Happy New Year Survivalists,

We hope all of you had a wonderful game filled holiday break and that your loot chests we’re full from a great Christmas loot run. So now that we’re back we’re going to share our Alpha 11 plan, announce the Christmas screenshot winners and share a little more good news. Here goes!

Alpha 11 Status

Folks we’re back from our holiday break and ready to talk a little about Alpha 11 and some of the cool things we’re either working on already or our on our list and could make it in. A disclaimer Alpha 11 has an ambitious list so it could take us through the end of February to deliver. That said here is a list of our big ticket items depending how development goes there is no guarantee all items will make it into A11.

New Gun System – We’ve been planning on a new Gun system for a few months now and we’re finally ready to start on it. The new system allows players to find whole weapons that can be broken down to yield a specified number of good parts. The parts and assembled guns have 7 quality ranges including broken, damaged, poor, average, great, flawless and legendary. Once the player collects enough good parts he can assembly a working gun. The sum or average quality of all the parts determines the sum or average quality of the assembled weapon. The parts themselves govern attributes like damage, accuracy, degradation rate, scope zoom level, knockback strength, penetration and falloff range. This will allow for hundreds of thousands of permutations of guns. Later this system will also be used for Armor, Tools and Melee Weapons.

New FPS Hands and Animations – We have some awesome new high res first person male and female hands and will be integrating these as well as a whole new awesome set of first person animations.

New Weapons– We have a new makeshift Blunderbuss Muzzle loader and a new handmade bow that we’re working on integrating.

New First Person Camera Control System – We’re working on integrating a new first person procedural spring physics system with simulated gravity, mouse smoothing and acceleration

Wellness Improvements – We’re improving wellness stat change and top capacity feedback so players can understand the wellness system better.

Leveling & Leveled Loot – We’re enhancing our current player leveling system improving the criteria and adding leveled loot lists to the game so higher leveled players get better loot drops. This is needed to work with our new gun, armor, tool and weapon quality systems.

New Random Gen Mixing XML – We’re rolling out an XML random gen mixer so users can set up their own world including the selection of world size, biomes, height intensity, prefabs per biome, prefab chance to spawn and more

Usability Enhancements – We’re adding a new windows like Right Click function Menu for items in the players backpack, belt or loot containers. The player simply needs to right click on an item and a popup menu displays showing a list of item related actions which include: Take, Craft, Equip, Use, Eat, Drink, Read, Examine, Scrap and Compare. We’re also doing many smaller usability enhancements that just make the game a lot easier to play and learn.

Integrate Steam Networking – We’re adding, evaluating and integrating new Steam Networking code and are optimistic we will gain performance, stability and more reliable Nat punch through

Server Browser Enhancements – We’re integrating better server stat options that are easier to read as well as integrating a new server filtering system, icon tips and scrolling

That’s the main stuff and if time permits these features below might also make it into Alpha 11 🙂

New Armor System – Inspired by our new gun system we’re will also be working on new armor system where the player can craft or find in loot Leather and Iron armor pieces with 6 quality ranges including damaged, poor, average, great, flawless and legendary. Once the player reads the associated book or accumulates the minimum skill points he can begin crafting the lowest level leather or iron armor. To craft the higher tiered armor the player must either boost his skills or find higher tiered armor through looting.

Drivable Minibike –We’re adding a drivable minibike. Players must gain mechanical knowledge through books and skills and then find parts to craft and assemble a chassis, break and throttle cable, small engine, gas tank and more.

New Localization System – We’re integrating a new Spreadsheet based localization system allowing much easier multi-language support for in game items, crafting, dialogue, tips, in game help journal and quests.

Improved Random World Generation – We’re improving the random gen pathing system to allow vertical cutting as well as tunnels and a more robust town code.

Christmas Screenshot Winners

Folks we want to thank all of you for participating in the very first 7 Days to Die Christmas Screenshot Contest we had a lot of great entries so it made selecting the best ones that much harder. We deciding to add a free game key for honorable mentions.

So now without further ado we want to announce the winners of Christmas Screenshot Contest.

1st Prize – GeForce GTX 760 Video Card, Blue Fang 10 slot server for 6 months and 5 free game keys goes out to Forum Post # 47 by voxelgeek (The Snowman Shelter)

2nd Prize – Blue Fang Server 10 slot server for 3 months and 5 free game keys goes out to Forum Post # 83 by Dr.Agon (Deadlights Holiday)

3rd Prize – Blue Fang Server 10 slot server for 1 month and 5 free game keys goes out to Forum Post # 51 by japsmaps (Santa’s Secret Base)

Honorable Mention and a free 7DTD game key goes out to these fine screenshots

Forum Post # 26 by Ghoul Face (Chainsaw Santa)

Forum Post # 31 by QicCa (Reindeer Games)

Forum Post # 52 by Mr_Bigs_de (Santa’s Sleigh & Reindeer)

Forum Post # 57 by Wotan (Santa’s Sleigh)

Forum Post # 65 by Roo42 (The 7 Days of Christmas Song)

Forum Post # 66 by Monkey Boogers (Giant Zombie Tree)

Forum Post # 68 by Andel (Santa’s Soldiers)

Winners please PM The Fun Pimp on the 7DTD forums to collect your prizes.

To view the original post click here: Christmas Screenshot Contest

Really great Rock, Paper , Shotgun 7Days Writers Diary

Folks Rock Paper Shotgun has done a really nice feature on 7 Days describing the writers diary of an in game week check it out:

RPS & Days Diary

We Broke our Highest Online User Count

Folks we reached our highest concurrent player count of 12,839 players on steam charts this week! All I can say is wow!

7 Days breaks online user record

We’ll thats all folks now its back to the Bat crib for Alpha 11 work

You Stay Cool,

The Fun Pimps