Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[beerfly]

Hell, I mean Heaven, these new props look awesome. Would definitely put a piano in my horde base. If it was actually playable, zombies wouldn`t be the only things that were killed around there.

 

Another great job Pimps ! 

[meganoth]

5 hours ago, Darthjake said:

 

 

I was scrounging water until day 10 in my current build, the closest water source is 1.7 km away, unless one of the many many ditches I've searched just didn't have water in it when I checked it.  Would be nice to be able to craft a reliable source of water, I think this map was one of the worst I spawned into.

 

In a SP game of mine I was desperately searching for a water source for the first 10 days. Then I found a small canal access with water 7 meters from my base. 

 

(incredulous voice) SEVEN !!!! METERS !!!!

 

 

 

[mstdv inc]

38 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

In a SP game of mine I was desperately searching for a water source for the first 10 days. Then I found a small canal access with water 7 meters from my base.

 

(incredulous voice) SEVEN !!!! METERS !!!!

 

 

 

7 meters to drink 😄

[Gamida]

4 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

In a SP game of mine I was desperately searching for a water source for the first 10 days. Then I found a small canal access with water 7 meters from my base. 

 

(incredulous voice) SEVEN !!!! METERS !!!!

 

 

 

I am constantly searching for a water source near where I intend to build. I usually keep checking the map for those wonderful little splotches of blue and it doesn't usually disappoint me. Especially if I have been running around for a while near a town.

[Darthjake]

4 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

In a SP game of mine I was desperately searching for a water source for the first 10 days. Then I found a small canal access with water 7 meters from my base. 

 

(incredulous voice) SEVEN !!!! METERS !!!!

 

 

 

Yeah, now that I've posted my gripe, I'll prolly get the same result the next time I log in.

[spud42]

16 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

I was thinking the same... and what about the radio? 

your going to have to have your amateur license for that...  😊😊😊🎙🎚🎛🎧📻

[faatal]

17 hours ago, Guppycur said:

If this is functional, and not just a prop, I hope it works in rain and not just some "place and it grows into a lootable water container" thing. 

Unloaded chunks and weather don't mix, so there is no current way to make it work with rain.

[Jost Amman]

46 minutes ago, faatal said:

Unloaded chunks and weather don't mix, so there is no current way to make it work with rain.

What I would do (from a non-programmer perspective) is to log somewhere how the weather was during the day.

(e.g.: Rained twice since dawn, snowed once and so on...)

Then, when the player goes back to the collector, I'd add a check to see if today there was rain and add water if it did.ù

This way you don't need to actually have the weather "interact" with the collector... it's just the illusion it did.

[faatal]

7 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

What I would do (from a non-programmer perspective) is to log somewhere how the weather was during the day.

(e.g.: Rained twice since dawn, snowed once and so on...)

Then, when the player goes back to the collector, I'd add a check to see if today there was rain and add water if it did.ù

This way you don't need to actually have the weather "interact" with the collector... it's just the illusion it did.

There are ways to make it work, but they would require a good amount of work, which we do not have the time for in a21.

Weather does not have a history. It could, but it would need to track many days worth and for every biome.

[jorbascrumps]

33 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

What I would do (from a non-programmer perspective) is to log somewhere how the weather was during the day.

(e.g.: Rained twice since dawn, snowed once and so on...)

Then, when the player goes back to the collector, I'd add a check to see if today there was rain and add water if it did.ù

This way you don't need to actually have the weather "interact" with the collector... it's just the illusion it did.

 

That solution would be much more complicated than what you've described. Entities would need to start tracking the last time a player was in range/ interacted with it and calculate the delta across an arbitrary timeframe. Multiply that by X number of entities placed in the world and assume that such tech would not be implemented for a single entity only.

 

The water problem is so easily overcome in 99% of cases, it's just not a problem that needs solving with automatic collection. In my opinion, water should be more of an issue than it currently is.

[Javabean867]

2 hours ago, faatal said:

There are ways to make it work, but they would require a good amount of work, which we do not have the time for in a21.

Weather does not have a history. It could, but it would need to track many days worth and for every biome.

Couldn't they just fill up x bottles of dirty water everyday, have it hold a max of 50 bottles of dirty water max.  It could be biome based(5 in the forest 1 in the desert, etc).  You could interact with it like you do water sources and it will fill up that many empty jars.

[Syphon583]

1 hour ago, Javabean867 said:

Couldn't they just fill up x bottles of dirty water everyday, have it hold a max of 50 bottles of dirty water max.  It could be biome based(5 in the forest 1 in the desert, etc).  You could interact with it like you do water sources and it will fill up that many empty jars.

Pretty sure that's how mods which require water for crops works already, so it is likely possible that's how it would work. I like the idea of making it unique to what biome it is placed in, though I would argue that it would collect drinkable water, not murky water. It's collecting water from the sky, so it should be fresh.

[SnowDog1942]

5 hours ago, faatal said:

There are ways to make it work, but they would require a good amount of work, which we do not have the time for in a21.

Weather does not have a history. It could, but it would need to track many days worth and for every biome.

 

If the chunk is unloaded it means no one was there to even know if it was raining or not, right?  Could it just be simply random at that point?

 

I'm not trying to tell you how to do it Im just curious if I'm even making sense, lol.

 

 

 

 

Edited July 20, 2022 by SnowDog1942 (see edit history)

[vergilsparda]

could the rain collector work like crops do? "growing" into being full (maybe shown via a texture on the side, rather than actual water in the plastic barrel/on the tarp, to save on computing resources) and then somehow you harvest it using empty jars? Or do crops specifically need to be broken in order to repopulate back into their "growing" stage?

[Callum123456789]

with all these new things being added will we ever see the return of hub city in RWG? 

[Blake_]

11 hours ago, faatal said:

Unloaded chunks and weather don't mix, so there is no current way to make it work with rain.

Why complicate things to yet again burn my potatoe to a crisp? It can fill up only when it rains on the loaded chunk. Anything outside of it can be faked as a very slow average. Or it can fill up every time a player encounters rain on ANY chunk (actually it would store an amount but not actually write it until the player opens the item or exits the game), that would probably be better.

 

The hard way is to check weather on the chunk from the moment the item is placed. That could be hard on the system if many are placed and be a bother in terms of performance vs gameplay gains.

[Jost Amman]

Guys, faatal already said they are busy with other stuff at the moment... it's either the rain collector OR the bandits. 

[meganoth]

10 hours ago, SnowDog1942 said:

 

If the chunk is unloaded it means no one was there to even know if it was raining or not, right?  Could it just be simply random at that point?

 

I'm not trying to tell you how to do it Im just curious if I'm even making sense, lol.

 

 

 

 

 

What should be avoided is that unloaded junks work differently than loaded ones. Otherwise players will meta-game it.

 

 

 

[Neminsis]

On 7/19/2022 at 4:06 AM, LBee said:

Hi pimps  

 

I love building in 7 days and if there was a way I could save some of my builds and port them over to a new server like after a wipe,backup or update etc that would be awesome.

Anyway I've had hours of fun in 7 days, thanks guys I know it's not always easy!

 

Love, 

Lbee

You can already do that.
 

 

[Naz]

On 7/19/2022 at 10:39 PM, Laz Man said:

Certainly, immersion levels will be at an all time high with all of these new props.  😎

 

As a player and preffaber i really appreciate these. They can really bring a vision to life and add a massive amount of authenticity to a build. However high detail block models have 2 achilles heels one of which i have a suggestion that could solve it. The first issue is performance, as a preffaber it's heart retching to know i can't use these amazingly detailed blocks because in larger builds the amount i would need would render the prefab unplayable. I can work around this issue by instead using simple shapes to "approximate" what ever is needed, bunk beds for example, ideally i would just stack beds but i can create them using simple shapes that look acceptable.

My solution however is for the 2nd issue related to performance. I noticed for example the conduit blocks got updated with more detailed 3d models. Instead of being basically 2d. However presumably when all these new block models were introduced they massively increased draw calls and performance. So to deal with that high detail block models are now completely culled when not near the player. This is great for performance but has the issue of degrading the players experience when these blocks poof in and out of existence and other blocks appear to float in mid air at a distance because the block under it is culled.

You can see this in these screenshots bellow of house_modern_05 the plants are in those bird bath blocks (i forget what their actual name is) however at a distance (33 blocks) they don't render and the plants appear to float.
 

Spoiler

 

My suggestion to solve this is, would it not be possible to use the same system that's already ingame to dynamically swap the zombies models for low Polly versions? maybe more a @faatal question we can sometimes catch a glimpse of how that works which can be both fascinating and hilarious at the same time😄

 

Could this system not also be used to swap block models for lower polly versions the same way it currently does for zombies? obviously not rendering at all is better for performance than rendering something so i have no idea if even if it could be done, could it be done with an acceptable performance trade off. Likely it would take too long to implement for a21 but i wonder if it's not a solution worth exploring for the future?

[Guppycur]

Track the weather on the player, not the container, and when they go to open the container that tracking determines the loot, aka water amount.

 

The beauty of it is that you already do the loot calculations using goggles and perks and stuff, so all you'd really need to add is a did it rain cvar on the player.

 

You're welcome.

 

/Helping since 1971 

[NekoPawtato]

2 minutes ago, Guppycur said:

Track the weather on the player, not the container, and when they go to open the container that tracking determines the loot, aka water amount.

 

The beauty of it is that you already do the loot calculations using goggles and perks and stuff, so all you'd really need to add is a did it rain cvar on the player.

 

Wouldnt that mean multiple players could loot the container at the same time and they would all get water?

i.e. 5 players open it and they all get (varying amounts of) water, rather than 1 person "emptying out" the container until it has to fill up again?

[Guppycur]

43 minutes ago, NekoPawtato said:

Wouldnt that mean multiple players could loot the container at the same time and they would all get water?

i.e. 5 players open it and they all get (varying amounts of) water, rather than 1 person "emptying out" the container until it has to fill up again?

 

Once looted it destroys itself into a new container that requires a new rain cvar id. 

 

Meh just make it a tile entity and chunk observer then. 

[Lord Ragnus]

The changes seem neat. My concern is that it will rend crafting pointless, as by the time you obtain 100 points into shotgun you will already have a level 6 Autoshotgun. Thoughts?

[faatal]

4 hours ago, Guppycur said:

Track the weather on the player, not the container, and when they go to open the container that tracking determines the loot, aka water amount.

 

The beauty of it is that you already do the loot calculations using goggles and perks and stuff, so all you'd really need to add is a did it rain cvar on the player.

 

You're welcome.

 

/Helping since 1971 

We would not track weather on a container. It would be of the world and not per player. My point was, I'm not spending time tracking weather on anything.

35 minutes ago, Lord Ragnus said:

The changes seem neat. My concern is that it will rend crafting pointless, as by the time you obtain 100 points into shotgun you will already have a level 6 Autoshotgun. Thoughts?

The idea is to have balanced systems. Not have useless parts of the game. Balance takes time and is subjective.