PC v1.x Developer Diary

Status
Not open for further replies.
I personally really dislike stuff like this. On top of a price hike, they plan to implement paid dlcs and expansions. They are already going to make bank off of the console release, so I see no need to do this kind of stuff. Is there going to be poi expansions? 10 bucks for some pois that should have been included in the game's price perhaps? I think I saw a couple posts by laz a while back that sort of hinted at that kind of stuff
In particular, I find calling it a 'price hike' to be poor framing. Everyone one of us has known all along that buying at Early access, we got an unfinished game at an unfinished game price. We got the hot deal because more or less, we were beta testers that got the devs enough capital to really take this project to the distance. We all bought in knowing a day would be coming where they start charging 'it's a done game' prices. Well- now they've chosen it. As for DLC- We've been in an age where companies drop 1.0 alongside day 1 DLC, I think just about all of us have seen that now- It's tacky. I agree. But 6 months in- it depends what we're seeing. If it's just cosmetics, then I really don't think that's something worth getting your goodies in a twist about. If they're going to do an expansion, I think that's great- as long as they fulfil their goals [BANDITS] before they go saying, 'For another $15 you can have 7D2D+'

.. On a tangential thought, it just occurred to me something along the lines of, it's been said: If TFP were hypothetically working on another title, it could be negatively viewed to tell us too much about 'New and Shiny' before the first game is even released... So if there is a game that may-or-may-not exist maybe there will be some official details dropping in the future. 🤞

It would be cool if this is true, and if they can spawn "anything" and drop a few dead chickens/bandits in the mix to have some zeds already chomping down on them when you run into them.
That exactly! - Maybe make a few gunshots trigger from the event location to get your attention then you run over to check it out and it's a gorefest. The possibilities of the unknown.

 
Please fix how guns work without optics. The front sight should be centered in the rear sight. I love this game but it's crazy how long front posts are and aiming solely with said front post.

There's mods to fix it but man, it's basic firearm knowledge that's being ignored. I don't know if there is a plan ever at all but it would make an already amazing game so much better.

Otherwise, great news and can't wait. 

 
There is one topic that bothers me. Attracting and retaining new players.

This concerns how the game is being talked about on the Internet.
Most often in the tops and articles, the game is referred to as "survival in the open world in a zombie apocalypse with horror elements."

Sometimes it is called "voxel-based".

Do you know what "voxel-based" means to ordinary people? It doesn't mean anything. An incomprehensible set of words. And they are not interested in finding out what it is, they are unlikely to go Googling. Yes, that's not necessary.
They want to buy a game and play it.

And the "voxel game" is the main reason why it is incorrect to compare it with ordinary AA, AAA, AAAAAAAAAA-class games.
But people don't know this and compare instead of trying to play on their own. They rate the game based on articles and tops that miss one of the most important features of the game.

There are very few official materials on the game. Screenshots and videos for the press.
Game reviews often use old screenshots or videos.
Personally, I learned about this game in 2018 from a YouTube video with a review of the games. I was shown the gameplay from the old alpha version, and I just scrolled through it.
Right now, open Google images and write "7 Days To Die". You will see a couple of new covers and screenshots, and then only the old alpha versions.
I was so surprised when I first launched the game in 2020. It was completely different from what I saw on the video. It was much better.

I think it is important in the video about the release of version 1.0 to focus on this and show clearly what can be done in this game, but cannot be done in 99% of other games.

I do not know who wrote the text that Rick voiced in the Alpha Exodus video, but this text is addressed to people familiar with the game.
To attract new players, it is necessary to show everything that this game can surprise and delay, without using definitions that are difficult for ordinary people like "voxel-based".

Show how you build a beautiful building, and then destroy it, show that you have a huge city in which you can enter every building.

The video that will be released for the 1.0 release is very important to attract a new audience.
 

I also really hope that you will pay attention to the training quests.
Journal entries are evil. Nobody reads them.
Show the basics of the game in the form of short videos. Tell us about the tools and their levels from simple to steel, weapons, survival and base construction.
Biomes, loot, progress, and more.

Here's the right way to beat the grass. Here's the right way to defeat zombies. It can be cured, and it can relieve a headache, it can cure an infection.
That's how to build, and that's how to modernize. With this, it is better to extract wood, and with this, stone and iron.
You can barricade yourself in a ready-made building or build your own base.
And so on and so forth. 
You shouldn't expect people to figure things out on their own or turn to google. 
They will close the game and make a refund.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
In particular, I find calling it a 'price hike' to be poor framing. Everyone one of us has known all along that buying at Early access, we got an unfinished game at an unfinished game price. We got the hot deal because more or less, we were beta testers that got the devs enough capital to really take this project to the distance. We all bought in knowing a day would be coming where they start charging 'it's a done game' prices. Well- now they've chosen it. As for DLC- We've been in an age where companies drop 1.0 alongside day 1 DLC, I think just about all of us have seen that now- It's tacky. I agree. But 6 months in- it depends what we're seeing. If it's just cosmetics, then I really don't think that's something worth getting your goodies in a twist about. If they're going to do an expansion, I think that's great- as long as they fulfil their goals [BANDITS] before they go saying, 'For another $15 you can have 7D2D+'

.. On a tangential thought, it just occurred to me something along the lines of, it's been said: If TFP were hypothetically working on another title, it could be negatively viewed to tell us too much about 'New and Shiny' before the first game is even released... So if there is a game that may-or-may-not exist maybe there will be some official details dropping in the future. 🤞

That exactly! - Maybe make a few gunshots trigger from the event location to get your attention then you run over to check it out and it's a gorefest. The possibilities of the unknown.
Good sir, you are based. Good point about the ea thing, it is true. My only real irk is the dlc I guess. But I think I'm the only one who doesn't like even cosmetic stuff like that in games- it didn't stop or reflect negatively on other sucessful indie games like deep rock galactic, and it doesn't bother most people. Just rubs me the wrong way a little. Makes me happy when games don't put that stuff in their games in any capacity, and its something I'd otherwise praise about the game if it didn't have any gameplay or cosmetic dlcs. I don't think I'd have as much as a problem if they released it after they finished their promised features, but I still wouldn't be a fan.

😅

 
Last edited by a moderator:
@faatal Question regarding RWG, is there or could there be an option to determine the min/max distance that wilderness POI's can spawn apart from each other?
Reason I ask is I'd like a way through xml to have wilderness POI's spawn about 200m-250m apart from each other, as well as the potential to have close to 1000 wilderness POI's in an 8k map, and even more if people dare to generate a 16k map.

(Think of it like a nomadic playstyle, constantly moving around the map)
It is not as simple as that. In tweaking rwgmixer.xml wilderness counts, I found there is a max count at which it stops successfully finding locations for for prefabs. Don't yet know what the limiting factor is. On a 10k I can get over 600 to spawn, so the Wilderness Many setting for that is now 750, up from 400. Many is now 450 on 8k. Reducing mountains also helps as that does limit some prefab locations.

Whoop whoop! New game version numbers! :]

Does this mean no more map wipes though...?
Hopefully less often, but there is no guarantee some tech issue requires changing data formats in a way we can't make backwards compatible. Ideally we will load/convert what we can instead of nothing at all.

 
All the new POIs are great and we do have a very large variety overall compared with most all other games...

BUT

Yes...there is always a big butt...

I feel like we need a lot more variety of wilderness and outdoor POIs that are not a cabin, a hut, a shed etc. Since the Perlin Worm cave system got scrapped ages ago...a shame...but if they were empty anyways does really matter at all! Things like small caves, outcroppings, animal dens, a copse of trees with a pond, rock formations etc etc.

 
Does the impending release of 1.0 this mean that TFP has worked out the optimization challenges?
I love this game, but performance has always been something that we excused as being something that would be addressed when it was time to leave alpha.
We do optimizations regularly, but that does not mean any of those optimizations will improve whatever feature or situation you are thinking about.

For example, I have some optimizations in the works for larger explosions that effect many blocks to stop them briefly using hundreds of megabytes, which can actually crash the game on consoles. This also improves FPS for the fraction of a second the explosion is initially happening, but otherwise that is not helping FPS.

Another example, RWG has a new building density limit calculation to keep complex buildings away from each other. This should help FPS in some cases, but depends on many factors.

Optimizations will continue, as that is one of my favorite things to do, but many of them will be small gains, in specific situations.

 
My biggest surprise with the 1.0 announcement, is that the devs seem to be happy with the magazine system and don't seem to plan to update it.

A21 has been around long enough for most players to realise the majority of magazines are useless, and if they just rapid-fire quests they'll get most tools and weapons without relying on magazines. If you want to force yourself to use magazines it's a grindy RNG-fest, especially if you dilute the magazine loot table by speccing into multiple perks attached to magazines.

Various people have made various suggestions on how to improve this, but apart from the scheduled trader rework in Q4 2025 (which won't change the core issues of magazines), it looks like magazines in their current state are here to stay? Seems a little strange to me.

 
No word yet on that. We need to let the arguing about the roadmap settle a bit before we start the argument over streamer weekend…heheh. 


I can start up on water again if you think it will buy you some time...? ;)

Related to the announcement, I am a bit surprised Steam Workshop integration comes so late in the plan. Admittedly I'm probably one of the few who look forward to this feature compared to other features. Honestly, I don't mind waiting, though I wonder if the game might be "played out" in the minds of folks before mods get that integration. I guess it really depends on how the game is supported after 2025 and, of course, folks can still apply mods like they do today.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Another example, RWG has a new building density limit calculation to keep complex buildings away from each other.


As a Tile and POI designer, can you provide any insight on what goes into this? Is it a matter of verts/tris above a certain threshold? Does it related to POIs on a single Tile or within a certain distance from each other?

For instance, I've been trying to keep POIs below 3.5M vertices since that's what the TFP skyscraper_01 has been. There's a newer TFP POI that's "heavier" than that, IIRC. I've had a custom downtown Tile that had poor performance and have since thinned it out. Your comment has me wondering what indicators of potential performance issues and/or guidance to designers you might pass along?

 
My biggest surprise with the 1.0 announcement, is that the devs seem to be happy with the magazine system and don't seem to plan to update it.

A21 has been around long enough for most players to realise the majority of magazines are useless, and if they just rapid-fire quests they'll get most tools and weapons without relying on magazines. If you want to force yourself to use magazines it's a grindy RNG-fest, especially if you dilute the magazine loot table by speccing into multiple perks attached to magazines.

Various people have made various suggestions on how to improve this, but apart from the scheduled trader rework in Q4 2025 (which won't change the core issues of magazines), it looks like magazines in their current state are here to stay? Seems a little strange to me.


Be careful not to fall into the trap of judging 1.0 by A21. Any adjustments and balancing changes to current (A21) systems have been held to be released in the next big update which will be 1.0 and we haven't seen them yet. Ultimately, A21 will be a dead-end build on the steam beta list that anyone who dislikes 1.0 will go back to and play...heheh. It is not representative of 1.0. Once the experimental build for 1.0 is released you can make your own judgements but the dev team has definitely made adjustments based on customer feedback over the past year. That's not to say that if you hate the magazine system you will suddenly love it and you are correct that it is here to stay.

 
It is not as simple as that. In tweaking rwgmixer.xml wilderness counts, I found there is a max count at which it stops successfully finding locations for for prefabs. Don't yet know what the limiting factor is. On a 10k I can get over 600 to spawn, so the Wilderness Many setting for that is now 750, up from 400. Many is now 450 on 8k. Reducing mountains also helps as that does limit some prefab locations.
Oh bummer! I noticed this limiting factor in A21 when I increased wilderness spawns too 800 (high) for a medium map, and I'd guess only half spawned. Looking at the map preview, they appear to be spread out about 400m apart from each other. Hopefully the limiting factor can be found, it would be huge to have a distance apart slider!

 
So is water still being worked on? Last I read/heard, it was being changed to more of a flow system and not occupying a block space or whatever the system of it is now. 

 
Brilliant news.  Was hoping for a storyline for when it goes gold to get newbies interested but that seems to be later down line. 

New pois and armour looks great. 

 
I fully support any game that goes paid DLC for cosmetic content: zero impact on gameplay.

I see a few in here complaining like it will totally ruin 7DTD and I just don't see it.

I would gladly shell out $$$ for some good cosmetics.

Non-cosmetic DLC is fine, too, as long as it isn't completing features that were originally promised in the base game. Seeing DLC mentioned is a positive development to me.

 
The roadmap states the release of 3 major updates in the timespan of 1,5 years.

This is the time they usually spend on a single update (whether that's a major one is up for debate).

So, forgive me for being a teeny-tiny bit skeptical.

Also; cosmetic DLC's? Yaiks.

 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top