PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary

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QUESTION.............Im not a programmer/coder,  but......how come we cant have the ground snap to a block when placed. I dont know if anyone has ever played ECO...but when you dig a hole and place a block, the ground snaps to the block and closes up any gaps....making for a MUCH cleaner look...Anyone Anyone Beuller???

Oh yeah...

Coughs * Airport POI * Coughs

Laran Mithras said:
DEVS:

So the new models are being worked on for A22. They look great.

Question: are the new female models being animated from a live female model?

Many games cut corners by having a single live model. Unfortunately, the female iterations based on male models walk like dudes.

Can you give us a teaser on the new models? Are the new females going to walk like a female and not like a dude?  :tongue:
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They might be Hershey chocolate models.....just saying

 
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Looking forward to the bandits. I hope they have good A.I and are able to work together.  I hope the bandits are Over Powered making you fear coming across them in game. Bandits should always be at a higher level than you. 

I hope water gets fixed. Maybe add swimming motions, Put a shark and squid in the water to make the water areas dangerous.

 
faatal said:
Large AI counts would overload pathing causing all zombies to be delayed in moving, so this decreases the update rate based on distance from players
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Does this mean zombies far away will take longer to get to the player? Or they don't recalculate/change paths as frequently when further away?

 
Ouch Quit It said:
QUESTION.............Im not a programmer/coder,  but......how come we cant have the ground snap to a block when placed. I dont know if anyone has ever played ECO...but when you dig a hole and place a block, the ground snaps to the block and closes up any gaps....making for a MUCH cleaner look...Anyone Anyone Beuller???
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I'm not a programmer either (but work with them closely) so take this with a grain of salt, but it would surprise me that something like that isn't possible. It should just be a manner of coding which block types that terrain blocks would snap flat to. It's likely a bit more complicated than that, but it should be possible.

EDIT: Seems like Roland has an answer as to why it likely isn't possible. Again, not a programmer 😆

 
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Ouch Quit It said:
QUESTION.............Im not a programmer/coder,  but......how come we cant have the ground snap to a block when placed. I dont know if anyone has ever played ECO...but when you dig a hole and place a block, the ground snaps to the block and closes up any gaps....making for a MUCH cleaner look...Anyone Anyone Beuller???
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Terrain blocks are not cubes like player placed blocks are. They are octahedrons I believe. The terrain used to be cubes in the earliest alphas but they changed them from cubes and actually experimented with a few different polyhedra before settling on what we still have currently. I'm pretty sure most if not all other voxel games base blocks on the same cube shapes whether they are crafted or terrain-- so they fit together perfectly. 

 
Roland said:
Terrain blocks are not cubes like player placed blocks are. They are octahedrons I believe. The terrain used to be cubes in the earliest alphas but they changed them from cubes and actually experimented with a few different polyhedra before settling on what we still have currently. I'm pretty sure most if not all other voxel games base blocks on the same cube shapes whether they are crafted or terrain-- so they fit together perfectly. 
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Yeah but that doesn't really address the issue.  Since you can manually adjust the density of the block to have it "snap" and remove the gap, doesn't it stand to reason it can be done programmatically?

...if adjacent to non terrain block, set density to x?

Also, didn't you retire?  :)

 
Guppycur said:
Yeah but that doesn't really address the issue.  Since you can manually adjust the density of the block to have it "snap" and remove the gap, doesn't it stand to reason it can be done programmatically?

...if adjacent to non terrain block, set density to x?

Also, didn't you retire?  :)
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I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm just explaining why in this game compared to other voxel games the gap exists in the first place. Other voxel games have universally consistent voxel shapes throughout their game-- not that the shapes are the same but their orientation is based off of the same basic shape.

I know the team has discussed the gap over the years and they know about changing the volumes but I seem to remember there being an issue about it. But one of the programmers would have to explain it.

I did retire....meaning I only do as much as I want when I want and its all free. I traded my company pants for a kilt and I'm feeling the breeze.

 
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Guppycur said:
Yeah but that doesn't really address the issue.  Since you can manually adjust the density of the block to have it "snap" and remove the gap, doesn't it stand to reason it can be done programmatically?

...if adjacent to non terrain block, set density to x?

Also, didn't you retire?  :)
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Coincidently, I asked faatal about this today and it was a complicated discussion.  Essentially, we may be able to make terrain blocks look like their snapped to cubes using density manipulation when in reality they are actually bleeding through them.

With that said, I have seen density values cause all sorts of havoc with terrain (e.g. holes in the world), so understand why it's not a simple thing.

 
Laz Man said:
With that said, I have seen density values cause all sorts of havoc with terrain (e.g. holes in the world), so understand why it's not a simple thing.
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Happens to me a lot when I am mining resources. I don't think I've ever fell through it, but it's a little irritating when you suddenly have a hole like that to look through the map with.
 

 
So, I made an account just to ask this question as it's been bothering me for a little while now. So without further delay I guess it's my time to ask. Also I apologize if this question has been asked before, but:

What will become of the Master Chef perk? As stated in the future changes for A21, "Perks no longer unlock recipes or govern crafting at all". So what does this mean for Master Chef? As I'm sure you're well aware that Master Chef is a purely recipe based perk tree. Will it be removed entirely or just overhauled to fit the new crafting system?

 
Tinyhugeproblem said:
So, I made an account just to ask this question as it's been bothering me for a little while now. So without further delay I guess it's my time to ask. Also I apologize if this question has been asked before, but:

What will become of the Master Chef perk? As stated in the future changes for A21, "Perks no longer unlock recipes or govern crafting at all". So what does this mean for Master Chef? As I'm sure you're well aware that Master Chef is a purely recipe based perk tree. Will it be removed entirely or just overhauled to fit the new crafting system?
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the master chef perks will affect the cooking times and amounts of resources used when cooking. each of the 3 perks will get better as you perk up.

reading the cooking magazines will unlock different recipes as you read them.

 
unholyjoe said:
the master chef perks will affect the cooking times and amounts of resources used when cooking. each of the 3 perks will get better as you perk up.

reading the cooking magazines will unlock different recipes as you read them.
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Would I be correct in guessing it will be similar for other perks that formerly unlocked recipes/schematics? ie higher levels of various perks (deep cuts, miner 69er, etc, shortening crafting times and reducing materials used?

 
So how is the Thick44 Magnum coming?  Asking for millions of frens.

Maybe it could Thick people and give them a bleed.  Who knows. 

Debuff list says "Thicked" bleed damage.

Ya'll live in imaginationland, I just go there from time to time.

 
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Ребята, скажите, пожалуйста, будет ли новая модель в alpha 21 с новыми качественными текстурами? или новая модель символов была портирована на alpha 22? И расскажите подробнее, пожалуйста, есть ли планы по внедрению плота или лодок с новой водой? Я очень на это надеюсь. Пожалуйста, кто знает, если возможно, ответьте мне

 
Roland said:
Terrain blocks are not cubes like player placed blocks are. They are octahedrons I believe. The terrain used to be cubes in the earliest alphas but they changed them from cubes and actually experimented with a few different polyhedra before settling on what we still have currently. I'm pretty sure most if not all other voxel games base blocks on the same cube shapes whether they are crafted or terrain-- so they fit together perfectly. 
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Terrain uses the marching cubes algorithm, which makes a diamond shape that merges into their neighbors, so they stretch in each direction. They also stretch into air, so the density of the surrounding air also effects the shape and there are some density combinations that make a bad mesh, but normal terrain manipulation does not create those combinations.

 
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As a player I feel like an intuitive enough way to fix the terrain gap would be to have a tool, like a trowel or alternate function for the shovel, that sets terrain voxels to fill their area. Not sure how feasible that would be on the dev side but it sounds better than having like a special block to select and would work with any voxel terrain type.

 
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I'm no programmer, but couldn't you use the same method you use to draw both terrain and water blocks in the same place (I understand that's how it will work in the next alpha) to draw terrain and player placed blocks in the same place? Have terrain flow into blocks the same way it flows into water voxels? I know you can't have a terrain block and a player block in the same place, but maybe a player block that touches a terrain block on any side could count as a terrain block when calculating the terrain mesh. This is probably really stupid. It makes my brain hurt. I'll go to sleep now.

 
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