Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Doomofman]

[ssrjazz]

1 minute ago, Teure said:

Does anyone know if the CPU usage improve with A21 update?

 

I have an octacore CPU with lower frequencies and it always bottlenecks me on larger cities. 

 

I've ~700h on PC and it always happened, since my athlon 5 years ago (of course it would) up to my current 5800h... and the FPS drop from stable 60 to 25~30 is a big let down. RWG is even worse because has a more intense voxel calculation all around...

 

Is there any improvement in that regard planned or discussed for A21?

 

Thanks!

 

One of the biggest performance hits of large cities were all the windows, especially in the skyscrapers, and caused a bunch of overhead due to unnecessary draw calls.  @faatal has posted previously about how windows were rewritten to be much more performant.  That and other optimizations that have happened along the way will hopefully add up to less FPS drops in cities in a21 and just better performance overall.

[RipClaw]

1 hour ago, x3eemguy said:

1. Getting rid of glass jars as you drink from them. Where does the glass jars go after you drink from them? In a survival situation, would you just throw away good and useful things after 1 use? Instead I believe it should be a good chance for it to break or damage beyond using condition after some use or getting damage or broken when combating zombies or just moving/running around. After all they are glass.

An attempt for a plausible explanation.

 

The character has a bag in which he keeps the empty jars, but it is not shown in the game's inventory. Every time the character loots murky water from a toilet, he actually takes a glass from his bag and fills it with the water from the toilet tank. When he takes clean water from the dew collector he actually fills the clean water from the barrel into one of the jars in his bag.

And when he gets honey from a tree stump then there was actually a honeycomb on the tree stump and the whole process to get the honey from it was just not shown.
 

This explains on the one hand where the jars go after you drink, and  on the other hand  where the jars come from that shouldn't exist.

Edited May 31, 2023 by RipClaw (see edit history)

[Laz Man]

1 hour ago, unholyjoe said:

also appears randomly with murky water that needs to be boiled.

After drinking the water it gets back into the toilet to become murky water jars...😅

[Morloc]

38 minutes ago, RipClaw said:

An attempt for a plausible explanation.

 

The character has a bag in which he keeps the empty jars, but it is not shown in the game's inventory. Every time the character loots murky water from a toilet, he actually takes a glass from his bag and fills it with the water from the toilet tank. When he takes clean water from the dew collector he actually fills the clean water from the barrel into one of the jars in his bag.

And when he gets honey from a tree stump then there was actually a honeycomb on the tree stump and the whole process to get the honey from it was just not shown.
 

This explains on the one hand where the jars go after you drink, and  on the other hand  where the jars come from that shouldn't exist.

 

No, no...

 

It's magic!

 

 

(And...there was more than one jar!...)

 

Spoiler

 

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc 💀

[Laz Man]

FYI, no exp. release this coming Monday (June 5th).  Should know more next week.

[Doomofman]

Fingers crossed for the 12th 

[Riamus]

5 hours ago, x3eemguy said:

Finally started watching the A21 dev streams. I'm on the first video. I love most of what I see. However, things I don't agree with are:

 

1. Getting rid of glass jars as you drink from them. Where does the glass jars go after you drink from them? In a survival situation, would you just throw away good and useful things after 1 use? Instead I believe it should be a good chance for it to break or damage beyond using condition after some use or getting damage or broken when combating zombies or just moving/running around. After all they are glass.

 

2. Garbage go poof. Really, ever heard of the saying one man's trash is another man's gold. I sell those in early game for money at the traders. Why not do it like the big trash that shows wheather it was looted with a different looking pile, like scattered vs intact? If intact, we can still loot and  if it's scattered then we can still chop it for scrap materials to sell or use. What I'm saying is clear distinction so we can decide to run past or stop and loot, however, not poof away.

 

3. Cannot throw spear, lol! One should be able to throw almost any thing in defense in a survival situation! You should be able to throw ur bottle or axe if u have to so you survive an encounter with a zombie or pig or whatever. If you throw something, you should also understand that there is a possibility of loosing them in many different ways. That's just life.

 

This just my opinion wheather you agree or not. Hopefully I can get to dec stream video 2 soon.

 

Lots of discussion on these already, but here's a quick recap.

 

Most things do not leave empty containers already and no one complains.  No empty gas cans, no empty acid bottles, no empty oil bottles, etc.  This just brings everything into a single standard.  There really isn't any need for glass jars or empty cans.  Now, whether or not the actual changes to how you can collect water are good will have to be seen.

 

I'm not sure how many people scrap the trash piles but I do think many people loot them multiple times and this will prevent that.  I do like not having to check everything to see if it has been looted yet but I don't know that this will be good.

 

Throwing a spear made the power attack almost useless.  By changing that, now the power attack perks have a lot more value.  You also are less likely to lose your spear and mods that are in it.  I think this is a good thing and I think more people will like it than not.

 

Lots of people have said here that they don't use spears because they feel they are underpowered compared to other weapons.  I think this will change that opinion.

Edited June 1, 2023 by Riamus (see edit history)

[XFinalChanceX]

So June huh

 

[kattenijin]

Well, June 1st is in 3 hours for me so... Yep. June.

[Aldranon]

When 7D2D part 2 is ready:

Only then will you realize the POWER of a coma dream!

 

[faatal]

On 5/29/2023 at 12:12 PM, Old Crow said:

Still curious to know how big of a chance vehicles will have to explode after hitting negative hit points. I know it's supposedly not likely to happen, but all it takes is one string of really bad luck and BOOM you lose your 4x4 and anything you had inside it.

 

It feels like a very player-hostile change, much like A20's farming changes, so I'm hoping it gets tweaked fairly quickly, like farming did (though farming is still pretty worthless unless you spec all the way through Living off the Land (and even then, a string of bad luck can still screw you over on getting a reasonable amount of seeds back).

That is not new to A21. A20 has the same chance (I don't remember the exact numbers), although it is a lot easier to get your vehicle to the destroyed state in A21.

 

The solution is not to trash your vehicle, and if you do, then repair it. Like lots of things in the game, it will be open to tweaking based on long term play and not knee jerk reactions.

[MichaelL.]

On 5/29/2023 at 1:12 PM, Old Crow said:

Still curious to know how big of a chance vehicles will have to explode after hitting negative hit points. I know it's supposedly not likely to happen, but all it takes is one string of really bad luck and BOOM you lose your 4x4 and anything you had inside it.

 

Just don't hit a shopping cart - 100% guaranteed to blow up your vehicle.... 

[faatal]

22 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

Any progress update? @faatal @Laz Man anyone?

Tks 

Things are looking pretty good at this point bug wise. Most of the current must fixes can be done during experimental. We only have one major bug that needs to be fixed before experimental, which causes the server to hang from what appears to be POI resets triggering water updates. The water sim programmer is working on that one. Granted we may find other nasty bugs as the testers continue testing.

[meilodasreh]

On 5/31/2023 at 10:25 PM, Teure said:

I have an octacore CPU with lower frequencies and it always bottlenecks me on larger cities. 

 

I've ~700h on PC and it always happened, since my athlon 5 years ago (of course it would) up to my current 5800h... and the FPS drop from stable 60 to 25~30 is a big let down. RWG is even worse because has a more intense voxel calculation all around...

 

Is there any improvement in that regard planned or discussed for A21?

You would have to accept you have to make cutbacks to your quality settings and/or resolution. That will always gain the most fps.

Do not expect any improvements within the game code that magically boost up your fps recognizably, especially in/for "low-fps situations" where your hardware is already bottlenecking.

Yes there will be optimizations, but there will also be more and more stuff implemented that additionally chews into performance,

so one can be happy if the requirements don't get up rather than expect it to get better.

 

I have played 7D2D for years with "ancient" CPU (2013 Intel i5 2500K) and got along well.

Graphics card was an AMD R9 390, and I got fps about 100 with FHD and somewhat mediocre quality settings,

dropping to around 60 in dense areas, so always very playable.

 

Now with a AM5 CPU and 4070 GPU, I of course pushed the resolution and settings up...so same fps as before more or less.

 

 

Edited June 2, 2023 by meilodasreh (see edit history)

[tdevine]

OMG release the update already!

[Jost Amman]

1 hour ago, faatal said:

Things are looking pretty good at this point bug wise. Most of the current must fixes can be done during experimental. We only have one major bug that needs to be fixed before experimental, which causes the server to hang from what appears to be POI resets triggering water updates. The water sim programmer is working on that one. Granted we may find other nasty bugs as the testers continue testing.

That's great news! Thanks for the reply!  

So, the water programmer is aiming for a "flawless" release... 

[meganoth]

12 hours ago, Teure said:

Does anyone know if the CPU usage improve with A21 update?

 

I have an octacore CPU with lower frequencies and it always bottlenecks me on larger cities. 

 

I've ~700h on PC and it always happened, since my athlon 5 years ago (of course it would) up to my current 5800h... and the FPS drop from stable 60 to 25~30 is a big let down. RWG is even worse because has a more intense voxel calculation all around...

 

Is there any improvement in that regard planned or discussed for A21?

 

Thanks!

 

5800h is a mobile CPU. Even if it is geared towards high-performance there are still physical limits your laptop can't ignore. Heat dissipation just does not allow your laptop to reach the same performance as a full PC and you have to tune your settings accordingly.

 

There is one bug with window blocks costing too much performance in cities that has been fixed in A21. So those drops in cities will likely not happen or not be as strong as in A20. But in my experience even in A20 those drops can easily be avoided if you turn off shadows completely. 

 

[BFT2020]

5 hours ago, tdevine said:

OMG release the update already!

personally, I would rather wait for the release until after they fix the major bug where it hangs.

[Teure]

@ssrjazz, @meilodasreh and @meganoth, that clarifies a lot.

 

I often leave Shadows to medium distance and overall graphic settings close to ultra, as a mobile 3050 holds it fine for 90% areas of the game stable 60FPS (I play on a FHD TV, so I can't push FPS any further).

 

Shadows are a good explanation andreally excited to see the windows perfomance update! Will make it a much more pleasant experience.

 

Big thumbs up to everyone. June 12th is just around the corner.

[Aldranon]

6 hours ago, faatal said:

Things are looking pretty good at this point bug wise. Most of the current must fixes can be done during experimental. We only have one major bug that needs to be fixed before experimental, which causes the server to hang from what appears to be POI resets triggering water updates. The water sim programmer is working on that one. Granted we may find other nasty bugs as the testers continue testing.

 

On a POI reset first remove all water from the POI area, then have the water "blocks" reset only after the land blocks are reset.

[doughphunghus]

5 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

That's great news! Thanks for the reply!  

So, the water programmer is aiming for a "flawless" release... 

water we waiting for? H2O?... nooooo! Ice thirst for it daily until it drops.  I hope the problem will not freeze development and can be solvent quicky or i will fluid my pants. I cannot jar this up inside for much longer and i Dew collector more anxious each day.

[zztong]

8 hours ago, MichaelL. said:

Just don't hit a shopping cart - 100% guaranteed to blow up your vehicle.

 

Suddenly, I have the inspiration to mix some of the landmine XML into a shopping cart object.

[Mister Forgash]

8 hours ago, faatal said:

Things are looking pretty good at this point bug wise. Most of the current must fixes can be done during experimental. We only have one major bug that needs to be fixed before experimental, which causes the server to hang from what appears to be POI resets triggering water updates. The water sim programmer is working on that one. Granted we may find other nasty bugs as the testers continue testing.

This to me reads very similarly to, "Yes, definitely next weekend." .. I get it, I'm putting words in your mouth and I want to go on the record of I don't officially suggest anyone to adopt my line of thinking.. (But unofficially..)

Very excited that it's so close to being ready for the public after so much time. .. Is anyone else eager to fight a bloodmoon horde with the new dismemberment?

[Laz Man]

12 minutes ago, Mister Forgash said:

This to me reads very similarly to, "Yes, definitely next weekend." .. I get it, I'm putting words in your mouth and I want to go on the record of I don't officially suggest anyone to adopt my line of thinking.. (But unofficially..)

Very excited that it's so close to being ready for the public after so much time. .. Is anyone else eager to fight a bloodmoon horde with the new dismemberment?