Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[jorbascrumps]

7 minutes ago, MechanicalLens said:

So pausing the A20 City Tile Tech video at 30 seconds in and looking towards the top right of the district... I see what could be the sewer system.

 

Underground structures were confirmed:

 

On 8/2/2021 at 10:03 AM, Kinyajuu said:

you can add sewers and other things underground

[Matt115]

9 minutes ago, jorbascrumps said:

 

Underground structures were confirmed:

 

well serwers could mean we can exepect drowned zombies someday! omg i finaly feels better!  skeletons , newsstands and drowned zombie ( i hate water, i have hydrophobia but i love drowned zombie what the hell?)  and i will send you guys photos frome havens! 

 

PS. Did there is new corpses model on basketball court? omg so good i love corpses! 

Edited August 3, 2021 by Matt115 (see edit history)

[zztong]

4 hours ago, zztong said:

Q: If so, could you tell us the width of roads/sidewalks and their relative placement along the sides on the Tile?

 

 

Update: Nevermind. I can clearly see a 42x42 next to a 25x25 filling from Tile edge to City Road.

 

150 - 2 x ( 42 + 25 ) = 16, so each half of the road/sidewalk is 8. Cars are 2, which by comparison seems to fit.

 

Thus, allow 8 blocks in the center of each side for a road, or allow 16 for a road and sidewalk on each side.

[faatal]

11 hours ago, Annihilatorza said:

In the video they are using 2020.3.1f1 and on twitter they did say they might have a higher version they are working with.

 

9 hours ago, gizmomelb said:

thanks for the info.. will go see what ray tracing support etc. is in 2020.3 (if any) - but hoping a Unity update will eventually mean ray tracing support for really impressive gfx and shadowing (and Unity 2021.2 beta has support for PS5 and XBOX X series - so TFP could end up producing console versions themselves).

I've been using 2020.3.14 for weeks and appears fine. Once builds gets tested using it, if it works well, then that will probably be A20's version.

 

Raytracing, DLSS, etc has to be supported by the render pipeline not just Unity in general. Those are HDRP features. We use the built in pipeline, which does not and may never support them. We have no plans to update 7dtd to HDRP, since it will take a lot of time. We hope to use HDRP on one of our next games.

[MechanicalLens]

10 minutes ago, faatal said:

 

I've been playing alpha version 2020.3.14 for weeks and appears fine.

 

*Fingers crossed this will happen someday*

[faatal]

1 hour ago, MechanicalLens said:

 

*Fingers crossed this will happen someday*

A2020.3.14? So how many centuries are we supposed to work on this game???

[MechanicalLens]

2 minutes ago, faatal said:

A2020.3.14? So how many centuries are we supposed to work on this game???

 

[samljer]

4 hours ago, faatal said:

A2020.3.14? So how many centuries are we supposed to work on this game???

Until its done, then for another few decades

[wolfbain5]

1. Have any new spawn groups been added to the prefab editor? like all female or all male? I know this also falls under modding, but since the editor is part of the game package it should also fall into a20 category.

it feels like some of the spawn group types are lacking. I mean the all female group would be great for the his/her bathroom spawns. the strip club, etc. a group for nurses and lab techs for hospitals and such. and yes although these can be modded, they are also easy additions that would make logical sense in certain prefabs. just as we have a workman group for joe builders and a military group for military poi's.

 

2. are the drop note quests getting an update to include the new zombie types? as it stands the party girl, lab tech missing from lady killer, as an example.

Edited August 4, 2021 by wolfbain5 (see edit history)

[Jost Amman]

@faatal Will the team ever work on implementing "sound dampening"?

It would be great before gold if we could have walls/terrain lower the effect of our sounds (or the hearing capability of the AI). Thanks

[Blake_]

2 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

@faatal Will the team ever work on implementing "sound dampening"?

It would be great before gold if we could have walls/terrain lower the effect of our sounds (or the hearing capability of the AI). Thanks

Oh, man, I feel you.

 

This was already asked quite a while ago. It isn't in because of the huge CPU overhead that it produces (each sound needs several calculations //"raycasts"// and several calls vs the player and the worst part is that it has to be in real time). I wouldn't get my hopes up beyond the most simple inplementation of the feature (already in : just based on distance), but 2024 CPUs and 2024 Unity might be able to handle it well enough  as an option.

 

There are tools for Unity (like SECTR AUDIO) that do all the sound calculations you need, but you need to bear in mind that those tools are designed for static worlds, not something as complex as 7dtd. You can't just cache an audio calculation that instantly changes when you break a block .

 

What is the "huge overhead" that I'm talking about? Well, when implementing it as is intended by default, I'm talking roughly 100% to 500% expected CPU overhead vs now in common situations (like when you are in a building and an outside horde appears, or you wake up 10 Zds in a building and change floors). So basically 0 fps. You Lose. Good day to you Sir (Charlie and the Chocolate factory reference).

That said, you never know with faatal. He can handle whiner dampening, why not sound dampening?  

[Jugginator]

20 hours ago, Matt115 said:

well a random thought -  do this alpha will add something to hallowen  event?

 

Let me guess, skeletons right? 😂

[meilodasreh]

58 minutes ago, Jugginator said:

 

Let me guess, skeletons right? 😂

If they add skeletons reading a newspaper in a busstop, he would be in heaven.

 

He's so positively weird, you just gotta love him 😃 

[Jost Amman]

3 hours ago, Blake_ said:

Oh, man, I feel you.

 

This was already asked quite a while ago. It isn't in because of the huge CPU overhead that it produces (each sound needs several calculations //"raycasts"// and several calls vs the player and the worst part is that it has to be in real time). I wouldn't get my hopes up beyond the most simple inplementation of the feature (already in : just based on distance), but 2024 CPUs and 2024 Unity might be able to handle it well enough  as an option.

 

There are tools for Unity (like SECTR AUDIO) that do all the sound calculations you need, but you need to bear in mind that those tools are designed for static worlds, not something as complex as 7dtd. You can't just cache an audio calculation that instantly changes when you break a block .

 

What is the "huge overhead" that I'm talking about? Well, when implementing it as is intended by default, I'm talking roughly 100% to 500% expected CPU overhead vs now in common situations (like when you are in a building and an outside horde appears, or you wake up 10 Zds in a building and change floors). So basically 0 fps. You Lose. Good day to you Sir (Charlie and the Chocolate factory reference).

That said, you never know with faatal. He can handle whiner dampening, why not sound dampening?  

Wow. Thanks for all the technical stuff... but I was talking maybe about something much simpler.

Maybe they could use the same code they use now to know if you're "inside", to mark you "behind walls" hence producing less sound. 

You know, games don't need to be RL simulations, they just need to trick you into thinking you're in a believable world. 

[dcsobral]

10 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

Wow. Thanks for all the technical stuff... but I was talking maybe about something much simpler.

Maybe they could use the same code they use now to know if you're "inside", to mark you "behind walls" hence producing less sound. 

You know, games don't need to be RL simulations, they just need to trick you into thinking you're in a believable world. 

I had thought of this as well. It can even be implemented as a mod! Sort of. Urban Combat has an example of doing something while indoors. Night Stalker has an example of being stealthier at night. The implementation of the latter changes light and noise multipliers. So it really isn't hard to make it so you make less noise while indoors. Depending on the material that's accurate, as sound gets absorbed instead of reflected. For other materials it's the opposite. We can't do anything about that, and we can't make it so the player is more silent just to zombies outside.  But everything I described above can be done as a mod right now in alpha 19.

 

To make it work sound would have to be split into two "channels". One indoor channel and one outdoor channel. Which channel is used for output depends on where the source is. Both channels contribute to detection but a divider is applied to the channel depending the "IsIndoor" status of whoever is doing the detection. For example, a zombie which is outdoors would divide the noise on the indoor channel and use the full noise of the outdoor channel, and vice versa. I suspect "InDoor" is only computed for players, and that would add CPU usage. And everything in this paragraph would need to be up to TFP.

 

And, of course, this would not be perfect by any means of imagination. For example, if you are indoors then any noise you make would be louder on the neighboring building than it would be between the two buildings. I'd still love something like this, though.

 

[Morloc]

20 hours ago, jorbascrumps said:

Underground structures were confirmed:

 

So....that means.....that............

 

 

CAVES ARE COMING BACK!!!!!

 

 

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc

[faatal]

6 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

@faatal Will the team ever work on implementing "sound dampening"?

It would be great before gold if we could have walls/terrain lower the effect of our sounds (or the hearing capability of the AI). Thanks

Not on the radar right now. It will add some performance overhead, so we would have to evaluate if worth it.

[faatal]

1 hour ago, Jost Amman said:

Wow. Thanks for all the technical stuff... but I was talking maybe about something much simpler.

Maybe they could use the same code they use now to know if you're "inside", to mark you "behind walls" hence producing less sound. 

The inside detection is not that great and could use more research. You also end up with cases like you are inside, but zombies are too, so it should not be muffled for them except maybe their indoors is really adjacent to yours in another room/building, so it should be muffled.

Edited August 4, 2021 by faatal (see edit history)

[q123]

wow 😲

 

 

 

 

Edited August 4, 2021 by q123 (see edit history)

[Guest]

I hope that the new Screamer Zombie will summon real hordes in new large and dense cities. @faatal, will it have new sounds?

[Ezed]

1 hour ago, q123 said:

wow 😲

 

 

 

 

I always thought the current screamer was kind of hot.  Unsure about the change.  Bah...who's kiddin'...I'd still hit that...

 

 

 

...with a steel club...

[Adam the Waster]

GREAT JOB with the funpimps. THIS IS A ZOMBIE 1000000/10


new screamer

 

[LewZephyr]

Sorry if this has already been answered.

@faatal 

If you are the wrong target for this question I apologize.

 

With A20 will Custom POI's auto download from the server that is hosting 7D2D?

This used to be the way at least for POI's and went away I think in A18 (I may mis-remember when).

It was a pretty cool feature and made it much easier than trying to walk non tech friends / family through how to copy the files to the correct directory.

 

Thanks for your time and insight.

[faatal]

7 hours ago, Kirill_226RUS said:

I hope that the new Screamer Zombie will summon real hordes in new large and dense cities. @faatal, will it have new sounds?

Have not heard about any new sounds.

[Blake_]

13 minutes ago, faatal said:

Have not heard about any new sounds.

Sounds good to me.