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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Vehicles can now fall faster than their max speed, capping out at a terminal velocity and hard falls will damage the vehicle and their riders.

 
Since they broke the mold on game desing, I want them to add zombie dinosaurs, power armors, battle royale and Trader DeVega.
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It wouldn't be nothing new lol. There's always a person that disagree with everything. Look at this:

ROCKS ARE BORING
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..

*Taps on shoulder*

I thought we were friends!

Sorry I was late :D A trader named after me would be nice! But we would have to name one after Guppy as well, and I'm for sure not buying what that guy is selling!

 
Stim cells can do wonders I've heard. I have a titanium arm.
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Yeah I have one of those arms too.. Like quagmire!

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It's not the size that matters. It's what you do with it.
Edit: Besides, cavemen trademarked rock smashing a long time ago. These days, we tend to do the same thing, just with rolled-up newspapers.
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Stop mistreating rocks! They have done nothing wrong!

 
some of us have more serious concerns with the game like:

where are all the d**** lemons?

where are my d**** lemon grenade schematics?

how are we supposed to burn houses down in 7 days to die without lemon grenades?

 
some of us have more serious concerns with the game like:
where are all the d**** lemons?

where are my d**** lemon grenade schematics?

how are we supposed to burn houses down in 7 days to die without lemon grenades?
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Portal Gun first. Level 150 weapon.

 
Shouldn't it reduce CPU load to remove all possible paths from the calculation beforehand? It's the same as occlusion really. If the zombie can't see it, don't compute it.
If these calculations would be done per grid and vantage point, and not per zombie, it would only be done when a block significant to the calculation breaks or gets placed.

It is a bit odd that a zombie will climb up stairs to find a hole in the roof instead of attacking the door in front of it on ground level.

If grid based isnt on the menu, perhaps you can take out paths that are too far outside the direct line to the player. If the zombie has to deviate more than say 10 degrees, it's out of the calculation.

Unless you've left a trail by using that hole yourself. I'd love zombies reacting to a trail the player leaves. That's coming with a18, right?

The golden rule of dynamic pathing is always culling as much as possible beforehand, it's usually cheaper to calculate what's not needed and then calculate the load than to explore all possibilities.

In my experience at least.
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I'm not sure I understand exactly what you mean, but I'll give a go at an layman's explanation. BTW, I'm the layman doing my best to explain what little I know. So, in an ideal situation, occlusion and pathfinding would be tied together to compliment one another, however, two issues that come to mind:

1. they are both extremely complicated systems that mixing them would probably cause more bugs than what it's worth.

2. I believe they are both worked out completely different to each other. Whereas pathfinding is like a mathematical grid, occlusion is based on geometrically how far away something is perceived to be and does it block the item behind it? Honestly, I have very little idea how GPU processes are handled, so can't comment much further.

But one is for certain, if occlusion was handled like pathfinding (based on a grid), you could never get remotely close to 60FPS. The calculations just couldn't be done in time.

I'd love for grid based and vantage point to be combined at least on flat and narrow spans between you and the zombie. I hate that zombies zig-zag over the grid and don't walk directly to you. I did ask Faatal whether it was a programming possibility to rotate the grid, but his answer was basically a no; again, too complicated for only a slight benefit.

In regards to zombies following your trail, hasn't that been implemented a few Alphas ago?

 
Yeah don't bother. All I can say is this is hands down the best version of the game. I liked the ideas we presented in 17 but it just didn't have 2000 hours of polish time put into it like 18 does. The looting depth is insane now, and we don't even have legendaries, but items with random stats is like "mini legendaries" when you get a top of the range item, and its still a blast.
Like levels are slower but with books its like leveling up now, since they are a mini perk on their own. So even when its a grindy hour or hour and a half without leveling since there are so much good loot it doesn't matter, finding loot is a huge reward now, and its paced so much better.

But honestly I've never really worried about my level, it happens because time flies when you play the game and the slow pace is better, before you would be able to craft the best stuff in no time and be like now what? Well now the best stuff is in loot and there are 5 interesting major builds waiting to be played and lots of interesting hybrids. Random stat items that are way better than what you will ever craft keeps you wanting new tech, and the slow leveling forces you to carefully pick your perks and then you find everything else you need, like I am not an INT guy, so I've been scrounging for schematics to do what the int player does, and food recipes, electricity, all of that. Its so rewarding finding schematics that unlock recipes and not having to buy the perk, so I can specialize fully in my main attribute and not waste points in stuff I want, but dont' NEED.

Much less jack of all trades and more specialization. We've put a lot of work into making ways to get by without any perks at all.
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This really gets me excited MM... since the first day I play this game I am a loot-addict. I just almost pick up everything and save it. (Or scrap it and save the scrap from it). I never have enough backpack space... I am really curious about A18 and the new "looting depth"

Besides... since the first day I play this game I am hooked and even have a hard time in reallife to make the difference.

I see Goldenrod everywhere as long as I see yellow flowers. If I make coffee for myself I wonder if I should plant some in the garden, I see broken cars (actually they are not broken, but old, but I just assume they are broken). Last week we had someone to sleepover and I asked if he needed a bedroll... but quickly changed it to "matras"... and I even see zombies (mother in law for example) and u have those days that the sun goes down and u got a very nice sunset/sundown and the sky turns red so i start to wonder : is this the 7th day???

I just can't get it out of my head and I think A18 will add new features in my head...

 
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I'm not sure I understand exactly what you mean, but I'll give a go at an layman's explanation. BTW, I'm the layman doing my best to explain what little I know. So, in an ideal situation, occlusion and pathfinding would be tied together to compliment one another, however, two issues that come to mind:
1. they are both extremely complicated systems that mixing them would probably cause more bugs than what it's worth.

2. I believe they are both worked out completely different to each other. Whereas pathfinding is like a mathematical grid, occlusion is based on geometrically how far away something is perceived to be and does it block the item behind it? Honestly, I have very little idea how GPU processes are handled, so can't comment much further.

But one is for certain, if occlusion was handled like pathfinding (based on a grid), you could never get remotely close to 60FPS. The calculations just couldn't be done in time.

I'd love for grid based and vantage point to be combined at least on flat and narrow spans between you and the zombie. I hate that zombies zig-zag over the grid and don't walk directly to you. I did ask Faatal whether it was a programming possibility to rotate the grid, but his answer was basically a no; again, too complicated for only a slight benefit.

In regards to zombies following your trail, hasn't that been implemented a few Alphas ago?
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Oh yeah, I know about expensive calculations. I wrote combat bots for quake back in the day, able to learn new levels and some tactics from monitoring players and their own navigation. Trying to avoid Hotspots and stuff. With the hardware available back then, it required a ton of strange math. I could convince my prof to make it a perfect item to discuss in class.

Optimizing this stuff in a changing environment would probably require a lot of magic numbers and advanced rules, like no block may be placed near a zombie, to avoid close combat calculations. Raycasting only in the direction of the player and only after an environment change.

Cops do that, right? They only seem to spit if they can directly see you?

I remember when quake finally went open-source and bot code went through the roof.

I can't wait for 7dtd to go open source someday. I hope it's before 2060, so I can still enjoy going through it :)

 
It's not the size that matters. It's what you do with it.
Edit: Besides, cavemen trademarked rock smashing a long time ago. These days, we tend to do the same thing, just with rolled-up newspapers.
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I like going through just kicking rocks, throwing them and see them bust, use hammer on them, pick axe, sledgehammer, oh even a jackhammer. Those big kinda flat ones even draw on them. Go rock climbing and pee or spit on them.......

Wondering if that is enough mistreating to rocks or do we need more..... *cough* *cough* ;)

 
Hey Madmole. I was surprised to hear that you only now discovered that there are traders in every boime.

But yeah, it's like that in Navezgane. Trader Jenny is the hardest to find :) . Mainly because unlike most traders that are on main roads. Jenny is on a side roads. Side roads are very hard to see in the wasteland biome.

In Random Gen (RG) I can find a trader in in every biome. Which gets a little weird when I find more than one trader with the same name. Because in RG, I find several biomes of the same type and each with it's own trader.

For example: I will have a several pine forest boimes and find (a) Trader Joel in each of them.

Having them always by the roads is both practical and helps others to find them and l love that.

 
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Anyone who wants it can just PM me their server info and I'll log on and say, "Well done Survivor. You've won the game."
Then you can shoot me in the face, quit your game momentarily to go stare at the credits, and then log back in to continue playing the "after game" bonus material.

You're Welcome.

#Trollandisendgame
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#savedifneededinthefuture

I will give this game a bad review again, if you don't when I ask you to! :D

 
I guess you missed what I wrote on the topic.
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No, I read what you said. I have known there would be a story in the game for a while now.

Just giving my reasons why i dont like story or endgame.

 
Sorry if I seem snappy. Been smashing weights and waking up too early for no reason. It happens around release time, I get anxiety I think and stop sleeping more than 6 hours. Leg day was yesterday, squatted 365 for 10, will be back to 400 pounds in about 3-4 weeks. SO that might have kicked my ass. I also read about spears about 500 times on various social media and its like yep, we got the memo already.
Spears use stamina now when thrown.
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You have been fine. Matter a fact, more than fine.

Thank you for being so active on the forums. Not alot of devs do that and it means alot to us.

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Official 7 Days Coffee mugs! I'm so stoked about these!
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Just ordered mine. Should have it by Saturday.

 
...snip...Also... I am playing game just fine without forcing what I need points on... my next unofficial test will be to level and survive without using any perks/points.. not as hard as you think.
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Thank you very much. Interesting to see the differences between MM, Roland, and yourself. Your 'style' seems very similar to mine. (pre 18 of course). I like the perk idea - I might try that as well.

As I have 6500+ hours I have a few tips/tricks as well. Am super looking forward to forgetting some and learning others.

Thanks again! (all of you).

 
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