PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[Red Eagle LXIX]

I think that part could be addressed by the POI designer (at least partially).

But if you could decide a change, how would you handle "surprise spawns"? Any ideas?

Increase the sleeper volume sizes such that at least any area the designer expects the user to come from is covered and causes the spawn before they enter the area.  Some examples:  In the old west towns there is often saloon with 2 sleeper closets at the top of the stairs.  you can "open" those sleeper closets and see nothing in them from downstairs.  That should either mark those volumes cleared, or have already spawned the sleepers when I walked in the door to the saloon.  However, it does not, and the spawn don't occur till you are at the top of the stairs with an off-angle view that can't really look into the closets.  Solution is more cheese, go up the stair rails so you can watch them spawn as you go reach the top.

Another example, I have to walk through a second floor room into another second floor room, then drop back down to the first floor (as the designed path of the POI.  The sleeper volume for the room I drop into should be at least as tall and wide enough to spawn the sleepers before I can look down the broken hole and see nothing in the room.  If I look in the room and see nothing, then nothing should be there when I land.  I should not have to lower myself by 2 full meters before the spawn occur.

If it's the desire by the designers to have "ambush rooms" then those rooms need to be designed in a way where zombie spawns are hidden. That can be done by cleverly-placed objects or a wall/ceiling that breaks. If zombies are popping out of thin air, it kinda breaks the immersion.

Honestly, I've never experienced anything like this prior to A20. I'm not sure what changed, but stealth definitely feels broken. They should either find a way to fix it or remove stealth as a mechanic. These are two separate issues, though. Zombie surprise spawns should be fixed.

Exactly.  I find the ceiling droppers more acceptable then looking and seeing an empty space until I cross an invisible line.

EDIT: and just to be clear I am only speaking when following the intended path of the POI.  I find it acceptable not following the path to see such events.  They should not be visible though following the correct/designed path.
 

 

[faatal]

Awesome analysis Blake_! I've just confirmed how 100 zeds stop eating fps after disabling shadows (in a plain without trees or buildings), vs shadows lowest quality.

Hope they find a way to create simpler shadows for zeds and trees, at least in low and medium quality shadows settings. It's sad how I saw a +3000h big 7d2d streamer with a beefy PC prefered to completely disable shadows to keep performance, showing people a terrible ugly version of the game.

Did you analyzed other settings like object quality? I did a little testing here: 

Yesterday I tested 100 zeds and various shadow settings and did not see that much difference on an RTX 2070. I do have Unity's gfx jobs enabled, which may have some effect on that even though FPS generally seems the same with it enabled. I moved the gfx jobs change into the project, so it will be on in a20.1.

Object quality setting matters more than it used to, since we have more block models, which cause more draw calls.

One of our new programmers is researching trees.

Likely already part of the bug ticket, but just in case it's not.  I've found a scenario where building down, even to ground has a little bit of a different SI issue.  I posted this in our discord where folks were running into SI issues and I took a bit of a look to see if there was a workaround.  The one issue I saw reported elsewhere is replacing the lowest blocks.  This other scenario was around building down rather than up and SI not being recalculated correctly.

I fixed it today. Fix will be in 20.1.

Hello @faatal!  I am interested in your opinion about the possibility or impossibility of drawing up a common navigation path for zombies? At least in POIs. Of course, this method of orientation is used on pre-modeled and indestructible terrain, but after all, the tile system and POI in a sense are small pre-modeled locations. And where the paths are broken (destroyed or built up), the "classic" method of path finding can already be included.
However, it is possible that I am talking some nonsense 

I don't want canned pathing, if that is what you mean by common. The AI should react dynamically to whatever block combination is presented to them and make a reasonable job getting to you. Bandits, once in, will do the same.

 

[faatal]

"Surprise spawns" right nearby the player only inside closets or above the ceiling, therefore those spawns don't magically appear in front of the player's eyes but are rather hidden and one would not know whether the zombies have been waiting there forever or just spawned.

In A19 it was possible to clear an entire room with a sneaky approach. You could have killed a zombie with a bow / crossbow and another zombie standing right next to it would not wake up. Now the first bow / crossbow kill always wakes up the remaining zombies of that same group.

Not in my testing. If I was in stealth and quiet enough, nearby zombies did not wake. Distance from zed being a big factor.

 

[dcsobral]

This shouldn't work  but  it does .   

Why not? You realize the blocks below also provide support for the blocks above, right?

 

[Demonoid74]

Just have to say , I always play 1 game since I started in Alpha 7...play it for certain amount of time and then stop till the next alpha...to keep from burning out before release...

The time I spend in the game has steadily been increasing as the alphas advance...first I used to play up till day 38-42 or so , then by Alpha 16 was up to playing till day 92...

Now with Alpha 20...I am playing 2 different games with different builds...one at home and one on my computer at my gf's house...

Always playing the Fortitude , Punching everything to death as my main game of course! up to day 62(still no crucible but I have 3 beakers now! lol)

Just started playing an Agility build at her house this week and up to day 21...using knives , the stealth and parkour perks...definitely interesting and plays different then punching everything and breaking out the M60 in emergencies

Aside from minor hitching occasionally while looting etc , haven't had any serious issues and the only problem I came across was in my main game traveling the snow , was a POI path that was crossing thru a river and it was like Moses Parting the Red Sea and water was on both sides of the path , with the path dipping down and continuing right thru it...(don't have the screenshot on this PC)

 

[Blake_]

Yesterday I tested 100 zeds and various shadow settings and did not see that much difference on an RTX 2070. I do have Unity's gfx jobs enabled, which may have some effect on that even though FPS generally seems the same with it enabled. I moved the gfx jobs change into the project, so it will be on in a20.1.

Object quality setting matters more than it used to, since we have more block models, which cause more draw calls.

With all due respect, that's not true and not a good profiling test. I'll explain. Shadows are a task that is extremely hard not only on the GPU but on the CPU too. So it does impact CPU, therefore your profiling is not accurate. My guess: You might also using a ryzen 3900x (or a good CPU) which runs shadows like a breeze in a granullated way as it is a background task for which many CPUs rely on raw processing power to do. Your RTX2070 is  obviously good enough for every shadow task if you don't go crazy with the graphics (though I believe it could run ULTRA in the right circunstances, HIGH is preferred for GPU-related settings for that card at 1080p). So your system is stable and drinking a Mojito while running shadows. Use an old CPU and you will start to see the difference right away (Vsync Off is a must).

Zd shadows are not as impactful as tree shadows, as shadow area (size of the shadow in pixels) seems to matter the most. But shadows off do  increase entity fps in a noticeable way in crappy systems when entities are on you, so I believe a simple crappy circle shadow is worth researching, but just a thought. Tree shadows do hit fps A LOT. Tree animations do hit fps up to quite a bit too, but they need quantity (as I said,up to 60% performance hit on a quad core 2.7-3.2ghz cpu when 100 41m oaks are in front of you /no shadows) ,. Maybe increasing player-placed tree distance from each other by 1 or 2 blocks might help, like 1 planted tree every 4 or 5 blocks?

Recap:

Zd shadows increase fps when off and they even reduce the overhead when entities are hitting blocks, which makes the overall experience from  better (all the situations except "extreme block hitting" by many entities) to slightly better (specifically when extreme block hitting by many entities). Performance impact seems to be in the low 5-10% (edit: actually, minimum fps and fps drops went way up, so it's a 50% more in some cases) but way more stable and with lesser freezes and lag when facing screamers/horde with lesser CPUs.

The suggested methods for increasing performance based on my tests are:

-An option for having simpler shadows for trees and entities, like a simple circle or shape below the base (right below) of the model/entity,  or a simpler/light shadow processing, as that is the most effective way of maintaining some hint of a shadow and realist in the lowest settings while still having some shadows. So, below the NEAR option we could have SIMPLE, which would make Zds, trees and (I hope) other assets have simpler shadow processing, a lighter one like in those games of old,  one that does not result in moving squares like the current downsizing of shadow quality does (ugly). Downside is that it might have to be coded in. Not difficult nor a huge time hog though.

-An option for choosing simpler animations, not the expensive default ones that they have now. Like: Animations: OFF-SIMPLE-NORMAL.

-Reducing shadow area even further for trees , as it can be done without affecting quality of the game, and will improve fps to various degrees in all systems. I believe a 20% lesser shadow area can be done for trees like the biggest oak and some others.

-Increasing the separation between player-planted trees, like 1 or 2 blocks more would slightly improve performance even more in crowded servers

Turning the occluder off when outdoors in not a hack, but a good optimization move, in my opinion. Should it be ON outside though? Do you really believe a CPU-intensive task increases performance in a CPU-intensive area like a city ? The easiness on the Graphics Card load isn't worth it, and it's actually not a problem anymore (GPU options are plenty and well optimized). A voxel game burns CPU. newer and not-that-newer Graphic Cards run 7dtd graphics while drinking a capirinha on a beach at a summer party, unless you go for 2k or 4k right off the bat.

I apologize for the text wall, but it's recommended to read it all while cursing me nevertheless.

 

[Games'n'Grumble]

I don't want canned pathing, if that is what you mean by common. The AI should react dynamically to whatever block combination is presented to them and make a reasonable job getting to you. Bandits, once in, will do the same.

Yes, I agree that AI should react to any combination of blocks, but surely bandits should be smarter than zombies? I mean, when a player makes noise in a large location, zombies coming from outside usually just hit the walls under the player because they don't see a way to get to the player. And what will the bandits do? Or because of their small number (you won't have to design a horde of bandits from 64 units, right?) will the area of their path search be significantly wider?

 

[Lord Morphleyes]

Yes, I agree that AI should react to any combination of blocks, but surely bandits should be smarter than zombies? I mean, when a player makes noise in a large location, zombies coming from outside usually just hit the walls under the player because they don't see a way to get to the player. And what will the bandits do? Or because of their small number (you won't have to design a horde of bandits from 64 units, right?) will the area of their path search be significantly wider?

Bandits are easy to program. If they detect you in a building they just take up positions outside the building to  ambush you when you come out. 

Its easy to code and realistic. And I say that with absolutely no experience in coding or banditing

 

[fragtzack]

IS there legendary loot in a20 or is tier6 the creme de la creme?

 

[Laz Man]

I'm enjoying A20 quite a bit, but one thing is really bugging me (even more than distant meshes not removing placed items as they get removed).

Stealth.

Virtually all the new POIs have danger close spawns.  Some are so bad they don't spawn till you are in the room and then do it right in front of you.

All are willing to spawn even though you have already made sure the area was clear (which is bulldung IMHO).

This makes it so one has to cheese to use stealth.  By cheese, I mean doing things like where the player is supposed to drop into a room, instead build a set of stairs down far enough you can descend in stealthily triggering the spawn without them spawning right next to you and instant waking.  It is weak sauce that break immersion but not as weak sauce as dropping into a room with a closed door and nothing in the room then getting jacked by 2 zombies that spawned in as you were falling into the room.  This is with full points in stealth and all stealth gear.

It is annoying to use a cheese built stairway, go down 2 blocks and WATCH zombies magically appear.  7 Days To Magic?

Stealth has no value on horde night and the only way to use it effectively outside horde night is to use cheese tactics (build stairs, break walls).  Honestly feel it could be removed as a skill and just everyone the same basic level since it wasting points on it is not worthwhile.

Assuming the zombie spawning is not delayed by server and/or latency issues, please submit a report which POI you are experiencing this.

If its a volume configuration, level design can probably adjust it.  See this tread as reference.

https://community.7daystodie.com/topic/26624-sleeper-alerting-system-is-weird/?do=findComment&comment=464543

 

[LastTugBoat243]

Alpha 20 Art Gallery

• Current 10 armor/clothing slots reduced to 4 slots for outfits that will merge both clothing and armor values. No more clipping issues of wearing clothing under armor. Better balance on number of mod slots available to use with outfits.
  

It feels like the game is changing and not all the changes are good. There have been weird removals of items such as Grain alcohol , Hoe's for land tilling , smell mechanic , cave systems , blunderbuss , Hub City , snowberry , separate animal meat , moldy bread , wood cutting bench , zombie looting ,  log spike traps , sliding jail doors , barbed wire , and the simplification of building tiers used to be Wood --> Reinforced Wood --> Iron Reinforced Wood --> Flagstone --> Cobblestone --> Concrete --> Reinforced Concrete --> Steel --> Stainless Steel This was a great upgrade path it wasn't that complex and it was rewarding upgrade slowly towards stainless steel in the end it was replaced by the current path Wood --> Cobblestone -- Concrete --> Steel. even farming has been simplified before you could till the land with a Hoe to plant crops and you could create fertilizer to speed up the process. Now you just use a farm plot. Another thing the new clothing system we have to wear limiting outfits to increase stats and completely toss out character customization. Sorry dude you can't look the way you want to anymore because you have to wear this specific outfit that you might not like in order to boost harvest percentage or be able to harvest crops effectively. You said in your post that the new system would fix armor clipping through clothing. Well it really doesn't. Removing clothing all together isn't really a fix, its a removal. NOT A FIX a removal you didn't wanna take the time to fix it. So you you removed the system entirely removing diversity in character customization. You could probably just add additional armor sets for mining farming etc and try to fix the clipping issue. But instead your removing all of them POOF and substituting it with this limited armor system. I love this game and want to be a fun like in previous alpha's.

If you do decide to remove all clothing do you think there's a way you could keep the clothing models for the Modding community. There are people who will want make mod's to bring them back. 

Sorry if a lot of this didn't make sense.

 

[Laz Man]

"Surprise spawns" right nearby the player only inside closets or above the ceiling, therefore those spawns don't magically appear in front of the player's eyes but are rather hidden and one would not know whether the zombies have been waiting there forever or just spawned.

In A19 it was possible to clear an entire room with a sneaky approach. You could have killed a zombie with a bow / crossbow and another zombie standing right next to it would not wake up. Now the first bow / crossbow kill always wakes up the remaining zombies of that same group.

Not all volumes AFAIK.

 

[Quantum Blue]

Stealth.

Virtually all the new POIs have danger close spawns.  Some are so bad they don't spawn till you are in the room and then do it right in front of you.

All are willing to spawn even though you have already made sure the area was clear (which is bulldung IMHO).

In A19 it was possible to clear an entire room with a sneaky approach. You could have killed a zombie with a bow / crossbow and another zombie standing right next to it would not wake up. Now the first bow / crossbow kill always wakes up the remaining zombies of that same group.

Not attempting to disqualify any statements already made.  Just adding my experience thus far.

The runs I am quoting below have 'Feral Sense' off.  (I could easily have a post just for that and my testing thus far.)

Neither of these is my experience at all.  I have 3 'normal' runs into A20b238 until level 50ish, and am on my 4th (mostly 'normal'.  I have 3 others for cycle time and feral sense testing purposes).  I usually get the first Shadows perk around day 14 and I might go for the second at about day 40+.  (If I do - which is usually only for higher level poi's.  But I really haven't needed.)  I am constantly clearing rooms of z's with the bow and/or crossbow.  Heck, I am even shooting doors on closets with multiple z's and taking them all out quietly.  I'll grant you that's almost always 1-3 Lvl POI,s but I have had really good luck with 4 and 5 too.  I am not saying I can always clear a poi quietly, because there seem to be trigger points in certain poi's to 'ambush' you.  (And that is not a complaint.)  And I haven't had any surprise z's pop right in front of my eyes, etc.  (They have dropped from ceiling, or come around from stacks, etc.)  And when I clear a POI I usually salvage all non-structure items (and doors).  (and sometimes I fix poi's up.)  I have revisited some, and it usually takes a week or more before z's move back in, but clearing them is massively easy as they can't hide.  (I don't do that commonly as there is no reason to because I usually destroy loot containers.)

I wonder how we could be experiencing so differently.  (NOT sarcasm.)
 

(btw - I haven't had any problems with vehicles moving/jumping, either.  Well, at least up to now.  It's happening quite a bit on my new 4th run.  But I am now also playing with about 15 mods, too.)

 

[Beelzebubs Ghost]

• Current 10 armor/clothing slots reduced to 4 slots for outfits that will merge both clothing and armor values. No more clipping issues of wearing clothing under armor. Better balance on number of mod slots available to use with outfits.
  

It feels like the game is changing and not all the changes are good. There have been weird removals of items such as Grain alcohol , Hoe's for land tilling , smell mechanic , cave systems , blunderbuss , Hub City , snowberry , separate animal meat , moldy bread , wood cutting bench , zombie looting ,  log spike traps , sliding jail doors , barbed wire , and the simplification of building tiers used to be Wood --> Reinforced Wood --> Iron Reinforced Wood --> Flagstone --> Cobblestone --> Concrete --> Reinforced Concrete --> Steel --> Stainless Steel This was a great upgrade path it wasn't that complex and it was rewarding upgrade slowly towards stainless steel in the end it was replaced by the current path Wood --> Cobblestone -- Concrete --> Steel. even farming has been simplified before you could till the land with a Hoe to plant crops and you could create fertilizer to speed up the process. Now you just use a farm plot. Another thing the new clothing system we have to wear limiting outfits to increase stats and completely toss out character customization. Sorry dude you can't look the way you want to anymore because you have to wear this specific outfit that you might not like in order to boost harvest percentage or be able to harvest crops effectively. You said in your post that the new system would fix armor clipping through clothing. Well it really doesn't. Removing clothing all together isn't really a fix, its a removal. NOT A FIX a removal you didn't wanna take the time to fix it. So you you removed the system entirely removing diversity in character customization. You could probably just add additional armor sets for mining farming etc and try to fix the clipping issue. But instead your removing all of them POOF and substituting it with this limited armor system. I love this game and want to be a fun like in previous alpha's.

If you do decide to remove all clothing do you think there's a way you could keep the clothing models for the Modding community. There are people who will want make mod's to bring them back. 

Sorry if a lot of this didn't make sense.

It makes perfect sense.

I have also articulated this point, and what you mentioned were a lot of the reasons I fell in love with 7 days in the first place.

Those quirks and interesting aspects that gave the game so much charm have long since gone, and that charm has gone with it.

I have tried and am still trying to give the game a proper go but to be honest its been too simplified, a lot of it is too boring because of this.

The ruined farming (the old system which you mentioned earlier, which I referred to as Nomadic Farming was amazing and by far one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game) has severely detracted from this aspect of gameplay.

The sameness of the zombies (more samey but in HD) gives the game a pressing visual repetetiveness which becomes apparent very quickly indeed.

Finally one of the last (but by no means least)  annoyances - the previously implemented zombie digging. This was a large amount of effort which added very little while taking a lot away, the ability to hide away from a horde night at the tradeoff cost of no kills or loot (though there are exceptions in design) - a system which is useless, since hordes are completely avoidable in certain POI's or bespoke player built bases anyway.

You have the fanbois to fight against, and the 'Devs do no wrong' crowd in airing such opinions and fond memories, and in the end all we can do is hope for mod support or lament the loss of so many things that made this game truly unique.

 

[Aldranon]

IS there legendary loot in a20 or is tier6 the creme de la creme?

Until heavily armed and armored bandits show up, I cant imagine a need for anything stronger than quality 6 weapons.

I'm living in the wastelands with two quality 6 weapons and some lower ones. 

At high character levels, the game is simple and too easy with that.  I could turn everything into bullet sponge's I guess, but that would be boring and annoying.

In SP, my true enemy (as it would be IRL), is boredom (Mid to late game).  I find I'm starting to take unnecessary risks.   I've lowered my armor from steel to military (maybe that's not really a downgrade depending how one would play).

Waiting on the all important Bandits (and some story arcs) to make the game great at higher levels.

 

[Palacinecka007]

Will there be some in-game mods (like for mod slot) for the drone to attack?

 

[Gazz]

In A19 it was possible to clear an entire room with a sneaky approach. You could have killed a zombie with a bow / crossbow and another zombie standing right next to it would not wake up. Now the first bow / crossbow kill always wakes up the remaining zombies of that same group.

This is not true.

I play stealth on a server and with the right perks and gear I hardly ever wake up any zombies.

The only real chance for them to notice me is if I try to sneak up on them by daylight and they see me.

Most of the time I instakill them with my machete.

Now if you play with feral sense on then you don't want to be sneaking around. This mode is for a much more combat-heavy game.

 

[PoloPoPo]

I'm playing on survivalist with feral sense on day and night. No skill points into stealth or anything related. Like I have said, whenever I kill a Z with my crossbow completely SILENTLY the whole room wakes up. No matter how many other guys saying "this is not true", it definitely is. Yesterday I have cleared the T5 hospital and in every room it was the same, one free kill with the crossbow and the whole gang woke up instantly. If my bolts miss though Zs don't wake up, only if I hit (which always ends in an instant kill).

In A19 on same settings (except feral sense of course) and no skill points into stealth neither that was a whole different experience. Clearing a room silently with a bunch of Zs with a crossbow only was possible.

Edit:

Not saying it is bad. Sneaking around with a bow (without any skill points in stealth) and being able to kill lots of Zs always felt a bit too powerful anyway to me. Either this has changed with A20 or it does not work anymore due to feral sense ON. Or it requires a few skill points which would make sense.

 

[Jost Amman]

No matter how many other guys saying "this is not true", it definitely is.

Gazz just literally said this: feral sense on means almost no stealth gameplay.

So, who're you talking to?  :biggrin1:

 

[icehot]

I'm playing on survivalist with feral sense on day and night. No skill points into stealth or anything related. Like I have said, whenever I kill a Z with my crossbow completely SILENTLY the whole room wakes up. No matter how many other guys saying "this is not true", it definitely is. Yesterday I have cleared the T5 hospital and in every room it was the same, one free kill with the crossbow and the whole gang woke up instantly. If my bolts miss though Zs don't wake up, only if I hit (which always ends in an instant kill).

In A19 on same settings (except feral sense of course) and no skill points into stealth neither that was a whole different experience. Clearing a room silently with a bunch of Zs with a crossbow only was possible.

Edit:

Not saying it is bad. Sneaking around with a bow (without any skill points in stealth) and being able to kill lots of Zs always felt a bit too powerful anyway to me. Either this has changed with A20 or it does not work anymore due to feral sense ON. Or it requires a few skill points which would make sense.

I can second this, one kill with the crossbow and everyone wakes up!