Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Barra]

Is alpha 8.8 stable runing for you on win 10 ?

 

Thought I could kill a bit time by beeing nostalgic but the game wont let me

[jdzane]

You know it's release day when the forums start taking too long to respond after 12 noon central time lol.

[Snowydeath]

3 minutes ago, jdzane said:

You know it's release day when the forums start taking too long to respond after 12 noon central time lol.

Very true but I still can't download the update (it doesn't appear in betas) 😭

[JayzenFreeze]

Gimme Gimme Gimme Gimme Gimme Gimme

[jdzane]

If you base it on what Roland said about someone being able to take a 4 hour nap, it probably isn't coming for another 2 hours

 

[Snowydeath]

5 minutes ago, jdzane said:

If you base it on what Roland said about someone being able to take a 4 hour nap, it probably isn't coming for another 2 hours

 

Very true, probably doing the rollout per region like steam usually does. Shouldn't take too long but could take a couple hours based on the stability of the servers. I'm cool with waiting but I'm just soooooo excited. This should tie me over until the release of Starfield, Cities Skylines 2 and Armored Core 6!

 

As soon as I mention it, it goes live!! Also 10.7 GB whew! Thank Roland for gigabit internet!

Edited June 12, 2023 by Snowydeath
edit (see edit history)

[Riamus]

With the forum lagging so badly, what is the best place to watch for the announcement of the release?  Wait for a Steam news feed to appear?  Refresh the store page for the game on Steam?  Keep watching the forums regardless of lag?

[unholyjoe]

2 minutes ago, Riamus said:

With the forum lagging so badly, what is the best place to watch for the announcement of the release?  Wait for a Steam news feed to appear?  Refresh the store page for the game on Steam?  Keep watching the forums regardless of lag?

try

https://steamdb.info/app/251570/history/

[beerfly]

Well, it is out. Have fun everyone. Thank you Pimps ! 

[Thaledwyn]

Uuuuuuh a new animated TFP Logo!

 

Nice!

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, Neminsis said:

The same could be said about any non standard, not perfectly min/maxed, disorganized or haphazard playstyle because we know that all 7 days players are letter perfect gaming pros or will be if only they stick with it long enough? This isn't Elden Ring and most of the people that play it are casual, so yes it would be a good idea to accommodate the broadest number of players as possible so long as it doesn't affect other players negatively or are exploitable to bypass progression. You want everyone to have the best experience possible, right?

 

"so long as it doesn't affect other players" which it usually does when you change game mechanics.

 

I would say the game as it is balanced now rewards team play when you play in a team. What you seem to propose is balancing it so you can be as effective as a selfish person in a team which would mean there would be no incentive for team play. That would affect everyone.

 

 

1 hour ago, Neminsis said:

Interesting that you'd take that position on tools. The reason why tools are unique is because you need to be able to craft them as soon as possible because every minute you have to wait is experience lost when you rely on that tool to get your experience. That isn't true for any other crafting task.

 

Well sure, if we are talking about min/maxing and perfect play. In reality many players waste hundreds of opportunities for getting XP and still have fun. I usually am up to 10 levels behind our INT/trader/xp whore player in our group by the time we cross level 50. Guess what, it doesn't matter, since we don't play PvP I don't feel any hindrance and usually one of the guys with more levels gets killed a lot more than I do.

 

And I am not sure if you wrote this before reading the rest of my post, but I have shown that a builder would get the better tools at exaclty the same time, independant of who reads the tools magazines. So your point is about xp gain, but not about magazines and cooperation at all.

 

 

1 hour ago, Neminsis said:

But it has everything to do with it. If you're not questing you're relying on shared exp and/or what you can get from resource gathering to be able to progress your resource gathering perks, for example, and since your rate of exp gain is intrinsically linked to how much damage that tool does...

 

And since you don't get the tool any earlier when the looter brings back the magazines instead of the ability to craft the better tool, that point is not about magazines at all.

 

1 hour ago, Neminsis said:

Right now gathering exp seems to be the same as it was when you could find that iron axe or pick in the trunk of a car before you even made it to your first trader, and could level up your tool crafting the same time you leveled your resource gathering and seems to be geared towards those conditions which have obviously changed.

Except that they sell at the trader, sure.

 

Ah, so what you really want to say is that you are missing the progression shortcut by putting all points into miner69er and craft a quality3 iron pickaxe on say day 2 or have that lucky find in a trunk? Am I right in assuming this is the issue?

Since that is gone you builders have to follow a rather slow tool progression like everyone else (Or do you think the PER player is happy about using a hunting rifle at first?). Well ok, if XP gathering now proves to be much slower for builders than for looters then surely TFP can increase the XP gain from upgrading blocks or hitting blocks until it is balanced for everyone. Nothing to do with magazines. Apart from that you should not be surprised that the game by default wants everyone to follow the progression.

 

 

 

[Elukka]

I had to pause the game to come here and comment: crazy performance upgrade! 4K 120fps rock steady now! First I thought I had wrong resolution or some setting at minimum but no, all good. I was expecting the usual 70-80fps.

3080 + 5800

 

Boy is this forum's server on it's knees or what 😆

[jdzane]

Anyone else having issues with randomly generated worlds not having traders? I've tried 2 different worlds, and both say "no trader" when I get to the end of the tutorial level.

[jdzane]

nvm moot point, I can't randomly generate any world, as I keep getting an "out of memory" error.

[sf87yomata]

Thanks team for another amazing update team! Having the best birthday ever! 

[BFT2020]

1 hour ago, jdzane said:

Anyone else having issues with randomly generated worlds not having traders? I've tried 2 different worlds, and both say "no trader" when I get to the end of the tutorial level.

 

Try quitting the game and restarting it.  Sometimes RWG won't release memory when you make maps (known bug).

[jdzane]

14 minutes ago, BFT2020 said:

 

Try quitting the game and restarting it.  Sometimes RWG won't release memory when you make maps (known bug).

Thanks, I'll give that another try. I had quit and restarted after each one. I think it may also be my fault, my D drive (where 7D2D is) had less than 10 gb of free space, and my C drive (windows location) had less than 2 GB free. I'm clearing up some space, then I'll do a restart, kill the BS I don't need running in the background, and then try again. 

 

Glad to know it's a known bug though.

[ParadiseLostUK]

The visual improvement with this alpha is outstanding, all the new assets, art, POI updates & textures are a significant upgrade.  All this and the performance so far seems to better as well.  The downside is that I'm constantly being blindsided by zombies as I'm too busy admiring the décor.  

 

 

[sillls]

Holy crap! TFP's want to drop Alpha-21 today??? Nice!  😃

[Roland]

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

Well ok, if XP gathering now proves to be much slower for builders than for looters then surely TFP can increase the XP gain from upgrading blocks or hitting blocks until it is balanced for everyone. Nothing to do with magazines. Apart from that you should not be surprised that the game by default wants everyone to follow the progression.

Im not sure how builders would increase slower if they are allied with the looters since they’ll share in all the kill xp but the looters won’t share in all the block upgrade xp. 
 

Then again if they are playing shared xp as intended and not sharing xp from kilometers away then they have my respect. 

[LostBoy]

19 minutes ago, jdzane said:

Thanks, I'll give that another try. I had quit and restarted after each one. I think it may also be my fault, my D drive (where 7D2D is) had less than 10 gb of free space, and my C drive (windows location) had less than 2 GB free. I'm clearing up some space, then I'll do a restart, kill the BS I don't need running in the background, and then try again. 

 

Glad to know it's a known bug though.

 

I believe I saw elsewhere that 10k worlds are about 11 GB, so you may be having space issues on your Drive.

 

Edited June 12, 2023 by LostBoy (see edit history)

[Riamus]

Some thoughts after playing A21...

 

• For some reason my FPS is fluctuating wildly even while not moving and staring at the ground where no grass is moving.  60 to 30 to 60 to 30 and so on (not exact values, that's just for reference) about every second.  I've played around some with graphics settings but so far haven't found the right setting to change this.  I turned off vsync and ended up with around 75 to 40 to 75 to 40.  This helps a little since my monitor is 60 so there's less difference from monitor max to the low level of the fluctuation.  Still, swinging a stone ax tends to have noticeable pauses or stutters in the animation because of this and running can sometimes be noticeable as well.  Never had this problem with A20.
• Graphics and new art assets look great.  I love the new stained glass - I only saw it in Jen's so not positive it'll look the same when we make it.  The roads look much better and the additional vehicles really make the world feel more real to me.
• Zombies seem to hit harder than in A20.  Not a big deal but a little getting used to.  Bleed effects from zombies also seem to trigger more often.
• Loving the power attack of the spear.  Great change from throwing it.
• Wish we had more door shapes for wood doors - only single or double and nothing else.  I guess all the new shapes we saw were metal only.
• I put some new windows in and I'm liking them as well.
• There seem to be way more snakes than before.  Not a big deal but I hate trying to see them in the grass.
• Trader compounds (at least Jen's) look so much better.  I know I saw them in the streams but in game they look even better.

Overall this is looking great.  A couple of issues that came up...  I got stuck in a door that I opened and ran through and so was in the same spot as the open door and couldn't move.  This was in Jen's.  The person I played with repaired a shovel and it disappeared (they say they definitely didn't scrap it but that might be the case so no guarantee of a bug there).

[betam4x]

The absolute best feature of the game is the fun pimps logo at startup.

 

Fight me.

 

16 minutes ago, Riamus said:

Some thoughts after playing A21...

 

• For some reason my FPS is fluctuating wildly even while not moving and staring at the ground where no grass is moving.  60 to 30 to 60 to 30 and so on (not exact values, that's just for reference) about every second.  I've played around some with graphics settings but so far haven't found the right setting to change this.  I turned off vsync and ended up with around 75 to 40 to 75 to 40.  This helps a little since my monitor is 60 so there's less difference from monitor max to the low level of the fluctuation.  Still, swinging a stone ax tends to have noticeable pauses or stutters in the animation because of this and running can sometimes be noticeable as well.  Never had this problem with A20.
• Graphics and new art assets look great.  I love the new stained glass - I only saw it in Jen's so not positive it'll look the same when we make it.  The roads look much better and the additional vehicles really make the world feel more real to me.
• Zombies seem to hit harder than in A20.  Not a big deal but a little getting used to.  Bleed effects from zombies also seem to trigger more often.
• Loving the power attack of the spear.  Great change from throwing it.
• Wish we had more door shapes for wood doors - only single or double and nothing else.  I guess all the new shapes we saw were metal only.
• I put some new windows in and I'm liking them as well.
• There seem to be way more snakes than before.  Not a big deal but I hate trying to see them in the grass.
• Trader compounds (at least Jen's) look so much better.  I know I saw them in the streams but in game they look even better.

Overall this is looking great.  A couple of issues that came up...  I got stuck in a door that I opened and ran through and so was in the same spot as the open door and couldn't move.  This was in Jen's.  The person I played with repaired a shovel and it disappeared (they say they definitely didn't scrap it but that might be the case so no guarantee of a bug there).

 

The game runs great for me, but admittedly I have very high end hardware (RTX 4090, Ryzen 7950X, 64 gb RAM, 4 TB PCIE Gen4 SSD) It appears to have far fewer freezes overall vs. Alpha 20.

 

Have you tried using Vulkan to see if your issues go away?

[faatal]

20 minutes ago, Riamus said:

• For some reason my FPS is fluctuating wildly even while not moving and staring at the ground where no grass is moving.  60 to 30 to 60 to 30 and so on (not exact values, that's just for reference) about every second.  I've played around some with graphics settings but so far haven't found the right setting to change this.  I turned off vsync and ended up with around 75 to 40 to 75 to 40.  This helps a little since my monitor is 60 so there's less difference from monitor max to the low level of the fluctuation.  Still, swinging a stone ax tends to have noticeable pauses or stutters in the animation because of this and running can sometimes be noticeable as well.  Never had this problem with A20.

The problem with a fixed 60hz vsync is if you can't stay above 60, you will drop to 30, which can lead to it oscillating if half the time you are just below 60.

What hardware to you have (CPU/GPU/RAM) and what game video settings are you using?

Edited June 12, 2023 by faatal (see edit history)

[meilodasreh]

From the known issues list:

Vehicles can catch on fire with burning shaft mod

 

Well that's just my kind of humor 😄😄

If I was into coding I would do exactly those lil shenanigans and then just sit there watching people go WTF, whilst already having a fix prepared 😄

 

I pull my hat Sir, whoever you are (of course you can't reveal your identity, but be assured, I appreciate your work!)