Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[Guppycur]

56 minutes ago, madmole said:

No, just trying to help isolate or repro the issue.

Xyth and Sphereii have some promising stuff working, but they should elaborate on it themselves. 

[madmole]

1 hour ago, MechanicalLens said:

@madmole I believe something that has been going on as of late is removing/buffing numbers of items in loot that players would otherwise scrap or toss away. (Raw brass, candy tins, hub caps, tree seeds, etc. etc.) I would like to add raw lead to that list. Typically one finds between 1-10 lead in loot per group, which is hardly worth keeping around. Might I suggest a small buff of groups of lead found in loot, raising it to around 30-60+? Your thoughts?

Probably, its never in a quantity that I keep, so I toss it out.

[bjurney]

1 hour ago, Laz Man said:

Yeah, I just noticed recently that terrain quality medium/high kills my FPS by a huge margin (e.g. 60-80 fps to 15-35 fps in wasteland) .  When i compared the textures up close to the low setting it wasnt worth the performance cost.  Using terrain quality low for now.  I will submit a bug report later today in Hope's it can be further optimized at some point.

I had this issue as well until I put -USEALLAVAILABLECORES into the steam launch options (putting it into the 7dtd game launcher may also work). I was then able to turn it all the way to Ultra without taking any frame drops. However, to me when it’s on ultra, it looks to grainy. To put it in photography terms, it looks like the ISO is turned way up to 3200, so I set it medium to get rid of some of the graininess. 

[Galifrey1965]

3 hours ago, madmole said:

I wonder if you don't have an SSD or your hard drive is fragmented causing a slow load speed?

 

Hopefully I can clarify your question with this picture

 

And some numbers 

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 7.0.0 x64 (C) 2007-2019 hiyohiyo
                                  Crystal Dew World: https://crystalmark.info/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

[Read]
Sequential 1MiB (Q=  8, T= 1):  2535.650 MB/s [   2418.2 IOPS] <  3306.06 us>
Sequential 1MiB (Q=  1, T= 1):  1727.673 MB/s [   1647.6 IOPS] <   606.48 us>
    Random 4KiB (Q= 32, T=16):  1511.273 MB/s [ 368963.1 IOPS] <  1386.06 us>
    Random 4KiB (Q=  1, T= 1):    56.793 MB/s [  13865.5 IOPS] <    71.95 us>

[Write]
Sequential 1MiB (Q=  8, T= 1):  1874.845 MB/s [   1788.0 IOPS] <  4466.98 us>
Sequential 1MiB (Q=  1, T= 1):  1870.009 MB/s [   1783.4 IOPS] <   559.93 us>
    Random 4KiB (Q= 32, T=16):  1366.560 MB/s [ 333632.8 IOPS] <  1533.00 us>
    Random 4KiB (Q=  1, T= 1):   193.822 MB/s [  47319.8 IOPS] <    20.97 us>

Profile: Default
   Test: 1 GiB (x5) [Interval: 5 sec] <DefaultAffinity=DISABLED>
   Date: 2020/07/19 18:42:46
     OS: Windows 10 Professional [10.0 Build 18363] (x64)

[War3zuk]

B169 Is very stuttery, Locks me up for 2 to 5 seconds at a time when getting near a building... Tested this on a few Gend worlds & always the same, Fly around the map a while like 20 mins & its still the same when getting near a prefab.. Think back to spawning in x2 25 UMA zombie herds & thats what its like..

 

HDD are NVME Sabrant drives, My misses drives are Samsung Nvme & hers is the same...

[Jay_ombie]

Its not SSD/HD or otherwise, the game for me like for many with specific high end GPU's was fine and rather smooth right up till this particular build update. Wasn't perfect but was working for us a whole lot better than now.

 

Its this latest build's code with regards texture handling and how they are loaded in and then purged.

[Syrex]

Friends and I decided to not restart just yet since there'll most likely be another edition of 19 (19.1+) and so far none of the patches have "broken" anything, thankfully. Friend and I did 119 horde night, separately (and not partied).

 

Game Stats: lvls 158 & 46, gamestages 331 & 110. I have it set to Warrior with max alive set to 100 and per player set to 24 (Thinking of adjusting some settings and increasing this for a test next horde night). This is a dedicated server running on my machine, that i'm also playing on, set at 2k res with variable medium to high settings (a couple low/off's like motion blur etc).

 

Machine stats: i9-9900k (4.18ghz), rtx 2070, game and server are on ssd, ram 32gb (3200mhz) - Game uses up to 30% CPU and 93%+ GPU - RAM is at 6200MB today. Server uses up to about 10% cpu and 978MB ram.

 

The night went rather well in terms of fps. There was a couple dips below 30's but it lasted about a second or so. I mostly unnoticed the dips until the end of the night. Toward the end of the night beginning of morning I noticed the drop (commented on it as well in video). Variable weapons used, all types of zombies present. I still need to "get good" with the pesky demolishers. Tried lowering the DPI of my mouse but it doesnt seem to take so zoomed in far away shots are hard for me with shaky hands. Hoping maybe these videos are helpful in some/any way possible.

 

Spoiler

 

 

[faatal]

10 hours ago, Doctor3D said:

 

Yeah that's way beyond me..I haven't looked at RAW files of this game since A15---if that's the case - maybe it needs to be aggrevated to much higher degree...I don't notice ANY LOD on the zeds..maybe get it so strong that I notice it...and go from there and see the FPS benefit.

Should maybe even force sleepers to level 3 or 4 of 5 LOD until they become activated...As they wake up - update their texture and animation to level 5..but before then..just let them sit idle in a low LOD state suitable for your distance.

What LOD is shown has nothing to do with data being in memory or not. LODs do not control loading. LODs control which rendering object(s) are enabled to reduce the complexity of the geometry that is rendered.

[Adam the Waster]

@madmole

 

 

i got a few questions for the bow!

 

 

1: Will damage be scaled for the wooden bow and compound bow, cuz the compound bow feels... Weak same with the compound crossbow 

 

2: will bows get a update in any shape or form? like able to put a Sight on it for example 

 

3: will bolts be removed. (you don't need to answers that if not) 

[sillls]

 Mastery of the kiting technique

 

I wanted to talk to you about mastering the technique of kiting. 

 

Basically kiting is backing up which anybody can do. But to gain mastery of it, one has to learn how to time and space at just the right time moment. Most people overdo it and step way the hell back and that is a waste of time and effort. While others have bad timing and get hit. 

Just tap the "S" key just when the zombie  moves forward and you stay just out of reach. Small quick taps are better than one long one. 

 

Mastery will allow you to continuously hit the zombies without a break.  

It would be best to practice this with the knife as it has a high thrust rate with low energy expended. 

For best results, aim for the center of mass, COM.

For the quickest kill and if you are getting good. Aim for the head. 

Make sure you can back up. You don't want to get stuck, that would be bad. 

 

Finally, practice, practice, practice and some day you will be nearly as good as me. IMAO  😄😃 

[faatal]

2 hours ago, Khalagar said:

I can confirm that SSD do not help with the stutter.

 

Ryzen 2700x

Nvidia 1080ti

32 GB DDR4 RAM

Game on an SSD

 

Stutters like a mofo since the last update. It was so bad it was straight up freezing at times. I actually thought it was something my friend was doing, but he was freezing up too, while over 2KM away. Not sure if it was because I was the server host or what, but it was hitting both of us at the same time every time and was pretty much unplayable until it finished loading what ever it was trying to do

It is not as simple as SSD or HD. There are slower SATA SSDs and faster NVME SSDs. I have a very fast NVME SSD, so in my testing of running, flying, teleporting around Navezgane, do not see major lag.

[faatal]

6 hours ago, Guppycur said:

Hmm, thanks for continuing to look into this and not being dismissive; it's definitely a hot topic amongst at least within my group.  Hopefully by next patch it gets resolved... I'd bet the majority of users still install on platter drives, but maybe gamesparks is providing that info... the overall performance is definitely worse on my game laptop but I'm on vacation so can't test on the big game rig... By accounts from others with similar specs I'm not optimistic though.  

 

Could be just some weird setting, who knows... I've faith you'll sort it. 

I know it is happening to some people. It is just a matter of finding a middle ground that works reasonably well for everyone within our minimum computer specs. This is experimental and that was an experiment. In any event it can't stay how it was before, since Joel consistently would report his FPS dropping to 20 FPS after x minutes of play and having to reload to fix it. He has a high end PC.

 

The irony is it may be the console warning messages from block prefabs not yet loaded causing a lot of the lag and not the actual loading.

[Xetsubou]

So I just updated to b169 and tried to join my server but got the nullreferenceobject console spam keeping me from playing, I don't mind being level 1 again but is there any way to fix this or do I have to start over again?

[Callum123456789]

to add to the stuttery situation i also don't have an ssd drive and i get stutters when i go next to buildings well it's not very bad throughout my play time but at the start it can be kinda awful oftenly lasts like 3-4 seconds for me but higher end pc's may have less of a time to wait i dunno what's causing it 

34 minutes ago, sillls said:

 Mastery of the kiting technique

 

I wanted to talk to you about mastering the technique of kiting. 

 

Basically kiting is backing up which anybody can do. But to gain mastery of it, one has to learn how to time and space at just the right time moment. Most people overdo it and step way the hell back and that is a waste of time and effort. While others have bad timing and get hit. 

Just tap the "S" key just when the zombie  moves forward and you stay just out of reach. Small quick taps are better than one long one. 

 

Mastery will allow you to continuously hit the zombies without a break.  

It would be best to practice this with the knife as it has a high thrust rate with low energy expended. 

For best results, aim for the center of mass, COM.

For the quickest kill and if you are getting good. Aim for the head. 

Make sure you can back up. You don't want to get stuck, that would be bad. 

 

Finally, practice, practice, practice and some day you will be nearly as good as me. IMAO  😄😃 

lol

[Blake_]

2 hours ago, Laz Man said:

 

Best to post your output log in the a19 bug forums if you want them to take a serious look at it (when the forum upload thing is fixed).

I don't think this counts as a bug as much as  feedback regarding a general performance issue. Also, I'm not posting there until I can make a reliable and solid repro for each and every one of the cases. This is not a sound fx tweak.  Posting here may be annoying sometimes, but it's always the more direct approach if the issue is BIG and crippling, like this one.

[Damocles]

1 hour ago, faatal said:

It is not as simple as SSD or HD. There are slower SATA SSDs and faster NVME SSDs. I have a very fast NVME SSD, so in my testing of running, flying, teleporting around Navezgane, do not see major lag.

Thats why its good to have a second crappy computer to see performance issues early.

[Laz Man]

@madmole

 

Any plans to make the inventory "Sort" button more intuitive?  I had a new player tell me that it would be nice if there was feature to auto sort their inventory.  It turns out the "Sort" button is an icon of a backpack and nothing else so I can see why they didn't know.

[Guppycur]

1 hour ago, faatal said:

I know it is happening to some people. It is just a matter of finding a middle ground that works reasonably well for everyone within our minimum computer specs. This is experimental and that was an experiment. In any event it can't stay how it was before, since Joel consistently would report his FPS dropping to 20 FPS after x minutes of play and having to reload to fix it. He has a high end PC.

 

The irony is it may be the console warning messages from block prefabs not yet loaded causing a lot of the lag and not the actual loading.

...that would be funny.  It's not so much about a stutter/FPS drop as it is about a *surprise* stutter/fps drop.  That happens at the wrong moment and you're falling into a pit, missing a jump, an attack, etc.  Can be life threatening.  😃

[Laz Man]

1 hour ago, sillls said:

 Mastery of the kiting technique

 

I wanted to talk to you about mastering the technique of kiting. 

 

Basically kiting is backing up which anybody can do. But to gain mastery of it, one has to learn how to time and space at just the right time moment. Most people overdo it and step way the hell back and that is a waste of time and effort. While others have bad timing and get hit. 

Just tap the "S" key just when the zombie  moves forward and you stay just out of reach. Small quick taps are better than one long one. 

 

Mastery will allow you to continuously hit the zombies without a break.  

It would be best to practice this with the knife as it has a high thrust rate with low energy expended. 

For best results, aim for the center of mass, COM.

For the quickest kill and if you are getting good. Aim for the head. 

Make sure you can back up. You don't want to get stuck, that would be bad. 

 

Finally, practice, practice, practice and some day you will be nearly as good as me. IMAO  😄😃 

 

It also helps to have plenty of space to back up and a path in mind...Also, the spear is a great weapon for practicing as the extra reach is more forgiving...:)

 

Edit: On the flip side, I think the spear is a double edged sword...because of its low damage, it requires more attacks to kill and thus increases the chances that a zombie will rage.  My brother still doesn't react very well to the change in zombie speed when it happens...

[faatal]

7 minutes ago, Blake_ said:

I don't think this counts as a bug as much as  feedback regarding a general performance issue. Also, I'm not posting there until I can make a reliable and solid repro for each and every one of the cases. This is not a sound fx tweak.  Posting here may be annoying sometimes, but it's always the more direct approach if the issue is BIG and crippling, like this one.

Posting here is fine. Mostly I just want hardware specs and circumstances in which it is happening.

 

I just ran 7d7d from my HD. Flying around, visiting all the biomes and towns and still pretty smooth. No freezes. I do drop to 30 FPS for a few frames while it loads, but quite playable. I even have some of those console warnings, but they don't seem to be doing much to my FPS.

 

I added a "mem objpre" console command for testing to precache block entity data and never remove them.

 

People with big freezes can try disabling their antivirus on the game's folder to see if that is slowing down loading.

[Guppycur]

1 hour ago, Xetsubou said:

So I just updated to b169 and tried to join my server but got the nullreferenceobject console spam keeping me from playing, I don't mind being level 1 again but is there any way to fix this or do I have to start over again?

Start over.  Especially in Experimental.  😃

[Space4Ace]

6 hours ago, madmole said:

 

I know a couple devs have really wide monitors and it worked fine for them, but I don't know the exact res so no promises, but it sounds promising

 

That's good to know there's a chance, maybe a dev or forum member might know for sure about if 5120 x 1440 res is supported. Thanks Joel!

[faatal]

16 minutes ago, Damocles said:

Thats why its good to have a second crappy computer to see performance issues early.

That is why we have testers and I have not heard of any of them having issues. Dropped in on a lot of streamers this weekend and have not seen any of them having load delays either.

[Deacon of Undead]

Anyone else having the rending issue? Buildings look like tall pillars of dirt.

[Blake_]

6 minutes ago, faatal said:

 

People with big freezes can try disabling their antivirus on the game's folder to see if that is slowing down loading.

Sadly I always make sure to disable any function on the antivirus both manually and internally before running games and I keep my pc clean and defragmented with ccleaner ( actually I uninstall the antivirus each time I play, just because I hate even the hint of a popup or background app). The only programs that boot on startup are :  steam. Clean as a baby's dental record.

Not even telemetry or Anticheat activated. Nothing. 

 

Pure minimum system clean of gadgets.