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8 years of Early Access and 7 Days to Die shows no signs of slowing down on the major upgrades, with Alpha 20 Experimental out now on Steam. It's opt-in, so you need to select it from the Beta menu for the game on Steam, and once it's stable enough it will be out for everyone.

This version is another huge change for the game with lots of new character / enemy models that look and perform better, along with some massive world-building upgrades to the whole experience.

Just some of what's new and improved includes:

  • A brand-new version of Random Gen World creation with new cities, city tiles and a part system spawner. You will be blown away by it!
  • Over 200 new POI’s and updates to many of the older POI’s. Over 550 Explorable locations total
  • Navezgane has many city improvements, terrain improvements and new rural and wilderness communities
  • Nearly 25 new HD characters with a couple with improved shaders
  • 6 New weapons and 13 HD remakes with the addition of new primitive pipe weapons
  • Overhauled shape menu with hundreds of new shapes organized and buildable from a simple frame with in-game, creative and level design support
  • Block Placement Improvements
  • We have added a Robotic Drone Companion to carry your extra gear, heal you and more
  • Dynamic Imposter System renders accurate changes to POI’s and player bases at far distances
  • Rendering improvements with 100s of new PBR models
  • Quest Improvements including new restore power night Quests
  • AI Enemy Improvements including city spawning, ducking, obstacle attacks, head tracking and burst attacks.

Seems this update has managed to pull back a lot of players too, with it hitting a recent peak count of over 40,000 players at a time, which is the highest it has been for quite a few months.

You can pick it up on Humble Store and Steam. Full Alpha 20 Experimental release notes here.

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Phlebiac Dec 8, 2021
Quoting: scainethanks to the legal fiasco that occurred when Tell Tale went under, it's still A16 you'll get on the Xbox and PS4.

Was Tell Tale their publisher for consoles? Can they not get a new one?

Edit: sounds like they will be doing a new console port:
https://7daystodie.fandom.com/wiki/Console_edition


Last edited by Phlebiac on 8 December 2021 at 6:50 am UTC
g000h Dec 8, 2021
Quoting: TheRiddickGame still runs on OpenGL under Linux doesn't it?

OpenGL is recommended. Vulkan is available. I've been playing some A20 with Vulkan, and it might be less stable but it does appear to run a bit quicker.

Meanwhile, I have been playing the game with Feral Sense setting activated. Woo - A nice boost in game difficulty. The zombies hear you easier and from further away.
Ehvis Dec 10, 2021
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Quoting: g000h
Quoting: TheRiddickGame still runs on OpenGL under Linux doesn't it?

OpenGL is recommended. Vulkan is available. I've been playing some A20 with Vulkan, and it might be less stable but it does appear to run a bit quicker.

Tried it with Vulkan. While it runs smoothly, it gives me a slight but noticeable increase in input lag.

Quoting: g000hMeanwhile, I have been playing the game with Feral Sense setting activated. Woo - A nice boost in game difficulty. The zombies hear you easier and from further away.

I cleared a house. By the time I was done there were more zombies coming in from the outside than had spawned inside. Actually had to take out my gun at some point!
Kithop Dec 10, 2021
From the notes, they added the Epic Online Services backend 'for future cross-platform capabilities'... ooh, do you think they're going to resurrect/update the console versions now that they've got the rights back (RIP Telltale) and apparently have money?

Started my own A20 server for friends last night, and definitely liking the changes so far. This is a huge update over A19. I've been running it on Vulkan since A17 or A18 with no major issues (AMD RX 580 on AMDGPU / Mesa, however) - I'd recommend people go ahead and try it (pick the Game Launcher when starting and you can even save it as the default there) if you haven't already.

I do have a couple minor issues where if the game crashes, it forgets half of the options you've changed (controls, video, etc.) that session; it must save on exit, and loading in at least single player works fine the first time, but if I quit out to the main menu and then try to load back in to that same save (e.g. after changing draw distance in the options), the game crashes.

Always the 2nd load in; first is always fine. So that's a new bug, but it's in the latest_experimental branch for a reason.
Kithop Dec 10, 2021
Quoting: EhvisTried it with Vulkan. While it runs smoothly, it gives me a slight but noticeable increase in input lag.

Just curious - is that with Vsync on, and does turning it off fix it? I seem to remember this issue in a couple games.

I've got a FreeSync monitor working right now so I have no perceptible input lag with Vsync/adaptive sync on under Vulkan here, for comparison.
Ehvis Dec 10, 2021
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Quoting: Kithop
Quoting: EhvisTried it with Vulkan. While it runs smoothly, it gives me a slight but noticeable increase in input lag.

Just curious - is that with Vsync on, and does turning it off fix it? I seem to remember this issue in a couple games.

I've got a FreeSync monitor working right now so I have no perceptible input lag with Vsync/adaptive sync on under Vulkan here, for comparison.

I have G-SYNC on, but since it's always above 60 Hz, it's hitting VSYNC.

I did a similar test early A19 and there it was much worse. But when both gsync/vsync were off everything was fine. Again, no input lack using OpenGL just like it is now.
g000h Dec 17, 2021
Quoting: EMO GANGSTER
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: EMO GANGSTERI love the game and I own it but why is this still in Alpha it came out in 2013

Why's it matter? Would you rather they stop development on it and call it a day? Alpha means it continually gets massive improvements. I just don't understand why people think this way. It'd be different maybe if they only put out tiny updates seldomly or something.

were did I says it should stop being developed for also there are lots of games that keep updating after Alpha what are you even talking about that being said I was just wondering why it still in Alpha, as Scaine, explained without taking oddly personal lol, is it just in name ok cool I love the game and own it if you mint to or not your message comes off like I was being malicious when all I asked was why is it still Alpha.

I think the reasoning is the Developers love their game and they don't feel it is ready to consider as "complete". Unlike certain OSes (Windows) and AAA gaming titles (nearly every one out there, but particularly Cyberpunk 2077) which release the game as "ready" but then have to go back in for following years to clean up their mess.
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