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Note that this is not currently Stable.
Linear Color Space Lighting Alpha 19 has gotten a huge visual upgrade with the switch to Linear Color Space Lighting. We have finally achieved full PBR Physically Based Rendering and all of the art has been adjusted to look better and compatible with it. Normal maps look better, bright lights don’t wash out the scene and so much more. It’s hard to describe why it looks better you’ll have to play it to see for yourself.
The video option to adjust gamma has been changed to brightness, so it works with the new lighting. It also has a more balanced range of darker to lighter adjustment.
Lights now use a priority system, so close lights are updated rapidly to reduce visible jumps in their intensity and range.
Interactive Loading Screen We added a brand new interactive loading screen with over 20 tool-tips on how to play the game from basic to advanced. The user can cycle back and forth through them and learn how to play the game better while it’s loading. It also looks better with new HD screenshot backgrounds.
Improved Game-pad Support We have combed through all game-pad functions making sure everything is up to date and working and we also improved defaults like for driving. Additionally we added a new reverse directions for block rotation placement.
Critical and Survival System We gutted the old ISS or interactive survival system that blackened and clamped your health and stamina bars from filling because it was confusing to players. We replaced it with an all new critical system.
All critical injuries that blacken or clamp your max health or stamina will be caused by a new critical buff on the left of the screen. These new critical buffs are clickable, taking the player directly to the player status effect screen where you can read about the problem and its cure.
When you are at full health a zombie can never cause a critical on the first hit so we don’t want to hear about unfair crits! =) Once you take a few hits, or get reckless in close combat the chances increases. Being at low health also increases the chance of receiving a critical. Armor reduces this chance by a flat amount, creating a buffer that enemies must overcome before they can hit you with criticals.
Some criticals are incremental. A sprained arm makes you vulnerable to getting a broken arm.
Some injuries don’t take kindly to being ignored. Sprinting or jumping with a broken leg will not work in your favor. If an injury is affected by an action like that then the buff icon will blink briefly and you will know that something happened.
New and reworked critical injuries include:
Abrasions – The most common injury that you get in fights. They cause no additional problems.
Sprained or Broken Arm – Lowers your swing speed and decreases your reload speed and weapon handling. The cure for a broken arm is a splint which lowers the time for healing. Power attacks or ranged attacks increase the time needed to heal it.
Sprained or Broken Leg – Lowers your mobility and jump height. You can get a sprained or broken leg in a melee fight or when jumping from heights. The cure for a broken leg is a splint which lowers the time for healing. Jumping, falling or sprinting increase the time needed to heal it.
Deep Lacerations – Make you more vulnerable to receiving bleeding criticals. They are cured by a first aid kit or sewing kit.
Concussion – Taking more hits while being stunned can cause a concussion. It periodically causes a stun effect and is cured by painkillers.
Infections – Infection is not something that enemies cause directly. Any critical hit has a chance to cause an infection. An infection is completely harmless and will even heal on it’s own… until it reaches 5%. At that point it starts getting worse and you need medication to cure it. While you have an infection any hit you take will make it worse.
Food and Water Bars
We’ve added food and water bars under the players belt inventory blue for water level and green for food level. You will see them go up and down based on your current hunger level.
HD Characters We have overhauled and re-imagined many of the characters in HD. They may look better but they have less draw calls and are slightly better in performance. New HD zombies include:
Zombie Arlene
Zombie Darlene
Zombie Marlene
Zombie Boe
Zombie Joe
Zombie Moe
Zombie Yo
Zombie Steve
Big Mama Zombie
Crawler Zombie
Trader Jen
Trader Joel
Player arms – male and female
Dynamic Music System
TFP have again teamed up with Native Darkness Productions to make the Alpha 19 Dynamic music system more robust while adding a ton of new content and features.
The propriety Dynamic Music System algorithm measures and uses many player-centric conditions such as player location, biome, time of day, inside or outside a location, nearby aggressive enemies, threat level and more to tailor a custom movie like musical experience for the player.
From this Dynamic Music System algorithm the system can play from the following musical groups: Home day music, home night music, exploration, suspense, combat and custom trader music for each trader.
Exploration, suspense and combat are procedurally generated providing a complete musical arrangement from a set of interchangeable loops. As of Alpha 19 there, are 31,558 unique combinations of music.
We are very excited to unveil this system and we hope you enjoy this new addition to the 7 Days soundscape.
Loot & Enemy Progression Balance Enemy progression has been re-balanced. The chosen game difficulty no longer affects the game-stage value and player parties accumulate roughly 2/3 of the combined game-stage that they used to.
Loot distribution has been smoothed out so that you do not find end game loot too soon and have no more upgrades to look forward to.
Loot has been balanced to provide a smooth progression from primitive, iron and steel items. This change provides a steady progression for the player and gives some incentive to craft, while slowing the economy a bit early game.
The loot quality for player parties is equivalent to that of the highest level player and perk effects like Lucky Looter are not shared. The only loot advantage is that parties face tougher opponents which have a higher chance to drop loot of better quality.
There are 4 tech levels of items in the game. These start appearing in loot at the following Game-Stage intervals.
Tech 0 (GS 1-11) – Primitive tools, weapons and armor including a bow and the blunderbuss.
Tech 1 (GS 12) – Iron or similar melee items and armor and and the first proper firearms like a pistol or double barrel shotgun.
Tech 2 (GS 50) – The best melee items, bows and armor and mid range firearms like a pump-action shotgun.
Tech 3 (GS 91) – The most advanced firearms like an M60 or the Sniper Rifle.
Trader quest rewards scale similar to this system. You won’t immediately get a shotgun for a day one quest.
We will be continuing to to fine tune loot progression in patches. In the future we plan on unifying loot progression, quest loot reward progression and trader for sale item progression more unified.
On Screen Sprite System We added a brand new Nav Objects On-Screen Sprite System to help players more easily locate important items in the world such as fetch quest containers, player backpacks, spears and more. We are using this system on many of the harder to find important items and events in the game.
The new Nav Objects On-Screen Sprite System, which govern the On Screen Icons, Compass Icons and Map Icons. These functions are easily configured in the XML and allow adding custom Nav Objects for Entities, Quest Objectives and Items for those who enjoy modding the game.
Some of the items that are using the new Nav Objects On-Screen Sprite System include:
Quest Rally Markers
Quest Fetch Objects
Dropped Player Backpacks
Player Bedrolls
Player owned vehicles
Traders
Thrown spears
Air Drops
Quest Improvements We have improved many of the quest types and even added new quests here are some of the improvements
Quest Sprites – We have implemented the on screen sprite markers for rally markers, traders, fetch bags, dig quests and more making it much easier for players to go where they need to go and find what they need to find.
Dig Quests – The dig quests have been improved displaying a projected image of a dotted circle onto the terrain showing the player where to dig. As the player digs out terrain blocks the projected circle shrinks letting the player know he is getting closer to the buried treasure.
Opening Routes – We have added new trader to trader quests that guide the player to the next closest trader after completing 10 quests. This continues until the player has delivered a package to all 5 traders.
World and Location updates We added a ton of new Remnant locations to the Game so there are lots of smaller low enemy count locations to explore, loot and take over if your not ready for a Tiered challenge.
We have updated Navezgane significantly increasing the playable space into the radiated zone with new roads that lead to new developments adding many new POIS or locations that were never in Navezgane before or updating cities. Locations include:
New Desert business development
New Snow modern development
New Forest old housing development
New Desert modern housing development
New Desert old housing development
Desert City of Departure has been updated
Snowy city of Perishton has been updated
Wasteland City of Gravestowne has been updated
Some Trader locations in Navezgane have been moved to improve distances between traders
We have improved Random Gen in A19 to use every POI possible in the game so players will see the breadth of content like never before along with a lot of tagging updates and improvements. In fact an A19 Random Worlds can have over 500 unique POIS!
We’ve re-imagined tons of older locations with a complete art and game-play overhaul converting them to beautiful and quest-able dungeon experiences and added many brand new locations to the game. In all over 40 new or updated locations and counting. Some of the new or re-imagined locations include:
2 Grocery Stores
2 Gun Stores
2 Pharmacies
2 Hardware Stores
2 Clothing Stores
2 Electronics Stores
7 Ranger Stations
Carlot_01
New High School
sawmill_01
house_modern_12
house_modern_13
house_old_gambrel_04
12 Remnants
departure_city_blk_plaza
park_basketball
park_plaza_01
park_plaza_02
red_mesa
celltower_01
Changed
Light intensity correction to all POIs to work better with the new linear lighting
Wasteland biome now spawns smaller but improved deco remnants
Removed un-needed random gen POIS
Improved naming conventions of some biome spawned poi remnants and deco piles. all will have the term deco first in their file names now
Renamed bank to store_bank_01
Removed un-used old tree piles
Deprecated old cover pile pois that were not being used anymore
Moved special totoz east of football stadium
Moved pawnshop from departure to rural pine forest where old small bookstore was
Removed all non forest and burnt forest player spawn locations to work with the new trader to trader quest progression in Navezgane. Will be adding more back to get variety
Adjusted pine forest biome to take over a small amount of the winter biome in Navezgane
Moved gas station 6 to outskirts of Perishton to make room for new plaza across from courthouse
Fixed over-sized trees in Persihton and improved city block performance
Deprecated old burnt pine cluster POIS as the are not needed
Removed alleys from Gravestowne blk improved Gravestownes overall look
Optimized Diersville city blk a little
Size and position of remnant mill so it fits to the alley in Perishton
Replaced many duplicate survivor sites with POIS never in Navezgane
Trader Hugh and Trader Joel can now spawn in any biome in RWG
Single bed & mattresses POI replacement
Optimized store_autoparts_01 from 487K verts/513K tris to 317K verts 315K tris
Fixed
Cabinets in Fastfood_04 are not lootable
Cemetery 02 torches that were not on
Wrong bookcases in bank POI
Boat docks 02 collapses
Boats Docks 3 collapses
Si issue bar_stripclub_01
Fake cabinets in Berserker Bill’s
Loot cover in abandoned_house_05 has an SI issue
Trailer_01 prefab si issue when wrenching the car
Missing support pillar in gas station 05
Incorrectly rotated drinking fountain in factory 01
Survivor_site_05 has cobblestone clipping through tent
Garage roof at house_old_pyramid_01 has si issue when stepped on
Lights in front of the Bear Den are too bright
CeilingLight04 spotlight was sideways and adjusted defaults
Environment Art The Art has grown much bigger and have made some major improvements including:
Snow Trees – Updated to resemble thick fir trees with 3D snow giving the trees more depth and volume.
Burnt Trees – Thin version that has charred bark in addition to being more performant. A thicker crispy fried fir tree that adds more atmosphere and variety to the burnt forest.
New skies – Updated sun and moon rendering, cloud blending and lighting, and horizon blending.
New fog – Uses a new distance calculation, allows for very dense fog and sun punch through of heavy fog. Fog now switches to a murky version when under water.
Updated Textures – Most environment textures have been updated in addition to adjustments for linear color space and physically based rendering.
Commercial Stores – All new commercial store POI props and loot containers! Quest through ransacked grocery stores shelves. Have your pick of rotten produce, peruse clothing stores with the latest fashions, and catch up on a best seller at the local book store. Shop till you drop for all of your post apocalyptic retail needs!
Nearly 150 new commercial assets including:
Hardware store shelves
Grocery stores stocked with food, beverage items
Rotten produce bins
Trashed store shelves
Frozen food refrigerators
Beverage refrigerators
Pharmaceutical drug shelves
Clothing racks
Clothing shelves
Mannequins
Store display cases
Gun and ammo display cases
Gun racks
Shoe racks
Electronic store shelves
Book shelves
Shooting target
Square and round hay bales
Restroom signs
Linear Color Space Lighting Alpha 19 has gotten a huge visual upgrade with the switch to Linear Color Space Lighting. We have finally achieved full PBR Physically Based Rendering and all of the art has been adjusted to look better and compatible with it. Normal maps look better, bright lights don’t wash out the scene and so much more. It’s hard to describe why it looks better you’ll have to play it to see for yourself.
The video option to adjust gamma has been changed to brightness, so it works with the new lighting. It also has a more balanced range of darker to lighter adjustment.
Lights now use a priority system, so close lights are updated rapidly to reduce visible jumps in their intensity and range.
Interactive Loading Screen We added a brand new interactive loading screen with over 20 tool-tips on how to play the game from basic to advanced. The user can cycle back and forth through them and learn how to play the game better while it’s loading. It also looks better with new HD screenshot backgrounds.
Improved Game-pad Support We have combed through all game-pad functions making sure everything is up to date and working and we also improved defaults like for driving. Additionally we added a new reverse directions for block rotation placement.
Critical and Survival System We gutted the old ISS or interactive survival system that blackened and clamped your health and stamina bars from filling because it was confusing to players. We replaced it with an all new critical system.
All critical injuries that blacken or clamp your max health or stamina will be caused by a new critical buff on the left of the screen. These new critical buffs are clickable, taking the player directly to the player status effect screen where you can read about the problem and its cure.
When you are at full health a zombie can never cause a critical on the first hit so we don’t want to hear about unfair crits! =) Once you take a few hits, or get reckless in close combat the chances increases. Being at low health also increases the chance of receiving a critical. Armor reduces this chance by a flat amount, creating a buffer that enemies must overcome before they can hit you with criticals.
Some criticals are incremental. A sprained arm makes you vulnerable to getting a broken arm.
Some injuries don’t take kindly to being ignored. Sprinting or jumping with a broken leg will not work in your favor. If an injury is affected by an action like that then the buff icon will blink briefly and you will know that something happened.
New and reworked critical injuries include:
Abrasions – The most common injury that you get in fights. They cause no additional problems.
Sprained or Broken Arm – Lowers your swing speed and decreases your reload speed and weapon handling. The cure for a broken arm is a splint which lowers the time for healing. Power attacks or ranged attacks increase the time needed to heal it.
Sprained or Broken Leg – Lowers your mobility and jump height. You can get a sprained or broken leg in a melee fight or when jumping from heights. The cure for a broken leg is a splint which lowers the time for healing. Jumping, falling or sprinting increase the time needed to heal it.
Deep Lacerations – Make you more vulnerable to receiving bleeding criticals. They are cured by a first aid kit or sewing kit.
Concussion – Taking more hits while being stunned can cause a concussion. It periodically causes a stun effect and is cured by painkillers.
Infections – Infection is not something that enemies cause directly. Any critical hit has a chance to cause an infection. An infection is completely harmless and will even heal on it’s own… until it reaches 5%. At that point it starts getting worse and you need medication to cure it. While you have an infection any hit you take will make it worse.
Food and Water Bars
We’ve added food and water bars under the players belt inventory blue for water level and green for food level. You will see them go up and down based on your current hunger level.
HD Characters We have overhauled and re-imagined many of the characters in HD. They may look better but they have less draw calls and are slightly better in performance. New HD zombies include:
Zombie Arlene
Zombie Darlene
Zombie Marlene
Zombie Boe
Zombie Joe
Zombie Moe
Zombie Yo
Zombie Steve
Big Mama Zombie
Crawler Zombie
Trader Jen
Trader Joel
Player arms – male and female
Dynamic Music System
TFP have again teamed up with Native Darkness Productions to make the Alpha 19 Dynamic music system more robust while adding a ton of new content and features.
The propriety Dynamic Music System algorithm measures and uses many player-centric conditions such as player location, biome, time of day, inside or outside a location, nearby aggressive enemies, threat level and more to tailor a custom movie like musical experience for the player.
From this Dynamic Music System algorithm the system can play from the following musical groups: Home day music, home night music, exploration, suspense, combat and custom trader music for each trader.
Exploration, suspense and combat are procedurally generated providing a complete musical arrangement from a set of interchangeable loops. As of Alpha 19 there, are 31,558 unique combinations of music.
We are very excited to unveil this system and we hope you enjoy this new addition to the 7 Days soundscape.
Loot & Enemy Progression Balance Enemy progression has been re-balanced. The chosen game difficulty no longer affects the game-stage value and player parties accumulate roughly 2/3 of the combined game-stage that they used to.
Loot distribution has been smoothed out so that you do not find end game loot too soon and have no more upgrades to look forward to.
Loot has been balanced to provide a smooth progression from primitive, iron and steel items. This change provides a steady progression for the player and gives some incentive to craft, while slowing the economy a bit early game.
The loot quality for player parties is equivalent to that of the highest level player and perk effects like Lucky Looter are not shared. The only loot advantage is that parties face tougher opponents which have a higher chance to drop loot of better quality.
There are 4 tech levels of items in the game. These start appearing in loot at the following Game-Stage intervals.
Tech 0 (GS 1-11) – Primitive tools, weapons and armor including a bow and the blunderbuss.
Tech 1 (GS 12) – Iron or similar melee items and armor and and the first proper firearms like a pistol or double barrel shotgun.
Tech 2 (GS 50) – The best melee items, bows and armor and mid range firearms like a pump-action shotgun.
Tech 3 (GS 91) – The most advanced firearms like an M60 or the Sniper Rifle.
Trader quest rewards scale similar to this system. You won’t immediately get a shotgun for a day one quest.
We will be continuing to to fine tune loot progression in patches. In the future we plan on unifying loot progression, quest loot reward progression and trader for sale item progression more unified.
On Screen Sprite System We added a brand new Nav Objects On-Screen Sprite System to help players more easily locate important items in the world such as fetch quest containers, player backpacks, spears and more. We are using this system on many of the harder to find important items and events in the game.
The new Nav Objects On-Screen Sprite System, which govern the On Screen Icons, Compass Icons and Map Icons. These functions are easily configured in the XML and allow adding custom Nav Objects for Entities, Quest Objectives and Items for those who enjoy modding the game.
Some of the items that are using the new Nav Objects On-Screen Sprite System include:
Quest Rally Markers
Quest Fetch Objects
Dropped Player Backpacks
Player Bedrolls
Player owned vehicles
Traders
Thrown spears
Air Drops
Quest Improvements We have improved many of the quest types and even added new quests here are some of the improvements
Quest Sprites – We have implemented the on screen sprite markers for rally markers, traders, fetch bags, dig quests and more making it much easier for players to go where they need to go and find what they need to find.
Dig Quests – The dig quests have been improved displaying a projected image of a dotted circle onto the terrain showing the player where to dig. As the player digs out terrain blocks the projected circle shrinks letting the player know he is getting closer to the buried treasure.
Opening Routes – We have added new trader to trader quests that guide the player to the next closest trader after completing 10 quests. This continues until the player has delivered a package to all 5 traders.
World and Location updates We added a ton of new Remnant locations to the Game so there are lots of smaller low enemy count locations to explore, loot and take over if your not ready for a Tiered challenge.
We have updated Navezgane significantly increasing the playable space into the radiated zone with new roads that lead to new developments adding many new POIS or locations that were never in Navezgane before or updating cities. Locations include:
New Desert business development
New Snow modern development
New Forest old housing development
New Desert modern housing development
New Desert old housing development
Desert City of Departure has been updated
Snowy city of Perishton has been updated
Wasteland City of Gravestowne has been updated
Some Trader locations in Navezgane have been moved to improve distances between traders
We have improved Random Gen in A19 to use every POI possible in the game so players will see the breadth of content like never before along with a lot of tagging updates and improvements. In fact an A19 Random Worlds can have over 500 unique POIS!
We’ve re-imagined tons of older locations with a complete art and game-play overhaul converting them to beautiful and quest-able dungeon experiences and added many brand new locations to the game. In all over 40 new or updated locations and counting. Some of the new or re-imagined locations include:
2 Grocery Stores
2 Gun Stores
2 Pharmacies
2 Hardware Stores
2 Clothing Stores
2 Electronics Stores
7 Ranger Stations
Carlot_01
New High School
sawmill_01
house_modern_12
house_modern_13
house_old_gambrel_04
12 Remnants
departure_city_blk_plaza
park_basketball
park_plaza_01
park_plaza_02
red_mesa
celltower_01
Changed
Light intensity correction to all POIs to work better with the new linear lighting
Wasteland biome now spawns smaller but improved deco remnants
Removed un-needed random gen POIS
Improved naming conventions of some biome spawned poi remnants and deco piles. all will have the term deco first in their file names now
Renamed bank to store_bank_01
Removed un-used old tree piles
Deprecated old cover pile pois that were not being used anymore
Moved special totoz east of football stadium
Moved pawnshop from departure to rural pine forest where old small bookstore was
Removed all non forest and burnt forest player spawn locations to work with the new trader to trader quest progression in Navezgane. Will be adding more back to get variety
Adjusted pine forest biome to take over a small amount of the winter biome in Navezgane
Moved gas station 6 to outskirts of Perishton to make room for new plaza across from courthouse
Fixed over-sized trees in Persihton and improved city block performance
Deprecated old burnt pine cluster POIS as the are not needed
Removed alleys from Gravestowne blk improved Gravestownes overall look
Optimized Diersville city blk a little
Size and position of remnant mill so it fits to the alley in Perishton
Replaced many duplicate survivor sites with POIS never in Navezgane
Trader Hugh and Trader Joel can now spawn in any biome in RWG
Single bed & mattresses POI replacement
Optimized store_autoparts_01 from 487K verts/513K tris to 317K verts 315K tris
Fixed
Cabinets in Fastfood_04 are not lootable
Cemetery 02 torches that were not on
Wrong bookcases in bank POI
Boat docks 02 collapses
Boats Docks 3 collapses
Si issue bar_stripclub_01
Fake cabinets in Berserker Bill’s
Loot cover in abandoned_house_05 has an SI issue
Trailer_01 prefab si issue when wrenching the car
Missing support pillar in gas station 05
Incorrectly rotated drinking fountain in factory 01
Survivor_site_05 has cobblestone clipping through tent
Garage roof at house_old_pyramid_01 has si issue when stepped on
Lights in front of the Bear Den are too bright
CeilingLight04 spotlight was sideways and adjusted defaults
Environment Art The Art has grown much bigger and have made some major improvements including:
Snow Trees – Updated to resemble thick fir trees with 3D snow giving the trees more depth and volume.
Burnt Trees – Thin version that has charred bark in addition to being more performant. A thicker crispy fried fir tree that adds more atmosphere and variety to the burnt forest.
New skies – Updated sun and moon rendering, cloud blending and lighting, and horizon blending.
New fog – Uses a new distance calculation, allows for very dense fog and sun punch through of heavy fog. Fog now switches to a murky version when under water.
Updated Textures – Most environment textures have been updated in addition to adjustments for linear color space and physically based rendering.
Commercial Stores – All new commercial store POI props and loot containers! Quest through ransacked grocery stores shelves. Have your pick of rotten produce, peruse clothing stores with the latest fashions, and catch up on a best seller at the local book store. Shop till you drop for all of your post apocalyptic retail needs!
Nearly 150 new commercial assets including:
Hardware store shelves
Grocery stores stocked with food, beverage items
Rotten produce bins
Trashed store shelves
Frozen food refrigerators
Beverage refrigerators
Pharmaceutical drug shelves
Clothing racks
Clothing shelves
Mannequins
Store display cases
Gun and ammo display cases
Gun racks
Shoe racks
Electronic store shelves
Book shelves
Shooting target
Square and round hay bales
Restroom signs