PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

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Hi MM. I have potato minimum and I found that some a17/18 stuff does not have the proper texture size scaling, meaning eight size is not as sluggish as it should be resulting in 10-35fps performance drops near and inside relatively new buildings with textures like: wood ceiling trims, red bricks, stone bricks, dry walls.... etc. Is it a known issue or are textures being addressed? May I consider it a bug?
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Being near or in a building probably is loading up all the coffee pots and stuff that was culled and putting additional load on your computer. Not a bug, you just need to upgrade, turn settings down even further or wait for further optimizations.

We do have a dynamic resolution feature coming that will keep fps in a certain range, but that only works if you have headroom to lower the settings. It basically down samples your resolution on the fly to keep things running smooth, when the frames are there it goes back to normal.

 
That is true, it is really nice having everything in one place so to speak. But this game doesn't take place in a suburban area, it's a sprawling wasteland with traders kilometers apart. Getting the "bad" traders would be less annoying if they were more common across the wasteland, but you could potentially be half a day's travel from the next one in this game, and I think there's enough time spent traveling as it is. I mean, if they all sell the same stuff at different rates anyway, why would I do that? It kind of seems like a huge waste of gas/time.
I like the idea but they're too far away from each other for it to be fun for me, I don't want to spend 10 minutes straight driving/flying to the next trader, especially with the risk of him having nothing interesting for me to purchase when I get there. Honestly I think the best way to fix this would be to reduce the gas intake when "sprinting" with vehicles, or just up their base speed. Or maybe have them all have the same pool with the same rates of inventory, but each one has a unique secret vault based around their specialty instead?
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As long as I can creative menu myself the starting quest to find new traders it's a non-issue for me. Let TFPs go crazy :)

 
We've talked about that, but there might not be enough specific POIs to do that effectively. I'd rather maybe do a specific quest for that trader that is hand groomed, but we probably don't have the man power or time to do those kind of quests.
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You are probably right, need to spend the time as effective as possible, I guess one such quest per trader that would like unlock after doing x missions only for that trader could be more than enough. Though you would need some handle to send the player to a specific POI though, a function that broke after A16 (currently it can only send a player to a nearby trader sadly).

 
You are probably right, need to spend the time as effective as possible, I guess one such quest per trader that would like unlock after doing x missions only for that trader could be more than enough. Though you would need some handle to send the player to a specific POI though, a function that broke after A16 (currently it can only send a player to a nearby trader sadly).
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After X missions it opens up the opportunity to do work for The Duke or Noah.

 
the Grip is still on the gun but the leather or cloth is probably just for Comfort.
and i really like the Combat shotgun. there are many parts that are normal but the rest were homemade and im a sucker for that! (Bias i know)
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No, the grip is NOT still on the gun. If you look at the picture you see the bare frame under the leather, no grip.

 
Being near or in a building probably is loading up all the coffee pots and stuff that was culled and putting additional load on your computer. Not a bug, you just need to upgrade, turn settings down even further or wait for further optimizations.
We do have a dynamic resolution feature coming that will keep fps in a certain range, but that only works if you have headroom to lower the settings. It basically down samples your resolution on the fly to keep things running smooth, when the frames are there it goes back to normal.
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It's nice to hear about the dynamic resolution feature thingy,thx!

screenshot proof:

((Disclaimer: Feel free to move this to the appropriate thread , I'm not sure which one applies in this case.))

Can't play lower .Playing 800x600 is the only way to avoid 90% of the hiccups (except horde night) Screenshots at Lowest 1080p.

GTX 780M 4VRAM 4/4 Intel core 2,9Ghz CPU

8 RAM good cooling (70-75؛C).

Everything minimum 1080p except for the occluder ON and texture streaming on.

Bricks. it says 45fps, couldn't capture it on time, it was 28fps.

20200210094432_1.jpg

Usually I play 800x600 because while there's 30fps drop from 60 to 30 sometimes, dropping below 30 is rare (only horde night) Also, the assets load ultra fast because they are already sluggish. It's just that some textures are not optimized at all for lower end, and eight size should be sluggish and it's not. Let me show you some examples:

Wood ceiling / wood trims is too damn high resolution compared to the sluggish curtains. Not apparent texture scaling.

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The drywall is too high with seemly no/not enough texture scaling. Objects are nice and fast.

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Believe it or not, those roof textures are 8th size. You can notice it because of the sluggish broken windows.

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Still lowest of the lowest. Not apparent change compared to the sluggish car.

20200210094451_1.jpg
 
You are probably right, need to spend the time as effective as possible, I guess one such quest per trader that would like unlock after doing x missions only for that trader could be more than enough. Though you would need some handle to send the player to a specific POI though, a function that broke after A16 (currently it can only send a player to a nearby trader sadly).
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That's still broken? Damn. Hope prime reads this.

 
Really now? Food is so abundant in the game you really do not need this quest to come by. And if it is, its more a problem that this particular quest drops so much in comparison to other activities. Food is only an issue in co-op if there are leechers in the group not pulling their weight :)
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I play 4 leecher co-op :cocksure: . We get just enough food because we do a lot of those dig quests in the first days. If we don't do much mining at night, don't do much wood cutting and melee and scan a city for vending machines I can imagine we'd even have food abundance.

Now the game must be playable for a group of 8 newbies as well.

 
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I play 4 leecher co-op :cocksure: . We get just enough food because we do a lot of those dig quests in the first days. If we don't do much mining at night, don't do much wood cutting and melee and scan a city for vending machines I can imagine we'd even have food abundance.
Now imagine the game must be playable for group of 8 newbies as well.
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Its good to hear food is a bit of an issue. With candy taking up vending machine space vending machines will be a less reliable source of food making food even harder to come by.

 
Its good to hear food is a bit of an issue. With candy taking up vending machine space vending machines will be a less reliable source of food making food even harder to come by.
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Why not spawn vending machine loot containers (No buying) in the POIs with pre-war canned goods in them, and have the ones at a trader be the only ones you can buy from? Thematically seems weird to have a random vending machine A.) Be stocked with jars of tea, and B.) Take a post-war currency. Could even lock the loot containers so you'd risk making noise for free food.

RE: Vulture chat from yesterday, have a special brand of vulture that dive bombs from above and damages your roof.

 
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The steel parts system to build steel tools/weapons is lacking imo and simply not fun. I hope it gets revised in a19 or at least simplified into lesser parts.

Also, can we get alternative recipes for building repair kits? I didn’t realize the vital role duct tape plays in the apocalypse

 
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Why not spawn vending machine loot containers (No buying) in the POIs with pre-war canned goods in them, and have the ones at a trader be the only ones you can buy from? Thematically seems weird to have a random vending machine A.) Be stocked with jars of tea, and B.) Take a post-war currency. Could even lock the loot containers so you'd risk making noise for free food.
RE: Vulture chat from yesterday, have a special brand of vulture that dive bombs from above and damages your roof.
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Its plausible a survivor stocked it up to make a profit from his buddies or set up a soup kitchen but you gotta pay to eat extra rations from vending machines, then things went bad.

 
@MM In alpha 17 news days I rewatched the videos that you posted over and over just to get every drop of info and imagination fuel as possible. If you could walk through a new poi and talk about the updates and plans sometime soon that would be very appreciated.

- - - Updated - - -

Wait...in A19? Or is that for a future Alpha?
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Probably future alpha.
 
Alpha 19 sounds better every day. Hype train !

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Too soon ? Ok.

 
Its plausible a survivor stocked it up to make a profit from his buddies or set up a soup kitchen but you gotta pay to eat extra rations from vending machines, then things went bad.
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But zombie infested vending machines restock every few days too. That is just weird I think, even if survivors stocked em up before all stuff went to hell, nobody is going to now since they would rather eat the vending machines. It would be more interesting if they spawned with a set stock, and that is that for this machine. Lockpicks could allow a player to try and steal the stock or buy it with old dollars (so saving those up has a use too).

Restocking the machines, if you do not want it gone, could be part of the loot respawn setting, if that is off the machines also do not refill their stock. But currently they share all mechanics with traders, including currency so its limited in what can be set for them.

 
Had the idea that once you have the relevant skill maxed out, that we can use weapon parts to reroll the stats on tier 6 items. Like T6 Item + 20 Parts + Other Crafting parts = New T6 weapon with new stats. Equipment parts kinda lose their value once you've found a decent T6 item that uses them.

 
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