Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[Robbing Zombie 3]

I have patients

 

Out of curiosity, what kind of doctor are you?

[HIREDGUN 1]

BOOM! And now we get a Devil? !

Does that mean it died, was tested and came back with a vengence??? EEK...

 

Or does it mean they are Done and changed it to mess with us all looking for the angel!!!!

 

Please,Please,Please be done!!

Edited September 26, 2018 by HIREDGUN (see edit history)

[deathless 0]

Out of curiosity, what kind of doctor are you?

 

Haha you so funny.

[Eighmy_Lupin 17]

Lack of updates could also mean stalled or stuck lack of people working on project.

Showing us pictures on twitter doesnt mean anything working on models for later builds this build

I have patients but when this game keeps getting stalled for releasing because they make a huge upgrade to unity 18.1 Instead of not waiting for alpha 18 or 19 or later instead upgrade in the middle of alpha 17.

 

They've already said the unity update had little to nothing to do with the delay. The delays that would have happened either way because they want things to be done right instead of fast.

[Robbing Zombie 3]

Haha you so funny.

 

[meganoth 924]

So we hear the new update is going to blow our minds but where are all the sneak peaks of the new update we haven't seen anything in a month. We have seen more negative then positive we seen telltale shut down, we dont get updates about 7d2d so how do we know its actually coming, an not just word say that its coming?

 

Occams Razor.

 

If they ran with the money a long time ago, why would they invest work into producing videos of a 4x4 or arrows sticking to zombies ? If they ran just now, wouldn't it make more sense to release a nearly finished new version first and THEN vanish in the much longer time until A18?

 

They could be lying about the telltale shut down not impacting them, but then they (and telltale and iron galaxy) would have lied about telltale's involvement a long time ago. And they would have made a financial deal with telltale at a time (I think I read it was in 2016) when they already had financial success with 7d2d. Why on earth would they give away control of their own game to a publisher for some money if their bank account has enough for years of continued development? Especially since publishers services are no longer needed that much with steam doing distribution and even finance (for EA titles).

 

What's your theory? Post it here. If nobody can put holes in it, we can worry. If it is shot down (maybe because someone has information you don't have) then you can rest safely in the knowledge that A17 is coming out because anything else would be just highly improbable.

[Jedo 38]

Lack of updates could also mean stalled or stuck lack of people working on project.

Showing us pictures on twitter doesnt mean anything working on models for later builds this build

I have patients but when this game keeps getting stalled for releasing because they make a huge upgrade to unity 18.1 Instead of not waiting for alpha 18 or 19 or later instead upgrade in the middle of alpha 17.

 

Lack of any updates certainly could mean what you say. However, I've already pointed out that there still are updates, just not in the form that you want.

 

I don't quite understand what your second sentence about the pictures means, but those pictures aren't the only updates which we receive. If those were the only updates, you might have a point; but they aren't.

 

Your last point is just wrong. Period.

 

I think our world would be a better place if everybody had to take a course in logic.

[Gmad03 2]

Hopefully we get to see all the improvements they been working on in video form soon. Pictures are nice but I want to see it all in action and to see those performance gains

[deathless 0]

Lack of any updates certainly could mean what you say. However, I've already pointed out that there still are updates, just not in the form that you want.

 

I don't quite understand what your second sentence about the pictures means, but those pictures aren't the only updates which we receive. If those were the only updates, you might have a point; but they aren't.

 

Your last point is just wrong. Period.

 

I think our world would be a better place if everybody had to take a course in logic.

 

So your saying that if they didnt update to unity 18 that the game would have been stalled still?

[DaVegaNL 163]

Hopefully we get to see all the improvements they been working on in video form soon. Pictures are nice but I want to see it all in action and to see those performance gains

 

^ this.

It's nice to see Faatal post on here with text updates relatively often. But I'm really wondering if the game runs smoother. Especially since I've been hearing the impact of these optimizations are being cancelled by additional new features.

[Perlin_Worm 33]

No other game stresses my CPU like 7DTD. I am looking forward to optimizations. Perhaps even offload some processing to the GPU would be brilliant.

[Jedo 38]

So your saying that if they didnt update to unity 18 that the game would have been stalled still?

 

I'm repeating what was conveyed to us by the devs and Roland. I'm pretty sure faatal specifically has responded to that query a couple of times.

 

Just using logic, though, the unity update would not affect all systems the same and not all programmers would work on fixing shaders (one of the named problems). What are the people who were affected minimally or who didn't work on fixing the problems still doing? Working on things which needed to be done anyway. Again, faatal's AI work has been ongoing, and that has nothing to do with the unity update.

 

I'll take your lack of comment on the rest of my post as acceptance of my points.

[Jackelmyer 34]

We're not aiming for 7 Dark Souls To Die, though.

 

*Tears* Bless you child... Bless you...

 

If I want to pull my hair out... Well... I made children for that... And... I have a real job. Don't need Dark Souls level of hair pulling. Thanks! :-D

[eidobunny 18]

Hopefully we get to see all the improvements they been working on in video form soon. Pictures are nice but I want to see it all in action and to see those performance gains

 

I don't think a video is going to be able to show performance gains, it's all relative to your own system. I doubt they're gonna load up 16.4 and 17e and do a side-by-side analysis of performance in identical situations. Too much work for little to no payoff. I'd rather the devs just develop and then release it for us to play and judge for ourselves than post some video I'm not going to watch, but to each their own.

[Jackelmyer 34]

I DREAD persistent memory. It will be up to the OS to make sure to clean up memory that we can make 100% sure is cleared now by a reboot. Persistent memory will make a reboot useless unless the OS flushes memory correctly. But I'm sure Microsoft will handle that perfectly. Lol

 

Oh go play with your Linux box. ;-p lol

[Cazmyr 21]

Occams Razor.

 

Snip

 

Love Occam's Razor. Also Hitchens' Razor.

 

'What can be presented without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.'

 

Miss you Hitch. RIP

[deathless 0]

I'm repeating what was conveyed to us by the devs and Roland. I'm pretty sure faatal specifically has responded to that query a couple of times.

 

Just using logic, though, the unity update would not affect all systems the same and not all programmers would work on fixing shaders (one of the named problems). What are the people who were affected minimally or who didn't work on fixing the problems still doing? Working on things which needed to be done anyway. Again, faatal's AI work has been ongoing, and that has nothing to do with the unity update.

 

I'll take your lack of comment on the rest of my post as acceptance of my points.

 

Honestly I disagree because why give an estimated release date if your going to continue planning the development as you go. Once they updated to unity then everything went to silent. They can say unity had nothing to do with it, but the newest update of unity allowed them to develop more then they first planned. So in other words its because of unity that stalled the game to getting released when they said.

[Jedo 38]

Love Occam's Razor. Also Hitchens' Razor.

 

'What can be presented without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.'

 

Interestingly, neither of those mean that the proposal is untrue or not real. (It's a habit of mine to point this out particularly for Occam's Razor. Most people have a simplistic understanding of its significance, and this leads to further false assumptions.)

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Honestly I disagree because why give an estimated release date if your going to continue planning the development as you go. Once they updated to unity then everything went to silent. They can say unity had nothing to do with it, but the newest update of unity allowed them to develop more then they first planned. So in other words its because of unity that stalled the game to getting released when they said.

 

Have fun talking to that mirror, then!

 

"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. You can lead..."

[deathless 0]

Interestingly, neither of those mean that the proposal is untrue or not real. (It's a habit of mine to point this out particularly for Occam's Razor. Most people have a simplistic understanding of its significance, and this leads to further false assumptions.)

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

 

 

Have fun talking to that mirror, then!

 

"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. You can lead..."

 

You can defend the fun pimps all you want, you cant believe everything they say. If I told you smoking didn't cause cancer would you believe that too?

[Jackelmyer 34]

The jeep is 2 blocks wide. Fits through the large doors fine.

 

But does it fit over a draw bridge? :-D

[Gnomaana 59]

Honestly I disagree because why give an estimated release date if your going to continue planning the development as you go. Once they updated to unity then everything went to silent. They can say unity had nothing to do with it, but the newest update of unity allowed them to develop more then they first planned. So in other words its because of unity that stalled the game to getting released when they said.

 

You have absolutely no way to know any of the things you just tried to state as facts. I think I'll trust the people that do have the information needed to know those facts over you making stuff up in your head.

[Cazmyr 21]

Interestingly, neither of those mean that the proposal is untrue or not real.

snip

 

You are absolutely correct, of course. Occam's deals with what is more likely true.

 

Hitchens' deals with the burden of proof being met.

[Cazmyr 21]

But does it fit over a draw bridge? :-D

 

I am not sure if I am reading sarcasm or not.

 

If you are being sarcastic, disregard this response.

 

In case you are not being sarcastic, the answer is yes it does. (Via the pics we have been getting)

[wolffblood 7]

We are not getting away from floats. Half the variables in a game are floats. We use them because we want the range of values they can have. If ints worked for everything we would use them, since we have them, but we don't because of their limitations.

 

Doubles are simply 64 bit higher precision floats and game devs would universally use them if they were mostly free in terms of memory, performance and compatibility, but they are not.

 

All other things being equal a 64 bit value is always going to use 8 bytes and a 32 bit value 4 bytes. Why would I waste memory if I don't need 64 bits? 3d models are a perfect example. Say I have some high end 100k vertex model. Those verts use 1.2 MB at 32 bit, but 2.4 MB if I stored them with doubles. The increase in data size means slower loading, bigger memory footprint, slower transfer to graphics card and more memory use on the gfx card.

 

We still use flags (1 bit) and byte (8 bit) and short (16 bit) variables to save memory, disk space and network bandwidth where it makes sense. Different data sizes are tools. More tools are nice, but not everything is a hammer.

 

Also, one of the primary reasons we went to 64 bit CPUs is for pointers. 32 bit pointers can only address 4 GB of memory.

 

Lol, true enough. I figured majority of variables used are floats. The explanation helps me process everything in my head. Thank ya.

[Menace312 24]

Interestingly, neither of those mean that the proposal is untrue or not real. (It's a habit of mine to point this out particularly for Occam's Razor. Most people have a simplistic understanding of its significance, and this leads to further false assumptions.)

 

This! So much this!!!

 

I see concepts used as "sayings" all the time. When they go mainstream, it's rarely used correctly.

 

For "Occam's Razor", that movie (you know which) didn't help at all one bit.

Unless you pick up on the fact, that the so called "scientists" in that movie, are as far from a scientist as you can get.

I dont think most people do...