Curious things.

[Smicer]

Thanks for the input.

I will consider this for bookshelves.

[Liesel Weppen]

3 minutes ago, Danidas said:

If no loot is left in the container then getting with in 15 blocks of it is bad and should be avoided as the loot will never respawn. Since the respawn timer is reset each time that you do so and forces you to have to wait longer for the loot. Now if you leave something in the container that will break the proximity check and allow loot to repawn

But if there is an item in the chest, on respawn this item will be removed for the new spawn? That means if i use a POI as a second base and leave "emergency stuff" in a (poi-)container there and don't come back within <loot respawn time> my stuff will vanish?

Never tested but in earlier games we intentionally emptied the containers, because we thought they won't respawn if not empty.

 

And they are doing proximity checks for every! single! container, just to reset a respawn timer? Wow, now i know how to cause performance issues. *lol*

[katarynna]

If you take over a poi and leave emergency stuff in a poi container, it will be completely safe (unless you are on a multiplayer server and another player takes it).

 

If you wait til the respawn time is up, remove all your loot from the poi container, then look at the container again, it will be back to "untouched" lootable state, and you can get loot from it again. If you never remove all your loot from the poi container, it will never reset and never be lootable again, until it is emptied.

 

If there is a building close to your base that you will be passing close by often, put a single plant fiber or piece of wood or the like in any container you definitely want to loot again, like gun safes and book shelves. After the respawn timer has passed, remove your left-behind item, wait a sec, then the container should be filled with loot again.

[Solomon]

On 11/2/2020 at 10:34 PM, Kalen said:

Trees generate lag

Really?

[Crater Creator]

On 11/2/2020 at 4:45 PM, Danidas said:

Each player placed tree has a counter to determine when it will grow to the next stage. Which for a single tree is very minor but as you add more and more it gets exponentially worse for the server cpu that on top of that is keeping all the data synced between all the players. Now on top of keeping it synced and processing the growth timers it also has to handle the map data for it all as well. When combined with how inefficient everything else runs on a server for this game it can put a noticeable load on the server. Especially when you consider that most rentable servers are very weak in the cpu/memory department.

 

 

That’s a plausible enough hypothesis, except if the timers really were the issue, then I’d expect reports of massive lag whenever people erect large concrete bases, for which each block takes time to dry.

[Maharin]

30 minutes ago, Crater Creator said:

That’s a plausible enough hypothesis, except if the timers really were the issue, then I’d expect reports of massive lag whenever people erect large concrete bases, for which each block takes time to dry.

I sure hope they aren't using timers for that kind of stuff.  Horribly inefficient. 

[meganoth]

There are items in the game (for example the coffee machine) that have so many polygons that TFP does not want you to be able to craft them for performance reason. They fear that trolls or even unsuspecting players could just fill a small place on the server with such items and overload all clients.

 

Now trees are probably not as bad as coffee machines because they have a minimum distance for placement (the reason for this should be apparent now), whereas the coffee machine density is effectively 1 per block (except for the z axis because of SI).

 

Timers can be very efficiently handled by adding them to a list sorted by time. Then every tick you just need to look at the first bucket for timers that run out.

 

So my guess is trees lag because of polygon count on the clients and not because of timers on the server.

 

 

[Solomon]

18 hours ago, meganoth said:

There are items in the game (for example the coffee machine) that have so many polygons that TFP does not want you to be able to craft them for performance reason. They fear that trolls or even unsuspecting players could just fill a small place on the server with such items and overload all clients.

Just a question but how did that even happen?

 

I dont want to sound negative but the whole game is kind of ugly even for 2015 standards, so i dont understand how can something what looks like early 2010 graphics have that high poly count that it runs an active chance of lagging up a game especially considering that it doesnt even have any moving parts like a turret for example.

[meganoth]

5 hours ago, Solomon said:

Just a question but how did that even happen?

 

I dont want to sound negative but the whole game is kind of ugly even for 2015 standards, so i dont understand how can something what looks like early 2010 graphics have that high poly count that it runs an active chance of lagging up a game especially considering that it doesnt even have any moving parts like a turret for example.

This is mostly guess-work and conclusions from having heard a lot about the topic:

 

* In a normal static world game you have high- and low-poly count things as well, but there the designers simply can put only one of those items (like the coffee machine) into a room and carefully craft each szene to have a uniform poly count even if some items have more or less. In a dynamically changeable world like TFP this is done as well by the designers, but in game the player can change this dramatically. Someone can make a room full of coffee machines and it will tank FPS.

 

* TFP uses voxels and then transforms the voxel world into the normal triangle-based graphics. The transformation costs a lot of power as every other voxel game that ever was built proves. A lot of well-known and well-understood optimizations that you can use with a static prerendered world based on painted walls instead of blocks won't work. For example in a tradtional world you can make a wall out of one big texture or one small texture that endlessly repeats itself. A voxel world is broken up into blocks, so you need to render a texture for each and every block, which costs CPU and GPU time.

 

* Relative power of CPUs and GPUs, their data paths, their capabilities are all optimized for traditional games. This is a voxel game and it has different needs. It might make heavy use of routines that are seldom used in traditional games and have not been optimized. While it might not be able to efficiently use the routines that are heavily used by the majority of 3D games. Naturally the focus of graphics driver programmers and graphic engine programmers go mostly to those routines.

 

* Show me other games by small studios doing a game and I show you mostly graphics that is behind the times as well. I haven't seen Ark lately, but is that game better? Is "The Forest" a graphics highlight? Or are you simply comparing this game with cyberpunk 2070? Well, a graphics department with 100 programmers and 200 artists will do better than one with 2 programmers and 4 artists (the numbers are just guesses)

 

 

 

[Solomon]

37 minutes ago, meganoth said:

* In a normal static world game you have high- and low-poly count things as well, but there the designers simply can put only one of those items (like the coffee machine) into a room and carefully craft each scene to have a uniform poly count even if some items have more or less. In a dynamically changeable world like TFP this is done as well by the designers, but in game the player can change this dramatically. Someone can make a room full of coffee machines and it will tank FPS.

I understand that but what is the reason for those to have high poly count at all?

 

Looking at how a coffee pot looks like ingame its nothing too fancy to justify having high poly count compared to for example a generator what player can actually make and may place more than 1.

 

51 minutes ago, meganoth said:

* Show me other games by small studios doing a game and I show you mostly graphics that is behind the times as well. I haven't seen Ark lately, but is that game better? Is "The Forest" a graphics highlight? Or are you simply comparing this game with cyberpunk 2070? Well, a graphics department with 100 programmers and 200 artists will do better than one with 2 programmers and 4 artists (the numbers are just guesses)

Warframe looks pretty good thought they are no longer a small studio because they grow out from that stage around 2016-17 (im not sure the exact date). Deep rock galactic left early access this year, it looks pretty good.

 

My point is that i cant shake it off why  a game where one of the biome floor looks like some poster laid down on the ground have trees lagging the players and other questionable elements. Im okay with the voxel system using up lots of power and how big holes can cause problems but im not okay with such sillyness.

[JCrook1028]

1 hour ago, Solomon said:

Looking at how a coffee pot looks like ingame its nothing too fancy to justify having high poly count compared to for example a generator what player can actually make and may place more than 1.

^^ This is exactly my thought on the "high poly count" coffee pot. If that look is the result of something than can break the game if overused then just don't high poly it. it still looks like just another basic clutter loot item.

[Solomon]

24 minutes ago, JCrook1028 said:

^^ This is exactly my thought on the "high poly count" coffee pot. If that look is the result of something than can break the game if overused then just don't high poly it. it still looks like just another basic clutter loot item.

It reminds me of that infamous skyrim mod what boosts fps by simply removing freacking thousands of meaningless clutter/decoration items. Seriously if something whats basically nothing but a container causes problems in the game it should be removed/remade. Seriously who is going to notice if TFP decreases the poly-count for it?

 

(hint this mod on the pics only removed rocks)

 

 

[meganoth]

2 hours ago, Solomon said:

I understand that but what is the reason for those to have high poly count at all?

 

Looking at how a coffee pot looks like ingame its nothing too fancy to justify having high poly count compared to for example a generator what player can actually make and may place more than 1.

 

I brought up coffee machines as an example. It might not even have a high poly count, I'm just guessing it could be one of those. A generator may or may not have a high poly count as well (it might also be just a texture on a rectangular thingy with a very low poly count). Even if it has, mass producing is mildly expensive and it could be a compromise because it just needs to be craftable. If you really want a good example of a high poly count item, ask madmole.

 

Trees need at minimum of polygons so they don't look blocky, because of their size and the shape that should look naturally grown. Probably they don't have the highest count by far, but even with a medium poly count their impact can be high because they can fill your whole viewpoint far into the distance.

 

2 hours ago, Solomon said:

Warframe looks pretty good thought they are no longer a small studio because they grow out from that stage around 2016-17 (im not sure the exact date). Deep rock galactic left early access this year, it looks pretty good.

 

My point is that i cant shake it off why  a game where one of the biome floor looks like some poster laid down on the ground have trees lagging the players and other questionable elements. Im okay with the voxel system using up lots of power and how big holes can cause problems but im not okay with such sillyness.

 

DRC uses a common trick, comic style looks much better than realistic style for the same poly count. Apart from that the dev seems comparable to TFP. Now I just looked at a random picture from DRC:

 

Notice the blocky nature of everything. Notice how the round tube has distinct edges and the vegetation is nothing more than a few polygons.

 

So you really want to tell me this looks much better than 7D2D ? Maybe you just didn't look closer because of all the action.

 

[Solomon]

12 hours ago, meganoth said:

DRC uses a common trick, comic style looks much better than realistic style for the same poly count. Apart from that the dev seems comparable to TFP. Now I just looked at a random picture from DRC:

 

Notice the blocky nature of everything. Notice how the round tube has distinct edges and the vegetation is nothing more than a few polygons.

 

So you really want to tell me this looks much better than 7D2D ? Maybe you just didn't look closer because of all the action.

Thats true but the whole game looks like that, everything has hard edges and few polygons.

 

7D2D on the other side as i said still has an entire biome floor looking like some stretched out flat image, sinks what does not seem to have real depth and some of the most horrid water i ever seen.

 

 

No back again, i didnt want to diss how the game looks because im okay with it but wanted to point out that items shouldnt ever be in a game if they are capatable of breaking it just be existing.

[meganoth]

4 hours ago, Solomon said:

Thats true but the whole game looks like that, everything has hard edges and few polygons.

 

7D2D on the other side as i said still has an entire biome floor looking like some stretched out flat image, sinks what does not seem to have real depth and some of the most horrid water i ever seen.

 

Work in progress.

 

4 hours ago, Solomon said:

 

 

No back again, i didnt want to diss how the game looks because im okay with it but wanted to point out that items shouldnt ever be in a game if they are capatable of breaking it just be existing.

 

Then they would need to remove options that increase zombie numbers and probably electricity completely. Two elements in the game that easily tank your FPS if you have a potato and use specific options. Just like someone playing Call of Duty has when he plays it on a potato in 4k with ultra settings.

 

While I think they want to keep all problematic stuff out of the hands of players you have to be aware that they may not be able to do it completely without seriously limiting the game. I don't need a fail-proof game if it means everyone has to be prevented from doing interesting stuff.

 

At the moment a feature to collect stuff in the world to put it into your home base was not implemented because of this. You want more of those limitations?

 

 

[Solomon]

1 minute ago, meganoth said:

Then they would need to remove options that increase zombie numbers and probably electricity completely

Yea except that electricity and zombies are core elements of the game while the coffee pot is not.

 

2 minutes ago, meganoth said:

At the moment a feature to collect stuff in the world to put it into your home base was not implemented because of this. You want more of those limitations?

No i want them to fix those items so this feature can come alive.

[meganoth]

7 minutes ago, Solomon said:

Yea except that electricity and zombies are core elements of the game while the coffee pot is not.

 

No i want them to fix those items so this feature can come alive.

I'd say that trees in the world are pretty important (maybe even core element) as well and trees were the stuff you were complaining about.

 

[Solomon]

6 minutes ago, meganoth said:

I'd say that trees in the world are pretty important (maybe even core element) as well and trees were the stuff you were complaining about.

See the second paragraph you quoted. Fix the issue what causes them to affect fps this much.

[meganoth]

17 minutes ago, Solomon said:

See the second paragraph you quoted. Fix the issue what causes them to affect fps this much.

And I explained that this might not be possible with trees. Not if they want them to have a comparable quality and style to the rest of the game. They can't make bushes look great and 3D and at the same time have trees as 2D potemkin card board images. Or lets rephrase that as "they could but surely won't"

 

[Crater Creator]

On 11/7/2020 at 10:29 AM, Solomon said:

I understand that but what is the reason for those to have high poly count at all?

 

Looking at how a coffee pot looks like ingame its nothing too fancy to justify having high poly count compared to for example a generator what player can actually make and may place more than 1.

On 11/7/2020 at 12:22 PM, Solomon said:

It reminds me of that infamous skyrim mod what boosts fps by simply removing freacking thousands of meaningless clutter/decoration items. Seriously if something whats basically nothing but a container causes problems in the game it should be removed/remade. Seriously who is going to notice if TFP decreases the poly-count for it?

 

I think you're looking at it backwards.  The coffee pots aren't holding back performance, because the devs only use them sparingly.  There's no problem with the coffee pots as is.  They'd only be a problem if they were craftable, and craftable for cheap.  All that removing the coffee pots would do is mean less decorative 'flavor' items to make rooms and buildings seem less generic.

 

[Roland]

It is important to remember as well that coffee pots and most "problematic" blocks can be modded to be craftable and adding a recipe for a block is among the easiest modding there is. They don't want to keep these things out of the hands of the players. They want to provide a stable environment that makes playing the game enjoyable for the widest range of gaming rigs as possible. It's the same with environmental spawns of zombies. If you want to increase the spawns by 2x 4x 8x or more you can do it quite easily. But, TFP isn't going to make it be default because they can't guarantee that people running their minimum required specs will be able to have a stable game if they do it.

 

If you want a coffee pot recipe then create one and add it. Same goes for any block that is restricted from being crafted in the default version of the game. If your rig can handle it then do it. The devs are designing for a community of players and not specifically for you and your specs. It might be frustrating being limited by others with less powerful machines than you but you really are just limiting yourself if you refuse to add a few recipes to your game for things you want or doubling or tripling the zombie spawns if your rig can handle it on some misguided belief that these things SHOULD be in the default version.

[Gamida]

As for loot respawn, you can try this video. I haven't watched this one yet but did watch his earlier one. I think this one is updated for A19 and one I watched was done in A18.

This one also accounts for vertical loot from you (like upstairs in a building) from what I can tell.