PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!
- Thread starter madmole
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naive1000
New member
Yeah, guess I have to change the way I play. I know about the vitamins and have had to use them, but I've only found two since I've started. In older versions I usually built up supplies at a base away from everything then go searching POIs. Looks like looting is the name of the game in a18. I'm use to building, crafting and mining in the beginning but that's a good way to starve.
I once suggested having city names appear as though you've discovered them (on screen and in the map) and you would get a decent amount of XP. It encourages exploration. Hopefully they will eventually add this, especially considering how *slow* you level up now. For a story line they could create one using snippets of paper found throughout the world (be it randomgen or a prebuilt map). Those pieces of paper could be recorded in a separate book so that one can read through easily and get a real sense of immersion.
Yes, this game can go a lot deeper.
Regarding game complexity and all that nonsense: I've only read a couple comments between now and the last few I wrote (I've been busy and this thread moves WAAY too quickly), but a game can be both streamlined and complex. Complexity doesn't translate to anything the player can see. For example, you can have a huge, diverse crafting system and it won't hurt your framerate and you don't even have to use it if you like to loot.
Just a bit of rambling below:
If you are experiencing poor performance, that isn't due to the 'complexity' of the game, but rather the hoops developers have to jump through in order to support the games physics model, which in turn is a result of having voxels, etc. Supporting a modding system, having to take into consideration older hardware, etc. all can actually result in a lower frame rate. Look no further than Rockstar's RAGE game engine. It was written in an era of Intel CPUs with few/any cores, and while the engine has adapted over time, bugs have emerged (2 in particular: If all of the threads of a CPU are running at 100%, rendering takes a nosedive, excluding 1 CPU core fixes this in RDR2, the second, related to the rendering engine not keeping up with in game events, is likely actually related to synchronization across threads. Crazy stuff!) Even the big boys have issues with this, so I don't expect TFP to deliver a perfect experience every time (though I do wish the game would perform better than it does now. Hopefully the next Unity engine upgrade will help with that.)
Having to work in Unity's constraints doesn't help either. I've built stuff in Unity and in C++ in the past: C++ development took a lot longer, but back in the day, writing a game to a compiled language as opposed to having to deal with a runtime like .NET was much faster. I've even gone down the road of implementing a partial Minecraft clone back in the days of DirectX 9. You wouldn't believe how much faster it was. I wonder what Rust/Vulkan development would be like. It almost makes me want to get back into game development, but I have absolutely no time. When I was single with no kids I had far more time for learning new languages and APIs.
Properly implemented, Vulkan can provide a considerable speedup as well. DX12 and Vulkan both are considerably more thread friendly (which helps on multicore CPUs), but the APIs are also more complex and multithreaded programming isn't a walk in the park either. Note that in C# and later versions of Unity there are tools to help with this, and those tools are improving, so hopefully 7 Days to Die will benefit from some of this. If not, well hopefully they make a sequel and focus hardcore on multithreading and the latest rendering APIs. Vulkan support in particular is fairly widespread. I'd be surprised if very many people who play this game have GPUs that don't support it.
Finally, if you compare the first alpha of 7DTD with today, you'll notice a huge difference in the graphics quality. This game has made huge strides visually in each alpha. The current iteration is absolutely stunning at max details. There are a couple more biomes that need an overhaul still, but the ones that have received overhaul look absolutely mindblowing. I never thought the game would get to this point.
Looting got more important, yes. But if you want to play as before, living near the trader (and the food machine there) is indispensible. A daily buried treasure quests gives you food and also some coin to buy either food from the food machine or other stuff. Buried treasure quest locations are always not far from the trader, so in the first days, without a bicycle, the easiest and fastest quests you can do.
If you play the newest experimental, actually investing in "Living in the Land" will help, as perking into it makes farmplots cheaper to craft (meaning more plots for the same amount of rotten meat). You still need to get out looting to collect rotten meat and a collection of seeds and/or plants.
Wnenever you have cooked food and no vitamins, eat when your stamina is halfway down (so you don't loose much if you barf) and once you reach full (or nearly full) stamina use canned food if you want to overeat.
If you got food poisoning 5 times in 9 days you were either especially unlucky or ate lots of low-grade cooked food. Try to go for the best cooked food you can make and food poisoning will be quite seldom.
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stallionsden
Tester
Yes Mr sheep lolMadmole has stated plenty of times in the past why its not part of the display hud. MM feels it is better to have less clutter on screen because having to much is immersive breaking, which I tend to agree and I hope they never add it in. I hope this clears things up for you my friend.
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It's called the compo pack. God gifted us prefabbers. God being Hal Magoli and Pille and now also Damocles . Lots of new pois and in addition with nitrogen your world is about to get a whole lot bigger (wise words of Jesus from twd R.I.P)
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stallionsden
Tester
Try my poison removal modlet still has poison chance but if you add the right ingredient and cook it properly using the Weber 9000 you remove any poison chance. And how do you starve I get a good amount of food cans to keep me going ok
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JCrook1028
New member
Yep, choice is limited now. You must loot.
Axe13
New member
I don't know the name of the mod, but there is one that adds food and water bars to the ui...Yes...but... this looks for me so as "look at the sun and by its position you will understand what time it is."...but i have a watch.
(and yes of course i figured out that this is something that corresponds to something ....gray stripes and all that...yea...)
Ah well, i understood, not let us here breed chatter, perhaps this was discussed many times and framers will annoyed by such discussion...
Unfortunately for me it remained a mystery.
Thank you all, enjoy the game!
ZombieSurvivor
Banned
lol baahh bah bah.Yes Mr sheep lol
mr.natural
New member
No, not true as there is the over eating buff. You still need to go to your character stats to see how much you can eat/drink.
mr.natural
New member
To make it more a game like other games. Don't know how to put it otherwise.
MechanicalLens
New member
Small note for future alphas: I'll no longer be posting horde 7D2D videos (or recording them outright), due to events on YouTube taking place in January next year (that I will not name). Such is life. :/
ZombieSurvivor
Banned
unholyjoe!!!! whats up brotha long time no see posts lol. Darn PITA gotta ruin everything lmao.its a PITA but their own greed got them in that predicament and now we have to suffer.
We can only speculate about some of the reasons, usually there are more than one. But at a guess:
1) It is simulating (and abstracting) the fact that you don't know exactly how full/fit/sated you are in reality. A real human doesn't have a fullness-meter where he can say exactly that he is at 120% fullness. Actually the display tells you two things, wether you feel healthy or it hutrts and whether you feel energized or tired, all the rest is somewhat diffuse, just like in reality.
2) Not knowing everything is part of some games, might even be usual in survival games (not sure, since I don't play many)
3) It also simulates (with a little abstracting) that the more you work the more tired you get and eventually need to eat again. More abstract is that it also heals you, but that is probably done for game balance instead of immersion. Water has a more subtle influence, just like in reality.
4) The UI shows everything you need to know and hides everything you should be able to guess. Forget to eat and you are punished later in the field. Prepare and be good. It allows for you to make mistakes and a good game should do that.
You don't seem to like that UI, I like it very much. I think it is much better than the grindy system of A16 that practically made everyone use tricks to eat as much as possible (to get the hit points up). In A16 many players should have been so obese to not even be able to leave the house. The disadvantage of the current UI is that it needs explaining because it is an unusual system. But I prefer something to have a learning curve instead of being banal.
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ZombieSurvivor
Banned
I'm guessing you talking about the fines youtube will start handing out.....
This is going to hurt a lot of us content creators but I am happy youtube is taking a step in the right direction to protect the children from these twisted pervs out there.
MechanicalLens
New member
I was referring to the FTC, but whatever works, I guess.its a PITA but their own greed got them in that predicament and now we have to suffer.
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Yep. I compare it to trying to hit a nail into a board with a sledgehammer. It gets the job done, it will cause permanent damage, but it has to be done.I'm guessing you talking about the fines youtube will start handing out.....
stallionsden
Tester
Wait what's happening with you tube lolYep. I compare it to trying to hit a nail into a board with a sledgehammer. It gets the job done, it will cause permanent damage, but it has to be done.
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