Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[jeromeN7]

@madmole@faatalTo anyone that will hear me out. Frankly, me and my friends do agree that many of the gun's iron sights are just bad.

 

The iron sight's front posts are too tall, and/or not centered, and/or the rear sights are missing or unused when aiming down sights. Though I can understand if there are no rear sights on pipe weapons, as they are primitive weapons, but modern firearms should use and/or have rear sights. That, or at least there should be some consistency... For example either we should be using rear sights on all the guns or not using them on any guns.

 

No matter the case, front sights should always be in line with the center of the screen. But they aren't, in the case of weapons like the pipe pistol. Please, at least revert the M9 Beretta Pistol to what is was in Alpha 19. I used to love that gun.

 

Another critique I have is the way pistols displayed. The pistol's appear to close to the camera. It looks like we are holding the pistols up in our face. Please do try and hold a pistol and make it look the way it does in-game. You will understand what I'm talking about. But I think, that's a topic for another day.

 

With all the other visual improvements, I do think the game could stand to benefit from a little more attention to weapon sights. But it's you game do what you want with it, I get that. Though I do think some weapons iron sights in Alpha 20 are a regression.

[Matt115]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

 

Those who abuse the system lose credibility with it. Does a Kuosimodo dislike really carry any weight with anyone? joshwa0816 is headed the same way. 

 

Yep because it sometimes at least me @%$# me off.  will it was specific period- almost everything go wrong in my life and i wrote 20- 30 lines post. Only reaction was dislike from kuosimodo and any quotes. So yep it was just frustrating as hell. I understand if i have controversial opinion people will hate this but... 1 dislike and nothing more it was just ugh. Well so i understand that. People are sometimes tired because they want to make discusion on some  topic : zombie teens, number of trees, bugged block in some POI etc.and get only dislike make them to feel this long post was pointeless. ofc you can say " so you always can create new topic" but honestly - 90% of people on this forum read most of time only  this topic ( 2-3  month ago i saw more people was writing in more topic now they are focused here). So they can be furious about this. Roland well everyone can just have worst time that normal. Well i'm not spaming now post everyday because- A20 is almost done so we need to wait until we get A21 roadmap to give new proposition, thing about what can be added in the future or about new game

1 hour ago, Jost Amman said:

Well, to be honest, I've received both positive and negative reactions from Kuosimodo... so, in my case, nothing to say to him.

Yep he give more likes that in the past so it is good change in my opinion

[meganoth]

3 hours ago, Xtrakicking said:

Fair enough, though there's also a problem when someone is trying to legitimately give negative feedback on something and it just gets shrugged off as a "rant", while also twisting words to try and make someone sound irrational.

 

It shouldn't be a problem for the objective of influencing TFP (except if a dev from TFP himself is calling it a rant). AFAIK Devs have no time to read longer discussions or lengthy arguments who is right, who is irrational and who says someone else is ranting. They'll read feedback that interests them and probably the shorter the better the chances to be read. 

 

This was the reason Roland moved all the discussions into the parallel discussion thread at the end of A19, so just the feedback and questions directed at Madmole/TPF was left and could be skimmed or read in acceptable time.

 

[Roland]

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

 

Small correction. Nobody needs to wait for 10 seeds to pile up before starting. Immediately plant away and save all produce for seed production until you are at least at 10 seeds and you have a large time advantage and exactly the same chances as long as you eventually find 10 seeds.

 

 

For whatever reason, I can only accumulate knowledge about farming incrementally from you. 
 

Thank you and sheesh!

[Callum123456789]

this poi has caused me my only death and i needed clay so.... i gave it a makeover with my auger but the make over included destroying everything

[MechanicalLens]

52 minutes ago, Callum123456789 said:

this poi has caused me my only death and i needed clay so.... i gave it a makeover with my auger but the make over included destroying everything

 

I'm living in this POI right now... What have you done?!

[Callum123456789]

3 minutes ago, MechanicalLens said:

 

I'm living in this POI right now... What have you done?!

oh ummm i tried to improve it with my decorating tool but it didnt work im not sure why though

[MechanicalLens]

2 minutes ago, Callum123456789 said:

oh ummm i tried to improve it with my decorating tool but it didnt work im not sure why though

 

[Callum123456789]

4 minutes ago, MechanicalLens said:

 

i know i tried my best though really 😂

[GRITTY]

i'm curious about this change:

• Updated metal hit metal and metal destroy sounds

when i'm mining with my iron pickax, it doesn't sound metallic at all.  the new sound reminds me of breaking down bulletproof glass.  I switched to my stone ax and the sound was very much like what it was prior to the change. 

 

i'm trying to determine if i'm having a hardware issue or if this non metallic sound is what was intended.

[faatal]

21 hours ago, HeLLKnight said:

@faatal please take a look how CPU and GPU are quite low all the time, maybe is there a code bottleneck? Also GPU usage seems inversely affected when lowering object quality. Maybe the less bottleneck is there, the more GPU can be used? Hope it helps.

 

Also please take a look to this mod which greatly reduces TAA flickering, maybe can help devs too: https://www.nexusmods.com/7daystodie/mods/1746

CPU may show as low because task manager shows you all cores together, which will never get near 100% if you have many cores, since the game can't use them all and can not use them all equally. Many Unity task have to happen on the main thread. GPU will typically not be at 100% as the game is usually CPU bound.

 

I will not do what that mod does. I don't want to disable AA on the weapon cam as it looks worse. The weapon cam may be going away at some point anyway. The increased blending they use also makes ugly motion blur, which the artists and I don't like.

22 hours ago, RBN said:

Well, before the pole drama hit me hard today i enter the forum with the intention of asking @faatall about the performance in A20.

 

In A19 i saw a great improvement in performance, always between 40-50 fps but in this alpha I'm between 30-40 again and when I am in any of the new "city cluster" the fps drops bellow 30, hitting sometimes 10-15, making playing very difficult.

 

I drop down the textures to medium, reflections to off, disable the music (i read this could help) and turning off the new long distance feature but.....the situation in the cities persists.

 

I have an AMD A-10 7860k, a Radeon rx 580 8GB and 24GB RAM. I know is modest but i want to know if there is anything i can do to improves the fps at least to 30 to enjoy the new cities.

In every case I've looked at, lowering settings will increase FPS regardless of what your peak FPS is. Be it 60 to 120 or 10 going up to 20. It sounds like your CPU is running very slow. Have you rebooted? What other programs are you running? Disk getting hammered by some OS update, backup running or a virus?

[RBN]

57 minutes ago, faatal said:

In every case I've looked at, lowering settings will increase FPS regardless of what your peak FPS is. Be it 60 to 120 or 10 going up to 20. It sounds like your CPU is running very slow. Have you rebooted? What other programs are you running? Disk getting hammered by some OS update, backup running or a virus?

 

No more programs running, updates or unusual activities.

 

The problem is only in the new clusters. Going only a few meters down the same street and getting out of the city zone all come back to normal.

 

In every other place the changes produces a variation in fps, not too much but newsworthy (shadows distance over all) but in the new cities there's no way to go above 30 when is calm and go down to 10-15 when there is some zombie action.

 

In the border of the city cluster is normal between 40-50

 

 

 

A few meters ahead inside the cluster

 

 

Same settings, only difference is the place.

[MuffinMan]

Is there a way to enable "profiling"  in 7 days to die so people can log where the slowdowns are occurring ? Would help a lot in regards to optimization over the different hardware perhaps. There is also a "severe" slowdown when opening inventory or talking in shop that happens randomly.

 

I've noticed a couple slowdowns less than 30fps in wasteland cities (5950x / 3090) where FPS is generally over 100, but just figured it was normal, would be nice to see where the issues lay as a programmer.

[Firecat]

1 hour ago, RBN said:

 

No more programs running, updates or unusual activities.

 

The problem is only in the new clusters. Going only a few meters down the same street and getting out of the city zone all come back to normal.

 

In every other place the changes produces a variation in fps, not too much but newsworthy (shadows distance over all) but in the new cities there's no way to go above 30 when is calm and go down to 10-15 when there is some zombie action.

 

In the border of the city cluster is normal between 40-50

 

 

 

A few meters ahead inside the cluster

 

 

Same settings, only difference is the place.

 Seconded, my friend and I notice our frames drop from normal 60-80 fps elsewhere to 15-30 in certain parts of the wasteland city we live in, especially bad with lots of zombie activity, changing graphics settings doesn't appear to make a difference. In recollection I do think the areas of city where it is especially bad are indeed where the new city block areas. The worst area so far has been around the dishong and higashi skyscrapers (they are across the street from each other). I know some folks have report issues with Dishong in particular, so I thought that might be the cause. Also we liked the game we were playing and did not wipe and restart after the first update patch, so I thought maybe some changes were causing frame drops in maps generated in the initial a20 version.

[Jost Amman]

3 hours ago, GRITTY said:

the new sound reminds me of breaking down bulletproof glass. 

Oh, you're one of those guys... 

[faatal]

13 hours ago, Mechanimal said:

I think, if this change continues to mutate(can't see how it won't tbh), the glaringly big problem, in the current iteration, is that -75% HP is not also -75% material cost.

I imagine that is an oversight/balance issue that will get dealt with in some way, hopefully soon, but until then I am not base building. Once that happens I can, and will, deal with reduced HP block builds. 

Is there even an argument that reduced HP blocks should still require the same material cost? Can't imagine there is, but I'm poking for a try.

Already changed that today. Upgrade, repair and harvesting all scale.

 

We are still testing and thinking about these changes like many parts of the game. I'm currently leaning towards two buckets. 25% (or 33%) and 100%. The 25 being the obviously flimsy/weak/small blocks that should not be stopping anything from breaking through and anyone should be able to look at and say that is not going to protect me.

 

Bars were intentionally excluded because they are primary window and elevated defenses. Plates would probably move back into the 100%, but we are still discussing. Changing stuff to see what happens is what game development is about and some major changes can and do happen during experimental.

[RBN]

12 minutes ago, Firecat said:

 Seconded, my friend and I notice our frames drop from normal 60-80 fps elsewhere to 15-30 in certain parts of the wasteland city we live in, especially bad with lots of zombie activity, changing graphics settings doesn't appear to make a difference. In recollection I do think the areas of city where it is especially bad are indeed where the new city block areas. The worst area so far has been around the dishong and higashi skyscrapers (they are across the street from each other). I know some folks have report issues with Dishong in particular, so I thought that might be the cause. Also we liked the game we were playing and did not wipe and restart after the first update patch, so I thought maybe some changes were causing frame drops in maps generated in the initial a20 version.

 

At least is not only me....

 

I don't know about the map. Erasing the region files doesn't help.

 

Otherwise my experience is exactly the same as yours. Always the new zones and worst when there is enemies around

[faatal]

9 hours ago, Blake_ said:

Any planned changes on performance? I know it won't help my particular case, but ANY calculations that you can actually separate in a new CPU thread is a very needed change.

 

I hope you guys can magically find a way to significantly reduce the "class-calling" hell of Unity. 

 

Music is bad for me now. The music fading and unfading reduces performance to a crazy degree, and sometimes it doesn't even fade properly if you leave the area quickly. I'm talking 300% in some particular scenarios (screamer calling next to a trader, buried supplies when also producing combat music, etc).

 

I think the Mesh calculation did hurt 4-core systems, as they just can't handle any more, but I've seen the drops in streams , and recent ones too, meaning current version b233.

Music loading will need a rewrite to use another method to improve performance issues, which is not happening now. Months away.

 

Mesh baking moving off the main thread should not make it worse, since the main thread is the most loaded thread.

[RBN]

7 minutes ago, faatal said:

Already changed that today. Upgrade, repair and harvesting all scale.

 

We are still testing and thinking about these changes like many parts of the game. I'm currently leaning towards two buckets. 25% (or 33%) and 100%. The 25 being the obviously flimsy/weak/small blocks that should not be stopping anything from breaking through and anyone should be able to look at and say that is not going to protect me.

 

Bars were intentionally excluded because they are primary window and elevated defenses. Plates would probably move back into the 100%, but we are still discussing. Changing stuff to see what happens is what game development is about and some major changes can and do happen during experimental.

 

If the cost is proportional things begin to make more sense.

 

Once the plates are safe what about the poles.....can we put them in the same plate's boat?

 

And if not, have you considered  removing the damage penalty?

 

 

 

 

[POCKET951]

21 minutes ago, faatal said:

Already changed that today. Upgrade, repair and harvesting all scale.

 

We are still testing and thinking about these changes like many parts of the game. I'm currently leaning towards two buckets. 25% (or 33%) and 100%. The 25 being the obviously flimsy/weak/small blocks that should not be stopping anything from breaking through and anyone should be able to look at and say that is not going to protect me.

 

Bars were intentionally excluded because they are primary window and elevated defenses. Plates would probably move back into the 100%, but we are still discussing. Changing stuff to see what happens is what game development is about and some major changes can and do happen during experimental.

This may or may not be what we get but I think the 2 bucket solution seems far more reasonable than the 3 bucket one. Also the idea of blocks that are more cosmetic and flimsy in nature is okay

[faatal]

48 minutes ago, MuffinMan said:

Is there a way to enable "profiling"  in 7 days to die so people can log where the slowdowns are occurring ? Would help a lot in regards to optimization over the different hardware perhaps. There is also a "severe" slowdown when opening inventory or talking in shop that happens randomly.

 

I've noticed a couple slowdowns less than 30fps in wasteland cities (5950x / 3090) where FPS is generally over 100, but just figured it was normal, would be nice to see where the issues lay as a programmer.

No. Profiling requires Unity editor to attach to game. Game has to be a dev build, which makes it run quite a bit slower, so you don't want to be playing a dev build.

 

Profiling is also not as great as it sounds. Knowing something is slow is easy, I see lots of that whenever I profile. Trying to make it faster is the hard part.

 

Cities are going to be slower by their very nature. More objects/blocks/zombies. More is going to render slower. To handle more, you turn down settings to reach a reasonable FPS vs quality tradeoff.

[Red Eagle LXIX]

32 minutes ago, faatal said:

Already changed that today. Upgrade, repair and harvesting all scale.

Nice!  That makes me happy to hear. 

 

35 minutes ago, faatal said:

Bars were intentionally excluded because they are primary window and elevated defenses. Plates would probably move back into the 100%, but we are still discussing. Changing stuff to see what happens is what game development is about and some major changes can and do happen during experimental.

Good to know.  Bars work well for one of the design ideas I wanted to try too. 

 

[faatal]

17 minutes ago, RBN said:

If the cost is proportional things begin to make more sense.

 

Once the plates are safe what about the poles.....can we put them in the same plate's boat?

 

And if not, have you considered  removing the damage penalty?

Any pole health reduction should be balanced with a reduced zed damage buf, but I actually forgot that code was even in there until I saw in forum discussion. Things are a bit hectic around here with a lot of back and forth on a variety of bugs and balance issues.

[q123]

3 hours ago, faatal said:

I will not do what that mod does. [...] The increased blending they use also makes ugly motion blur, which the artists and I don't like.

[RBN]

7 minutes ago, faatal said:

Any pole health reduction should be balanced with a reduced zed damage buf, but I actually forgot that code was even in there until I saw in forum discussion. Things are a bit hectic around here with a lot of back and forth on a variety of bugs and balance issues.

 

Leave them as is and you have one problem less 😄

 

They look so happy together