[2022] Alpha 21 Dev Diary

Welcome to the Alpha 21 Developer Diary mirror on Steam.
If you wish to visit the dev diary where members of The Fun Pimp staff will occasionally answer questions, post updates of what they are working on, and give us sneak peaks into the future of 7 Days to Die, click the following link. (link)[community.7daystodie.com]

In addition, only Alpha 21 features that have been confirmed will show up in the list below. No longer will planned and hoped-for features be posted until they are actually a reality. This means that even though a developer might talk about their wishes for A21 in the body of the thread, those features will not be listed as official A21 features here until they are confirmed as already implemented.

NOTE: This thread is not for reporting issues. Please use the correct forum section for that. Don't forget to do the needful.


CONFIRMED A21 FEATURES
New Places of Interest

• 100+ New places to explore
  
• additional environmental storytelling in POIs
  
• 100s of classic POIs updated to current standards
  
• Many new T5 and T4 POIs
  
• All POI's have a proper name

New Decorations

• Cars, trucks, tractors
  
• Furniture and many many new items

Additional Advanced World Generation Options

• Biome Percent Sliders (included in Alpha 20.6)

Learn By Reading System

• 23 new skills to govern crafting (photo in gallery below)
  
• 23 new magazines added to loot
  
• Perks no longer unlock recipes or govern crafting at all
  
• The only schematics that still unlock recipes are mod attachments.
  
• Crafting skill is increased by finding and reading magazines
  
• Skill increases unlock recipes at certain points as well as increase quality of crafting for items with quality
  
• Each tech level has a separate range in the skill spectrum so that you have to work up through primitive tech and then iron tech and then steel tech and being able to craft a blue stone axe no long means you automatically can also craft a blue iron axe.
  
• Some skills have 100 levels but others have less depending on how many unlocks there are for recipes and quality tiers.
  
• A new skill page showing your progress has been added to the player interface (photo in gallery below)
  
• Skill magazines can be found, bought, and/or received as quest rewards. The topic of the magazine matches the location you would expect to find it in the world.
  
• Perks slightly affect the probability of finding like-themed magazines and parts for those recipes. Perk into shotguns and you will notice more shotgun magazines and shotgun parts appearing in the world. It isn't a significant bonus but it does prevent the player from being screwed over.
  
• When you max out a skill, that slight probability bonus granted by perks for finding the corresponding magazine for that skill drops off. The magazine will still show up randomly in loot but no longer have a boost. The probability boost for finding matching parts will remain.

Interactive Environmental Hazards

• Flaming broken gas pipes blocking the way. A valve to turn off the gas flow is located elsewhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0mgZ9zB9m4

Doors

• Double Doors
  
• Partially damaged doors with large holes can be shot/meleed through to damage enemies on the other side

Water Simulation

• All new water coding--water is no longer a block but a water voxel
  
• Water voxels flow into neighboring voxels that are marked to allow it.
  
• Water can be in the same space as a block
  
• Water does not flow or fall continuously like a river or a waterfall
  
• Player movement in water has been enhanced.

Armor -Pushed to A22 with bandits and character models

Drinking Water Rebalance

• Murky water is the only water found in loot and water sources.
  
• Empty Glass bottles removed from game to match all the rest of the containers in the game
  
• Dew collector work station added
  
• Players can drink murky water directly from water sources with empty hand by pressing "e".
  
• Drinking murky water causes 5 hp of damage and has a chance to give dysentery
  
• Pot is now required to boil murky water into boiled water
  
• Glue crafting taken into consideration

Spears

• Spear damage increased
  
• Spear power attack is a thrust instead of a throw
  
• Throw attack for spears removed

Chunk Reset Option

• Default is disabled
  
• Options for days all the way up to 70 days
  
• Chunk resets to its pregenerated state if no player has entered the chunk after the number of days selected.
  
• An active LCB or bedroll will prevent a chunk from resetting.

Trader Changes

• New Trader compounds
  
• Trader inventories rebalanced with the new crafting progression
  
• Removal of Secret Stash
  
• Further specialization of traders and what they carry

Electricity Changes

• Wires only visible when holding wire cutting tool

Player HUD changes

• Danger Meter added to show danger level of biomes and POIs
  
• Crafting Recipe Tracker can be toggled to show on the HUD to help players as they gather materials needed for crafting
  
• When crafting, the player can select on the hud the quality level they would like to craft as long as it is equal to or less than what they've learned.
  
• An armor state indicator to warn when your armor durability is low.
  
• F7 now supports interacting with objects so the entire HUD can be removed for cinematic play.

Perk Rebalancing

• Sexual T-Rex removed. Stamina improvement now incorporated into the separate perks for each relevant weapon
  
• Each attribute will get its own version of Flurry of Blows as an additional perk for the melee weapons within that attribute
  
• Grease Monkey now increases the amount of health that repair kits restore to vehicles. (One repair kit no longer restores a vehicle back to max health)
  
• The cooking perk speeds up cooking times

Vehicle Changes

• Repair kits restore a fixed amount of health and each level of Grease Monkey adds 10% of the vehicle's total health to the amount restored.
  
• Increased vehicle damage to blocks, terrain, and entities by various amounts.
  
• Increased vehicle damage received from collisions by various amounts
  
• Improved vehicle block collision calculations
  
• Greatly increased damage given and received to and from block collision.
  
• Increased bicycle, gyro, and 4x4 helath
  
• Vehicle spark effects on bigger self damage hits
  
• Vehicle blood splatter effects on high damage collisions with entities

Entity Activity Throttling System

• Zombie pathing updates less frequently (server-side) based on distance from player
  
• Jiggle components disabled (client-side) based on distance from player
  
• Each player can always have some fully simulated zombies
  
• Helps with large numbers of zombies from Blood Moon & sleeper volumes

New Terrain Tool

• Sphere-shaped brush with adjustable size
  
• Grows terrain in all directions instead of just upwards
  
• Can fill space with any block (including non-terrain)
  
• Undo function

Graphics Improvements

• Shadows re-enabled on grass, based on quality settings

Quests

• New quest type: Infested Clear
  
• Infested quests increase the Tier level of the quest by one level and greatly increase the number of zombies.
  
• T5 infestation quests are therefore considered T6.

ROADMAP TO GOLD AND BEYOND

1. Bandits
   
2. Armor
   
3. Weather
   
4. Factions & Story
   
5. Steam Workshop Support

A21 ART GALLERY

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2783218934
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2783219445
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2783219715
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2783219906
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2783220513
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2909809992
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2909810834

Originally posted by Highlander: So from A20 that was released at the end of Dec to now the end of march, 3 months later your telling me the only thing so far confirmed are POIs and Decorative Cars Wow they have been working some heavy duty overtime hope they didnt strain themselves LOL But i dont know why im worrying now anyways more then likely wont see this update till Dec of 2022 just in time for Xmas to real in a few more fish.

You apparently missed part of the announcement.

Originally posted by SylenThunder: In addition, only Alpha 21 features that have been confirmed will show up in the list below.

Next time you decide to show up for a rally, at least show up informed. You just look silly when you make ignorant statements.

Originally posted by RaozSkillz: These suggestions are just for the game in general and is the direction you should take with the development of this simulator <3

1. Improve performance and optimization, continue to focus on better resource saving techniques. If you made a mobile version, imagine how well that would optimize this game for PC. If your company/s pulled it off.

This is something you work on primarily in Beta. Development isn't at that stage yet.

Originally posted by RaozSkillz: 2. Focus on mechanic fluidity and animation realism.

This has been a work in progress for a couple of years.

Originally posted by RaozSkillz: 3. Content: The goal should be to eventually add so much content that everything made by humans can be made by your character. It is possible for one human to build anything, complex machines just require handmade machines to make better machines. So we should be able to evolve the technology in our world from stone age to future sci-fi/supreme age. More ores need to be added so we can make alloys and composites.

Can't have that fancy content until the core features for the story exist. You should be hearing a lot about that in the near future.

Originally posted by RaozSkillz: 4. Graphics: Record as much as possible from real life and only improve the graphics without increasing resource usage, less resource usage and better graphics is obviously always the goal. Simple dev stuff. Aim for real life like you have been.

This is a voxel game, not CyberPunk. High-end graphics are very expensive.

Originally posted by RaozSkillz: 5. Base it on Sci-fi, look into the science of human mutation and zombie parasites. Don't make it safe and boring, just base it on what's possible like what Marvel do with Sci-Fi. So we can continue to evolve into a mutated superhuman that is virtually immortal when maxed. I think you should base the maxed out player on Maestro Hulk or Professor Hulk at least a little bit and maybe just at a human level.

You haven't heard the story yet. I'm sure it'll be interesting.

Originally posted by RaozSkillz: 6. Muscle, fat and weight system. Just start working on this in-depth stuff and when you get it done it's done. We should start off with a lethargic build and then maxed out players look like Eddie Hall or Illia Gollem (Biggest muscle athletes on earth). But this muscle should have to be maintained and we can gain or lose fat realistically. Basically just copy RDR2's weight system to start and then expand on that. It might take forever but amazing things take forever.

Be careful what you ask for.

Originally posted by RaozSkillz: 7. Add less realistic options for players who don't want a simulator, so players can adjust how realistic they want the game to be. So that you can please people who want it to be more of a game as well.

Too many options just muddles the interface and confuses players.