PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[faatal]

I think, if this change continues to mutate(can't see how it won't tbh), the glaringly big problem, in the current iteration, is that -75% HP is not also -75% material cost.

I imagine that is an oversight/balance issue that will get dealt with in some way, hopefully soon, but until then I am not base building. Once that happens I can, and will, deal with reduced HP block builds. 

Is there even an argument that reduced HP blocks should still require the same material cost? Can't imagine there is, but I'm poking for a try.

Already changed that today. Upgrade, repair and harvesting all scale.

We are still testing and thinking about these changes like many parts of the game. I'm currently leaning towards two buckets. 25% (or 33%) and 100%. The 25 being the obviously flimsy/weak/small blocks that should not be stopping anything from breaking through and anyone should be able to look at and say that is not going to protect me.

Bars were intentionally excluded because they are primary window and elevated defenses. Plates would probably move back into the 100%, but we are still discussing. Changing stuff to see what happens is what game development is about and some major changes can and do happen during experimental.

 

[RBN]

 Seconded, my friend and I notice our frames drop from normal 60-80 fps elsewhere to 15-30 in certain parts of the wasteland city we live in, especially bad with lots of zombie activity, changing graphics settings doesn't appear to make a difference. In recollection I do think the areas of city where it is especially bad are indeed where the new city block areas. The worst area so far has been around the dishong and higashi skyscrapers (they are across the street from each other). I know some folks have report issues with Dishong in particular, so I thought that might be the cause. Also we liked the game we were playing and did not wipe and restart after the first update patch, so I thought maybe some changes were causing frame drops in maps generated in the initial a20 version.

At least is not only me....

I don't know about the map. Erasing the region files doesn't help.

Otherwise my experience is exactly the same as yours. Always the new zones and worst when there is enemies around

 

[faatal]

Any planned changes on performance? I know it won't help my particular case, but ANY calculations that you can actually separate in a new CPU thread is a very needed change.

I hope you guys can magically find a way to significantly reduce the "class-calling" hell of Unity. 

Music is bad for me now. The music fading and unfading reduces performance to a crazy degree, and sometimes it doesn't even fade properly if you leave the area quickly. I'm talking 300% in some particular scenarios (screamer calling next to a trader, buried supplies when also producing combat music, etc).

I think the Mesh calculation did hurt 4-core systems, as they just can't handle any more, but I've seen the drops in streams , and recent ones too, meaning current version b233.

Music loading will need a rewrite to use another method to improve performance issues, which is not happening now. Months away.

Mesh baking moving off the main thread should not make it worse, since the main thread is the most loaded thread.

 

[RBN]

Already changed that today. Upgrade, repair and harvesting all scale.

We are still testing and thinking about these changes like many parts of the game. I'm currently leaning towards two buckets. 25% (or 33%) and 100%. The 25 being the obviously flimsy/weak/small blocks that should not be stopping anything from breaking through and anyone should be able to look at and say that is not going to protect me.

Bars were intentionally excluded because they are primary window and elevated defenses. Plates would probably move back into the 100%, but we are still discussing. Changing stuff to see what happens is what game development is about and some major changes can and do happen during experimental.

If the cost is proportional things begin to make more sense.

Once the plates are safe what about the poles.....can we put them in the same plate's boat?

And if not, have you considered  removing the damage penalty?

 

[POCKET951]

Already changed that today. Upgrade, repair and harvesting all scale.

We are still testing and thinking about these changes like many parts of the game. I'm currently leaning towards two buckets. 25% (or 33%) and 100%. The 25 being the obviously flimsy/weak/small blocks that should not be stopping anything from breaking through and anyone should be able to look at and say that is not going to protect me.

Bars were intentionally excluded because they are primary window and elevated defenses. Plates would probably move back into the 100%, but we are still discussing. Changing stuff to see what happens is what game development is about and some major changes can and do happen during experimental.

This may or may not be what we get but I think the 2 bucket solution seems far more reasonable than the 3 bucket one. Also the idea of blocks that are more cosmetic and flimsy in nature is okay

 

[faatal]

Is there a way to enable "profiling"  in 7 days to die so people can log where the slowdowns are occurring ? Would help a lot in regards to optimization over the different hardware perhaps. There is also a "severe" slowdown when opening inventory or talking in shop that happens randomly.

I've noticed a couple slowdowns less than 30fps in wasteland cities (5950x / 3090) where FPS is generally over 100, but just figured it was normal, would be nice to see where the issues lay as a programmer.

No. Profiling requires Unity editor to attach to game. Game has to be a dev build, which makes it run quite a bit slower, so you don't want to be playing a dev build.

Profiling is also not as great as it sounds. Knowing something is slow is easy, I see lots of that whenever I profile. Trying to make it faster is the hard part.

Cities are going to be slower by their very nature. More objects/blocks/zombies. More is going to render slower. To handle more, you turn down settings to reach a reasonable FPS vs quality tradeoff.

 

[Red Eagle LXIX]

Already changed that today. Upgrade, repair and harvesting all scale.

Nice!  That makes me happy to hear. 

Bars were intentionally excluded because they are primary window and elevated defenses. Plates would probably move back into the 100%, but we are still discussing. Changing stuff to see what happens is what game development is about and some major changes can and do happen during experimental.

Good to know.  Bars work well for one of the design ideas I wanted to try too. 

 

[faatal]

If the cost is proportional things begin to make more sense.

Once the plates are safe what about the poles.....can we put them in the same plate's boat?

And if not, have you considered  removing the damage penalty?

Any pole health reduction should be balanced with a reduced zed damage buf, but I actually forgot that code was even in there until I saw in forum discussion. Things are a bit hectic around here with a lot of back and forth on a variety of bugs and balance issues.

 

[q123]

I will not do what that mod does. [...] The increased blending they use also makes ugly motion blur, which the artists and I don't like.

:bless_you:

 

[RBN]

Any pole health reduction should be balanced with a reduced zed damage buf, but I actually forgot that code was even in there until I saw in forum discussion. Things are a bit hectic around here with a lot of back and forth on a variety of bugs and balance issues.

Leave them as is and you have one problem less

They look so happy together

 

[MuffinMan]

No. Profiling requires Unity editor to attach to game. Game has to be a dev build, which makes it run quite a bit slower, so you don't want to be playing a dev build.

Profiling is also not as great as it sounds. Knowing something is slow is easy, I see lots of that whenever I profile. Trying to make it faster is the hard part.

Cities are going to be slower by their very nature. More objects/blocks/zombies. More is going to render slower. To handle more, you turn down settings to reach a reasonable FPS vs quality tradeoff.

There is literally no setting I can change to improve FPS except the "draw distance". 5950x and 3090.

 

[Firecat]

There is literally no setting I can change to improve FPS except the "draw distance". 5950x and 3090

Indeed. I run a computer that in alpha 19 would only drop into frames below 60 if I turned settings to ultra. Usually ultra would give me about 40 fps.  It could handle high no issues, and I usually run on the lowest settings that still look "pretty", in this game that is medium. A20 on medium now I'm pretty much never above 60 frames unless I'm out in the wilderness, and in the city I'm getting like 30 fps. When I started seeing visual stutters due to sudden frame drops I started playing with the settings, but turning the settings to low had no effect, the fps stayed essentially the same.

P.S.

LMAO I noticed something is a bit...odd about the college jacket. That's not how that texture is supposed to go, I wouldn't think! +1 silly inconsequential bug

 

[meilodasreh]

If it stays,

the lower hitpoint stuff should at least get its own "flimsy deco stuff tab", or being highlighted/separated somehow else from the regular "full HP stuff".

So at least you can't run into accidentally create absolutely non-obvious structural weakness in your base design,

just because you just want it to be nice/smooth looking, and wanting to try out all the great new shapes.

I guess that's the main point why everybody is complaining about the change.

And I don't like it either, although I can see the fact that before you could somewhat "exploit" building by adding thin stuff together to have a nice HP upgrade whilst still having some nice and slim design. (can't see the actual problem with that either btw)

 

[palikkamaa]

In my testing with a20 in cities FPS improves a ton lowering object quality, and in a second place, shadows.

Object quality ultra:

Object quality lowest:

Yeah, there is a big difference in graphics, I usually play at medium object quality. RTX3080, i7 7700k, 16gb 3200 CL15, game on SSD, pregen 8k, creative mode. 4k resolution, default high preset. Tried also 1080p, low preset, same spot. Ultra object quality is ~45fps, lowest object quality ~130fps.

Gallery with all ultra, high, medium, low and lowest here:

https://imgur.com/a/z7YjHRV

@faatal please take a look how CPU and GPU are quite low all the time, maybe is there a code bottleneck? Also GPU usage seems inversely affected when lowering object quality. Maybe the less bottleneck is there, the more GPU can be used? Hope it helps.

Also please take a look to this mod which greatly reduces TAA flickering, maybe can help devs too: https://www.nexusmods.com/7daystodie/mods/1746

I also did quick stationary test that changing object quality from ultra to lowest improves framerate from 44 -> 75. However, object popping is very noticeable. I would not play lower than medium which still nets ~+20fps compared to ultra or +10 to high what I was using. However, out in the wilderness, fps gain was only 100 -> 110 between lowest and ultra so not really meaningful. (I'm using 9600k + 2070s +16gb ram)

 

[MechanicalLens]

Okay, important question. Do zombie loot bags despawn after you log out of the game?

 

[Aldranon]

Oh, you're one of those guys...  :suspicious:

Wow Josh, go easy on the new guy, that's his first post!

 

[MechanicalLens]

Okay, important question. Do zombie loot bags despawn after you log out of the game?

Don't bothering answering.

 

[POCKET951]

No, but my turds were so powerful you had to remove them.

Sounds like the poop I had at work today.

 

[Jost Amman]

Wow Josh, go easy on the new guy, that's his first post!

Did you get my reference though? 

It's a joke but maybe not too easy to get... ;-]

 

[MechanicalLens]

Even with the nerf, I feel the pipe machine gun is still far too powerful compared to the other pipe weapons. I think another nerf is needed. From my feedback, but I propose these changes:

- A level 6 pipe machine gun currently has a damage value of 45.6 with regular bullets. I would reduce the maximum damage to 35, and go down from there as quality level decreases.
- Currently, pipe machine guns have a magazine size of 15. I would reduce this to 10.
- Their current rounds/minute is 335. I would reduce this by half, so around 160-165.
- I would double the reload time.
- Accuracy would be terrible if you hold it down fully auto. This would be alright in close combat situations but from afar or fights that require precision, it would encourage the player to single tap the weapon, or fire in small bursts.

In general, I also don't think pipe weapons should be able to use more advanced ammo types.