PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

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like there eyes are a white void staring into your soul i like it but it seems only some zombies have it so i'm guessing it isn't intended and maybe a graphical bug i dunno 
I hope it is cuz it looks scary!

i was walking around the road and at night a saw 2 white eyes looking at me and i crouched and i walked passed them! 

 
This one has been nerfed to a state of being ridiculously OP.


Yeah, I don't normally like stuff I use being nerfed, but Auto Shottie is still the best weapon in the game bar none, undeniably lol. Which is quite the upset since it's always been M60 as the king of end game

Since Int doesn't have a Tier 3 offense weapon (or tier 3 at all atm) do you guys intend to balance Dual Junk turrets to be on par with the other classes Tier 3 weapons?

 
Yeah, I don't normally like stuff I use being nerfed, but Auto Shottie is still the best weapon in the game bar none, undeniably lol. Which is quite the upset since it's always been M60 as the king of end game

Since Int doesn't have a Tier 3 offense weapon (or tier 3 at all atm) do you guys intend to balance Dual Junk turrets to be on par with the other classes Tier 3 weapons?
remember! The junk drone will be Tier 3 for robotic expert!

it would be nice if there was ranged weapons for intellect class! but one step at a time! it still needs batons before they even make a new weapon class, at least in my mind!




 
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hmmmmmm a intellect ranged weapon i would say probably either a minigun that uses junk ammo that deals 4 damage per shot and has a rpm of 1,200 or maybe some sort of battery rifle i'm not too sure what weapon thats ranged would go with intellect lol

 
well i have another idea maybe the intellect guy can craft unique weapon mods eh? what do you think of something like a target locator that can find targets from 40 metres away or maybe the ability to craft special ammunition that none of the books or traders sell like incendiary rounds or maybe ballistic rounds

dragons breath to be precise 

 
remember! The junk drone will be Tier 3 for robotic expert!


Unless the ideals have changed during development, the Junk Drone isn't an offense weapon, it's a support weapon primarily and just has a stun to help support the user and has heals and storage as extra support utility, which is why I say Int has no Tier 3 equivalent offense weapon. 

Junk Turrets are decent enough but require a LOT more resources for an output that isn't really on par with the other classes tier 3's. It takes twice as many mods and an absolutely MASSIVE amount of resource cost to perform the same job the others can do cheaper. You have set up time for every engagement, and then you'll burn through 10 to 20 thousand iron per PoI if you are using the junk turrets very heavily, when instead you could just whip out a shotgun and clear the entire PoI with 50-100 shotgun shells which are pocket change to craft / find  compared to 2,000-3,000+ Junk Turret ammo, and you'd do it in half the time as the junk turrets with their set up time and pick up time

Another issue with the Junk Drone is all classes can and almost certainly *will* use it, because again, unless it's changed recently, it doesn't scale with perks at all. It's actually *worse* for the Int class than any other class because Mad Mole originally said he wanted it to take a Junk Turret spot. Which would mean int build instantly loses 50% of it's damage output just to use the Junk Drone that's "free" to every other class that couldn't care less about losing a junk turret spot they had no intention on using

I'm sure they will balance it, and have considered these things behind closed doors, but if not, it's always good to mention and talk about

 
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What day are u on with all that food?
They're probably on Navezgane. Apparently a lot more of the corn is alive now in the corn field, and they definitely visited Bob's Boars; two and a bit stacks seems about right.

Awesome, and everyone said INT was worthless.
It still is. 😜

In all seriousness though, Intellect is like a symbiotic relationship. Intellect needs the drones with its stun batons, otherwise the latter is largely ineffective, especially against rad zombies. Out of all the trees, Intellect is certainly the most specialized and it cannot be treated like the other attributes and their weapons; still not something I'll be going under though, not my style of play.

 
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They're probably on Navezgane. Apparently a lot more of the corn is alive now in the corn field, and they definitely visited Bob's Boars; two and a bit stacks seems about right.

It still is. 😜


In my own experience, anyway - it's so far the most fun path. And once you've maxed it and you're a badass - the icing on the top is charismatic nature perk. 😛

 
Don't mention the name of that perk in front of me ever again. 😛
me who plays alone!

5f0.gif


 
Hi @faatal , I've been playing for a while now, and I thought you could use this feedback:

Full wipe (files+appdata) + reinstall. New map (RWG 4k x 4k)

The biggest and most screenfreezing performance drops come from  a bunch of console warnings that read in yellow something like: "failed to load in chunk (numbers numbers) blablabla (nameoftheblock)." Said blocks include Couch_01, some cars... etc. How bad of a frame drop? I go from 60 to ~1 fps for no more than 5 seconds and then the warning pops internally ( I need to press f1 to notice it). Happens in multiplayer. Didn't test in singleplayer.

The second case of performace drops comes from the instaspawn of Zds and animals both after death and when moving through the world. They respawn instantly and sometimes in numbers above 1 (can be seen in console) and can result in big short drops in performance. I'd rather see more entities but with at least a few seconds between each spawn (no need to be more than 5 seconds). Even wandering hordes should wait 1 second per Zd because while they are not that common, the moment they spawn I can feel it.

To add to this info, 1 entity spawning drops performance 10-15 fps (from 60 to 40-45fps) for a couple of seconds .

When spawning more than one instantly the fps drop  18-40fps for 3 to 5 seconds.

Tunning spawn rates to be a bit separated between entities will benefit all players and should not affect gameplay in any way .

 
Hi @faatal , I've been playing for a while now, and I thought you could use this feedback:

Full wipe (files+appdata) + reinstall. New map (RWG 4k x 4k)

The biggest and most screenfreezing performance drops come from  a bunch of console warnings that read in yellow something like: "failed to load in chunk (numbers numbers) blablabla (nameoftheblock)." Said blocks include Couch_01, some cars... etc. How bad of a frame drop? I go from 60 to ~1 fps for no more than 5 seconds and then the warning pops internally ( I need to press f1 to notice it). Happens in multiplayer. Didn't test in singleplayer.

The second case of performace drops comes from the instaspawn of Zds and animals both after death and when moving through the world. They respawn instantly and sometimes in numbers above 1 (can be seen in console) and can result in big short drops in performance. I'd rather see more entities but with at least a few seconds between each spawn (no need to be more than 5 seconds). Even wandering hordes should wait 1 second per Zd because while they are not that common, the moment they spawn I can feel it.

To add to this info, 1 entity spawning drops performance 10-15 fps (from 60 to 40-45fps) for a couple of seconds .

When spawning more than one instantly the fps drop  18-40fps for 3 to 5 seconds.

Tunning spawn rates to be a bit separated between entities will benefit all players and should not affect gameplay in any way .

He's right -maybe they are spawning too fast in too close proximity? We don't need to see the zeds as an entity until at least we are in a POI - so figure out your biggest POI - set that as the distance before entities load in - AND - if you have time - see if you can LOD them and make them really low poly\textured from far away and better close up.

 
Awesome, and everyone said INT was worthless.
Int is my next run to test.  I just want to get some play time with my desert eagle first :p

When first released Baton was super weak unless backed by turrets and Dual Turret was pretty underwhelming compared to other specs.  But after the skill buffs and the ammo storage buffs and etc it became viable and very powerful within very narrow niches like being top tier at POI clearing.  With the new hammer turret, the new turret ammos, and the new books it's looking like it can stand toe to toe with other spec'd now on horde defense while retaining it's POI power.   I have no clue where baton stands now with the added books and mod and candy, it's a total wildcard for me atm.

I'm scared that after a full int run to day 50+ I'll be recommending a nerf now :P.  I'll see how it shakes out.  Now if I can just stop playing Death Stranding for a bit...

I usually ignore rabbits because they are annoying to hunt. In my game there were 2 rabbits who had no way to escape I killed them.
Yo, legit, rabbits are definitely super annoying to hunt.  Gotta find one then nerd pole so you can see them through the grass and then wait for them to stand up.  But most of the time they blend into the undergrowth and are already fleeing by the time you see them and they flee very unpredictably.

 
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Junk Turrets are decent enough but require a LOT more resources for an output that isn't really on par with the other classes tier 3's. It takes twice as many mods and an absolutely MASSIVE amount of resource cost to perform the same job the others can do cheaper. You have set up time for every engagement, and then you'll burn through 10 to 20 thousand iron per PoI if you are using the junk turrets very heavily, when instead you could just whip out a shotgun and clear the entire PoI with 50-100 shotgun shells which are pocket change to craft / find  compared to 2,000-3,000+ Junk Turret ammo, and you'd do it in half the time as the junk turrets with their set up time and pick up time
This isn't much of a deal on Nomad difficulty.  HOWEVER, the higher up you go in difficulty the less this is true.  The downfall of int is DPS and resource cost and each bump up in difficulty makes that weakness stand out more and mroe.  On the default difficulty (adventurer) everything is cake.  On the next level up (nomad), which used to be the old default, it's still pretty cakey, but once you start going Warrior and above the drawbacks of int start getting pretty noticable as anything tougher than Moe or a Hawaiin Zombie starts taking a long time to kill.  At least turrets have AP ammo now so they are not totally screwed vs high gamestage hordes relative to other specs. Penetration is a pretty big deal once the average horde zombie starts being feral or rad because of the sheer amount of hp being thrown your way.

So if you're on higher difficulties than warrior then yeah, Int is prolly a super expensive spec, albeit pretty safe.
 

Another issue with the Junk Drone is all classes can and almost certainly *will* use it, because again, unless it's changed recently, it doesn't scale with perks at all. It's actually *worse* for the Int class than any other class because Mad Mole originally said he wanted it to take a Junk Turret spot. Which would mean int build instantly loses 50% of it's damage output just to use the Junk Drone that's "free" to every other class that couldn't care less about losing a junk turret spot they had no intention on using
I'll stay mum about the drone until it's in my hot little hands and I can test it directly.  That being said I have faith in TFP, if we give them good feedback they can verify they tend to make changes.  I remember the original implementations of Junk Turrets and I had some strong criticisms of them early on at a time where most people were in love with them...because they were using them off spec and I was testing them out on spec.  I remember posters justifying their launch state by "their not supposed to be a main weapon!" and the like.

But after conversations back and forth with the devs and a few videos the devs made several powerful and smart changes to them that brought int in line as a viable spec.  They nerfed baseline junk turret,  buffed the turrets syndrome skill, let them use more mods, and made the ammo stack much higher.  Overall int got much stronger, and it needed it, and junk turret stopped being a god item for every other spec and just became a useful item for every other spec.

And the ammo pool buffs for junk turrets and tying those to skills were a huge QOL/balance change.  You can see here how much time I was spending just constantly reloading those suckers pre-buffs.  It was like playing a reloading simulator instead of a game.  I took someone's advice on the forums and just had 4 turrets on horde night so I wasn't getting so much firepower downtime from the turrets.  IIRC they buffed baseline turret mag size, allowed them to use drum mag mods, and buffed turrets syndrome to give more mag size AFTER that video, so no longer do they run dry so much.  It's seriously one of the best changed made from the release state turrets.

I figure Junk drone will likely go through much the same cycle.  Implementation, feedback, iteration, and then the happies :P.

 
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Mmm. Ok. Having tested a19 b169, I am playing at 800×600 with scaling at 90%  texture size quarter and  can say that stuff runs bad when loading/unloading instructions come in.

It appears that certain stuff is inherently tied to the system ram and cpu, but the problem here is that the amount of loaded stuff actually smashes a 4 core/4 thread system from 2013 in multiplayer and while VRAM seems to have been tunned down, it still surpasses the 4 gig mark from time to time in small spikes, but I could be wrong ?

Also, the loading and unloading of VRAM fixed ALL the visual artifacts happening because of it, at the cost of pain. Mostly CPU related pain handling said instructions.

Result: when VRAM unloading/loading and CPU stress happen = drops ranging from 20 to 52 fps (8fps gameplay ftw) on potato systems.

Is there anything else you can do for us stone age players, @faatal?  The drops are still substantial in a minimum specs system. I am just a 10% below minimum PC specs (edit: actually, my system is pretty much equal to minimum) but a consistent framerate would be preferred, even if it means to spread the VRAM unloading even more.

Great Job though. it runs better and more stable for longer until those painful spikes happen.
Unfortunately the preloading that was going on before was causing constant bad FPS after a while, for lots of players. That would only continue to get worse as more content is added to the game, so it needed to be changed. How long block prefabs are kept in memory will be adjusted as needed.

Data loading is generally not a demanding CPU task. Reading from a HD is probably the bottleneck. Is your game installed on a HD or SSD?

 
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