PC Alpha 18 feedback and balancing thread

[faatal]

A long time ago we were promised by devs that we'd have options to disable Post Processing and others alike to increase FPS.
It's been a while and I now have memorized that, to increase FPS I must type on the console:

gfx af enable 0

gfx pp enable 0

when are these gonna be made into an option in the video menu so we don't have to type these in each time?

Video option Texture Filter set to Low is the same as gfx af enable 0.

Video options Bloom, SSAO and SS Reflections are post processing effects.

That just leaves Color Grading and Eye Adaptation, which are core effects that go together and we don't want people to commonly disable, so there are no plans to add UI options for them.

 

[KhaineGB]

Ok, so quick test for A18.2 then... same system. Same settings other than Terrain Detail. Also got as close as possible to the same spot in the screenshots that I posted.

Microsplat on, Terrain Detail Lowest: 120-ish average fps.

Terrain Detail Low: 115-ish average fps.

Terrain Detail Medium: 106-ish average fps.

Terrain Detail High: 100-ish average fps.

Terrain Detail Ultra: 90-ish average fps (kinda expected this one to be the worst).

Will test with the patch shortly, if it works.

 

[ZombieSurvivor]

Video option Texture Filter set to Low is the same as gfx af enable 0.
Video options Bloom, SSAO and SS Reflections are post processing effects.

That just leaves Color Grading and Eye Adaptation, which are core effects that go together and we don't want people to commonly disable, so there are no plans to add UI options for them.

Sun shafts post processing as well, I think, right?

 

[faatal]

Ok, so quick test for A18.2 then... same system. Same settings other than Terrain Detail. Also got as close as possible to the same spot in the screenshots that I posted.
Microsplat on, Terrain Detail Lowest: 120-ish average fps.

Terrain Detail Low: 115-ish average fps.

Terrain Detail Medium: 106-ish average fps.

Terrain Detail High: 100-ish average fps.

Terrain Detail Ultra: 90-ish average fps (kinda expected this one to be the worst).

Will test with the patch shortly, if it works.

Ultra, High, Medium is the high quality shader, but with reducing terrain distance.

Low you drop to the simplified shader.

Lowest is a placeholder and actually the same settings as Low.

 

[ZombieSurvivor]

Ultra, High, Medium is the high quality shader, but with reducing terrain distance.Low you drop to the simplified shader.

Lowest is a placeholder and actually the same settings as Low.

If one chooses to set it on, lets say medium but then does the console command sg OptionsViewDistance 12 will this conflict with the new terrain option in a negative way at all?

 

[faatal]

Sun shafts post processing as well, I think, right?

It is a separate script not part of the main post processing.

 

[faatal]

If one chooses to set it on, lets say medium but then does the console command sg OptionsViewDistance 12 will this conflict with the new terrain option in a negative way at all?

No conflict. Distant terrain does not use OptionsViewDistance.

 

[Damocles]

Ultra, High, Medium is the high quality shader, but with reducing terrain distance.Low you drop to the simplified shader.

Lowest is a placeholder and actually the same settings as Low.

Can you put in Doom graphics rendering for "lowest", that would be funny.

 

[madmole]

No, that part checks out for me -- the 5 minutes stat is from the person I was talking to about this. I'd say more like 10 minutes, but, yeah, you can definitely do that. I take about 20, 30 minutes, real time, to gather 90k iron (enough to refill all my three forges). Level 4 in Miner and Mother, purple auger (decent random stats too) with breaker, buster, digger and diamond, drinking coffee, all mining magazines. Having all mining magazines is the main thing, since you can one-shot iron ore like crazy with it. For me, it happens every three or four seconds, but when it does it hits two or three blocks in a row. Since I've finished playing that world, I can log in, find a new iron mine (the one I had was exhausted), and time it.

Ok yeah I suppose fully tricked out you can, and with coffee, etc it could be possible, and it is intended to to be possible because late game ammo grind is a grind and you should have time to do other things and not become a complete slave to the grind of ammo, which is why I eventually get some traps to assist.

 

[madmole]

I have 5/5 in lucky looter. I haven't touched loot%. The shamway recipe has given me 100's of canned food. I would say my playstyle is similar to yours. I also always buy up the food everytime I visit a trader.

Well that just throws any argument about food abundance out the window. I NEVER EVER buy food because its a huge waste of money, unless I have no choice and its always very early game. I might buy up chili or salmon for chili dogs and stuff, but I don't eat the canned food straight its for recipes. Same as dog food, it goes into the elixer.

If you strictly ate every canned food you found, didn't buy food from a trader or vending machine, and didn't hunt or cook I would venture to say that you would always be worried about your food situation or you would actually be starving some of the time. Like try surviving only on canned food you looted, that is the only argument to say food is too abundant.

 

[madmole]

Ok, I timed and recorded it. 5 minutes, 36k iron (6 stacks). And this was on a new mine, so I had to clear gravel and find which direction it was going -- after the mine boundaries are well defined, it becomes even faster.
[video=youtube_share;cM67AomdV3A]

That is awesome seeing that in action. One of the things causing some disconnect for me in your statement was the change to metal which AFAIK, used to stack to 1200, and probably weighed more than the new iron, so really 1 stack of 6k is like 1200 metal, which is a fair amount but nothing too OP.

 

[madmole]

And at what point does the outlier stop being an outlier? If we've seen 17 Demolishers on Day 21 and 40 on Day 28 with people in their late 20s to mid 30s, I don't imagine it's going to get lighter. I'm also not exaggerating for effect; I went through the log and counted - 34 mentions on Day 21 and 80 on Day 28. That's one entry each for spawn and kill.
I'm actually asking a legit question here, not whining. We're likely restarting a map when 18.2 drops (still talking about it) and we can see if that's a continuing thing or not. I know that you'd mentioned something with reviewing MP gamestage so if it's moot until that gets done, that's fine too, just don't want to waste the testing opportunities.

Ok we can take a peek.

 

[madmole]

Nope, and I'm completely comfortable with it if you are. I just wasn't sure if it was a bug or something else needing to be looked at, because 15 minutes to crank out 34k lead is a hell of a lot in a short time. I admit I was surprised as hell when I'd be getting 2, 3, or 4 one-shots in a row, which is part of why I was concerned.

Its possible the one shot perk needs to be reduced for the auger since you cast rays so much faster the chance is basically 5x or something since you "swing" 5x more.

 

[Laz Man]

Ok we can take a peek.

Joel!!!!! HAPPY THANKS GIVING! Thank you for bringing us 7D2D. Spending today with Rick again? I wonder what new idea or game you guys will discuss over Thanksgiving dinner this year.

 

[madmole]

Again regarding the current skill system: I do NOT ask for LBD (because your last answer to my post assumed that).

But simply give generic buffs to the skills (perception, strength, agility, ...) which are universally usefull and do NOT tie them to specific weapon types.

e.g (just suggestions, not do it exatly this way).

Perception: Increases chance of dismemberment and headshot damage for ANY weapon

Strength: Increase damage and blockdamage for ANY weapon

Fortitude: Increase stamina and health

Agilitiy: Increase movement speed, increase reload speed, increase attack rate for melee

Intelligence: Decrease ressources for crafting, increase amount of harvesting blocks

And limit weapon specific bonuses to only perks, which still may require X points in perception, fortitude, agility...

Then if i maybe skill fortitude just because i want to have living of the land is not completely wasted, because i don't use fists or machine guns, because it gives me a generic buff to stamina and health which brings me effort without using specific items. Maybe then i'd even skill fortitude without using any perk from the fortitude branch.

Its not completely wasted, you got what you wanted. We're not making crossover generic bonuses, we had that in 17 and that promotes leveling/min maxing vs looting/just playing because player will want to max out every attribute then.

 

[madmole]

Single player it's fine, perhaps just a little more than needed but that depends on your activity level.
Multiplayer it's necessary to go a bit out of your way to keep everyone fed. Cutting food will impact the larger groups (we've had 5 a few times lately) to the point they'll have to buy food or choose food-heavy buildings over others or have everyone be hungry to the point of low stamina.

A side note...why do the piles of food not appear until I'm within 2-3 blocks of them most of the time? Tilt trucks and domed trash cans do the same thing.

Potato settings, its LODing to air fast. Mine render probably 30 meters away.

 

[Blake_]

Potato settings, its LODing to air fast. Mine render probably 30 meters away.

Well... I can confirm it is a bug. It happens with piles of canned food and with the cement mixer. Low settings of course.

The canned food appears too close compared to ammo piles and medical supplies.

The cement mixer cuts in half into an ugly nest-shape triangle at similar distance.

Cement mixer should stay in a similar shape in a distance and canned food piles should be visible from a good enough distance like its peers. I don't know what's the LOD rendering distance of say the ammo piles/ medical but they should exactly the same. Right now they are not because canned food piles LOD is too short compared to those two.

Edit: Needs further testing. I will report my findings when I have the time.

 

[ZombieSurvivor]

Well... I can confirm it is a bug. It happens with piles of canned food and with the cement mixer. Low settings of course.The canned food appears too close compared to ammo piles and medical supplies.

The cement mixer cuts in half into an ugly nest-shape triangle at similar distance.

Cement mixer should stay in a similar shape in a distance and canned food piles should be visible from a good enough distance like its peers. I don't know what's the LOD rendering distance of say the ammo piles/ medical but they should exactly the same. Right now they are not because canned food piles LOD is too short compared to those two.

Edit: Needs further testing. I will report my findings when I have the time.

Its not a bug but rather low LOD. Items load in at different ranges depending on the % chosen in the options. Low settings result in some items not loading in until they are right on you or very low models of them.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_detail

 

[AtomicUs5000]

Well... I can confirm it is a bug. It happens with piles of canned food and with the cement mixer. Low settings of course.The canned food appears too close compared to ammo piles and medical supplies.

The cement mixer cuts in half into an ugly nest-shape triangle at similar distance.

Cement mixer should stay in a similar shape in a distance and canned food piles should be visible from a good enough distance like its peers. I don't know what's the LOD rendering distance of say the ammo piles/ medical but they should exactly the same. Right now they are not because canned food piles LOD is too short compared to those two.

Edit: Needs further testing. I will report my findings when I have the time.

I've noticed the same with those exact same two items.

The food piles are especially weird like that. It's as if it has no distant lod model at all, so it just disappears.

 

[-Holo-]

Sure. Testing on A18.1 (b8) since that's the stable build.
Spec: i7-4710MQ CPU, 32GB DDR3-1600 RAM, GTX 980M GPU (overclocked by hand, pulls numbers similar to a desktop GTX 970) and running off a 1TB NVME drive.

Video settings: 1600x900 windowed (this is my modding machine so I run windowed for ease of checking logs and such), no AA, full texture quality, low texture filter, middle UMA quality, low reflection quality, no reflected shadows, near shadow distance, high quality water, 50% water particles, high view distance, 50% LOD distance, low tree quality (no idea why it was set to that when I usually use medium), normal grass distance, no occlusion, no bloom (I don't like it), no depth of field (don't like it), no motion blur (again, don't like it, it gives me headaches), no SSAO, no sun shafts, no texture streaming.

Microsplat on.

Microsplat off.

Happy to do more testing on my main gaming rig later, since that runs at 1440p with more details turned up.

Yes there's some slightly more detail in the mountains right at the back, but it's not worth 70fps.

Wow. this cut the GPU usage from 99% to 35-40%.

now I can increase shadowrange, turn on reflected shadows, increase AF to max and more and still only use 70% GPU. All with a solid 60 fps.

insane to use such a resource hogging system for something barely noticable. :/