PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

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As I said, nothing has changed from before in terms of gameplay. The only change is how you setup a solo game. Instead of choosing “Single Player” you choose “1”.
How will anyone grief your story progress if you choose “1”?

I also think you’ve over inflated the story element of the game in your mind. When the game was originally brought to steam the story mode was billed as “find out what happened by discovering notes”.

Now it appears that the quest system will evolve past that but if you’ve been waiting all this time for a game designed around an epic tale you might be in for some disappointment. Think more of a collection of quests which will give some backstory to the world and maybe reveal your place in it and eventually lead you to the Duke of Navezgane. In addition tons of random side quests.

This game has always been about creating your own stories. If the main story is more than what I’ve described I will be happily surprised. If so, it will definitely surpass anything that has been promised by the developers.

In any case, you’ll still be able to experience it all solo as you would’ve under the old system and TFP is still not showing any signs of putting MP before SP or favoring MP at the cost of SP much to the continuing consternation of PvPers everywhere.
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It's not something I made up in my mind. It's something madmole hinted at several times during the development. Maybe it is just my imagination of what it could be or simply misunderstanding of what he said, but it definitely sounded like something more than just anything you could achieve with sp and mp mixed together in a game with such features like 7 Days To Die.

Again this is not Dead Island where you could roleplay with your friends and still play the main story of the game. This would be impossible in 7 Days to die for what it is now and I'm getting worried that this move to mix mp and sp is just an easy way for devs to say goodbye to any of the fancy plans for sp and story they possibly ever had in the past.

In the end, if there was nothing more to the sp part than just a basic story and NPCs that could help you on your journey like companions / followers in Skyrim and Fallout, that would still have been much better than fueling players hope for years with the separate singleplayer for nothing.

I will just assume that you have no information that could really answer this at this point and maybe that's for better, but to be honest I'm already losing hope.

 
Well it sounds like you’ve been worried about the story part of the game for some time and have latched onto the change you quoted as proof for your fears. I can tell you though that nothing has changed other than how you select playing the game solo.

Perhaps if the story won’t work with friends it will be a separate mode in which selecting more than 1 player will be impossible.

What is true, though, is that your interpretation of mixing SP and MP is faulty. The main reasons were to clean up the options menu and remove the possibility of a nasty bug that would cause a SP game to revert to a MP game and erase all progress/ corrupt the save game file.

You are reading way too much sinister motives into the announcement. If the story turns out to be less than you imagined or perhaps what Madmole wished for at some point earlier in development it will be for other reasons and not because we have a new method of selecting solo play.

 
I myself have a library of over 2500 public domain sound files...200 music files and numerous other sounds...I amjust a private developer...there are so many public domain sound and music files out there...I still to this day hear the "kunark ghost sounds" from Everquest and those were used way back in 2000-2001...

Not to mention all the asset packs for sale or free on the Unity store...you will definitely see them around...
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Speaking of sounds....long ago I learned of the "Wilhelm Scream" now I hear the damn thing everywhere. Somethings you can't just unhear...

 
Scheduled to arrive 3-5 weeks prior to the (next +1) video based on evidence.
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Really?

From what you were saying last week. It seemed to indicate that Madmole was going to try to put a video out either last week or this one.

Since it did not happen last week. I am assuming this one.

 
On the subject of solo vs multiplayer gaming, someone asked awhile back if you could change it after a save has been created and the answer is yes. You can change the number of players and whether the game shows up publicly, is visible only to friends, or is private and invisible to everyone.

So if you start out solo and select "1 player" and "private" and then later a friend wants to join you, you can change the number to "2 players" and "friends only" and then a couple weeks later when your friend suggests letting random noobs to join so you guys can gank them you can change it to "8 players" and "public". Then when the guilt hits you and your figure your friends is kind of a douchebag for ever suggesting such a slimey plan, you can set it back to 1 player and private.

And best of all since they enabled pause for multiplayer you can always pause the game whenever you happen to be alone on the server.

 
What if we added a new power tool for taking things apart? We already got a nail gun for repairs, why not something like a powered drill or screwdriver for faster ripping apart?

 
Speaking of sounds....long ago I learned of the "Wilhelm Scream" now I hear the damn thing everywhere. Somethings you can't just unhear...
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Yeah, after learning of the "Wilhelm Scream" I went through the same thing. I purposefully try to not figure out stock sounds these days to avoid another occurrence. At this point it completely takes me out of the experience.

 
It's not something I made up in my mind. It's something madmole hinted at several times during the development. Maybe it is just my imagination of what it could be or simply misunderstanding of what he said, but it definitely sounded like something more than just anything you could achieve with sp and mp mixed together in a game with such features like 7 Days To Die.
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Says you. Lets list just a few mechanics to tell a story in a destructible world full of grievers:

A) Anywhere in the world you find journals, quest or books telling you anything you need to know. Even though you find such stuff at random, it is for example very easy in principle to make certain that you get these journals, quests or books in the proper sequence if necessary. Or that you get specific papers only when certain preconditions are true. As long as you can scavenge anything, you can follow the story.

B) Radio messages could be introduced into the game. As soon as you build a simple transistor receiver (1 electronics, 1 wood, 1 battery) you can listen to whatever is on the waves, story, quests, cries for help, messages from the duke. Radio messages could even tell you where to meet specific NPCs necessary for a quest and should a griever kill him before you are there, the radio tells you where to find his replacement. As long as NPCs can be spawned, a griever can at most delay you for a bit.

C) NPCs can spawn as effortlessly as zombies. Don't ask how, but again, there is an endless supply of NPCs, and eventually you will talk to one who will give you information, quests... As long as TFP make sure that those NPCs are replaceable, no griever can really stop you.

D) Story-relevant NPCs could be indestructible. Sure, the world is destructible, but the traders are not.

E) There is a meta-method: If TFP decides that the story is not griever-safe, they could make story-relevant NPCs killable and declare the problem solved. Either you play cooperatively together with friends or alone and you simply don't kill NPCs that have something important to say. Or you play on a server with grievers and that's your own fault then.

 
The story game is griever safe people. Select “1 player” and your story is your own. There is no need for convoluted safeguards. The most powerful safeguard is your own ability to select.....one.....friggin......player [Wilhelm Scream]!!!

Is my mic not on or something?

 
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Really? From what you were saying last week. It seemed to indicate that Madmole was going to try to put a video out either last week or this one.

Since it did not happen last week. I am assuming this one.
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My point was that I don’t know and that videos seem to be about 3-5 weeks apart. He was hoping to but then...Super Bowl. So maybe this weekend....

 
Ok, but that answers my concern only partially!
My concern is that I can't really imagine how could the current multiplayer system work with a full story with quests, NPCs, followers and all the things that I mentioned in my previous post. I'm not in the mind of the developers and maybe they do know how to make it all happen so that both sp and mp can actually become one without any kind of issue.

It was just that this game is certainly not Dead Island where co-op worked because there was a story tailored for it. 7 Days To Die is a whole different game with some extra features like world destruction that could possibly make the same kind of story gameplay impossible!

For example, in Dead Island you couldn't shoot NPCs that were important for the game story, neither you could destroy the world like you can do in 7 Days To Die which would ultimately lead to some funny consequences for the story and possible multiplayer griefing that would ruin the game for those who would prefer to follow the story before some troll destroys their world making it impossible to finish the quest!

Therefore, unless the developers can magically make sure that these problems would never really happen, multiplayer aspect of the game will necessarily either hurt or limit the singleplayer experience to a great extent. That's why I was asking that question - are the things like singleplayer oriented story, quests, followers and all that not going to be a part of the final version of this game after all?
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That's why quests should be from "Faction + Title" and not a specific NPC. So, if you get a quest from: "The Ranger's", Leader NPC, if the current leader is killed then another takes his place.

What would be interesting is to have them all wiped out and that triggers another quest: "The Angel of Death" - Kill them all! ("Them" could be any number of NPC's) OR "The Rise of the Phoenix!" YOU can be the leader who: makes the Rangers great again!

See, MP is no problem to a robust quest system.

 
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There's a podcast called "We're Alive" which I'm listening to which seems to use some of the same sounds for their zombies. Are the zombie sounds in 7DTD stock sounds bought as filler? Or are they the finished version?
Note: I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the sounds, I was just curious.
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I think they are stock unity sounds or ones you can buy, I've heard the same zombie sounds in quite a few other zombie games. So my guess would be that they are filler for now. With proper ones maybe around beta time. Its just a guess though.

 
On the subject of solo vs multiplayer gaming, someone asked awhile back if you could change it after a save has been created and the answer is yes. You can change the number of players and whether the game shows up publicly, is visible only to friends, or is private and invisible to everyone.
So if you start out solo and select "1 player" and "private" and then later a friend wants to join you, you can change the number to "2 players" and "friends only" and then a couple weeks later when your friend suggests letting random noobs to join so you guys can gank them you can change it to "8 players" and "public". Then when the guilt hits you and your figure your friends is kind of a douchebag for ever suggesting such a slimey plan, you can set it back to 1 player and private.

And best of all since they enabled pause for multiplayer you can always pause the game whenever you happen to be alone on the server.
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Thanks for the answer - the SP -> MP sounds like a good change.

-A

 
Could we please get a Search-Bar for Chests, that work the same as for Creative Menu and Crafting Menu?

Would make sorting the fresh loot a lot easier :)

Thanks and have a nice Weekend.

 
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