Here is the latest installment covering news about the development of the game 7 Days to Die. Currently, the Fun Pimps (the developers of 7 Days to Die) are working the Alpha 17 update for the game, which will likely make some significant steps in the game’s development. This is the fourth of these articles and will cover the latest development news since the last article was released.

If you wish to read the previous articles, you can reach them through the following links:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

The developers continue to make advancement in different aspects of Alpha 17.

They continue to make advancements to the games weapons system. They are changing the strength system of weapons. In the current system, you have incremental degrees of weapon strength, ranging from 1 to 600, which are divided into 6 colored categories with an internal range of a hundred points. They plan to get rid of the incremental point values and instead just have the six color levels as the different levels of weapon strength. Incremental variations in power for the weapons will come from skill perks and weapons modifications. As mentioned before, they plan on adding a set of possible modifications to in game weapons. Mods which have been displayed include ones to add ranged sights, extended magazines, increased fire rate, and altered fire spread. Players will be able to hold down the mouse click to rapid fire, instead of having to click it a bunch of times. Instead of collecting gun parts to make guns, guns will be crafted using resources. It appears that the various weapons inside the game will be getting new appearances as part of updating the weapons. Though it’s uncertain what the exact form of these new appearances will be.

The movement system has been redone so that instead of having to hold down shift to run, players will press shift to toggle running vs walking modes.

The developers have been working to advance terrain formation tools and systems, to help create nicer terrains and mapping. This should allow for more natural-looking terrain and better fitting POIs. In addition, developer Joel Huenink has declared that they’ll be adding over 50 new POIs and various others will be remodeled.

They are working to improve the path movement of zombies and the sleeper zombie system, so they are more formidable.

The dog zombie has been updated to a new form.

The developers continue to make advancements towards developing the new third person game play mode. They’ve worked to develop the ability to engage in melee and ranged combat while in a third person mode.

They’ve added to the number of light forms in POIs, with the addition of things like a flashlight, lantern and lamp.

And to top it off, there is news that the developers are working on advancing the world editor feature. Currently the world editor feature only allows for getting an overall view of a map. Though they are working to get it functioning so that eventually players will be able to design their own maps. It’s not certain whether it will be up and running will Alpha 17 or come along later. But at least there are signs of its advancement.

With that said, this is it for this installment.