PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[madmole]

I also did a good number of buried treasure quests, feels more varied now than before. I even had one underneath a POI, which never happened in A17. It was under the parking lot of the Waterworks... or so I thought. I dug down in the dirt strip between the lot and the road, tunneled over to the marker, then spent half a day clearing a cavern, nothing. Went back up top and the dang chest was inside a support pillar a few blocks above the ground, ha. I coulda just walked in and grabbed it right away.
The very next one was on a hillside. I thought it would take awhile, saw Madmole dig up half a hillside looking for one in Primes stream the other night. I marked out the perimeter with frames, went to the center, one shot with a shovel and bam there it was, immediately. The rest were pretty normal feeling, but those 2 were distinct. Not sure if they're supposed to spawn under/within POIs, but it adds an interesting variable.

Yeah we need to improve the buried treasure quests them spawning 2 meters below a roof top is just bad. I don't like them on hills either, its really hard to pinpoint.

 

[Trankitas]

It is what it is. Noone saw this coming. AFAIK at worst it matched 17 at best, much faster.

Agreed A18exp>A17.4 stable. Nevertheless, it would be cool to see some optimizations to mid/low end pc's for stable branch or A18.X

Btw, very cool avatar, you look happy AF.

 

[faatal]

Yes. I just was testing distant terrain textures. I'm pretty sure we can down sample our distant terrain texture arrays, because there is no way you can see a 2k texture when the closest you can get to it on the screen is like 20% the height of the screen. That would mean at 4k monitor res, that texture is about 400 pixels tall. Talk about overkill. Plan on trying that tomorrow. Been a long day.

It turns out the near terrain is using the same material and shader, so the high res textures are being used close up.

There appears to an issue with changing the texture quality option that some textures of other qualities are still loaded. Typing "mem" in the console will do an unload unused resources, which appears to fix that. Restarting the game would also fix it.

We continue to research.

 

[Reddevil]

what level living off the land do you get farm plots at? no level of the perk says you get it, but the farming quick tip says you get it.

 

[madmole]

Agreed A18exp>A17.4 stable. Nevertheless, it would be cool to see some optimizations to mid/low end pc's for stable branch or A18.X

Btw, very cool avatar, you look happy AF.

Thanks yes it was a great day! I need to not show my serious face on all my pics lol.

 

[Wulf]

I think you guys made some great steps in the new perk descriptions. I like the flavor text a lot, and it's a more clearer what type of bonus you are getting.

However, for some perks it's still unclear what exact weapons it applies to. Hope you can improve on that!

 

[Mechanimal]

Yeah we need to improve the buried treasure quests them spawning 2 meters below a roof top is just bad. I don't like them on hills either, its really hard to pinpoint.

Well, I thought it was interesting actually. Only had one under a road once in A17, had to dig to it sideways, but I remember it, none of the other ones were distinctly memorable. But I've already had some interesting ones in A18, I'd leave it, provides some fun variation.

I just got super lucky on the hillside one I had, I've also spent much longer with other ones. But if they were all too consistent it would get kinda repetitive. Is neat having to figure it out, actually wish more were within/under POIs. Either way, just mentioning it because I found it entertaining.

 

[MajorMunchy]

It turns out the near terrain is using the same material and shader, so the high res textures are being used close up.
There appears to an issue with changing the texture quality option that some textures of other qualities are still loaded. Typing "mem" in the console will do an unload unused resources, which appears to fix that. Restarting the game would also fix it.

We continue to research.

Is this the yellow texted distance whatever hooy everyone is getting?

 

[Trankitas]

Thanks yes it was a great day! I need to not show my serious face on all my pics lol.

Yeah, that's a first for me (seeing you happy, lol)

I also I'm always serious in my photos, although I'm a happy person in general.

 

[unholyjoe]

what level living off the land do you get farm plots at? no level of the perk says you get it, but the farming quick tip says you get it.

not gated by perk.. you just need ALL the mats and then you can make them... good luck... open you craft window and look to see what you need.

 

[agrastiOs]

We're looking at follow through power attack animations now.

That's great! I really would like the bats and sledgehammers to have better power attack animations.

 

[dhlmaster]

Infection is no joke in the first days. I was in the same boat. Couldn’t find enough stumps in the green forest to keep it down... had to trek it to the snow biome and didn’t leave until I had a decent stock of honey. Good times, nonetheless.

Do some t1 quests. Antibiotics seem to be a common quest reward

- - - Updated - - -

Found 'Pure Mineral Water', is has 'efficient digestion 15%' effect, how does it work?

Stamina use drains less of your food/water while that buff is active.

 

[4sheetzngeegles]

First impressions

I've only played 1 day 120min days Nomad 16 live, rushed back to resume

playing Pregen 02. Spawned in burnt biome.

Impression

1 Terrain, Nice with the incorp of erosion.

2 Ambient lighting, I like the tone.

3 Res Settings, 1080p. I loaded game and changed settings 1 at a time

with the fps monitor on. Smooth including in the Tall POI. Relocated

particle emitters to unused biome for now. will re-engage on the 1080gtx.

but it stopped the fluctuation in main fps.

4 Z-rage Im glad i read the forum or i would have $*#T myself the first

time it happened.

5 Faatal the breadcrumbs, make using stealth feel more real. To shake

4 or 5 in a group.

6 Gating the reinforced iron club sneaky but, makes me work harder for

just a decent weapon. I open everything now looking for resources.

7 The main "I see you" toms may need to be Base toms, the present pitch

is more along the line of The middle of a horde and you have less than 20 percent

health and are about to die. The rest of the musical theme so far is movie setting.

8 Right now I feel like that guy in Predators, "Hey man give me a gun."

"You've got two guns, Give me a gun"

9 Scavenging Thumbs up.

10 The stone axe not causing instafatigue, Thank you.

Disclaimer: Opinions and individual game experiences may vary.

Thank you for the primitive bow.

 

[Masiher]

Everybody with low end graphic card experiences problems. But is there anybody with relatively weak cpu and got to first horde night?

Before in a17 horde night made my fps tank to around 20-10 even 5 (i was playing first on 16 spawns then changed to 32).

Today in a18 my first horde night (16 zombies set) i did not see any impact on performace what so ever. I was still rocking 60-80 fps without stutter. Its impressive optimization from cpu side in this alpha.

Cheers! Now i can enjoy horde nights without lags. Even on old Phenom processor.

 

[SnowDog1942]

No it needs to stay as there are those games where you might not find what you want. We'll embellish them with something extra down the road, like I want to do random break downs and you have to repair your vehicle. Imagine the lock pick mini game using repair kits to pull off a repair and you broke down in the wasteland. Each rank makes a better chance for a successful and faster repair. So a non perked guy might blow through 10 repair kits and walk home because he ran out. Right now vehicles are unbalanced and don't degrade like they should. Just driving should cause wear and tear not just collisions.

Interesting, thanks.

 

[Jarod_Silverstar]

We're trying one weapon out to see how it feels, if we like it we'll go wide.

Is this referring to spears? I hope so because I have an idea / suggestion for it and the power attack.

What I think would be neat to see is if you click and hold the RMB you get the throw but if you just click it does a sweep attack with the back end of the spear at the legs for a knockdown.

Right now the spear feels a little lacking at close range when power attacks from any other melee weapon have a chance to knock down or stun the zombie, but with the spear you have to throw it to get that effect, which is better from a distance. I don't even think we need to have the sweep attack do damage, just be able to trip or knock down the zombie to give you that extra instant to take a few steps back and prepare a throw.

 

[Wulf]

It turns out the near terrain is using the same material and shader, so the high res textures are being used close up.
There appears to an issue with changing the texture quality option that some textures of other qualities are still loaded. Typing "mem" in the console will do an unload unused resources, which appears to fix that. Restarting the game would also fix it.

We continue to research.

Yeah it does seem the texture settings are wonky. However even when i use the mem clean command after switching texture size, it still only causes a very small performance increase.

Did you notice some streamers mentioning noticeable performance loss with B139 compared to B134?

I run a full solid 60 fps without stuttering at all, but my gpu usage sits at 100 percent at 4k and at 1080 p. there is a major memory use issue with the textures, its gotta be the reason for all this trouble. I'd simply wait for an update at this point. game ran fine on the builgs before 139

Something is hammering the GPU in some cases and for me, it's definitely not the texture size.

 

[sinkler]

Yeah we need to improve the buried treasure quests them spawning 2 meters below a roof top is just bad. I don't like them on hills either, its really hard to pinpoint.

I really enjoy a18 so far!

a few observations:

- New improved infection:

Im playing Agility. saw a single zed, was thinking "ill practice some melee, save few arrows" , got close and boop him on the head with a club. he raged, and punched me in the face. i killed him with my trusty bow thinking that was the end of it. but now a damn vulture smelled my bloody face and gave me zombie AIDS. lol. I rushed to the trader and sold everything of value i had to buy honey in time before it get to a point i can no longer easily cure. that was a great experience.

- The digging quest:

its fun, not too far on foot, and the rewards are worth the effort.

the only down side for me is the insta spawning of zeds out of no where when i pick up the stash.

it always happens the same way, and is immersion breaking.

i would rather see a random 0-#number of sleeping zeds be buried with the stash and then rise if u dig them up like the zombies in graves we know and love, or whatever other method, just as long as it is not watching zed spawn from thin air in the most predictable way possible.

- Resource Nodes:

I love the way those each have it`s unique look and is identifiable from afar. great job.

I feel like there are too many resource nodes on the surface. playing pregen02, i spawned in the desert and was trying getting used to placing a marker on my map where i find them for later. was excited seeing them at first but once you realize they are so abundant they become less special. i see them literally everywhere in groups of 2-3 even, so after 10 min i stopped adding them to my already cluttered map, and the exploration element was gone.

it might be fine for MP but for just 1 dude it is way too much it seems. xD

even if value-wise it is balanced for single player, i rather have a reason to explore and find them.

so i prefer few rare nodes in each biome with 100K harvest, rather than having 100s of nodes everywhere with 1K harvest each. nodes can be abundant underground where its not visible and u have to dig search for it, thats great. but i want finding a new surface ore to feel special, at least in SP.

 

[MajorMunchy]

Yeah it does seem the texture settings are wonky. However even when i use the mem clean command after switching texture size, it still only causes a very small performance increase.Did you notice some streamers mentioning noticeable performance loss with B139 compared to B134?

Something is hammering the GPU in some cases and for me, it's definitely not the texture size.

This guy ^

 

[faatal]

Yeah it does seem the texture settings are wonky. However even when i use the mem clean command after switching texture size, it still only causes a very small performance increase.Did you notice some streamers mentioning noticeable performance loss with B139 compared to B134?

Your mileage will vary. Depends on how close you are sitting to running out of VRAM.

Mem command is triggering a flush of the old high res texture atlases, which is a subset of all textures in the game. These seem to also be getting loaded on startup and staying in mem for a while.