PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

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smokingpaper said:
Will there be a "Toggle to run" option added, like Toggle to crouch? It helps save the pinky finger!
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I'd like to have that, not sure when we can get it in though.

Weazelsun said:
@madmole Artistically will the wasteland biome and burnt forest biome get a remodel to make them look more unique? Currently the only difference in terms of model separating them is the ground textures and debris.
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I think the plan is to get rid of the burnt forest as it's own biome, and make the wasteland have burnt forest areas, but I could be wrong and it might stay. The wasteland hasn't had any love yet that we plan to do.

KingSlayerGM said:
Hey Joel, can we please have a developer stream soon? I'm dying to know what's going on behind the curtains :)
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I'm not sure what is planned yet, but I'm sure we will continue them soon or when we feel like there is enough new content to warrant a showing.

ltbrunt said:
I'm not expecting anything this early on but would like to get any info about bandits. When they make it into the game it will be like Christmas come early. I love the game and this is the thing daydream about most. 
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We've recently completed concept art of upcoming bandits, which will come in weak, medium and strong versions for variety and game staging, and they look really cool. Hopefully A21 we can have bandits finally, as the models are going into production soon so programming will have everything it needs, and really after 20 drops we just don't have much ambitions beyond bandits and the new character armor and quests, so now is the time.

 
Tahaan said:
@Devs is there any news about "dynamic prefabs" and about the water rework that is mentioned in A20... What does those things bring us and what do they do?
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This is in afaik, and will allow for distant chunks to show changes, like player bases, or building and terrain blown up. It still needs tested and verified, and might get disabled if its too slow or buggy, but hopefully launches in A20 as I think it will be a nice touch and seeing your base in the distance will be awesome.

 
madmole said:
...really after 20 drops we just don't have much ambitions beyond bandits and the new character armor and quests, so now is the time.
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What about legendary weapons? And special infected zombies?

Also @madmole, what is the current vision for bandits? Will they be randomly roaming the land? Will they spawn in their own POIs? Will they spawn with quests?

 
madmole said:
I'd like to have that, not sure when we can get it in though.

I think the plan is to get rid of the burnt forest as it's own biome, and make the wasteland have burnt forest areas, but I could be wrong and it might stay. The wasteland hasn't had any love yet that we plan to do.

I'm not sure what is planned yet, but I'm sure we will continue them soon or when we feel like there is enough new content to warrant a showing.

We've recently completed concept art of upcoming bandits, which will come in weak, medium and strong versions for variety and game staging, and they look really cool. Hopefully A21 we can have bandits finally, as the models are going into production soon so programming will have everything it needs, and really after 20 drops we just don't have much ambitions beyond bandits and the new character armor and quests, so now is the time.
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@madmole thank you very much for the info. I have a question.

Barring quests that involve npcs , are you planning on implementing any other less elaborated quests that don't require living entities to work like the upcoming generator one?

Specifically simple quests like :

-"go there and find info" and you find a note with lore/info. Can be chained/collectable/more than one note.

-Or even like, "bring me X"  from "location"  to do Y (or just bring me 50 pelts lol).

-With Zds ? (Tier 1) go there and kill the feral fatty in that POI (all the way up to go and kill that radiated demolisher/cop/special infected for higher levels)

A penny for your thoughts.

 
Tahaan said:
@Devs is there any news about "dynamic prefabs" and about the water rework that is mentioned in A20... What does those things bring us and what do they do?

Other questions: 
1. Will you ever offload S.I to the GPU (it is the perfect problem space match) and will you ever use all CPU cores for A.I ?  

2. I only have a #1.  Sorry.  
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Probably not. If you profile the game, it shows neither one of those things as issues. We plan on continuing to optimize the slower parts of the game, not parts that already run fast enough.

 
@faatal Regarding the changes to the weather system that you're doing... Are these changes NFRs or will there be functional updates to the code?

Specifically - will there be any way to get rid of the weather grace period, or to have the global temperature not be clamped at 70 and 101 degrees?

 
madmole said:
This is in afaik, and will allow for distant chunks to show changes, like player bases, or building and terrain blown up. It still needs tested and verified, and might get disabled if its too slow or buggy, but hopefully launches in A20 as I think it will be a nice touch and seeing your base in the distance will be awesome.
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Hey madmole , grads for the most serious game out there .

I always had this in my back of my mind to see zombies overcome the defenses of my base , it seems that you can build really durable stuff in comparison to zombies powers (and even repair them on the fly with just 1 move with the claw hammer ) , is there a possibility to have a siege/tank zombie that spawns not that often but it will specialize in destroying structures or something similar ?

 
faatal said:
Probably not. If you profile the game, it shows neither one of those things as issues. We plan on continuing to optimize the slower parts of the game, not parts that already run fast enough.
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Based on what i've seen and the popularity on servers for disabling falling blocks to prevent lag and chunk corruption. I had really hoped SI was up there on the optimisation hit list. I was really concerned when they mention on one of the dev streams that they wanted to do some "Demolition" quests where you destroy/collapse a poi. Here is a video on A19 Nav of a small remnant structure collapse. You can see the framerate went from 115-130 FPS before it started, then the frames where removed and it nose dives down to 45-50 FPS. That 1 feature killed nearly 90% of the starting performance and that's the smallest tier of quest poi's. Anyone what had the idea to collapse a skyscraper knows it's not a fun experience. Performance aside large collapses glitch out and you end up with floating blocks all happening at a less than cinematic framerate.

It even affects combat, here is a video of what happens to performance when you shoot a block. This was in A17 but it is still an issue in A19, The number of people i've seen asking if it's possible to remove weapon block damage so they can use automatic weapons without the game turning into a 3 legged asthmatic hippo. You can see performance it cut in half when you damage a block. It does it anytime a block is damaged and si updates, this includes zombies so imagine 4 players with m60's and 16 zombies all whacking away during a hoard which is not an unreasonable situation.

I think rather than moving the load to the gpu maybe it's a better idea to not run that feature on a single core. 7DTD only scales in multicore performance up to 4 threads. This would be great in 2010, but these days 4 thread cpus are difficult to find new. Most modern cpus now are 6-8 cores and 12-16 threads. There is plenty of cpu gas in the tank these days but only if applications are made to take advantage of them. Core count and GPU performance has increases exponentially since 2013 but single thread performance hasn't changed that much.

Anyway that's my thought on SI😛 thanks for reading and i hope you'll at least give si a double take.

 
I'm sorry if this has been asked before as I've been off the forums for a while, how is the new "biome tier system" coming along, and how exactly will it work ? I'm talking about having better loot in tougher biomes / POIs.

 
If Zombies will be able to fit into a 1 frame high opening, does that mean players will be able to fit into a frame opening too? Would love crawling/prone animation for players.

 
faatal said:
1 This week: Fixing holes/overlaps in block meshes/colliders (added shape ModelOffset). Testing (using) Unity 2019.4. Changes to skin quality settings, so can change on a per entity/LOD basis. Fixed a playtest load bug. Improved shape loading. Improved chunk debug grid drawing. Improving chunk mesh generation.
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Hi faatal, speaking of hit detection: any word on when the large melee range issue will be addressed?

 
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Love the game.  Keep up the great work.  Try not to ruin it with updates. (JK... or am I?)

Please, OH PLEASE, would you fix how the spider monkey zombie can hit through walls and hatches? He's killing my vibe.  I hates him. We ALL hates him. His screaming and jumping are quite enough.

Also, the vultures seem to have superspeed.  Since when can a vulture outrun a speeding motorcycle? 60mph is their natural max.  Were they exposed to radiation and have super powers?  Just curious.  

From one of the few ladies who play the game,

Thanks.

Enchantra

 
Hi MM.
I have a few questions about special infected.
We already know for sure that special infected will have unique behavior.

Question 1. Will each infected have unique animations for normal activities like walking, running and fighting?
Question 2. Will the special infected have some unique vulnerabilities? For example, the zombie Gasser could take increased damage from fire and shotgun, but would be nearly immune to bullet damage. Or a zombie with a sledgehammer could take increased damage from melee weapons, but other weapons will deal less damage to him than usual, and so on.

 
Is there a plan to allow the Field of View to be set much larger for those of us that get severely motion sick while playing at lower settings?

 
madmole said:
No 7 days has 5000 more features than Left 4 Dead, so we need to polish what we have instead of adding endless features that don't really add value.
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You are still adding VR support as per your kickstarter goal, right?

Also, any chance you can fix some of the major exploits that happen on PvP servers? I know you don't exactly care for PvP but these exploits practically kill the server type when you can glitch your head through the terrain and see everything underground, and even fire through the terrain due to it. Not to mention that if you stick a block on top of a turret then it will allow the turret to also do the same.

 
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Enchantra said:
Please, OH PLEASE, would you fix how the spider monkey zombie can hit through walls and hatches? He's killing my vibe.  I hates him. We ALL hates him. His screaming and jumping are quite enough.
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This. Absolutely this. TFP, we respectfully request that you look into this whenever you can.

 
@madmole Regarding the new quest types being added into the game in a future update, will "combination quests" be implemented for them? (Ex. Quest to restore power + clear all zombies.)

I also heard something about infestation quests a couple of times. I sincerely hope they are what I can predict. My current criticism with the clear quests is they don't really offer any kind of unique experience versus standard looting. A quest that doubles the spawn rates within a POI, maybe increasing the POI's gamestage in the process as a bonus, would be pretty sweet.

 
Also, will there be quest types that give the player the choice of giving up valuable resources for a potential worthwhile reward? For example, a quest that instructs you to deliver antibiotics to an infected NPC (within a certain time frame?).

On a side note, instead of having traders available right off the bat, I think it would be fair if the player had to assist in rebuilding the compound and getting the traders back on their feet. Perhaps their compound is infested with zombies and must be cleared out. After that, x amount of basic resources (wood, cobblestone, etc.) must be delivered to the trader so that reconstruction can begin. Perhaps a nearby bandit facility is posing a significant looming threat and must be eliminated. Only after a certain amount of tasks are completed do the full functionality of the traders open up.

 
About the "Zombies can fit through 1 block high holes" wanted to know is it only for holes at ground Level or will it also work for 1 block high holes. You can see hatch bases everywhere with a corridor and a hatch on the ground when opened will block the way on ground level so you can attack the zombies with meele. I wish they could crawl over a block. This would be the best!!

 
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