Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Adam the Waster]

On 9/2/2022 at 4:36 PM, Fanatical_Meat said:

I want to add Will the random creepy sounds come back. The ones that sounded like whispers I think they were in alpha 12

sounds like this from Alpha 11

Or this

 

the music in the wasteland is a classic for me. i hope they add it as a soundtrack in the game

and yes 100% agree they should add more creppy stuff

[khzmusik]

12 minutes ago, Prydonian said:

It'd be great if they could take the gloss sheen off the older carpet textures.  Oh, and dark, polished wood!  #Mahogany

What I think would be cool is if you could specify a "base color" of a texture. That would get rid of some of the textures ("orange metal" or "red concrete") and offer a lot more flexibility.

 

Of course, the real issue is space. There are only so many bits in a block, and if you add even two bits to store the index of a color map, that's two less bits to store the index of the texture map, meaning four less textures would be available. So who knows if that's worth it.

 

The ideal solution would be to simply use more bits per block, but I'm guessing they're using a standard bit size (like a ushort), so moving up to the next bit size (like a uint) would double the bits per block. The map itself would take up four times the amount of memory it does now, as would any code that dealt with map chunks. So I understand why they won't do that.

[faatal]

On 9/6/2022 at 12:30 AM, Blake_ said:

@faatal,  I've got two gentle yet compeling questions to ask:

 

1-Can you tell us some news about bandits?

2-What are you working on at the moment? 

1 The advance/retreat to cover is coming along. Steve is working on that.

2 Player swimming motion rework, which turned into handling move states in our code (mostly), not UFPS. That lead to some bugs which prompted cleanup of multiple pieces of code doing various checks for in water (in water, swimming, head in water). Camera and head in water were treated the same, which they are not when you consider 3rd person camera, like driving.

[Diragor]

2 hours ago, faatal said:

Camera and head in water were treated the same, which they are not when you consider 3rd person camera, like driving.

Love this "feature". Driving under water and keep the camera above so you have air xD

[Xeen]

The thing I find interesting is that I can see storing certain magazines away for later after you have nailed down the ones you really want to work on.

[RipClaw]

1 hour ago, Xeen said:

The thing I find interesting is that I can see storing certain magazines away for later after you have nailed down the ones you really want to work on.

I don't see what advantage this would have.

[Xeen]

43 minutes ago, RipClaw said:

I don't see what advantage this would have.

If you don't spec into something it won't add any weight to it's corresponding magazine and you will hardly ever get them in a drop.

[RipClaw]

11 minutes ago, Xeen said:

If you don't spec into something it won't add any weight to it's corresponding magazine and you will hardly ever get them in a drop.

This bonus is not so strong that you can't find other magazines at all. @Roland, for example, reported that he sometimes found more magazines for other weapons than for the one he specialized in. It was described more as a kind of safety net.

 

Also, the magazines have no influence on what other magazines you find. You invest points in perks like Boomstick and get a bonus to find more shotgun magazines and parts.

But if you for example find and read a spear magazine you don't get a bonus to find more spear magazines. It is not a self-reinforcing effect.

 

Edited September 9, 2022 by RipClaw (see edit history)

[Xeen]

49 minutes ago, RipClaw said:

This bonus is not so strong that you can't find other magazines at all. @Roland, for example, reported that he sometimes found more magazines for other weapons than for the one he specialized in. It was described more as a kind of safety net.

 

Also, the magazines have no influence on what other magazines you find. You invest points in perks like Boomstick and get a bonus to find more shotgun magazines and parts.

But if you for example find and read a spear magazine you don't get a bonus to find more spear magazines. It is not a self-reinforcing effect.

 

The way I understand it is the more points you put into an attribute the heavier the weight in finding magazines. That's what I was trying to get at.

Edited September 9, 2022 by Xeen (see edit history)

[Mister Forgash]

1 hour ago, Xeen said:

The way I understand it is the more points you put into an attribute the heavier the weight in finding magazines. That's what I was trying to get at.

Earlier in the thread Roland gave a a breakdown of how it was balanced .. around a week and a half ago. Be mindful that things are constantly being changed- but as it was, the weighted bonus was not very much. You have an X% chance to loot any given magazine depending on the loot container [That's important, it sounds like it's the main thing influencing what you find] and with the perks you've specced into get like a 20-30% increase on top of that for what you want, resulting in somewhat more, but sometimes, it doesn't even feel noticable.

[Xeen]

5 minutes ago, Mister Forgash said:

Earlier in the thread Roland gave a a breakdown of how it was balanced .. around a week and a half ago. Be mindful that things are constantly being changed- but as it was, the weighted bonus was not very much. You have an X% chance to loot any given magazine depending on the loot container [That's important, it sounds like it's the main thing influencing what you find] and with the perks you've specced into get like a 20-30% increase on top of that for what you want, resulting in somewhat more, but sometimes, it doesn't even feel noticeable.

I hope it ends up being more noticeable as they play with it during balancing and tuning.

Edited September 9, 2022 by Xeen (see edit history)

[Roland]

5 hours ago, Xeen said:

If you don't spec into something it won't add any weight to it's corresponding magazine and you will hardly ever get them in a drop.

 

Not necessarily. You get a wide variety of magazines when you open generic containers and you get targeted ones when opening a specialized container. For example, if you open a Shotgun Messiah crate you will have a good chance of finding a mag and/or part that matches what you perked into but you still have a fair chance of getting any other weapon themed mag and/or part. If you open a kitchen cupboard you have an excellent chance of getting a cooking magazine and very very low to zero chance of getting the weapon mag that matches what you perked into. It is still not a noticeable or marked bonus at all as far as I can see and I'm almost certain we will have threads from people wondering if their perk bonus is actually working.

 

I have never had a situation yet where I couldn't find any magazines or parts for what I was perked into and I think that rather than a noticeable avalanche of a particular magazine title is the better result. But we'll see if that frustrates people or not once they start playing.

 

3 hours ago, Xeen said:

I hope it ends up being more noticeable as they play with it during balancing and tuning.

 

We'll see what feedback comes back. I prefer it being subtle, myself, but if generally people keep thinking it is buggy because they can't tell then the devs will probably look at it.

[xiiMaRcLeoN]

Sound like a interesting system, wonder how the other Perks will be changed hopefully not made kinda redundant.

[falloutcloud]

Are the weapons still tied to a specific ability such as shotguns only improve with strength?

[Tete1805]

I don't see the bandits in the confirmed features of A21 by the way.

Is there a possibility they'd be pushed back to another alpha? (Another alpha? Yeah!)

[Roland]

2 hours ago, xiiMaRcLeoN said:

Sound like a interesting system, wonder how the other Perks will be changed hopefully not made kinda redundant.

 

Hey man! Good to see your name!!

 

Perks govern how well you use the weapons and what abilities you might gain with them that an unperked person wouldn't have. Magazines simply provide the recipes for crafting them. So no redundancy at all really.

 

2 hours ago, falloutcloud said:

Are the weapons still tied to a specific ability such as shotguns only improve with strength?

 

There is no change to the organization of perks. They are still tied to their exact same attributes.

 

29 minutes ago, Tete1805 said:

I don't see the bandits in the confirmed features of A21 by the way.

Is there a possibility they'd be pushed back to another alpha? (Another alpha? Yeah!)

 

There is always that possibility but  I'm pretty confident we will see at least an initial implementation of bandits in A21. They are not confirmed yet because the developers haven't revealed anything yet. But that doesn't mean they won't make the cut. There are a few things not on the list as of yet that are very likely to be landing in A21. The list will expand a lot once the devs start showing off what they've been working on in their streams.

[xiiMaRcLeoN]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

 

Hey man! Good to see your name!!

 

Perks govern how well you use the weapons and what abilities you might gain with them that an unperked person wouldn't have. Magazines simply provide the recipes for crafting them. So no redundancy at all really.

Thanks Roland.

It has been a while but I been getting back into the game again, really fun to explore all buildings again and the city tile system is one of the best things put into the game.

And getting better weapon tier and such for weapon you dont perk into sound nice, so each one has a use even when it isnt for the skill you perked into.

Edited September 10, 2022 by xiiMaRcLeoN (see edit history)

[mstdv inc]

There are 4 topics that I would like to discuss:
1. Some time ago (in A19) I noticed a discrepancy between the game time and the real one.For example, with a standard day of 60 minutes on a 45 game day, I got 48.8 hours of real time on this save.The discrepancy is almost 4 hours.I also noticed that this discrepancy appears mainly during the horde, when the game timer slows down in direct proportion to the fps drop.I can't confirm 100%, I haven't done detailed tests, but there is a feeling that at 30 fps the game timer is 2 times slower.Can there be any comments from the developers on this? @fataal There's nothing wrong with that, but I wonder why this is happening.(my pc 6/12 3.2Ghz,16gb ddr4 3200,rx550 4gb,SSD)
2. Continuation of the previous topic.I'm honestly already tired of looking at complaints about FPS during the horde.People shout that they have a top computer and the game should give out so much fps.But not really.She shouldn't.And I understand why.But they don't want to listen to any explanations.Most likely, this will be an extremely unpopular offer, but maybe it's worth doing some kind of verification of the characteristics of the PC and the number of players who play together, in order to limit automatically limit the possible number of zombies in the horde?Not to give a choice of 24 or more zombies for a potato pc?Or forced dynamic resolution in skyscrapers and the horde?I don't know.I already feel bad from these eternal complaints about fps.
3. Again, the question is most likely to faatal. Is the DX 12 still in the plans?I remember the rules.No questions "when"
4. Full load of more than 6 cpu threads?Is it possible to further parallelize the game processes to use more threads?
Thanks

Edited September 10, 2022 by mstdv inc (see edit history)

[Adam the Waster]

i only have one question about Alpha 20
WHO THE HELL keeps making the shoulder plates different, with metal/junk armors its fine looking but with light armors why, the worst is stuff like Farmer and Nomad armor (nomad is heavy but oh well)

 

Spoiler

No hate tho but still, i can't be the only one bugged by this

[Blake_]

On 9/9/2022 at 5:33 AM, faatal said:

1 The advance/retreat to cover is coming along. Steve is working on that.

2 Player swimming motion rework, which turned into handling move states in our code (mostly), not UFPS. That lead to some bugs which prompted cleanup of multiple pieces of code doing various checks for in water (in water, swimming, head in water). Camera and head in water were treated the same, which they are not when you consider 3rd person camera, like driving.

That is very nice. It makes sense to let Steve do that behaviour since you and him are kind of in sync on that particular code and you are always neck deep in many features at once.

 

I love all the 'watery stuff'. Water gameplay was always in dire need of love and improving that side of the game will get us all wet for the right reasons.

[faatal]

1 hour ago, mstdv inc said:

There are 4 topics that I would like to discuss:
1. Some time ago (in A19) I noticed a discrepancy between the game time and the real one.For example, with a standard day of 60 minutes on a 45 game day, I got 48.8 hours of real time on this save.The discrepancy is almost 4 hours.I also noticed that this discrepancy appears mainly during the horde, when the game timer slows down in direct proportion to the fps drop.I can't confirm 100%, I haven't done detailed tests, but there is a feeling that at 30 fps the game timer is 2 times slower.Can there be any comments from the developers on this? @fataal There's nothing wrong with that, but I wonder why this is happening.(my pc 6/12 3.2Ghz,16gb ddr4 3200,rx550 4gb,SSD)
2. Continuation of the previous topic.I'm honestly already tired of looking at complaints about FPS during the horde.People shout that they have a top computer and the game should give out so much fps.But not really.She shouldn't.And I understand why.But they don't want to listen to any explanations.Most likely, this will be an extremely unpopular offer, but maybe it's worth doing some kind of verification of the characteristics of the PC and the number of players who play together, in order to limit automatically limit the possible number of zombies in the horde?Not to give a choice of 24 or more zombies for a potato pc?Or forced dynamic resolution in skyscrapers and the horde?I don't know.I already feel bad from these eternal complaints about fps.
3. Again, the question is most likely to faatal. Is the DX 12 still in the plans?I remember the rules.No questions "when"
4. Full load of more than 6 cpu threads?Is it possible to further parallelize the game processes to use more threads?
Thanks

1 The game timer should work fine down to 20 FPS as that is the tick rate. A consultant did find a problem with the tick timing, but I think that was just dedi.

2 Lots of computations equals slower FPS. Cause and effect.

3 I would like DX12 to work as well as DX11, but that generally depends on Unity.

4 It is possible, but that takes a lot of programmer time. I'd rather have something on the main thread run faster, which benefits everyone, than try to use extra cores that only some PCs will have.

[Xeen]

27 minutes ago, faatal said:

1 The game timer should work fine down to 20 FPS as that is the tick rate. A consultant did find a problem with the tick timing, but I think that was just dedi.

2 Lots of computations equals slower FPS. Cause and effect.

3 I would like DX12 to work as well as DX11, but that generally depends on Unity.

4 It is possible, but that takes a lot of programmer time. I'd rather have something on the main thread run faster, which benefits everyone, than try to use extra cores that only some PCs will have.

Wait the game is limited on how many cores it can use? What a bummer man, I guess my 12 core CPU isn't going to help me in this game, that is depressing.

Edited September 10, 2022 by Xeen (see edit history)

[Guest]

With how the water survival mechanics are getting an overhaul as it was felt that it was too adundant / the survival mechanic became obselete early on, is food getting a look at too?

 

As food is binary (food or not food) it's really easy to overcome this in the first couple of days.

 

I've always liked the split between food types in other games (e.g. protein, carbs, fats) so you can't rely on one food type (e.g. bacon and eggs, boiled meat). Balanced this way, it means you only really could get on top of food in the very late game and would be encouraged to scavenge / farm more.

 

Just wondered whether there was appetite for this kind of change at TFP or whether you guys are happy with where food is at for gold and think a change like this would be more for modders? Only really raising it due to the convo around water.

Edited September 10, 2022 by Pyrrhrick
txt (see edit history)

[Xeen]

9 hours ago, faatal said:

4 It is possible, but that takes a lot of programmer time. I'd rather have something on the main thread run faster, which benefits everyone, than try to use extra cores that only some PCs will have.

Surely for someone with your level of talent it would be nothing to add a couple extra cores for us guys with nice computers that could put all that power to work making the game run even better for us.

[Games'n'Grumble]

Hello @schwanz9000 ! I do not know exactly who is responsible for the shapes of the blocks, but perhaps you can answer? The game already has several forms of blocks that can be painted with different textures from different sides. My favorites are the forms of "destruction". Do you think it is possible to add buffets and various containers with such shapes to the game? I think then it would be possible to diversify the interiors more by using standard paints separately - for doors, separately - for handles and "holes" between the doors. What do you think?