PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

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My opinion about the ambient lighting and colorgrading:

Forest: looks good

Snow: look way better now

Desert: too low contrast between sunlight and shadows (like in an overcast sky), too strong reddish tone, ugly dust storm effect (looks like an eye condition). The desert used to look better.

Burnt forest & wasteland: they look too similar now (is the plan to combine those biomes and make room for another one?). The thick fog might make for a nice effect, but will make it hard to navigate.

Should occur only periodically.

 
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This must be pretty subjective, my seeds have been fantastic so far. But I just play the game, I don't preview the map, I don't cheat and fly around, I see what I see playing organically. There could be roads crashing into mountains and craters yet, but so far I haven't seen anything too horrible one sloped road that I was still able to traverse on my bicycle. When in doubt I just go around and role play a bomb dropped there or something. Sometimes I fix the roads it gives me something to do and I feel like I'm improving the apocalypse. I only chop down dead trees too, at least where I am settled, unless they interfere with line of sight at my base for some sniping.
This is just a wild guess, but I think one of the things people are referring to are the steep cliffs that some of the wilderness POIs are spawning on top of.  TBH, the squarish cliffs look more realistic to me (maybe its the textures) versus the old cylindrical mounds in past alphas.

Aside from those, I am digging the topology especially the smaller bodies of water where it looks like the lake has dried up some.

Edit: Took some screenshots and attached.  I like the 3 POIs on the mountain.  The POI cut out into the mountain is alittle weird but no biggie to me.

A19.0_2020-06-30_09-12-49.jpg

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A19.0_2020-06-30_09-13-19.jpg

 
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The burnt forest looks absolutely amaze-balls. The random sounds give me goosebumps. The only issue I have come across is in the green forest, the grass and plants at sunset become kind of fuzzy to the eye and blurred together. Not sure if it’s just me and my eyesight going bad ( I’ve had eye surgery due to a tumor ), but I was just curious if anyone else noticed this. I run full textures and everything at high. DOF is off as well as motion blur.

 
BTW guys, just because the trader doesn't give you a dig quest right away doesn't mean there isn't any  viable spots in the area, it is random. The next day there might be dig quests available.

This is just a wild guess, but I think one of the things people are referring to are the steep cliffs that some of the wilderness POIs are spawning on top of.  TBH, the squarish cliffs look more realistic to me (maybe its the textures) versus the old cylindrical mounds in past alphas.

Aside from those, I am digging the topology especially the smaller bodies of water where it looks like the lake has dried up some.

Edit: Took some screenshots and attached.  I like the 3 POIs on the mountain.  The POI cut out into the mountain is alittle weird but no biggie to me.

View attachment 10917

View attachment 10918

View attachment 10919
Yikes, I haven't seen ANY of that, that looks pretty bad. FYI, RWG will be a strike teams top focus for A20. We're going to give Robert all the support he needs to get it shippable once and for all. Closer quest POIs will be part of that improvement as well as fixing roads and issues like this.

 
I played A19 for a couple hours last night (which... so much for paying attention in my morning meeting). And generally speaking, I've been getting as good or better performance as I did under A18, while looking much better.

But there is a big issue: A19 eats up a huge amount of RAM. Like, nearly twice the amount of RAM that A18 did. I have 12G of memory and between 7D2D, Steam, and the OS, I'm nearly out of memory.

I'm guessing this is due to the higher-resolution textures but that's just a guess.

My questions: Has anyone else noticed this? If not, is it a bug caused by my setup? Either way - does anyone know of any ways to bring the memory footprint down?

(If not, I'm afraid I won't be able to play any mods until I buy a new 'puter.)
Well I have a dual quadcore with 32GB of Ram and a Titan card and I cannot run it smoothly at full res, was the same in A18. It's not s huge deal, I just knock the overall screen res down a notch, most settings I have are a split between mid and high, and it still looks great, and is smooth. But I put it back to 3440 and my framerate plummets. Not sure why, I run other modern games at 3440 without issue, like R6 Seige(though I do not run it at 4k, my son does on his). I may have a Titan card, but it is the very first one made, my sons 1080 Ti has more vRAM. But on his machine he runs stuff no prob, then he goes to play Minecraft, and laaag.. memory problems. It may have something to do with memory management in a voxel engine, not an easy task. Anyway he has maybe half the system RAM I do, but those 2 extra GB in his video card make all the difference in some games.

My guess is I need more vRAM, so a better video card, it is def not my system RAM, I have never, ever, seen that 32 GB peak or fill up no matter what I do, and I work on larger CAD assemblies that typically take "workstation" level machines where Titan is the potato entry card. In that realm vRAM is everything, more so than system RAM, and it only really lags when you get a high volume of geometry in a single file. I have to manage huge CAD files(robot assemblies) by removing erroneous details(some CAD files have a TON of this), and manually creating lower detail models like the LOD stuff they do in game engines.

Anyway, my point is it seems like voxel engines in general run into similar memory needs as workstation level CAD. Major kudos to TFP for even trying what they do, because they have to improve performance via extreme optimization, where-as in the CAD world they expect users to tackle it via Brute Force and just throw more video RAM at it. Problem there is the current "entry level" is the new Titan(24GB) at around $2,500, then the "normal" cards used are the Quadro cards that I think start somewhere just over $5k with 48 GB of vRAM. So, yeah... upgrade your video card. Should be able to find a decent 1080, better with something like a 2080, but in a few months the new series drops, so the 3080 and a whole new suite of stuff should be out this Fall sometime. Current prices will drop on some, not as much as you'd think on others, regardless this realm of hardware is about to go through another huge growth spurt by the end of this year. Time it right and look around enough and you should be able upgrade more affordably, soon, ish.

 
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Well I have a dual quadcore with 32GB of Ram and a Titan card and I cannot run it smoothly at full res, was the same in A18. It's not s huge deal, I just knock the overall screen res down a notch, most settings I have are a split between mid and high, and it still looks great, and is smooth. But I put it back to 3440 and my framerate plummets. Not sure why, I run other modern games at 3440 without issue, like R6 Seige(though I do not run it at 4k, my son does on his). I may have a Titan card, but it is the very first one made, my sons 1080 Ti has more vRAM. But on his machine he runs stuff no prob, then he goes to play Minecraft, and laaag.. memory problems. It may have something to do with memory management in a voxel engine, not an easy task. Anyway he has maybe half the system RAM I do, but those 2 extra GB in his video card make all the difference in some games.

My guess is I need more vRAM, so a better video card, it is def not my system RAM, I have never, ever, seen that 32 GB peak or fill up no matter what I do, and I work on larger CAD assemblies that typically take "workstation" level machines where Titan is the potato entry card. In that realm vRAM is everything, more so than system RAM, and it only really lags when you get a high volume of geometry in a single file. I have to manage huge CAD files(robot assemblies) by removing erroneous details(some CAD files have a TON of this), and manually creating lower detail models like the LOD stuff they do in game engines.

Anyway, my point is it seems like voxel engines in general run into similar memory needs as workstation level CAD. Major kudos to TFP for even trying what they do, because they have to improve performance via extreme optimization, where-as in the CAD world they expect users to tackle it via Brute Force and just throw more video RAM at it. Problem there is the current "entry level" is the new Titan at around $2,500, then the "normal" cards used are the Quadro cards that I think start somewhere just over $5k. So, yeah... upgrade your video card. Should be able to find a decent 1080, better with something like a 2080, but in a few months the new series drops, so the 3080 and a whole new suite of stuff should be out this Fall sometime. Current prices will drop on some, not as much as you'd think on others, regardless this realm of hardware is about to go through another huge growth spurt by the end of this year. Time it right and look around enough and you should be able upgrade more affordably, soon, ish.
I bought my 2070 Super 2 weeks ago at Best Buy for $500USD, just a price gauge for anyone wondering

 
I bought my 2070 Super 2 weeks ago at Best Buy for $500USD, just a price gauge for anyone wondering
Yeah I heard the "supers" were good. My Titan is again the original one, part of GTX series. The new one is RTX, and has over twice the RAM, also costs about double. Seems to me the best thing to do now is pick up a card like that, any RTX, Ti, or Super variant, and most of all shoot for MORE RAM, that is the magic sauce, not system RAM. Anyway, good find, those new Super variants seem to be the best deal for larger RAM amounts and performance in general, at the moment.

 
@madmole

Only got a couple hours in so far, but liking the updates. Except for the overall light level at night, it is just way too bright and makes things to easy to see. Personally I like the darkness at night that adds to the suspense factor. There is little that compares to exploring a POI at night with a torch for light to be able to see.

It would be nice if for those of us that want it, we could get an option to adjust light levels at night and inside POIs.

 
@madmole

Only got a couple hours in so far, but liking the updates. Except for the overall light level at night, it is just way too bright and makes things to easy to see. Personally I like the darkness at night that adds to the suspense factor. There is little that compares to exploring a POI at night with a torch for light to be able to see.

It would be nice if for those of us that want it, we could get an option to adjust light levels at night and inside POIs.
Then turn down your brightness once the sun sets and turn it back up once it rises. All it takes is a little micromanagement.

Okay, now that would be a nice quality of nice feature. I think that's been passed around a bit actually.

 
We're going to give Robert all the support he needs to get it shippable once and for all. 
He have our support, too. Bugs and glitches are inevitable in such a huge project, there is solution for every problem though, can`t wait for the final version of RNG, no matter how much it takes. 

 
I am having fun in A19 btw, not having any new performance issues for the most part, was just commenting on what I've learned about engine and hardware limits, mainly since I need to upgrade for work, having a high-end gaming machine is just a happy side effect of needing a powerful workstation for my professional career. Once I upgrade it should once again stay ahead of game engine needs, took this one 7-8 yrs before it hit the limit. 

I'm dealing with same, minor, restrictions I had in A18, and I know it is my machines vRAM at fault. But a few setting tweaks and I forget about it, plays smooth as I have it now. 

 
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Yeah I heard the "supers" were good. My Titan is again the original one, part of GTX series. The new one is RTX, and has over twice the RAM, also costs about double. Seems to me the best thing to do now is pick up a card like that, any RTX, Ti, or Super variant, and most of all shoot for MORE RAM, that is the magic sauce, not system RAM. Anyway, good find, those new Super variants seem to be the best deal for larger RAM amounts and performance in general, at the moment.
Yeah man, I love my new one. I get double the performance. I went from a 1070 to a 2070 super

 
@madmole

so sense you guys have expanded navezgane this area i had my eye on for a while has been "opened up"

are you guys planing on building another city here?

pics here

ttttttttt

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@madmole

Only got a couple hours in so far, but liking the updates. Except for the overall light level at night, it is just way too bright and makes things to easy to see. Personally I like the darkness at night that adds to the suspense factor. There is little that compares to exploring a POI at night with a torch for light to be able to see.

It would be nice if for those of us that want it, we could get an option to adjust light levels at night and inside POIs.
I like that it isn't pitch black immediately at 22:01. Did you check it at later times? 1:00 in the morning it is very dark, on my screen I can't see much outside. I didn't go into poi's at night yet but I can't imagine I would be able to see anything since I already have problems seeing much in cellars at daytime.

Maybe your screens brightness is too high. There is the brightness setting ingame.

 
 I'm also going to confirm that my trader quests are pretty frickin far away. This was the first one I had where there was even an option that wasn't 1KM+ away, and thus far I've done like 5 or 6 quests and only had a single dig quest available =(

FCKFkja.jpg


Proof_89 said:
I have FPS issues playing in 2k resolution in Ultra.  The max FPS i get is 55 and low 35. I noticed that if i go down in quality from Ultra to High i get just around 60FPS most of the times.

I see people here on forum playing in 4k Ultra with 60-70 FPS constantly and i really don't understand why i don't get the same in 2K with the rig i have: 

  • GPU - GTX 1080 8gb
  • CPU - Ryzen 5 - 3600 - 3.6ghz
  • RAM - 16gb DDR4 3000mhz
  • SSD - Samsung - 1TB
Do i need to tweak the settings somehow to get that performance? 

Cheerio!
Same, me and my friend have nearly identical rigs as yours. My friend plays at 4K and I play at 2K (1440p). No matter what settings I change or lower, A19 is running really bad for me, I get about 15-50 fps max. It drops down to 15-ish fairly regularly, my friend says his runs at about 45-60 fps. I wonder if it's it's something to do with 1440p? I have Dynamic Resolution off, but I wonder if that janked something on the back end

FYI, RWG will be a strike teams top focus for A20. We're going to give Robert all the support he needs to get it shippable once and for all. Closer quest POIs will be part of that improvement as well as fixing roads and issues like this.


Excellent to hear!! My RWG is pretty hit or miss, I had an image similar to the one posted but didn't want to make this post any longer to scroll past.

Also, since I know you guys are wanting more Junk Sledge stuff and @'s at @madmole , I specifically wanted to rush the Junk Sledge as fast as possible so I could use it early game as it's seemingly intended to be used, but the Junk Parts definitely gate it to being a week 2+ weapon. I had the ability to craft it within a few hours of spawning in, but junk parts don't seem to spawn this early so I can't use it

My question is, would it be possible to add junk parts to the loot table, or just remove junk part requirement entirely? I see shotgun parts a LOT, and get tons of military and steel armor parts etc, but as best I can tell, Junk Parts just aren't possible to get before the iron age, which leads to the inevitable "Junk Sledge is now competing against Iron Sledge" scenario. 

Except it's worse than that, because I could just craft an Iron Sledge atm, but still can't make a Junk Sledge. I've got all these points sunk into int and my precious junk perk . . .and have literally zero way to use it  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 
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Yeah man, I love my new one. I get double the performance. I went from a 1070 to a 2070 super
You probs went from GTX to RTX too from the sounds of it, and that is a big deal. The RTX cards are a newer chip architecture and the first gen of "Real Time Raytracing" cards, a decades old pipe dream in the graphics world. The dif is significant, I highly recommend everyone to at least get something from the RTX if they have GTX or older, hot damn will you feels it, and as you pointed out in the deal you got those cards have become far more affordable... well, the dang 2080 Ti is still around $1,200 which is more than I paid for my Titan way back. But still, there is a decent range of good and afforbale RTX cards out there right now.

 
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