PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[faatal]

The fix wont come until A22?? kinda figured we would see an A21.1 or something. The wife is going to be @%$#ed if I keep throwing her around the room for another year and a half lol.

21.1 will have a variety of fixes. We put our changes in trunk which is the next version of the game (A22) and then branch some changes to the A21 project for building and testing.

 

[Blake_]

@faatal , I think you are the one to talk about performance, right? Well, there's an issue that has been in the game for quite a few alphas and I would like to know if it has an easy fix performance-wise. 

The thing is, when ragdolling, entities (all of them, animals and zds alike) only emit the sound in the exact spot the ragdoll started, so that means entity sounds are not tracked while in ragdoll mode, not even a little.

That means, dropping a zd from any slope, building, block, path, edge,etc, and engaging or just following the entity will result in no sound, except in the point of origin.

There are many combat situations in which that issue happens, but most noticeably while using the club, that has a book, BATTER UP VOL.6 (ragdolls enemies) that generates that issue and the repulsor mod for the baton (lots of fun though, if it weren't for the sound) .

I believe the team might be aware of this? Would "tracking sound" while ragdolling reduce performance or is it negligible?

 

[faatal]

@faatal , I think you are the one to talk about performance, right? Well, there's an issue that has been in the game for quite a few alphas and I would like to know if it has an easy fix performance-wise. 

The thing is, when ragdolling, entities (all of them, animals and zds alike) only emit the sound in the exact spot the ragdoll started, so that means entity sounds are not tracked while in ragdoll mode, not even a little.

That means, dropping a zd from any slope, building, block, path, edge,etc, and engaging or just following the entity will result in no sound, except in the point of origin.

There are many combat situations in which that issue happens, but most noticeably while using the club, that has a book, BATTER UP VOL.6 (ragdolls enemies) that generates that issue and the repulsor mod for the baton (lots of fun though, if it weren't for the sound) .

I believe the team might be aware of this? Would "tracking sound" while ragdolling reduce performance or is it negligible?

I am not aware of the issue, but playing a sound at the hips (the ragdoll root location) is no harder than at the entity position (controller ground position), it is a matter of finding all the places in code playing sounds on the entity and changing them all to account for ragdolls being on or making it always use the hips.
I made a ticket.

 

[Zombiepoptard]

What part of "we're reworking character and NPCs animations for A22" did you miss?

I missed the part where they said at any time they were going to fix the first person shooter part of the game. I know the animation team is on other jobs thank you but it's also about what they don't have have on there to do list. Last time I heard from Joel about this he said the first person shooter side of the game was fine. It seemed like he didn't even think it had glaring issues. Do you know something that I don't? after there done with all the npc stuff will they move to a revamp on everything first person? I think it'll be time to go gold by then. Once they go gold I think will be stuck with a subpar shooter element of an overall good game. There are still a lot of people waiting on this game to fill it's potential. I've been waiting for 7 years for bandits to come out so I can wait but the question is do they have time to do another revamp on something so big?

 

[mstdv inc]

@faatal Is it planned that A21 will be shorter than A20? .1 .2 maximum .3? 

 

[Zombiepoptard]

@faatal Is it planned that A21 will be shorter than A20? .1 .2 maximum .3? 

a22 you mean

 

[Sephiroth87xz]

Developers say a lot, but so little. They are rarely specific and usually very vague. They want progress in the game, but you can get it in a thousand different ways. With the Learn by Reading system, they have chosen a progression system based on looting. This makes it hard to predict how the game will progress because looting involves a lot of randomness.

When they talk about balancing, it's unclear what they mean. After all, balancing is a very subjective thing. And they have never explained what "normal" gameplay means to them. Everyone claims to play normally, but everyone plays differently. So the term "normal" is meaningless.

As for quests, maybe you haven't noticed, but they have nothing to do with progression in the game. They are simply based on risk and reward. The greater the risk, the greater the reward. It's the same principle as going into a more difficult biome. If you only do low-risk T1 quests all the time, you will only get T1 rewards.

And one last thing. Your idea of balance is not necessarily the same as the developers'. Balancing is very subjective. So when the developers talk about balancing and you talk about balancing, you might be talking about two very different things.

Developers have a precise idea of balancing actually, with the magazine system, which work good with the actually progression of the difficulty systems.

Now traders/loot/quests rewards aren't in line with the the progression of the difficulty system, they broke it making it too quick too easy, even on the hardest difficulty.

Developers confirmed they will continue to balance.

You think they will remove the new magazine systems and change how the difficulty systems works or they will fix the progression of traders/loot/quests ?

A nice idea to slow down trader advancement and add exploration to the mix would be that you need a different trader for each trader tier advancement.

Example: You would do 7(?) quests for trader 1 and would advance to tier2 quests with him. Then you need to find another trader and do 7 quests for him to advance to tier2 and do 7 quests at another trader to advance to tier3.

And there should be some mechanic to prevent doing lots of tier1 quests to advance everywhere. So either you need to do quests of the directly lower tier to advance to next tier or quests of higher tiers give you more "points" for the advancement. Maybe the latter is even already in the game? I did not check, but it would be sensible and still allow for lower tier quests to finally advance someone, but not in a fraction of the time.

Sure can work to slow the things a bit.

But there will still be the problems of what the traders sells and what give for rewards.

The progression for traders/loot/quests is too much quick because there are weapons and items given too much soon.

Getting magnum from traders both in rewards of quests tier 2/3 and in trader list, is simple too soon.

Because break the difficulty progression and because is a bit "funny" to get a weapon need steel to be crafted so soon.

 

[Jost Amman]

I missed the part where they said at any time they were going to fix the first person shooter part of the game.

The only thing to fix there that comes to my mind is the crosshairs, IF they want to make them more realistic.

Apart from that, what's there to fix according to you?  :suspicious:

 

[mstdv inc]

a22 you mean

No. I mean, A21 will be A21.1, A21.2 and maximum A21.3. We won't have A21.7 like it was with A20. I hope.
That's the question.

 

[Zombiepoptard]

The only thing to fix there that comes to my mind is the crosshairs, IF they want to make them more realistic.

Apart from that, what's there to fix according to you?  :suspicious:

I listed these things in the first comment. I have faith that you can critically look and compare how first person shooter usually work and what 7dtd is missing. I can tell you a lot but it 3am and I'm heading to bed.

 

[meganoth]

Sure can work to slow the things a bit.

But there will still be the problems of what the traders sells and what give for rewards.

The progression for traders/loot/quests is too much quick because there are weapons and items given too much soon.

Getting magnum from traders both in rewards of quests tier 2/3 and in trader list, is simple too soon.

Because break the difficulty progression and because is a bit "funny" to get a weapon need steel to be crafted so soon.

There is no requirement in the forum to post complete solutions to the whole balance problem .

The idea isn't without drawbacks as well as the player would be forced to go through "low-level" POIs again just to reach higher tiers. Probably the walk through the lower tiers would have to be shortened once you finished them once to not make this a grind.

 

[Thaledwyn]

21.1 will have a variety of fixes. We put our changes in trunk which is the next version of the game (A22) and then branch some changes to the A21 project for building and testing.

Cross your fingers, that 21.1 includes the double barrel fix, too.

 

[DaMfS]

I also hope that the quest rewards from the trader get balanced. We are playing in a group of three, and each of us received a level 4 steel melee weapon from a tier 3 quest.
Up to that point, we were able to craft level 3/4 iron.
This means now we seemingly have to read 30 books before we can even get a better weapon. Moreover, we are now blazing through all POIs without much difficulty. Before, we had to be somewhat careful.

 

[Jost Amman]

I listed these things in the first comment. I have faith that you can critically look and compare how first person shooter usually work and what 7dtd is missing. I can tell you a lot but it 3am and I'm heading to bed.

Right, I thought you were talking about the way others see you in COOP.

So the list is:

1. the bone work 
   
2. the recoil 
   
3. the running animation
   
4. the way your gun sways when moving the camera 
   
5. revamp all of that 
   
6. having more than one main attack melee animation
   

Of the above points, the only one I see has any meaningful merit is n.6 (but it would be a plus, not something lacking).

As for n.1 I'd ask for @SnowDog1942's expertise on how to handle it.

 

[RipClaw]

Developers have a precise idea of balancing actually, with the magazine system, which work good with the actually progression of the difficulty systems.

It works for you and your playstyle, but that doesn't mean it works for everyone in every situation. A player who doesn't loot, or loots very little, will progress slowly or not at all with the magazine system. Someone who does nothing but looting will progress quickly.

It also depends on how many opportunities you have to find magazines. The more loot containers you have that could potentially hold a magazine, the faster you will progress. Looting a crack a book can give you a huge boost in progress. If you have a town with a lot of mailboxes and news dispensers, you will also progress faster than if you have a town that does not.

Now traders/loot/quests rewards aren't in line with the the progression of the difficulty system, they broke it making it too quick too easy, even on the hardest difficulty.

By difficulty system, you probably mean the gamestage. The difficulty settings have no effect on the gamestage. In the calculation for the gamestage there used to be a multiplier that changes with the difficulty setting but that was changed some time ago and set to a fixed value of 1.2.

What was added in A21 is the biome bonus and biome multiplier for the gamestage calculation.

If you want to have a hard game that relies mainly on your crafting skills then I would suggest that you change the loot settings to at least 50%, don't do any quests and don't put any points into Daring Adventurer.

Developers confirmed they will continue to balance.

They always do until 7 Days goes gold and maybe even beyond. But they never said that the balancing will be based on the crafting skills as you seem to imagine.

The traderstage, lootstage and the gamestage have the player level as a common element in the calculation. It can therefore be assumed that this is the central anchor point. But the crafting skills are not bound to the player level. This is based solely on the magazines you read.

The quest rewards are a different story. These are basically a special loot group per quest tier and per quest type. Here the balancing could be more about the rewards being appropriate for the quest tier and the quest type. Less relevant could be that they match the gamestage, lootstage or traderstage.

You think they will remove the new magazine systems and change how the difficulty systems works or they will fix the progression of traders/loot/quests ?

No, I think they will continue to balance the game based on telemetry data but not necessarily in the way you imagine. You seem to see crafting as a central element but my impression is that the developers see looting as a central element of the game.

Whether they will change the quest rewards much remains to be seen. If they do, they will probably tie the quest reward to the lootstage and not to the crafting skills of the player but cap it based on the quest tier.

 

[Javabean867]

With intellect build and daring adventurer I had the trader offer a Q4 steel pic at Teir 2 quests.  Ironically this is before the capstone for T2 that gives a workbench.  So the trader rewards were way ahead of even the other trader rewards lol.
 

Sure with the daring adventurer perk you can get some more advanced rewards, but not by much.  I'm running the same build, and I can make the same level of gear I get as rewards on average.

There will always be lucky finds in the game, and that goes towards looting as well as quest rewards.  The previous playthrough I did I found a quality 2 swat helmet in a random loot container(no loot bonuses)  That doesn't mean it is common or change that loot/trader/crafting is out of balance.

We are 3 players each specializing in different things.

Are you focusing on running quests?  My group has been clearing pois as opposed to focusing on questing.  That might be the difference.

 

[Blake_]

I am not aware of the issue, but playing a sound at the hips (the ragdoll root location) is no harder than at the entity position (controller ground position), it is a matter of finding all the places in code playing sounds on the entity and changing them all to account for ragdolls being on or making it always use the hips.
I made a ticket.

Wow, thank you very much, I'm glad it's an easy fix. I thought it was known. Gameplay will improve a lot by this. 

 

[meilodasreh]

I also fixed that corpse heads were getting the head damage bonus when you were harvesting them.

Holy Jesus, I have been excessively using this - as I assumed - qol feature, just to hear now that I was totally exploiting a bug in the game mechanics all the time.

Man I'm so sorry!

Well, count me in for a few hours of grass punching community service on the test server. 

I really hope you will accept this as a just punishment for my misconduct.

edit: done



btw free plant fiber inside of storage chest, feel free to grab it

 

[RipClaw]

@faatal I have a question. Some content creators sometimes have the problem that their 7 Days to die content is classified as not advertisement friendly because of the decapitations and dismemberments. Would it be technically possible to change this with a mod so that it looks the same as with the Demolisher? When I shoot the Demolisher's head off, it pops out of existence and there is only a hole where its neck used to be.

 

[Zombiepoptard]

Right, I thought you were talking about the way others see you in COOP.

So the list is:

1. the bone work 
   
2. the recoil 
   
3. the running animation
   
4. the way your gun sways when moving the camera 
   
5. revamp all of that 
   
6. having more than one main attack melee animation
   

Of the above points, the only one I see has any meaningful merit is n.6 (but it would be a plus, not something lacking).

As for n.1 I'd ask for @SnowDog1942's expertise on how to handle it.

so you  think the skipping/ missing frames of the recoil is acceptable?

You think the 2d plan of gun sway is acceptable? 

You think that having your running animation be the bobbing of everything in your hand is ok as oppose to every fps doing the tuck and run.

Every game with melee animations at least have 2 animation one swing from the left to right. 

I'm not asking for much. I'm asking for bare minimum standards to be realized. 

I'm thinking you got way to comfortable with what the game is that any added compared standards of what an fps should be is just something that "would be a plus" at most.