PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[MechanicalLens]

Clothing and armor slots are not changing for A20. Streamers stream all types of games, simple or complex. The Robotic Drone is not simplifying anything, since it is an addition to the game.

With the outfit system eventually coming to the game in an alpha near you, I suppose I'm correct in thinking that certain loot containers like nightstands and clothing racks will get a rework of their loot table, if not removed entirely?

 

[mstdv inc]

I would like to express my respect to @faatal for the optimization upgrade in 19.5.
avg indicators increased by 20-25%, and 1% and 0.1% became from 2 to 5 times better.I am very happy!)My PC is very happy, thank you!

Who noticed in A19.5 b1-b50
50?50 builds!!Amazing

 

[faatal]

@faatal, @madmole, will there be an update to Unity and DX12/Vulkan for the current version of the game? For example, in A19.6. Or will it all be only in A20?

There should be no 19.6. A20 will be soon enough we hope.

Unity says they made a fix for one of the DX12 or Vulkan issues I reported, but it takes weeks/months to filter down through their testing and into a release. I do hope to update Unity once more before A20 is done, so it should have that fix.

 

[TWORDY]

Not sure if this has been asked. But, I am wondering if Dukes integration into hotbar of inventory will be in an update? that way money doesnt take up space in inventory? I know that Dukes can be smelted...but the yield is too low to be of significance in materials and also dukes are generally more needed for traders.

That's interesting. I was thinking about some digital version of Dukes instead of a physical limit of up to 20 000 for each inventory slot. In theory, all electronics could be knocked down by electromagnetic pulse. I presume that devs went with a more natural post-apo feel when it comes to currency management, at the same time slightly sacrificing gameplay solutions. Actually, I would rather see by myself a separate dedicated slot (some signature Idk somewhere by the inventory) for money with up to 1 000 000 units as a limit. Some new exchange models might be granted directly from a trader after accomplishing the first mission for him/her. It`s not a game feature of incredible importance in my view, but still, anything can be done in this matter.

 

[faatal]

Not only thought of, TFP already has that implemented. This variation is in the game since A18, a certain percentage of the zombies on horde night go into destroy aka rage mode and just attack a random block even if they have a path to you.

The only small  problem with this "rage mode" is that it often attacks random blocks in the area that might have no useful function at all. The AI should probably prioritize blocks near the player to be a bit more effective.

I'm not sure if the AI wasn't that way in A17 (i.e. the priorization), because at that time lots of complains by users about zombies with an engineering degree came up in the forum. It may have been toned down. But probably it was just the effect of A17 zombies having a bigger buff to group damage which made them destroy buildings quite fast if you let them.

It is not a percent. Destroy area mode is when they can't reach you, but it can also happen when they fall. The blocks chosen are not totally random. It looks for supports and it is randomly between the player and zed, but supports are often not near the player, so it looks in a 10x10x10 area. That is already fairly slow trying to make a quick decision on what to destroy.

Zombies types have random weighting for how much they care about block health. It creates some path variation, not radically different paths like some people want. That would require some very different rules.

Yeah this is a big problem : i can understand why dogs do holes in dirt under a walls but zombies attacking everything is rly stupid. It Should work like : First destroing doors, If they can't ( doors are blocked) they try to destoy the player putted hard blocks first - stone , iron walls , etc just change their piority because they sometime just fall into lakes ( they easy could go away from it but nope) and their just destroyed a lot of dirt . Well i hope they will fix problems with they AI soon

Door are already weighted so zombies prefer them over walls with equal health.

The game does not know if a block is player placed. Each block only uses 8 bytes of data. With the amount of blocks in the world, it quickly adds up. I have thought about adding a bit to tell of any player placed/changed the block, but I don't even think any of those 64 bits in the 8 bytes are free. Adding a another byte means it gets slower for code to pass around because it is now bigger than the magic size of 64 bits that our processors like.

 

[faatal]

I would like to express my respect to @faatal for the optimization upgrade in 19.5.
avg indicators increased by 20-25%, and 1% and 0.1% became from 2 to 5 times better.I am very happy!)My PC is very happy, thank you!

Who noticed in A19.5 b1-b50
50?50 builds!!Amazing

A large amount of my optimizations targeted worse case performance. As in reducing frame spikes for smoother game play. I don't care much for peak FPS. Who cares if sometimes you get 120 FPS, when most of the time you get 40 FPS and then randomly dropping to 10 FPS. I'll take 60 FPS most of the time.

Lathan did a lot of iteration and testers a lot of testing to get to 50 builds.

 

[mstdv inc]

A large amount of my optimizations targeted worse case performance. As in reducing frame spikes for smoother game play. I don't care much for peak FPS. Who cares if sometimes you get 120 FPS, when most of the time you get 40 FPS and then randomly dropping to 10 FPS. I'll take 60 FPS most of the time.

Lathan did a lot of iteration and testers a lot of testing to get to 50 builds.

Unfortunately, I do not know all the team members,so I only thanked you.

Lathan and all testers also give respect and a big thanks!

 

[faatal]

Unfortunately, I do not know all the team members,so I only thanked you.

Lathan and all testers also give respect and a big thanks!

Lathan AKA Prime did the twitch integration. He is a streamer and loves that stuff.

 

[Adam the Waster]

I have a few questions @faatal

How will the Zombies can crawl through 1-meter hole Work? like if the wall has one block can they crawl through it? what half blocks?


 

2): this looks like a pipe rifle that would uses one shot, but then again what will happen to the hunting rifle or will that go bye bye!


 

3): what role will this weapon serve? madmole said they the marksman rifle will be a Lever action. but for a tier 2 it does not fit in well. but if its not then where does that pipe rifle serve as? so i was thinking, is this a Tier 0 AR? sense you can rifle a lever action really quick like in RDR???

my brain is broken today
 

 

[unholyjoe]

Unfortunately, I do not know all the team members,so I only thanked you.

Lathan and all testers also give respect and a big thanks!

***************************************

start up 7dtd... click on Credits... viola... there is who is on the team.. we have some new ones that arent there yet tho.





 







QA Tester-unholyjoe

***************************************

 

[faatal]

I have a few questions @faatal

How will the Zombies can crawl through 1-meter hole Work? like if the wall has one block can they crawl through it? what half blocks?

Don't know, since no work has been done on it and it is not coming to A20.

 

[Adam the Waster]

Don't know, since no work has been done on it and it is not coming to A20.

damn that kinda sad 

kinda wanted a zombie to come from a vent to eat me! 

hoping for it on A21

 

[MechanicalLens]

Don't know, since no work has been done on it and it is not coming to A20.

Might want to update the first page then since it states that such a feature is "most likely not shipping in A20".

 

[ErikH5027]

So what exactly is coming to A20? Almost half of everything on the list claims that it will not ship in A20...

Here is a half-assed list of what I feel most of the players would want, content wise at least.

NPCs

More zombie varieties.

more items/special items

weapons

a story of some sort

more workstations

better immersion purpose additions

more pois.

more vehicles.

basically more options to customize their experience

I know there are plenty more

(anyone please feel free to add to this)

Can any of this be confirmed or denied as far as coming to A20/A21 or ever?

I know this is also a cliche question, but when can we expect anything new? Are we getting closer to a release of A20. 1 week, 2 months, 6 months, a year?

Please do not take any of this as @%$#ing or griping. I love this game. It's is pretty much all I play. I started on the console (we all know what happened there) and then because of the console issues, I basically spent about $2000 just to play this game on PC. I don't regret that. And I'm not going anywhere. But would love to hear some relevant information about new content.

Thanks for any and all responses, especially from any dev confirmed or denied information.

Erik

 

[faatal]

Might want to update the first page then since it states that such a feature is "most likely not shipping in A20".

Sure. Now it says Not...

So what exactly is coming to A20? Almost half of everything on the list claims that it will not ship in A20...

There are 20 items on list and 2 say not coming in A20.

Edit: Changed water to say not in A20.

 

[ErikH5027]

OK, let me clarify...Many of the items claim "details coming" Any Idea when we will see any details? Can you maybe speak to any of the other aforementioned content?

Thank you

 

[faatal]

NPCs

More zombie varieties.

more items/special items

weapons

a story of some sort

more workstations

better immersion purpose additions

more pois.

more vehicles.

basically more options to customize their experience

I know there are plenty more

(anyone please feel free to add to this)

Can any of this be confirmed or denied as far as coming to A20/A21 or ever?

I know this is also a cliche question, but when can we expect anything new? Are we getting closer to a release of A20. 1 week, 2 months, 6 months, a year?

We have many programmers, many artists and many designers working on all different parts of the game. I concern myself with programming, so can't say much in other areas.

Most of what you listed is not coming to A20. What is on the first page is most of what is coming, but there are some changes like optimizations or block placement visuals that are not listed.

We don't give release dates months or even weeks in advance, but I can say A20 is months away and as a player of the game, I'm looking forward to it.

 

[khzmusik]

Edit: Changed water to say not in A20.

Oh, that sucks. Is it still on the roadmap for A21? Or is it one of those things that is just too impractical to do properly? (Sorry if I missed that conversation, it's a big thread.)

 

[unholyjoe]

We don't give release dates months or even weeks in advance, but I can say A20 is months away and as a player of the game, I'm looking forward to it.

next you're gonna tell us you love to play the game... ooops

Spoiler

we cant have people loving the game

 

[Roland]

Oh, that sucks. Is it still on the roadmap for A21? Or is it one of those things that is just too impractical to do properly? (Sorry if I missed that conversation, it's a big thread.)

Water is definitely not considered shippable in its current form and is guaranteed to get polished/fixed before release. As faatal said, A20 is looming and some things on the list didn't get done in time.