Ahoy Survivalists,

Our Massive Alpha 9 update is finally here with a multitude of new additions, improvements and fixes here’s the skinny. The biggest addition is our beautiful new Randomly Generated Worlds A.K.A. Randomz-gane which have full gigantic cities, roads, rivers, lakes, cliffs, mountains, roadside and wilderness locations and feature all biome types.

We’ve also reworked the entire in game GUI with new Art, Truetype fonts and many new features including fog of war, waypoints, friend tracking and recipe search.

If that wasn’t enough we’ve added some major Buff System enhancements including, Broken Legs, Sprained Legs, Dysentery, Drowning, Concussions and First Aid Kits. We’ve also including new rendering enhancements including soft shadows and underwater effects. In addition the player can now craft a full cloth armor set and use scrap iron build and upgrade forts. Folks this update is jammed packed with features!

Official Alpha 9 Release Notes

Added

Added new game map option ‘Random Gen’ which creates a randomly generated world seed based on the name you give the world. The random world generation includes all biomes, a full random sized central city, random in the wild cities, roads, rivers, lakes and random roadside and wilderness locations. Simply select Random Gen as the Game World and the name you give it will be the seed.

Added new sexier data driven ‘M’ map that renders based on where the player has visited with ‘Fog of War’ functionality. The new map shows, current position, cursor position, has waypoint functionality, recenter view to player, track friends on compass, mouse wheel scroll to zoom and left click drag to pan.

Added new biome type wasteland hub with custom spawning definition for random gen cities

Added overhauled most of the GUI including the new belt, backpack, compass, map, freinds list, character screen, loot container and more as well as new gui functionality and Truetype fonts

Added many new locations never before seen that appear only in the randomly generated worlds including, city blocks, movie theaters, several apartment buildings, parking garages, parking lots, new destroyed buildings and giant sewer holes.

Added a Debuff system for sprained, and broken legs that work with a new craftable splint that accelerates the healing time. Legs can also be re-injured more easily while on the mend and the more severe the injury the longer the recovery time.

Added Dysentery Debuff contracted from drinking river or murky water. Dysentery is cured by drinking goldenrod tea or taking antibiotics.

Added new stunned concussion debuff which slows the player down for a few seconds and has a chance to happen with zombie hits.

Added soft shadows to moon and sunlight

Added Simple drowning Debuff system that detects when the player is underwater and displays the icon. Going above water removes the icon. staying underwater for too long causes drowning pain damage and drowning death

Added Underwater visual effects, sound effects & leaving water effects with refract & screen particle effects

Added new tooltip loading screens

Added craftable Cloth jacket, pants, shoes, hat and gloves

Added cotton, cotton growing and cloth recipes from cotton

Added new scrap metal frame, ramp recipes and upgrade path for more fort building options

Added scrap metal inside corner wedges for scrap metal upgrade path

Added outside corners for scrap metal forts

Added recipe for scrap metal inside corner frames

Added Apartment building, Parking Garage, Movie Theater and new destroyed buildings to Navezgane Gravestown

Added eat glass for suicide option

Added empty jars added to inventory when using water, coffee, murky water, yucca juice, and goldenrod tea

Added recipe for adobe tan made from sand or sandstone and cement

Added paper to trash loot

Added cabinet filler pieces and cabinet top plate blocks for counters replacing some of the cabinet loot in the world

Added green plaster wallpaper full blocks

Added, blood bags, blood draw kits and first aid kits to the world. First aid kits heal 50 hit points immediately plus an additional 50 over 10 seconds. It is made from a bandage, grain alcohol, and a blood bag. Blood draw kits can be reused to make blood bags.

Added “gunpowder charge” item & recipe which is made of 9 gunpowder

Added inside corner wedge and wedged corner for oldwood for attics

Added seeds to garbage and backpack loot

Added icons for leg splint, blood bag, blood draw kit, first aid kit, gun powder charge\bottle, cloth hat, cloth pants, cloth jacket, cloth shoes and cloth gloves.

Added slowed movement speed in sand, water and web for player and entities

Added weapon parts to loot lists, reduced chance of finding complete weapons

Added a new water biome sound loop plays on rivers in random gen only

Added Reduced damage from crawling zombies but gave them a chance give the player a sprained leg

Added new blocks creme wall with backsplash block, wood floor with drywall ceiling block

Added city street painted lines

Added random rotation to loot on roads

Added Player placed dirt now grows grass

Added bookcase blocks, textures and recipes to craft them and bookcase loot containers to the world

Added updated english.txt random gen description and new items

Added MovementState to hornet controller to stop error msgs

Added a few pigs to pine forest biome

Added smell debuff code support and buff note: smell blips still show up on the main map

Added upgradable inside and outside wood corners useful for building mitered roof corners

Added scrap Lead to garbage loot

Added recipes for wooden inside and outside corners

Changed

Changed removed old minimap compass and replaced with new sleek minimalist compass that shows player sleeping bag position, set waypoints and tracked friends

Changed Hordes are smaller in general but except every 7th day they are super nasty.

Changed thinned the total amount of loot containers in all world prefabs and moved the best prefabs to harder to reach areas

Changed Drinking river water doesn’t damage your health and you get some stamina now just like drinking pure water, but there is a chance of catching the new Dysentery Debuff from drinking it. Dysentery is cured by drinking goldenrod tea or taking antibiotics. If untreated it becomes advanced dysentery which damages stamina and health which is only curable with antibiotics

Changed credits adding all Kickstarter Backers and made it scroll faster

Changed cupboards to have 0-1 cans of food instead of 0-2

Changed increased amount of food you get from canned Lamb and Chicken

Changed decreased weight of candy tins, hub caps and air filters

Changed slowed crop growth

Changed spiked club recipe to require ingots instead of scrap metal

Changed white flowers are now cotton plants

Changed lowered zombie player damage to work with the new stun system

Changed awnings are made from cloth instead of plant fibers

Changed most all interior house walls are a full block thick improves lighting and enemy pathing

Changed pipe bombs are now made from gunpowder charge instead of gunpowder

Changed TNT now uses loads of gunpowder instead of gunpowder

Changed replaced all plate block and plate block corner thin walls in old houses and ranch houses

Changed new default spectrum (used in plains and Diersville) with magenta sunset and bluer nights

Changed craft time of sandbags from 30 seconds to 5 seconds

Changed all blocks that use the shape of the pine tip are now only 1m height.

Changed backpacks so you have equal chance of finding the items they contain

Changed pistol book so it gates pistol part mold crafting instead of pistol crafting.

Changed removed shotguns from the book so they can be assembled by anyone who has the parts. Molds still require the book to learn how to craft them

Changed Sandbags can be picked up

Changed made both mattresses work as player bedrolls when placed

Changed Fog, Sunlight and Sky in forest

Changed when placing a regular block on the terrain, the terrain now “snaps” to this block

Changed Zombies are no longer slowed by forge or campfire light at night, and never run in dark places during the day

Changed increased chance of clay deposits in earth. Removed chance of getting clay when digging dirt

Changed increased chainsaw wood damage

Changed removed flicker from wall mounted torches

Changed plains terrain grass is a little greener

Changed resources underground so there are only 3 minerals per layer. There is stone and iron ore in every layer. The third mineral changes every twenty layers down starting with coal, then potassium nitrate, then lead, and finally tungsten.

Changed radiated terrain texture, added more loot to cupboards

Changed Added peeling paint and grunge to Diersville houses and white door

Changed reduced cars in Diersville and gravestown for performance

Changed the way chunks are build in background threads to optimize them

Changed scrap metal wall and reinforced scrap metal wall art

Changed dirt grows into grass, grass grows into tallgrass

Changed ramp trussing textures to use new scrap metal textures

Changed redwood cabinets plain on sides and bottom

Changed removed blob shadows on all entities (zombies, animals, players, etc)

Changed Biome intensity fading now also over time

Changed winter biomes have less fog and brighter midday

Changed dirt to sides of burnt forest blocks and burnt forest dirt on the sides of the wasteland blocks

Changed tweaked cupboard loot. Added empty cans and coffee beans are now in the seed group

Changed Reduced decal litter on roads

Changed increased weight of fishing weights from 1 to 4 ounces

Changed cars now only have automotive loot

Changed crafted doors to be unlocked by default

Changed Serverconfig.xml defaults to zombies normal 3

Changed: Moved VAC window to the top

Fixed

Fixed scrap timer not updating when adding more scrap while it’s in progress

Fixed problem that other players HUD text was flashing

Fixed elevator to surface bug

Fixed all backpacks and purses have terrain decoration flag so they don’t clip terrain

Fixed animals should avoid water > 1m deep unless they are forced in via physics somehow.

Fixed player should be push out of ground correctly

Fixed: Gave wasteland scrap metal block terrain decoration flag so it doesn’t float

Fixed drinking from river not being the same as drinking murky water

Fixed the VAC warning dialog

Fixed problem with animated doors on a client and also open/close state of a door can be saved in a prefab

Fixed regression: god mode wasn’t enabled in Cheat mod

Fixed bug where Mouse Sensitivity was not adjustable

Fixed horizon colors flickering a single time when time turns from about 13:50 to 14:10

Fixed Spinning rabbits and deers

Fixed the rotation of the preview of a door before placing is now correct

Fixed loot not spawning the right amount of items

Fixed severe problem that sometimes the collider for a newly placed block wasn’t generated

Fixed: Fat Cop Zombie Vomit Projectile disappears before it hits anything

Fixed old window upgrade path showing wrong model

Fixed old window upgrade path to include scrap metal reinforced version

Fixed window01white to require scrap metal to reach the metal reinforced version

Fixed walking in shallow water plays footsteps from ground below

Fixed playing “fall into water” sound now only if the fall distance is > 1m

Fixed hovering over item in campfire and closing causing item names to stay

Fixed Removed muzzle flash & smoke from crossbow

Fixed problem that client player in a Coop game was not seen by enemies if far away from the server

ServerConfig.xml

Renamed GamePref ShowAllPlayersOnMap to ShowFriendPlayerOnMap

Server config file option “ShowAllPlayersOnMap” has been renamed to “ShowFriendPlayerOnMap”

Known Issues

32 bit Operating Systems can run out of memory sometimes. We’re still optimizing this.

Some users have trouble setting the video to higher resolutions like 1920×1080 or 1920×1200 as the list appears to long. The work around is to use your keyboard up and down arrow to reach these.

More News

Achievement Hunters

Be sure to check out the latest Achievement Hunters Video the 4th installment. The word on the street or Reddit is they may make us a regular or semi-regular series. Let’s Play 7 Days to Die Part 4

New Free Tool

Also we are pleased to announce that our friends at www.blackboxservers.net have released the 1st Visual Rcon tool (7DTDCC Alpha 0.1) for 7 Days to Die. The Rcon tool enable Server admins to:

Control and administrate multiple servers live

Chat with players and add MOTD’s when players join

Kick Ban/unban players ( select player name and kick/ban )

Live Navezgane Map – View player location, msg players , kick and ban

Change Server settings on the fly (without server Restart)

View and log / search game server console.

Create server banners for websites and forums using www.bbtracker.net

No need to download any additional software it is all web base interface

One Year Ago Today

Coincidentally today is our 1 year anniversary of getting funded on Kickstarter. Thanks folks for funding us! We all remember “where’s my Key Bro… where’s my Key!” Thank god that’s behind us. And for all of you waiting on tangible goods don’t worry we’re working on getting the T-shirts, Map and Zombie poster designs done and out. We can’t finish them until the world and characters are done so thank you for your patience.

Playing Older Versions

We’re also making the last stable Alpha 8.8 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 8.8 Stable’

6. The game will then update and download Alpha 8.8

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