New HD Character System

“7 Days to Die 1.0” introduces a brand new custom-built from the ground up Character System which offers all new High Definition Models, 1st and 3rd person animations, variations and all new skin and hair shaders to elevate the overall experience. This comprehensive system enhances player immersion, allowing for a personalized and engaging gaming experience. See your hands in the viewport, the sex, skin color and the real gloves you’re wearing. Enjoy seeing your full HD model on vehicles, in the UI and with your friends. See what your co-op friend is looking at with the new character head tracking system. The new system offers extensive customization options including:

• Presets: Choose from a wide variety of pre-made character presets to get a jump-start on your adventure in Navezgane.
• Create your own custom character with a wide variety of of customization options including:
  • Sexes: Male or Female
  • Races: Black, White, Asian, Native
  • Face: Each race and sex has four different face options for a total of 32 face options
  • Eyes: There are over thirty eye color options
  • Hairstyles: There are twenty unique hairstyles
  • Hair Color: There are ten unique hair colors
  • Mustaches: There are five unique mustache styles to choose from
  • Chops: There are five unique lamb chop styles to choose from
  • Beards: There are five unique beard styles

New Player Armor/Clothing System

Along with a brand new Character System in Version 1.0 we have also added a brand new High Definition Armor and Clothing System. This extensive new system amplifies player immersion, enabling a customized and compelling gaming adventure where looting, finding, crafting and upgrading Armor matters.

Witness your hands in the viewport, complete with details like gender, skin color, and the actual clothing you’re wearing. Delight in the sight of your high-definition model on vehicles watching details animate like cloth and backpacks jiggle, Experience the ability to observe what your co-op companion is focusing on, courtesy of the new character head tracking system. Moreover, the enhanced system provides a plethora of customization choices, allowing for extensive personalization including:

• Sixteen full sets of unique armor with Male and Female variants
• Four main clothing groups include: headgear, bodywear, footwear and gloves.
• 1 primitive set, 5 light sets, 6 medium sets, 4 heavy sets
• Except for the primitive set, each armor set comes with a set bonus when you are wearing all four pieces of one set with the lowest quality item governing the strength of that bonus.
• For Example if you we’re wearing the Lumberjack Armor set you would receive the following bonuses:
  • Double wood harvest
  • 5% less stamina use when using axes with a Q1 item in the mix
  • Every slot using Q6 items in slots changes the stamina bonus to 30% 
• We have kept and reworked most clothing mods with many options including:
  • Glasses have been reworked as armor mods
    • The following adds +1 to the attribute
      • Perception – was the Shades
      • Strength – was the Cigar
      • Fortitude – was the Tough Guy Sunglasses
      • Agility – was the Ski Goggles
      • Intellect – was the Nerdy Glasses
      • Treasure Hunter Mod – previously Lucky Goggles
        • +10% XP Gain
        • +10% Better Loot
        • Treasure Radius -1
      • Night Vision Goggles – now in mod form
        • Updated screen effect
  • The cigar is now an armor mod
    • Adds +1 to Strength and +10% Bartering
  • Added a Quad Pocket Mod
  • Multiple pocket mods can be added to armor
    • Must be of different sizes
      • i.e. Two Triple Mods cannot be installed in one armor piece
  • Stealth Boots Mod – previously Military Stealth Boots
    • Reduces the noise and stamina penalties of medium and heavy boots

New Animal Models

Our elite team of character artists have been hard at work updating all of our animal models to match the modern aesthetics of our updated HD zombies. The system comes with new models, rigs, more realistic animations and a brand new high tech fur shader to make hair and fur more realistic. The current HD animal roster includes:

• Deer, stag, wolf, and mountain lion.
• Coming in a future patch: Bear, zombie bear, boar, Grace, vulture, rabbit, snake, and dire wolf, coyote and vulture

These updates will be released progressively in patches as animation and rigging are completed, adding more lifelike and detailed creatures to the survival experience.

New Challenge System

We did away with the old tutorial quest and journal system and rolled them into a brand new Challenge System. The challenge system is designed to help new players learn the ropes with an easy-to-follow introduction questline that offers worthwhile rewards. Additionally, long-term challenges keep players engaged with enticing rewards for completing various challenge categories while teaching more advanced mechanics. This system ensures both new and veteran players have continuous goals to strive for, enhancing their gameplay experience. The system includes:

• Over one hundred and twenty unique challenges are broken into twelve categories
  • Basics of Survival
  • Homesteading
  • Advanced Survival
  • Crafting
  • Traders and Crafting
  • Harvesting
  • Gathering
  • Farmre
  • Survivor
  • Hunter
  • Zombie Slayer
• A challenge quest tracking system. Track what you want and see your progress
• Redeem completed challenges for XP. Some challenges can be redeemed for XP and rewards given by any trader. See each challenge for details.
• Some items have in-game sprite help making it easier to learn
• Do the challenges in any order of and still get credit for your work or resources you have on

New Vehicle Models

Our artists have also given the existing vehicle models an update, bringing them to parity with the other improved models in Version 1.0. Most vehicles now have additional seating to accommodate at least one friend. There are also new vehicle armor mods available that allow them to withstand wasteland wear-and-tear. Many vehicle mods now have a visual model update so you can see the mods you have installed. These updates enhance the visual appeal and functionality of the vehicles, offering a more immersive and enjoyable driving experience in the game.

The update has many improvements including:

• Bicycle
• Mini Bike
• Motorcycle
• 4×4 Truck (Now comes with 4 default seats and can be modded to hold 6 players)
• Gyrocopter (Now comes with 2 seats to fly with your friend)
• We have added new Vehicle Mods. These mods are visible on the model. Including:
  • Bicycle
    • Light Mod
  • Motorcycle
    • Armor Mod
  • 4×4 Truck
    • Plow Armor Mod
  • Gyrocopter
    • Armor Mod
    • Light Mod

Random World Generation Updates
Several improvements and optimizations have been made to our RWG system, making it leaner, faster, and able to create better looking worlds than ever before, with refined composition and layouts improving the overall fidelity and detail of generated worlds.

RWG Game Improvements include :

• Faster Creation Time: The time required to generate new worlds has been significantly reduced.
• District Density Calculation: Improved calculations for better urban planning and layout.
• Biome Distribution Variants: New variants to create more diverse and interesting world biomes.
• Road Smoothing: Enhanced road generation for smoother and more realistic paths.
• Bigger Cities and More POIs: Approximately 50% more Points of Interest, with larger cities and more wilderness locations.
• Chunk Reset: Improved chunk management and resetting for a more seamless experience.
• Performance POI Placement: A new POI placement algorithm has been implemented to keep cities more performant placing lighter weight POIS around more expensive heavier weight POIS
• The Burnt Forest Biome is back in newly created and Pregen RWG maps

RWG Tool Improvements Include:

• New biome distribution presets include:
  • Biome Layout
    • Center Forest – Default
    • Center Wasteland
    • Circle – Biomes arranged like a pie chart
    • Line – Biomes arranged like a layered cake with 90° rotations i.e. Forest to the South Wasteland to the North
• Burnt Forest is back!
• District Colors
  • Light Blue = Rural
  • Yellow = Industrial
  • Blue = Commercial
  • Grey = Downtown
  • Green = Residential
• Darker Colors of each above are lower density POI’s like remnants
  • Red = Traders
  • White = Wilderness
• Spawn Points in the forest can be seen when zoomed into the map. They are small X’s on the country roads and are 

New Points of Interest

In order to complement our updated RWG system, our Level Design team has added a ton of new content with over 75 new POIs that will be coming to Version 1.0.

Notable additions, improvements and efforts include:

• A high focus on new remnants enhancing performance and providing more diverse environments to explore with lighter zombie counts. A majority of the remnants were created for the downtown district which was low on these types. These efforts have helped significantly with performance.
• New high-tier locations have been introduced for players to explore and conquer.

• Haven Hotel (Tier 5)
• 7 Days Suites (Tier 5)
• Navezgane Athletics Complex (Tier 5)
• Grover High (Tier 5)
• Minotaur Theater (Tier 5)
• 6 – New Tier 4’s

• A new zombie spawning throttling triggering system has been added to the level editor and the level designers have made use of it to keep the higher count POIS challenging but running better.
• RWG Performance POI Placement: A new POI placement algorithm has been implemented to keep cities more performant placing lighter weight POIS around more expensive heavier weight POIS

New Zombie Variants and Zombie Updates

Our existing zombies didn’t get left out. Version 1.0 introduces several new zombie variants with unique outfits. Most have received several clothing, skin and hari variation options that spawn, giving large groups a more organic composition and promoting an immersive experience.

Notable additions include:

• A nurse from a children’s hospital with bears on her uniform
• A bowling alley-themed outfit for the fat Hawaiian zombie.
• Many more variants are coming, adding fresh visual elements to the game’s undead horde.
• The demolition zombie has received a complete model makeover, aligning with the newest generation of zombie models. This iconic foe now features an updated and more terrifying look.

World Lighting Graphics Update

The shader programming and technical art team have been busy adding in an overall improved lighting model that looks amazing. Improvements include:

• Overall more even and consistent lighting
• Over bright areas are toned down and areas that were too dark are easier to see
• Details in world and character models are more noticeable
• You can play now without a mining helmet or torch in dark areas
• Biome Spectrums and Storm Spectrums have been reworked to give the right amount of mood but provide more consistent lighting overall
• AO has been turned back on
• Shadows on Grass has been turned back on
• FSR has been added to the Graphics Options
  • AMD FidelityFX™ Super Resolution (FSR) uses cutting-edge open upscaling and advanced frame generation technologies to help boost your framerates in supported games and deliver amazing high-quality, high-performance gaming on virtually any hardware.

Optimizations

We have worked hard to optimize the game for all SKUs. Efforts to make the game run on the consoles has paid off. Many optimizations have been done including:

• A new POI placement algorithm has been implemented to keep cities more performant placing lighter weight POIS around more expensive heavier weight POIs
• A ton of lighter weight remnant POIs have been made to lighten the weight of cities and give more variety in POIs
• A new zombie spawning throttling triggering system has been added to the level editor and the level designers have made use of it to keep the higher count POIS challenging but running better.
• Many art assets have had reduced draw calls or simproved settings in Unity to make them run more preformant
• The Cutout atlas has been removed
• A new window tinting system makes window glass opaque until you get close. Occluding the interior or exterior improves performance (moderately), especially for skyscrapers.
• Game updated to Unity 2022 LTS with better Vulkan and DX12 support (Note: DX12 performance seems worse than DX11)
• New lighting update manager
• Ambient occlusion better handles large amounts of props
• Block entities (props) spawn over multiple frames

Massive Progression Update

We have given a lot of attention to overall progression and balance in version 1.0. Here are some of the more notable improvements:

• Traders give less dukes and have nerfed rewards that no longer break progression.
• Trader inventories offer sales staged items for sale that are more appropriate for your character’s level.
• The game is a little more crafting oriented than in the past, and legendary items are now craftable.
• The end result is the game feels much more balanced and even in a coop team players will find themselves still engaged on day 70, single players even further.
• Crafting
  • Quality 6 crafting is back
• Tools/Weapons/Armor
  • Requires new Legendary Parts
• Traders/Biome order
  • Rekt – Forest
  • Jen – Burnt
  • Bob – Desert
  • Hugh – Snow
  • Joel – Wasteland
• Quests
  • Quest Progression has been improved so you get higher Tier Quests offered with each trader and can roll back to lower tiers if you want to
• Armor
  • Quality determines perk level
  • Basic Example – Q1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 = 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 50%

Legendary Crafting

• We have added new Legendary Parts which can be acquired in high end loot chests, and higher Trader rewards
• With these player can craft Legendary Q6 weapons, tools, and armor

Dew Collector Overhaul

The Dew Collector has been reworked. It now supports 3 workstation tools, one of which is a water filter. This change makes the Dew Collector available early in game, but it collects murky water without having the filter installed.

Enhanced Gore System

Along with the new Zombie variants comes the new and improved Dismemberment Gore System, ensuring consistent dismemberment across zombie types, and as a bonus, there are also brand-new blood splatter particles to complete the visceral experience of combat. 

With Version 1.0, the entire zombie lineup has been upgraded with new gore pieces, including a complete overhaul of recently updated zombies from past Alphas. This ensures all zombies are consistent with the latest technology, enhancing the game’s visual impact and immersion.

Updated Road Decals

Say goodbye to one of our last remaining legacy assets, our original Road Decals. They’ve been revamped, giving them a modern face-lift to help make the roads and lots of Navezgane County feel more lived in and legitimate. 

Players can now enjoy enhanced realism with updated road decals, featuring more detailed and immersive trash and debris scattered on the roads. This update adds another layer of authenticity to the game environment, making the post-apocalyptic world feel more lived-in and engaging.

Twitch Integration Update

The latest update introduces exciting new features for Twitch integration:

• Small Zombies: A new command that shrinks down the size of zombies, adding a fun and challenging twist to gameplay.
• On Screen Extension: Interactive Twitch features are now displayed directly on screen, enhancing the viewer and streamer experience.

These features provide more interactive and engaging content for both players and their audiences.

New World Borders

The game now features layered world borders, replacing the old radiation zones. The very outer layer is a no-go zone, preventing players from walking off the map. Just inside this is a no-build zone, ensuring players cannot build too close to the edge. As players approach the border, the area fogs up, providing a clear visual cue. This system allows more Points of Interest (POIs) to spawn near the map’s edges, increasing the playable area while communicating to the player you can’t go that way.

New Upgradeable Player Chests

Introducing player writeable storage boxes! Start with a basic wooden box, which can be upgraded to iron, and eventually to steel. Each upgrade increases the storage capacity, providing more space for your items. Additionally, these chests feature writeable areas that display custom text, allowing for easy organization and labeling of your stored goods. Up to three lines of copy can be added. Happy chest placing, survivors!

Environment Art Update

The environment team has been busy with many new art updates that will further immerse you for 1.0 experience including: 

• New movie theater seats, new soda and drink vending machines, new TV studio camera, new mini beverage coolers, new food and candy posters, new retro electric and gas signs, new neon signs, new camping tents, new chemistry set, new modular iron wrought fence set with destructive states. Dishong tower tribute plaque, zombie spawner tombstone, swing set model, commercial food trash can, new ceiling lights, new mailboxes, new electric fuse boxes, new shipping crane
• New plants and vegetation such as: Hops plant, Pumpkins and coffee plants
• Decorative assets such as: office desk pictures, trophies, business wall signs
• Art updates to old assets such as: updated spinning blade trap, updated recycling pallets (cans, cardboard paper), updated rocks and boulders, updated commercial dumpster, updated bathroom and kitchen faucets, updated barbed wire fences.
• Last but not least, a major optimization pass on almost all of the environmental art props to get ready for console. Including shader and texture optimizations, as well as mesh optimizations to improve game performance. 

Block Shape Updates

The environment Art team has been busy with many new block shapes to build with.
162 new shapes added to fill in missing shapes to roofs, railings, poles, stairs, and many more.
A few notable ones include:

• Wedge Stairs Railing Left, Right, Tip Left, and Tip Right
• Wedge Stairs Railing Metal Left, Right, Tip Left, and Tip Right
• 6m and 8m long ramp sets
• Wedge60 Windows set
• Broken and Empty versions of all Bulletproof Windows (POI’s)
• Also note the addition of a new Radial Menu option:
  • Copy Shape And Rotation

Enhanced Audio

Sharpen your ears, survivors! The latest update includes enhanced audio features:

• Updated Ambient Stingers: More dynamic and immersive ambient sounds.
• Variety of Bird Chirps: A larger variety of bird sounds to enrich the environment.
• Inventory management sounds: Unique sounds for moving various item groups in your backpack

Enhanced Particle VFX

We have enhanced many of the particle effects to be better, more realistic and performant. The latest update includes:

• All new blood and dismemberment VFX particles
• New block destruction and block physics VFX particles
• New Explosion VFX particles
• New Shading system for smoke and fire
• New Vehicle VFX including rigid body destruction

Trader VO overhaul

We have cast 5 unique voice actors and recorded over 1200 unique Voice Over lines to bring new life, story, responses and funny quips to the five traders in the game.

Don’t worry your favorites Trader Rekt and Trader Jen still have the same actors but all new lines and new functionality. New functionality includes:

• All traders now have their own unique voice
• Traders have more than 200 lines each with story bits and strong hints to relations between traders
• Subtitles will be translated to all supported languages

Gamepad Improvements

A ton of work has gone into improving Gamepad Support to make it control better, more intuitive and have native console features including: 

• New UI navigation system that removes the virtual cursor
• Overhauled modern camera controls that are easier to use and can be extensively customized
• New aim assist systems for gamepads to aid with quicker targeting when aiming a weapon or swinging a melee weapon, and slowing the camera when passing over small interactable objects
• Greatly expanded gamepad settings in a new controller options menu including:
  • Joystick layout options
  • Separated X and Y camera sensitivity
  • Look acceleration
  • Deadzone adjustments
  • Rumble strength
  • Aim assist toggle
• Full gamepad remapping support for on foot and vehicle controls
• New controls and shortcuts when using a gamepad, including:
  • Directly access items on your toolbelt via radial menu by holding either of the toolbelt selection buttons.
  • Instantly swap to your previously equipped item with the new quick swap button
  • Easier sprinting with tap or hold controls
• Expanded controller vibration support that responds to actions triggered by the player and what’s happening around them
• Support for DualSense controller features including:
  • Track time of day, weather and blood moons on the light bar
  • Trigger effects when using certain items and weapons

Modding Notes

• Game updated to Unity 2022.3.29f1
• Updated HarmonyX to 2.13.0
• ModInfo: Now requires ModInfo in V2 format, also properties “Name” and “DisplayName” no longer optional as announced in Alpha 21
• XML parsing now supports “conditional” blocks:
  • Allows switching between different XML blocks based on conditions like game version, whether a certain mod is loaded etc
  • Can be evaluated once by the host when loading the XMLs so host and every client will have the same resulting XML or by each game instance separately, so that host and every client can have different effects, e.g. when based on a GamePref
  • Also supported on the top level of patch XMLs: These are always applied during XML loading
  • Detailed documentation will be added to the game’s wiki
• XML patches now feature a new instruction “include” which allows including another XML in place, e.g. to split up large XMLs into smaller pieces or – combined with the usage of conditional blocks – include different XML based on other conditions
• New XML “events.xml”: Allows defining date based events (like christmas, halloween etc) and use them with conditional XML blocks – have the pipe baton automatically use a candy cane shiv model during christmas season or pumpkins use a halloween based model during that time
• Z-Selection box for POI or world building now shows the current selection size
• Updated POI properties windows to reflect the current POI features
• Debugging:
  • Debug views (F3) now remember the selected elements
  • CVar filter box can no longer have the input focus when the mouse cursor is not enabled – avoids accidentally overwriting your filter while running around
  • FPS graph and network monitor available in releases
• Game assembly gets fully publicized members for easier code modding – each member that has changed access level gets an attribute “PublicizedFrom” attached that will tell you the original accessibility level. Accessing originally not public stuff is still meant to be a last resort if other approaches fail.
• New BlockCompositeTileEntity with respective TileEntityComposite
  • This is a generic TileEntity (TE) block which allows selecting which features it should have from XML (“compositing”)
  • Currently these features are supported:
    • Lockable: The TE can be locked
    • LockPickable: Players can pick the lock on the TE (only usable in combination with Lockable)
    • Signable: The TE can be written on. The prefab used for the TE will have to have properly set up TextMeshes – at least one but it supports as many as desired
    • Storage: The TE will have container features
  • These TE properly support up/downgrading, so for example a block that has Signable can upgrade to a block that supports Storage and Signable and keep its text
  • Adding new features does not require enumeration modifications so should be easier going forward to add custom TE features from mods
  • Example usage of these features can be seen on the new player storage blocks “cntWoodWritableCrate” and similar
• File lookup prioritizes files in user data (e.g. LocalPrefabs) over mods
• New game argument “-newprefabsmod=somemod” allows defining a mod in which new prefabs get stored instead of going to “LocalPrefabs”. Mod name is given by its internal name from its “ModInfo.xml”, not the folder name
• XUi changes:
  • Generic “repeat_content” attribute support for all views. For non-grid views the attribute “repeat_count” specifies the number of clones
  • Repeated elements automatically get fed with additional template parameters that can be used with template bindings (“${…}”):
    • For every parent view: “repeat_count” giving the number of elements as specified by “repeat_count” attribute and “repeat_i” incrementing by one for each created element, starting at 0
    • Additionally for grid views only: “repeat_col” and “repeat_row” giving the column and row the element will be in the grid – assuming the grid dimensions do not change later on
  • New attribute “disabled_tooltip_key” lets you define a tooltip that gets shown when hovering a disabled view
  • New attribute “force_hide” allows keeping a view invisible
  • New attributes for controller navigation:
    • “use_selection_box”: Should controller navigation show an outline around the selected view
    • “gamepad_selectable”: View can be selected with a controller
    • “nav_up”, “nav_down”, “nav_left”, “nav_right”: Manual override which view to select when pressing the respective direction on a controller
  • Texture views now support: Color tinting (“color” attribute) and for keeping the texture’s aspect ratio (attribute “original_aspect_ratio”)
• XML “extends” now allow excluding specified subclasses (like “UpgradeBlock” in blocks) so that all its children are actually excluded
• Changes to quests should no longer kill savegames’ character files – though the affected quests will lose their details in the quest log
• Plants tick correctly when placed on the same position as another plant was growing before – before the timer would potentially not reset thus accumulating the old and new growth times
• Perks can now have LevelRequirements for individual levels only instead of being required to be specified for all levels if done for at least one
• “Inventory.PUBLIC_SLOTS” is changed to be targeted by mods, making it easier to implement custom toolbelt sizes. Also a new property “SHIFT_KEY_SLOT_OFFSET” has been added that allows specifying which slots are meant to be targeted when using Shift + slot hotkey
• World Editor: Previews of POI now match the actual state when rotating them

TFP News Screen

We have moved the old shared menu news screen into a new skippable in-game News screen that has graphics and link support for all formats. This will be used to inform players on new patch updates and other TFP news.

Server Administration

Changes to serverconfig.xml:

• Setting “SaveGameFolder” has been removed. It is now always based on the “UserDataFolder”
• New setting “IgnoreEOSSanctions”: Allows ignoring EOS sanctions when players want to join servers. Defaults to false