PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Jugginator]

Yes, I made mention of it earlier. MM responded asking us to let him know which zeds in particular. I am waiting on the update to play again and roll out a list.
1 in particular that I have always had issues with in the past is the nurse, her headshots are like shooting a blob of jelly, they go right through without any effect whatsoever.

There are def more to come once I get the game rolling again and can screenshot them

Yeah the biker zombie's beard seems to be protecting his neck. I've noticed his hitbox is off while using the spear a bit. His head and face are spot on, but sides of his neck not so much.

And gfx af is antistrophic filtering, set it to 0 along with gfx pp 0.

- - - Updated - - -

Cool.Yeah, my FPS seems to be around 75-85 in the open without it on.

Just tried the gfx af 0 and FPS went to 110.

Do you have to restart your game to remove the gfx af 0 command? I left the game and came back and it was still applied.

I don't typically, but I've never noticed it turning back on mid game. I've noticed none of the commands work pre-game load, though, so restarting the game prob turns it off anyway.

 

[madmole]

No, has. The snow biome still has that exact same performance drop when looking at terrain that the first experimental build has. Desert has it also, but to a smaller extent.

Forest, Wasteland and BurnedBiome have no issue and are currently performing roughly the same as A17 (although i have to turn AF off for that, which hurts image quality, but that issue will hopefully be fixed sooner or later).

There's still plenty of people reporting it as well (specifically mentioning snow biome as well)

Edit: as far as numbers go, looking at lots of terrain in the Snowbiome, the fps can go as low as 15, but typically sits at 20-30FPS. Forest/Burned/Wasteland biome is ~50 FPS for me now(no drops).

Edit2: Specs: Intel 4.2 Ghz Quadcore (Haswell) , Radeon RX480 8GB, 16GB DDR3. Running 1080p on Win10. Texturesize or streaming/occlusion does not matter for framerate.

Ok thanks, we'll keep looking into this.

 

[madmole]

@Madmole
Do you think we will ever see the return of rg caves some day?

Its not on the roadmap.

 

[madmole]

Yeah definitely shotgun is viable. My horde base that's only for hordes is kinda like the Pentagon, cept it's square. 3 square walls around each other 4 blocks high spaced 1 block apart from each other with spikes inbetween. I have wood bars on top, and i usually use my level 1 shotgun with no shotgun perks to start the night to use excess shells I've found, the 4 height seems effective, get quite a few kills before running out and switching to my main AK/7.62 ammo.
By the way, does the "forgetim' " drink or whatever the trader sells give you a respec? If not what does it do? I kept forgetting to check it and the trader doesn't have it for sale atm.

Yes.

 

[madmole]

well that does seem to help clarify it, hadn't noticed that on the AK.

That is a fairly recent change so that may be why.

 

[argeos]

Created a new RWG map. Started it. No mod used.

Entered the world and at like 7:01, left it immediately. Reentered the game.

For whatever reasons, the "starter quests" chain never got triggered.

The only other difference with previous games, "game settings" in the small menu at the beginning were reset for this alpha.

 

[stallionsden]

If you are getting 2 FPS with that hardware, then you have a serious problem going on. I can get 10 FPS on a garbage AMD HD 5770 1 GB VRAM from 10 years ago.
Try:

1 Reboot the computer

2 Remove any 7dtd mods you might have

3 Start steam and Verify Integrity Of Game Files from the properties for 7dtd

4 Start 7dtd with no other programs running (other than steam)

5 Set screen resolution to 1920x1080 and VSync off

6 Set Video settings to High and Apply

7 Start a new Navezgane map

8 Check FPS (F8 key)

I play alot of other games no issues.... Skyrim. Fallout 4 all run fine with full mods I can get... No issues with my pc

 

[TheRhinoThunder]

are Perlin worm caves going to make a return? I miss them so much.

 

[stallionsden]

Aside from what Fataal said, run Windows update and make sure you get all the .NET framework updates and etc. Note this could (usually does) take multiple passes, and check for updates even if it says no updates are available. And, may seem silly but it happens commonly, make sure you're running on your actual video card, not the on-board connection. But yeah, I get 60+ fps indoors and anywhere between 20-50 outdoors depending (about to try the new update now), on my potato laptop lol.
Also, if you're running at 4k, lower the resolution. 4k is very hard to get good FPS on.

Updates make a huge difference, trust me on that one.

- - - Updated - - -

Generally off, but my integrated GPU only has 1gb VRAM allocated to it. I find occlusion is a 50/50, but in the big Shotgun Messiah factory occlusion def helped.

No idea how to update .net framework unsure If I ever have lol.

Windows was just updated.

Pretty sure i running on my vid card

 

[Gazz]

I just searched up "Pumpkin" in the crafting interface. Several recipes came up, including the seeds, but the actual pumpkins and some of the recipes show up as question marks, so I still wouldn't take the chance, @Gareee

This is experimental so even if someone breaks a savegame this is of no concern whatsoever.

AK-47's are now classed as machine guns, for whatever reason.

As Joel pointed out: Mainly consistency and clarity.

But... our AKs don't have a selective fire option so technically they are machine guns. =P

that's what I believe to, but if you saw that skill and wanted to go rifles you could put points into it not realizing that AK's arn't "rifles". by changing the wording to single fire rifles the reader would more clearly know what it was for.

By the same reasoning you could argue that a marksman rifle is not a semi-auto rifle any more if you install the right trigger group.

That's why we went with the more obvious naming convention. Simple.

I want to be clear, Int spec will still be able to handle 32 zombies at nomad difficulty. It just won't be able to do so as easily as other stats because it's less powerful. A greater focus on careful pulls/kiting/splitting enemy groups and farm can overcome most power differentials in this game if need be.

So... you want to do a pure Int build but you don't want to be using Int stuff?

2 junk turrets, 1 rifle/MG to wield and use up 7.62mm, SMG turrets to use up 9mm, shotgun turrets to use up shells.

That's quite the firestorm. As the meek Int guy you can use up all the ammo that you find and all the gun parts.

Iron, brass, paper... you can convert all of it into damage at the same time.

The Int guy is supposed to be the smart one and figure this out. =P

Yep. everything we had with durability was broken: equipped, toolbar, inventory and in storage chests.

That's in the patch notes, so yes. As expected.

 

[Retsof123]

Hey Guys,

Love your work, A18 is better than ever, thank you.

I do notice that the stores are not very prevalent. Pregen01 has no gun store (14 stores), Pregen02 has no hardware store (17 stores) and Pregen03 has no Gun, Book or bank (12 stores). RWG also does not generate all the stores and is very light on what it does generate. I have tied a number of RWG maps. I upped the probability on stores to 0.5 to get them to generate better in RWG. Also added a min count and upped the max count to store_group.

Cheers

 

[AtomicUs5000]

Super rage almost got me on day one. It is tempting to throw down that level 1 junk turret when 4 or 5 zombies are closing in... I recommend not.

 

[faatal]

Cool.Yeah, my FPS seems to be around 75-85 in the open without it on.

Just tried the gfx af 0 and FPS went to 110.

Do you have to restart your game to remove the gfx af 0 command? I left the game and came back and it was still applied.

AF is anisotropic filtering. It is a method of taking many samples of a texture to produce a higher quality image. It also takes perspective into account. Driver control panels usually let you disable it or enable lower quality but faster versions of it.

Just use "gfx af 1" to turn it back on.

 

[MrSamuelAdam]

AF is anisotropic filtering. It is a method of taking many samples of a texture to produce a higher quality image. It also takes perspective into account. Driver control panels usually let you disable it or enable lower quality but faster versions of it.
Just use "gfx af 1" to turn it back on.

Thank you for the explanation!

 

[Laz Man]

Ok thanks, we'll keep looking into this.

Yes, I can confirm I am still having the massive drop in FPS in the snow biome at certain day times (after today's update) (existing save game from previous build; pregen02). For my GTX 960 2GB card what is interesting is on medium settings its at least playble at around 30 to 40 fps out in the open in the snow biome but if I move up just texture quality from half to full, my FPS drops back down into the teens. Once I get around too it I will start a new save game to see if its consistent or not.

 

[Jugginator]

No idea how to update .net framework unsure If I ever have lol.
Windows was just updated.

Pretty sure i running on my vid card

Always a good idea to run Windows update anyway to make sure if it's displaying updates, like I said sometimes it'll say there aren't any and when you run it a couple pop up, I deal with it all the time working on workstations/customer computers. .NET frameworks come with windows updates, so it'll be there.

If you want to check... C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework > you'll see version numbers in folders.

Or, in regedit, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP

(Check for DWORD entry and Release) >> Warning, don't mess around in regedit if you're uncomfortable with it.

I believe the latest is 4.5, off the top of my head. I'm not sure which one Unity uses, but it's good to have it updated. Also, go to your manufactorer's website for your video card to find drivers, Windows is decent about driver but... it's Windows. I've found way outdated versions on the Update, sometimes newer.

Btw if you're running Skyrim and Fallout 4 fine, those are both old titles. They may accept old drivers/etc just fine but intensive/newer games won't. Plus, if your OS is having to work hard to compensate for outdated stuff, leaves less room for 7 days, an intensive Alpha game on an unstable build, to run properly.

BTW Just did my final horde night on my old build, next time prob tomorrow night I'm going to wipe saves and start new, but man oh man was that a fun horde night.

Accidently fell off my base onto my spikes right when a Demo zombie showed up (first encounter). Love the sound he makes and model, and love his toughness! I was prepared though and had a mix of iron/steel armor on, plus painkillers and 1 Fortbite I found. I was literally invincible taking no damage haha. Still was an absolute blast being surrounded by swarms blasting away with my AK modded out. ALmost bit the dust when the Fortbite ran out, but I managed to get back in my base lol. 1600 kills that save Bring the swarms!

 

[DaVegaNL]

Are we going to get geologist zombies? You know.. They attack you with their geological hammer.. And as a special attack they throw a rock.

 

[NukemDed]

I would expect that from snow but not you sir lol...

its the quiet ones you need to watch out for

 

[Damocles]

Are we going to get geologist zombies? You know.. They attack you with their geological hammer.. And as a special attack they throw a rock.

You mean a zombie digging though the dirt?

 

[Jugginator]

Are we going to get geologist zombies? You know.. They attack you with their geological hammer.. And as a special attack they throw a rock.

Hah lol, have them sorta like screamers for when you're out farming rock nodes too much. The sound of boulders breaking is tantalizing to them.