PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary

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I think it could probably be added that snowballs could be boiled for murky water making some of the balance changes to quantities and stack size and yields so that it isn’t really worth it to try and mass produce water that way but if you’re dying of thirst and can dig some snow and convert it to a bit of water to not die that should be doable. @schwanz9000 would have to take a look at it and get the okay from Madmole. 
 
My suggestion would be grindy and you would have to work for your water, it would take 8 swings with a Q1 stone shovel to get enough snow for 1 water. Or increase the snow block hp to 100 and then it'll be 12 swings for 1 drink

That doesn't sound logical at all lol...  There isn't 1 million Yucca plants making up the terrain of the desert biome...😁
That is precisely why I made the suggestion to nerf the amount of water you can get from snow by 98% :D

 
I know that there is going to be a lot of debate over the next while over realism and gameplay and why jars have been removed except as a visual unit of drinkable liquid. I can’t fault anyone for thinking it is weird. This game has always been quirky and weird with the bottles. 
 
Well, let's be real, pretty much any decision to remove something at this point is simply for the console port.

Yes it is weird, and unnecessary as it won't in any way shape or form make water more difficult, just weirder.

 
I have a question about the dew collector. @schwanz9000,

How many units of water does the Dew Collector workstation produce in a 60min day? It would be cool to have a farm of those eventually, lol. 

 
I think the footprint is 3x3 and the height is possibly 3 or 4 blocks?  Can’t confirm right now but maybe someone else can. 
 

There is not a more advanced version of the dew collector.   It is not hard to build but it does take a lot of resources and a part( the filter) that can’t be crafted.  In the beginning it will be tough to get multiple made but later it will get easier. 
 

As for MP there is no need to modify vending machines or traders. Crafting teas will just be even more important. I am crafting more teas than I ever did before. You have less water now so you really want what you have to go farther and the teas really do help. Plus having a goldenrod tea on hand makes drinking murk less risky. 
 

I know that there is going to be a lot of debate over the next while over realism and gameplay and why jars have been removed except as a visual unit of drinkable liquid. I can’t fault anyone for thinking it is weird. This game has always been quirky and weird with the bottles. 
 

But it does play fun. It is fun getting the water part of survival managed and it does eventually reach a point where water survival is a breeze and doesn’t matter but the journey is much better……if you can forgive the oddities. 
This makes the helmet mod that lets you drink murky water without risk much more valuable.

Or have they been removed too?

 
Good day, @faatal. I have a few questions for you.

1. Will the problematic windows that degrade performance in large cities and skyscrapers be replaced in A21, or already in A20.X?

2. Is it possible in the future to eliminate flickering on the edges of some objects when using TAA smoothing? Or is it a feature of TAA in Unity?

3. Is it possible in the future to add FidelityFX CAS to (or instead of) the existing sharpening filter for TAA? Or is it completely unnecessary? (Or, like FSR 1.0, not implementable without HDRP?)

 
Good day, @faatal. I have a few questions for you.

1. Will the problematic windows that degrade performance in large cities and skyscrapers be replaced in A21, or already in A20.X?

2. Is it possible in the future to eliminate flickering on the edges of some objects when using TAA smoothing? Or is it a feature of TAA in Unity?

3. Is it possible in the future to add FidelityFX CAS to (or instead of) the existing sharpening filter for TAA? Or is it completely unnecessary? (Or, like FSR 1.0, not implementable without HDRP?)
1 In A21. I think most have been replaced at this point.

2 TAA needs the flicker or it does not work.

3 It probably needs HDRP.

 
2 TAA needs the flicker or it does not work.
I was not aware of this feature of TAA, thank you. But why is it unnoticeable in other games? In Far Cry 6, for example, I haven't seen flicker when using TAA (even if you add CAS and FSR as well). Although I understand that FC6 and 7 DTD are different games, to say the least.

 
Serious question...

Why is it, if an "issue" is identified, the go-to resolution is often "Let's just remove it."

You could've made non-dew collector water radioactive, kept the jars and required the player to get tablets to purify it.

MUCH more creative solution and still makes the new block useful, if you really wanted it to be useful. 😛

Oh, and @faatal is right on DLSS/FSR. It needs the HDRP pipeline in unity.... and honestly, 7DTD doesn't use your GPU properly anyway, so it likely wouldn't be a performance benefit.

It could do it using more cores, because you actually get a benefit from either limiting it to 2 cores/4 threads so a modern CPU can turbo higher, OR... if you have the RAM, boot up the dedicated server and connect to that via 127.0.0.1 for your SP game as the server side then just handles all the AI while your game handles all the rendering, and that then uses more of your CPU for better performance.

 
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How can you say that? From all I've read on how it plays right now is quite the opposite.

Unless you know something that we don't, that is...  :suspicious:
There's nothing to know besides history.  Jars or lack of jars doesn't affect the ability to get water one bit.  

...I suppose there were those freaks who would boil water directly in a jar but why?  Pots are plentiful.

If they're planning on limiting pots, they will still be plentiful.  

Water has *never* been a problem in the game and I suspect, despite their protestations, it still ultimately won't be.  

These dew collectors just replace any hardship their was. 

 
The only thing I have done that on, that I remember, is one of the classes... because I realised it was technically a duplicate of another and I did a dumb.

I've temp disabled broken stuff until fixed, and i've done back-end coding to make stuff work better, and that's it.

Also I meant to say it APPEARS that's the resolution. That was my bad on that.

 
would the water voxel dissapear if I drank it or would it always stay there? currently in Alpha 20 if you use a Jar to scoop up water some of it disappears.
Im curious about this as well. If the water block does not disappear when drinking, then it would seem the easiest strategy would be to carry water purifier mod, 1 bucket of water, and some frame shapes. Then you'd never have to worry about thirst anywhere/anytime because you could make a sort of "well" with the frame shapes, plop water in the middle, drink til full, and pick everything back up again.

(I guess finding the purifier mod will be the hard part)

 
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Since we are getting a water rebalance, how about a food rebalance too?

-No fresh food in loot, except canned food
-Animals give half the meat, so that the animal harvesting perk is more tempting to invest in
-Grace gives rotting flesh instead of fresh meat (Seriously! She's radiated!)

In A20, I can survive just fine on charred meat

One last thing, in A20, starving is a joke, you can literally "eat" medical items or have the fortifying grip (heal every 5 seconds) and you'll never have to eat food.
Losing 1HP every 40 seconds is too slow. Maybe 20 seconds would be better? (every 10 seconds for dehydration as well)
Sure, there's the max stamina penalty, but if you're well hydrated if offsets the penalty a fair bit


Also, dare I say, food spoilage!

 
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@Roland

Nixon would be proud of you. :)
There's no cover up here. People will get to play it once it is released and they can make up their own minds. I've accurately reported how the dew collector works, what has been changed, and that getting pure water is tougher now. Even if you are going to spam explore kitchen after kitchen to find a pot, that is something you didn't need to do before because you would find empty bottles, pure water, and murky water in those same kitchens. Raid five kitchens and you would probably come away with a pot, 4 bottles of pure water, 6 empty bottles, and a couple bottle of murky water. That would be about 12 bottles you could then refill and reboil forever. The things you found in those kitchens would easily set you up to have pure water always on hand for the rest of the game.

In A21 if you raid five kitchens you would probably come away with a pot and 2 bottles of murky water that won't return a jar. So you could take those home and boil them and get two drinks but have no bottles to refill which means you would have to go back out looking for more and not have any equipment for having infinite water supplies for the rest of the game from those five kitchens.

You could spam raid 20 kitchens and come home with a few pots and maybe even 10 or more bottles of murky water but no empty bottles for getting more from the nearby lake and once you drank those 20 bottles you would have nothing left to go and refill and repeat. 

You will have to decide once you play it in your non-biased non-roleplaying fashion if there is any additional challenge or not. I don't think it is challenging per se to stay hydrated since you can always drink murky water. Heck, you could walk over to a city sewer with water in it and slurp up as much as you want with an empty hand anytime and stay hydraded for a health cost. This change does give murky water a larger footprint in the game and it keeps you looking for water since there are no stacks of empty jars that you can refill all at once at any time. You can eventually get to the point of having crates filled with pure water but it is going to be a progression to get to that point and not simply the result of breaking into several kitchens.

I personally like the changes and I am not a crook.

 
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The point is not to make everyone thirstier. The point is make it so that having an easily renewable source of good water is more of a process and journey. The removal of empty bottles is key to that because empty bottles made having renewable good water attainable almost instantly. With empty bottles gone you will be glad to get any murky water you find in loot for a lot longer into the game because finding more water is the only way to replenish your stores. We have become so ingrained with the idea that after a day of looting we will have a large stack of empty bottles that can be re-used forever that the idea that any water we find now is a one use fix, is tough to imagine. 

You can sort of try it out now by immediately throwing away any empty bottle you get. Keep filled bottles and use them but then throw them away. Go one step further and throw away any fresh water you find in loot and only keep murky water and see if there is any change in challenge level for you. It is a sort of role-playing way to play (sorry Gup) but as a little preview into how the removal of empty bottles will affect the game it will let you see for yourself right now what the game will enforce later.

Alpha 20: Find about 10 bottles (empty or filled) and your struggle to keep hydrated is over since you have infinite re-uses of those bottles (morning of Day 1)

Alpha 21: Get a dew collector farm built and your struggle to keep hydrated is over since they will infinitely regenerate water (Longer but exact length of time will vary)

 
Semi serious question and admittedly it hasn’t happened to me recently.

How do we suicide if you get stuck? I am assuming glass jars won’t be in everyone’s inventory all the time.

Will there be a new broken glass item?

 
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