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
    3
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In the mean time the new borderlands 2 DLC dropped. bad news for Linux players cause you can't play it yet. Also the DLC is free on steam till july 9th so get it before it becomes 15 bucks.

 
The Romero fans among the players will not like that. The zombies in Romero movies are slow and have no emotions. Accordingly, they can't get angry.
I know of players who have put the feral zombies on jog and still they are nervous every time they meet such a jogging zombie. They won't be happy about this change either.

In my game I kept the speed of the zombies at standard. I've got used to the running zombies but they usually don't show up in the game until I already have a good armor and points in pain tolerance. I need the armor and pain tolerance because I fight 90% of the fights in close combat to save ammo.

I hope that you can make armor in A18 as early as possible. Also, you shouldn't start bleeding because of every nudge from a zombie, as is currently the case in A17. That you constantly bleed although you have a full steel armor is really annoying.

One question I ask myself is how it behaves with the zombies waiting up in the ceiling and falling down when you enter the room. They get little damage because they fall from the ceiling. Do they get angry and run faster towards you ?
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I've seen zombies hit zombies and trigger the aggro. We're not Dawn of the dead and have our own lore for zombies. Its reminiscent of the old days where zombies ran in the dark but it looks better. Its not that you can't out run them either. People need to remember running is always an option. You just have to play it a bit safer is all.

Bleeding is still to high in 18 but I'm wearing bits of padded and light armor so far for mobility.

 
I've seen zombies hit zombies and trigger the aggro. We're not Dawn of the dead and have our own lore for zombies. Its reminiscent of the old days where zombies ran in the dark but it looks better. Its not that you can't out run them either. People need to remember running is always an option. You just have to play it a bit safer is all.
Bleeding is still to high in 18 but I'm wearing bits of padded and light armor so far for mobility.
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Joel, there is any new effects for bleeding zombies?

Also, can you slightly lower the screen effects when the player is bleeding? I mean, at least you're bleeding from your forehead the blood shouldn't affect your visibility

 
Its a shame we can not have dynamic moving zombies, they don't have fixed animation routines as such but animate & move accordance to weight and physics around and over the environment.

I can pull a loose example to this from GTA which includes a proprietary physics engine, and runs along with the Euphoria animation engine.

 
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Does light still penetrate surfaces? This person posted a screenshot:
https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?111778-Alpha-18-Dev-Diary!!/page541&p=984748#post984748
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That is not from occlusion, but it is a bug. Light goes through something because it either does not block it (cast a shadow) or the light is too close to make a shadow (within light shadow near plane).

A18: Fixed player's wall torch leaking light (moved light pos) and not using game's shadow quality setting (was High).

We also tasked another programmer to make sure the rest of our light prefabs don't leak.

Thanks.

 
Thanks for the info faatal. I've read a lot of people in unity forums with performance problems implementing occlusion mainly because Unity documentation is scarce. It's possible to ask support from Unity crew? Do you expect better performance from occlusion in next builds?
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It is not really a documentation issue (that just slows the work down), but that it adds additional work to the render process. The depth buffer gets copied to a low res version, then thousands of blockers get checked (rendered to it) using a depth camera and the results have to get read back from the GPU (takes time) and then applied to each occludee's renderers (enable/disable or switching shadow modes). We are basically using CPU time to try to get back Unity renderer culling and processing time and save some overdraw.

Static world games don't need to do that because they can process their worlds offline and build up data to define what can be seen from each general location.

 
The Romero fans among the players will not like that. The zombies in Romero movies are slow and have no emotions. Accordingly, they can't get angry.
I know of players who have put the feral zombies on jog and still they are nervous every time they meet such a jogging zombie. They won't be happy about this change either.

In my game I kept the speed of the zombies at standard. I've got used to the running zombies but they usually don't show up in the game until I already have a good armor and points in pain tolerance. I need the armor and pain tolerance because I fight 90% of the fights in close combat to save ammo.

I hope that you can make armor in A18 as early as possible. Also, you shouldn't start bleeding because of every nudge from a zombie, as is currently the case in A17. That you constantly bleed although you have a full steel armor is really annoying.

One question I ask myself is how it behaves with the zombies waiting up in the ceiling and falling down when you enter the room. They get little damage because they fall from the ceiling. Do they get angry and run faster towards you ?
Click to expand...
How often they boost is adjusted by game difficulty. At the lowest difficulty, they do not speed boost.

Currently any damage could boost them, so a fall could do that, but on the other hand falls can also now ragdoll zombies, so that part would be to your advantage. A18 playtesting has only just started, so there will be adjustments as needed as we get a feel of the overall gameplay.

 
Joel, there is any new effects for bleeding zombies? Also, can you slightly lower the screen effects when the player is bleeding? I mean, at least you're bleeding from your forehead the blood shouldn't affect your visibility
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It's probably for the nonperceptive players who won't notice they're bleeding unless they have blood on the screen.

 
It is not really a documentation issue (that just slows the work down), but that it adds additional work to the render process. The depth buffer gets copied to a low res version, then thousands of blockers get checked (rendered to it) using a depth camera and the results have to get read back from the GPU (takes time) and then applied to each occludee's renderers (enable/disable or switching shadow modes). We are basically using CPU time to try to get back Unity renderer culling and processing time and save some overdraw.
Static world games don't need to do that because they can process their worlds offline and build up data to define what can be seen from each general location.
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I assume you could potentially do an initial calculation of it all when the world first gets loaded (or reloaded when using a save), and then only redo the processing when blocks are found to change within a given area?

I'm sure you've already thought of all sorts of ways to lighten up the load and I'm talking without any in-depth knowledge, so take this with a (big) pinch of salt :p

 
Not really, its game staged and loot is set up accordingly. Changing it would be a bunch of work that only benefits 5000 hour guys who have memorized how many zombies spawn at particular houses. There are loads of new remnants going into the game that have zero to a few guys that spawn, but the dungeons are what they are and the loot is good.
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Understand. How about this. Could you maybe throw in a higher dispersion of "abandonded" buildings in between the flood of POI buildings during world generation. I am not saying tons, but maybe one for every five POI? The amount of content is unbelievable, but sometimes it would be nice to be able to retreat to an isolated place for just a few minutes without having to run out of the town areas.

This may be a skewed perspective on the server I am playing on, so if it is not a typical issue on single player then ignore.

 
How often they boost is adjusted by game difficulty. At the lowest difficulty, they do not speed boost.
Currently any damage could boost them, so a fall could do that, but on the other hand falls can also now ragdoll zombies, so that part would be to your advantage. A18 playtesting has only just started, so there will be adjustments as needed as we get a feel of the overall gameplay.
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To test the scenario I mentioned, I recommend Butcher Pete's. There is a room where the zombies fall from the ceiling.

 
Understand. How about this. Could you maybe throw in a higher dispersion of "abandonded" buildings in between the flood of POI buildings during world generation. I am not saying tons, but maybe one for every five POI? The amount of content is unbelievable, but sometimes it would be nice to be able to retreat to an isolated place for just a few minutes without having to run out of the town areas.
This may be a skewed perspective on the server I am playing on, so if it is not a typical issue on single player then ignore.
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Based on Madmole's post about 'remnants', these new buildings will be exactly that. Or, at the very least, have a high chance for low or 0 population.

 
The same applies to the intake of antibiotics. You never know if they will work or not. So it would be good to get more information about whether the infection is getting worse or better. I know of players who panicked and swallowed all the medications they had because they didn't get any information.
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I'm pushing for buffs having numbers. Infection counts upwards and changes color at stages. Each hit raises it too so getting hit works against your meds. If you take antibiotics, the number starts going down. When it reaches 0 you are cured. You might need additional doses to get rid of it if it ticks up too high. You'll need to remember to take your medication when it wears off. Herbals would work when its below 200 or so, beyond that you need antibiotics to start counting down.

This system would allow for different levels of meds to have their uses like honey and herbal antibiotics could be useful when infection is low. When high the only thing to get it low is antibiotics. So if it was 250 and antibiotics (-200 to all stages of infection) could lower it to 50 (stage 1) and then some honey (-50 to simple infection) would lower it the rest of the way.

 
...On the plus side, (IMO both are a huge plus, zombies were zero threat before and I didn't need armor at all) players now have a glancing blow so as you swipe your sword across a guy it might hit his arm and then hit his face for the intended hit. If you miss by a milimeter you will get a glancing blow, so less missed head shots that result in nothing at all, and it kind of helps make combat feel less binary.
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Sword? :eek-new: :chuncky:

 
That is not from occlusion, but it is a bug. Light goes through something because it either does not block it (cast a shadow) or the light is too close to make a shadow (within light shadow near plane).
A18: Fixed player's wall torch leaking light (moved light pos) and not using game's shadow quality setting (was High).

We also tasked another programmer to make sure the rest of our light prefabs don't leak.

Thanks.
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No problem Faatal, thanks for solving it so quickly!

 
Joel, there is any new effects for bleeding zombies? Also, can you slightly lower the screen effects when the player is bleeding? I mean, at least you're bleeding from your forehead the blood shouldn't affect your visibility
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While the effect probably isn't final it needs to be strong enough to notice, people (myself included) used to not even notice you were bleeding before.

 
While the effect probably isn't final it needs to be strong enough to notice, people (myself included) used to not even notice you were bleeding before.
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Maybe increasing sound effects when you're bleeding and nerf the bleed DPS.

- - - Updated - - -

With the new dynamic music system, can't you make a little dramatic music for when you're bleeding? or a human pain noise or bleeding sound effect (this is already in the game I think).

 
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