7 Days to Die - and How I'm now Spoiled

[utakataJ6]

Anyone taken a look at the kickstarter for 7 Days to Die? It's a blatant - and very well done - cross between Minecraft and Day-Z, with decent physics to boot.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/7da ... vival-game


There's a pre-alpha play video available here, which is pretty interesting although I can't stand the commentator.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqmHuO0mUQ8

My real point here, though, is that I just had to laugh when, 22 minutes in, he tried to pillar out of danger and it just felt WRONG.
...also, I sort of feel like this would be better as a roughlike than with respawns. Maybe that's based on not seeing enough footage, though.

[FlowerChild]

Game looks really cool, but above all else, I have to give props to that guy for managing to be even more annoying than the Yogscast. Holy shit was that terrible. I was absolutely enthralled with the gameplay footage but he got so annoying after awhile that I quit the vid because I couldn't take it anymore.

[lostone1993]

*cough* viewtopic.php?f=8&t=7727
:P

I am liking the gameplay videos thus far, A few of my friends have bought it. I am going to wait for a video from my friends before I decide whether to buy

I am hoping that it lives up to what I observed


EDIT:
The devs youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnMhai ... 8lzcxBfepg
Steam Greenlight Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS066QnJsnU

[FlowerChild]

A much more tolerable LP:



I've also been watching this guy's RUST series which is another interesting building/survival style game that's worth having a look at.

[Gilberreke]

I've also been watching this guy's RUST series which is another interesting building/survival style game that's worth having a look at.

So many LPs these days. I don't even play games anymore, I just watch other people play games in a funny voice :)

[agentwiggles]

Looks really cool, definitely on my radar.

[userzero]

Looks like the guy behind it worked as a developer at Gearbox. Says he worked on Brothers in Arms: Furious Four , and Duke Nukem Forever.

[FlowerChild]

They've put out a public release. Buy page is down at the moment, but I'm going to try and grab this as soon as I can, as like I've said, this is what I personally consider to be the next gen of voxel games.

http://7daystodie.com/

[Gunnerman21]

Yeah I agree with the "next gen" of voxel games. I love how they can make the voxels bend into different shapes other than squares :) I didn't know programmers could do that..

[FlowerChild]

Yeah I agree with the "next gen" of voxel games. I love how they can make the voxels bend into different shapes other than squares :) I didn't know programmers could do that..

Well, to my knowledge they're still cubes, with just a visual filter (that can be turned off) to make them look more organic.

I'm still not 100% on that feature. I find it looks really good on some things, and not as much on others, but I want to reserve judgement on it until I can actually play the thing and see how it works out in practice.

The main thing that impresses me about this title is that it seems to have a distinctly realistic design. They haven't gone nuts with new shiny features like many of the other voxel games I've been seeing in development, but rather seem to have a nice simple evolutionary design there that I have every confidence can actually be completed in a reasonable amount of time.

That's what makes it "next gen" for me, when I'd classify many of the others I'm seeing as "yeah...maybe in 4 or 5 gens" ;)

[Bevanz]

I backed the game on kickstarter... have been watching the playthroughs of a few people on Youtube, and am very excited to get my key. It sounds like pre-orders and backers from Kickstarter are getting the keys distributed now, although their forums are flooded with people complaining about not getting their keys yet. Once they get through the large number of people on the kickstarter, it sounds like they'll re-open the pre-order page for people to buy it again.

The organic-looking way blocks shift does sound like a setting. One of the people on a video I watched said it could be turned off in the settings. It is a pretty awesome feature.

[userzero]

Wish I'd found this game sooner. I will definitely be grabbing it as soon as that buy page is back up. I've been burned on a few kickstarter/greenlight games lately so I was reluctant to buy it until I saw more of it. But after looking into the bios of the guys affiliated with the company I'm a lot less concerned and the game looks great.

[horstdog]

Buy page is back up. $35. 300MB download. Windows 32/64 download links (4 each) . Hopefully I will have a chance to play it today.

[userzero]

Just got my ass handed to me by zombies.

Chopped down my first tree and it crushed me to death.

Tried to hide in a hole for the night and ....

I am loving this game. Can't wait to see where it goes.

[FlowerChild]

Woot! Perfect timing as I wanted to take the day off today to recharge my batteries :)

Way beyond my budget, but this one is totally "must play" for me.

[FlowerChild]

Zombies are everywhere!

AAAAHHHHH!!!!

;)

[Taleric]

Favorite part is to watch things fall! I find the view somehow disorienting though...

[FlowerChild]

After playing a few hours, I have to say, I'm really not noticing the visual filter on the blocks. I think I'm a fan of it.

Having a blast so far. Will report more later. Too busy playing right now ;)

[userzero]

There's definitely a lot to like and since they're experienced professional developers and using Unity I imagine we'll see a fairly fast pace of development. But right now after the third or so day cycle for me it starts to feel repetitive. I think it has a lot to do with the dumb pathing and omniscient AI. I'm also worried about the persistence of the world and the fact that there's a finite amount of resources, eventually you'll just be left with a wasteland which limits the never-ending sandbox aspect. The games fun, and it's definitely a strong move in the direction of the kind of zombie game I've been hoping for, but I'm thinking this might be something that stirs somebody else to come along and take the concept and then blow it out of the water with an even better game. I'd really like to see generated and infinite worlds and persistent servers where people could form factions and build whole cities while fighting for resources and supremacy in the zombie apocalypse.

[FlowerChild]

Even at this early stage of development, I think you think the world is far more finite than it actually is. Farming, mining, etc. are all already in the game. Yes, you could theoretically run out of stuff, but that's a level of theoretical wankery that I don't think is worth dwelling on.

[userzero]

After just a few day/night cycles and fighting zombies with explosives a few parts of my world already resemble a map on Ace of Spades near the end of a really long match. I'm looking at long term playability. I don't know that you would even need to go to generated terrain to address it. But when you add in multiplayer, pvp and griefing it might lead to necessitating world resets every so often on servers. I still think it's a great game and worth the money even now.

I did start a small potato farm on day 5 using a bucket of water to provide irrigation, it felt nostalgic.

I think one of the best things so far are the times I just catch myself busting out in laughter over some of the overwhelmingly destructive results of the unrelenting horde. My last death i had a barrel of oil behind me and the zombie in front of me hit it, I somehow survived long enough to be covered by the horde which filled in on top me in the resulting hole in the ground as the second floor of the base collapsed on top of everyone.

[FlowerChild]

Okeley dokely. I pretty much spent the whole day yesterday surviving in the zombie apocalypse, so I'll share a few impressions. I think I have about 10 hours of play into the thing now.

First, I'm having a ball. The game is still very early in development, there's obviously a lot of loose ends for them to address, but what is there is very fun.

So far I've been playing almost entirely nomadic rather than working on a single base. I've been moving to a new location every night or two, fortifying an established structure, setting it up as a small base in case things go sideways, and then moving on the next day. I'm not sure of the exact figure, but I'm at over ten days and haven't died a single time yet and have maybe explored the structures in about a third of the map.

Which, will lead me to say that I think the survival aspect is rather easy at present. There are both hunger and thirst systems in place, but I don't find either are much of an issue at present given the overabundance of each resource. On the contrary, I find myself leaving rather large stockpiles of both behind at each of my temporary shelters in case I need to return and so that my inventory doesn't fill up.

Having to worry about structural integrity in this kind of game is awesome, and so far I am digging their implementation of it. I had one particularly nerve racking episode where during the night I was barricaded in the upper floors of a house and decided to build a wood bridge from the roof of my house to a neighboring one so I could spend the night gathering more supplies. The tension of not quite knowing if my bridge would support my weight or send me plummeting into the arms of a hoard of zombies was excellent.

With regards to the visual filter that I mentioned I wanted to check out for myself: I think it works really well. I started playing, and didn't even notice it. It was only when I was taking a break from the game later that I remembered I wanted to take note of how well it works, so obviously, it's working quite well :)

There are still some oddities here and there while you're constructing stuff, but I'll write that off to it being an early dev build.

Performance at present is a bit wonky. My impression is that they have a memory leak going on as it seems to get worse with time rather than being linked to anything specific going on in the game. I'd recommend restarting the game every hour or so at present, as it tends to get rather bad otherwise. The game currently lacks a pause button, so I've gotten into the habit of just quitting the game entirely whenever I get up from my computer, and then restarting when I come back.

I'm so-so on the crafting system. They're obviously trying to retain the grid-based system of MC, while providing memory aids for the player so that they don't have to go to a wiki most of the time to figure something out. It's a bit of a weird hybrid between the crafting system of MC and something like DS, that I'm not sure I like. Yes, it works, but the grid itself frankly feels a little extraneous. I'll be thinking about this more to try and identify what it is precisely that feels off to me.

Water buckets are horrible, and I really hope this is just a placeholder. Right now, they function pretty much like vanilla MC, and with the nature of this game in particular, with aspects like structural integrity in construction and such, that feels WAAAAAY out of place. I think I'm going to self-impose a rule not to use them at all as a result, as after mucking about with them a bit just to satisfy my own curiosity as to how they handled that problem, they just feel silly and totally muck up my suspension of disbelief.

Multiplayer: I haven't tried it yet, so it might be a bit odd for me to comment, but I think they may be headed for a bit of a mistake here. I can easily see how some of the game system they're creating (like the limited map size) will conflict with certain forms of multiplayer, and I'm thinking this game is only really suited to co-op with a small number of players as a result. I think this might be the main danger point to their development as I think it may lead to some questionable design compromises as they attempt to reconcile the different modes of play (assuming that's what they're going to do). I'd personally much rather see this game decide to do one thing and do it well, and right now, my impression is that this game's primary strength is single player.

Building: as I said, I've been living primarily nomad, so my experiences with building are rather limited at present. It does strike me though that the current balance lends itself well to the player slowly discovering building as a system. At the beginning of the game, food is rather abundant so you can just roam the map looting for supplies and focus on that aspect of play, and I find myself kind of naturally transitioning to small building projects through creating barricades and elevated platforms in existing structures to help my survivability. I think as play proceeds and lootable resources start to dwindle, I'll tend to gravitate more towards creating my own structures. I like this idea of a slow transition into different game systems and play styles, but I'm wondering if it might be a bit weighted towards using what's already present in terms of pregenerated structures (think of building a base from scratch in MC vs using an existing village), thus reducing the emphasis on one of the strengths of this kind of game in terms of player creativity.

Also, with regards to blocks, I'm uncertain as to whether the way they've chosen to organize them is the best move. At present, most blocks seem to consist of either full blocks, or "panel" type blocks which are quite thin and which you can place to occupy one side of a block (stuff like boarded windows for example). The thing is, these panel blocks still occupy the full block space when it comes to placing other blocks, which tends to get rather awkward and IMO requires the player to be a little too aware of the grid. Yes, it results in some very cool looking structures, but I think they might be trying a little too hard to not make things look cubic, and as a result, are having a rather opposite effect in making the player even more aware of the voxel nature of the world.

I think that about covers most of my analysis so far. There is of course plenty of stuff I've seen that is just clearly a result of this being a work in progress that I don't even think is worth mentioning as a result.

The short version is that I think this game has a huge amount of potential, and even at this early stage I'm having a blast with it.

[userzero]

I pretty much agree with everything you said.

I hate not being able to pause in single player. I play games when taking small breaks from day trading and I have a toddler constantly needing attention, so having to quit and reload constantly is a pain especially when zombies are re-spawned on load and sometimes spawn inside whatever structure I'm holed up in.

I kind of like the tendency to use existing structures at first. I think it adds to the whole I'm living in a post apocalyptic zombie world feel. Especially with the tendency of zombies to congregate around structures which means you might have to clear a building out before moving in.

You're right on the money about PVP and Coop. Removing PVP addresses a lot of the issues I see as problematic for the game.

The only thing you didn't mention that bothers is me is that the day/ night cycle seems a bit rushed to me. But I think it has to do with the map size. Currently it takes just about a full day to get from one "zone" to another. So if you go in search of a resource that is scarce in one area but abundant elsewhere you will have to take into account finding shelter. For the current map size the timing is probably just about right and I imagine it might lengthen when the larger map comes around. If anything it's current length shows they are paying attention to balance and tuning from the get go, which is a huge step ahead of most games.

I'm really impressed with the way the materials for building latter stage things such as reinforced concrete will force you to grab resources from different areas of the map. Everything seems to interact and balance nicely.

I really like mining in this game and the structural considerations that come along with it. The terror of having the ground collapse on you and having a bunch of zombies rain down on you is awesome. It also means you usually want to hide above ground rather than under. It reminds me of a zombie match in Ace of spades where by the end it's a horde of zombies digging down to find the last survivor.

So far my favorite weapon is the sledge hammer.

[FlowerChild]

I hate not being able to pause in single player. I play games when taking small breaks from day trading and I have a toddler constantly needing attention, so having to quit and reload constantly is a pain especially when zombies are re-spawned on load and sometimes spawn inside whatever structure I'm holed up in.

Yup, I hate the lack of pause as well, but I write that off to it being in early development. I think it's pretty much a given that they'll have it down the road, and given what I perceive to be those memory leak issues anyways, it's just giving me another reminder to restart the game anyways.

I kind of like the tendency to use existing structures at first. I think it adds to the whole I'm living in a post apocalyptic zombie world feel. Especially with the tendency of zombies to congregate around structures which means you might have to clear a building out before moving in.

Yeah, I don't disagree, it's thematically appropriate, and I like it myself, it more just struck me that as you add more such structures, you're also decreasing player motivation to build from scratch and thus decreasing creativity somewhat. It's a tough balancing act to be sure.

You're right on the money about PVP and Coop. Removing PVP addresses a lot of the issues I see as problematic for the game.

Yeah, I think this will be the real litmus test for me as to whether these devs can withstand public pressure or whether they'll wind up watering down the design to accommodate it.

I do think that the game could work for PvP, but I think it would have to be more as one-off modes like CTF or whatever, rather than trying to support extended play on the same map.

The only thing you didn't mention that bothers is me is that the day/ night cycle seems a bit rushed to me. But I think it has to do with the map size.

Interesting. It seems about right to me, and yeah, I agree that the balance seems to be about right in the level design in terms of having just about enough time to move on to the next location and setup a new base there before night falls.

I think I'm going to take a rather unusual 2nd day off (omg...it's almost an entire weekend ;) ) to keep on playing and start exploring construction a bit more.

[userzero]

I do think that the game could work for PvP, but I think it would have to be more as one-off modes like CTF or whatever, rather than trying to support extended play on the same map.

Oh wow, CTF with zombie hordes to unleash upon your enemies. That sounds amazing. It reminds me of The Walking Dead where the Governor unleashed the zombies on the prison. I would buy a game just to be able to do that and watch the other team become zombie food.