faatal

How their weapons will work has not be determined.

I think many of the settings could use more choices, so I could see more being added, but possibly after a20.

I have several months of work left for A20 exp, so it is not soon.

I would guess yes. Not sure new game would matter. A bandit POI could just not spawn them if the option was turned off in an existing game.

We are pretty much just trying to get tasks done. Dev talk should pick up as we get closer to A20 exp.

Clouds/sky/weather are legacy systems. They work how previous devs made them and then we refactor them to better meet the final design of the game. The why of designs is often lost and in the end I don't care, we just need to make it work to meet the goals of shipping the game. I've been cleaning up and rewriting those systems as time permits, but it is a big WIP. Some of what you describe are just side effects of a combination of things and it may change by the time we go gold. Test features are usually for debugging and generally don't become normal features. I'm not sure what you are referring to, but probably not a change for a20.

Correct. That list of features is just a list of what we plan to do. It may be months before someone works on it and often features will get pushed back, because it can't be done in time or at all due to unforeseen circumstances. As the alpha progresses, the list tends to get updated to reflect where we are at, but is no guarantee of anything. We have bug tickets for such things, so eventually they should get looked at. Basically yes. There are and may still be some global parts, but it is all WIP. Not planned.

No plans, but it could happen months from now.

Well that is your typical problem with having standard vertical character controller cylinders with something that is drawn mostly horizontally (like many animals). Basically it needs to be offset back, so the head is more towards the center, but is probably not a trivial change. It should get "better" at some point. There is nothing natural about those vultures. They are Undead. I have not, but it would make sense if heat was a worse effect, that you would want things to counter it. It will be a big can of worms, but no work has been done on it yet, so can't say what will be using it, in what cases or how it will look.

You are blaming SI, when I don't think that is the main overhead. Profiling clearly shows chunk mesh and collider updates as the big overhead, which is primarily internal to Unity with data copying and PhysX updates. There are multiple chunk layers and their mesh and colliders update in the same frame, so hopefully I can slice that over multiple frames to reduces spikes. Have not tried changing it yet, since I tend to bounce between features, optimizations and bugs. There are some other mesh settings to try, plus some of our mesh building code could be faster. Our mesh building is on a separate thread (the faster part), but mesh copying to Unity has to be done on the main thread. I did improve the hot/cold screen effects the other day, but that is cosmetic. I'd like it more brutal as a trade off for the eventual better biome loot, but now you are talking designer area.

Before gold? I've got a never ending list of things I'm working on, so hard to say when it percolates to the top. The main functional change is biome weather parameters are in groups now, so something like a storm can change all parameters to ranges a storm should have. Biome temperatures are in absolutes now and global temp is just a random +/-5. Grace period is same. There probably won't be many more changes (for a20) beyond that.

Probably not. If you profile the game, it shows neither one of those things as issues. We plan on continuing to optimize the slower parts of the game, not parts that already run fast enough.

That has not happened yet. A20 is on 2019.4.17, but may get another update if any good fixes happen before we get to experimental.

1 This week: Fixing holes/overlaps in block meshes/colliders (added shape ModelOffset). Testing (using) Unity 2019.4. Changes to skin quality settings, so can change on a per entity/LOD basis. Fixed a playtest load bug. Improved shape loading. Improved chunk debug grid drawing. Improving chunk mesh generation. 2 That will probably be A21 3 Saw some new screenshots today. New POI placement system is looking cool. 4 Artists are working on new weapon, block and zed/animal content, but nothing that has needed programmers for, other that the skin change I made. We could make texture changes using layers or whatever, but don't know that we have the time for that. My general goal is to optimize what we have and not add features, unless the feature is a good memory or performance win. Block type and possibly xml settings may determine painting, but I've not looked much at how that works.

No. That would require a ton of code rewriting, which is not going to happen. That is not likely to happen. We have many other tasks that need our time.

A correct random number generator gives you random numbers. We use an industry standard random number generator, so it does work. Truly random does mean you could get the same thing many times in a row, which people often don't like and want something less random. Now the seed used for the random generator could cause issues if not varied enough or reused/repeated.

Weather changes were not planned for a20, but after noticing the state of the code, that it was not gold quality, I ended up spending a lot of December overhauling it. The overhaul is basically done, but the simulation parameters are still being tweaked and needs testing/feedback. Now the players reaction to the weather is completely separate, so this does not change what happens to the player being hot/cold/wet/etc. The amount of logic we already run from xml adds a good amount of overhead to the game. It could be added, but it would be slow, so not likely.

Next year. We have been working on other things.

Wandering hordes randomly skim along the edge of where a player is, so maybe you just got (un)lucky and they have not been noticing you? That would be an interesting thing to bring in closer as their target's GS increases.

1 Yes! 2 Nothing much atm other than the weather should change at a consistent rate. 3 The goal of these changes is to make it run faster, look better and not get stuck on ugly conditions. Rain comes and goes in a clean fashion. Snow looks pretty sweet now.

You don't rewrite all your game code for each new release/update. That would be crazy. 95%+ is the same code. Now you might rewrite a system, but that is often overkill too. I am updating the Weather Manager, not rewriting it. Maybe 40% of the code has been touched. We are not planning on doing altitude changes for any of it. All creations by a person/company are automatically the copyright owner by default (in the USA anyway), unless stated otherwise.

I've been working on weather manager cleanup and now starting on the simulation, so hopefully less gloomy days.

I can look at that at some point, but busy with other things now. A lot of complicated code. For all the people who complain about lack of optimizations, if there were none it would be unplayable.

None of that should be set in stone yet. Once RWG changes are further along, we can see where memory use is at and fix what needs to be fixed. Edit: Robert says 4k is still possible, so we will probably have that too.

The pathing distance limit is horizontal. They can only path about 40m out. Farther and they just go in a straight line to the edge of the path grid. I dug to bedrock in Navezgane and BM day 7 spawns came above me and started digging down. They do a lot of moving and stumbling in addition to digging, so it can take them a while if you don't have a ton of zombies. That is code, so would be me, but doubt it will change anytime soon. I tend to forget that is even a feature.