Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[Thecolours]

I was getting 60 fps on medium settings in A19 and now with the same settings I'm getting 50 fps.  Anyone have some tips to improve fps besides dropping my settings to low? 

[DividingByZero]

Has anyone run into issues with all Clear portions of any quests not working? We are playing on a server and none of them ever complete, and we have thoroughly searched the POIs. Even the new restore power quests. 

16 minutes ago, Tete1805 said:

For information, I had terrible FPS looking at the cities, even from afar, or in a POI when looking outside a window.

Setting dynamic mesh to off fixed it. (At least regarding the cities part.)

ooh, I need to test this. My performance out of cities is mostly better, but in cities it is trash. 

[Doomofman]

12 minutes ago, DividingByZero said:

Has anyone run into issues with all Clear portions of any quests not working? We are playing on a server and none of them ever complete, and we have thoroughly searched the POIs. Even the new restore power quests. 

 

Had this happen once so far since the latest build released. Is the world you're playing on generated on one of the older builds? I kinda figured that's why mine acted up

[DividingByZero]

15 minutes ago, Doomofman said:

 

Had this happen once so far since the latest build released. Is the world you're playing on generated on one of the older builds? I kinda figured that's why mine acted up

Not sure, I will ask my buddy who set it up. I think it was on this build… 

[JCrook1028]

22 hours ago, Mechanimal said:

Is there even an argument that reduced HP blocks should still require the same material cost?

Yes. They all come from the same Mother block. You really want 3 different Mother blocks for each material? I don't. So yes, all blocks must have the same cost to make regardless of their HP when placed.

[hiemfire]

7 hours ago, Firecat said:

P.S.

LMAO I noticed something is a bit...odd about the college jacket. That's not how that texture is supposed to go, I wouldn't think! +1 silly inconsequential bug

Been that way for awhile. Haven't brought it up since I think they'll be completely tossing it with the armor/clothing/character overhaul in A21.

[canadianbluebeer]

13 hours ago, GRITTY said:

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.

 

 

That's what I get too. Very, very annoying.  Same sound for hitting any metal.

Wrenching included.

 

Don't know what effect y'all are after, but this sound is not good.

In the category of Auger Annoying not good.

(so I'll just have to crank the sound down when wrenching/mining)

 

What was wrong with the old sound?

[hiemfire]

8 minutes ago, canadianbluebeer said:

(so I'll just have to crank the sound down when wrenching/mining)

 

I had to do that with the old sound or risk a headache and ringing after about two minutes...

[Mahnogard]

47 minutes ago, hiemfire said:

 

I had to do that with the old sound or risk a headache and ringing after about two minutes...

Same. I don't love the new sound but the old sound did not get along with my tinnitus so it's been a net improvement for me.

[GRITTY]

if the sound was somewhat metallic and not so "strange".   I know that is subjective but it's not like a sound i've ever heard.  even if the sound was similar to the stone ax hitting metal, that would be great.  this new sound is very plastic mixed with some industrial beats circa 1998.

[Gazz]

Change is hard but that may be an actual improvement for the infernal racket of the auger...

[GRITTY]

9 minutes ago, Gazz said:

Change is hard but that may be an actual improvement for the infernal racket of the auger...

the auger sounds the same.

[joshwa0816]

I'm not going to call out names of those who messaged me in a rant about dislikes and taking it very personal but it's simply not personal and it wasn't needed to be brought into this diary about a20 when the rant was ignored. I'm not going through someone's profile and hitting dislike across the board. I'm opening a browser that opens to this forum discussion where I left off and start going down and to the next page. I disagree and instead of disagreeing in a comment and joining an argument or creating one I use the dislike system. It wasn't to mess with someone's reputation and as Roland stated it's neutral but I'm not anyone else but myself. I've been disliking AND liking through plenty of posts because the system was easier to use than sparking an argument and I believed that was it's intention.. 

[Kosmic Kerman]

The new metal sound is a big improvement over the old sound. The old sound was seriously grating when mining or wrenching cars.

[Callum123456789]

1 minute ago, Kosmic Kerman said:

The new metal sound is a big improvement over the old sound. The old sound was seriously grating when mining or wrenching cars.

Or using the auger for 2 hours straight in am iron mine..i had to turn off the game volume because it was literally giving me a headache 😂

[Callum123456789]

also i dont know about anyone else but ive noticed when you mine in lead mines you almost get 1.5x more xp than the other ores and when you get the art of mining book where you can craft stacks of ores and wood you get a huge xp amount for some odd reason

[GRITTY]

while i agree the auger sound is irritating and from what i can tell it's not changed.  the new pick ax sound is really bad and i would love to have a more "natural" sound.

[MuffinMan]

13 hours ago, faatal said:

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.

What about the 1-3 second "hitch" when opening inventory sometimes or talking to a shop owner?

[Wulf]

9 minutes ago, MuffinMan said:

What about the 1-3 second "hitch" when opening inventory sometimes or talking to a shop owner?

 

Also happens when looting sometimes. (Also see that hitch on Youtubers video's as well so it's not just me) This hitch wasn't in A19 for me.

[Callum123456789]

11 minutes ago, Wulf said:

 

Also happens when looting sometimes. (Also see that hitch on Youtubers video's as well so it's not just me) This hitch wasn't in A19 for me.

Same here its a new issue 

[Lord Morphleyes]

Bars are functionally stronger than plates made of the same material and having the same thickness.

Short reason, its the void space. 

 

IRL if you take a 1m square plate and a 1m square bars as depicted in the game.  Fire 1000 rounds of 7.62 at each of them the plate would suffer greater damage and lose way more structural integrity than the bars.  

 

Make a cube 3x3x3 of plates and another of bars.  Set off an explosive inside of those boxes.  There will be more structural damage to the box made from plates than the one made of bars. 

 

Back to the game, a bunch of zombies attacking a plate where every shot within that 1m square has to be absorbed by the plate vrs attacking bars where some of ther shots don't land flush on the bars, are deflect towards the void spaces, or even, them reaching through to take a swipe at whats on the other side. 

 

Bars>plates 

All day

[katarynna]

39 minutes ago, MuffinMan said:

What about the 1-3 second "hitch" when opening inventory sometimes or talking to a shop owner?

I could be wrong, but i believe that is the garbage collection. It happens about every 20 minutes if i remember right, and always when you talk to a trader or go into your inventory.

[Star69]

I think I remember someone(maybe Fatal) saying he’d rather have the garbage collection hitch at the trader or inventory screen rather than during a melee swing on a zombie.

[MuffinMan]

1 hour ago, katarynna said:

I could be wrong, but i believe that is the garbage collection. It happens about every 20 minutes if i remember right, and always when you talk to a trader or go into your inventory.

 

Hmm you are probably correct. They might want to look into a better way of doing it simply because it isn't a good look or feel.

1 hour ago, Lord Morphleyes said:

Bars are functionally stronger than plates made of the same material and having the same thickness.

Short reason, its the void space. 

 

IRL if you take a 1m square plate and a 1m square bars as depicted in the game.  Fire 1000 rounds of 7.62 at each of them the plate would suffer greater damage and lose way more structural integrity than the bars.  

 

Make a cube 3x3x3 of plates and another of bars.  Set off an explosive inside of those boxes.  There will be more structural damage to the box made from plates than the one made of bars. 

 

Back to the game, a bunch of zombies attacking a plate where every shot within that 1m square has to be absorbed by the plate vrs attacking bars where some of ther shots don't land flush on the bars, are deflect towards the void spaces, or even, them reaching through to take a swipe at whats on the other side. 

 

Bars>plates 

All day

 

IRL flesh and bone hitting a 1" steel plate will never do any real damage to it. Even if you hit it a million times, let alone a couple hundred like in the game that destroy cubes of steel. But that aint very fun, so.

[Kosmic Kerman]

16 minutes ago, MuffinMan said:

 

Hmm you are probably correct. They might want to look into a better way of doing it simply because it isn't a good look or feel.

 

 

I'm sure they are all ears if you have any suggestions. GC has to occur and they figured having it occur during looting, opening inventory, etc. was the safest time to have it.