PC 1.0 (A22) Dev Diary Overflow

Will the problem of transport accessibility on the A22 be solved?
All my observations of the A21 led to the fact that I got a motorcycle for about 35-40 days of life (60 minutes/day).
Perhaps it was a balance for survival in a cooperative, but it disrupted survival alone.
In more than 200 hours on the A21 highway, I have cycled for more than 70 hours.
If trader Bob does not appear nearby and the player purposefully does not search for magazines (never did this on purpose) I only get 4x4 for 50-60 days.
According to my observations, quite a lot of players give up on survival, as soon as they get all the best weapons and armor, they reach the maximum of concrete. By this time, they have a motorcycle at best.

The situation with solar panels is repeated. Soon 4x4 will turn into such a rarity.

As far as I remember, it used to be something like this: in the first stages, the player has access to wooden and stone buildings, appropriate weapons, tools and armor, literally after the first horde we got the opportunity to craft a mini-bike, to the third or fourth horde - a mini-motorcycle. a motorcycle and much more. concrete, up to the sixth or seventh horde is 4x4, and the base is made of steel.
Progress has been steady, now I can have a concrete base, but at the same time I'm going to complete a level 6 task on a bike or, at most, on a moped.

I understand that the balance adjustment happens in each alpha version, and it is not final yet, but I thought this problem would be solved a couple of months after the release of A21, but it is still not solved.

Am I the only one having problems with transport accessibility? 
And yes, I am aware of int skills that increase the number of transport logs, but I am not obligated to put points into the int branch in every survival

 
Cr0wst0rm said:
Yes, the performance is really bad, even on minimum settings, so it has to be the game code at fault (whether it is physics/pathing) but definitely not rendering performance, I highly doubt that, considering i have lowest rendering settings and RTX with 16 gigs
Click to expand...
Do note that the game does not care about your RTX with 16GB VRAM. It relies on the capability of your CPU.

If you want to get assistance with your issue, start a thread in the correct location after following the instructions.  This is not a discussion topic for the dev diary.

 
Cr0wst0rm said:
This is not a question, this is a statement. I have substantial proof from the researched game source that there are infact places which make absolutely no sense (for example drowning buff checks on zombies in the game update loop etc)

Now with the respect to the devs, there were already attempts to optimize the performance (TickEntitiesSlice), however, this approach will eventually fail (because you still have to eventually process all the entities on the game thread)
You could also try to even lower the workload so you would slice limited number of entities (5 entities frame 1, 5 other frame 2)
This will, however, worsen the visual output. Relying on gamethread only is just not feasible. And this is why threading should be used.
Buying a new CPU just because it has 2 more GHz just so it catches up to the terribly optimized gamethread is just not a solution, but an excuse.

There are also places which are not dependant on the game framerate (for example camera movement is framerate dependant, management of environmental events such as AI perception is NOT)

So what I would like to conclude is that the developers/moderators should NOT tell their players to "buzz off and buy better hardware" when you can very easily utilize the already used hardware which supports multithreading.
Click to expand...
The game deva have repeatedly said that optimization happens before going gold.

There is near zero reason to do a full optimization now, when systems and other features will change. Any changes they make would require a full optimization run again.

Basically, doing a full optimization early doesn't save them any work/labor/time in the process of making the game.

 
Cr0wst0rm said:
This is not a question, this is a statement. I have substantial proof from the researched game source that there are infact places which make absolutely no sense (for example drowning buff checks on zombies in the game update loop etc)

Now with the respect to the devs, there were already attempts to optimize the performance (TickEntitiesSlice), however, this approach will eventually fail (because you still have to eventually process all the entities on the game thread)
You could also try to even lower the workload so you would slice limited number of entities (5 entities frame 1, 5 other frame 2)
This will, however, worsen the visual output. Relying on gamethread only is just not feasible. And this is why threading should be used.
Buying a new CPU just because it has 2 more GHz just so it catches up to the terribly optimized gamethread is just not a solution, but an excuse.

There are also places which are not dependant on the game framerate (for example camera movement is framerate dependant, management of environmental events such as AI perception is NOT)

So what I would like to conclude is that the developers/moderators should NOT tell their players to "buzz off and buy better hardware" when you can very easily utilize the already used hardware which supports multithreading.
Click to expand...
Take your "proof" and submit a proper bug report. 

It doesn't make my statement any less true, or wrong. You would not believe the number of people I have assisted who thought just throwing a better GPU at the problem would solve it. Sure that will work for other games, but not this one. I will also note that I have chided the developers a number of times for the overly vague hardware requirements. I even recently submitted a suggestion with details.

And by the way, if you studied your proof, you would realize that the game already makes use of multithreading. However the core process is still tied to a single CPU, and child tasks are able to be sent to other threads. Unlike most other games that do not utilize multithreading at all. The engine needs to support further separation of the main process to multiple threads for the team to be able to utilize a tactic like that further.

Again, this is not a discussion for this thread. Bring it up in the proper channels, and stop talking about it here. If your performance is really that bad on something better than a GTX 1060 6GB card, then you have other issues preventing the game from performing well. I have actual proof of this, and it has been presented already.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
If I recall, faatal mentioned many things are on the main thread because of unity.  I know some users have posted suggestions in the past and he explained why it wasn't so easy.  

As far as optimizations are concerned, they are happening all the time.  There would of been no way the game would work on the consoles without them.

More optimizations will keep continuing to happen.

 
spud42 said:
so far the "optimizations" seem to be simplifying the game to shoehorn it into a console. Sure some of these wil benifit the PC game but  a lot of the richness and complexity has been whittled away to cram it into a console. 
Click to expand...
In my opinion the real problem is that some supported features are geared towards low-end, 10 years old computers, and are impacting everyone.

Example: why don't they allow a greater number of concurrent zombies in the game, as an option? No, they limit it to 64 whatever system you have.

Same goes for view distance and map size.

Those limitations should be removed, and left to the individual player to try on their system.

As for the "legal reasons", they could just add a short disclaimer about that. Done. Everybody happy.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Jost Amman said:
In my opinion the real problem is that some supported features are geared towards low-end, 10 years old computers, and are impacting everyone.

Example: why don't they allow a greater number of concurrent zombies in the game, as an option? No, they limit it to 64 whatever system you have.

Same goes for view distance and map size.

Those limitations should be removed, and left to the individual player to try on their system.

As for the "legal reasons", they could just add a short disclaimer about that. Done. Everybody happy.
Click to expand...
That just isn't the case. Go into a world and enter dm mode. Hit F6 and check the Spawn 25 box. Spawn 75+ zombies and watch your game go to crap. And that's with the zombies doing basically nothing. Go to a POI with a complex path through it and spawn them again. Your game will be almost unplayable and the AI will slow to a halt. The best PC you can buy today will have those same struggles.

 
bdubyah said:
That just isn't the case. Go into a world and enter dm mode. Hit F6 and check the Spawn 25 box. Spawn 75+ zombies and watch your game go to crap. And that's with the zombies doing basically nothing. Go to a POI with a complex path through it and spawn them again. Your game will be almost unplayable and the AI will slow to a halt. The best PC you can buy today will have those same struggles.
Click to expand...
Is this recent? ... Because I clearly remember people modding their game to play with up to 128 zombies (not sure if active at one time, probably not).

In any case there are other limits that are imposed with no setting available to overcome them, so my point stands.

We need more freedom!!  :whoo: :israel: :peace:

 
Cr0wst0rm said:
We are no longer in 1998 where systems had just 1 core for processing. Argument that you should buy better HW is just invalid. Every game uses threads. (UEBS 2 is one nice example)
Click to expand...
And yet even now, I can count on one hand the number of games that actually support multithreading. Never mind that the tech has existed for nearly 15 years. Same with IPv6, but that is even worse.

 
SylenThunder said:
And yet even now, I can count on one hand the number of games that actually support multithreading. Never mind that the tech has existed for nearly 15 years. Same with IPv6, but that is even worse.
Click to expand...
Agreed and I thinks it’s a game engine thing. Nobody is patching Unity to have multi thread support.

Unity allows a lot of fun things, it’s just getting old.

 
Cr0wst0rm said:
I think it is fair to post it here since it is related to the development of the game, and I prefer stronger exposure. 
Click to expand...
I would point out that right at the beginning of this topic, they ask that discussions are about the specific items listed for A22, so I think that removes your "fair" option since this isn't related to those specific items.  But that is up to the mods to move it to the overflow.  Besides, this is far less actual exposure than other places because things get hidden in the Dev threads almost immediately. 

Anyhow, as others have says, much of what you are wanting done with multithreading is not really available with Unity, so the suggestions aren't going to go anywhere.

 
I assume the biggest problem in making this game make better use of more threads is that 10 years ago this game started with a much smaller scope and nobody programming the main loops had any idea that nowadays the workload would need to be distributed well to multiple threads AND that the minimum specs would increase as well (in 2014 minimum specs talked about 1 or 2 cores max).

Today they have probably "matured", inflexible code, and only a complete rewrite/refactoring of the main loop and some of the subsystems would be needed for a an optimal distribution of workload. But for that they don't have the time anymore.

 
vom said:
Acquire and wear the complete set for a bonus

This is bad game mechanics - you shouldn't be penalized because you don't like to wear a straw hat or blue coveralls.
Click to expand...
This is common game mechanics, even if you don't like them.  Heh.  Full set bonus in have have been around at least a couple of decades.  I don't remember which game was the first to have them, but it has been a long time.  You will still get a variety of bonuses for each item from the looks of it.  You just won't get the full set bonus if you don't wear the full set.  That is a choice that you can make.  If the bonus is that important to you, then wear the full set.  You rarely see yourself anyhow except when driving.  If you care more about how you look, ignore the bonus. 

That being said, I have suggested that they consider a cosmetic option for armor that lets you display different pieces of armor/clothes than what you are wearing.  Many games give you that option and it would give players the choice to look the way they want while getting the bonuses they need or want.  After all, if you play with light armor, you won't get to experience the heavy armor styles, and vice versa. 

 
Last edited by a moderator:
vom said:
It's a bad mechanic, even if you think it's common.

That's just dumb mechanics. No reason wearing cowboy boots and a hat should make you a better shot.
Click to expand...
Something isn't bad just because you don't personally like it.  There are going to be many people who do like set bonuses.  You aren't any more right than them, or vice versa.

A cigar shouldn't make you better at buying and selling.  You shouldn't be able to carry thousands of ore or wood, or a vehicle, or tons of weapons and armor.  You shouldn't be able to gain health by using a bandage.  There are all kinds of unrealistic gameplay mechanics in this game and in most games.  Choices are made for gameplay reasons even if they aren't realistic.  This isn't a sim.  Gameplay mechanics aren't bad or dumb just because they are unrealistic or because you don't like them.

 
Riamus said:
Something isn't bad just because you don't personally like it.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the philosophy essay.

I don't think this is a bad mechanic, merely because I don't like it.
I don't like it, because it is a bad mechanic.

Since you are obviously very intelligent and creative, I can't imagine why you didn't figure that out for yourself.
Regardless, I hope this clarifies things for you.

Riamus said:
A cigar shouldn't make you better at buying and selling. 
Click to expand...


That's right, that's a bad mechanic. There's no 'fun' in changing your clothes to gain some stupid bonus. Changing your outfit to gain passive bonuses is not meaningful 'gameplay'. This mechanic should be removed, as it serves no purpose and does not improve the game.
 

 
Last edited by a moderator:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top