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 fifth 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

Part 4

The developers are getting closer to completing the Alpha 17 update for 7 Days to Die. They are working on finishing up new features and are moving more towards the testing and bug fixing aspects, which will allow them to a create a playable experimental version of the game. In his latest video, Joel Huenink announced that he estimates that the experimental version for Alpha 17 might be done sometime in July. Now this isn't a hard-set date for when the experimental will be out, and the process of development might cause its release date to change. But it gives a general date for when the Alpha 17 experimental might come out. And once the experimental is ready, players will have the opportunity to opt into playing the experimental version of Alpha 17. Once the experimental is out, the developers will take input from how the game play is working, work to refine features, fix bugs, and prepare a full version of Alpha 17, which will be released to all players at some point in the future (likely in late summer or fall, if they do end up releasing the experimental in July).

With that said, here is the latest new information on what should be in alpha 17.

More than 70 new POIs have been designed. With all these new buildings, the environment of 7 Days to Die will look rather different, and the process of looting and taking over POIs will change to adapt to the new dungeon style designs that many of these POIs will have. Though, I hope that they will opt to keep a fair amount of the old-style buildings for diversity and realism, will have to wait for Alpha 17's release to see whether the shift in POIs styles is additional or a full replacement.

They are redoing the systems for how food, water, health, and stamina work. As you use more energy and take damage, the maximum of your health and stamina will temporarily decrease. Food will used to help restore max health and stamina. Water will be used to effect the rate at which health and stamina is restored.

They default movement speeds for players have been changed, so that walking and running are faster. Though the endurance for running may not be as long.

It as revealed that quests and quest POIs will be able to work in random gen worlds, as well as Navezgane.

One of the weapons mods they will be including for guns will be a silencer, which allow players to shoot zombies with a reduced noise. This will allow for more stealth fighting and a reduced likelihood of alerting other zombies in the area.

They have been working on improving the zombie pathing system, so that zombies will move more efficiently towards their target. This will include a system which will calculate multiple possible paths for zombies t attack their target, movement smoothing, so that zombies don't zig-zag or run in circles, zombies attacking blocks according to their relative block strength, zombies being better able to systematically knock down buildings when players are hiding at higher levels, and a greater ability for zombies to get to players who are hiding underground. There have also been innovations to zombie ragdoll physics, so that they should fall down more realistically.

They are changing the system for the different environment biomes in the game. Currently, there are seven types of biomes in the game: Maple Forest, Pine Forest, Plains, Desert, Burnt Forest, Snow, and Wasteland. These will be consolidated into four biomes. The Maple and Pine Forests will be consolidated into a single forest biome. The plains biome will be consolidated into a sub-biome of the forest and/or desert biomes. Thus, Alpha 17 will have Five types of Biomes: Forest, Desert, Burnt Forest, Snow, and Wasteland.

The system for the height maps will be changed, to include for more natural cliffs, ridges, and terrain variety.

They have added new models for the trees in the game

The Navezgane Map will be redesigned to incorporate the various changes to the game's POIs, terrain system, and biomes.

They will be adding a new chat system, which will allow for distinct friend, party, and global chat modes.

They game engine will be updates to run on Unity 2018.

That is it for this installment of news on the development of 7 Days to Die Alpha 17. If the experimental is released around the estimated time, then odd re the next installment of this will be covering the overall list of changes released in Alpha 17's experimental version.