different textures than that in the painting menu?
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I think I remember Rick saying in the Dev Stream that there's probably only one or two textures which were "deprecated" and replaced with new ones.

 
vergilsparda said:
Keeping my reply semi-on topic but for anyone on the dev team who sees this and feels like answering, is painting still an issue going forward, with regards to the texture limit, and if so, are there going to be custom blocks for POI builders that feature new or different textures than that in the painting menu?
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Unfortunately, the reasons they give for not adding new textures to the paint menu also apply to the POI editor.  I think they could increase this even if it means a bit higher minimum specs, but they either do or don't.  Adding it for one is the same as adding it for the other.  From what they've said, they aren't going to add more.  All they will do is replace some they don't like with new ones, but the number will stay the same.  I wish that weren't the case and others have said the same but....

 
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