Goededag Survivalists,

Alpha 10 code name “The Apocalypse Release” is out and it’s one of our biggest releases to date. The feature rich Apocalypse update includes: our new character creation system with face/body morphing and visible clothing, our new zombie horde world heat map system, a new wellness system which tracks eating habits and disease, a new model based destructible/upgradable door system, an enhanced buff system with criticals, hunger, thirst and lighting zombies on fire, a brand new sexier easier to use server browser, a new random gen township system for dynamic small towns in every biome, Linux client and dedicated server support, offline mode support, a world destruction art pass, over a dozen new locations including gun stores with signs, concrete upgradable fort building, farming overhaul and a multitude of fixes, requested changes

Folks this is the largest content drop to date as Fred Sanford used to say “it’s the big one.” This update has some big framework changes so starting a new game is a must. Please don’t try to salvage your old saved game. And for those of you that experience any problems please use your steam client to delete local files and reinstall the game. Note: EAC will be disabled for 24 hours.

Now for a complete list of Alpha 10 release notes read on you big dummy!

Official Alpha 10 Release Notes

Added

Added a brand new Character Creation System complete with custom face, body morphing and fully visible clothing and armor on your character. With it you can make customize your character and make him or her look like you’d like. Future versions will include custom skin, eye color and hair style choices. Also included in this build are a shit ton of new lootable or craftable clothing including: Kevlar helmets, swat helmets, bandanas, goggles, sun glasses, denim jacket, pants, worn boots and tank tops. You can also remove, make a favorite outfit and put it back on quickly using the -, star and + buttons below the new character mirror in the inventory menu as well as rotating around your character in the mirror. Profile Creation has been added to the game options menu where you can create your custom charters as well as zoom in and pan around them.

Added a new zombie horde world heat map system that tracks how much noise and smells have added up in a zone. Over time the zone will cool down, but if it heats up too fast spider zombies will come and investigate the area. If they find something and start screeching a horde will soon follow. Campfires, forges, smells and dead animal gore also contribute to the heat maps intensity.

Added a new Wellness System that can go up and down based upon your eating habits, disease and death. Your wellness influences your stamina and health cap and can go from 0 to 200 over boosting these caps. Note: 100 is your base starting wellness. If you live well you’ll benefit from it with more stamina and health potential. If you live poorly you’ll suffer with less stamina and health. You can check this stat in your character screen. Remember that dying is bad so you have to play the game a little more cautious. It is possible to live well for several days and raise your wellness level quite high and reap the benefits of boosted stamina and health.

Added a new model based destructible/upgradable door system provides elegant door animations, multistage destruction and upgrades to all player built and intact world doors. Now you know when a door is going to break open with physical model changes, particle effects and impact sounds. Also replaced all world doors with new model ones

Added our enhanced buff system which controls the new debuff hunger and thirst states with multiple stages. Dehydration will kill you faster than starving and both lower your wellness. Also the broken leg system has been reworked to a more intuitive healing system with a splint icon. The new system allows buffs to affect other buffs, buffs to affect zombies and animals and even apply critical and timed damage. With it clubs have a chance to do criticals on heads, arrows cause bleed out on other players and animals and torches can light zombies on fire. Zombies are immune to bleeding, sickness, and disease.

Added a brand new server browser with a completely overhauled GUI. The new browser spools pages of servers better and has a large row of top buttons providing options to sort servers by Standard, Modded, Peer to Peer, Friends, History/Favorites, LAN and more. The main left panel has a sub header with icons for easily digesting server information and sort by many categories including ping. The browser also includes a new vertical server stats page on the right with a custom server message, and server address link

Added a township system that creates small towns in random gen can appear in every biome type with a greater probability than cities but less probable than rural locations along roads. They are smaller than cities but can have between 2-8 blocks with each block having anywhere from 4 to 8 buildings.

Added Linux 32 bit client and the Linux dedicated server 32 bit only. Future versions will include 64 bit.

Added Steam offline mode support. now you can play Survival SP or Survival MP by yourself or continue your client hosted games offline

Added a post apocalypse world destruction art pass. Every structure has been upgraded with boarded windows, cracked windows, broken windows, partially broken doors, locked doors, old blinds and more.

Added new random gen locations with custom signs including Shotgun Messiah’s gun stores and Pass-n-Gas gas stations as well as several new wasteland city buildings, rubble piles, parking lots, 4 farm shed variants and 4 vacant junk filled lot variants to the world

Added new concrete fort building path. You start with a rebar frame and place it. Then you upgrade that with wood planks which places the concrete forms. Then you take a bucket of concrete mix and pour it on the wood form and when it dries the wood pops off and you have hard reinforced concrete. Also added a new broken concrete texture

Added new better ladder physics so players can stay on ladders easier and fight from ladders

Added 5 new craftable containers that are labeled with symbols for player crafted storage to keep your items organized including guns, ammo, supplies, food and explosives

Added new search by ingredient that shows uses of an item

Added mouse over ingredient name tooltip to crafting tarp

Major efforts put into server performance which should support more players in multiplayer than before. Optimized mesh building of chunks so that this should take less CPU power

Added new improved wood hit set for using wooden weapons to hit zombies and objects in the world of varying material types

Added scrap armor recipes

Added bio-fuel. It is made from animal fat in the beaker

Added pigs, stags drop animal fat and animal fat to fat zombie loot

Added new nail gun to loot which can be used to upgrade forts really fast or used as a weapon requires new nail ammo which can be found in loot or forged

Added recipe for concrete mix

Added new recipe for gravel using small stones. Note the old two recipes are still there as well

Added a baby cotton plant that grows into the existing cotton plant

Added lead and tungsten trophies to the loot

Added reinforced concrete ramps

Added a texture quality option to Options->Video to allow to down sample textures to half and quarter resolution. This will lead to memory and speed improvements on lower end hardware

Added tallow made from animal fat in a cooking pot

Added Animal Stealth and sneak damage (must be crouched and they must be unaware). NOTE: animals do not affect player stealth state

Added new hard to get loot stash in each apartment building which include a munitions crate and Shotgun Messiah crate

Added animal gore block which spawns after looting an animal or after an animal dies. These contribute to the horde heat map

Added vegetable stew

Added mold time to forge

Added shipping crates which must be broken to expose a lootable interior crate

Added new shotgun messiah loot containers

Added spawnDeadChance to biome spawning to allow the simulation of ambient ecosystem heat and the potential to spawn scout hordes not directly due to player interaction

Added both good and bad wellness attributes to all foods

Added goldenrod seed recipe

Added slight animated wobble to campfire and forge lights to create natural bouncing shadow effect, as a followup to the disabled flicker that caused headaches previously

Added MacDyvers guide to scrap metal crafting which unlocks scrap iron armor recipes

Added new craftable Wooden Hatch Doors which can be placed to fill a ladder hole. Note the top ladder block must be placed first

Added zoom function to sniper rifle scope part for a makeshift telescope

Added: Hard coded backpack for the player, this will always be on the player. Note: future version will include crafting backpacks

Added gravel to mining and added stability to coal and potassium nitrate

Added to Navezgane the new small gun store in the snow biome and the large gun store to the wasteland biome

Changed

Changed Overhauled clubs. They use more stamina now and have a slower animation but do more damage. Barbed and spiked clubs have a chance to do bleeding damage

Changed farming with a complete overhaul. The hoe now raises dirt and makes the dirt it raises fertile (along with a new fertile dirt texture) and the ground adjacent to it gets flattened out and it clears out the grass and turns it to regular dirt. So you can make these nice pretty looking farm fields now and its easy to tell where to plant as well. Seeds will project where the plant will be planted when you focus on a spot. Also crops won’t break if walked on any more and grass doesn’t grow under your crops or on the dirt adjacent to it that was hoed. If you want to grow grass just place a dirt block. Also we added goldenrod farming

Changed Bone breaking. Now there are two stages. A sprain or break. Both can be splinted. Splints are still applied like before but when you splint your leg it replaces the broken leg icon with a splint icon. When the leg heals the splint icon is removed. If you fall while splinted the splint will break off and a new one will be needed

Changed removed planks block and many other old blocks that used its textures

Changed replaced old wood planks with new plank counterparts

Changed updated fertile farm ground texture

Changed farming grass no longer will grow on hoed earth. Crops will not grow on placed dirt only on hoed dirt. Grass grows on placed dirt blocks. The hoe turns dirt into fertile farm ground now

Changed icon for lead trophy

Changed removed deprecated material metal_no_distortion

Changed wasteland cars are easier to mine for resources

Changed updated white brick and decayed brick textures

Changed updated adobe peach and white textures and clay roof texture

Changed all sidewalks to be cracked with a new sidewalk texture

Changed corn crops to new growing concept

Changed Antibiotics and grain alcohol cook twice as fast

Changed gas cans are now made from grain alcohol and bio fuel

Changed: Reduced the health of pigs to match stags

Changed cloth and plant fiber torches now require animal fat

Changed yucca juice now takes 4 yucca

Changed removed recipes for concrete blocks replaced by new upgradable concrete forms

Changed dirt to grow grass in at a random time interval

Changed you can’t eat or drink if you are full or not thirsty

Changed If you eat or drink excess food or water increases your meter more than 100% (but it still shows as 100%). (i.e. this means food/water can be over saturated)

Changed lowered airdrop medicine quantities a bit

Changed moving in water slows you down

Changed now plants continue growing, even if no player is around

Changed Forge and Campfire now operate if no player is nearby

Changed Creative menu can now also be enabled per client with the “cm” / “creativemenu” command

Changed almost all prefabs to use a new Terrain Filler block. This allows these prefabs with allow topsoil decorations true flag to fit into nearly all biomes for better locational variety

Changed fuel values and weight values of many objects

Changed resource rocks no longer drop coal or potassium nitrate powder

Changed fire should debuff if in water

Changed hay bales can now be picked up and negate all fall damage

Changed Air Drop from hours to Days and changed the Default to Every 3 Days and change the options to Disabled, 1 Day, 3 Days, 7 Days

Changed in game option main categories to Stock, Modded and Multiplayer reorganizing the options under these 3 new fields and reordered the options under them to better match our new server browser structure.

Changed removed Difficulty Presets, Damage Given and Damage received and rolled them into one new category called Difficulty with 6 levels 1. Scavenger, 2. Adventurer, 3. Nomad, 4. Warrior, 5. Survivalist and 6. Insane

Changed updated particle system on wall torch, campfire and forge

Changed updated shader on sniper rifle

Changed increase zombie dogs pain-hit pause to make dogs better

Changed increased chance for rare books to appear

Changed random gen spawning to limit the largest buildings in the cities with the new MaxPerHub function. F.E you should only see one movie theater or 1 of the same large apartment building

Changed updated English.txt with all new in-game items, blocks and clothing

Changed optimized resource boulders to use less draw calls

Changed recipes learned from books will now show on the tooltip above the toolbelt

Changed improved locker loot, added clothes and football helmets

Changed disabled BB Colors on server names and chat window

Changed lowered volume of frig, chainsaw and auger

Changed: Zombies respawn immediately in wasteland. 4 days in other biomes. Animals respawn every 5 days

Fixed

Fixed bug in spawn algorithm that led zombies spawn in player’s view cone

Fixed prefabs and roads overlapping sometimes causing an asphalt block with air density

Fixed Terrain decoration flag on small trees in burnt forest

Fixed dysentery so it advances and lasts forever until cured

Fixed Goldenrod doesn’t break when you walk on it

Fixed wrong popup “Player was kicked by server” if a player was kicked and disconnected from another server after being kicked

Fixed with Unity 4.5.4: game window always on top

Fixed with Unity 4.5.4: Mac full screen sometimes shows texture garbage

Fixed flickering between up/downgrades of block entities

Fixed not being able to eat food that increases hydration when full. Food is discarded in this case but hydration is consumed

Fixed improperly rotated cabinets in the apartments

Fix airdrop crates showing smoke if they are in unloaded chunks

Fixed culling distance on wall torch, campfire and forge

Fixed scope aim location on sniper rifle, added muzzle origin

Fixed Dropped items like grass should not clip into terrain any more

Fixed dupe bug that allowed you to copy your inventory on exiting the game with Alt-F4 or killing the game process

Fixed game speed exploit when moving from single player to a multiplayer server

Fixed zombie pain-hit pause

Fixed weight of scrap lead so that single trophies can be scrapped

Fixed bug that ambient sound volume was also controlled by music volume slider

Fixed joining a password protected server through steam://connect/ links or the friend list while the game is not running

Fixed console commands issuing exceptions will not spawn in the server log any more

Fixed (Mac/Linux only): problem that some float values were read wrong on non-english locales

Fixed nullref in buffs

Fixed password for a door or chest was using a header font

Fixed replaying a saved game you can reread the books again

Fixed ambient loops to not use 3d position

Fixed repair wrench should not be allowed to upgrade concrete

ServerConfig.xml and Dedicated Servers

Added Linux Dedicated Server Support

Changed in game options to Standard, Modded and Multiplayer reorganizing the options under these 3 new fields. Changing Modded options or XML files will make a server sort into the modded server list

Added config options: ServerDescription, ServerWebsiteURL

Removed serverconfig options PlayerDamageGiven and PlayerDamageReceived. Those are integrated with the GameDifficulty (0 = 200% given, 50% received, 1 = 150% / 75%, 2 = 100% / 100%, 3 = 75% / 150%, 4 = 50% / 200%, 5 = 25% / 250%)

Removed horde mode and death match parameters (DayCount, FragLimit, MatchLength, RebuildMap) from serverconfig.xml

Renamed VACEnabled to EACEnabled

For servers to show up in the new “standard” category in the server browser the following settings have to be at their default values: DayNightLength = 40, DropOnDeath = 0, DropOnQuit = 1, CraftTimer = 1, LootTimer = 1, EnemySenseMemory = 60, EnemySpawnMode = 3, NightPercentage = 20 – 50, BlockDurabilityModifier = 100, LootRespawnDays = 7, LootAbundance = 100, AirDropFrequency = 72, BuildCreate = false. Also the XML files in Data/Config/ may not be modified

Changed default port to 26900. If this port is used and the server set to public it will be found in the local LAN in the LAN tab of the server browser

Tools and Modding

Folks we’re not really officially supporting modding yet but we’re working on some of the proper framework to do so. That said here are some things that have been done or are in the works.

Changed Xml configuration files reside now in Data/Config for modding

Because we changed our Block IDS dramatically for organizational and performance benefits we have asked Hal 9000 to create a prefab conversion utility which thankfully he agreed. The Utility converts your previously built user prefabs to our new block IDs so you can use them with Alpha 10. More info and download here: http://www.vendocode.com/SDTD/SDTD.asmx/GetPrefabConverter

Hal 9000 is also working with us on an official Xml Editor which will help folk’s mod the game. It can be downloaded here: http://www.vendocode.com/SDTD/SDTD.asmx/GetXMLEditor

Known Issues

Some clients may experience connection problems while playing which can result in the world chunks not drawing and zombies not moving. This can be fixed by disconnecting and reconnecting

When loading a previous saved game Weapons can sometimes load rotated incorrectly. This can be fixed by switching hold items

Impact sounds for chainsaws/augers still use bullet impact sounds which is why they are too loud which will be fixed in the next build

The Iron armor and scrap armor sets are missing their materials and appear to be chrome. This will be fixed in the next patch

Playing Old Versions

We’re also making the last stable Alpha 9 build and older builds available to re download so here’s how you do it.

1. Open your steam client.

2. Click on Games/View Games Library

3. Right click ‘7 Days to Die’ and select properties

4. From the new popup dialogue box select the ‘BETAS’ Tab

5. Under ‘Select the beta you would like to opt into’ – select ‘Alpha 9.3 Stable’

6. The game will then update and download Alpha 9.3

7. Switching back to the latest version is as easy as repeating steps 1-4 and on step 5 choose the option ‘None – Opt out of all Beta Programs’ and you’ll revert to the latest version