7 Days to Die Alpha 2 Release!

[TallTyrionLannister]

http://7daystodie.com/news/

Thoughts?

[lostone1993]

Sounds Interesting
Change log in spoiler

Spoiler

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Official Alpha 2 Release Notes

World

Added new large Wasteland city in Navezgane called Gravetown
Added new housing development in the north central Navezagne on a new street called Husker Ave
Added giant wasp hives in the burnt forest central region of Navezgane
Added new Mp Death match maps Wasteland War, Wasteland Skirmish and Forest Skirmish
Added new zombie horde maps Wasteland Horde and Forest Horde

Weapons and Items

Added universal repair wrench tool and recipe for crafting it. Right click to repair broken/damaged blocks and doors
Added Hunting Rifle and Ammo to the game and to the loot
Added craftable crossbow and craftable crossbow bolts
Added craftable pipe bomb that can be lit thrown and will explode in chain reactions
Added pump shotgun with long barrel
Added feather item
Added lootable bird nests to the world
Added egg item
Added food item Honey, and implemented into giant mutated hornets hive loot

AI / Enemies

Added new wall climbing Spider Zombie
Added new Zombie Dogs that run faster than zombies
Added new Acid Puking Hulk Zombie Cop whose acid vomit melts blocks and he explodes with low health*BURP!*
Added giant mutated hornets and hive POI’s for them *BZZZZZZZZZ!*
Added a new burnt zombie to the burnt forest
Added new spawning system improvements
Added a new base zombie sound set
Added new base zombie climb ladder behavior

HUD/Menu

New Menu Theme with new background, options and layout
Added customization for game modes including: game difficulty with 5 levels to choose from, user defined 24 Hour cycle, friendly fire toggle, enemies spawn toggle, public/private game options, cheats toggle, password setting and more
Added new List box for levels with scrolling with 5 new levels and 2 new game modes
Added scoreboard which can be shown by holding the TAB key (You can set the key bindings for this to something else if you like)
Added a FOV (Field of View) slider to graphics options for our players who get nausea (sorry it took so long!)
Added Credits Screen

Miscellaneous

Added cabinet side texture for new houses and integrated into modern house art key
Added glass shower texture for new houses and integrated into modern house art key
Added new end tables, end tables with lamps to modern house
Added Created range top texture and implemented into new houses
Added soffit to modern shingle blocks
Added bird nest loot, eggs and feathers to desert biome
Added bird nest to certain trees, barns, roofs and other hidden areas
Added new museum/bank building and textures
Added New chunk region format with less chunk files
New file format for chunks – Old worlds can be converted to the new format [We recommend just starting a new world]

Multiplayer

Added new game Server Browser for finding and connecting to games which shows game name, host, world, mode and more. Can also kick and ban users
Implemented a day 9 and beyond in hoard mode
Added new multiplayer mode – Horde Mode – Added first pass on hoard mode
Added new multiplayer mode – Deathmatch
Added new MP Forest Horde map
Added new MP Forest Skirmish map
Added MP Wasteland Skirmish map
Added MP Wasteland War map
Added MP Wasteland Horde map
Created Various supply crate entities and texture assets for MP maps
Added Server side recipe list download for connected clients.
Added web based control panel access for dedicated servers
Added master server list and server registration for server browser
Switched network communication protocol to Unity’s RPC mechanism. Now hopefully more than 8 players should be running smoothly
NAT Punchthrough for player ran servers as well as dedicated servers.
Added new deathmatch airdrop supply volumes to wasteland war and skirmish maps
Added a new serverconfig.xml for the dedicated server that uses all game options

Dedicated Server Settings include:

ServerPort – specifies the port used to connect to the server
ServerIsPublic – If true, the game will show up in the server browser
ServerName – The name of your server
ServerPassword – Specifies required password to connect to a server. Leave blank for no pass
ServerMaxPlayerCount – Specifies the maximum amount of players (max 64)
GameWorld – The game map you wish to use for the server (usually Navezgane)
GameName – The name of your game/who hosts
GameDifficulty – Specifies the difficulty for the game. 0 = easiest. 4 = hardest
GameMode – Specifiy the game mode type. : GameModeSurvival, GameModeDeathmatch, GameModeZombieHorde)
EnemySpawning – If true, enemies will spawn in the game
ShowAllPlayersOnMap – If true, players will show up on the map
BuildCreate – If true, creative mode will be enabled to use
DayNightLength – Sets the 24 hour time in minutes. Default is 40 minutes for 24 hours
DayCount – Specifies the amount of days for hordemode( only for horde mode, use 0 for unlimited)
FragLimit – specifies amount of frags/kills to reach before game ends in deathmatch(only for deathmatch, use 0 for disabled)
MatchLength – specifies the length of the match that will end the game if the fraglimit isn’t reached(only for deathmatch, use 0 for unlimited)
RebuildMap – If true, when the round ends for a full game the map will be reset to it’s original state
ControlPanelPort – Specifies the port to access the web control-panel
ControlPanelPassword – Specifies the password to access the web control-panel

Changes General

Changed barbed wire fences recipe to use sticks instead of power poles
Changed barbed wire recipe to use forging metal
Added concrete to general supplies
Added general supplies to hoard drops
Changed hardness of “leaves” material so pine tree & dead tree branches can easily be destroyed and they now have a 100% chance of dropping a stick so players can make clubs easily pretty much anywhere.
Torch and car fire have now burning sounds
If you drop a torch, now it doesn’t continue burning (the particles are switched off
Added m136 rocket launcher reloads to both controllers
Added hunting rifle to fire sounds so zombies can hear it, lowered sniper rifle volume
When reloading a weapon, the ammo is instantly consumed now. If the player switches to another hotkey slot while the reload animation is playing, the gun is not reloaded and the ammo consumed is restored.
Increased rocket entity damage
Made it so anything stone destroyed drops destroyed stone, and then you can create cobblestone from 4 pieces of it.
Removed thin corrugated metal recipe because it was redundant with thinmetalplate
Added crossbow reload sound
Weapons found in loot containers will now have a random chance of having between 25%-75% durability left to use.
Tree leaves don’t fall any more when hit with a single shot (f.e. pistol / axe)
Rewrote game mode, difficulty and level descriptions
Added Ladder Climbing animations for female player
Removed a bunch of First Person Male animations and now share with female
Added Rocket Launcher reload animation – New rocket particle effect – New rocket ammo model and texture
There is now a small delay between dropping items. You cannot spam the Q button anymore.
Improved reload animations for all weapons
Rocks can be picked up and crafted into stone, and then stone can be crafted into throwing rocks. – Throwing rocks will make a noise and should attract nearby zombies that don’t see the player
The “loot label” in the game on loot containers is now hidden by the bag again
Added new beds to modern houses
Metal trussing is easier to destroy
Game Options now saved with the save game
Fixed problem that sleeping bag icon wasn’t removed when sleeping bag fell down
When picking up a torch now you get the item and not the block torch
Added a delay of 0.8s to throwing rocks

Changes Items

Barbed wire fences now do less damage
Wooden spikes now do less damage
Animated Wrench / Repair tool and added repair sound
Some items now have new and better models and icons
You now need to use paper instead of sticks to create a campfire
Increased iron ingots in supply crates and how much you get from ore
Blocks involved in an explosion now drop its destroyed block with a chance of 50%
Blocks involved in falling now drop its destroyed block with a chance of 70%
Reduced the amount of metal trussing you get from short metal pipes and amount of short metal pipes you get from forging metal

Changes Multiplayer

Removed port setting in options (Networking) and moved to single player creation on the create new game screen.
Raised all supply drop volumes in the Dm and Horde levels to 150
Added a temp sound + text for the zombie horde mode whenever a wave starts
Changed logic for “rebuild map: never”. Old: player inventory was cleared, new: player keeps his inventory
In horde mode the state of the dynamic spawner is now saved too. Now there is not always a “New horde” on continuing a saved horde mode game
Delete Save game button added to Continue Game screen
Kick/Ban functionality added to console commands
Game Browser now has search input at the top, searches game name and game host
Ping added to server entries on Game Browser
Climb animation is now also shown on clients
Increased chance of getting water in horde supply crate drops
Supply crates are also saved in DM and horde games

Changes HUD/Menu

Added new Coming Next features background to the game
Game mode options now have a default and a restore defaults so you can get back to the original settings
Updated all map menu thumbnails so they are new and unique
Messages now show up by default and the F2 Menu has been removed and replaced with the (default) TAB key that brings up the scoreboard
Player icon now blinks on map (M)
Made pressing TAB in the username field, jump into the password field at the login screen
Added game options description to right hand panel
Added a default “no image” for levels without a set image
Added background music. Made background music fade in on menu and fade out on game play
Game browser now has a column text limitation
All Main menus changed to follow new theme
Redid the server login of a client to better fit the lobby concept
“Version is not valid any more” is only shown once on startup now instead of every quit to the main menu
Added drop down box for the max number of allowed players on the create new game screen.
Added game option that allows the player to set 24 hour cycle length in minutes.
Removed background shadow sprites from game scene escape UI.
Added new layout list of saved games on Continue Game Screen
New menu sounds and music added
HUD tweaks to switch locations of status bars

Changes AI /Enemies

Zombies don’t attack meaningless blocks anymore
Zombies navigate fencing and other oddly shaped blocks properly
Improved collision performance
Implemented fat zombie special run anim
Zombies will now climb ladders to get to you
Increased Zombie spawning time for general biome zombies to address mass spawning
Gave regular fat zombies fat zombie cop melee attack
Added despawn rules: Zombies that are not spawned from a static POI spawner get despawned when they dont have a target any more
Zombies now only run when there is a target/something they’re interested in
Hornets will have honey on them on death
Hulk’s vomit lightened in color
Hulk explosion particles improved

Changes Other

Added placeholder sounds for all thrown or dropped objects
Replaced window_paned01.png with smaller tiling tga version
Special characters are no longer allowed in game names
Internal change of saving of chunks: file handle is now kept open so that should lead to better save performance
New water texture for game for non reflective water setting
Add 0 to game options as infinite value
Remappable keys added for Scoreboard and Console.
In order to show certain MP maps, you must now have the gamemode selected
Disabled Debug feature NUMPAD – (minus) and NUMPAD + (plus) and NUMPAD ENTER for release builds
Darkened Supply Crate texture.
New cobweb textures
Removed all old cars from the game clearing up new texture space
Removed model tree stump and leaves texture. Visit camp sites and make sure they don’t have a stone tree stump block in place
Added xml file for level information – xml has allowed game name, game modes and description.
Updated Navezgane bridges with central middle metal support for improved stability
Made special bridge materials/blocks asphalt, metal, concrete and wood which helped the strength of the bridges. They still have a few blocks that sometimes fall in the center from the players weight but they are much better
Updated inventory icons (GUI) for food, weapons and tools
Added modern style furniture to Block model sets modular leather couch, end tables, lamp big screen TV
Removed sticks dropping from leaves except for dead bushes
Day/Night Length now deafaults to 30 minutes rather than a minute if registry key does not exist
Several GameOptions set to not be persistent, these should no longer save in registry but instead use the default value if not set in new game or continue game
Fixed preview image for small rock

Bug Fixes

Fixed (Should be) a server bug where items dropped on a server could not be picked up, and zombies were invincible – If this bug occurs again, please let us know.
Fixed a bug that sounds of a breaking tree was too loud
Fixed crash with NullReferenceException
Fixed a problem that dynamic spawners weren’t spawning regularly
Fixed a bug where the player could spam rockets, and other general gun shots by switching to another hotkey slot and back quickly
Fixed a bug where the player could bypass the reloading animation to shoot again.
Fixed a bug where general biome zombies and animals despawned too quickly
Fixed all trees so stability works properly with them
Fixed Zombie console error problem
Fixed streetlight prefabs so stability works with them
Fixed a bug where a dedicated server would not start a new round
Fixed a bug where the Back button was not working in Options menu
Fixed a problem where the player would take damage in cornfields with 0 damage from falling plant pieces
Fixed issue where Option widths on new dropdown menu were not wide enough and now highlight when mousing over the options
Fixed a bug where capital letters in a game name would count as special characters
Fixed a bug where the Music volume slider did not work
Fixed swung club to pistol transition
Fixed held block to weapon transition
Fixed pistol reload animation
Fixed bug where zombies sometimes spawned below earth level or in a wall
Fixed a bug where the player could place certain items that have low durability points into the crafting table to restore durability points back without using a second item to repair.
Fixed a bug where the player could fall between 6-10 blocks high and take fall damage but get healed instead of losing health
Fixed a bug with the metal to dirt impact particles
Fixed a bug where pressing escape while the inventory/loot container was open would not close it properly.
Fixed MP5 rotation bug when zoomed in
Fixed a bug where the inventory would stay open when opening the sniper scope zoom
64bit Installer installs the game in the correct location now
Fixed problem that Overall Audio Sound Level was not working (due to a Unity 4.2 bug)
No more weird sounds on entering a level any more
Fixed big dupe bug where a player could press Q on certain items and not lose any from inventory
Fixed male first person not crouching and some transition issues.
Fixed stick attack for third person
Fixed trunk breaks after 4 hits for client player
Fixed “some sounds are not played correctly” in multiplayer
Fixed the screen tilt problem when aiming down a weapon’s sights
Fixed a bug where if the player was aiming down their gun sights and placed a weapon over it, the game would freeze up/spam console errors
Fixed a bug where right clicking to split an output item in the crafting table would cause the unsplit items in the output block to vanish
Fixed some duplication bugs
Fixed a bug where the player could hit enemies and blocks from far away
Fixed bug where popup menus would be covered by other things
Fixed stability problem on explosions
Fixed bug that plants did not grow any more
Fixed Hornets attacking not yet spawned client players
Fixed crash stack overflow on tall grass dying
Fixed bug where adding a favorite would overwrite the last favorite
Fixed bug where changing game options on continue game screen would not save
Fixed explosion sound was played locally. Now the distance is also taken into consideration
Fixed bug that the 2nd lit pipe bomb in a row wasn’t shown on the other clients. Please also retest the torches
Fixed flicker of sunlight during early morning/evening
Fixed bug where any player was able to call kick/ban, even if client. Now set to server only
Fixed Car Entities collision is messed up
Fixed All 4 chests in the game are now rotated right when placed: with the side facing the player
Fixed mantis bug: Torch can be placed “into” a chest
Fixed bug that when throwing a small rock very quickly (indeed it was with dropping all items) they were not subtracted from the client after a while
Fixed meat on a stick and hunting rifle bullet to not have animation warnings

Known Issues

Animals get knocked back quite far when hit
If you light a pipebomb and don’t throw it, it will explode but the pipebomb is not “deleted”/removed from your inventory. If you die, all of them are dropped, including the one that exploded.
Stability on Bridges are still a little weak in the middle
Dogs climbs ladders sometimes
Animals sometimes run in circles due to zombie ai improvements
Auger is rendered smaller in player’s hands
Multiplayer servers sometime don’t show up in server browser
Spanish, French and German translations are not done use English for now
Large structures falling from stability cause poor performance on lower end systems
Rocket Launcher does not have a degradation stat bar
Switching languages multiple times in a row can cause broken wording in continued game
Continue game screen titles not updating when re-entering.
The NAT punchthrough sometimes doesn’t work as it should for some users and usually results in server hosting connection issues. Use the disable nat option in the server config to work around this for now.

Will try in a bit however a quick skim read, seems to me they have not fixed/changed the zombie player GPS
Until that is sorted my interest will be limited

[FlowerChild]

With a couple of hours into it, I'm finding it much more interesting so far. I actually died on my first night, and the level of tension is much better with the wall climbing zombies and such. You have to think a bit about defense now to get through the night, which is great.

They've also done a nice revamp to the sound. The noises going on outside my safe house are really unnerving.

I'm playing on the medium difficulty that they describe as "normal" (I think it's called nomad), so your experience may vary based on that. For some strange reason it seems to default to the very easiest.

Still, there are some odd choices present, like kill messages every time you kill a frigging zombie, which is super annoying. Also was disappointed when I died and respawned with only the items in my hotbar missing, same as with the last release. Also, still no pause option for single player, which is getting rather tiresome.

[tedium]

i'm yet to play this one [edit: but i have watched a few "let's play's" from earlier releases]... but having just watched 'world war z' last night i've been reminded of one of the things about zombie games that i dislike, that this game has now gone for. spider zombies? i know it adds tension and a new element, but for me it doesn't fit the 'zombie plague' idea. zombies are mindless... while challenging, the possible ramifications of this are awesome, as represented countless times in movies. i don't mind varying degree's of strength and speed. weight lifter zombie would be one scary dude. usain bolt zombie is giving me goosebumps just thinking about it. but rock climbing seems a little absurd to me... if the brain still works that well, why not kung fu zombies? hell, if we're going there... gun wielding nazi zombies anyone? but when i think of zombies climbing over the a mountain of ex-zombie corpses that have been stampeded to death or crushed against a wall by the hoard of zombies trailing them... that sounds like possibly the most awesome gaming experience i could imagine. and it's not like this engine seems beyond such an idea. (zombie mountain idea courtesy of world war z)

[FlowerChild]

Try them. I'm about as anti intelligent zombie's as they come, with Land Of The Dead being my true breaking point with Romero, and I had zero objection to the spider zombies in play.

As for stacking massive piles of corpses to climb over...uh...yeah. Super simple to just throw that in there :P

The giant bees on the other hand, I'm not a fan of. Well, at least not in certain contexts.

Holed up in your shack late at night with the screaming hordes outside bashing at your structure, having a giant brightly colored insect fly in is more comical than anything, and not in a good way.

They're fine outside during the day, especially in the center burnt out zone, but I think they're a rather poor choice for night time attacks. I get the mechanic they're going for there, and it does make a significant difference for base defense (as do the spider zombies), I just think that the choice of giant bees themselves is thematically off.

[tedium]

yeh i really ought to try it... i've played enough bloody kerbal recently to drive me crazy recently i've played enough kerbal. oh crap, i missed the periapsis

also, it's kind of sad what's become of romero. maybe he's infected? ironically, his recent work resembles it's earlier self but not in the flatering way ;) let's give him the benefit of the doubt

as for piles of corpses. i know about programming but have never pushed a program to actually push the limits of hardware... surely the idea isn't that intense to do? just hard to make look good ;) in the simplest way to explain it... mincecraft terms... dead body creates 1/4 of a 'dead zombie' block that has 4 stages of size. when a 3d chunk has more than 5 zombies in it, damage any zombie that is next to a block 1 higher than it's feet and zombies in all other horizontally adjacent blocks... or would it be easier to just use a collision detection that prevents zombies from being pushed into walls? i dunno, this is starting to sound kind of codey. especially when i'm ignoring the fact that i need hundreds of zombies if not thousands of zombies to be active/computed at once to really have the desired effect. okay, i concede, but i still like the idea's and it's late and i'm reworking this post and i don't want to delete anymore.

and... um yeh bee's... i wish them all the best of luck with it, but putting them into video games... i don't know, just seem's kind of... i remember there was another minecraft mod i played for a bit that was fun, but when the update came out with bee's in it i realised the modder has no real clear vision of what they wanted to make of their world. that's one of the things i've always loved about BTW. you clearly have a vision, even if it does occasionally change a little. there's the sense that BTW is a piece of art, slowly crafted over time to represent a form of game. it's funny, i sometimes think BTW get's easier as you progress. it just seems that way because you become so well trained at doing what you need to do that you are well prepared for the true challenges when they come around... if you're lucky ;)

enough crapping on, i'll get onto it tomorrow... like i said, i've been playing way to much kerbal space program and i need another excuse to stay away from gta 5 online now that my free month of xbox live has run out... 7 ways to die is cheaper =D

[tedium]

so i've played a bit... it's funny that punching tree's seem's to be the best strategy for the first minute, after you loot that car and it' surroundings of course. 'wood spike' trap's are awesome! i'm yet to properly establish a walled compound with any kind of decent killing mechanism... but that's just through lack of play time. i've got a nice vision of a wooden diamond wall structure that would nicely funnel night time waves into waiting rows of wooden spikes. i just wish i had an auger because i must have enough fuel stored to dig my way to china

[tedium]

Anyone still interested in this game, Alpha 5 is now out... on steam. most of the last 3 updates seem to have added enough to be considered worth calling them an actual update, but i only played the alpha 4 so far. i think they're starting to get a real feel for how they want us to experience their world, and not getting caught up in community requests, although they did add an option so zombies will never run. looks like they are actually on track to release a game they can call complete just not shiny once they reach beta. i've been mostly playing with the new cheat menu to kind of build my own world rather than play proper survival style so i can't comment on the new mobs or difficulty adjustments. and i'll stop this comment before it continues the trend of my previous ones in making people flee the thread.

[FlowerChild]

I've been playing each of the updates as they come out, with the exception of this last one which didn't really draw me in. Will likely try it sometime though.

On the survival side, I think they're in need of some serious rebalancing. Like, I got a chuckle a couple of releases ago when they changed iron ore to craft into 8 ingots instead of 9 or some other trivial adjustments because it was "too easy". Like, I probably would have chopped it down to 1 or 2 tops because right now, mining rapidly becomes dull because the ores are utterly meaningless and you just wind up throwing them in a chest to be forgotten, given they produce such ungodly amounts of material. That applies to pretty much everything though, as there's just a massive overabundance of stuff everywhere at present which I find keeps it from being truly compelling.

We'll see. It's still the next gen voxel game I have the most faith in.

[RandomObj3ct]

oh great, you guys have just added another game to the to play list, seems interesting.

I'm still trying to catch up from the last 3 steam sales, i need a time machine to catch up...