PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[RusMan3]

All you NVIDIA Card owners having FPS issues, if you haven't tried this already go download the following driver (if applies to your card) ASAP. Massive performance gains. I am now able to play at 1920x1080 resolution on medium settings with 20 to 30 FPS on my 5 year 2GB video card (EVGA GeForce GTX 960 SuperSC ACX 2.0+). Happy Days! I plan to do some tweaking to see if I can get my FPS even higher.

Additional Screenshots below (PREGEN02):

https://imgur.com/a/mCB7LW9

The first thing I did was update the video card driver. This did not solve the problem. I'm going to try setting up "gfx dt" and "mem" today.

 

[Zaroff]

Woot! So happy!

 

[Odetta]

I am not sure about the early game fist weapon. I was using it and it takes so many punches and wears out so fast that I was out of leather in no time and throwing spears again lel.

Ya, the leather wraps wear out way to fast. Still the best melee weapon for me though (fist weapons).

 

[Moonflower]

Anyone knows which melee weapons are affected by flurry of blows perk? States knived and clubs in description. Are spears affected as well?

 

[Laz Man]

All you NVIDIA Card owners having FPS issues, if you haven't tried this already go download the following driver (if applies to your card) ASAP. Massive performance gains. I am now able to play at 1920x1080 resolution on medium settings with 20 to 30 FPS on my 5 year 2GB video card (EVGA GeForce GTX 960 SuperSC ACX 2.0+). Happy Days! I plan to do some tweaking to see if I can get my FPS even higher.
<snip>

Additional Screenshots below (PREGEN02):

https://imgur.com/a/mCB7LW9

Strange, I just continued my save game (PREGEN01) and my FPS drops back down into the single digits. When checking my system resources I see that my 12GB of system ram is maxing out. I will try playing PREGEN02 to see if my performance consistently stays good or whether it eventually drops to what I am seeing in PREGEN01. Perhaps I need to buy more system RAM as a workaround

EDIT: Thinking out loud, is it possible there is something unique to PREGEN01 that would cause it to run worse then PREGEN02?

 

[dan]

Wow, a lot of negative posts about A18. I have had no issues at all. FPS have been high and stable on high settings. No bugs or glitches, my day 7 horde (set at 16) lasted most of the night and there were a ton of z's. Mods and skill books are great. Junk turrets are helpful. Stun baton is disappointing because of it's range, but punching a Z in the face with spiked knuckles usually gets me hit, but it's very satisfying.

The RWG is so much better than in A17, seems to be very random. I built outside of a large city, however the closest trader is 1.6km away, so I haven't been using him. But this is survival, I don't expect to have everything easy and convenient. Only one death so far because I was walking backwards shooting and walked over a landmine.

This is the most fun I've had in 7d2d in a couple years.

As far as my specs go, i7-8700k, 1080ti, 16 gigs of ram. Graphics are cranked up and not even a stutter.

 

[Pico]

Bizarre changes in performance today...

So earlier today I had a game that just totally bogged down performance wise.

I've had the poor framerate issues, so have been using the gfx dt toggle to get things flowing, but my other issue of very poor performance within inventory / cookpot stations was hyper bad initially.

I got so stuck in a screen, trying to move some gear, but the destination slot wouldn't highlight or allow me to place the objects. Framerates were fine during this, but the mouse and all the UI was totally bogged down.

Even pressing escape to get to the Exit option, it wouldn't act on my selecting Exit.

Eventually I issued the mem command, and this seemed to free up enough resources to allow me to exit the game.

So, since returning to the game, it has all been flowing fine... for many hours of play, going far better than yesterday, and insanely better than this morning (still the same game, and no updates or changes have been made). I just don't fathom how the same game can change so much from one instance to the next.

 

[Katitof]

Anyone knows which melee weapons are affected by flurry of blows perk? States knived and clubs in description. Are spears affected as well?

By the description, all should be affected.

 

[JayzenFreeze]

software engineer qa engineer

 

[faatal]

Maybe I am... tools are tools. Just being passionate.
On another topic,

Don't get me started on mountains lol.You guys managed to improve indoors performance by a LOT in this alpha (sometimes up to 30%).

But Mountains... they eat fps like crazy on lower rigs. I'm talking 30-90% fps drop .

Maybe expand the Occluder video options so it only works inside buildings? The Occluder checks outdoors are killing potato rigs. That's a bit of work but it will help to get outside performance back and better.

Also, the game is currently rendering terrain textures that are not visible to the player. Just go to god mode and go below the terrain.

Texture streaming helps a solid 10-15% outdoors (tested) so as soon as the occluder thing gets tweaked the game will run better everywhere.

Your analysis is off. Indoor performance is better because of occlusion period.

Mountains are Unity terrain and Micro Splat shaders, which are both new to A18. Terrain also has new high res textures in texture arrays (also new). There is no indoors or outdoors. It is just voxels under, around, above you or some combination.

The game has always rendered terrain that is not visible to the player.

I've been profiling the last 2 days and the occlusion system has never shown up as using a lot of resources.

 

[Syrex]

why get rid of "ground", like forest ground, blocks? hard to find level spots and those blocks help make that happen, I know there's other ways to, but that was one of the ways..

**edit: found a "dirt" block**

 

[A Nice Cup of Tea]

With all due respect, i don't know whether it's such an improvement. Yes, the areas outside the cities look nice enough. The cities themselves are placed in rather massive craters again, as we saw in a16. They don't have very steep slopes, but it still looks unnatural. All cities are also just.. squares.

That's pretty accurate for US cities, though.

 

[4sheetzngeegles]

Faatal I like the stamp layout in, Rwg. Question re POI placement, does it level land to make a lot, or does it place in any available flat terrain that has surface area to support a lot?

 

[DaVegaNL]

Wow, a lot of negative posts about A18. I have had no issues at all. FPS have been high and stable on high settings. No bugs or glitches, my day 7 horde (set at 16) lasted most of the night and there were a ton of z's. Mods and skill books are great. Junk turrets are helpful. Stun baton is disappointing because of it's range, but punching a Z in the face with spiked knuckles usually gets me hit, but it's very satisfying.
The RWG is so much better than in A17, seems to be very random. I built outside of a large city, however the closest trader is 1.6km away, so I haven't been using him. But this is survival, I don't expect to have everything easy and convenient. Only one death so far because I was walking backwards shooting and walked over a landmine.

This is the most fun I've had in 7d2d in a couple years.

As far as my specs go, i7-8700k, 1080ti, 16 gigs of ram. Graphics are cranked up and not even a stutter.

When you say that RWG is better, what do you mean? The areas outside of towns, or the towns themselves? Because they are not better than in A17 (they are smaller, just squares plopped down on the map).

- - - Updated - - -

That's pretty accurate for US cities, though.

Yeah I know, but if you compare them to the cities in A17, the cities in A18 are very.. Homogeneous, predictable and not really interesting.

 

[Aldranon]

Yeh but there were only two of us on at the time. maxAlive 80, got the rush, but it turned into a trickle real quick.
*snipped*

What sucks is soon after I had some uh, misadventures with candy tin mines, three times in like 5 minutes, *snipped*

I make big forts and refuse to fight (aka waste ammo) so more ammo for quests!

I think we should start a "Misadventures in A18" topic soon.

My poor Super hero Strength/Fortitude character... God knows how he fought to stay alive! But it was fun.

 

[Tok]

The occlusion tooltip says it can only be changed at the main menu.

Thanks, I changed it at the main menu and got around 10fps or so more, so it is playable now at around 30-40 with some stuttering. Still way off the 80+ I was getting on A17.

I was going to turn down the textures to half, but it makes the trees look really bad, despite the trees textures being set to high.

 

[A Nice Cup of Tea]

Homogeneous, predictable and not really interesting.

That's pretty accurate for US cities, though.

(Sorry, I couldn't resist)

 

[JamesKirk]

It says buried treasure, not floating in the air. I didn't perk into miner 69r, buy a shovel to build scaffolding and grab my "buried treasure" floating near the ceiling of a POI.

There may be a new name for this child:

hidden treasure

;-)

EDIT: sorry Guppy, just saw your post:

It implies hidden, but you do like to fix things that aren't broken...

 

[Wiltuschnik]

Hi guys!

Just here to give a short feedback.. feel free to skip!

Played less than 7 days and i already loved so much all the f*kin things i see..

POI are great, rewarding, lot of hidden things and cool ideas! And, atm, nicely calibrated!

Food, infection, sickness are getting really good and balanced right now!

Loot is just fantastic.. icons too, skills are great! (less is more)

The scrapping into "specific" parts make me feel great.. i LOVE to see these little thingies ready to be assembled in something like "raw" resources! I like resources to be homogeneous as stacks!

RWG is TOO much to handle.. looks like a Google maps screenshots 90% of the times! LOVE it!

I found myself looking at the landscape and gettin' nearly rekt by 2 sh***y vultures! I can't wait to see other biomes beside Desert.. but i don't think i can find something better than these humongous reddish mountains, clefts and cool roads..

Started in 8k RWG in a desert - less than 15 mins generation on a not so-high end pc (desert was the hardest start said MM)

Gettin' infected in no time, but it's ok.. i risk a lot and grinded zombies by melee from start.

Died(so, cured) quickly on day 1-2 for a coyote, really nasty at low level.. but avenged soon by 1 shot of hunting rifle! (nearly c*mming for that)

Before day 7 (and playling with no hurry) done 4-5 quests and many levels. Found Sawed Shotgun, Rifle, Wooden Bow, 2 Junk Turres, AK 47 all brown, 2 antibiotics and herbal, honey, 2-3 recipes and 3 books (desert is not that rich, but still ton of loot on EVERY quest and POI with hidden places).

Seen POIs:

Little desert hovel with secret bunker (frightening.. expecting wave of zeds.. but nothing! feeling like a true Z-film)

Funeral house (full of coffins, incinerator)

Metal works factory

Desert fetch quest (tunnels underneath, soo cool and full of loot)

Other quests..

"BAD" NOTES:

1) Hunting rifle shots are a bit too powerful (not as damage, as impact!) the coyote just flown like a paper plane(my son laughed a lot)! Many zombies too looks a bit too "light" when hit by a hunting rifle (still I LOVE one-shot kills like that.. feels so sweet!).

2) the XP malus when dead is really nothing.. why should i cure infection (not that easy in first days) if i can die in no time and get up for good grinding again? Usually i don't use tricks, but if i get 10%+ infected again i think ill die on purpose.. i can't see the reason to cure me if i got food/water and i can die near my base! Maybe a light "bonus" for remaing alive without interrupting the "alive streak" can give a reason?! I don't know..

3) spears are cool, but i feel there is something suboptimal on how you have to use them.

ok, i'm low level on spear.. but for that range, the not-easy way to aim, the fact that you have to retrieve them..

honestly i don't see why to use a spear instead of power-attacking with a wooden club or going true-ranged with a bow (more shots, but at least being safe!).

to make it clear:

for spears i feel the "bad" part of throwing weapons(slow attack, have to retrieve, hard to aim) AND still the risk of melee weapons.

i'm forcing me to try them more cause i love the idea, but for now i can't feel ok with them (unlike ANY of the other weapons in 7d2d)

i'm SURE that one of these hairy guys of TFP will find a way to fix that..

Ill see if it makes sense to post again, just wanted to share my love for that fkin piece of gold you're making there.. love you guys!

 

[JamesKirk]

I heard somewhere that a18 B139 is not liking Radeon GPU's that much. Is it true?

at least when generating a world.

But there is a workaround that worked for me, and Fataal explained why this could happen.

In a normal game RWG is generated using GPU. On Server games it seems to use CPU.

Fataal said, that CPU generation is a kind of fallback solution (maybe because dedicated servers

are mostly equipped with onboard graphics), and that there might be differences.

So if you want to use RWG on Radeon, edit serverconfig.xml and insert your seed / size there.

Start 'startdedicated.bat' Get a sixpack beer, just after you drank it, RWG is ready. (took me 50min for 10k map on a i7-8700k)

Stop the server, and run the game normally.

Enjoy!