PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

  • A18 Stable is Out!

    Votes: 2 66.7%

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    Votes: 1 33.3%
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Hmm, guess I should chime in here.I got a MSI GTX970, and a i7 4960 CPU, 16Gb RAM.

I've never really had issues with performance in 7days...

Well, some lag when there are lots of zombies, and in the past the jitter and so on...

But nothing really bad.
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Same exact processor and GPU brand as well. lol. I do have 32 Ram though, of which I don't know how much of it is actually is helpful. Yeah, once in a while, the zombies spawning in will cause a bit of lag, but that's about it... and I play with max zombies.

The only thing here though, is that I don't try to keep the fancy graphics going. Most things are set at some low level, but not necessarily the lowest.

 
Same exact processor and GPU brand as well. lol. I do have 32 Ram though, of which I don't know how much of it is actually is helpful. Yeah, once in a while, the zombies spawning in will cause a bit of lag, but that's about it... and I play with max zombies.
The only thing here though, is that I don't try to keep the fancy graphics going. Most things are set at some low level, but not necessarily the lowest.
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I got my settings at about medium. Reflections off.

Resolution at 1440p.

I put that down to optimizations, not being done. We are in alpha after all.

Imagine having to optimize after each exp release...

The game is actually amazingly stable if you think about it.

Only some gameplay and RWG is suffering right now.

A18, where art thou? :)

 
Performance is boss but I hope something can be worked out to include at least limited perlin worm caves. It adds so much to random gen exploration.

&lt;tear&gt;

 
Hmm. I was running a 970M with 16GB ram and i7 and did not have any issues either. Thought I would for A17 so I upgraded to a desktop with a EVGA Geoforce GTX 1070 with 16gb ram and Ryzen 5. Haven't had any issues there either. Monitor is 2k Dell with G-sync. Haven't really tweaked any of the settings because, well I don't know what I'm doing, and it seems to be working for me. Was at 40-60fps on the 970M and rock-steady at 60fps on 1070.

 
I have been running a server for 7DTD as well as my gaming rig. Server is what was my prior gaming rig that's now 7 year old with my current rig having i7-6700k, 16gig, GTX 980TI. I have tinkered with both to see what runs better with 7DTD and other games using the same engine. Clock speed on the cpu core is king with core count almost meaningless. Little tweaking on video has the current rig working well on 1080p up to 4K with most settings near max. But running the game on different machines, core clock speed comes first and video second. If your cpu clock speed is 2.2, a great video card is not going to pay off.

 
I have been running a server for 7DTD as well as my gaming rig. Server is what was my prior gaming rig that's now 7 year old with my current rig having i7-6700k, 16gig, GTX 980TI. I have tinkered with both to see what runs better with 7DTD and other games using the same engine. Clock speed on the cpu core is king with core count almost meaningless. Little tweaking on video has the current rig working well on 1080p up to 4K with most settings near max. But running the game on different machines, core clock speed comes first and video second. If your cpu clock speed is 2.2, a great video card is not going to pay off.
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Ok, one thing I wondered after reading.

Did you run it at 1080p or 4K (2160p, kinda).

Edit:

I cant do the full 3840x2160. It causes problems!

 
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Even now in A17 if you start hitting the stalactites on the ceiling of those POIs that are down in the hole with either a door or scrap plates covering the opening...the ones with the indian crate in them....they are only a few blocks underground and the ENTIRE roof collapses.....But on the other hand..i think actual underground camp, mine, hideouts POIs would be better, as some of the larger POIs in game now have pretty big underground areas...think the scientist lab one under the house. Make underground cave POIs that can be generated into the mix...they would not be as open as the large rooms that we find in the house POIs just add wood supports every 5 blocks to simulate cribbing inn a mine shaft.

Coughs* Oh and add a small airport while you guys are at it...we need one * Coughs

regards

Ouch
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I wonder if you have "Coughs*" bound to a macro or at least ctrl V it.

 
I didn't. The laptop I was using for mod development went from a 70-ish FPS average to a 30-ish FPS average with mostly the same video settings. That's from A16 to A17. The only difference is I had a wider FOV in A16.
My desktop was just as bad, going from 130-ish down to around 80-ish.

I've since bought a new one and back to roughly 80-ish FPS, but I consider that to be pretty unacceptable when A17 was touted to be a performance INCREASE.

However it sounds like TFP are working on that now, so that's good.
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Source of said tout? I said memory usage was way down, which is a true statement. That doesn't mean performance though.

 
I think this is a good strategy. I had many friends that I tried to get hooked on this game, but it was just too unpolished to them and they couldn't play it. Get the performance up, the graphics good and fix the bugs, and a lot of new players will enjoy 7dtd!


Speaking of which: @MadMole how is the development of A18 coming along? Is it still set to be released in the first half of 2019?
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Thanks for the feedback. Yes TFP agrees that performance, better graphics and fixing the bugs is where we need to focus most of our energy.
I've recently finished subnautica and then tried to play no mans sky. I feel like Subnautica blows it away because it is a smaller focused experience with direct goals and a bit of a narrative going on, and the experience feels very polished. No mans sky is too much sand and its too hard, I am constantly grinding oxygen and environment protection energy which is hindering me from exploring, and I finally found a space station full of pig aliens that don't even speak English and there was literally nothing to do there.

My point is that a smaller polished experience is way better than a broad sandbox with no real goals or connection. At least 7 days has the horde coming, so there is that inevitable doom you need to prepare for which instills "purpose" for the player. Trader quests are adding more purpose and story. The new books add a tiny bit of lore and help tutor a little. Once we get a main quest in I think we'll be closer to the polished subnautica experience and further away from the unpolished no man's sky experience.

But I felt a bit of frustration trying to learn no mans sky and getting sucked into it was difficult because of the clunky UI and difficult crafting. Any game that forces you to spend a bunch of time on youtube learning it is poorly designed. But I can relate to new players in 7 days who probably feel this way and we want to make it as smooth as possible for them. What they should have done is either start you at a space station where they give you some basic training (rock mining, crafting etc) then crash you on a planet. Subnautica has the little pda that guides you through stuff and I think its accessibility is why its outsold no mans sky so much.

A18 Its coming along good, I see no issues with it launching experimental the first half of 2019.

 
Ok, one thing I wondered after reading.Did you run it at 1080p or 4K (2160p, kinda).

Edit:

I cant do the full 3840x2160. It causes problems!
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I've run both, 1080p and 3840x2160 even on hoard night. Still from my limited testing/formal knowledge, its appears more the engine rather than 7DTD that's the primary limiting factor to frame rate. Looks like once the engine maxes out 2 cores, that's when the frame rate plummets. Same kind of thing on the server, not all cores are used and when the ones that are get near max, then you see lag grow. See that with memory as well, so if any one knows the tweak to allow the game to use more, I'd love to know.

 
I've made about 10 sewer POIs so far. I'm designing them to be modular, so you can connect them in a maze-like fashion, with larger arena type junction areas. I ran into the problem of deciding what loot should be down there. For now, just a ton of bodies to be looted for bones. Some of these are modern sewers and some are older. The older ones have some minerals stalagmites growing from the ceiling, so a good source of nitrate. One of the POIs have like little hobo shelters that have a little loot. So, there are ways... just need to use some imagination.
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I would think the sewer/storm drainage systems would be one of the go to hiding spots early outbreak, all your concrete walls premade and far more hidden than holing up in a building already full off infected. You'd probably find several early survivor bases, that last at least to the first blood moon where the Zs dig down. Might even find more developed base with turrets, etc.

 
Considering you guys somehow managed to halve performance from 16 to 17 while at the same time crippling larger mods I would say you did a very good job of that all by yourself.
Id love to have a thread of people playing vanilla A16 with a snapshot of their CPU and GPU stats, and then a shot of A17 with a snapshot of those same stats. I think the drastic difference would shock you.

There is no way you will ever get back to the performance you had in 16, no matter how many artificial handicaps you throw at the game like Texture Streaming you implement.

And telling people to get better systems isn't going to work, because there are people WITH those better systems that are close to maxing GPU usage playing just vanilla on high settings, and thats before people even install a single mod.

And considering this whole thing was branded as "mod friendly" thats a bit of irony I certainly wasn't expecting.
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A16 didn't have detailed POIs. It was literally minecraft and now its close to Fallout 4 in terms of detail but fallout 4 loads a new dungeon inside. All we need to do is cull unseen interiors and the FPS will be better than A16. This isn't an easy task though.
We're also rendering distant trees, alpha 16 didn't do that.

People need to understand that texture streaming doesn't make the game run faster, it just lets us add new content because it can unload unseen objects or reduce them to a thumbnail, and up res them. It helps manage memory but it doesn't improve performance. Draw calls of objects, and overdraw (rendering stuff on top of stuff) is where a lot of fps goes, but its more complicated because sometimes cpu bound from ai, keeps the gpu from being faster, etc.

So texture streaming is getting you guys much needed content. It didn't slow the game down at least not on modern hardware. The big thing was all the detail the level designers added. They are optimizing plus with some culling I think we can reach a point where things run good and look good.

Here's another thing though, sure exact same settings you take a nose dive in fps from 16 to 17. BUT... if you lower your resolution A17 STILL LOOKS WAY BETTER THAN 16 AT HIGH RES. And for me all I did was drop from 2560 to 1440 and boom, same fps as 16 but it still looked way better.

 
The idea of subway POI is really old and anticipated. Though, subways are build under big cities and all we have here is collection of villages, and towns that look better and better with the time. Subway poi in a town with 1500-5000 or even 20k residents sounds unrealistic.

So, sewers ;)
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Yes getting trapped in the dark is a great idea. I'd go to the mountains or plains where you can see everything coming for a mile.

 
Did you dye your beard?
(Every mod counts!)
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My beard is legendary, and the mods are dye, alpha intimidation, creative thinking beard, well oiled buff, mustache waxed, beard balmed.

 
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