PC A20 Developer Diary Discussions

Blake_ said:
@faatal , since Robert isn't here to answer, do you know if the RWG has a target RAM consumption for a20 ? The news are that you guys are ditching the 4k maps. I have mixed feelings for various reasons:

In 4k maps, the RAM RSS feed currently stands at 3800 Mb to ... 6000-6200 MB !! after around 5 (quest days/build nights) hour sessions SINGLE PLAYER. That means multiplayer can easily double after just 4-5 hours resulting in 12000+MB memory RSS feed and square and texture artifacts everywhere at virtually any time (artifacts start to happen when the dedicated memory  is filled and system RAM juggles too much).

My concern is that if we are going to get 6k maps minimum, how is that going to fare for us lads with peanut butter Pcs? At the moment I'm standing in the "just ok" rope with 4k maps consuming said 3,8 gigs to 6,2gigs  after 5 or 6 hours.

Do you have any insight on this subject ? Are 6k maps gonna have a stable 4 gigs of RSS most of the time or are they expectedly going to hit the 8 gig mark as Navezgane is currently doing ?  Senior programmers have a throne in Westeros from where they can overlook such things, right? I'm sure of it.

Salutations.

Not hard to reproduce. When dedicated memory is filled and RAM is also topping or juggling too much, it happens 100% of the time. Moving fast through the map (no need to God mode) also results in that, but again, memory HAS to be filled.
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Thats a good theory.  Do you have any solid vanilla repros to fill up memory?  Maybe a memory leak somewhere making the POI issue happen more frequently.

Post the info. In the bug forum and I'll look it over.  Thanks.

 
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Spuder said:
So with the change to armor/clothing will the night vision goggles be moved to a helmet mod like the headlight?
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This question has already been answered by Madmole in the past. The answer is a flat no.

 
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MechanicalLens said:
This question has already been answered by Madmole in the past. The answer is a flat no.
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Not everyone has time to watch hours of dev talks to hear one question, and that specific question is well within the scope of the Alpha 20 Dev Diary.

You seem awfully angry, you OK?

 
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G2manT said:
Hopefully we'll be able to do 12k!
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I believe they should continue to push all the way up to 32 k tops. I can wait half an hour for thousands of hours of gameplay. 

For gold release date 4k, 6k, 8k, 10k, 12k, 16k and 32 k would be absolutely awesome. There would be no more whining. Yes, the Ram at 32k will be for systems with 16 ram and 10+ dedicated memory minimum and they should state so with a warning , but that's what options are for right? That choice could stand 16 players for quite a while (currently 16 players is an option in the new game menu ) or even 8 very intense ones.

 
Laz Man said:
Thats a good theory.  Do you have any solid vanilla repros to fill up memory?  Maybe a memory leak somewhere making the POI issue happen more frequently.

Post the info. In the bug forum and I'll look it over.  Thanks.
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Yes I do I will relay in screenshots. Let's do it. The report will be live this friday because I have to be thorough and test in 8k and 4k.

Also, not exactly related, I did a memory report a while back about initial RSS being 6000mb+ just after map generation until steam restart ( game restart didn't work, only steam restart). Any loading after that is normal.

I'll also tag you in both when the time comes. Be aware though, 19.3 has memory saving vs 19.2, so that's very likely the case and therefore a bit unavoidable at the moment due to Unity hoarding that Ram and forcefully blocking it. I hope I'm wrong.

Hugs.

Edit: @stallionsden yes, parenting "child" yellow warnings are 100% related to what I said, as it involves a memory unloading and loading that won't work properly and overtax said memory if it's already filled. It also generates a lot of microsutters on lower systems, yet CPU related most of them in 4k. 8k is just a NO for potatoes.

Bottom line, don't be an admin for 8 people without a big fat amount of memory both dedicated and not and a beefy 8 or 10 physical core CPU with high frequency (3.9ghz+). -**stares at 16-player servers everywhere**-

 
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Blake_ said:
I believe they should continue to push all the way up to 32 k tops. I can wait half an hour for thousands of hours of gameplay. 

For gold release date 4k, 6k, 8k, 10k, 12k, 16k and 32 k would be absolutely awesome. There would be no more whining. Yes, the Ram at 32k will be for systems with 16 ram and 10+ dedicated memory minimum and they should state so with a warning , but that's what options are for right? That choice could stand 16 players for quite a while (currently 16 players is an option in the new game menu ) or even 8 very intense ones.
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I agree with ya, i hope they dont limit this game for low end pc's from 2002. 

 
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Jost Amman said:
Personally I never play with mods. I tried them but I never find one "reasonable" enough to feel like vanilla. What I mean is that vanilla, even when still in need of some balancing, feels way more "professional" than whatever good/great mods are out there. I already said this before (I think on Steam): modders are great, sure, but the problem is they can't feel the pressure the devs have on their own game to not screw up, so they often go too far or let some very weird stuff slip into their mods.  :noidea:
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In other words, hopefully to hit the nail on the head here, conversion mods are created under the vision of one, sometimes a few, individuals. With humans come opinions, and each individual has their own to speak of. To some, chopping down a tree, crafting wood logs into planks of wood, strips of wood, sticks, etc., harvesting the next tree with a bone knife to get sap, having to craft a forge (which is its own extended process) to craft nails, as well as obtaining glue, all to craft wood frames, is realistic/rewarding/etc., but to other folks, they'd just fine it a pain in the ***. 😛 With conversion mods come hundreds, if not thousands of changes, and a lot of people will prefer the vast majority of them, but to some people, they are just far too picky and if they had the ability to, they would just create their own mods instead. I fall into that category, for one.

 
MechanicalLens said:
In other words, hopefully to hit the nail on the head here, conversion mods are created under the vision of one, sometimes a few, individuals. With humans come opinions, and each individual has their own to speak of. To some, chopping down a tree, crafting wood logs into planks of wood, strips of wood, sticks, etc., harvesting the next tree with a bone knife to get sap, having to craft a forge (which is its own extended process) to craft nails, as well as obtaining glue, all to craft wood frames, is realistic/rewarding/etc., but to other folks, they'd just fine it a pain in the ***. 😛 With conversion mods come hundreds, if not thousands of changes, and a lot of people will prefer the vast majority of them, but to some people, they are just far too picky and if they had the ability to, they would just create their own mods instead. I fall into that category, for one.
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No, that's not it... I can accept mods that are geared toward specific audiences (even if I may not like them).

My problem is of a different kind: I'll give you an example. A long time ago (during A16) I tried the "Starvation" mod. It was a great mod with a lot of innovative gameplay, graphics, NPCs, colonies and so on... but the crazy amount of exotic wildlife they put in it was simply too much for me. On top of that they also added some alien-fantasy special infected that made absolutely no sense.

If they had removed those crazy/weird stuff it would have been a blast to play that, but I guess you can't have your cake and eat it too.  :nono:

 
Jost Amman said:
No, that's not it... I can accept mods that are geared toward specific audiences (even if I may not like them).

My problem is of a different kind: I'll give you an example. A long time ago (during A16) I tried the "Starvation" mod. It was a great mod with a lot of innovative gameplay, graphics, NPCs, colonies and so on... but the crazy amount of exotic wildlife they put in it was simply too much for me. On top of that they also added some alien-fantasy special infected that made absolutely no sense.

If they had removed those crazy/weird stuff it would have been a blast to play that, but I guess you can't have your cake and eat it too.  :nono:
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And those scenarios are the most frustrating for sure. You love the idea of x mod or texture pack or whatever in its entirety, minus a couple of exceptions which turn you off of it outright. I know that all too well.

 
SnowDog1942 said:
Its all about the Pentiums.
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1xkmbq.jpg


 
Sidney said:
I'm curious why you believe that.  Do you guys want to be like EA?  Release games that are visually pretty, but fundamentally garbage?  If so please reconsider because almost nothing that AAA publishers @%$# out is worth the time, let alone money, to play.

This is just like, my opinion man, but the things that are holding you back are:

  • The lack of variety as well as the hard tiering of weapons and armor.  For example the sniper rifle is strictly better than the marksman rifle, and there are only 3 rifles total.
  • Bugs, especially the gamebreaking ones like vehicle duping, item loss in vehicles, vehicle loss, crippling FPS hitching during weapon fire, zombies' attacks clipping through walls, jerky zombie movement (the micro rubberbanding not the pathing that attempts to juke the player, that's cool), the game deciding that you don't have a bedroll or that your bedroll is actually someone else's, etc.
  • Things that perhaps aren't bugs, but are super irritating like the almost random autosort order, inconsistent reload and draw with bows, camera position not staying the same when exiting a vehicle so you are always disoriented, inability to consistently pick up a thrown spear, respawning "near your bed" can place you on the roof of a nearby POI (like a Shamway), the cancerous amount of I-beam debris in the wasteland making the 4x4 unusable there, gaining zero exp from cooking food or from zombies dying to traps/bleeding/fire.
  • Lack of special zombies.  Only the demo, and to a lesser extent the vultures, present a threat.  Everything else is a bullet sponge to one degree or another.
  • Game progression, especially loot not being better in harder POIs and harder biomes.  I understand you're working on this one, so this may not be valid for long.
  • Low worth/Worthless game content like stealth, gillie suits, knives, spears, batons, buried treasure perks, etc.
  • Terrible FPS, especially during BMs, even with the graphics turned way down.  My PC isn't a potato, but I never saw my frames break 30 on a BM after night 14.
  • Lack of features common in other FPS games such as different mouse sensitivity settings for different zoom levels, autorun, configs stored in a universal and portable .ini/.cfg file instead of the damn windows registry (really guys?), and changeable crosshairs.
  • Not enough "knobs and dials" to customize the game without mods.  For example you can't turn off the death penalty, nor can you remove the noobie weather protection.  There are a LOT of settings that should be configurable when creating a new world that aren't there.
These are the things keeping you from greatness, not how pretty your models are.
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Agree 100% on the graphics. Gameplay, mechanics, and performance are more important.

Since I started hosting my own dedicated server (A18) the offline and online LCB protection never worked with or without mods. Not sure if others have this issue. I have done tests on multiple systems (Windows and Linux) with no success. The LCB and area always take damage no matter what I have the serverconfig.xml values set to.

Setting the following values seems to have no difference from leaving them on the default which is 4.

<property name="LandClaimOnlineDurabilityModifier"    value="0"/>

<property name="LandClaimOfflineDurabilityModifier"    value="0"/>

Also my delay is set to 0. I have tried messing with that as well.

<property name="LandClaimOfflineDelay"            value="0"/>    

 
@TFP So... are you ready for the next Dev Stream?  :biggrin1:

Gimme, gimme, gimme news of A20! Me hungry!  :hungry:

 
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FranticDan said:
I decided to reenable the Charging Bull perk, because I enjoyed using it in A17. Noticed 2 things, it doesn't correctly function anymore, and the new description is essentially Pain Train from Fallout 4.

My question is, will Charging Bull be making a return in A20?
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I think there's one of the books in the brawling series that does that (or something similar).

 
Jost Amman said:
I think there's one of the books in the brawling series that does that (or something similar).
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Yeah, only applies to brawling though, that's the old version of Charging Bull. The new version will let you run into zombies and at the cost of stamina you can stagger and eventually knock them down by sprinting into them.

 
sillls said:
I wanted to ask. How were you able to get the game to load all that data? I know some people who are trying to make a game and it takes forever to the game to load and it doesn't have nearly as much detail as this game. 
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Skill, dude...it's all about skill.

You may want to try shaping your question quite a bit more precisely.

I mean you don't ask the NASA "how were you able to build a rocket to bring man to the moon? I have tried, but it didn't fly as high as yours..."

It's because there are highly skilled people working there...so where exactly was your problem??? 🤔

 
Hi. I believe this might be a @Gazz thing. I was finally able to reproduce the disappearing weapon bug.

1. Aim with 2x, 4x or 8x scope with any firearm/projectile weapon that allows them.

2. Run (shift+ [WASD])

3. Enjoy your phantom weapon. You can't see it but it's pretty.





Please post any future bugs that you find in the bug pool. The developer diary is not for reporting bugs.  --Roland

 
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