PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[pApA^LeGBa]

@Jost Amman If you use WIN10 you can easily just use the X-Box game bar, press windows key plus G. If you have a Nvidia GPU and Geforce Experience installed you can use that too. It´s activated with Alt+Z. Both allow you to make a video of the last few minutes of gameplay.  You can set that time to whatever you want. Just need to pay attention that you have enough free storage.

 

[faatal]

My point too.
I don't understand how players can spend points on Stealth?
The worst thing is that if you want to make a tier 5 with "stealth" you will be literally 24 hours real.

Let's not even mention that on horde night it is useless and guess what, the game is about surviving the hordes haha

Here's a bit of hate: I always thought people use stealth because they are new to the game JA

Stealth is a play style for having fun. In its current form, like other things in the game, it may not be the best for min/maxer play styles.

Cosmetic items also do nothing for succeeding in the game, but some play styles like them for having fun. I generally don't touch cosmetic items and often play stealth. Why? That is my combination of fun.

Your version of fun is not mine.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

@rubens9311 One shotting Z´s with the sneak bonus saves ressources, that works up to radiated bikers and cops with a crossbow. Play on 50% loot and warrior or higher difficulty. You will be happy about every single arrow you can save. Not drawing attention from outside a POI also helps when playing higher difficulties. First 3 stages of difficulty i propably wouldn´t spend anything in stealth eithe. Also Splinter Cell made me a stealth fanboy.

 

[Jost Amman]

3 - When you get near a volume it spawns, so you may see things appear. Just like a lot of other stuff appears out of nothing in games. Low FPS really breaks 'immersion'.

First of all, thanks for the reply. Just wanted to point out that my point 3 (in my case) has nothing to do with low FPS. This happens when sneaking at a very slow pace while nearing the area where the volume is: it's SP and everything has loaded up and there's no graphics intense thing going on while approaching. It's just that when the trigger goes off the sleepers appear nearby and you can see them appearing a few blocks away in front of you,

Granted, it must be more of a POI "layout" problem than anything else, it's probably not even connected with sneaking but just with volume spawns.

Edit: there's also the problem I forgot to mention that you can shoot and kill a sleeper with a shotgun while sneaking and no other sleeper in the POI will wake up. Strangely the shot can be heard instead from the occasional walker outside...

@Jost Amman If you use WIN10 you can easily just use the X-Box game bar, press windows key plus G. If you have a Nvidia GPU and Geforce Experience installed you can use that too. It´s activated with Alt+Z. Both allow you to make a video of the last few minutes of gameplay.  You can set that time to whatever you want. Just need to pay attention if you have enough free storage.

No game... Radeon here!  :second:

 

[faatal]

So how is a sneak attack with a knife ever supposed to be effective if they always wake up before you can get within 1m?  Is the knife reach actually longer than 1m?

Bone knife has a 2m range against entities. 2.5m against blocks.

 

[faatal]

First of all, thanks for the reply. Just wanted to point out that my point 3 (in my case) has nothing to do with low FPS. This happens when sneaking at a very slow pace while nearing the area where the volume is: it's SP and everything has loaded up and there's no graphics intense thing going on while approaching. It's just that when the trigger goes off the sleepers appear nearby and you can see them appearing a few blocks away in front of you,

Granted, it must be more of a POI "layout" problem than anything else, it's probably not even connected with sneaking but just with volume spawns.

Edit: there's also the problem I forgot to mention that you can shoot and kill a sleeper with a shotgun while sneaking and no other sleeper in the POI will wake up. Strangely the shot can be heard instead from the occasional walker outside...

No game... Radeon here!  :second:

Except you are talking about a good case. I'm talking about all the cases. A group of players running around the walls and through POIs. Near all manner of sleeper volumes. We would be spawning tons of zombies and FPS declining. Someday having cheap bare bones non animated versions appear or just plain cheaper zeds allowing more volume padding, would be improvements, but not in A19.x.

Sleeper volume spawning tries to pick spawn blocks you can't see, but given limited choices that are visible it spawns far to near. Designers don't like it when you don't spawn their zombies. If they place 1 block in a volume, it will always spawn there regardless of how you busted into the volume, since there are no other choices.

Sleeper volumes are independent of each other unless grouped. Having a party in one, does nothing to the rest.

 

[Adam the Waster]

Just remember to blow out the candle before you go to sleep!

whats life without some danger?

 

[Jost Amman]

Except you are talking about a good case. I'm talking about all the cases. A group of players running around the walls and through POIs. Near all manner of sleeper volumes. We would be spawning tons of zombies and FPS declining. Someday having cheap bare bones non animated versions appear or just plain cheaper zeds allowing more volume padding, would be improvements, but not in A19.x.

I was thinking that to solve the wake-up problem for sleepers you could use kind of an additional Heat-Map just dedicated to sounds.

That system is already working great with "normal" heat... but in this case you could use something similar just for sounds, to gauge the noise level in the chunk.

That would mean that each player action or breaking block or explosion would add to the chunk "noise meter".

E.g. for a 1 to 100 meter: shooting an arrow would add 1, a gun +20, a Grenade +100, a Block that breaks +15.

Then you'd use that meter in the sleepers AI to check if a specific threshold was reached : when that happens the sleepers in the chunk would wake up.

If I understand a bit how it works that could save tons of FPS because you'd just need to add a check on a number in the zombies' AI, am I right?

 

[faatal]

You're missing which behavior is unintended. Auto Aggro volumes sends the message that you are not supposed to stealth. Players trying to stealth in those volumes is the simile to the zombies in A17 and A18 jumping up the wedge walls only to slide back down.

A better choice might be stealth provides you some resistance to the targeting, so based on distance and randomness, you may only get a partial amount targeting you while the rest just look around.

@rubens9311 One shotting Z´s with the sneak bonus saves ressources, that works up to radiated bikers and cops with a crossbow. Play on 50% loot and warrior or higher difficulty. You will be happy about every single arrow you can save. Not drawing attention from outside a POI also helps when playing higher difficulties. First 3 stages of difficulty i propably wouldn´t spend anything in stealth eithe. Also Splinter Cell made me a stealth fanboy.

I don't even try to get melee stealth kills. I basically just use the bow when I can. Enemy in field or sleeper laying there? Free damage. Head shot even better.

 

[Danidas]

I was thinking that to solve the wake-up problem for sleepers you could use kind of an additional Heat-Map just dedicated to sounds.

That system is already working great with "normal" heat... but in this case you could use something similar just for sounds, to gauge the noise level in the chunk.

That would mean that each player action or breaking block or explosion would add to the chunk "noise meter".

E.g. for a 1 to 100 meter: shooting an arrow would add 1, a gun +20, a Grenade +100, a Block that breaks +15.

Then you'd use that meter in the sleepers AI to check if a specific threshold was reached : when that happens the sleepers in the chunk would wake up.

If I understand a bit how it works that could save tons of FPS because you'd just need to add a check on a number in the zombies' AI, am I right?

The Sleepers literally do not exist until your with in X blocks of them or enter their cube size trigger zone. As the whole point of the sleeper volume system is to reduce the number of zombies in the world to the absolute minimal. Especially the number of active zombies as each living zombie is a huge drain on the games very limited resource pool.

 

[Jost Amman]

The Sleepers literally do not exist until your with in X blocks of them or enter their cube size trigger zone. As the whole point of the sleeper volume system is to reduce the number of zombies in the world to the absolute minimal. Especially the number of active zombies as each living zombie is a huge drain on the games very limited resource pool.

Wasn't talking about sleepers that still have to spawn.

 

[faatal]

The Sleepers literally do not exist until your with in X blocks of them or enter their cube size trigger zone. As the whole point of the sleeper volume system is to reduce the number of zombies in the world to the absolute minimal. Especially the number of active zombies as each living zombie is a huge drain on the games very limited resource pool.

Exactly.

A primary point of the system is to reduce the active zombie count. I specifically put spawned sleepers in a passive state, so they can't hear or see and run very little code. Player touches volume and they go active, so then they can hear/see.

 

[hiemfire]

A better choice might be stealth provides you some resistance to the targeting, so based on distance and randomness, you may only get a partial amount targeting you while the rest just look around.

Reads as a far cry better than the current iteration of them ignoring that the player is stealthed. I have an itchy feeling in the back of my mind with how close to the player some of the POIs dump their auto-aggroed zombies, but I'd like to see how it pans out if the idea is implemented.

 

[MechanicalLens]

Sweet dreams everyone.

View attachment 7_Days_To_Die_2020-08-27_17-22-38.mp4

 

[Outlaw_187]

So I was watching a glock9 video, his horde every night challenge, and I saw he found a needles & thread book that allowed pocket mods for clothing? 

Does this mean for regular clothing like pants, shirts, sweaters, etc??

I wondered why the other pocket mods that are crafted in the workbench didn't work on them.

 

[MechanicalLens]

So I was watching a glock9 video, his horde every night challenge, and I saw he found a needles & thread book that allowed pocket mods for clothing? 

Does this mean for regular clothing like pants, shirts, sweaters, etc??

I wondered why the other pocket mods that are crafted in the workbench didn't work on them.

Armor pocket mods are for armor. The regular clothing pocket mods and the clothing double pocket mods are for pants, shirts, and ovecoats.

 

[Outlaw_187]

Armor pocket mods are for armor. The regular clothing pocket mods and the clothing double pocket mods are for pants, shirts, and ovecoats.

I'll be dayumned!! I never knew that. Sweet!! I don't know if Ive found those needle & thread books or not but I'll definitely be checking next time I play. 

 

[Jost Amman]

Exactly.

A primary point of the system is to reduce the active zombie count. I specifically put spawned sleepers in a passive state, so they can't hear or see and run very little code. Player touches volume and they go active, so then they can hear/see.

Then you could attach the "Noise Map" to the volumes in the same chunk and trigger them (along with the sleepers) when there's too much noise. This would solve the problem with the player destroying closet doors in a POI making noise but not waking up the zed inside AND the problem with the player killing a sleeper with a shotgun and still not waking up all the other (spawned) sleepers inside the same room. Also, this would bring back the possibility to wake up zeds when you try to break your way in a POI bypassing the normal "dungeon" path.

 

[Jugginator]

Spoiler

Sweet dreams everyone

View attachment 14115

Lol! Bravo. Made me laugh a good bit.

 

[Tmodloader]

He's been farting since Alpha 1, burping etc. Nobody ever noticed?

I noticed the burping and nasty liquid sounding noises, just hoping it's not more nasty when he becomes the gasser. Not sure if it's just me but sometimes I just want to kill zombies without the extra nastiness.