PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[TSBX]

I don’t know what you’re talking about. Sorry. Guess I missed it.

Here, let me shine some light to help you out.

 

[TSRViper]

So something that hasn’t been talked about much (that I’ve seen)

Has there been much change to the default receipies in A17?

 

[Zadwanaa]

Been slammed at work (finally) and got semi caught up.. i like how just yesterday there was a mostly civil discussion... and back to the norm of crying about streamers getting it a few days before us? I mean... its A17E. E. Reminds me of beta testers in WoW that take beta or PTS servers serious.

Oh well, and roland, those pics look amazing!

 

[unholyjoe]

Will the lighting in A18 be further improved?

7dtd is always WIP

just go to the back door at TFP building and Roland will toss a bone out for you (if he is in a sharing mood that is, he wont even share any of that steak with the rest of us at the table)

 

[Socrastein]

You make some fair points as you can't eat the pizza until you have it, or fulfill a service till it's ready. However, with this game you CAN play until the next release. Its not like we are sitting here with nothing, we just don't have the new stuff yet.

True, but I'm not sure how that relates to the point about being conservative vs idealistic with regard to giving projected completion times. Whether you have something to enjoy in the meantime or not, it's still a matter of leaving margin for delay in order to chance surprising people with faster delivery vs projecting best case scenarios which takes the chance you'll miss your mark and leave people feeling let down.

That being said, I also included the training example which does involve people enjoying gains while anticipating the next goals they are hoping for, and still the reasonable thing to do is to factor delays into any estimations of how long the next goal will take to be reached.

You could also use home renovation (you have plenty of house to enjoy while waiting for new upgrades), novel series (plenty to read while you wait for next installment), or park playground expansions (you can play on the old equipment while waiting for new stuff to be installed) for more examples of having something already while you wait for next installments. No matter the example, same point stands: there aren't very good reasons for giving hopeful best guesses rather than very conservative ones.

 

[sillls]

Now if we could place the flashlights like that, it would be good.

 

[JaxTeller718]

Let's just put it directly and honestly. Memes about estimates are now officially frowned upon by few who get triggered instantly even by innocent jokes and creating such meme, even if meant as an innocent joke, is a reason for not being considered a member of the Official Fan Base™ anymore.
Dear Lord Roland, I have to confess. I have sinned. I created a meme about release date estimate. Do I even have a chance to be ever forgiven and accepted back in holy Official Fan Base™? :apathy:

I think your use of TM and the tone of your post all but proves there's nothing "innocent" about your meme. Just because you say it does not make it so. Nice try though.

- - - Updated - - -

So something that hasn’t been talked about much (that I’ve seen)
Has there been much change to the default receipies in A17?

What kind of changes are you looking for? Im certain there are NEW ones.

- - - Updated - - -

Now if we could place the flashlights like that, it would be good.

That flashlight IS placed.

 

[Damadux]

Hey Skippy,

<Best post>

I know everyone said it already, but I gotta say, thank you so much for this post! Keep up the great work, you and TFP!

 

[Henrique]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1028069398798426112

Are We There Yet?

 

[wolfbain5]

No, but you can paint them.Paint them red, make them go faster!

Paint them pink for more family-friendly massacre.

Paint them black for a true Fortress of Doom. (black spikes really are critical here)

Or build steel spikes and then paint them in simple wood. =P

On a more serious note: What new and interesting functionality would other types of spikes have?

an iron version of the wood spikes made of rebar. more durability, they go to 0 durability without breaking. for the permanent base.

 

[lesipher]

With the unity update and all the new graphics is there any idea of what the minimum requirements of a potato are? Seeing as I will not be able to upgrade in the foreseeable future I am curious as to whether or not my old system will even run A17 when it does come out.

 

[Swiftpaw]

My GPU is so old it doesn't even support Vulkan, so I'm not that excited about it. And remember, even with or without Vulkan, they said couple of times how much better performance the new Alpha has over the last version and yet people still had more performance issues than before or simply ran into old performance issues that weren't really fixed. So even when they say that the new Alpha is much smoother, has much better performance, it's always better to take that statement with a grain of salt and if you haven't learned that by now, don't worry, you will have plenty of time for that. :smile-new:
I mean look at me, you might think that I'm being salty today, but that just shows how many times I took statements with a grain of salt.

It's not just them saying it, it's also Unity3D devs, and I've seen posts around the net, Reddit and elsewhere, showing FPS increases over older Unity3D rendering cores.

There are olderish cards that can run Vulkan in these benchmarks here. How old are you talking?

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amdnv-vulkan-20gpus&num=6

 

[CplCritter]

Here are some new A17 screenshots of my own for you to drool over. These are unauthorized so I hope I don't get in trouble. I tried to stay within your wheelhouse Snowdog.
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/959716682489418960/8FA348CE50A129FD7CC14FE30E1E7C1219888B08/

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/959716682489419753/8DF7324C5530C4E0635009FC1175DBF5AB0384E6/

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/959716682489419643/EB0A5C220B1CF243DB716669CB931A6A6D003448/

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/959716682489419351/929F1A9615D7508E0E8EB01FE93982628E112BA4/

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/959716682489419177/277138B489CB026E8C89FC212AAF95305068DD0B/

*Behind on posts* Looking great! I know this is still in the works, but one thing that stuck me as odd was the torches on the wall and the lighting directly above them. It almost looks like the are emitting light meant for a lantern. Maybe a place holder for torch light? Nonetheless, looks like A17 is going to be pretty! lol.

 

[skippy0330]

Hey Skippy,
No disrespect meant. I know not everyone reads every single post as they try to catch up on all the posts so I will break it down for you and everyone else who are wondering what happened.

In June Madmole said in a video that he was hopeful that they would be done with A17 by the end of July. He admitted that it was a guess but that it was his estimate on what he felt would be possible.

In early July the team made the choice to upgrade to Unity 2018.2 because at first glance it appeared that it would have some solid performance benefits and no major inconsistencies from the previous version. It was a risk but one they felt was worth it for the benefits. They were right about the benefits but they were wrong about inconsistencies. It turned out their shaders became incompatible and needed to be redone. This caused a delay much longer than they anticipated.

Towards the end of July, as people were submitting bug fixes and uploading new art assets from their local builds to the shared build the magnitude of new art assets overwhelmed the atlases that they use. This has caused another unforeseen delay as they have had to find an alternative solution to be able to include all the new art in the game. They have found a solution and are doing that conversion. The bad news is the delay it caused but the good news is that all the new content that will be included in A17 is awesome and will be able to be supported.

At the end of July when I knew that Madmole's guess was going to be wrong I changed the date to August which caused an eruption from a segment of the community who thought that "hope" and "guess" and "estimate" really meant "promise" and "vow" and "set in stone". Then when August 1st came and all the "It's August where is it?" posts started appearing I changed it to "August or....." so that people would know that even August was just an estimate. But people went ballistic and the dev diary went off the rails. I had to move over 150 posts out of this thread all because some people couldn't understand the difference between "Maybe" and "Definitely".

That is how "It's done when its done" came about. I realized that the immature segment would never understand the concept of "estimate" and if they were going to be mad no matter what then I didn't want to have to deal with constantly updating the date. I added the smilie because someone thought the phrase sounded petulant and passive aggressive and smilies always make forum posts better. Right?

But now....lol....we have people trying to assign special meaning to the smilie...

It will be done just as soon as the unforeseen issues are handled and the known bugs that are considered show-stoppers are squished. There aren't going to be any more Unity updates before A17 and they know the full extent of the massive amount of new content and have a framework that can support it all. They are not holding out on us and stringing us along. They will get it into our hands at the soonest possible moment they can.

Thanks Roland. That definatly makes me feel better and I can pass these things along to people who ask, unfortunatly not everyone cares enough to go through a forum, but care enough to ask.

It is impossible to pick out good information from this thread, which is why I hadn't looked for single things like you listed.

Idea: why don't you move this explanation to the first page, I'm seeing a lot of people feeling the same way, but impossible to tell there are answers in 1800 pages I get its done when its done being a friendly joke, but unfortunatly at a forum, at face value, sarcasm and jokes lose thier effect.

 

[Roland]

Post linked on OP

 

[Tearstone]

Hey Skippy,
<snipped for length>

Thank you for that, especially the first half of the post. I personally am fine with waiting. I just want to know why and what we're waiting on. It's the same principle as someone telling me "BECAUSE I SAID SO!" - That's not an answer. There's no reason behind it, no logic. Now if mom/dad were to say "Because, I feel like _____" or "Because you've been doing _____ a lot lately." - That's a lot more reasonable.

I know the Devs are working hard. I love and appreciate that. I think most of us would just like a periodic State of the Development type post, maybe every couple weeks, or once a month. Devs of course chiming in now and again on the daily is great. But it doesn't give us a snapshot of things going on. It never has to be long, and doesn't take long to make. (Hence why we love similar vids and Q&A sessions).

I know that after your post I felt a lot better, and had a lot better understanding of where things are, and how we've wound up where we are. I think at the end of the day, that's mostly what a lot of people are looking for. And really, I feel like this thread is meant more for that kind of interaction vs a bunch of clamoring and complaining. It's the Developer Diary, not the Complaining Player Diary. Diary for the Devs to chronicle the work and keep the howling masses up to date on the situation individually or as a whole.

People can, of course, discuss all day long, but I do think that this could cut down on some of the noise. Yes, I'm hedging. Sue me. People aren't completely predictable. You never know until you're in the situation.

This would be the most likely place for me to become a black skulldugger, but I just complain to my wife once a month that the next Dresden Files book still isn't out. Waiting is hard, y'all.
Jim Butcher, if you play 7dtd and participate in this forum, stop and go write that next novel!

YES! Peace Talks needs to come out now! ... On the real though, Mr. Butcher released a statement to the fans either on FB or on his author site as to why it's been delayed. And the answer boils down to life went to hell for a while. He said he was getting back to it, so who knows. It was a while back, so hopefully we'll have a release around Harry's birthday.

That flashlight IS placed.

Uhhh, you can place flashlights in A16? I thought I heard it mentioned that those heavy duty flashlights were a POI light and not a craftable, hand held, placeable light.

If you can place flashlights currently... crap I did not know. (I dont think so)

If you wind up being able to place them in A17 that will be dope.

I found the smilie Maybe it should have been a winkie

I don't wanna be looking at/for Roland's winkie/winky. That's for whatever significant other/interested party Roland has.

I remember the days when the thunder crack would scare me outta my chair.

What I want to know is why do we have rainstorms, but no thunderstorms? Especially in the southwest (Navezgane, Arizona). Weather neesd to have lightning and thunder for some rain cycles. Been wondering about this for a long time.

Shall I mention in-game nudity and child zombies just for completion?

Why don't we have child zombies? Dawn of the Dead and The Walking Dead have used them. I wonder where they are. They wouldn't just vanish. And say we're 10 years in? (I think that's been mentioned) ... they wouldn't have grown any.. so they'd still be a child.

And in my tabletop Dead Reign game, you absolutely do see child zombies. They'd be there. It's a harsh reality.

When was the nudity thing changed, again? Weird question, but I believe I've quite a few zombies that are supposed to be topless? (Not that it's really easy to tell, since the colorscheme is pretty monochromatic on them.

Lighting is like a scab. Madmole can’t help but pick at it.

As scabs go, that's a pretty fun/good one to pick at... See the latest twitter posts.

- - - Updated - - -

https://twitter.com/x/status/1028069398798426112

@Roland - Can that get added to the OP as well?

 

[DUST2DEATH]

last one needs AO so bad.

 

[dhlmaster]

This gets me excited to start making a17 videos when the time comes!

 

[wolfbain5]

Spoiler

nice date you got there roland

 

[CplCritter]

true if they want more people to play the game that means more income but now people wond play or buy the game until A17 will be released .i stoped playing for now and i advise people not to buy the game atm but after A17 has been released:smash:

Wow, what power you have over the world's purchasing decisions! You must have found the button in this video!

(spoiler alert, this is Neebs and Apsro from NeebsGaming way before NeebsGaming came into existence).
In all seriousness, the VAST majority of people who come across this game in steam or YouTube and decide to buy won't even have a clue of the conversation in this thread or the fact A17 exists. Your argument really holds no merit nor will it make A17 come out faster. Nice try though.