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%

  • Total voters
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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.
Minecraft's system is also designed to place a water block as a water source. That would look ugly in 7D2D. When you dump a bucket of 1 meter cubed water on the ground it should disperse and dissipate, not leave a 1 meter cubed block plus more than that on each side. The only time it should be possible to place a water block is in the Prefab editor just as a convenience method to have water in place at world gen.

 
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Theoretically you can ignore a large number of blocks if they're already surrounded by water, you only have to calculate those which may move. A custom octree-style storage layer may be part of a solution?

I'm just glad the idea of a water physics update is still on the table. It would be a huge shame if you didn't include rivers.

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Minecraft's system is also designed to place a water block as a water source. That would look ugly in 7D2D. When you dump a bucket of 1 meter cubed water on the ground it should disperse and dissipate, not leave a 1 meter cubed block plus more than that on each side.
7dtd used to do that. Many bases were flooded by griefers as a result.

 
when a stone axe runs out and needs repair, the repair message pops up. click flickity press on the controller (keyboard and mouse is faster) to repair and keep going sees you mining again before a second message pops up and says the item needs repair. but, no it dont as i am already digging again....
I noticed this too, but I assumed that it was related to the "double-swing" bug - events are firing twice when they should be firing once (the swing event in one case, the "repair message" event in the other case).

A17.3 (released yesterday) is supposed to have fixed the double-swing bug. I haven't had time to try it yet, though. Is the "double message" bug still happening on A17.3? If so, you should file a bug report.

 
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. ;)
I agree that in general the water system is in a perfectly workable condition.

There seem to be some bugs in the flow algorithm though. For example I can see holes in a lake that don't get closed even if nothing else happens in the world. So there are free CPU cycles, but the missing water blocks are not handled for quite some time.

Do you use a low-priority background process to check every water block in the players chunk whether it can flow? Or do you keep a list of blocks to look at and cycle through that list?

If the latter, there must be cases where applicable blocks are not added to the list.

 
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I'm pretty sure that's kind of intentional. It stops you cutting a hole in the side of a pond and eventually flooding several square kilometres of land. Kind of like the flooding of the Mediterranean sea if the Atlantic ocean was a swimming pool in someone's back yard.

 
The ideal situation would be not checking blocks all the time. When water changes state it becomes a different object type with a static mechanic.

 
Meh, spoilage is just another thing to micro manage that I don't think adds anything to the game. Spoilage would not make it so that hunger does not get 'solved' at some point. All it would accomplish IMHO, is make me do more micro managing to solve it. If you want to remove the solution to hunger than that would require ending farming - not something that I think would be a good thing either.
Exactly. I nerfed healing from meds some, so you might use more food to survive. Eggs and feathers are getting a nerf yet too.

 
you'd think everyone would stfu and play...
balancing comments (not negative) after reaching dawn day 2

stone axe continual use level one with no stamina perks at all. not running out of stamina with constant use ie digging straight down. time taken to repair axe is enough to restore stamina to wear the next axe out. i am fully fed and watered. appearance therefore is no penalty for infinite use. (which i like :-) )

nerdpolling back up however takes stamina and therefore time you evil sods! lol

seem to be more zds in the world, in groups of 2,3,4? mini hordes?

rwg looks much improved. havent ventured far yet but found a perfect spot for base so that may be a while.

i play loot 200% no respawn but found 2 mining helmets on day 1 with very little looting. maybe lucky... havent been in a poi yet.

when upgrading wood frames, sometimes (~10%) first hit to 25% happens twice, meaning 5 hits to upgrade. muscle memory called it out initially as so many blocks didnt upgrade as expected. watching closely you can see first hit 25% second hit 25% then 50 75 done. bug?

whatever. after only 2 hrs, i think this build is the best yet! cant wait for a18 content!!!!
Awesome. A17.3 is just a fraction of the "things we're taking into consideration' from the forums here. Imagine the full monte with loads of new content.

 
Madmole,
I know additional mod support isn't the focus right now, but is there any chance that while the system goes in place that drives the new music for A18, plans for modding are considered? I wouldn't want to mess with the music... I'm a big fan of dynamic transitions based on changes in game intensity. I love how they did it in Doom. It's a blended masterpiece of code and music.

What I am interested in is being able to tap into that single, important intensity variable to hopefully drive other events in a mod... not only for knowing when it's at its peak, but also when it's at its low.

Even if intensity was translated into a simple var 0.0 thru 1.0, it would be great.
I don't know.

 
Y'all are missing the Very Big issue with rafts, through.
Rafts or boats are pointless as long as there is no water gameplay or threat.
No, the point is that mm was frustrated about modding conversations, used boats as an example, and I pointed out that we had already seen a PoC on boats which is why we had it in our heads it was happening at some point. If it's not that's cool but we can only go by last info given.

No sane person or modder expects tfp to release sub standard stuff, and no sane modder believes his/her stuff to be AAA quality. But you already know this. :)

 
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. ;)
I'm thinking it needs to be a single cube that instantly spreads to fill spaces, but the more it spreads the lower the height.

 
what about water physics from A13, what happened with it?

I think you answered that in your video. Clearly, those physics had some issues. I would welcome them back though without the ability to place a water block. Or maybe place a separate block that acts as the water does now and have a water world block that acts like the video.

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The new perk ssytem and your books did not make it in MM :*(

RWG WAY better. Can finally start a map blind. LOVING the increased zeds in the wild. It is dangerous at night in the beginning now. Not sure how that works with scaling - working with Roland's mod and really liking the 0 xp.

 
I'm thinking it needs to be a single cube that instantly spreads to fill spaces, but the more it spreads the lower the height.
Yes, that would be the perfect water. I'd love that.

The problem is that you either need to calculate the entire surface of a body of water at once or you get a break in the surface and first you need to evaluate the water in 3D if some flows "out the bottom" into a tunnel which would propagate a hole back to the surface, which would then have to flow back together, fill that one block, at which point it could again flow down to fill more of the tunnel and...

The perfect idea is also the costliest because you have way more recursion then there is now. ;)

For an impossible problem like this, hacks and workarounds are more likely to do the job. It's suboptimal but doesn't completely kill the game...

 
I'm pretty sure that's kind of intentional. It stops you cutting a hole in the side of a pond and eventually flooding several square kilometres of land. Kind of like the flooding of the Mediterranean sea if the Atlantic ocean was a swimming pool in someone's back yard.

Good point. Exhaustion of the flood fill can't be the reason though if I see a block missing in a lake because a zombie died in there. Essentially the missing block or blocks are 1 block away from LOTS of water blocks.

 
Good point. Exhaustion of the flood fill can't be the reason though if I see a block missing in a lake because a zombie died in there. Essentially the missing block or blocks are 1 block away from LOTS of water blocks.
This is why I said "kind of" intentional. I'd be very surprised if the holes weren't a bug introduced during the removal of the water spawning mechanism.

 
Meh, spoilage is just another thing to micro manage that I don't think adds anything to the game. Spoilage would not make it so that hunger does not get 'solved' at some point. All it would accomplish IMHO, is make me do more micro managing to solve it. If you want to remove the solution to hunger than that would require ending farming - not something that I think would be a good thing either.
Exactly. I nerfed healing from meds some, so you might use more food to survive. Eggs and feathers are getting a nerf yet too.
Food inflation already kills farming, and since you recognize this is not a good thing, this alone adds to the list of SBD's benefits. Because after the player stockpiles enormous amounts of food (which is easily done even with 25% loot settings), there is no reason to farm for food, hunt animals (other than getting bones), and the worst - a big percentage of loot (that is food related) becomes "trash" - whereas SBD would make canned food a valuable long duration resource.

 
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This is literally the only compelling reason I've found to have SBD and I really can't think of a better way to balance food inflation.

I'm normally all for more complex mechanics but it will annoy a lot of people if handled incorrectly.

 
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