[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

*continues to hit F5 on his SteamDB Watchlist page*

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

1 minute ago, Teure said:

Does anyone know if the CPU usage improve with A21 update?

 

I have an octacore CPU with lower frequencies and it always bottlenecks me on larger cities. 

 

I've ~700h on PC and it always happened, since my athlon 5 years ago (of course it would) up to my current 5800h... and the FPS drop from stable 60 to 25~30 is a big let down. RWG is even worse because has a more intense voxel calculation all around...

 

Is there any improvement in that regard planned or discussed for A21?

 

Thanks!

 

One of the biggest performance hits of large cities were all the windows, especially in the skyscrapers, and caused a bunch of overhead due to unnecessary draw calls.  @faatal has posted previously about how windows were rewritten to be much more performant.  That and other optimizations that have happened along the way will hopefully add up to less FPS drops in cities in a21 and just better performance overall.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

On 6/3/2022 at 10:11 PM, faatal said:

Yes, I added block tech that allows some mesh "sides" to be opaque and others transparent, so a window block can have a frame and glass with each being in the chunk's combines meshes, instead of each window being a separate prop, which did make for a lot of draw calls. Allan has made many window blocks using this tech for the POIs.

 

I still have a few tasks with drops from and how upgrades work with those blocks, but nothing major.

 

 

I -really- wish this could get backported to a20, but I know it's too big of a change to be reasonable for that. This is one of the top things I'm looking forward to for a21.  Can't wait!

[Linux dedicated a20 server crashing on RWG]

No.... but it seems that 8GB of RAM in a server isn't enough to actually be able to RWG an 8k sized map in a20.  I could do a 6k one just fine though.  Guess memory requirements went way up.

[Linux dedicated a20 server crashing on RWG]

Did a fresh install of a20 on a linux server via steamcmd (I have command line access to this server)

 

At some point during RWG for an 8k map, the server crashes with this in the output log:

 

2021-12-06T15:31:40 1095.307 INF WorldGenerator:Wilderness Prefabs Spawned 103
Caught fatal signal - signo:11 code:1 errno:0 addr:0x50
Obtained 9 stack frames.
#0  0x007f76eddd1630 in _L_unlock_13
#1  0x007f76eefb27da in void prcore::RemapGenericIntegerToFloat<TexFormatARGB8888, TexFormatRGBAFloat>(prcore::InnerInfo const*)
#2  0x007f76eefa050b in prcore::BlitterRemapAny::Blit(prcore::InnerInfo const*)
#3  0x007f76eefa8e9b in prcore::BlitImageRemapNoScale(ImageReference const&, ImageReference&)
#4  0x007f76ef157c54 in bool GetImagePixelBlock<ColorRGBAf>(unsigned char const*, int, int, GraphicsFormat, int, int, int, int, ColorRGBAf*)
#5  0x007f76ef11d6d0 in Texture2D::GetPixels(int, int, int, int, int, ColorRGBAf*, int) const
#6  0x007f76ef0ec301 in Texture2DScripting::GetPixels(Texture2D*, int, int, int, int, int, ScriptingExceptionPtr*)
#7  0x007f76ef4634fb in Texture2D_CUSTOM_GetPixels(ScriptingBackendNativeObjectPtrOpaque*, int, int, int, int, int)
#8  0x00000040b08175 in (wrapper managed-to-native) UnityEngine.Texture2D:GetPixels (UnityEngine.Texture2D,int,int,int,int,int)

 

 

[A20 Developer Diary Discussions]

3 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

So you're saying there's little to nothing to do because shadows always give problems in games?

Short answer: Yes, shadows are computationally expensive (hard).

 

Longer answer (from 2015, but still valid): In Video Games Why Are Shadows So Hard To Render

[A20 Developer Diary Discussions]

On 9/22/2021 at 10:49 PM, MechanicalLens said:

Can we get a questline in A20 to assassinate Trader Rekt? It wouldn't have to be anything special, it could even be called exactly that. 😜

 

I would like to second this request….

[A20 Developer Diary Discussions]

Just now, Adam the Waster said:

well. if we still get to have the Paintable parts, ill be happy

 

I seem to remember a paint/texture discussion somewhere in this A20 diary thread too.  I don't recall any discussion of it being taken away.

[A20 Developer Diary Discussions]

4 hours ago, SnowDog1942 said:

Yea I just cant imagine the build path simplifying being good, I think even concrete / reinforced concrete was merged into one.

 

Doesnt matter what we say they tho are hell bent on simplifying. 

 

^^^^ This is what Madmole mentioned several pages back. Honestly, I can't wait for it to be implemented.  Having that many block upgrades certainly didn't add to the fun for me.  Here's what the man himself had to say to those who think he's ruining the game: 


 

[A19e Nitrogen - UNSTABLE]

Has Nitrogen been updated (or does it even need to be) to support the latest a19 build that came out last week?  If it does need to be updated, any ETA?