PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[xyth]

Bandits and survivors can be very tough in this game, or as easy as the designer wants.  TFP will no doubt do a great job on the AI.  Until then, If you look at some of the gameplay videos of mods using the A20 modded Bandits in custom POIs that were designed around intelligent bandits, you will see its an entirely different experience from just zeds.

 

[faatal]

i would say you got that backwards... Bandits are nothing like real life PvP players. A bandit will never have the ability to challenge the offense and defense that it takes to raid and defend a base. Competition in players is something a bandit would never supply. Thinking about the strategy how to attack a base and thinking about the strategy how to defend it is a factor bandits would never have. Basically a bandit would just be another zombie to kill on pvp servers.

I said I expected to succeed again 10 bandits and not 10 players, meaning bandits are easier. So you seem to agree with me, which is not backwards.

Give us the NAME and most importantly, HOME ADDRESS (so in case the bandits suck, we can go pay him/her a visit).  :heh:

I was talking about a consultant working on water. I'm the one working on bandits.

 

[Guppycur]

I'm the one working on bandits.

...do you wear a raccoon mask while working on them, you know, to keep inspired? 

 

[Jost Amman]

I was talking about a consultant working on water. I'm the one working on bandits.

Ok, sorry, I messed up the quoting... in that case we are already watching your address.  eep:

But we also want water to be working well, so...  :heh:

 

[Blake_]

I said I expected to succeed again 10 bandits and not 10 players, meaning bandits are easier. So you seem to agree with me, which is not backwards.

I was talking about a consultant working on water. I'm the one working on bandits.

Bandits easier than humans? You jest. I remember a17 with moderate shivers. Nevertheless, you already have a very nice path-targeting code that can be made into a crazy good AI, like making landscape npc bandits "store" viable attack paths within the same gameplay session. Allowing them to create a tiny NPC "POI"/tent/workstation thingy on the outskirts of your base/ airdrop site, etc is also a viable behaviour and a very cool and emergent one at that . It might sound like a Pimp Dream? Difficult to tell nowadays with all our dreams coming true. Money, Love and Bandits, the three most important things in life.

Will you make settings for "esoteric" things like bandit AI (accuracy?) and/or bandit amount in the menu?

 

[Demonoid74]

Bandits? you mean like Trash Pandas? having a horde of them sneak into your base and steal all your food...even from chests because the little @%$#s have hands!!!

 

 

[RussianMafia]

Anyone else facing difficulties understanding which book is read already and which is not, in order to not read it and keep it for selling to trader - or is it just me?

I keep searching the recipe or the skill section everytime I find a book in order to understand if to read it or not. Quite tedious... 

I know there is a book symbol icon on each book but for me its always white no matter if the book was read before or not. Shouldn't be like grey color to indicate that you haven't read that book before.

 

[Ezed]

That book icon is either open (if already read) or closed (of not read).  It's small and can be hard to tell but if you hi-light the book in question it will bring it up in the larger panel and be easier to discern if you've read it or not.

I different colour would be helpful though.  

 

[Matt115]

I said I expected to succeed again 10 bandits and not 10 players, meaning bandits are easier. So you seem to agree with me, which is not backwards.

I was talking about a consultant working on water. I'm the one working on bandits.

So faatal please give us flamethrower guy.. you know he can make our hearts more warm  :angel2:

Btw maybe could you spoiler us one thing- can bandits  throw molotows and pipe bombs?

 

[Naz]

@faatal I noticed in my a20.0 tests that the 4 core affinity trick no longer has the same huge gain seen in previous alphas and that without it applied the results are where i'd expect with it applied. I also took a look at the list threads command and see the game now only spawns up to 6 threads instead of all cpu threads [SIZE=14.6px]available[/SIZE]. This is a god send for users with many core cpu's that don't want to mess [SIZE=14.6px]around[/SIZE] with [SIZE=14.6px]applying[/SIZE] affinity [SIZE=14.6px]themselves. I had a couple questions regarding it out of curiosity.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6px]1.Why 6 threads instead of 4? my initial tests using a extremely high vert and tris prefab to stress the cpu as much as possible showed a huge loss bellow 4 and every new thread above 4 showed a small but constant loss in performance, that got worse the more threads were [/SIZE][SIZE=14.6px]available. The difference in performance between 4 and 6 threads is very insignificant so it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things but i'm curious if there was a specific reason to go with 6.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6px]2. Will any of those threads be run on a virtual core or does it somehow only utilise physical cores? I've found that hyperthreading/amd's smt doesn't help and pretty much always results in a loss in performance when used by the game. I know as an example Cyperpunk 2077 scans your hardware to determine how to handle it and if you have 12 or more physical cores it won't use virtual cores at all, but will use them on cpu's with fewer. Cyberpunk may always be considered a bit of a train wreck but i was very impressed with how well the game scales in performance in cpu's it will happily use all 16 cores on my cpu and performance does scale. Obviously i'm not expecting the same feat from 7dtd they're 2 completely different kind of games and developers with very different resources.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6px]Appling 4 core affinity in a20.0 does yield some gain, but it's worth noting that i've targeted those 4 physical cores to the fastest cores on the cpu which will be the majority of the gain.[/SIZE]
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[Lord Morphleyes]

Please adjust the Bloodmoon loot for MP. Surviving BM is no longer rewarded with the Christmas morning feeling if opening the wonderful zombie loot bags.

The three of us are level 55-62. We have a gamestage of 158. So in A19 we would face GS 158 BM horde and open GS 158 lootbags.  Now in A20 we face GS 158 BM horde but open lootstage 78 loot (Forest biome, lucky looter maxed +goggles)  

Yes I know we can build our BM base in the wasteland for a higher lootstage, we did that during experimental. Having a wasteland BM fort seemed too cheesy for us.  You aren't facing a tougher BM in the wasteland and the difficulty of building there was minimal so the reward was way too good.  

I guess for now we will make a BM fort in the snow biome to get a lootstage that reflects the challenge.

My big dream is that the BM lootstage would be tied to gamestage and whe we are at it make the blood moon gamestage calculation for difficulty include the biome modifier so that the wasteland level of BM loot would be behind a wasteland worthy BM.

Oh and if any code tinkerers have any tips I have a thread here.

 

[The Gronk]

i would say you got that backwards... Bandits are nothing like real life PvP players. A bandit will never have the ability to challenge the offense and defense that it takes to raid and defend a base. Competition in players is something a bandit would never supply. Thinking about the strategy how to attack a base and thinking about the strategy how to defend it is a factor bandits would never have. Basically a bandit would just be another zombie to kill on pvp servers.

I'll let you into a secret.  Every AI you have played against has had its abilities crippled to make you feel better.  Players have an easier time losing to another player than an unfettered AI.  Some of the main advantages are listed below, allowing the AI to fully use any of these will instantly lead to screams of "unfair" and "implayable" by the players.

Perfect aim : An AI can work out exactly where to aim with a simple matrix rotation, in unity that even has a little helper-function.  Depending on the system the programmer may have to randomize the aiming point a little before the shot to give the player a chance.

Perfect radar : The AI does not perceive the game world as you do, it knows where everything is and its weaknesses.  If you think wall-hacks are cheating please be aware that to the AI the walls simply don't exist.

Perfect pathfinding : It takes time for a player to memorize the routes on a map, for the AI all routes are known and the default is to choose the shortest route regardless of how obvious it is or whether it can even be seen from where they are.

There are more but these should give an example of why we cripple AI for the players, programmers are only human and we like to win every now and again as well.

 

[Jost Amman]

@TFP: can you remove (or make optional) the unrealistic night "ambient sounds" please?

I'm talking about the one that sounds like someone flushed the water in the toilet and similar ones.

I'm asking this because currently they can't be disabled, and it's very difficult to hear the zombie steps and do stealth at night when those sounds play.

I think this is a reasonable request, and it's IMO something that has been long overdue.  :dispirited:

Thanks for listening!  :yo:

 

[Callum123456789]

@TFP: can you remove (or make optional) the unrealistic night "ambient sounds" please?

I'm talking about the one that sounds like someone flushed the water in the toilet and similar ones.

I'm asking this because currently they can't be disabled, and it's very difficult to hear the zombie steps and do stealth at night when those sounds play.

I think this is a reasonable request, and it's IMO something that has been long overdue.  :dispirited:

Thanks for listening!  :yo:

i think theres a mod for that on nexus if your interested for that as a temporary solution

Night Sounds Nerf at 7 Days to Die Nexus - Mods and community (nexusmods.com) hopefully this might help you with what you're looking for

 

[ThetinBourne]

Anyone else facing difficulties understanding which book is read already and which is not, in order to not read it and keep it for selling to trader - or is it just me?

I keep searching the recipe or the skill section everytime I find a book in order to understand if to read it or not. Quite tedious... 

I know there is a book symbol icon on each book but for me its always white no matter if the book was read before or not. Shouldn't be like grey color to indicate that you haven't read that book before.

If it's a "closed book" icon then you have not read it, if it is an "open book" icon you have read it.

 

[Matt115]

I'll let you into a secret.  Every AI you have played against has had its abilities crippled to make you feel better.  Players have an easier time losing to another player than an unfettered AI.  Some of the main advantages are listed below, allowing the AI to fully use any of these will instantly lead to screams of "unfair" and "implayable" by the players.

Perfect aim : An AI can work out exactly where to aim with a simple matrix rotation, in unity that even has a little helper-function.  Depending on the system the programmer may have to randomize the aiming point a little before the shot to give the player a chance.

Perfect radar : The AI does not perceive the game world as you do, it knows where everything is and its weaknesses.  If you think wall-hacks are cheating please be aware that to the AI the walls simply don't exist.

Perfect pathfinding : It takes time for a player to memorize the routes on a map, for the AI all routes are known and the default is to choose the shortest route regardless of how obvious it is or whether it can even be seen from where they are.

There are more but these should give an example of why we cripple AI for the players, programmers are only human and we like to win every now and again as well.

Yep this hard to  do good. 

I'm playing now in DL2 and a lot of zombies you can easy kill using just sittng on elevetor

@TFP: can you remove (or make optional) the unrealistic night "ambient sounds" please?

I'm talking about the one that sounds like someone flushed the water in the toilet and similar ones.

I'm asking this because currently they can't be disabled, and it's very difficult to hear the zombie steps and do stealth at night when those sounds play.

I think this is a reasonable request, and it's IMO something that has been long overdue.  :dispirited:

Thanks for listening!  :yo:

Jost... damn... but this is point of this in my opinon. Ofc this is not THIEF so it simpler but i will use L4D2 and DL2 as example what i mean. In both games zombie do stupid things - hitting doors, walking radomly etc. So this voices have perfect sense  for setting - one zombie just kick a random glass bottle, another one will go on glass etc. Well it would be too hard and.... a little bit pointless  to implement even in not voxel game. 

So make optional - ok.

Remove - bad.

Btw a lot of people complaing about footsteps in cod. How it could be solved? by adding bombs sounds etc so nobody would hear footsteps XD

 

[Jost Amman]

Jost... damn... but this is point of this in my opinon. Ofc this is not THIEF so it simpler but i will use L4D2 and DL2 as example what i mean. In both games zombie do stupid things - hitting doors, walking radomly etc. So this voices have perfect sense  for setting - one zombie just kick a random glass bottle, another one will go on glass etc. Well it would be too hard and.... a little bit pointless  to implement even in not voxel game. 

So make optional - ok.

Remove - bad.

Btw a lot of people complaing about footsteps in cod. How it could be solved? by adding bombs sounds etc so nobody would hear footsteps XD

I'm not talking about that... read again.

The ones who got it know what I was talking about.  

 

[Matt115]

I'm not talking about that... read again.

The ones who got it know what I was talking about.  

I read and i still think you mean randoms sounds in ambient right?

 

[The Gronk]

Yep this hard to  do good. 

I'm playing now in DL2 and a lot of zombies you can easy kill using just sittng on elevetor

This _isn't_ hard to do well it's hard to make the AI do badly enough that it seems your expertise with a firearm and superior tactics are the deciding factor, they're not, that's my point. 

You found an exploit, well done, people have just as many exploitable behaviours.  If you gave the zombies a gun each with unfettered aiming I'm sure your lovely little hidey-hole would be of little use as a well aimed barrage of shots hit your head every time you popped up for a shot.  You have a distinct advantage with a gun and you've already decided your best chance of survival is to run away and hit them from where they cannot hit you back.

 

[Matt115]

This _isn't_ hard to do well it's hard to make the AI do badly enough that it seems your expertise with a firearm and superior tactics are the deciding factor, they're not, that's my point. 

You found an exploit, well done, people have just as many exploitable behaviours. 

Nope.  First random thing - granades. It is so hard to implement granades for npc - that can spam them or do it radomly on their own legs (stalker XD) . Or bots in L4D2 can't use melee weapons because... i don;t remember. i agree that npc can heave perfect accuracy but sometimes mean nothing - guy with rocket launcher can shot in wall and hurt his mens by accident  or he can use rocket laucher as shotgun etc so this is so hard to make good. 

About exploits : this is another reason how hard is to make this good. Well in DL1 it was much less exploits and some of them weren't even exploit - you could kill goon zombie just throwing knifes at him. In DL2  you can tons of them - i know they wanted to do balance  volatines to avoid to be too much agresive but they make them just... dogs on a leash