[2021] Where are the zombies? Development priorities.

Think of it like this... You're building a machine, You've got a tentative blueprint and built a part of it, It works- It's not perfect but the part appears to work without causing issues. It could be fine tuned, It could be polished...But you haven't finished the rest of the parts for the machine yet, so you can't really put it through it's paces and ensure it will work properly in the end.

So, what do you do? Do you spend your time refining, tuning, and polishing that single part, when you know it could be a waste of time doing so as the part might just blow out? Or worse, you might over-tone or under-tune as you can't set the piece against the machine to be sure it fits after your changes? Or do you work on other parts so that you can finish the machine before beginning to polish and tune?


That's basically the situation we have here with zombie spawns. The spawning system, by and large, is complete. It's just missing the tuning and polishing. There was a point in the previous versions where all the wandering zombies were causing performance issues and degrading the gameplay- So it was scaled backwards pending performance improvements., The system still works, there's just less zombies around now.

Now they're doing a bunch of work on all of the other parts and trying to finish the last few so every part of the machine is here and can all be tuned and polished together at the same time.

"If it works, don't fix it." is a very important but often true phrase. It works, It just doesn't make as many zombies as some people would like. And, in the end, performance is still a bit of a sticky subject amongst the community- Some people have no issues, some have lots of issues. So until they finish working on the other parts and begin doing serious optimization and debugging passes to clear up performance problems, it's unlikely that they'll scale the spawns back up in the vanilla game.


Plus, For those that want more, and can handle more with their rig, Modding exists and it's not too hard to 'correct'; Which is, at least in my eyes, all the more reason to wait on making the change in the game itself until they work on performance.

First you get feature complete, then you optimize. That is standard practice. We are still in alpha, which is when you add features.

Unfortunately for the players that want more zombies, zombie count is limited by performance. Ergo, the game needs optimization (like redoing all the zombie models to be more efficient) before more zombies can be added.

Feature complete -> optimization -> more zombies

That is (my undersranding of) TFP’s thought process.

Originally posted by fran:

Originally posted by Shurenai: Think of it like this... You're building a machine, You've got a tentative blueprint and built a part of it, It works- It's not perfect but the part appears to work without causing issues. It could be fine tuned, It could be polished...But you haven't finished the rest of the parts for the machine yet, so you can't really put it through it's paces and ensure it will work properly in the end.

So, what do you do? Do you spend your time refining, tuning, and polishing that single part, when you know it could be a waste of time doing so as the part might just blow out? Or worse, you might over-tone or under-tune as you can't set the piece against the machine to be sure it fits after your changes? Or do you work on other parts so that you can finish the machine before beginning to polish and tune?

Yes, if it's an essential part of the machine that renders it useless it if it blows out, then it makes a lot more sense to have it work perfectly before stacking up more stuff on top of it.

If the game wasn't able to perform in feature-lighter earlier alphas, then it should've been addresed as priority number one before introducing anything else.

Originally posted by Shurenai: "If it works, don't fix it." is a very important but often true phrase. It works, It just doesn't make as many zombies as some people would like. And, in the end, performance is still a bit of a sticky subject amongst the community- Some people have no issues, some have lots of issues. So until they finish working on the other parts and begin doing serious optimization and debugging passes to clear up performance problems, it's unlikely that they'll scale the spawns back up in the vanilla game.

Thing is... it doesn't work. Deserted cities and environment is just sad.

Sad as it might be from your perspective, It remains that the spawning system spawns zombies in, doesn't error, and is fully capable of spawning more or less zombies as set by the XML. The system in question works, It's just set in low gear. And the amount of zombies roaming around is purely subjective to the individual- You think it's sad, I think it's a blessing; I remember the old days when you couldn't walk 5 blocks without being entangled with another zombie, traveling, exploring, and trying to loot houses was a frustrating mess.

It's highly likely, at least IMO, that when they address the spawn counts that they'll add a game option for determining how many you want.


As for whether the game was able to perform, You don't address that as priority 1 in alpha. You don't build the house upon a half built foundation- You finish the foundation, then build the house.

Bug fixing and optimizing is a very tricky business- There's a reason so many games will have PatchA patch something out, and then PatchB,C or D a few weeks down the line accidentally re-introduces the same bug. 7DTD has already had a fair share of exactly that- Patching out the age old backpack-fell-through-the-world issue only for it to crop up every other alpha. Was gone in 15, back in 16, gone in 17, back in 18, seems to be gone in 19...

They do in fact do SOME bugfixing and optimizing, Just enough to keep the game in a mostly playable state for most people; Otherwise the game wouldn't be testable.. But my point here is that, If you do a bunch of fine tuning, tweaking, polishing, bugfixing and optimizing on a feature, Then you change anything in the game that has even a tangential relationship to that feature, you're going to break all your careful tweaks and have to redo them- This magnifies development time. Development would go from, loosely speaking,

"Develop develop develop bugfix optimize done"
to
"Develop bugfix optimize, develop re-bugfix re-optimize, develop re-bugfix re-optimize done"

Now magnify that over the course of 7 years of development. We'd still be back in the era of A12, maybe A13 if they took the time to completely optimize and refine every new version to the highest degree.


Now, When your game is a completed product, You pretty much have no choice but to take that time to polish the game after every pass. 7DTD however is not a finished game- It's an in progress game in it's alpha state, features are still being added regularly, entire systems are being rewritten- Fundamentally, the foundation of the house is still being built. It'd be kinda dumb to start building and furnishing the house now when you know changes to the foundation are forthcoming.

Anywho, I'm tired and it's bedtime, so gnight. :P