Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[rescue86k]

Water Overhaul!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

lol. Failed searches for new information on it. Maybe its hiding somewhere in this omegathread. Boats. Fishes. Evil fishes. Fish burgers. Harpoon gun for zombies. Water Overhaul. There must be more info on that somewhere. 

[Crater Creator]

On 3/26/2021 at 6:47 PM, danielspoa said:

are there plans to add a new zombie to the snow biome, to diverse from the lumberjack?

 

22 hours ago, bloodmoth13 said:

Will we get a bit more variety in the snow biome as far as zeds go? id like to see less lumberjacks and more of the various other zombies if only for variety. Dont get me wrong, i like the lumberjack and appreciate the threat he poses but seeing the same zombie over and over breaks immersion.

 

13 hours ago, Roland said:

Just got word that the beanie color is going to be changed.

 

I can't help but point out that, in the time it would take to concept/model/texture/rig a new zombie type so that the snowy biome isn't all the same lumberjack, one could make dozens of complementary beanie colors, beard colors, shirt colors, pants colors, suspender colors, skin colors, etc.

[faatal]

14 hours ago, rescue86k said:

Water Overhaul!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

lol. Failed searches for new information on it. Maybe its hiding somewhere in this omegathread. Boats. Fishes. Evil fishes. Fish burgers. Harpoon gun for zombies. Water Overhaul. There must be more info on that somewhere. 

It is on the back burner. Optimizations basically got bumped to higher priority.

On 3/31/2021 at 9:40 AM, Kirill_226RUS said:

@faatal, And how much time is left until the release of A19.5 with optimizations? Or are these just plans for now?

Just plans. We may not do the Unity upgrade for A19, since there is more risk, but many of the optimizations can be moved over without updating Unity.

[MechanicalLens]

10 minutes ago, faatal said:

It is on the back burner. Optimizations basically got bumped to higher priority.

 

I'm going to be honest, this is probably a smart move. New content is great and all, but this game needs to be optimized for lower end and midrange PC's... badly.

[Guppycur]

Zombies always have the shiniest shoes...

[MechanicalLens]

Traders already have specialized inventories, to a degree. Will they be getting the same treatment for their quest rewards? (Ex. Trader Jen would have a higher chance to award the player with meds.)

[PaladinDenn]

It's definitely a small thing, but it really bugs me. Are there any plans to make weapon models match the modifications you've given them? Like for example, right now putting an extended mag on an Ak doesn't change the model, but would this change in the future in a potential model overhaul? 

[pregnable]

Well I can think of another reason now for simplifying the work stations...

 

So I am on like day 61 in my world with the settings pretty much maxed.  It took me forever to find 1 acid... I finally got 5 total on day 60. 

 

I go to make my chem station... after the horde I go and get it and am like "cool, now I can spam pipe bombs for fun."

 

My base is now at bedrock, and I did not really like how I placed my workbench, but did not feel like picking it up, so I decide I am going to just put the chem station above it and stick it to the wall. 

 

So I dig out a small spot for it to fit into the rock above my workbench.  Looks green, all good.  I place it.... it sits there for a moment then falls and breaks... LOL...

 

I remember they used to stick to walls and stuff, and it let me place it... I was raging so hard. 

 

Now I am almost on day 63 and I have 2 acid... it took so long to get 5 that I am probably just going to go back and forth to the traders and buy one.  I even have the book for better odds of finding acid, so I am not sure what is up, heh. 

[Guppycur]

So instead of being able to get to day 60, you'd get to what, day 20 and be done?

[Adam the Waster]

12 hours ago, MechanicalLens said:

Traders already have specialized inventories, to a degree. Will they be getting the same treatment for their quest rewards? (Ex. Trader Jen would have a higher chance to award the player with meds.)

i would like to see that. i always need more bath sal- I mean Zana- I MEAN Painkillers!

 

[pregnable]

1 hour ago, Guppycur said:

So instead of being able to get to day 60, you'd get to what, day 20 and be done?

 

I am guessing this is directed at me?

 

Nah, I just would not have lost my chemistry station, because I would not have had an extra station to craft that does not act like a normal voxel(?). 

 

Was just annoying because I have had really bad luck with loot in that world, and was looking forward to using it.  Then it died in front of me.  Although it was also kinda funny.  More annoying at the time... more funny as time passes. 

 

Pretty sure the simplified system will have a similar progression to what we have now, just it will be gated by upgrades, similar to the crucible, instead of crafting a new station, or something like that. 

[Guest]

@faatal, Can DX12 be implemented on the current version, or does it require a Unity update? And will it improve performance? There aren't many games right now where DX12 improves FPS, and it's usually only needed for RT or DLSS. And how do GLCore and Vulkan work, which can already be activated?

[faatal]

13 minutes ago, Kirill_226RUS said:

@faatal, Can DX12 be implemented on the current version, or does it require a Unity update? And will it improve performance? There aren't many games right now where DX12 improves FPS, and it's usually only needed for RT or DLSS. And how do GLCore and Vulkan work, which can already be activated?

I actually tested DX12 a few weeks back (you just add to the project as a gfx choice), but it caused a crash when the occlusion manager was on. Unity replicated and thinks it was nVidia's drivers, so I retested yesterday with the latest drivers and did not crash, but I do get a DX12 error (x2) on world exit, which I told Unity about. We do want to support it, but FPS seems the same. I still have DX12 enabled in the Unity editor, which also has that error (x2), but they don't seem to break anything other than making the console open.

[meganoth]

37 minutes ago, Kirill_226RUS said:

@faatal, Can DX12 be implemented on the current version, or does it require a Unity update? And will it improve performance? There aren't many games right now where DX12 improves FPS, and it's usually only needed for RT or DLSS. And how do GLCore and Vulkan work, which can already be activated?

I'm using vulkan on Linux for months now. Apart from a strange frame update problem that only showed up in a specific mod I am very pleased with it. FPS is better than with opengl/GLcore

 

[Guest]

@faatalAnd on Windows, will Vulkan give any error-free performance boost? Or should I limit myself to DX11? In parentheses after Vulkan, it says: not fully supported yet. 

[faatal]

26 minutes ago, Kirill_226RUS said:

@faatalAnd on Windows, will Vulkan give any error-free performance boost? Or should I limit myself to DX11? In parentheses after Vulkan, it says: not fully supported yet. 

I tried Vulkan last month on Windows and the Unity editor crashed in Vulkan mode while making a build. I have a ticket open with Unity and they have reproduced the crash. I stopped testing at that point and did not try a normal build and switching it to Vulkan. I will probably try again once Unity fixes the editor crash.

[petruherro]

How big of an improvement should we expect due to the optimizations?

[Verne]

Hello

 

I noticed we are going to get a new type of quest in Alpha 20 "power restore" and since quests are what i like the most i would like to propose adding even more. Some suggestions:

 

1) "Street cleaning" => You go to specific spot located outside (preferably in city) and after activating quest mark groups of zombies will spawn in certain distance. Your objective is to kill them (maybe one group at once for performance reasons).

 

2) "Clear and protect" => After activating quest mark you have to clear area (building) as we usually have to do in "clear" type quest. But after we are done with first part of mission we get X amount of time to foritfy our place before horde spawns. You can also add objective we have to protect.

 

3) "Fetch v2.0" => Currently we lack variety in t5 quests. Buildings that can be choosen are few. New fetch v2.0 instead of picking one t5 building could also choose area (few t1-3 buildings) and location of our objective is unknown.

 

 

Just some random ideas. I would really love to see improvements and more variety in higher tier quests. hope you can consider my suggestions and surprise me when alpha 20 will be released  

[faatal]

2 hours ago, petruherro said:

How big of an improvement should we expect due to the optimizations?

Most of the optimizations have to do with making the game smoother, not higher peak FPS, so less frequent and milder FPS drops.

 

For example, I can run at 60 FPS, but it would often drop to 30, 20, 15 for multiple frames, which feels bad. Now I rarely drop below 30 and it just feels much smoother. I have yet to try A20 optimizations on lower end computers, so results there many be more, less or the same as a higher end computer.

[bloodmoth13]

On 4/1/2021 at 8:40 PM, Crater Creator said:

 

 

 

I can't help but point out that, in the time it would take to concept/model/texture/rig a new zombie type so that the snowy biome isn't all the same lumberjack, one could make dozens of complementary beanie colors, beard colors, shirt colors, pants colors, suspender colors, skin colors, etc.

Im all for that but we need variation in silhouettes too. Having more variation of the same zombies would be amazing for immersion.

I think they need to do what they did with the stripper zombie (retooling her into the 'socialite' zombie) and retool another zombie into a more versatile one that fits in more biomes.

 

One idea i had was a wild-man trapper kind of character with furs and stuff. He'd fit right in with gun ranges, snow biome, shanty town and forest biome and would look great in the middle of a forest where the socialite would be out of place.

The cowboy could be a little more versatile as an example and could possibly be a candidate, though i do enjoy seeing the ol cowboy, but he's ridiculously niche

On 4/1/2021 at 6:26 AM, Roland said:

Just got word that the beanie color is going to be changed.

Thats awesome. How easy/hard is it to do? it would be great if we could get a few color variations of each zombie to break the monotony

[Blake_]

7 hours ago, faatal said:

Most of the optimizations have to do with making the game smoother, not higher peak FPS, so less frequent and milder FPS drops.

 

For example, I can run at 60 FPS, but it would often drop to 30, 20, 15 for multiple frames, which feels bad. Now I rarely drop below 30 and it just feels much smoother. I have yet to try A20 optimizations on lower end computers, so results there many be more, less or the same as a higher end computer.

For lowest end there is no better test than 64 alive and level 300 day 70000 horde + a big squared base that takes  time to break to reach you and is equipped with ramps and pathing while you are using bombs and even dinamite.

 

If you never go below 30 fps for a lowest end PC then there's absolutely no instance in the game that can be lower than that.

 

My system currently achieves (at lowest 720p but shadows near) from 7 to 22 fps in the peaks of  that test IF Occluder off or else 0-14fps if on. Quad Core/8 T 2.7ghz CPU 4gb VRAM GPU. 

 

This test will be invalid in a system with only 1 slot of RAM (single channel) at 2400MHZ or less, as it will freeze constantly in that case. It might also be more unstable for higher speeds of single channel rams(30% lower fps drop threshold when they do drop). It will also be invalid in a dual core/ 4 T system as it will run like rotten sham (7dtd CAN'T do dual core with stable 30fps 1% or 0.1%).

 

I am very interested in testing a 19.5 and a20 with your new changes.

[MechanicalLens]

It's long been known that the burnt biome is, to a certain extent, being merged as a part of the wasteland in A20. As a result, will clay patches now be present within the wasteland biome?

 

Also, will the radiated zones encompass the entire biome, or just towns, or perhaps instead random splotches across the map? Will it be possible for the player to survive in the wasteland, or will the tactic from now on always be to get in and get out as soon as possible?

[faatal]

Added Feral Sense option (None, Day, Night, All).
 

I'm still tweaking it, but I expect to be playing with it set to Night and actually being afraid of the dark.

[MechanicalLens]

3 minutes ago, faatal said:

Added Feral Sense option (None, Day, Night, All).
 

I'm still tweaking it, but I expect to be playing with it set to Night and actually being afraid of the dark.

 

Excellent work Faatal!

 

I can't wait to get my hands on this feature whenever A20 EXP hits. I personally edit my forest biome XML's to add wights, cops, and soldiers to nighttime spawning, so this shall prove to be... interesting.

[unholyjoe]

1 minute ago, MechanicalLens said:

 

Excellent work Faatal!

 

I can't wait to get my hands on this feature whenever A20 EXP hits. I personally edit my forest biome XML's to add wights, cops, and soldiers to nighttime spawning, so this shall prove to be... interesting.

but.... try playing it with GodMode off... its a whole new game then. i was amazed