K4te
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I have had the same problem. This is definitely "Black Smearing" and is a hardware related issue (the monitor). 7D2D is especially bad for black smearing (or especially good for 'testing' any tendency towards black smearing on a monitor). It's not related to reflection settings. Occlusion settings are a good guess, but in this case it's not the problem either. The reason it has bad black smearing, is because the textures in 7d2d at night have thousands of hard transitions from full black (0 of 255 in all colors), to more lit areas. Gives the game a very 'sandpaper' look, texture-wise. Very granular. This means that standing still maybe 20% of the screen is full black. but it's not a black area, it's a "pixel here, a pixel there" all over the screen. When you move the camera, you're moving those black pixels across your monitor, so different 'physical' pixels are displaying the full-black, as it moves across your panel. If your monitor has slow-ish pixel response this makes for a "smear" of black. When it's a black object on screen, this is pretty tolerable, gives the black object a slight "trail" behind it. But when it's a thousand individual pixels all over, basically the percentage of screen which is displaying black will double or triple when you move the mouse, as each 1 pixel of black becomes several pixels of black in a 'smear'. Not all monitors will have this problem. And/or will not have this problem to a significant degree. OLED panels do not black smear. Pretty much all other panel types will black-smear, but they vary a lot in how severe or noticeable it is. VA panels are especially prone to black smear (but they do have lovely deep blacks for a cheap panel tech). Anyway, MOST monitors have a much easier time going from very dark gray to lit up, than they do from true black to lit up (and vice versa). Going from a pixel illumination of say 75-32-162 to 0-0-0 and back, makes black smearing as noticeable as possible. while going from 76-33-163 to 1-1-1 and back, will "USUALLY" have much better performance, because your pixel isn't turning all the way "off". So what you're going to want to do, is prevent any of your pixels (in game) from going "fully" to black (fully "off" state for that pixel). Henshaw's suggestion will definitely work for that. But it does (as he pointed out) make the game look a lot more washed out. I think with "most" monitors, you don't have to take things quite that far. (and I'm actually rather a fan of VA panels myself, so I'm in the 'problem zone' myself). Instead of going to nvidia control panel, I would go to 2 main places to adjust: - Your monitor brightness & contrast settings - The in-game gamma setting Normally I have my monitor very carefully calibrated for visual production work. So my 0-0-0 true-black pixels (in the pc's signal to the monitor) are displaying as 0-0-0 true-black on the monitor's physical pixels as well (extremely accurate calibration). And I very much like that a VA panel goes nice & dark for that. But for games, this tends to really bring out any black smearing. Sooo... for gaming, I adjust monitor brightness & contrast up, just slightly. Just enough that it's very nearly black, but not "true-black" in the darkest parts of the screen. So "none" of the pixels (the physical ones) are going fully 0-0-0 black (just very close to that). This will make things look slightly washed out (like IPS panels look all of the time). Now if you then go to the game's gamma setting, and turn that up some, you can bring out brighter highlights. This will visually make the dark areas (which now aren't "fully" black) look pretty black to the naked eye, by way of visual contrast. So your blacks aren't 'true black', but your user experience will see them as 'pretty darn black'. Um, if you're in a very dark room, it might make the screen look a little bright, so consider turning on a small nightlight or something so it's not so glaring (it's better for your eyes anyway). anti-aliasing can "slightly" blur the edges of the black pixels, and "slightly" alleviate the problem by allowing a little bit of the smear to exist in an area disguised by the faint blurry area. Softening the sharpness on the monitor may also do similar (and is generally less of a performance hit than anti-aliasing). But the usefulness of this vs. black smearing is Very limited. And in some cases it can make it worse. I think 7D2D looks good with some softening though, as it's textures are very granular. IF that's not enough to eliminate the problem, try tweaking the monitor's brightness/contrast and in-game gamma settings slightly more. If that's STILL not enough, then start using Henshaw's approach as well. But i'd test it in baby steps, adjusting 1% at a time, until things look acceptable. There is one other approach which might help. If you de-sync monitor frame rate from game frame rate (no v-sync), and you run the game at 60fps, but run the monitor at 120fps or so (if it can), you may see some improvement that way too. Depends on how many milliseconds of black-to-gray response time we're working with in your monitor. Overdrive settings on monitors 'may' also help, it's very model specific whether that's going to be a pro or a con, and to what extent. Turning down your textures may help as well. I recently got a 4090, calibrated my monitor for visual work with it, and the following weekend cranked the F out the settings in 7d2d... and it was BAD black smear on this somewhat aged VA panel. But I was able to minimize it without an overly washed out look for the game. The reason 7d2d has this issue, is very high fidelity textures with true-black bits in them (at least at night), and very granular textures. It's especially bad in the grass and in the 'old wood' textures in most burnt or rustic POI's. Most games just clip the true-black out of their textures, and use smoother textures, so the issue isn't as apparent (but it does "exist" in many many other games). I mean, go look at a vid of Overwatch gameplay. There is no black anywhere on the screen at any time. Voila they "fixed" it... but that kind of cartoony look doesn't suit a horror title ARK has fairly noticeable black smearing too. There may be approaches that I missed, but your google searching should be "minimizing black smearing on a monitor" and you can leave "7D2D" out of the search, since it's not a strictly 7D2D problem, it's just extra obvious in 7D2D. That'll get you to the best answers. It is "mostly" fixable, so long as your monitor doesn't have really severe pixel response time problems. 7D2D would make a good benchmark for torture testing black-smear though I'm confident enough in all this to say I'm 90% sure you have a VA panel (which isn't in my view a bad thing, just a complicated matchup with 7D2D). If you're playing on a "TV" (one which isn't really optimized for gaming use), or a reeeaaallly slow pixel response VA panel, you may not be able to get a satisfactory result though. But if that's the case, you'd be seeing this problem in many titles, just not as severe. PS: before getting too deep in it, try just turning up gamma in game. That may resolve the issue by itself. I can clearly see the black smearing in your posted video clip on my monitor. Many of the people responding can't see it in your video, because they have faster pixel response time. I prioritized gamma accuracy for visual work though.
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Well I don't think 'anything' in UL is terrible Personally, I'd kill the regen on scorpions, and scale back their spawn rate. Maybe I just saw so many of them because I was in the snow (which spawns animals heavily)? But the place was totally infested. Main reason to kill the regen: uh... ok, you know how Dutch kills the Predator in the movie Predator? He's outmatched in every way, but through great skill and planning, he wins in the end? If the predator had regen, then the movie would have sucked hp pool, damage resistance, and regen... synergize a little too well. It's like mixing drugs & booze. It's multiplicative. The effective time-to-kill is sky high, way higher than just adding the regen/hp/and resistance, they multiply each other. plus a 1-shot kill mechanic? it's kinda god-tier. It just got kinda silly, being in a really superior position, and spending all my ammo, breaking every tool I had on endless regen, to no avail. I'd also consider making the antidote to the poison a little easier to get. if you get touched by scorpion-love, it's a little harsh to say your options are "be high level or just die". Just my 2 cents. Oh... I wouldn't mind if there was totally un-kill-able enemies in the game. Even in late game. Like Mr-X, "run or die". Or a giga in ARK (which is more "run 'and' die" hehe). That can be fun. Just 'rare', ideally When a game forces you to have your head on a swivel to avoid death, that's exciting. When immanent death is in every direction, then there's not much point in keeping a sharp look out anymore, and it kinda kills the suspense.
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I know about the biome loot stages. Not my first rodeo with the zombies The vanilla game has some balance to difficulty/loot stage though. Exaggerating that by a lot seems... I'll go with "very tricky to balance". There's uh... "MMO logic" where you just don't play outside your difficulty zone or you're toast. That's a playstyle. It's fine. It's not how I'm used to playing 7d2d is all. I'm used to hard areas being very difficult and requiring great skill to go into early. Not used to them being effectively no-go zones. I won't say it's a 'bad' change, but it's a very 'big' change. For the moment, scorpions kinda overshadow the rest of the game. I've done grasslands and then scorpions as well. It was a pretty harsh ammo-grind, even when well equipped. I was just kinda shocked that scorpions become totally un-killable (no matter what skill or positional advantage you try) with early game gear. I didn't realize the other biomes were so strictly cut off from viable early game play in 20.6 UL. I'm really curious to see the other creatures you come up with And new biomes! that sounds incredible. I for one really miss the burnt forest (the navez version, without landmines & bricks everywhere hehe).
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I'll definitely try it out For now though, I'm trying to do a series of biome-specific play throughs. So I'm gonna have to go back to the 20.5 version.
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Technically I shot it 79 times with a scrap pistol (35 dmg), and then stabbed it continuously with a found steel spear, in a 'perfect' defensive position. I killed the bears and dire wolf and cougar with twigs & rocks. I only mention them for comparison purposes. I didn't attack a scorpion with a bone shiv. I attacked bears with a bone shiv to avoid scorpions. Avoiding them? Maybe i have a bug (pun intended) but the map was full of them. It's a miracle I went most of 2 days without having to fight one. Well not a miracle really, I just ran headfirst into bears & such to avoid the scorpions. If they were rare enough to avoid, I wouldn't bring it up. Anyway, 20.6 gives you map biome sliders. I had wanted to do a series of biome-specific play throughs. And I always use UL cuz UL is awesome. But that combo isn't gonna work with scorpions. They overshadow everything else in the game by a wide margin. Which would be 'awesome' if they were actually rare.
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Well, they certainly do that. But on a balanced map, that does turn 7d2d into a 1/4 zombie survival game, and a 3/4 scorpion survival game. That's a very large change to the game. It's subjective of course, but it's not my cup of tea. Is there a way to edit files to remove them or change their spawning on my end? Cuz literally everything else about UL is superior to vanilla or DF in my opinion. (technically I found a steel spear in the basement of the poi, so I was hitting it with that, but i wasn't skilled in it)
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SCORPIONS ... TL/DR: scorpions are broken I attempted to do a play-through in harder biomes (no grasslands), in the 20.6 UL build. (Nomad/permadeath) And scorpions are just out of control. Ended up in the snow biome. And on my map, scorpions were about as common as lumberjacks. The playthrough degenerated into 100% focus on avoiding scorpions, and none of the rest of the game mechanics mattered at all. I killed a zombie bear and a regular bear on days 1 and 2, just because I had to kill bears to find pathways where I wouldn't aggro a scorpion. I cleared a tier 3 POI (the house with the brick & iron fence around it, and the main loot in the sewer underneath) to use as a base. It's a great base poi. I was playing 'very well' you could say. But late on day 2, a scorpion finally heard me inside my house. I helped it break 1 brick block out of the wall so i could fight it. I put 12 arrows, and 75 9mm rounds into it, and then just melee'd it for about 5 minutes. As soon as I ran out of 9mm, it started out-healing my melee attacks (i have health bars). I was in a near perfect defensive position, and I had found a 'good' pistol, and used every offensive resource I had. And it just busted apart my wall, tore a drive-through through the house, and chased me out into the night, in the snow biome, on night 2, poisoned. Once the scorpion heard me in my base, the next 15 minutes was really just me dragging out my inevitable demise and the end of the play-through. Rather frustrating. especially since I was playing smart, and doing everything right. I mean I killed 2 bears, a dire wolf, a cougar, countless lumberjacks, and cleared a tier 3 poi with some ferals in it to use as a base ...all half nekkid using twigs & rocks. I don't think I was having a skill-issue. A demolisher, or a radiated cop or wight (even all 3 at once) would have been FAR easier to deal with. I like a challenge, I'm not apposed to hard enemies. But these things were 'everywhere'. 3/4 of the town was inaccessible because of roaming scorpions. I'm afraid I'm going back to the 20.5 version. The version with scorpions is still "7d2d" while you're in the grasslands, and then if you leave the grasslands, zombies don't matter at all, and the game becomes almost purely "Scorpion Apocalypse" instead. If i turn down the difficulty to n00b, maybe they'd be manageable, but then the zombies would be far too easy. Also, that massive health & damage resistance they have, plus the regeneration, and on top of that the 1-shot (delayed) kill attack.. they are just wildly out of balance unless they're used sparingly as a late-game boss fight type creature. If you turn up difficulty at all, scorpions turn the game into a crazy ammo-grind "at best". I love the look, animations, etc. Very cool. But mechanically, they're just game breaking. When a player with a bone shiv, club, crude bow, and trash 9mm consciously chooses to attack a zombie bear (and has the skills to win), just because every other compass direction has a scorpion in it... something's very not right. PS: This is my first post here. And I wanted to add that I LOVE the mod. UL has become my default 7d2d. The experimental version gave me zero bugs, fantastic work. But I'm going back to the previous version for now. The scorpions just throw the game balance too far out. Rare, or GS-linked spawning would work. But if they're gonna be like ants at a picnic, they need to be nerfed, hard. Personally I'd rather see them NOT nerfed, just rare. I'm also not too sure about gate-keeping the poison cure behind being able to defeat them. It makes sense, but it's pretty brutal balance-wise.