V2.5+ Survival Revival Dev Diary

Grandpa Minion said:
On a daily basis these players are coming to me with questions — when is 2.6 dropping? What's being fixed? Why this update now instead of waiting? They expect answers, and it's my job to give them answers.
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You run a server, that's all you do. You are not a spokesperson for TFP and you don't get insider information.
When your flock asks about the next update or what's being fixed, just say: "I don't know", because you don't.
 
zztong said:
I can only speak for myself, but I keep coming back to voxel games because they let me change the world. Voxels might not be a selling point to the masses, but it's an important feature to me and greatly influences my purchasing decisions. It doesn't have to be content that is depth underground.

Fallout 4 is an excellent game. I've played it twice for a total of 125 hours. I've got far more time in 7D2D. The difference to me? Voxels significantly enhance the replay value of the game. It sucks that I can't dig into the side of a Fallout POI.
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This exactly. For example, I've played a number of games that let you build large bases. Almost all of them have you using either prefab rooms of different shapes and sizes (e.g. Subnautica) or have you placing large wall, floor, or ceiling prefab sections (e.g. No Man's Sky). Those work, and you can still build interesting bases, but I really enjoy being have to build my bases one block at a time. It allows for far more creativity than just using a lot of larger pieces or rooms. And then there is the destructible environment. Some games let you destroy everything, but it tends to be much more limited in how that works than in a voxel game. I play this game because of the voxels. If there weren't voxels, I would probably not have even half the hours I have in this game.

Yes, voxels impact performance significantly, especially because computers are usually designed for GPU intensive games and not so much for CPU intensive games. But it's still worth it to me. Keeping in mind that I'm using a computer that is about 7 or 8 years old and it wasn't a high end gaming computer even when it was new and yet I have little trouble with performance as long as I accept how my computer runs. For example, I know I'm not going to maintain 60FPS (my monitor's max) without significant fluctuations, so I have the game set to 30FPS cap, which makes for a much smoother experience. I know some people get upset at low FPS, but I accept what I have for a computer, and at that cap, I can have my graphics up to High in most cases without any trouble. I do have slow chunk loading issues when driving at high speed in a large city, especially after being inside a tier 5 POI, but as I said, I accept the limitations I know I have with my computer, and that doesn't impact anything other than driving. The rest of the game is nice and smooth even with an older computer.
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Space4Ace said:
You run a server, that's all you do. You are not a spokesperson for TFP and you don't get insider information.
When your flock asks about the next update or what's being fixed, just say: "I don't know", because you don't.
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Yeah... it's a simple thing. "I'm just running the server and have no more information than you do." The end.
 
4sheetzngeegles said:
That's only a partial solution. What I mean is that the whole
world from the base to the sky box is monitored, Including the
invisible air. Basically it is a Matrix. I asked a while back about
removing the air blocks. It was explained to me that what you see and
what you don't is still 1 big rubiks cube of 3d calculations separated
into 1x1 meter data cubes. You just don't bump into the air blocks and
they have a transparent texture.
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That is not how it works.

You don't monitor data, you update it when something changes data. It is not a matrix. The world is built from 16x256x16 chunks broken into 16 high layers, broken into 4m high arrays, broken into multiple types of byte arrays. Only chunks near the player are loaded. The air is removed if a whole layer or 4m high section is nothing but air, which is basically all that sky, so no meshes generated, no transparent textures, no colliders, no memory, meaning nothing to process. Each 4m array is also removed if it is all the same value, like deeper underground, which also has no visible mesh, so nothing is generated to render.
 
IzPrebuilt said:
I'm just saying, all that space under our feet hogging performance and complicating development but there's literally nothing of interest down there. Would it kill them to put some content under our feet for the 99% of players who only interact with the floor to engage with the EVER so enjoyable mining mechanic.
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I played Alpha 12 recently, there were a lot of caves filled with mushrooms, and mining resources and even a pool of water at the end of most of them, it's one of those things that got removed and wish they kept in. It feels more natural than finding resource boulders on the surface.

I'd also love for an underground retro system that interconnects with all the cities so you could go between cities and towns underground, we have the tiles above ground, so I think it'll be epic if there were also underground tiles.
 
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