PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary

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Slingblade2040 said:
Oh the pimps do care and they have proven that with all the ridiculous changes to combat certain play styles on almost every alpha they do. Digging zombies because they cared about folks building underground bases, the whole looting zombies and then having to compromise with loot bags because of the backlash and even this most recent nonsense with the water because as madmole himself said we don't want people making 500 duct tape and water to be more important which it isn't so far unless they nerf finding murky water and the vending machines further. That's just to name a few.

Unless this biome gating plan has a serious impact such as players loosing hp I don't see much of an issue and just by passing survival gear in the same way folks just deal with the heat or cold in the desert or winter biome. Annoying sure but nothing that can be easily ignored.
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Using an underground base before zombies could dig as a way to avoid BM was an exploit.  They will of course fix exploits.  You can still have underground bases.  But you can't use them to avoid BM.  If you don't want to deal with BM, turn it off.  But exploiting the game isn't something they'll allow to last.  And they shouldn't.  They have repeatedly said the zombie loot issue was related to performance.  Whether bags stay as they are or get made into something at least a little better is hard to say.  I'd say that the better option would be to despawn any zombie without loot and only leave zombies that have loot instead of a bag.  Probably still more issue with performance than just bags as I'm sure zombies use more resources than bags but I wouldn't think it would be all that bad.  But I don't have the performance data to say that for certain.

As far as the duct tape, it really wasn't a strange statement.  They want you to have a challenge in the game and being able to mass produce duct tape within a couple of days is rather ridiculous.  Besides, there were other reasons for the change.

I was talking about the ability to loot in the wasteland.  They don't care if you do that.  They'll most likely make it a very challenging thing to do - because it should be - but they aren't going to prevent you from doing so.

 
HeLLKnight said:
Hey, wanted to give you some initial a21exp performance feedback. I7 13700k, 32gb 6400mhz CL32, RTX3080. Tried resolutions up to 4k and low medium high ultra presets.

In general A21 improved a bit in some cases and scenarios, specially in cities with many zombies, great job! I give you results on the top of Higashi tower with other big buildings in the background.

Ultra preset
- No zombies (killall): 60-70 fps
- spamming 50 demolishers: 45-50 fps

High preset
- No zombies (killall): 80-90 fps
- spamming 50 demolishers: 60-70 fps

In all cases 1440p to avoid GPU bottleneck, MSI Afterburner reporting GPU usage always below 65%. Far from gold for a 13700k IMO, but better. I've seen a streamer playing a21 with AMD 2700x and 2080ti suffering 30-40fps in a little town with 15-20 zombies, 1440p and medium preset (low GPU usage too), while using other PC to capture the streaming and as game server. Hope there is room for more improvement in this unique voxel game.

I didnt have good experiences with dynamic resolution in automatic mode. In heavy scenarios when I'm clearly CPU bound with GPU at 50%, when fps are below 60 the game lowers resolution by a lot and my fps doesnt get up at all. Maybe the solution is to only lower resolution if the game detects itself that the GPU is in heavy use?

@faatal implementations of FSR for old Unity render pipeline keep improving. The free mentioned here a month ago got updates, and the 30$ unity store addon is released, gives support and they are looking into Adaptive FSR quality, that can even be seemless as the downscaling is a float value between 1 and 3. Maybe this could improve current dynamic resolution implementation.

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/fsr-2-upscaling-for-unity-252172

About graphics, I improved antialiasing a lot injecting FXAA on top of ingame TAA with Reshade, improving edges specially in far geometry. Maybe TAA+FXAA or TAA+SMAA or whatever could be an option in a future.
 
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Dynamic res automatic is only useful in some cases. It was added as an experiment, but I don't use it.

FSR support was put on hold as plant shaders have to be changed to support motion vectors otherwise they blur badly as they animate. Entities animating also have blur issues.

Thanks for the info.

 
@faatal I have a question about the electric fences. I noticed that the wire between two fences snaps to a lower point than in A20. Has that something to do with the bug that the wire eventually jumps over to a point in the distance and when you restarted the game everything was back to normal ?

 
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Cr0wst0rm said:
Q to devs:

Does unity support something like screen space global illumination? How performance heavy would it be to implement this in C#? Are there any conversions to pure C++ available in Unity Engine?
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Unity does, but it seems to only be for the HDRP, which we do not use. Graphics effects are generally done in shader code, not c# or c++.

 
Riamus said:
Using an underground base before zombies could dig as a way to avoid BM was an exploit.  They will of course fix exploits.  You can still have underground bases.  But you can't use them to avoid BM.  If you don't want to deal with BM, turn it off.  But exploiting the game isn't something they'll allow to last.  And they shouldn't.  They have repeatedly said the zombie loot issue was related to performance.  Whether bags stay as they are or get made into something at least a little better is hard to say.  I'd say that the better option would be to despawn any zombie without loot and only leave zombies that have loot instead of a bag.  Probably still more issue with performance than just bags as I'm sure zombies use more resources than bags but I wouldn't think it would be all that bad.  But I don't have the performance data to say that for certain.

As far as the duct tape, it really wasn't a strange statement.  They want you to have a challenge in the game and being able to mass produce duct tape within a couple of days is rather ridiculous.  Besides, there were other reasons for the change.

I was talking about the ability to loot in the wasteland.  They don't care if you do that.  They'll most likely make it a very challenging thing to do - because it should be - but they aren't going to prevent you from doing so.
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Calling something an exploit was a lame excuse to say we don't want people building underground especially if its in a single player world which doesnt impact anyone else besides the player or if they are playing on a MP server which the pimps themselves dont run.  ah yes mass produce duct tape while ignoring all the other items needed to craft it like bones, wood for the camp fire or the very gated Chem station. None of the reasons given are valid, hell the fact we have a literal Pot and can't fill it with water from a lake or creek is dumb.  It's only a matter of time till they nerf the helmet filter mod because I'm sure they will use the excuse of not fair for it to provide infinite water from a source.

They call things exploits when it's convenient. Hell if you want to see an exploit look at the easy resetting of PoIs because of the quests especially with one's where the end loot can be accessed very easily or resetting a book store for very easy double looting of magazines.

Now a real exploit was the whole stacking of ores then unstacking for massive exp which really made a huge impact. 

 
RipClaw said:
@faatal I have a question about the electric fences. I noticed that the wire between two fences snaps to a lower point than in A20. Has that something to do with the bug that the wire eventually jumps over to a point in the distance and when you restarted the game everything was back to normal ?
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I lowered the height as short zombies would just walk under it and it was reported as a bug. Zombie controller collider height was shortened, so they stack better, which also made more of them miss the wire. In a typical case, I would not be putting a wire high above the ground where enemies walk under it, but lowering it even more may make other issues, so it landed where it is now.

 
faatal said:
I lowered the height as short zombies would just walk under it and it was reported as a bug. Zombie controller collider height was shortened, so they stack better, which also made more of them miss the wire. In a typical case, I would not be putting a wire high above the ground where enemies walk under it, but lowering it even more may make other issues, so it landed where it is now.
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I always used to place the wires 1 block down.  eg:

main level:  dart trap(s)  behind them, the tripwires posts

behind that, but 1 block down, the electric posts.  

that caught the spiders and everything else. 

perhaps 2 connect points for the posts, or 2 types of posts?  high and low?

(probably easier to make 2 types of posts)

 
Slingblade2040 said:
Calling something an exploit was a lame excuse to say we don't want people building underground especially if its in a single player world which doesnt impact anyone else besides the player or if they are playing on a MP server which the pimps themselves dont run.
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Slingblade2040 said:
Now a real exploit was the whole stacking of ores then unstacking for massive exp which really made a huge impact. 
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So, maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but... The dev's aren't in a position to determine what an exploit is ... And you are?

.. And yes, the stacking ore for a huge XP boost is broken, but at least it only works a couple of times.. You could re-use the same 3-block hole every horde night of the play-through as long as you put a single frame on top after you crawled in. ... Mmmhmm, sounds legit.

 
Slingblade2040 said:
Calling something an exploit was a lame excuse to say we don't want people building underground especially if its in a single player world which doesnt impact anyone else besides the player or if they are playing on a MP server which the pimps themselves dont run.  ah yes mass produce duct tape while ignoring all the other items needed to craft it like bones, wood for the camp fire or the very gated Chem station. None of the reasons given are valid, hell the fact we have a literal Pot and can't fill it with water from a lake or creek is dumb.  It's only a matter of time till they nerf the helmet filter mod because I'm sure they will use the excuse of not fair for it to provide infinite water from a source.

They call things exploits when it's convenient. Hell if you want to see an exploit look at the easy resetting of PoIs because of the quests especially with one's where the end loot can be accessed very easily or resetting a book store for very easy double looting of magazines.

Now a real exploit was the whole stacking of ores then unstacking for massive exp which really made a huge impact. 
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It is an exploit.  And it's still an exploit in single player.  And if you don't want to play BM, especially in single player, why not just turn it off?  In any case, you can build underground bases just fine.  They work.  But you can't avoid the horde during BM that way and you shouldn't be able to.

Other exploits like what you mentioned are likely to be fixed before gold as well, so don't be too surprised if they are.

Ore stacking for XP was an exploit, yes.  But it was limited in that you could only do it so many times before finishing returns made it pointless.  But they also fixed that exploit.

 
Riamus said:
It is an exploit.  And it's still an exploit in single player.  And if you don't want to play BM, especially in single player, why not just turn it off?  In any case, you can build underground bases just fine.  They work.  But you can't avoid the horde during BM that way and you shouldn't be able to.

Other exploits like what you mentioned are likely to be fixed before gold as well, so don't be too surprised if they are.

Ore stacking for XP was an exploit, yes.  But it was limited in that you could only do it so many times before finishing returns made it pointless.  But they also fixed that exploit.
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Calling that an exploit when blood moon can be turned off is silly. In MP guess you are SoL and have to log off and log back on once it's done otherwise.  Adding a mechanic because you don't like players avoiding the blood moon while at the same time making that option available is kinda ridiculous. 

It's on the same level as saying we don't want folks mass producing items while ignoring everything else in the recipe and the time it takes to not only acquire those items but also to craft them. 

If changes are going to be made atleast make it make sense as to why those changes are implemented instead of we don't like the players doing this because at that point it seems like you are mad folks aren't playing an open world survival game the way you want them to play it. 

 
Is there a future for the random event/encounter system idea?
I've always looked forward to hearing more about it, but it's rarely mentioned.

 
faatal said:
I lowered the height as short zombies would just walk under it and it was reported as a bug. Zombie controller collider height was shortened, so they stack better, which also made more of them miss the wire. In a typical case, I would not be putting a wire high above the ground where enemies walk under it, but lowering it even more may make other issues, so it landed where it is now.
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It seems to be at a good height now. It caught dogs and spider zombies. It' not the end of the world if it doesn't catch pure crawlers (which it may do but I haven't tested it). If people want a whole block fully covered they can go top to bottom with their fences or criss-cross poles at different heights.

ETA: However I was using upside down electric fences so maybe this is unique to the orientation I was using.

 
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Is it still meant to rain and be foggy so much? In A20 and 21 it rains a LOT everywhere, and is near constantly foggy in the snow biome. And now in A21, rain during daylight means nighttime-levels of darkness inside buildings and even outside sometimes.

 
Old Crow said:
Is it still meant to rain and be foggy so much? In A20 and 21 it rains a LOT everywhere, and is near constantly foggy in the snow biome. And now in A21, rain during daylight means nighttime-levels of darkness inside buildings and even outside sometimes.
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IMO nighttime darkness inside of buildings during heavy rain that blocks out the sun is great.  Bring torches, when done take the torches with you.  Same with the darkness outside.  And when it happens at night you basically can only see yourself and the road and glowing eyes :D.  And fog happens reasonably often too.  I LOVE it!  It also means you need to put more torches at your base meaning slightly more heat :P. 

The only bit of feedback I have though is that rooms do not respect you removing blinds and curtains.  I wish that if you took out blinds and curtains in a room it got a little brighter, even if its only a little.  Or if you bust a few holes in the wall.  But im sure that's prolly complicated to code lol.

 
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meganoth said:
With the way magazines are set up they would probably just decrease the number of magazines you need to reach every milestone.

But no matter which method they would employ it would also change the balance for the whole game, because players who play it normally would get the workstations in no time if those drop more in loot and can be bought more often at the trader.
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I think that the loot probability distribution route would provide finer tuning with enough variance to keep things interesting, and well, that's how pretty much how everything else is balanced already and it's all set up for it. 
 

meganoth said:
I can think of one solution that would specifically address the ungrouped SP miner/builder (who is the only one with a problem really) without changing overall balance too much: If you perk into AdvancedEngineering you always have a very small chance to find a diamond while digging below ground (i.e. whenever destroying a dirt block). And you can trade in diamonds for specific magazines like forge ahead at the trader. 
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I wouldn't say that it's just the miner, it's also the scrapper and the farmer, and in a broader sense anyone that just wants to pick up road trash. The only trees that don't have a gathering skill or equivalent production skill early game are Agility and Intellect, one's a ninja and the other has better barter and daring adventurer, so...

Although stay at homes are most often builders, I've left out building exp to simplify because you spend more time gathering resources and thus more food/water than you actually do building. Building exp is just in a good place for every tree.

Laran Mithras said:
BM hordes tear through cobblestone fast.
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The ai is kind of broken right now from what I can tell. It looks like they're having trouble switching tasks e.g. beating on walls and not repathing. It'll be fixed eventually.

No need to rush into modding it, unless you're into that sort of thing. I don't judge.

 
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