PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Damocles]

Whats planned for the water then? Removing the voxel system and replacing it with a flat even hight water plane? (Robust, simple but boooring)

Or improving on the voxel system?

 

[KingSlayerGM]

Well...while "swimming" remains as it is there is at least one point to a raft.

Exactly

 

[Gazz]

It's not a priority. This is not Subnautica.

This is not about a water surface behaving correctly. A flat plane is easy to control. The tricky part is water flowing into and out of places when those places can change shape at any time so you cannot pre-generate anything.

That essentially means doing pathing calculations for a massive number of water blocks all the time as the water goes places.

That this is not done all the time is why water can have holes that do not equalise/close immediately or ever.

Some point at how well Minecraft water works but it's only a matter of scale. It flows for 7 blocks while 7D water flows for 3 or so. Other than that it's quite similar and 7D has more to do than animate stick figures hopping around cube blocks.

Saying "fix water" or "improve the voxel system" is easy but... with what kind of CPU power? LOL

Even replacing voxel water with a permanent water level is neither simple nor easy because it creates just as many issues when tunneling into a body of water at which point players would expect the water to flow into the tunnel.

So if water doesn't flow you can dig out the ground under a lake and build your base in this newly created air bubble, looking up into the lake water. And if you go "but the water would flow into that, right?" you are back to square one because it would have to be voxel water made of individual blocks and... see the problem?

Games that "do water" reasonably well tend to be 2D ones like Terraria where the computing requirements for it are exponentially lower.

 

[Odetta]

It's not a priority. This is not Subnautica.
This is not about a water surface behaving correctly. A flat plane is easy to control. The tricky part is water flowing into and out of places when those places can change shape at any time so you cannot pre-generate anything.

That essentially means doing pathing calculations for a massive number of water blocks all the time as the water goes places.

That this is not done all the time is why water can have holes that do not equalise/close immediately or ever.

Some point at how well Minecraft water works but it's only a matter of scale. It flows for 7 blocks while 7D water flows for 3 or so. Other than that it's quite similar and 7D has more to do than animate stick figures hopping around cube blocks.

Saying "fix water" or "improve the voxel system" is easy but... with what kind of CPU power? LOL

Even replacing voxel water with a permanent water level is neither simple nor easy because it creates just as many issues when tunneling into a body of water at which point players would expect the water to flow into the tunnel.

So if water doesn't flow you can dig out the ground under a lake and build your base in this newly created air bubble, looking up into the lake water. And if you go "but the water would flow into that, right?" you are back to square one because it would have to be voxel water made of individual blocks and... see the problem?

Games that "do water" reasonably well tend to be 2D ones like Terraria where the computing requirements for it are exponentially lower.

Hmm... have you tried screaming at it? Or stabbing it? That usually gets it to work.

So I'm going to assume that the water system you had before this current one will not work anymore. I mean at least it was workable and you could make water bases. It also flowed, even if it was derpy.

 

[Damocles]

The primary question is: whats more important? Water that looks as good as possible at generation time (initial world) or dynamic water that flows.

I would choose to have water have almost no dynamic flow. And just behave like falling voxels. Without side flow or path-tracing. But try to get the initial water distribution at the initial generation as smooth (avoiding those bugs near shallow shores) as possible.

If players can dig holes into water so be it. Its then a manually created “bug”, that player could avoid if they really hate the looks of it.

Another priority of mine would be a better water depth shader “fog” effect.

 

[AtomicUs5000]

I think a single water object is a good idea for the sake of performance. Maybe something clever can be done mixing that concept with the voxel system? For example something in the lines of if a block is broken directly next to the large water object, that block is replaced with a single water voxel.

Wouldn't know where to go beyond that though. Baby steps.

 

[RestInPieces]

This will be different in A18, since there was a bug reducing animation root motion, which when fixed made all the animals and zombies much faster, so I tweeked some of the AI move speeds back down to try to match how it was before. This should give more headroom for higher speeds, since it was capped out before on nightmare.
Bottom line, we will be making another pass over that for A18.

I guess there were some changes to root motion that would be too hard to port to 17. 18 will have a true nightmare mode.

EDIT: I'm excited to see if all the changes bring back that desire of I need this, I need that, that hook of you wanting stuff, fearing stuff and general addiction level. BTW 18 is not shipping with the dream gun system, but some quality damage is coming back.

Well, A18 can't come soon enough!

As you said, "that hook" is what we need whether we realize it or not. Fancy new toys can only last for so long, but mechanics with practical reasons for the player to engage with, and results with some impact are a much better hook, because actions leading to a result as are meaningful as the result after all (really hope you guys add a death penalty severity option). Also take a quick look at the horde thread in the general discussion if you want.

So much trouble in creating different types of food, tin cans, animals to hunt, agriculture ... and at the end of all that, even a new player understands that food ceases to be a problem the second or third day at the latest............Giving food a secondary role in healing or giving buffs does not solve the bottom line.

I am saddened to see how much effort has been made in other areas to correct "bad designs" and that everything related to survival and resource management has been considered good enough.

Despite this I understand that you do not want to add rot (which would have helped in this) if this seriously affects the performance of the game.

Very well said. If SBD isn't a good fit for this game, no other game has hopes of making it fit. Like you said, we have all these different kinds of food and ways to acquire it/produce it, and it simply becomes a non-issue too fast. In other words it's a lot of content not fully exploited. Hopefully the performance hurdles can be overcome for a streamlined SBD.

 

[KingSlayerGM]

It's not a priority. This is not Subnautica.
This is not about a water surface behaving correctly. A flat plane is easy to control. The tricky part is water flowing into and out of places when those places can change shape at any time so you cannot pre-generate anything.

That essentially means doing pathing calculations for a massive number of water blocks all the time as the water goes places.

That this is not done all the time is why water can have holes that do not equalise/close immediately or ever.

Some point at how well Minecraft water works but it's only a matter of scale. It flows for 7 blocks while 7D water flows for 3 or so. Other than that it's quite similar and 7D has more to do than animate stick figures hopping around cube blocks.

Saying "fix water" or "improve the voxel system" is easy but... with what kind of CPU power? LOL

Even replacing voxel water with a permanent water level is neither simple nor easy because it creates just as many issues when tunneling into a body of water at which point players would expect the water to flow into the tunnel.

So if water doesn't flow you can dig out the ground under a lake and build your base in this newly created air bubble, looking up into the lake water. And if you go "but the water would flow into that, right?" you are back to square one because it would have to be voxel water made of individual blocks and... see the problem?

Games that "do water" reasonably well tend to be 2D ones like Terraria where the computing requirements for it are exponentially lower.

Gazz,

Minecraft water would be perfect. It is a balance between good phisics and good performance.

 

[Dark_Corvid]

The mixer should use gas and not be electric IMO. The saw is just decorative fluff so I wonder do we need to add complexity to people who simply want to decorate their base?

As somone who likes to build, I was frustrated the first time I saw the table saw. Gateing wood building/deco materials is strange since they don't serve a function beyond aesthetics.

 

[Damocles]

Gazz,Minecraft water would be perfect. It is a balance between good phisics and good performance.

Minecraft does not use a hightmap terrain, nor marching cubes terrain and has mainly simple cube blocks. The tech is way different.

 

[Gazz]

Gazz,Minecraft water would be perfect. It is a balance between good phisics and good performance.

How? It doesn't do anything different. It develops holes, it does not flow where you would expect water to flow...

It flows 2x as far from it's spawn block but AFAIK that's it.

 

[Thecolours]

No maybe it was broke with that root motion thing. As I said 17 is way faster than 16 player movement speed.
EDIT: I'm excited to see if all the changes bring back that desire of I need this, I need that, that hook of you wanting stuff, fearing stuff and general addiction level. BTW 18 is not shipping with the dream gun system, but some quality damage is coming back.

What is the "dream gun system"?

 

[Pille]

How?

Would be an interesting challenge. Imo difficult but possible.

 

[Scyris]

I have often wondered if there might be a way to combine static and voxel terrain to improve fps. Like only doing voxels 3-4 deep for terrain until the player starts digging and then converting to voxels as the player moves into what would have been static terrain.
And grass. Would it make sense to get rid of grass as a separate, harvestable voxel and just make it part of the ground block? The last couple of alphas have seen grass become less and less important (I'd argue we really don't need grass clothing now that we have a weather-protection buff at the beginning) and it seems like a lot of items to spawn and make destructible for little gain.

I actually go into the biomes.xml and set anything to do with grass to 0.1 if its higher than 0.1. Some of them have .4 or .5 which I believe is 40-50% chance to spawn per block. You'd be surprized how much fps you can get by just reducing the amount of grass its not as big of a improvement in a17 as it was in a16 though, not to mention it makes stuff like stones and bird's nests easier to see as there is less grass in the way.

 

[GrifterMan]

Yeah, Gazz has a pretty ironclad point. Essentially there is no free lunch in life. Not anywhere or under any circumstances. Want something? Brace yourself to give up something somewhere else. It might not affect you directly, but until quantum computers are as ubiquitous as current PCs or the laws of physics change, we are stuck with it.

We could get into a tangential discussion about universal balance and whatnot, but it won't change the fact that NOTHING is FREE. There is always a cost, somewhere, to some other person or location, etc.

I like to think of it as the gods' sense of humor and personal challenge to us all.

 

[The Gronk]

Would be an interesting challenge. Imo difficult but possible.

The difficulty isn't the issue. It's whether it can be implemented without killing the frame-rate.

The minecraft system also has such oddities as the ability to build water-walls which isn't anywhere near how real water works.

 

[Pille]

The difficulty isn't the issue. It's whether it can be implemented without killing the frame-rate.
The minecraft system also has such oddities as the ability to build water-walls which isn't anywhere near how real water works.

I meant it was difficult because of possible frame-rate issues.

 

[meganoth]

No I dont remember the Behemoth Because my mod isn't Darkness Falls.

Oops, sorry, I could have sworn it was in Ravenhearst. Doesn't change the argument though, DF shows a mod can get away with substandard features.

The only reason the behemoth has jerky animations is because we had to extract it, animate it and put it back in.

The actual behemoth, activated via XML and NOT extracted, can just use normal zombie walk types.... but then it has no colliders and thus you can't kill it.

That'd be an easy-ish fix for TFP too. The model just needs colliders so it can register weapon damage and it's good to go.

Yes. Yes. Yes. And not my point. Point is "lower standards": A modder put it into his mod and got away with it. TFP think they can't.

 

[The Gronk]

I meant it was difficult because of possible frame-rate issues.

Fair enough, my mistake.

I'd love to see how the terraria system would be if you used the job system to run it in the background. It _should_ leave the frame-rate relatively untouched but the flow-rate may be more than a little slow.

 

[Gazz]

The difficulty isn't the issue. It's whether it can be implemented without killing the frame-rate.
The minecraft system also has such oddities as the ability to build water-walls which isn't anywhere near how real water works.

Those Minecraft water walls are pretty much the same thing the 7D water does.

It already "works correctly".

Water spreads out horizontally and if there is air below it, it spreads into the air block.

When it hits a non-air block on the way down it spreads out again.

The only problem? It's an exponentially costly calculation in 3 dimensions. There is no bright idea to do that cheaply. If you want water to flow it needs to be calculated in an ever-changing block space.

If you don't want it to flow and then you dig into a river you are looking at a water wall.

As a result of that, the distance that water is allowed to flow is capped hard.

It's not difficult at all and it's not incompetence. It's just not free.