Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[The Gronk]

I'd be very surprised if there isn't some sort of overflow buffer where if you eat a large meal while almost full you remain well fed for some time after although unable to eat more until you're hungry again.

 

Don't talk to me about software bugs, not today at least. I spent most of the day, and fixed several other bugs, while hunting for a bug that was staring me in the face all the time. Who thought it was a good idea to automatically convert a Vector3 into a Vector2 without throwing a frikkin' error? :-)

[Brian9824]

Their objects could be scaled, which changes the visible size and collider size, but bad things will start happening as they get too big, like pathing not working, since they don't fit in the path width of 1 meter.

 

What we really need is scaling of stats. Stuff like movement speed having a RANGE would be a massive quality of life change. Its really annoying watching 5 nurses heading towards me at the EXACT SAME SPEED. If there speed was say between .75 and 1.25 and more randomized then it would catch you off guard as they might arrive in clumps or surprise you.

[naive1000]

I'll see your pill and raise you a reality check.

Alpha is about iteration, it means doing things again and again. If you can't handle that then you shouldn't be playing an Early Access game.

Simple as that.

 

Most people don't understand the programming process and getting an actual application out. You get a lot done at first and then it's all correction, removing bugs, updating functionality, and optimizing to make things run faster, smother, and better without overloading a typical computer. This from someone who spend years fixing other peoples code. The fun.

[Brian9824]

Doing things again and again is fine, but when we're waiting this long? If you want to do things time and time again, it should be done through steady updates so you don't have an overfilled plate. I love this game, have bought servers for it multiple times, and had a blast, but waiting this long is a little overdone. I support the devs in their endeavors, but when you put too much on your own plate, it's a little silly.

 

I'll continue to wait, but that's really all I can do. I mentioned allowing players into the A17 branch with an early access code in the steam property files, etc but... I don't think that'll happen. We could be helping you guys, at least with bugs to save time. But what I feel is going to happen is, we're going to open the game after this update hits, and feel like we're in an entirely reworked and overhauled game. That isn't always a good thing. Too much to catch up on when you've played it hours upon hours the week before.

 

Except that never works the way you think it does. You end up getting 1000 people reporting on issues they already know about and you spend more time going thru their tickets causing you to lose time. Getting players involved is a waste until they've completed their first pass or two with bug testing.

[Crater Creator]

I'm not a fan of grind either and these suggestions actually are pretty cool.

The not-being-able-to-jump is pretty bad when you're stuck and need to jump to get out of a spot. Maybe slow down temporarily when you jump with a broken leg.

 

Building on this, you could simply lose a few HP with every jump: not enough to ruin your day, but enough to make you think twice before nerd poling all over the place.

 

Simple is good. =)

 

Saving this quote for future reference.

 

Wellness was simple but HP gain was also too directly tied to eating. That type of simplicity led to weird gamey behavior to increase wellness (HP). HP will increase as a result of fortitude which will increase as a result of playing the game doing a variety of activities. Wellness as a concept will be an accumulation of buffs and debuffs based on what you eat and drink and whether you have been exposed to illness or poisoning. Still a simple concept but now there won't be eating to directly gain HP.

 

I think what will be missed in particular is the ability to quantify how well the player character is. I know that rubs you the wrong way and it doesn't need an MMORPG-level UI and yadda yadda, but 'on a scale of 1 to 100' is/was a simple concept.

 

Fun game additions for broken legs....like constant pitiful whining and bitching as you walk...upgraded to loud cursing if you actually try to sprint or jump and then get slowed right back down...the addition of alcohol dunk buff or painkillers reduces the chatter , but also increases its vulgarity and originality...so you will hear less complaints , but when you do , oh boy!

 

Ha! And given how much Trader Rekt offends people, I'd say this would be pretty impactful!

 

Their objects could be scaled, which changes the visible size and collider size, but bad things will start happening as they get too big, like pathing not working, since they don't fit in the path width of 1 meter.

 

I would loooooove some variation among zombie instances of the same type any way I can get it - most of all among human zombies. I know you're collectively moving away from UMA, but I'm holding out hope for randomly tinted textures (clothes, hair, skin tone), size (within the bounds of, say, the player character creator), and/or movement speed. Random generation enriches this game so well in other areas, I maintain it could do great things to enrich enemies as well.

[Wolf959]

That sounds a lot like how Savage Lands' stamina works, and it was one of the things I disliked intensely about that game. (besides the bugs, which I'll mostly give them a pass on as it's early release...) If you're not snacking fairly regularly you can't do more than tiny sprints.

 

Their cold weather mechanic also meant you were usually either at full health or dead with not much in between unless you set up campfires every few hundred yards. Given 7DtD's much more polished, well-thought-out systems (a16 and earlier) I can't see how this is a good change.

 

I'm a little worried about this mechanic. I imagine myself carrying stacks and stacks of food and water just to get places. I guess this is balanced by having more vehicles. Anyway, I don't want to sound like i'm complaining, but just in case you didn't consider it (even though you guys probably did cuz your're awesome) maybe make sure you don't end up drinking a lake for a day of travel at a steady -not slow- clip.

[sillls]

@faatal Can we have an evil clown zombie please.

 

Yeah, there were these two zombies that were eating a clown and one of them asked the other. Does this taste funny to you?

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Most people don't understand the programming process and getting an actual application out. You get a lot done at first and then it's all correction, removing bugs, updating functionality, and optimizing to make things run faster, smother, and better without overloading a typical computer. This from someone who spend years fixing other peoples code. The fun.

 

You seem to know a lot about this. Are you a programmer?

[Crater Creator]

Most people don't understand the programming process and getting an actual application out. You get a lot done at first and then it's all correction, removing bugs, updating functionality, and optimizing to make things run faster, smother, and better without overloading a typical computer. This from someone who spend years fixing other peoples code. The fun.

 

You seem to know a lot about this. Are you a programmer?

 

Are you kidding? Anyone that "spends years fixing other people's code" is a programmer. naive1000 already answered your question.

[Alphado-Jaki]

Monster PC.....

[Snowydeath]

On stuttering:

Pre A16, stutters were caused by a couple known things and possibly unknowns.

 

The first known was that the UFPS camera was updating in the wrong order sometimes causing what would look like FPS lag while your FPS would still say 60fps. That one I fixed early on in A17 development so that will no longer be an issue. This would happen when the CPU's physics update would get out of sync with the game update so it was hard to track at first. I tried some random things until I stumbled onto something that kept those calculations in order.

 

The other known is Garbage Collection. Prior to A17 we made a LOT of garbage and created a lot of new structs and method level vars during run time. We have now internally all started pushing vars to class members instead of making them in the methods. While it adds a tiny bit more to ram when creating the class initially, it doesn't need to destroy it every time the method is ran. The new effect system that runs buffs, progression, items, and events uses this setup so that processing a lot in one frame won't make a crapton of garbage from all those tiny bits adding up.

 

There are probably more situations and such that have stuttering but those are the main ones I know about and that we've found and started working on reducing.

 

For anyone curious, below are my system stats and I never have issues with any Unity based games, or any games for that matter.

 

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3

Processor: AMD FX-6300 Six Core Processor (6 CPU) ~3.5GHz

Memory: 20480MB (yeah, I had an extra 4GB ram stick laying around lol)

Video Card: GeForce GTX 1060 3GB

Hard Drives: 512G SSD (2 of them), 2TB HDD

 

I have windows installed on one of my SSDs and I keep all my games installed on the other.

 

Awesome. My 16GB of RAM will love you for this! I love when my ram is used say more than 8GB (for me the game actually uses about 8-9 which is awesome) CANNOT wait for experimental but with FrostPunk releasing sooooon (About 9 hours) I will have something to keep me busy. Great work as always and love the info dump!

[naive1000]

Yeah, there were these two zombies that were eating a clown and one of them asked the other. Does this taste funny to you?

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

 

 

You seem to know a lot about this. Are you a programmer?

 

Was, for a long time. Nothing exciting though. Backup programs mostly for financial and corporate entities.

[Aldranon]

Whether the bonus "tankiness" comes from more HP or more buffs doesn't make a noticeable difference.

 

Having more HP is a simple way to communicate to the player that he is now harder to kill. Simple is good. =)

 

I think it was a dice and paper game called Rune Quest, where your armor could withstand a threshold of damage before the player took the surplus damage. Each area had its own damage resistance and difficulty to hit depending on your weapon, if memory serves.

 

Smart and complex is sometimes best.

[archergod]

On stuttering:

Pre A16, stutters were caused by a couple known things and possibly unknowns.

 

The first known was that the UFPS camera was updating in the wrong order sometimes causing what would look like FPS lag while your FPS would still say 60fps. That one I fixed early on in A17 development so that will no longer be an issue. This would happen when the CPU's physics update would get out of sync with the game update so it was hard to track at first. I tried some random things until I stumbled onto something that kept those calculations in order.

 

The other known is Garbage Collection. Prior to A17 we made a LOT of garbage and created a lot of new structs and method level vars during run time. We have now internally all started pushing vars to class members instead of making them in the methods. While it adds a tiny bit more to ram when creating the class initially, it doesn't need to destroy it every time the method is ran. The new effect system that runs buffs, progression, items, and events uses this setup so that processing a lot in one frame won't make a crapton of garbage from all those tiny bits adding up.

 

There are probably more situations and such that have stuttering but those are the main ones I know about and that we've found and started working on reducing.

 

For anyone curious, below are my system stats and I never have issues with any Unity based games, or any games for that matter.

 

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3

Processor: AMD FX-6300 Six Core Processor (6 CPU) ~3.5GHz

Memory: 20480MB (yeah, I had an extra 4GB ram stick laying around lol)

Video Card: GeForce GTX 1060 3GB

Hard Drives: 512G SSD (2 of them), 2TB HDD

 

I have windows installed on one of my SSDs and I keep all my games installed on the other.

 

I always have arugment with my brother if 7DTD can perform better, and I always told him that code optimization is needed as I was pretty sure your code is not optimize. You just confirm it. I am happy that I was right. I am more happy that game is getting streamline and will perform little better then before.

 

Been a programmer I always tell my friends, the less you right is better your code works.

[Roland]

I think it was a dice and paper game called Rune Quest, where your armor could withstand a threshold of damage before the player took the surplus damage. Each area had its own damage resistance and difficulty to hit depending on your weapon, if memory serves.

 

Smart and complex is sometimes best.

 

GURPS as well. Generic and universal is sometimes best.

[archergod]

Also, if you not save XML in memory will make it efficient, with my experience XML object in memory are one of slowest thing. Convert them in Array and use it from there.

[Daggett Beaver]

Whether the bonus "tankiness" comes from more HP or more buffs doesn't make a noticeable difference.

 

I have to disagree here - gameplay-wise there is usually a huge difference between Tankiness from HP or Tankiness from resistances. Let's take the example of 200 HP and no damage reduction vs. 100 HP and 50% damage reduction. One major difference is the efficiency of healing items - if healing items don't restore a percentage of your health, but an absolute number of HP (as it is in 7d2d), damage reduction makes healing items and health gain from food so much more efficient.

 

The next point is that damage reductions can be partial, while HP always is general. In other words: HP protect you from every source of damage, while damage reduction usually doesn't. In 7d2d we have different protection areas (blunt, slashing, radiation) and some other damage forms might not be reduced at all (falling damage, suffocating...). Having 250 HP is great in the current built of 7d2d if you want to get some really deep underwater airdrops / treasure hunts - because even after you run out of air, you survive for a long time. Damage reduction would not help here.

 

So yeah, i'm all the way for damage reductions - i think a game like 7d2d shouldn't cater to the absolute casual game, the argument that "easier is better" thus isn't to fitting for this game. Sure, it shouldn't be overly complex as well, but it doesn't have to be to easy - believe me, the "this game is to complicated for me" guy is not the player base you are aiming for with this game...

 

As to @Aldranon, yes, there are lots and lots of interesting armor systems. A percentage resistance ("X% of all damage is ignored") and an absolute resistance ("The first x points of damage are ignored") are the easiest and most common, a percentage fail chance ("Each attack has x% chance to not inflict any damage") is rarer, and there are a lot of systems in-between.

[Xeen]

On stuttering:

Pre A16, stutters were caused by a couple known things and possibly unknowns.

 

The first known was that the UFPS camera was updating in the wrong order sometimes causing what would look like FPS lag while your FPS would still say 60fps. That one I fixed early on in A17 development so that will no longer be an issue. This would happen when the CPU's physics update would get out of sync with the game update so it was hard to track at first. I tried some random things until I stumbled onto something that kept those calculations in order.

 

The other known is Garbage Collection. Prior to A17 we made a LOT of garbage and created a lot of new structs and method level vars during run time. We have now internally all started pushing vars to class members instead of making them in the methods. While it adds a tiny bit more to ram when creating the class initially, it doesn't need to destroy it every time the method is ran. The new effect system that runs buffs, progression, items, and events uses this setup so that processing a lot in one frame won't make a crapton of garbage from all those tiny bits adding up.

 

There are probably more situations and such that have stuttering but those are the main ones I know about and that we've found and started working on reducing.

 

For anyone curious, below are my system stats and I never have issues with any Unity based games, or any games for that matter.

 

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3

Processor: AMD FX-6300 Six Core Processor (6 CPU) ~3.5GHz

Memory: 20480MB (yeah, I had an extra 4GB ram stick laying around lol)

Video Card: GeForce GTX 1060 3GB

Hard Drives: 512G SSD (2 of them), 2TB HDD

 

I have windows installed on one of my SSDs and I keep all my games installed on the other.

 

Thanks for the update on this because people have been going on and on about this issue for months on end.

There you have it folks the micro-stuttering problem is being fixed, @Roland could you please add this to the second post text so people can stop complaining about it YAY!

[Skuriles]

In A16 I have updated my system with a GTX 1080 and still got "lags", even if I reduced most of the settings like shadows or view distance.

Hope this will be fixed with the improvements in code in A17.

[Xeen]

In A16 I have updated my system with a GTX 1080 and still got "lags", even if I reduced most of the settings like shadows or view distance.

Hope this will be fixed with the improvements in code in A17.

 

Don't worry Kinyajuu has got us covered, he will hunt these issues down and destroy them with extreme prejudice. lol

 

p.s. I always had faith that the graphics stuttering and lag problems would get fixed, I knew it was just a matter of them making it a priority to find the problems and fix them, we <3 you Kinyajuu!

[Demonoid74]

GURPS as well. Generic and universal is sometimes best.

 

lol , I am paid to run table top RPG game sessions out here in Vegas and still do a monthly GURPS game...since I still have all my old RPG books...over the years we have tried different ones , but currently we are running a long standing GURPS Western+Horror campaign...Horror , Western , Supers have always been the favorite and different combinations of those 3 have always been interesting...

[DaVegaNL]

+1 to adding those buffs anyway, even if it's just for modders to use.

 

Hopefully one day I'll get my wish of shaking hands from a caffeine overdose, I know from personal experience that it happens in real life :-)

 

Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Been there. Experienced that.

[Scyris]

Don't worry Kinyajuu has got you covered, he will hunt these issues down and destroy them with extreme prejudice. lol

 

The problem is the reflections to name one, everything seems to cast a reflection in a16.4 which shouldn't be. If you shut them off everything seems too dark.

[DaVegaNL]

Yeh, a stun-after-jump (quick stun, just to make it annoying but not grindy).

 

I'm not sure if I would call the broken leg buff grindy.. I would think it's a rather fitting buff, since trying to jump with a broken leg is rather impossible in real life.

 

But I agree that it should happen less random.

[Scyris]

I think it was a dice and paper game called Rune Quest, where your armor could withstand a threshold of damage before the player took the surplus damage. Each area had its own damage resistance and difficulty to hit depending on your weapon, if memory serves.

 

Smart and complex is sometimes best.

 

Sounds like Fallout 1 and 2. If the dmg was less than your DT it'd usually miss entirely. You were god in that game once you got power armor as most things became unable to land a hit on you unless they got REALLY lucky. New vegas also uses a DT system but it allows a bit of bleedthru 25% of the damage you would have taken if it was more than your DT.

[Scyris]

What we really need is scaling of stats. Stuff like movement speed having a RANGE would be a massive quality of life change. Its really annoying watching 5 nurses heading towards me at the EXACT SAME SPEED. If there speed was say between .75 and 1.25 and more randomized then it would catch you off guard as they might arrive in clumps or surprise you.

 

i'd also like to see health and damage done and block damage also have random values between a range by the zombies class, randomized looks would also be nice.