PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[icehot]

I have a question, When i am in snow or burn biome or when around me is very much zombies, my FPS droped from 59 to 33. My PC: intel i5 7400 3GHz, Ram 2x8GB DDR 4 2400Mhz, nVidia 1060 GTR 6GB, game is on SSD disk. Have somebody same PC and have same problems? How can i fix problems with droping FPS? Wait to GOLD version of game or buy better processor?

Honestly upgrading won't gain you much in this game, the bottleneck is unlikely to be in the system, I spent £5,000 on a new computer, and barely got 10 to 20 fps increase in this game, it's not fully utilising the hardware at all, my GPU sits at 30% usage.

 

[Ricowan]

You're confusing me with TFP maybe...  :heh:

The thing is, TFP has actual data from the game.  They know exactly how many players are doing X vs. Y.

You only have a handful of angry people posting here, which is NOT representative of the player base by a long shot.

I don't know if the data that's collected is driving TFP's game design decisions or not, I'm just pointing out that they do actually know a lot more about how people are playing their game than we do.

 

[icehot]

The thing is, TFP has actual data from the game.  They know exactly how many players are doing X vs. Y.

You only have a handful of angry people posting here, which is NOT representative of the player base by a long shot.

I don't know if the data that's collected is driving TFP's game design decisions or not, I'm just pointing out that they do actually know a lot more about how people are playing their game than we do.

It may or may not, but some of us have been here for years, and seen the knee jerk changes that go way too far, it happens all the time, they swing too far one way, then dial it back again after seeing some of the reactions.

 

[orak]

If some blocks have lower HP im ok with it (25% seems a bit low tho, 50% would be more viable) but I definitely think the upgrade cost should be scaled.

It already takes up a square space where you could put a full HP bloc anyway,

the advantage is that you get a bit of room for players if the bloc is small or the ability to see through.

The blocs you can choose from is great now, it would be a shame if most players use only full HP blocs.

Plus as many mentions in the forum, it will always be easy to cheese the Z's during horde night if the player really want it.

I've thought about a design concerning this:

- remove the ability to place wood, cobblestone, concrete and steel blocs

- frames cost all the same

- give the ability to choose the upgrade type by pressing the R button (just like you change ammo type)

- scale the upgrade cost and the player XP with the bloc HP

- show the relevant info (HP, stability...) when you choose blocs in the UI frame menu

Also for bigger blocs that take multiple blocs in the game, it would be great to place the frame as a whole;

then it would create multiple frame blocs that you can either destroy or upgrade.

it would simplify things a lot if some "mega bloc" would be added, like 25 degrees ramps, roof parts etc

 

[DEADFACE]

- remove the ability to place wood, cobblestone, concrete and steel blocs

- frames cost all the same

- give the ability to choose the upgrade type by pressing the R button (just like you change ammo type)

- scale the upgrade cost and the player XP with the bloc HP

- show the relevant info (HP, stability...) when you choose blocs in the UI frame menu

This is exactly what I was hoping for with the new block system. It's what seemed like the obvious way to do it to me, but instead we have to deal with either force upgrade paths (time consuming) or placing blocks and having to deal with either mistakes or being unable to reconfigure the build prior to committing resources.

The new block system is on the cusp of being perfect and this is the change that would make it that way.

Also, I don't understand everybody calling the block hp change "illogical", if you wanted logical you would be in favor of reduced hp for smaller blocks along with reduced resources. I personally don't care either way, I'll play the game and enjoy it regardless.

 

[Jay_ombie]

Any reason models in game deform when dead ?

 

[Jost Amman]

The thing is, TFP has actual data from the game.  They know exactly how many players are doing X vs. Y.

You only have a handful of angry people posting here, which is NOT representative of the player base by a long shot.

I don't know if the data that's collected is driving TFP's game design decisions or not, I'm just pointing out that they do actually know a lot more about how people are playing their game than we do.

You're just stating the obvious there, I don't know why you even felt the need to reply to my post.

But no matter how informed or "right" the devs choice is, I'm free to disagree and to not like it.

So in this case, my own personal opinion is that this is a bad change. For me, it's less fun to build blocky BM bases to have more HP just to compensate the change. That's all.

 

[gpcstargate]

This is exactly what I was hoping for with the new block system. It's what seemed like the obvious way to do it to me, but instead we have to deal with either force upgrade paths (time consuming) or placing blocks and having to deal with either mistakes or being unable to reconfigure the build prior to committing resources.

The new block system is on the cusp of being perfect and this is the change that would make it that way.

Also, I don't understand everybody calling the block hp change "illogical", if you wanted logical you would be in favor of reduced hp for smaller blocks along with reduced resources. I personally don't care either way, I'll play the game and enjoy it regardless.

STEEL is STEEL ... block vs plate, it is made the same way and at the same cost. 

Their changing the Basic material mid stream ... and as a builder, I'm not happy about this one change.

And its been this way since A-18.1 for the most part.

 

[Aldranon]

Could you explain this to me like I'm 5? 

It just coding shorthand for MustFixCount will keep adding 1 to itself.

Its a joke of course.

 

[DEADFACE]

STEEL is STEEL ... block vs plate, it is made the same way and at the same cost. 

Their changing the Basic material mid stream ... and as a builder, I'm not happy about this one change.

Oh I have no problem telling that you and everybody else is unhappy about this change 

I said if you are going to use "logic" as an argument then the most logical course would be to have both reduced hp and materials and now you've responded by shouting about how they cost the same. Why did you quote me if you didn't even read what I said?

I also said I don't personally care, I'll have fun either way so I don't know why you would bother arguing with me like I'm somebody you have to convince.

 

[Mahnogard]

Last night I was getting pretty upset that the modular table pieces were missing from the wooden furniture block choices. Then I remembered - we got shapes for that! And I happily went back to furnishing my kitchen with a cute little table in the corner. 

Wooden furniture block > select kitchen chair > place kitchen chair > pick up chair then select color from the chair block. I like the flexibility but it's not super intuitive at first.

Regarding shapes: Square trellis can be climbed but the diamond design trellis cannot. I've been using trellises for loft access since A19 and I think diamond was climbable when it was part of the other group it used to be in. Also, railings / bars shapes but no center options? Not a huge deal because I'm used to cranking centered iron bars out of the forge anyway, but again - even the forged iron bars have a corner but no centered corner option.

The new window shapes are awesome! However. A few of them have the miniblinds texture (love that!), others are open shapes, while others are filled and have the split-texturing feature which is great but since we don't (unless I'm blind) have a window paint texture, it's kind of a stretch to call it a "window". I've tried a few of those with the shutter paint texture and that looks nice. I guess the window is implied.

I noticed that faucets are in metal furniture shapes now. Is that new? I may have just missed it before. (I know I can just wrench them or sometimes buy them but I like making stuff.) Will we ever be able to craft or buy some of the other storage bits like gun racks? Also, what demon do I have to make a sacrifice to in order to be able to paint sink and stovetop textures in the correct orientation? I try turning the crates when I place them but no matter what I do, it always seems to be either "wrong" or "different but also wrong". I'm in single player so after about 10 tries I give up and use the CM to get a sink if I can't find one for sale. I think the only things I ever spawn in are sinks and uncraftable / unbuyable storage items.

Yeah, I know, everyone else is worried about keeping zombies out of their bases and I'm playing 7 Days to Die: Better Homes and Gardens Edition. I'm building a defense perimeter too. Not just a kitchen.  

 

[Red Eagle LXIX]

This is exactly what I was hoping for with the new block system. It's what seemed like the obvious way to do it to me, but instead we have to deal with either force upgrade paths (time consuming) or placing blocks and having to deal with either mistakes or being unable to reconfigure the build prior to committing resources.

The new block system is on the cusp of being perfect and this is the change that would make it that way.

Also, I don't understand everybody calling the block hp change "illogical", if you wanted logical you would be in favor of reduced hp for smaller blocks along with reduced resources. I personally don't care either way, I'll play the game and enjoy it regardless.

As someone whom specifically called it out as illogical here is my answer.

It is illogical currently because the resource cost is the same.

It is illogical currently because it only impacts some blocks.

It is illogical because larger blocks do not have a higher HP (and associated higher resource cost).

If the lower HP blocks cost less and larger blocks also got higher HP and cost more then it would make sense.

Edit: and just to be fair I have said I am in favor of the system, if it gets balanced out.

 

[NukemDed]

 I'm building a defense perimeter too. Not just a kitchen.  

lol

 bro, having 4 sons, my kitchen IS a defensive perimeter!!

protect the fridge!!!

 

[Mahnogard]

lol

 bro, having 4 sons, my kitchen IS a defensive perimeter!!

protect the fridge!!!

Ha! Yeah, I can see that! Heck, even in game, I put A LOT of work into gathering all those eggs and I'm going to defend them with my life. 

 

[Macheezmo]

After a little testing, it seems like this is an overall a buff to poles and plates, but I'd need to test a little more extensively.  Zombies used to almost always do 6x damage to poles and plates thinking they were stuck.  It seems like they aren't doing that anymore, but I only tested them for a few minutes. 

 

[Kosmic Kerman]

After a little testing, it seems like this is an overall a buff to poles and plates, but I'd need to test a little more extensively.  Zombies used to almost always do 6x damage to poles and plates thinking they were stuck.  It seems like they aren't doing that anymore, but I only tested them for a few minutes. 

Are you comparing A19 to A20 or old exp build to new exp build?

 

[Macheezmo]

Are you comparing A19 to A20 or old exp build to new exp build?

A19 to new exp build.  If the zombies stopped doing 6x damage in A20, then poles and plates would've gotten a huge buff in A20 and this new build brings them closer to where they were in A19, but still overall stronger.  That's IF the 6x damage doesn't happen anymore, which I still want to test more, but from a quick test it seems not to be happening now.

 

[MuffinMan]

Honestly upgrading won't gain you much in this game, the bottleneck is unlikely to be in the system, I spent £5,000 on a new computer, and barely got 10 to 20 fps increase in this game, it's not fully utilising the hardware at all, my GPU sits at 30% usage.

Any "complex" Unity game is usually CPU limited. All multithreading in "old" Unity has to be done manually and is more complex than it should be. I haven't stayed on top of recent Unity but it is likely better in that regard and I think they are upgrading Unity for Alpha 21? TFP could, probably with a lot of work gain significantly using the "new" ECS in Unity. I wouldn't like to be the guy working on that on an existing engine, usually it is best to start off with stuff like that from the start but it is significantly faster for having many "entities" in the world which 7DTD does.

So the best gains you will get with 7 Days to Die currently are CPU upgrades. Same applies to Rust, Rimworld, etc, etc. I saw +20% gains in 7DTD going from AMD 3900 to 5950x.

One major thing I hope TFP implement is keeping all graphical objects that are drawn centered around 0,0,0 . It is something most commercial engines are now starting to move to (UE5 will supposedly have it) , but without that when you move too far away from 0,0,0 in 7DTD there are precision issues graphically, jerky animations, movement, etc. Unfortunately out of the box most commercial engines are not really designed for procedural games where you would love to have double precision for the game code (0% performance difference) which is then moved to a 32bit float world for the GPU on the fly , it is easy if designed from the start like this and my own engines have been doing it since 2009. It will be good when UE and Unity finally do basic engine things right allowing developers to not have to jerry-rig solutions.

 

[Macheezmo]

I did a little more testing and the 6x damage is still there.  I'm not even sure why it wasn't happening in my original testing.  Regular zombies do 8 damage vs normal blocks and are doing 48 vs poles.  Feral zombies are doing 24 damage vs normal blocks and 144 damage vs poles which is enough to destroy wooden poles in a single hit.  I wouldn't mind the block hp nerf if the damage bonus wasn't still there.

 

[dcsobral]

Adjusting the material costs would mean you need three different generic block items per material instead of one. I.e. 3 wood shapes, 3 cobbelstone shapes, ... . And segment the shapes menue into 3 different shape menues that you can't just convert from one into the other.

It can be done, sure, but I guess that is a big disadvantage  and they won't like it much

Oh, just thought of an alternative: Poles would use up 1 wood shape while full blocks would use up 4 wood shapes when you place a block

And I guess the reasons are:

1) it conforms to expectations (i.e. a pole in reality has less "HP" than a full block)

2) They also have big in-game advantages as they use much less space for the same defense value

While it's all true, I'd rather the change was done the other way around, with the minimum durability remaining what it is right now. 

Yeah... I'm surprised your the only one that's so far mentioned this one, give it another few days.

I, just, don't even know why this even happened, and am especially confused as to why the material/upgrade cost wouldn't also be adjusted the same way.

Like, one way or the other, or just put it back the way it was. Reducing block HP by 75% is no subtle nerf, jfc. But to still require the same amount of material to get there is an off the charts mistake.

I was having fun with the new shapes, so much for that I guess. I am highly skeptical this will stay as it is in this patch, it'll either revert to the way it was(ideal) or upgrade cost will be reduced to reflect the lower HP values(unfortunate, but tolerable. Still a massive blow to base building). Can't imagine how or why anyone could be happy with this cruel and unusual change. So if someone can manage to defend this, please try, lol. 

Gnamod did it, and it was awesome. Case closed. Though the material cost was also decreased in Gnamod's case.