PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

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Jay_ombie said:
This has been done to stop the game chugging when VRAM maxes out on low end memory cards I take it. Trouble being cards like the 1080ti with 11gb this was not an issue and the game ran great with hardly a hitch noticeable. Now my VRAM maxes out at approx 7gb at some points (needs more testing) but catering for the low GPU's its now running like pants on higher end GPU's. 

Once the textures are in its obviously okay there after (until I travel somewhere I have not) but the high end quality textures which I have always used and so should be able to with a 1080ti are now loading in one big chunk causing serious game pauses up to two seconds or more whilst trying to move or do something.
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@madmole

It seems like this would be a great Video Options toggle..

 
MechanicalLens said:
Can't confirm this though, JaWoodle said it either in his latest video or the one before (that it was rumored or he heard it somewhere, idk)
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This change would be sort of pointless... INT finally got playable and now its getting nerfed - INT doesnt really have that many options early game or late game. TFP should figure out a way how only INT guy can use these weapons ( so you need to spec into int. in order to be able to use turrets ). 

 
Bhaaltazar said:
This change would be sort of pointless... INT finally got playable and now its getting nerfed - INT doesnt really have that many options early game or late game. TFP should figure out a way how only INT guy can use these weapons ( so you need to spec into int. in order to be able to use turrets ). 
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Key word: rumor. Like I said, JaWoodle heard about it from somewhere, but since he didn't cite his source, take it with a pinch of salt. Thought I'd bring it up though.

 
I kinda like how they stuff all the quirky weapons into INT and then decided since they were so chockful of utility, they needed low base damage... and ruined an entire stat's combat effectiveness. Chances are if someone is making an INT only run work with only INT weapons, cheese is involved.

 
Ranzera said:
I kinda like how they stuff all the quirky weapons into INT and then decided since they were so chockful of utility, they needed low base damage... and ruined an entire stat's combat effectiveness. Chances are if someone is making an INT only run work with only INT weapons, cheese is involved.
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The only effective (cheese design) I've happened across on the Internet that utilizes the Robotic Sledges involves a tall, thick staircase with pillars on either side, you're at the top, and as the zombies climb upwards the sledges knock them off. I'm not saying the Sledges are useless, but they seem to have brought back a mini-resurgence of cheese bases.

 
madmole said:
I'm pretty sure its a missing texture bug.
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damn thats sad, it looks really cool

tenor.gif


 
faatal said:
Console messages are slow period, so many of them in a short period will use CPU. Never seen that block message. Are you on a slow computer? Are you running the game from a HD?

Entities should never spawn in multiples on the same frame. That would obviously lead to frame spikes. Biome group ZombiesWastelandNight now has 0 delay and max count of 3. The 0 should probably be a small number like .01, but really code should just deal with the 0 and make it the minimum to get smooth spawning. Biome spawning is crusty old code that could use some work. What biome(s) and time of day are you seeing this?
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Yes, HDD. 750GB (I have 50% freed storage space) 7200rpm ATA (stands for ATAcking potato)  This one: https://www.hdsentinel.com/storageinfo_details.php?lang=en&model=HITACHI HTS727575A9E364 

It's not THAT bad of an HDD. Good health too. Yes, it is very slow by today's standards but should be useful as a minimum spec system test case. 

My full specs:

CPU: Intel Core i7 4800MQ 4/8 (3,7gherz )

GPU: GTX 780M ( 4gb of VRAM btw)

RAM: 8,00GB Single-Channel DDR3 1600MHz RAM 

HDD: 750gb ATA 7200rpm 50% freed space.

The rest is good and not important (I think !).

Windows 7 64 bits

Zd spawning and block handling warnings on console make the game pretty much unplayable in batches. These frame drops that I've told you about are happening with THESE ingame settings: 

I'm playing at 800x600 everything Lowest/off (yes, shadows off) except texture size (quarter) and of course Occluder ON (like the zombie miner's Jim Carrey stare).

When this is improved I can even dream of 720p. Or even 1080p ! Think about it ! Am I worth it?  :pray:

EDIT: Temperatures are ALL ok. I have a custom cooling system that maintains CPU at no more than 70ºC during stressful workloads and GPU is always in the 60-70ºC range. HDD is in the 45ºC range at all times.

Also, It's not that the Zds  spawn at the same frame but that they spawn too close in time, The improvement I'm talking is we should have seconds (2-5) of delay between any spawn (animal or Zd, hordes or any npc) to help frame rates. I'd rather see a sustained 15 frame drop over 30 seconds than a full 55 frame drop within 3 seconds.

 
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"Normal entities load their prefabs and meshes on demand instead of during world load"

This is causing the horrendous in game pauses when moving around the world I believe (and I am running on an M.2 NVME, dread to think what it is like on a Platter Drive).

It gets better the longer you play (as more prefabs get into memory maybe?).

 
So, booted up the latest Alpha Experimental just to check out the progress. My god, the game looks gorgeous! The world looks so vibrant and colourful but still feels apocalyptic at the same time and I'm loving it! The frame rate is better and smoother (probably get faster loading as well once I fit a new SSD) too. I figured I'd check out my usual base set-up location in Navezgane. The good old cornfield near Diersvill. I remember in A18 it was a nuisance with ground blocks there and I wanted to see if A19 fixed it. They did! Sort of... Asphalt now appears properly when placed on the cornfield ground/replaces it BUT the biome ground blocks like topsoil, burnt forest ground, forest ground, desert ground etc. do not appear properly still. Progress has been made though so I'm remaining hopeful that this can be resolved so grass can replace the ugly cornfield ground. What? I want my base to look nice! Alternative option is I flatten the hill nearby but I thought I'd post an update to just voice my thoughts. So far, I'm liking what I'm seeing! Trying to get to the cornfield from spawn as well, I noticed some things have been changed up. Excited for the stable release and seeing what else is changed and new on Navezgane! Fingers crossed TFP can get to the root of the issue. I think Madmole mentioned something about this back when A18 released about some sort of new rendering stuff? Dunno if that's the cause. I'm WAY out of my depth with that kind of thing. Leave it to the pros.

 
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MechanicalLens said:
So I just got a gas can recipe as my first T1 quest reward. Just saying.
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Then you got extremely lucky, I hope you are not suggesting for a nerf. Although traders are unbalanced as hell, but schematics and books should not be gated by gs.

Did you start a new game?

 
v3tro said:
Then you got extremely lucky, I hope you are not suggesting for a nerf. Although traders are unbalanced as hell, but schematics and books should not be gated by gs.

Did you start a new game?
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Yeah, I had to start a new game. I recently had all the files of all my games completely wiped, and it persists even when I rolled my computer back in time. It always occurred the moment I plugged in my new second monitor (a hard crash) so I'm going to definitely be returning it.

Anyway, not asking for a nerf, I think it's fine. It's not like it's going to be immediately useful to the player either, especially if they are far from a desert.

The almost full stack of ammo rewards though... Yeah, that's gotta go. 😛

 
q123 said:
I did a quick test right now and after most of the hickups that happen I had one or more yellow lines in the console.

Here is only the WRN part of my logs from yesterday - I have plenty of them in:

2020-07-18T23:20:27 3429.223 WRN No chunk for position 1519, 56, 1712, can not add childs to pos 1520, 56, 1712! Block couchSofa01
2020-07-18T23:26:11 3773.224 WRN No chunk for position 767, 75, 1584, can not add childs to pos 767, 75, 1583! Block bed02
2020-07-18T23:26:39 3801.145 WRN No chunk for position 703, 74, 1605, can not add childs to pos 704, 74, 1605! Block cntBathTubEmpty
2020-07-18T23:27:36 3857.930 WRN No chunk for position 617, 65, 1712, can not add childs to pos 617, 65, 1711! Block couchSofa01
2020-07-18T23:28:10 3891.740 WRN No chunk for position 574, 69, 1744, can not add childs to pos 574, 69, 1742! Block crushedCars
2020-07-18T23:28:31 3913.186 WRN No chunk for position 509, 66, 1600, can not add childs to pos 509, 65, 1597! Block cntCar03SedanDamage2v06
2020-07-18T23:28:31 3913.216 WRN No chunk for position 502, 75, 1664, can not add childs to pos 502, 75, 1663! Block bed02
2020-07-18T23:28:39 3920.972 WRN No chunk for position 463, 67, 1583, can not add childs to pos 464, 67, 1583! Block pipeSmallWall1x3
2020-07-18T23:28:39 3920.987 WRN No chunk for position 463, 69, 1604, can not add childs to pos 464, 69, 1603! Block decoPicnicTable
2020-07-18T23:28:50 3931.922 WRN No chunk for position 454, 67, 1664, can not add childs to pos 454, 67, 1663! Block pipeSmallWall1x3
2020-07-18T23:28:50 3931.969 WRN No chunk for position 456, 70, 1760, can not add childs to pos 456, 70, 1759! Block bed02
2020-07-18T23:29:01 3943.074 WRN No chunk for position 415, 67, 1602, can not add childs to pos 416, 67, 1602! Block cntCoffin
2020-07-18T23:29:01 3943.074 WRN No chunk for position 415, 67, 1608, can not add childs to pos 416, 67, 1608! Block cntCoffin
2020-07-18T23:29:01 3943.081 WRN No chunk for position 415, 67, 1618, can not add childs to pos 416, 67, 1618! Block cntCoffin
2020-07-18T23:29:01 3943.082 WRN No chunk for position 415, 67, 1621, can not add childs to pos 416, 67, 1621! Block cntCoffin
2020-07-18T23:29:07 3948.983 WRN No chunk for position 391, 69, 1808, can not add childs to pos 391, 68, 1805! Block cntCar03SedanDamage0v04
2020-07-18T23:29:21 3963.643 WRN No chunk for position 367, 71, 1719, can not add childs to pos 369, 70, 1719! Block cntCar03SedanDamage2v07
2020-07-18T23:29:35 3977.162 WRN No chunk for position 313, 75, 1712, can not add childs to pos 313, 75, 1711! Block bed02
2020-07-18T23:29:43 3984.970 WRN No chunk for position 271, 68, 1715, can not add childs to pos 272, 68, 1716! Block decoPicnicTable
2020-07-18T23:29:48 3990.644 WRN No chunk for position 255, 70, 1730, can not add childs to pos 256, 68, 1732! Block decoSwingSet
2020-07-18T23:30:04 4005.861 WRN No chunk for position 384, 69, 1805, can not add childs to pos 382, 68, 1805! Block cntCar03SedanDamage2v06
2020-07-18T23:30:04 4005.861 WRN No chunk for position 384, 69, 1792, can not add childs to pos 383, 68, 1792! Block cntDumpster
2020-07-18T23:30:49 4051.521 WRN No chunk for position 188, 69, 1584, can not add childs to pos 186, 68, 1583! Block cntCar03SedanDamage2v02
2020-07-18T23:32:47 4169.504 WRN No chunk for position 130, 74, 1760, can not add childs to pos 130, 74, 1759! Block cntBathTubEmpty
2020-07-18T23:32:50 4172.219 WRN No chunk for position 119, 68, 1600, can not add childs to pos 120, 68, 1599! Block decoPicnicTable
2020-07-18T23:32:50 4172.234 WRN No chunk for position 125, 69, 1632, can not add childs to pos 125, 69, 1631! Block hayBaleSquare
2020-07-18T23:32:50 4172.303 WRN No chunk for position 111, 74, 1783, can not add childs to pos 112, 74, 1783! Block cntWoodDesk01Open
2020-07-18T23:32:58 4180.102 WRN No chunk for position 111, 70, 1760, can not add childs to pos 111, 69, 1759! Block decoBenchPress
2020-07-18T23:34:44 4286.529 WRN No chunk for position 15, 71, 1563, can not add childs to pos 16, 70, 1561! Block cntCar03SedanDamage2v01
2020-07-18T23:41:25 4687.177 WRN No chunk for position 140, 71, 1391, can not add childs to pos 140, 68, 1393! Block decoMetalSlide
2020-07-18T23:41:28 4690.522 WRN No chunk for position 128, 70, 1384, can not add childs to pos 126, 68, 1385! Block decoSwingSet
2020-07-18T23:42:11 4732.845 WRN No chunk for position 32, 58, 1334, can not add childs to pos 31, 57, 1334! Block cntDumpster
2020-07-18T23:42:32 4753.901 WRN No chunk for position 32, 69, 1302, can not add childs to pos 30, 68, 1302! Block cntCar03SedanDamage2v03
2020-07-18T23:42:41 4763.562 WRN No chunk for position 64, 69, 1272, can not add childs to pos 63, 68, 1271! Block cntDumpster
2020-07-18T23:42:49 4771.385 WRN No chunk for position 89, 68, 1231, can not add childs to pos 89, 68, 1232! Block couchSofa01
2020-07-18T23:43:03 4785.239 WRN No chunk for position 128, 75, 1201, can not add childs to pos 127, 75, 1201! Block cntMetalDesk02Closed
2020-07-18T23:43:24 4805.903 WRN No chunk for position 60, 70, 1167, can not add childs to pos 60, 69, 1168! Block cntDumpster
2020-07-18T23:43:33 4815.255 WRN No chunk for position 56, 69, 1151, can not add childs to pos 56, 69, 1153! Block crushedCars
2020-07-18T23:43:33 4815.278 WRN No chunk for position 112, 70, 1167, can not add childs to pos 111, 69, 1167! Block cntDumpster
2020-07-18T23:52:01 5323.534 WRN No chunk for position 192, 80, 1109, can not add childs to pos 191, 80, 1109! Block cntMetalDesk02Open
2020-07-18T23:52:19 5341.183 WRN No chunk for position 240, 69, 1152, can not add childs to pos 239, 68, 1154! Block cntCar03SedanDamage2v06
2020-07-18T23:53:57 5439.530 WRN No chunk for position 248, 69, 1168, can not add childs to pos 248, 68, 1166! Block cntCar03SedanDamage2v04
2020-07-18T23:54:48 5490.620 WRN No chunk for position 212, 69, 1039, can not add childs to pos 214, 68, 1040! Block cntCar03SedanDamage0v05



This is a fresh generated game (b169) on PREGEN02.

Maybe the PREGENs are outdated after the latest fixes? It may help, if I'll generate a new RWG word, I think.
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I had a lot of that console errors when using a Nitrogen made map.

The far distance pois models do not unloaded when i got close to them, causing strange textures overlaps. I was seeing the poi and the distance poi (marbled blocks)  merged together.

 
faatal said:
The normal entities like zombies are a one time load, because currently they never unload. Many of those you will never see like every trader, so it make sense to not load them. With the changes to streaming now only using the main camera, preloading them may not be as much of an issue, but it needs more R&D or possibly a newer Unity version with more control of streaming.

You would need to load our current prefabs to get an idea what the designers are using. There is not specific number. They just try to keep it down.
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Hmm, thanks for continuing to look into this and not being dismissive; it's definitely a hot topic amongst at least within my group.  Hopefully by next patch it gets resolved... I'd bet the majority of users still install on platter drives, but maybe gamesparks is providing that info... the overall performance is definitely worse on my game laptop but I'm on vacation so can't test on the big game rig... By accounts from others with similar specs I'm not optimistic though.  

Could be just some weird setting, who knows... I've faith you'll sort it. 

 
This stutter is not happening to everyone. I have a mid-level PC with Ryzen CPU, rx580 with 8G VRAM and SSD. I play co-op with 3 others and neither of us noticed any stutters. So be sure to mention your stats, CPU, GPU, RAM, VRAM size and SSD/HD. My bet is on the hardware and probably age of the platform (because internal data paths throughput) and/or using a HD.

MechanicalLens said:
Key word: rumor. Like I said, JaWoodle heard about it from somewhere, but since he didn't cite his source, take it with a pinch of salt. Thought I'd bring it up though.
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Other rumors I heard:

* They soon want to remove the ability to pick up mines with a wrench!!! So hurry and pick up as many as you can before that ability is gone forever.

* Madmole was banned from the forum for using the m* word

* They found a bug. In the game. It was said to be there undetected for all of A19.

 
The stutter is happening on beast rigs with i7 chips and 32 gigs ram and 8 gig Vram.  It's real enough, but likely will be improved in the next build.  I think providing a switch to enable or disable preloading would also help.  Preload for folks with 4+ gigs Vram, no preload for those running on potatos.  

 
meganoth said:
This stutter is not happening to everyone. I have a mid-level PC with Ryzen CPU, rx580 with 8G VRAM and SSD. I play co-op with 3 others and neither of us noticed any stutters. So be sure to mention your stats, CPU, GPU, RAM, VRAM size and SSD/HD. My bet is on the hardware and probably age of the platform (because internal data paths throughput) and/or using a HD.

Other rumors I heard:

* They soon want to remove the ability to pick up mines with a wrench!!! So hurry and pick up as many as you can before that ability is gone forever.

* Madmole was banned from the forum for using the m* word

* They found a bug. In the game. It was said to be there undetected for all of A19.
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There is also a rumor going around of you being banned from the forums for spreading sweet little lies. ;)   😜

 
As I've been looking at getting a new GPU I've noticed that it looks like both AMD & nVidia have decided to go with 6GB of VRAM for anything less than about $400. AMD still has some earlier offerings below $400 with 8GB but going by their newest(?) challenge to nVidia cards, the 5600XT, they're embracing 6GB as well. (apparently the initial driver to go with 6GB was ability to use 192 bit paths rather than full 256, so chips that would otherwise have been trash could be sold)

So now I'm quite curious how 7dtd will treat 6GB cards. Is 6GB the new 'normal'? Sure seemed like 8GB had settled in as the 'default' for a decent gaming GPU. No idea if the 6GB trend is a blip or not, I don't follow gpus much these days, but from the bits I read about the bus width vs. sellable parts, maybe the 6GB VRAM size will be the new normal in the sub$400 range.

Edit: "sweet little lies" good Fleetwood Mac tune Mech :)

 
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