Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[unholyjoe]

3 hours ago, POCKET951 said:

could you answer these questions  please?

1.Will Steel/concrete blocks have just as much HP as they currently do in Alpha 19? (steel has 7500 HP and breaks down to reinforced concrete( (5000) HP for a total of 12,500 hp
2.Will they also use the same amount of materials to achieve?
3. will they also give roughly the same EXP?

 

if you have the skills you will start at wood and upgrade to each stage when you have all the resources to do so, if you have the resource and skill to out right build the steel block it takes a little time and will still have the hp of steel block which is 10,000. upgrading from wood to steel still makes it 10,000. down grading/destroying just keeps going until its gone (no more down grading to lower tier).

 

efficiency depends on your knowledge (perks/schematics learned) and amount of resources you have.

 

so again. wood block 500hp steel block 10,000hp.

 

upgrade path

frame shape=100 hp - wood=500 - cobblestone=1500 - concrete=5000 - steel=10000

 

[pregnable]

Looking good boys. 

 

Curious if I will be able to play feral sense on along with insane/nightmare/64/horde every night, in the new build...

 

How large is the feral sense range, in game or map terms that I would be able to understand?

[Jost Amman]

21 minutes ago, pregnable said:

How large is the feral sense range, in game or map terms that I would be able to understand?

Double the normal sense IIRC.

21 minutes ago, pregnable said:

Curious if I will be able to play feral sense on along with insane/nightmare/64/horde every night, in the new build...

Yes, faatal said it's a separate option.

[MechanicalLens]

3 hours ago, Gamida said:

I thought it was mentioned that blocks would no longer downgrade to next block but would be destroyed but would have a bit more HP.

 

Speaking of which, how is the HP of steel looking these days?

[faatal]

6 hours ago, A Nice Cup of Tea said:

 

Does the bicycle support another player on the back? Does it turn into a tandem?

No. I decided it was not worthy enough being the starter vehicle.

[Fanatical_Meat]

3 minutes ago, faatal said:

No. I decided it was not worthy enough being the starter vehicle.

Kill the bicycle its use is too narrow.

Add a cart you can store stuff in and pull around with you. Sort of like Valheim.

[faatal]

8 hours ago, HeLLKnight said:

New lighting looks promising, considering isn't Unity HDRP, but keep in mind the time of day could favor it.

 

@faatal Can you give us technical details about these new rendering and lighting they mentioned in the last streaming?

That would be for grass and small plants. There is a new grass shader Justin did that I merged into the old, since the old one had vertex anim and fade out we needed to keep. That uses different calculations for lighting, so it looks better. Justin also improved a lot of the textures and tweaked the world's ambient lighting. I also cleaned up the grass/plant mesh generation, it has much more variety now, but with the same simple collider shapes for all of them. Biome decoration generation code and values have also been tweaked.

[POCKET951]

Another question.. are there any plans for a tractor or a weed whacker or some kind of item/tool for quickly removing grass? a lawn mower maybe? maybe even like a scythe for ploughing fields?

also are we ever going to get any tools that allow us to harvest farm plots faster?

[retrogamingdev]

Sorry if this has been answered, but now that zombies can crawl through single blocks - can the players also do that?

[Roland]

5 minutes ago, retrogamingdev said:

Sorry if this has been answered, but now that zombies can crawl through single blocks - can the players also do that?

Zombies cannot crawl through single blocks. They can crouch and duck under low roof ceilings like in the attic or through spaces that are less than two meters but more than 1 meter-- just like the player can.

 

Select zombies may someday be able to move through 1 meter holes horizontally but the players will always be limited to passing through 1 meter holes vertically. faatal explained that our backpacks full of vehicles and concrete prevent us from crawling through 1-meter holes. However, much like Santa, we can easily pack as much as we want up and down 1-meter holes.

[HeemboGlobin]

@faatal Seeing the new awesome street prefabs used in POI towns, is it planned to make the dynamically spawned roads have similar dividing lines and look more natural at some point (or somehow replace dynamic roads with prefab chunks)? If not strictly planned is anything being considered at all regarding the roads, or has that been internally ruled out?

 

Also on a related note about roads, is it planned to have power lines along the dynamic roads at some point? I think Madmole may have told me a long time ago in a livestream that that was planned, not sure if things changed though.

 

And another unrelated question, I realize this is a fairly far-off thing to ask about seeing as even NPCs aren't in yet, but are there any broad plans to add a reputation system to the game in some form once factions are implemented? Maybe something like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. where for instance killing a certain dude might make the faction he belonged to hostile to the player but may increase rep with factions that oppose that NPC's faction?

 

And related to that question, will there be faction-specific NPC patrols or the like spawning out in the world in addition to bandits? Something similar to, for instance, the Brotherhood of Steel from Fallout or such. Actually come to think of it the relevancy of my previous question kind of hinges on this question, since you can't @%$# off a faction in the way I described if there are no actual killable faction NPCs wandering around lol.

 

If it's too early to ask about factions I understand, just thought I'd throw it out there.

[faatal]

2 hours ago, HeemboGlobin said:

@faatal Seeing the new awesome street prefabs used in POI towns, is it planned to make the dynamically spawned roads have similar dividing lines and look more natural at some point (or somehow replace dynamic roads with prefab chunks)? If not strictly planned is anything being considered at all regarding the roads, or has that been internally ruled out?

 

Also on a related note about roads, is it planned to have power lines along the dynamic roads at some point? I think Madmole may have told me a long time ago in a livestream that that was planned, not sure if things changed though.

 

And another unrelated question, I realize this is a fairly far-off thing to ask about seeing as even NPCs aren't in yet, but are there any broad plans to add a reputation system to the game in some form once factions are implemented? Maybe something like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. where for instance killing a certain dude might make the faction he belonged to hostile to the player but may increase rep with factions that oppose that NPC's faction?

 

And related to that question, will there be faction-specific NPC patrols or the like spawning out in the world in addition to bandits? Something similar to, for instance, the Brotherhood of Steel from Fallout or such. Actually come to think of it the relevancy of my previous question kind of hinges on this question, since you can't @%$# off a faction in the way I described if there are no actual killable faction NPCs wandering around lol.

 

If it's too early to ask about factions I understand, just thought I'd throw it out there.

You are asking the wrong guy. I don't really know what they are planning with any of that.

2 hours ago, Roland said:

 

Well...I'm not going to limit @faatal so really "select zombies" means whichever zombies faatal selects. He might choose one or choose them all. Maybe he'll think it just as funny as you to watch a cop or a biker squeeze through. 😁

Yeah, that could go either way. I usually just make stuff up as I go based on what someone might have wanted modified by what I want.

 

This guy needed something different, so today he got a vomit burst attack. Artists may change those particles, since those are just mine.

[Adam the Waster]

So the Raidioactive boy (lets name him phill)

is a AOE attacker? or is ls just a specials move. 


Also @faatal i have some questions
 

• Is the feral weight going to stay the same in terms of ability's or is it going to stay the same
• is the new marksman rifle still going to uses 7.62 or 44?
• Are some of the things that got new models long ago (Deer, pigs, bears) will they get a new model to match the new Standard 

 

[faatal]

5 hours ago, Adam the Waster said:

So the Raidioactive boy (lets name him phill)

is a AOE attacker? or is ls just a specials move. 

Also @faatal i have some questions

• Is the feral weight going to stay the same in terms of ability's or is it going to stay the same
• is the new marksman rifle still going to uses 7.62 or 44?
• Are some of the things that got new models long ago (Deer, pigs, bears) will they get a new model to match the new Standard 

It is just called the Rad zombie.

It is an AOE attacker by using its special move. It can still hit you like normal.

Feral weight?

Don't know.

Probably new models before gold.

[meilodasreh]

On 9/9/2021 at 7:51 PM, Roland said:

All the new weapons make it awesome and you CAN craft them from day 1 without needing a recipe so crafters can rejoice that they aren't so reliant upon loot and traders.

Really, not even locked behind a perk or anything, just have the mats and have one crafted from your backpack?

I would assume it at least requires a workbench or some tool (wrench?).

 

Else, what kind of character am I supposed to be, knowing how to makeshift things like guns from scrap, but can't figure out how to make coffee or bacon and eggs without a recipe.

 

...oh wait,...Sheldon Cooper, right?

I see now.

Cool background story. Post-big-bang zombie apocalypse.

 

9 hours ago, unholyjoe said:

oh and occasionally Jen will drop a hint towards that as well.

Anything Jen drops will be much apprechiated.

[MechanicalLens]

Will A20 experimental be available for the public when it releases, or will it be a closed experimental that is locked behind a dedicated testing team? Just wondering.  Also, which business decision would be wiser?

[playlessNamer]

loooong time ago any dev announced a stamp system for biomes but i havnt hearded anything about it anymore. He say this system can spawn prebuild things into any biomes like a nice looking little stonearch in the desert or lakes in the forest. Technically a cosmetic poi spawning system into wilderness.

I think there was a screenshot of a stonearch in the desert too.

 

Is this still on the plan? This sounds to awesome to have little sweet designed poi everywhere in the wilderness.

I imagine a oasis in the desert, ancient stonecircles in the forest, gigantic prebuild canyon fit into landscape and also very small destroyed wood cabins in the outback, ..

 

I think this was years ago talked about and i cant find it anymore. You know what i talk about?

[onark]

Hi, I really hope devs read my personal opinion, I love this game since years ago but I'm tired of starting a new game over and over again, I want to play in a creative game for creating perdurable buildings and things such as this, wasting multiple hours for something, not for losing everything each x months. Just leave it as it is now and start to develope a new game, like 7D2D2 if you want, that way you can do every new thing you want but without the pressure of fandom.

[Survager]

6 hours ago, faatal said:

It is just called the Rad zombie.

It is an AOE attacker by using its special move. It can still hit you like normal.

Feral weight?

Don't know.

Probably new models before gold.

Shouldn't he throw bunches aimed at the player, as the zombie Cop does?

[Naz]

@faatal If you have a sec could you look at these performance tweaks and share your thoughts? if they check out with you, they could give a substantial boost to performance in a20 and they're small changes. I can measure that things are better with them, but i still don't understand the "how" they work as well as they do and i don't know if there are any potential issues running the game with them.

1 is locking the game to 4 physical cores, helps more the more cores/threads you have. I saw a 20-25% improvement in Valheim with the same tweak so maybe it's a unity thing?

2 is editing a file called boot.config , this has a similar boost to the 4 core affinity tweak, however it's not compatible with eac, so currently it can only be used in sp. Using both of these tweaks substantially boost performance. I don't know how useful or practical to implement the 4 core affinity tweak could be, however the boot.config tweak is a very simple change and as long as there are no side effects it might be worth changing it in vanilla. It would also be nice to know what exactly the changes are and what they do 😛

I'll leave benchmark numbers on 2 systems and details on the changes to the boot.config in the spoiler bellow (so i don't clutter up the thread :P)

 

Spoiler

All setting set to ultra except motion blurs disabled. The boot config tweak was brought up in this thread by DonDregon. The file in question is located here:
7 Days To Die\7DaysToDie_Data\boot.config

Current boot.config	Tweaked boot config
gfx-enable-native-gfx-jobs= wait-for-native-de@%$#=0 scripting-runtime-version=latest vr-enabled=0 hdr-display-enabled=0 gc-max-time-slice=3	gfx-enable-gfx-jobs=1 gfx-enable-native-gfx-jobs=1 wait-for-native-de@%$#=0 scripting-runtime-version=latest vr-enabled=0 hdr-display-enabled=0 gc-max-time-slice=3

system 1
CPU: i7 6700K | GPU: 1080ti | Ram: 32GB DDR4 3000Mhz


system 2
CPU: R9 5950x | GPU: 3090 | Ram: 64GB DDR4 3600Mhz

 

[Roland]

7 hours ago, meilodasreh said:

Really, not even locked behind a perk or anything, just have the mats and have one crafted from your backpack?

I would assume it at least requires a workbench or some tool (wrench?).

 

Else, what kind of character am I supposed to be, knowing how to makeshift things like guns from scrap, but can't figure out how to make coffee or bacon and eggs without a recipe.

 

lol...funny but true. We cannot make bacon and eggs but we can throw together makeshift weapons with no special tool or workbench...just normal backpack crafting. Unless you perk into those weapon types you can only make the brown level of them and they are pretty garbage.  But if you get a quest reward of 150 rounds, its a nice feeling to craft up a gun that can use those rounds. Efficient way of playing and the best use of that ammo? No....but fun.

 

Have fun for six days and then weep on the seventh. That's my motto!

5 hours ago, MechanicalLens said:

Will A20 experimental be available for the public when it releases, or will it be a closed experimental that is locked behind a dedicated testing team? Just wondering.  Also, which business decision would be wiser?

A20 will be released exactly like past alphas. There will be a streamer weekend and then the experimental will release on a Monday for anyone to play who goes to the beta opt-in interface on Steam and selects latest_experimental. Latest_experimental will not appear in the list of versions until that future Monday.

[Adam the Waster]

9 hours ago, faatal said:

 

Feral weight?

 

i REALLY hate Auto correct 
"oh Grammarly will help you" I guess not

 

But what I was trying to ask was:  Will the Feral Wight get any new abilities?  

 

[Gamida]

19 hours ago, Roland said:

Zombies cannot crawl through single blocks. They can crouch and duck under low roof ceilings like in the attic or through spaces that are less than two meters but more than 1 meter-- just like the player can.

 

Select zombies may someday be able to move through 1 meter holes horizontally but the players will always be limited to passing through 1 meter holes vertically. faatal explained that our backpacks full of vehicles and concrete prevent us from crawling through 1-meter holes. However, much like Santa, we can easily pack as much as we want up and down 1-meter holes.

any chance the ability to do it (when added for the zombies) can be turned on and off for players in xml or have a menu option. Will it be able to be modded at all or something hidden deep within the game code?

[Roland]

4 hours ago, playlessNamer said:

loooong time ago any dev announced a stamp system for biomes but i havnt hearded anything about it anymore. He say this system can spawn prebuild things into any biomes like a nice looking little stonearch in the desert or lakes in the forest. Technically a cosmetic poi spawning system into wilderness.

I think there was a screenshot of a stonearch in the desert too.

 

Is this still on the plan? This sounds to awesome to have little sweet designed poi everywhere in the wilderness.

I imagine a oasis in the desert, ancient stonecircles in the forest, gigantic prebuild canyon fit into landscape and also very small destroyed wood cabins in the outback, ..

 

I think this was years ago talked about and i cant find it anymore. You know what i talk about?

 

You don't have to look back toooo far. Just the beginning of this thread...

 

On 10/28/2020 at 6:49 PM, madmole said:

2) Random Generation Update

• New stamp tech that will allow artist created features such as mountains, hills, rivers, etc. to be placed in biomes. There will be a stable of different land features for the game to choose from.

[Blake_]

3 hours ago, Naz said:

@faatal If you have a sec could you look at these performance tweaks and share your thoughts? if they check out with you, they could give a substantial boost to performance in a20 and they're small changes. I can measure that things are better with them, but i still don't understand the "how" they work as well as they do and i don't know if there are any potential issues running the game with them.

1 is locking the game to 4 physical cores, helps more the more cores/threads you have. I saw a 20-25% improvement in Valheim with the same tweak so maybe it's a unity thing?

2 is editing a file called boot.config , this has a similar boost to the 4 core affinity tweak, however it's not compatible with eac, so currently it can only be used in sp. Using both of these tweaks substantially boost performance. I don't know how useful or practical to implement the 4 core affinity tweak could be, however the boot.config tweak is a very simple change and as long as there are no side effects it might be worth changing it in vanilla. It would also be nice to know what exactly the changes are and what they do 😛

I'll leave benchmark numbers on 2 systems and details on the changes to the boot.config in the spoiler bellow (so i don't clutter up the thread :P)

 

  Reveal hidden contents

All setting set to ultra except motion blurs disabled. The boot config tweak was brought up in this thread by DonDregon. The file in question is located here:
7 Days To Die\7DaysToDie_Data\boot.config

Current boot.config	Tweaked boot config
gfx-enable-native-gfx-jobs= wait-for-native-de@%$#=0 scripting-runtime-version=latest vr-enabled=0 hdr-display-enabled=0 gc-max-time-slice=3	gfx-enable-gfx-jobs=1 gfx-enable-native-gfx-jobs=1 wait-for-native-de@%$#=0 scripting-runtime-version=latest vr-enabled=0 hdr-display-enabled=0 gc-max-time-slice=3

system 1
CPU: i7 6700K | GPU: 1080ti | Ram: 32GB DDR4 3000Mhz


system 2
CPU: R9 5950x | GPU: 3090 | Ram: 64GB DDR4 3600Mhz

 

Wow. I'm telling you @faatal THAT is not spawn. And it works. 5%-15% average increase in fps on my potato GPU 780M with 4800MQ 4 core CPU. DDR3L RAM (dual channel 32gigs 1666Mhz). 

 

EAC was off and it was worse before modifying the boot. I'm not sure why it runs that much better for free, but I suspect telling the boot exactly what to do frees CPU and therefore increases performance to various degrees depending on your hardware.

 

It was like this for me: AVG-low: 24fps AVG-high: 94fps // And after applying the boot AVG-low: 32fps Avg high: 108fps. I didn't use a fps program (hence, the "Average" thing) but it was noticeable at plain sight. 

 

My video settings are that of a peasant of course, VSync off, Half quality textures and almost everything turned off except shadows, which are near, and view distance (high).