PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[DuHast_Play]

Some news.

The basics of an entity activity throttling system have been added to A21 to allow servers to handle more zombies. Large AI counts would overload pathing causing all zombies to be delayed in moving, so this decreases the update rate based on distance from players while still allowing each player to always have some fully active zombies. With this change, max zombie counts for blood moons and sleeper volumes are allowed to be scaled around double what the the cap is set to. The system also disables jiggle components for clients with distance as these were getting expensive as more zombies have them. The system will continue to be improved to throttle other activities.

I noticed last week we had an old Terrain Tool that was not being used, as it did not work very well, so it has gotten some changes and bug fixes. It now grows terrain in all directions (was just upwards before) and you can select the fill block. Undo also works. This will allow POI designers to make easier and faster terrain instead of the old add/paste/cut blocks and modify density using the cursor keys. Other improvements are planned.

Grass like plants now have shadows, which were removed years ago for performance reasons. Based on tests enabling shadows for grass near the player, I saw no reason we can't have these shadows and it looks nicer. Enabling and distance is controlled by shadow and grass quality settings.

We are also finishing the process of doing one more Unity update to 2021.3.19.

I'm glad that there was news directly from the team) I'm glad to see them with my own eyes) I would like to ask if there is an approximate date for at least the first streams of the new alpha? just an approximate date according to your plans and expectations)

 

[Matt115]

Some news.

The basics of an entity activity throttling system have been added to A21 to allow servers to handle more zombies. Large AI counts would overload pathing causing all zombies to be delayed in moving, so this decreases the update rate based on distance from players while still allowing each player to always have some fully active zombies. With this change, max zombie counts for blood moons and sleeper volumes are allowed to be scaled around double what the the cap is set to. The system also disables jiggle components for clients with distance as these were getting expensive as more zombies have them. The system will continue to be improved to throttle other activities.

I noticed last week we had an old Terrain Tool that was not being used, as it did not work very well, so it has gotten some changes and bug fixes. It now grows terrain in all directions (was just upwards before) and you can select the fill block. Undo also works. This will allow POI designers to make easier and faster terrain instead of the old add/paste/cut blocks and modify density using the cursor keys. Other improvements are planned.

Grass like plants now have shadows, which were removed years ago for performance reasons. Based on tests enabling shadows for grass near the player, I saw no reason we can't have these shadows and it looks nicer. Enabling and distance is controlled by shadow and grass quality settings.

We are also finishing the process of doing one more Unity update to 2021.3.19.

So this mean in short - more zombie during blood moon or totaly more zombies?

All drama aside now ...What about Zombie Cows or Zombies teens/children?

I wanted convice them for zombie teens like in No more room in hell or Dead space 2 but they doesn't wanted because it would cause 7dtd would be banned in few countries so some people would lose access to this game

 

[zztong]

May need to start calling Faatal the Xtreme Optimization Cowboy with how efficient he is at cleaning and improving the code.    Since Faatal shared about the recent terrain tool improvements, here is a small sample of some terrain sculpting I did quickly with it in the prefab editor.  Sculpting something like this previously would take me much longer.

I was confused by Faatal's description. Is this sculpting things block by block manually, some noise function applied to a bunch of blocks in a selection, or something else?

 

[Laz Man]

I was confused by Faatal's description. Is this sculpting things block by block manually, some noise function applied to a bunch of blocks in a selection, or something else?

There is a sphere type terrain tool in the creative / dev menu that has been there for many Alphas but has mostly been underutilized because how it functioned.

His new tool will update / replace the old one.  

 

[Morloc]

also disables jiggle components for clients

Meh?



-Arch Necromancer Morloc 

 

[faatal]

Now Sir, you are treading on dangerous waters here. How do you sleep at night?

Jokes aside, I love those changes. I have a question about the Zd count: does that mean that you guys will set the max Zd count on the new map/continue map menu to 128 or something like that? Please do tell !

The cap currently is the same. Different spawning systems can now scale the cap as they check the count. Blood moon is x1.9. Sleeper volumes x2.1.

 

[faatal]

@faatal All that sounds awesome. The more zombies the better. The terrain tool improvements sound good if they will work how I think. I never saw much use for that tool as is due to it being too destructive either way. Giving it a smoothing ability would be pretty sweet if that is possible. Battlecraft 1942 had some good terrain abilities back in the day for BF42. Something like that would be perfect.

Have you guys started the MF counter for A21 yet? Soon, maybe?

To be clear, this is more zombies on the server, spread across multiple players, while improvements like disabling jiggle is client side.

If you as a client had 100 zombies around you, the overhead of animating, colliding and rendering them is still expensive and you would probably have a low FPS.

Must Fixes was started a few months ago, but that is just a guide. Multiple systems are still being worked on, polished and tested, which are not often in MFs. There is some overlap, like my vehicle damage task is marked MF, yet it is a system improvement task, not a bug. That one is basically done, but I'm not closing it yet as the values are still open to tweaking and I would like to work on vehicles smoking when highly damaged, if I spend the time. That could also be done during experimental, so not a high priority to me.

 

[Vintorez]

NGL every time I see terrain updates mentioned my first thought/hope is finally being able to square terrain blocks to be flush against structures we build in game.

Some day~

 

[faatal]

Faatal how much improvement did they make on this one?

Any improvement is good news If I'm understanding it correctly. 

• IL2CPP: Improved performance of awaiting async operations on Windows. (UUM-20917)
  
• 
  

That one does not matter since the computer version of the game does not use IL2CPP as it would break code mods. Console is using IL2CPP. Console needed a fix in .17 for a PS5 occlusion bug and we currently try to keep versions in sync between computer and console dev, so the update from .16 to latest.

 

[faatal]

I'm glad that there was news directly from the team) I'm glad to see them with my own eyes) I would like to ask if there is an approximate date for at least the first streams of the new alpha? just an approximate date according to your plans and expectations)

No date yet. Streams would be x amount of time before we anticipate release as we don't want streams too early. Multiple people, including myself have tasks to finish with unknown durations. A good example is a hole in terrain bug I have when quest resetting some POIs. I've looked at it before and why it happens is unknown, which means it could take a day or a week or more. There is no way to know, only guess.

 

[Fanatical_Meat]

@faatal thank you for posting. The overall silence has been irritating.

Thank you for the knowledge bombs dropped today.

 

[meilodasreh]

A good example is a hole in terrain bug I have when quest resetting some POIs. I've looked at it before and why it happens is unknown, which means it could take a day or a week or more. There is no way to know, only guess.

This would be nice to have fixed. I've encountered it a few times myself.  Hard to get out of if you fall into it.

Just a thought:

Might this be related to the cases where the quest marker is generated a few meters undergound, so you have to dig it up?

Some weird "ground level offset error" when generating/setting a poi?

How is that done anyways? I mean how is it determined at which height a POI is set to, in relation to the surrounding area?

 

[Riamus]

Just a thought:

Might this be related to the cases where the quest marker is generated a few meters undergound, so you have to dig it up?

Some weird "ground level offset error" when generating/setting a poi?

How is that done anyways? I mean how is it determined at which height a POI is set to, in relation to the surrounding area?

Not knowing the code, I can't be certain, but they are different enough that they are probably separate issues.  I could be wrong, though.

As for how the POI is determined, it is a value set in the POIs XML file (yoffset).  The designer adjusts the position based on how they make it.  In some cases, with an underground section in a POI, the entire thing will be made above ground and then the offset is used to drop it all down to the right height.  It is also common to have the entire POI one block above the actual ground level during design as it makes it easier to work with the ground and so many POI have a -1 offset even if they don't have an underground area.  You can easily edit this value if you feel a specific POI is set up incorrectly.  Vanilla POI are fine, but it is possible a custom POI could be set incorrectly.

 

[Beelzebubs Ghost]

Some news.

The basics of an entity activity throttling system have been added to A21 to allow servers to handle more zombies. Large AI counts would overload pathing causing all zombies to be delayed in moving, so this decreases the update rate based on distance from players while still allowing each player to always have some fully active zombies. With this change, max zombie counts for blood moons and sleeper volumes are allowed to be scaled around double what the the cap is set to. The system also disables jiggle components for clients with distance as these were getting expensive as more zombies have them. The system will continue to be improved to throttle other activities.

I noticed last week we had an old Terrain Tool that was not being used, as it did not work very well, so it has gotten some changes and bug fixes. It now grows terrain in all directions (was just upwards before) and you can select the fill block. Undo also works. This will allow POI designers to make easier and faster terrain instead of the old add/paste/cut blocks and modify density using the cursor keys. Other improvements are planned.

Grass like plants now have shadows, which were removed years ago for performance reasons. Based on tests enabling shadows for grass near the player, I saw no reason we can't have these shadows and it looks nicer. Enabling and distance is controlled by shadow and grass quality settings.

We are also finishing the process of doing one more Unity update to 2021.3.19.

Suggestion: Crowd fund a migration to a new engine - even if that were to be handled by other people while you work on the next game.

I think plenty people would appreciate that - and unlocking more potential for this would ensure more unrestricted updates and development instead of having your game as a symbolic anachronism in a few more years, frozen in an outdated and restricted capacity.

 

[Aldranon]

No date yet. Streams would be x amount of time before we anticipate release as we don't want streams too early. Multiple people, including myself have tasks to finish with unknown durations. A good example is a hole in terrain bug I have when quest resetting some POIs. I've looked at it before and why it happens is unknown, which means it could take a day or a week or more. There is no way to know, only guess.

Are the POI's large in some way that cause a hole?  I know there is something odd with finding the last zombie sometimes in large POI's. 

If it's not related, forget everything I just [SIZE=14.6px]said.   Not a MF.  [/SIZE]

 

[gunner1912]

Some news.

The basics of an entity activity throttling system have been added to A21 to allow servers to handle more zombies. Large AI counts would overload pathing causing all zombies to be delayed in moving, so this decreases the update rate based on distance from players while still allowing each player to always have some fully active zombies. With this change, max zombie counts for blood moons and sleeper volumes are allowed to be scaled around double what the the cap is set to. The system also disables jiggle components for clients with distance as these were getting expensive as more zombies have them. The system will continue to be improved to throttle other activities.

I noticed last week we had an old Terrain Tool that was not being used, as it did not work very well, so it has gotten some changes and bug fixes. It now grows terrain in all directions (was just upwards before) and you can select the fill block. Undo also works. This will allow POI designers to make easier and faster terrain instead of the old add/paste/cut blocks and modify density using the cursor keys. Other improvements are planned.

Grass like plants now have shadows, which were removed years ago for performance reasons. Based on tests enabling shadows for grass near the player, I saw no reason we can't have these shadows and it looks nicer. Enabling and distance is controlled by shadow and grass quality settings.

We are also finishing the process of doing one more Unity update to 2021.3.19.

appreciate the update even little things like this are nice to see when you are waiting for release. it gives a little peek through the window for everyone who doesn't know what all goes into development

 

[Aldranon]

To be clear, this is more zombies on the server, spread across multiple players, while improvements like disabling jiggle is client side.

If you as a client had 100 zombies around you, the overhead of animating, colliding and rendering them is still expensive and you would probably have a low FPS.

Must Fixes was started a few months ago, but that is just a guide. Multiple systems are still being worked on, polished and tested, which are not often in MFs. There is some overlap, like my vehicle damage task is marked MF, yet it is a system improvement task, not a bug. That one is basically done, but I'm not closing it yet as the values are still open to tweaking and I would like to work on vehicles smoking when highly damaged, if I spend the time. That could also be done during experimental, so not a high priority to me.

With the hole appearing when a POI is reset MF bug:  (This is just spit-balling but might help somehow) Can you do an area wide function that is similar to when a person is digging a hole and the system will keep the player from falling through the world by making ground under their feet?

The bug might be when a POI is on two or more chunks and not all the chunks get updated.

Or the player digs around the POI (for whatever reason) and that throws off the POI reset?

 

[Laran Mithras]

DEVS:

So the new models are being worked on for A22. They look great.

Question: are the new female models being animated from a live female model?

Many games cut corners by having a single live model. Unfortunately, the female iterations based on male models walk like dudes.

Can you give us a teaser on the new models? Are the new females going to walk like a female and not like a dude?  :tongue:

 

[faatal]

With the hole appearing when a POI is reset MF bug:  (This is just spit-balling but might help somehow) Can you do an area wide function that is similar to when a person is digging a hole and the system will keep the player from falling through the world by making ground under their feet?

The bug might be when a POI is on two or more chunks and not all the chunks get updated.

Or the player digs around the POI (for whatever reason) and that throws off the POI reset?

It is a terrain collision mesh generation issue. Could be timing and/or a combination of density values or simply a code error. I've never seen someone fall through the world digging down.

 

[Aldranon]

It is a terrain collision mesh generation issue. Could be timing and/or a combination of density values or simply a code error. I've never seen someone fall through the world digging down.

Nether have I.  I didn't know what to call that system function that does that, so I described it. 

Although I did have a cop spit up through two concrete blocks and damage my base.  My theory was the cops head was temporarily stuck inside the lower block and then it was a clear shot to try and spit at me.