PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[Demandred1957]

Because realism isn't fun. I don't know how many times I need to say this.

I'm not a bear hunter but I know people who are and I've heard plenty of stories how bullets can just bounce or deflect off their skulls. The balance can seem unrealistic, or realistic depending on your view point. The fact is if a bear was rushing you, and don't have all the perks or a good gun, imagine your fear and your missing the skull by a fraction and it is grazing off. The "more damage" per rank simulates your confidence, not shaking the gun, not flinching, exhaling when squeezing the trigger, etc. Its easy to be a confident marksman in your luxury chair, but IRL it is different. So we try to simulate that with perks, just because you aimed at the head doesn't mean it was a perfect shot because you need all the perks, the best gun, ammo then its a lot easier to take one down.

Then you need to consider post apocalyptic conditions. Your barrel is rusty, your ammo was home made in a make shift garage. The guns are scabbed together out of parts. The radiation might enhance animals to be more resiliant over the generations since the bombs dropped and a mysterious virus is in the air, the water, who knows.

I've seen opossums get shot in the chest twice, then 3 more to the head before it finally quit hissing and died.

From a game play perspective we were tired of predator animals being meals on wheels, so we made them a lot more dangerous.

Yeah, possums are tough as nails. My grandpa shot one and skinned it, then heard a noise later to find it walking off...

As for the rest, the last sentence sums it up.

Because using the games world, i was looking down sights, at a bears skull 10 feet away, and scoring direct hits with every shot..

So i'm supposed to pretend I suck?

Make them more wary of players and or rare, if you can't stand them being hunted like they are in the real world.

And stories are usually just that.

 

[Adam the Waster]

Yeah, possums are tough as nails. My grandpa shot one and skinned it, then heard a noise later to find it walking off...

the possum...

Spoiler

 

[rubens9311]

Madmole. 
I have to say that I envy your patience in this forum.
 I have been reading them for a couple of years and recently decided to write.
 It is incredible but lately the "pro" players have been aligned to come to insult the game in one way or another.
 Greetings from Argentina. 
And thanks again for this GREAT game.

 

[Kattla]

Bears? Nothing a wooden club and some cheesecake can't handle.

Video is not publicly listed for 1 simple reason. It was a terrible edit. I tried to shorten it by speeding it up, but then the audio went out of sync. I could reupload it, but nah.

Still shows what a wooden club can do though. And, i kinda hinted in A15 i would use a club vs bear in a later alpha too, so, now i've done that.

 

[Phoenixshade35]

11 minutes ago, Kattla said:

Bears? Nothing a wooden club and some cheesecake can't handle.

Video is not publicly listed for 1 simple reason. It was a terrible edit. I tried to shorten it by speeding it up, but then the audio went out of sync. I could reupload it, but nah.

Still shows what a wooden club can do though. And, i kinda hinted in A15 i would use a club vs bear in a later alpha too, so, now i've done that.

not going to lie that was amusing to watch, and it was a zombie bear to boot

 

[STyK_]

Good shot of your beast

 

[Pegasus]

There ya go boys.  Have fun.

 

[meilodasreh]

Yeah, possums are tough as nails. My grandpa shot one and skinned it, then heard a noise later to find it walking off...

I got one with a remote triggered explosive charge. It still walked off...immediately, very fast, and in many directions.

tough little @%$*#!s...

 

[MechanicalLens]

So you are going to sit there with 0 workbench for 9 days when you've found 0 schematics, and 3 traders / POIs all with broken workbenches because you planned weeks before to do 'no intellect'? That's more gimp then the other guy. No, I think you are going to spend the points on it. 

Just as in an earlier post you said you use pack mule because it gets your early game going off to a faster start...

I've played 200 hours of alpha 19, and I've found TONS of good schematics week 1. I also know which POIs have bookshelves.

I've also played a game where I didn't find a workbench until day 9, so I put points into it to build one, and lo and behold, the next broken workbench I found had the schematic in it.

That's RNG-esus for you.  "You know, I could give you this item you are desperately searching for... But what if I don't?  " Later... "Oh, this item you've given up searching for/you don't need anymore? Well, here you go, have 17 of them!"

In my current world I didn't find a workbench until day 6, and I had been able to craft a bicycle since day 2. The amount of excitement I expressed when I had finally found a working workbench was truly breathtaking.  In all seriousness though, sometimes patience is a virtue.

 

[Phoenixshade35]

This was my favorite part of my horde night, and i dont even have perks points into it at this point

View attachment 7_Days_to_Die_edit_2.mp4

 

[MechanicalLens]

This was my favorite part of my horde night, and i dont even have perks points into it at this point

View attachment 13208

Hey, mind if I steal that iron bar/steel pole design from you?

 

[Phoenixshade35]

Hey, mind if I steal that iron bar/steel pole design from you?

by all means, its a 7x7 with plates on the outside, been working pretty good for simple, lets me go out looting more than designing a base

 

[MechanicalLens]

Just as an fyi: regular poles take 6x the damage from zombie attacks if they are placed horizontally.

 

[Phoenixshade35]

Just as an fyi: regular poles take 6x the damage from zombie attacks if they are placed horizontally.

i didnt know that, and i rotated my regular poles to be horizontal, but it works well for me, and now i love the sledge

 

[MechanicalLens]

i didnt know that, and i rotated my regular poles to be horizontal, but it works well for me, and now i love the sledge

Yeah, that's been a thing since A17 I believe. Quick question: Would you think that plates placed on top and below the iron bars (flat against the blocks) would hold up the iron bars?

 

[Phoenixshade35]

Yeah, that's been a thing since A17 I believe. Quick question: Would you think that plates placed on top and below the iron bars (flat against the blocks) would hold up the iron bars?

hard to say, i have them placed on the poles, i imagine it would work on simple plates as well, they are normal bars and not centered bars, upgraded from wood bars for cheap placement in case i screwed up lol

 

[faatal]

I'm talking specifically about rain and snow.  Solid blocks, like wood blocks and concrete blocks, already stop rain and snow.  It's windows (which actually say, right in their description, that they keep the elements out) and hatches which do not stop rain and snow.  There's something with those particular blocks, whether placed vertically or horizontally, which do not stop rain and snow.

I can put in a skylight of bulletproof glass between stretches of concrete blocks ... and stand under the glass in a rainstorm and my "you are wet" indicator goes up.  I move literally one block to the right, so I'm standing under the concrete ... and I'm magically dry again.

I can stand under a solid steel vault hatch ... and i'm soaked to the skin 52 meters underground ... take one step back, so I'm under concrete and solid rock ... and I'm dry again.  I can understand it if the wood hatches leak... I mean come on, I built it with a couple of flatish pieces of wood that I carved with a stone axe ... i'm surprised it doesn't fall on my head every time I open it.  But a vault hatch shouldn't leak.  And neither should bulletproof glass windows ... or any other windows for that matter.

I don't know the details of what works or not currently. Just guessing. I have not touched that code and the creator is probably one of the programmers no longer with TFP. Like many features, it needs to be tested and reevaluated someday when someone has time.

I'm currently on day 65 and I'm just doing an all round character which has like 5, 6 or 7 points into each attribute which I haven't ever actually tried before and well it feels great with all the different weapons and approaches I can take 

sidenote: the stun baton does feel better now it has the repulsor mod but i feel like it should have its damage increased by a small fraction just to put the cherry on top because all the other weapons seem to out perform the baton by quite a bit 

bug report for the stun baton: when zombies die to the schocking damage from the 3 zombies i let die to it didn't give me any xp is this intended?

same goes for letting zombies die by fire from your weapons but 75% of the time it gives you the xp 

Today I fixed some issues with electrocution, so it may be better.

 

[Aldranon]

As someone that owns a 7.62x39 AK variant irl, I just gotta say the damage the bears can take is just insanely unrealistic. I went through almost a full clip on a living bear, point blank range to the face, before I killed it. Bears are tough yeah, but they ain't taking more than 1-2 rounds from a AK especially headshots.. I can punch neat bullet sized holes in 3/8 " thick mild steel plate with mine, shooting fmj standard issue russian ammo.

I mean..o.k.? Bears and other living predators should be tough and a real threat, but Humans rule the world because of our tools, and when you are using the right tool (guns vs anything else) you should tear through them like tissue paper.. Now if you don't have a gun, or get jumped/surprise attacked, yeah I could see you getting @%$*#! handed. But when You are doing the jumping with a AK, they shouldn't stand a chance, and go down 5 rnds MAX..

This is factual, but doesn't make for a fun game.  

I don't envy the Devs job of trying to find the fun "Needle" in the realism "Haystack".

But what I know is: They MUST do whats fun for them or the game is lost.  

 

[faatal]

VRAM Usage : Much has happened with fine tuning this procedure Its at the moment for me at least running really well and I am wondering if the game gives those with 11gb of Vram (1080ti) some love and uses it to the max before purging to reduce those (small but still noticeable) micro stutters.?

I ask as so far I do ponder as I  seem to see the game not use any more than 7gb ?

Normal entities don't load up front like they used to and hundreds of oversized textures were reduced, so the game does not need more VRAM. VRAM use can also be misleading since Unity's texture streaming does not free unused textures until it needs some space to load a new one.

I've heard lots of sizes for chunks.....16x16, 64x64, 512x512  {/shrugs} but it might be because some people say chunk when they mean region or vice versa. Irregardless, IMO, resetting a region would be the way to go if you are interested in resetting an area because it is a significant area. Then how do you decide what action resets the clock.....does just causing the chunk/region to load enough to restart the 30 day clock or do you need to interact with a chunk/region to reset the clock? Things to think about for sure. I still think it's a fabulous idea and hope they figure out how to make it work. Doing it manually is a pia.....deleting the region file is simple, figuring out which and how many to delete is time consuming. As far I as know, there's no way for me to figure out if a region or chunk has been loaded recently. Having the game doing those calculations would be great. Less work for a busy admin. Again, just my opinion.

Technically a chunk is 16x256x16 and has 16 layers each 16 tall, but people and myself often call a chunk 16x16x16 even though code calls it a chunk layer.

 

[Blake_]

Normal entities don't load up front like they used to and hundreds of oversized textures were reduced, so the game does not need more VRAM. VRAM use can also be misleading since Unity's texture streaming does not free unused textures until it needs some space to load a new one.

Technically a chunk is 16x256x16 and has 16 layers each 16 tall, but people and myself often call a chunk 16x16x16 even though code calls it a chunk layer.

Hi @faatal, I've been testing a bit b177. After testing for a few hours I would say that a19 isn't ready yet but a few improvements have been made specially regarding texture handling.

Feedback:

Right at the start, I don't freeze anymore for a few seconds. That is good news. Everything is loading smoother. I'm talking 1080p this time. 

While I am running faster when pure texture handling is involved (always at 60fps no bumps even on god mode and running fast), the fps bumps were even more apparent this time, as there was absolutely no contamination from the texture streaming side of things (well done, congrats to the texture shrinking Pimp).

The biggest bump in fps surfaced pretty quickly and was ALWAYS there when I noticed the bump and watched console a second after (actually the INF sound notifications can take a couple of seconds to show).

So the thing is, music is the culprit for a19 most constant and abundant 15-45fps drops for minimum and medium spec systems (turns out it happens in a18 too, but less music = less problem).

Every time music starts or ends or transitions, the game takes a big bump (15-45 fps) and lasts for  2-5 seconds (depending on if there are other complexities happening at the same time, like sleeper spawning).

This is the biggest and fattest fps RARE bump (freezes screen for up to 10 seconds ) AKA The extremely crossable-road elevated- house exception that I showed you in pages 577 and 582 of this thread): 



While there are other fps problems (Shown in the other posts  and related to sleepers, loading and unloading of blocks and simultaneous spawns and loading happening)

music is, by far the culprit in a19 and a18(YES, I rolled back to check and damn, when ambience music [[the only one in a18]] started, transitioned and/or ended- the bumps were real. 

So there, if us peasants get a fix for the music handling = butter smooth gaming buttocks .

Edit: BTW, the game is still quite unbearable because of the fps drops, at least in potatoes.