PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[Aviose]

The difference between 7DTD and Empyrion is that zombies need to be many and run fast, aliens don't. This is because of the lore of zombies and hordes. TFP have a bigger challenge to tackle and it looks like they are doing a good job
The best zombie game would have 300 zombies alive at a time. Almost all of which you can one-shot

So like Death Road to Canada?

While I enjoy that, I enjoy 7dtd for different reasons.

 

[unholyjoe]

But still a bullet in the head is a bullet in the head. If the zombie is not wearing a military helmet it should die instantly.. At least this is what we are used to see in movies.

but people dont die in the movies... i have seen them shot or killed somehow and yet you could see them in another movie.... so there

 

[emarat]

But still a bullet in the head is a bullet in the head. If the zombie is not wearing a military helmet it should die instantly.. At least this is what we are used to see in movies.

But in movies zombies have no differenting health points, or health bars xD

 

[Gnomaana]

Empyrion does too have pathfinding. You've never watched the herds of wild animals wander around.Granted, that's not the same level of pathfinding as 7dtd, but it's still path finding.

No, it really isn't. Moving in a random direction is not path finding. It is "pathing" but the "finding" part is the tricky one.

 

[Survager]

but people dont die in the movies... i have seen them shot or killed somehow and yet you could see them in another movie.... so there

Zombies of "7 Days to die" have already played their roles in other games? Have you Evidence )))

 

[Demonoid74]

Hell , I made that type of "pathfinding" in a few minutes...roaming livestock , animals and the like are very , very easy

to get working , just simple obstacle avoidance...

Now , getting my AI working for people walking around a small city , with time schedules etc. was a lot harder...

Then getting THAT AI to actually interact with each other and the player is still an ongoing process of trail and error...

sometimes it works , sometimes it doesn't...but its slowly getting there!

And mind you , that is all in a static world...not voxel or a destructible world...that brings up even more issues...

 

[meganoth]

We LOVE asymmetric balance because that's the most fun kind - and fully accept that it will never be perfect. =P

You mean you love that the game allows you to avoid horde night zombies by just driving around? Ok, thats a surprise. Care to explain?

The reward of horde night (xp and some loot minus all the damage done) at least now is by far not good enough that one could speak of a risk/reward balance. So where is the asymmetric balance?

Or are you talking about something else? As far as I know asymmetric balance is for example if you pit 4 players against a single one who is appropriatly stronger.

 

[lesipher]

I've been reading some of the posts re food consumption and stamina etc and just wanted to add a little real word XP to the mix.
When I were a young lad I worked for a time on a crayfishing boat (Lobster to some of you) and even though I was young and fit I soon learned that I just did not have enough energy resources to be able to do a quarter of what I needed to be able to do on that boat.

The days were as long as 16-18 hours long and the amount of heavy lifting I had to do was crazy, 220 lifts of large steel and wooden pots that each weighed about 50kg on a rolling deck!

After collapsing on the deck when my legs just gave up and turned to jelly I was advised in not so friendly terms to get my act together and eat more.

My diet to be able to last a whole day of hard work was:

2kg of sausages cooked and placed into a whole loaf of bread as sandwiches

3 litres of milk and a whole large box of cereal

5kg of caught fish consumed both on the boat and after

2 steak sandwiches at the pub

2 large meals at same pub

10 bags of various nuts, chips crackers etc

and about 10 litres of beer. I'm sure there was more I consumed but... the beer

I've heard stories of Rig workers who need over 9000 calories a day just to get through to the next day.

I like the idea of tying food/water to stamina/health it seems right to me

I spent 8 years as a roughneck ( a hand on a drilling rig) and I can attest to the fact that massive calorie count is essential. I have on occasion packed away 12K calories a day when we were tripping pipe regularly. A family sized pan of lasagna, a half gallon of chocolate milk, along with with numerous snacks during the course of the day.

IMHO by all means tie stamina and health to wellness. Heck I haven't died of starvation or thirst since some time around A8 or so.

 

[Zadwanaa]

I spent 8 years as a roughneck ( a hand on a drilling rig) and I can attest to the fact that massive calorie count is essential. I have on occasion packed away 12K calories a day when we were tripping pipe regularly. A family sized pan of lasagna, a half gallon of chocolate milk, along with with numerous snacks during the course of the day.IMHO by all means tie stamina and health to wellness. Heck I haven't died of starvation or thirst since some time around A8 or so.

ok, no offense to you or gobarg... but i have ive been fishing when i was a kid a few times... and ive seen many a discovery shows about intensive physical labor and i can tell you, without a doubt, that it can be intensive and require proper nourishment.

Also, i planned ahead in life. Where i only needed basically 2k calories a day due to me never using any energy, i stockpiled up almost 10k a day. See, gotta think ahead. Now, should the zombie apocalypse happen, i'll be fine for a LONG time because i stockpiled up all them calories where you people foolishly expend it doing something foolish.

also... Eating / Drinking in 7DTD refreshing / adding to Health / Stamina makes sense.. but i would love it if eating certain foods slowed you down, drinking certain drinks sped you up etc. etc. That would be pretty nice. Gunna build all day/night? Eat something heavy, you arent looting. Gunna go scavenge? Grab some drink that speeds you up! (a little bit, not like sonic [although...)

and unlike this roughneck, I havent died of starvation or dehydration since A15. Im not nearly as good and i didnt start 7DTD until A15

 

[lesipher]

No offense taken bud, we all live different lives and should be thankful of that.....I wouldn't wish the life I have lived thus far on ANYONE...lol.

 

[blenna13]

Hey

I don't really post in the forums, but I'm here every day lol, so hey ya'll!!

I was just wondering if there was any news of another Madmole video before a17 drops?

The reason I ask is because I've been cutting together somewhat of a trailer/teaser video, from all the videos MM has uploaded on a17 in the past year. At this point I'm unsure whether to upload the video or hold out in hopes MM provides me with new footage to use.

I think I read somewhere another vid was planned before a17 but its been a few weeks with no news, just curious

In the infamous words of Ouch

*cough* VIDEO *cough*

 

[archergod]

So, every couple months you think the A18 team should stop all work on A18 to incorporate the new changes the A17 team just added and then spend a couple weeks testing to see what it broke of their new changes? Exactly what kind of programming have you done? Because it doesn't sound like you ever worked on project approaching the size of something like 7 Days.

Not sure of my programming skills, but someone need to read again, I ask they need 2 team one for A18 and other for A17. If you think that is too much for company like TFP, to do then why this thread is so much big? Why it doesn't read only the Feature they do and people saying thank you.

Now you say it is because 1000s of people are stupid. But not a failure of team to promote their product in informative manner that keeps 1000s of stupid happy. Management is trick, and there is no right way. those 1000s who are crying for update are those who trust and pay the company. company is doing what they can do best per their thinking. but maybe not good enough for paying customer.

 

[Gnomaana]

Not sure of my programming skills, but someone need to read again, I ask they need 2 team one for A18 and other for A17. If you think that is too much for company like TFP, to do then why this thread is so much big? Why it doesn't read only the Feature they do and people saying thank you.
Now you say it is because 1000s of people are stupid. But not a failure of team to promote their product in informative manner that keeps 1000s of stupid happy. Management is trick, and there is no right way. those 1000s who are crying for update are those who trust and pay the company. company is doing what they can do best per their thinking. but maybe not good enough for paying customer.

And when the "A17 Team" rolls out their changes how do you think those changes get into the current A18 build? Development does NOT work the way you think it does. Two completely separate teams can't work on the same code base. Your idea of two teams would only work if A17 and A18 were completely separate games. They are not. Any changes made to A17 after the development of A18 started would have to be incorporated into A18 by someone. That would actually make the whole process take longer than it does now. Not to mention the fact you are paying an entire team to do nothing but code for an Alpha that, from a development standpoint, is a dead end.

Early Access is letting us get a look into the dev process. We get to play a game years before we would normally and see some of the decisions that were made along the way. We even get to make suggestions on what we think works and what doesn't. The developers get money to finish their game. You are watching the dev process. Complaining that it is slow won't help. Making completely unworkable suggestions won't help. Sit back and enjoy the process. If a particular alpha phase takes a while maybe find another game to tide you over.

 

[Aldranon]

Weeeell, it working. Kinda.

It's a huge problem with collisions / performance when you try to collide Very Big and Very Small objects/vehicles in the same universe.

Scale is brutal.

I agree for MP.

In Empyrion SP, the scale is fine. But in MP, when your team has covered your planet in bases and then two enemy class 9 CV's enter the atmosphere...

Thats why all serious MP servers have class limits. A well designed class 3 CV can have everything you need.

 

[faatal]

I could not find this information in the thread about AI and Pathing, so i will try here. Will zombies be able to path through stairs with many twists? As far as I know, in A16, when you go to the top of staircase, zombies stucks in the bottom levels and wondering or smashing walls instead of just going up.

Yes, but there may be cases with weird block combinations that give them trouble. Fixing those will be on going.

 

[Aldranon]

But still a bullet in the head is a bullet in the head. If the zombie is not wearing a military helmet it should die instantly.. At least this is what we are used to see in movies.

and with all that "bobble-head" action the zombies do in 7d2d, a head shot on human zombies (a bears skull can deflect low velocity rounds) should end them.

Edit: now that might not work with arrows or even bolts as the hydro-static shock wave would not cause as much damage.

 

[Xtrakicking]

They aren't dead!

They are basically on bathsalts... very agressive bathsalts

Don't quite agree there. Zombies in 7dtd are quite dead, there's no way a human being can still be alive when their skull is wide open (Yo), or when half of their face is missing (Marlene), or when their mouth and throat are all torn apart (Arlene) and there are many other examples. In fact, even their names prove they're dead (Festering Corpse, Putrid Corpse, Reanimated Corpse... etc.).

The reason there aren't hordes of up to 300 zombies in 7dtd is the framerate. Otherwise I'm pretty sure they would've gone with that.

 

[The Gronk]

and with all that "bobble-head" action the zombies do in 7d2d, a head shot on human zombies (a bears skull can deflect low velocity rounds) should end them.
Edit: now that might not work with arrows or even bolts as the hydro-static shock wave would not cause as much damage.

You'd be surprised what an arrow wil go through, what it lacks in speed it makes up for in mass and inertia. An arrow will go through a modern suit of kevlar armour better than a bullet although you're correct that there's far less hydrostatic damage of the surrounding tissue.

You can get more damage by using a proper war arrowhead like a bodkin, although they're technically illegal in the UK you can get them for the price of a couple of beers from your local medieval blacksmithing re-enactor.

[trigger warning : arrow through a skull]

https://i2.wp.com/memolition.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/1198.jpg?fit=758%2C800

 

[yelekam]

I don't really post in the forums, but I'm here every day lol, so hey ya'll!! I was just wondering if there was any news of another Madmole video before a17 drops?

The reason I ask is because I've been cutting together somewhat of a trailer/teaser video, from all the videos MM has uploaded on a17 in the past year. At this point I'm unsure whether to upload the video or hold out in hopes MM provides me with new footage to use.

I think I read somewhere another vid was planned before a17 but its been a few weeks with no news, just curious

In the infamous words of Ouch

*cough* VIDEO *cough*

There should be another video from Madmole coming out. But it's not certain when it will.

 

[Amanitasec]

Yes, but there may be cases with weird block combinations that give them trouble. Fixing those will be on going.

That is a great news!