PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

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@faatal / @madmole

Hi! Just wanted to ask you devs if you've started working on the bandits' AI or anything related.

There's still confusion in the 7D2D community as to what the current A19 zombie AI is:

1) A prototype for the bandits AI that after bandits are implemented will be dialed back to "dumb" zombies

-OR-

2) The intended AI for zombies and the bandits AI will have its own way of doing things.

Thanks!
No specific work yet.

Probably both. Special infected will likely cover a range of behaviors allowing common zombies as the more stupid ones, but the whole range can't really be balanced across the entire game until there is an entire range to balance.

 
Thank you very much Faatal, now that you're working optimizing terrain shader please take a look at this thread, there is a massive 40% fps drop from low to med terrain quality setting:
That post is basically backwards. There is a huge increase going to low, which is the point of low, to disable terrain visual features so it runs faster. The difference is bigger on lower end hardware that has trouble with those features. The recent changes to the terrain shaders make those features run faster, so what they want is already done.

 
No specific work yet.

Probably both. Special infected will likely cover a range of behaviors allowing common zombies as the more stupid ones, but the whole range can't really be balanced across the entire game until there is an entire range to balance.
Thanks for the reply, I can see how this approach could be optimal (also to save precious dev time!) but what I'm worried about is that most players will see that as an inconsistency in zombie behavior rather than a plus (like I do).

I've already read on Steam people complaining about the current (A19) AI because they expect zombies to ALL behave the same way... so when they see 3/4 of them out of 20 going their way doing different things (e.g.: rage mode) they'll just rant about not being able to reliably build a blood moon base because they can't predict where the zombies will go.

As always in life (and game development) it's "damned if you do, damned if you don't".

Now that the AI is (IMO) better and more varied people start complaining exactly about that (facepalm).

 
@madmole Forgive me if this has already be brought up and answered, but are the wood 1/4th corner blocks and others in the wood frame shape menu that aren't upgradeable going to be able to be upgraded?

 
That post is basically backwards. There is a huge increase going to low, which is the point of low, to disable terrain visual features so it runs faster. The difference is bigger on lower end hardware that has trouble with those features. The recent changes to the terrain shaders make those features run faster, so what they want is already done.


Yes I get your point but I needed to use low with a high-end PC to get 1440p on high.

Just did a quick test to 19.2 b3 and I can notice a very noticeable performance improvement with terrain quality on high compared with 19.1, huge kudos to TFP!

 
Hi Faatal,

Quick question: Does Alpha 19 currently support 32:9 aspect ratio monitors (5120 x 1440 res.)?

I'm looking at the new Samsung G9 with the 1000R screen curvature; looks amazing!

Madmole once told me that some of the devs use large screens, so maybe?

 
Hi Faatal,

Quick question: Does Alpha 19 currently support 32:9 aspect ratio monitors (5120 x 1440 res.)?

I'm looking at the new Samsung G9 with the 1000R screen curvature; looks amazing!

Madmole once told me that some of the devs use large screens, so maybe?
I can't say for sure for that aspect ratio, i have a 21:9 3840x1600 and 7dtd seems to work quite well with it. The only 2 nit picks i have really is 1. the loading screen images get stretched, it's not too bad in 21:9 but it would be worse in 32:9 i'd imagine, but not a big issue. 2. some ui elements are sometimes not positioned conveniently for ultra wide users. Things like the buff pop outs and active quests are right in the far corners and can strain your eyes a bit stretching to look over there. But those are very minor issues and as a whole it works quite well on ultra wides, so i'd say go for it.

 
@madmole Forgive me if this has already be brought up and answered, but are the wood 1/4th corner blocks and others in the wood frame shape menu that aren't upgradeable going to be able to be upgraded?
Once the new framework is done (if we do it) then all shapes will be unified in menus and all will upgrade, except for certain blocks we might not want in steel like iron bars, etc.

 
Once the new framework is done (if we do it) then all shapes will be unified in menus and all will upgrade, except for certain blocks we might not want in steel like iron bars, etc.
why not iron bars? kidding aside, I will be glad to see trussing get more shapes

 
 I just want to say thanks to @faatal for the terrain shader improvements in 19.2 (and all the other optimizations) 🍺

Did a quick test only - but looks like I'm now able to play with Texture Filter on Ultra+ @60fps in Snow biome - wow, thanks 😃

--
this was worth the Knuckle Rub ;)


 
@madmole I thought one of the traders was supposed to specialize in food and seeds, but i have never seen seeds offered for purchase at any trader, either in my own game or any of the youtubers/streamers i watch. 

Is this an oversight, or are they just exceptionally rare?

Sort of on the same subject, any chance of adding 3 or so of random veggie seeds or farm plots to t1-2 quest rewards?

 
Hi @faatal , I posted some performance feedback with screenshots, output log and some suggestions that might help you further in optimizing a19. It's in the General Support section of the forums:




 
I can't say for sure for that aspect ratio, i have a 21:9 3840x1600 and 7dtd seems to work quite well with it. The only 2 nit picks i have really is 1. the loading screen images get stretched, it's not too bad in 21:9 but it would be worse in 32:9 i'd imagine, but not a big issue. 2. some ui elements are sometimes not positioned conveniently for ultra wide users. Things like the buff pop outs and active quests are right in the far corners and can strain your eyes a bit stretching to look over there. But those are very minor issues and as a whole it works quite well on ultra wides, so i'd say go for it.
It is not something I've tried and I don't know of anyone on the team that has one. I use a 32 inch 4k 16:9 monitor for my main.

Running in windowed mode would allow us to test any aspect ratio.

 
faatal said:
Do you know that this is a team with many different skill sets, like pretty much every game team? Most people on the team can't fix FPS issues, so they do spent their time working on their "stupid" stuff.

FPS issues don't have an "I Win" button you can press to make it all better. It takes lots of time to analyze performance and find bottlenecks, which then often have no easy fix, but to rewrite and retest something, which often results in minimal gains. Features have maximum limits at which they can be optimized to run.

I've actually been spending half my time the last few weeks doing that and cleaning up the project of old/unused files. For example, I found an old unneeded water depth camera, that was rendering nothing each frame. After time spend researching it, removing and testing, I saw a 3% FPS gain. Not much. Path grid updates have also been optimized, which is not something increasing overall FPS, but reduces frame spikes. Terrain shader has been updated for good gains. Tree batching/instancing is being analyzed and tweaked. To get large gains, you have to do that over and over on many systems. Today I started moving many of those improvements to 19.2 for testing, so the next exp will have them.
I  look at what they update every time  they  do one & none ever make sense  & from what I see it don't fix game play issues that  I notice. then I have  a friend who plays on a laptop & she's always complaining about fps issues even after changing settings & she still has issues. one of my issues is when mining the world glitches  & u can't see where  I'm mining that spot till I clear it.

 
It is not something I've tried and I don't know of anyone on the team that has one. I use a 32 inch 4k 16:9 monitor for my main.

Running in windowed mode would allow us to test any aspect ratio.
Looks like this
 

loading_aspect_ratio.jpg

 
@madmole I thought one of the traders was supposed to specialize in food and seeds, but i have never seen seeds offered for purchase at any trader, either in my own game or any of the youtubers/streamers i watch. 

Is this an oversight, or are they just exceptionally rare?

Sort of on the same subject, any chance of adding 3 or so of random veggie seeds or farm plots to t1-2 quest rewards?
It is a bug I noticed and tried fixing, but it's an engine bug. I reported it to Prime so once he gets that fixed Traders Rekt will be selling seeds.

 
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