Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[Callum123456789]

1 hour ago, Guppycur said:

SP or MP, and did you happen to move far enough away from the base for the origin reset to occur and do you happen to have a log?

 

/curious since 1971

i mean i have some sort of log i was on my first bloodmoon horde also had a sledge turret i was fighting with my turret with me and it fell through the floor during the horde one thing i know that fixes this is placing a cube then placing the turret on top of that then it just seemingly stops but if its just floor it falls through its been happening since the launch of a20 i know because i played on the day it released publicly this is both an sp and mp bug 

oh and this bug isnt just to do with the sledge turret the same exact thing also happens with the junk turret too 

Edited January 28, 2022 by Callum123456789 (see edit history)

[Jost Amman]

3 hours ago, Guppycur said:

SP or MP, and did you happen to move far enough away from the base for the origin reset to occur and do you happen to have a log?

 

/curious since 1971

Only play SP... I was defending in a very tight BM base.

 

Spoiler

This was before placing the sledge turret, I later placed it on the left of the gate on the outside of those bars.

 

@faatal : I think I found kind of "proof" that maybe the origin shift bug sometimes applies also to entities. Look at this topic on Steam, please.

 

[Jay_ombie]

Quick suggestion on weapon types for killing animals. Maybe if we overkill and shoot heads/limbs off we should be penalised meat quantity.

 

At the moment I get the same amount of meat for a headless pig killed with a shotty than I do with a whole pig with head which I took down with precision sniping..

[Lord Morphleyes]

11 minutes ago, Jay_ombie said:

Quick suggestion on weapon types for killing animals. Maybe if we overkill and shoot heads/limbs off we should be penalised meat quantity.

 

At the moment I get the same amount of meat for a headless pig killed with a shotty than I do with a whole pig with head which I took down with precision sniping..

 

Is it the same?  The headless ones alway take fewer clicks to harvest, I thought we were getting less.

[faatal]

5 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

@faatal : I think I found kind of "proof" that maybe the origin shift bug sometimes applies also to entities. Look at this topic on Steam, please.

The origin shift had to do with falling through the world and it did happen for players and zombies. What I said was those were fixed in 20.1 and not happening anymore in .1.

 

That Steam video is unclear. There could easily have been the same type of zombie on the other side of the trader that followed them in.

21 hours ago, Blake_ said:

Any news on the optimization front? What are the changes cooking for us players? 

 

I'm really starting to believe that the biggest improvement this title needs going forward might be a good code culling/cleaning of block stability calculations or block code in general.

 

I would avoid the garbage collection feature altogether, because it does eat A LOT of CPU after a while. Painstakingly profiling and using the correct functions to avoid GC is the only way to stop this constant optimization struggle and start having solid content with some slack.

I'm not working on optimizations. Bugs and a21 features.

 

You can't avoid all GC, because a reasonable amount is fine and in some cases avoiding it would very difficult. CG is incremental and does not cause much in the way of FPS spikes.

[minisith]

On 1/26/2022 at 2:52 PM, Neminsis said:

When the topic is "level gating is bad" one is kind of forced into taking "level" and "gating" into account, right?

But yes, I'm well aware of the use cases for those "ignored perks" and maybe Charismatic Nature ought to maybe give a stamina regen buff in single player, as most leaders tend to get a little high off their own fumes, so to speak. 

As I said, 'my' end game is typically well past level 300, so I have used everything you've listed as in-game goals, but as I also said, I've done shorter playthroughs to experiment with the early game and build orders. I put over 4k hours into a19 alone, and probably half that on each alpha going back to a15, and another 500 into a20 so far, so maybe my perspective is a little different than the average player, I can't help that.

Although, I have done the math I'm not really a min/maxer as I tend to play reactively to the situation i.e. putting points into what I need at the time rather than sticking to a script. Those decisions are always informed by the knowledge that I can always just level up more if I need something else later though. 

And the thing about playing longer games and leveling higher is that you find out sooner or later that the Zs keep scaling for a long time and that OP feeling that you can get early game is more of an illusion than a reality. That maxed out tree by level 50 just doesn't perform the same against the Zs that spawn at higher game stages, yeah?

Well I have played the same way and got to Lvl 145.   I think I am just addict at starting new.  I might just enjoy the early game play that much.   I agree it gets harder at level 100.   I have 1875 hours on my Steam account.  Which is the longest game,   I took a while to switch to Steam from physical copies.

[Guppycur]

@Prime

 

Uh, I found you in a club man!  Nice moves!

 

 

[Callum123456789]

1 minute ago, Guppycur said:

@Prime

 

Uh, I found you in a club man!  Nice moves!

 

 

that is probably the most cured thing i have seen in 7 days to die LMFAO

[RipClaw]

On 1/20/2022 at 6:15 AM, faatal said:

Allan committed a fix for it and similar blocks today. He changed the colliders and xml tags, so path raycasts can now see the colliders.

However, the fix no longer allows you to repair through the arrow slits or access the dart traps.

[Jost Amman]

11 minutes ago, RipClaw said:

However, the fix no longer allows you to repair through the arrow slits or access the dart traps.

You want too much...

[Jay_ombie]

19 hours ago, Lord Morphleyes said:

 

Is it the same?  The headless ones alway take fewer clicks to harvest, I thought we were getting less.

Yeahhhh seems conclusive, killed two with different guns together, same time to test.

[Daello]

Was the nice tan stone/brick texture that had alternating layers of stone removed from Alpha 20?  If so, may I ask why?

[Laz Man]

12 minutes ago, Daello said:

Was the nice tan stone/brick texture that had alternating layers of stone removed from Alpha 20?  If so, may I ask why?

 

I believe that texture was updated to what it was originally intended for (a larger tan colored brick texture)

 

Hopefully we will eventually get more textures since I believe a few low use ones were removed.

[Daello]

29 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

 

I believe that texture was updated to what it was originally intended for (a larger tan colored brick texture)

 

Hopefully we will eventually get more textures since I believe a few low use ones were removed.

Ah well, that was my favorite brick for castle designs.  Thanks for the reply though!

[Red Eagle LXIX]

Well, that was interesting.  Game crashed while I was about 50m from my base on my bike riding home from a POI. 

Made a backup of the save before trying to load.  Restart and I'm about 75m away but no bike, no bike on compass. 

Ok, no problem, cheat myself a new bike, deposit my loot back at base.  Start riding to POI to finish getting loot.  about 300m from my base and 400m from the POI game bugs out, me and bike seem to teleport and rubber band all around.  Try to get off bike, see empty bike keep moving and even get hurt but cant move myself (can steer empty bike which I seem to be standing on).
Ok, restore backed up save from after crash, rinse and repeat, same thing, same spot. 

Try it again, but this time I do NOT ride the new bike, I walk.  At the 300ish meter point that kept bugging out, I am suddenly teleported onto my missing bike.  After that the chunk no longer had any issue for me.  I got my bike back (threw away the brand new one) and all seems fine since.

 

EDIT: I should note the crash was due to my old PC being a bit unstable.  They get cranky after 11+ years overclocked and now running an out of spec amount of RAM.

Edited January 30, 2022 by Red Eagle LXIX (see edit history)

[Callum123456789]

5 hours ago, Red Eagle LXIX said:

Well, that was interesting.  Game crashed while I was about 50m from my base on my bike riding home from a POI. 

Made a backup of the save before trying to load.  Restart and I'm about 75m away but no bike, no bike on compass. 

Ok, no problem, cheat myself a new bike, deposit my loot back at base.  Start riding to POI to finish getting loot.  about 300m from my base and 400m from the POI game bugs out, me and bike seem to teleport and rubber band all around.  Try to get off bike, see empty bike keep moving and even get hurt but cant move myself (can steer empty bike which I seem to be standing on).
Ok, restore backed up save from after crash, rinse and repeat, same thing, same spot. 

Try it again, but this time I do NOT ride the new bike, I walk.  At the 300ish meter point that kept bugging out, I am suddenly teleported onto my missing bike.  After that the chunk no longer had any issue for me.  I got my bike back (threw away the brand new one) and all seems fine since.

 

EDIT: I should note the crash was due to my old PC being a bit unstable.  They get cranky after 11+ years overclocked and now running an out of spec amount of RAM.

ive had this issue generally when the game doesnt close properly and you are on vehicle i dont know if its your pc because mines 2 years old basically brand new and i have definetly encountered this issue starting in alpha 18 it didnt exist before not too sure why it does now

[DEATH MECHANIC]

6 hours ago, Callum123456789 said:

ive had this issue generally when the game doesnt close properly and you are on vehicle i dont know if its your pc because mines 2 years old basically brand new and i have definetly encountered this issue starting in alpha 18 it didnt exist before not too sure why it does now

 

 

11 hours ago, Red Eagle LXIX said:

Well, that was interesting.  Game crashed while I was about 50m from my base on my bike riding home from a POI. 

Made a backup of the save before trying to load.  Restart and I'm about 75m away but no bike, no bike on compass. 

Ok, no problem, cheat myself a new bike, deposit my loot back at base.  Start riding to POI to finish getting loot.  about 300m from my base and 400m from the POI game bugs out, me and bike seem to teleport and rubber band all around.  Try to get off bike, see empty bike keep moving and even get hurt but cant move myself (can steer empty bike which I seem to be standing on).
Ok, restore backed up save from after crash, rinse and repeat, same thing, same spot. 

Try it again, but this time I do NOT ride the new bike, I walk.  At the 300ish meter point that kept bugging out, I am suddenly teleported onto my missing bike.  After that the chunk no longer had any issue for me.  I got my bike back (threw away the brand new one) and all seems fine since.

 

EDIT: I should note the crash was due to my old PC being a bit unstable.  They get cranky after 11+ years overclocked and now running an out of spec amount of RAM.

 

yep had this as well, really sucks when you are on the gyro

[Code6]

I'm curious about the shape names.  They seem a bit strange to me. For example, something like "Wedge60 Tip Pillar 0.025m".  I suppose it is very precise, but perhaps too precise.  Taken one at a time, the names don't seem too bad, but when scrolling through hundreds of them, does anyone really "know" the names of the shapes they want?  Especially with the new shape presentation/selection method of A20.  I just look at the pictures.

 

I understand the need for a unique identifier for each shape behind the scenes, but I think that those names could be hidden from the players.  There is little value in showing them.

Some might suggest that I simply ignore the names if I don't care about them.  I must confess that the reason I care about this is that I am translating 7 Days To Die into Esperanto.  I have translated all of the rest of the interface, but there are thousands of shape strings.  I would not bother translating them if perhaps they were going to be hidden in a future release. 

[RipClaw]

12 minutes ago, Code6 said:

I understand the need for a unique identifier for each shape behind the scenes, but I think that those names could be hidden from the players.  There is little value in showing them.

There is a value. If someone asks me which shape I use for a certain part of my base, I can tell him the exact name.

[Code6]

49 minutes ago, RipClaw said:

There is a value. If someone asks me which shape I use for a certain part of my base, I can tell him the exact name.

I did say "little value" because I knew someone would say that.  But do you really remember the names of the blocks that you use?
I have been playing multiplayer for 5 years and have never needed to tell someone the exact name of a shape.

 

For example, I don't even know what "Pillar 0.5m Plate Pillar 0.05m" means, much less remember how it differs from the other 24 shapes that start with "Pillar 0.5m".

But I suppose this is another example of how each of us plays the game differently.

[RipClaw]

25 minutes ago, Code6 said:

I did say "little value" because I knew someone would say that.  But do you really remember the names of the blocks that you use?
I have been playing multiplayer for 5 years and have never needed to tell someone the exact name of a shape.

 

I don't need to remember it. I can just use the Copy Shape function to find out what shape it is that I used. Then I can give that information to someone else.

 

In multiplayer you would just have to build the block but if you want to pass the information via a another medium it is a bit more complicated

 

For example, yesterday I was testing different blocks to use as replacements for the arrow slits, since you can't repair through them anymore. So when I say "Cube 1/4 Tee Side Centered works good if you want to repair something through it", he knows exactly which block I'm talking about.

 

27 minutes ago, Code6 said:

For example, I don't even know what "Pillar 0.5m Plate Pillar 0.05m" means, much less remember how it differs from the other 24 shapes that start with "Pillar 0.5m".

There's a search box at the top of the shape selection. I type in the name and I have exactly the shape you mentioned.

 

[Blake_]

@faatal disabling graphic jobs did decrease average fps significantly, but I noticed improved stability in heavy duty areas, like downtown. When I say stability I say stutters, which are usually CPU-bound and don't usually show on the fps display but they do show on the performance graph.

 

Better CPUs should only see a decrease in fps and no further stability gains, though I agree that disabling the feature for now is the best course of action until we get a future 7dtd Unity upgrade that doesn't cause crashes in some pcs.

 

Very nice job on the "disengaging behaviour of zds". I hate that I love that their awareness works as intended now.

 

BTW, what a21 feature are you working on in these early days? Please do tell ! So exciting :3

[mr.devolver]

37 minutes ago, Blake_ said:

BTW, what a21 feature are you working on in these early days? Please do tell ! So exciting :3

I bet the feature he's working on right now is an auto responding bot on forum to automatically answer those who frequently call him using @ faatal.

[Naz]

Yeah performance in downtown has returned to where it is in a20.0 

Here is s an example, it's pretty rough

https://youtu.be/tYDSAvb8E8o

[Callum123456789]

hey guys i have a question: would there be anyway to create radiated spawns at night or in the wasteland biome in the spawning.xml files? because its something ive been thinking about doing in the later game just to make things more difficult because night looting at that stage isnt very dangerous 

also i have seen some posts from downtown areas tanking fps again and i myself can also confirm this 

Edited January 31, 2022 by Callum123456789 (see edit history)