I assume Roland gave us the new katniss everdeen hint.
PC Alpha 21 Discussion Overflow
- Thread starter meilodasreh
- Start date
I assume Roland gave us the new katniss everdeen hint.
Blake_
Captain Obvious
I found a muscle man called Brutus The barber with that search. I'm going to pretend those words never happened. Nope, not even trying to find their meaning, lol.
Btw ! Surprise questions !
1.How many new Tier 5 POI or otherwise can you confirm as implemented in a21 ?
2.And another question: Did you guys made some new underground POI for a21?
3. What is your favourite "not yours" a21 POI?
Blake_
Captain Obvious
The most famous Brutus was one of the senators(?) who stabbed Caesar. So the first idea would be it is about the knife.
I normally would disregard this since weapons are not the focus right now. But the bible says in Matthew 7:5: "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.".
And now it makes sense as graphics designers are working on kill gore. You can cut out the eyes of zombies with a knife. Which would "Denied" the zombie his eyesight, make him blind.
I normally would disregard this since weapons are not the focus right now. But the bible says in Matthew 7:5: "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.".
And now it makes sense as graphics designers are working on kill gore. You can cut out the eyes of zombies with a knife. Which would "Denied" the zombie his eyesight, make him blind.
Last edited by a moderator:
AmishMan53
New member
What is your benchmark that this game is playable? I don't have a high-end machine.. all the high-end machine talk was in reference to beelzebubs issue with the game. That being said, GTX 1060 6GB with Ryzen 5 2600 and 16GB of RAM, which each piece (and things unmentioned) meet the steam page recommended specs.. i shouldn't have terrible fps issues on medium settings, especially since i've heavily customized the settings to be closer to low settings, keeping some things like FOV to the medium setting. For the majority of the time, the game is playable.. but for horde night to have FPS sit consistently below 30fps on my machine, dipping often into 10-15fps.. that's unplayable. Repairing traps and walls is difficult at that framerate, never mind the idea that i should be also shooting/smacking zombies.
Minecraft is a terrible example for this particular comparison's sake, as it's not exactly pushing graphics. It probably pushes memory and cpu harder then the graphics card. Additionally, It had just a little over 2 years from public alpha/beta phase to full release. Honestly, if minecraft was sold to me in alpha and stayed in alpha for 9 years, still having fps issues while shoveling out a 3rd rework to some in-game system.. i might just start expecting circles from Mojang.
You seem to be lumping anybody who complains with a "complain crowd" and think everyone who complains is the same with your final full paragraph. Reporting experiencing bugs is often encouraged by developers, and depending the level of frustration a bug can cause it can often come across, or even be, complaining. Depending on what that complaint is, it can be reasonable or unreasonable. Performance, especially at medium settings when running a rig that meets the recommended specs for said game, seems to me like a pretty reasonable complaint. Which is my case, even tho as i said in my previous post.. i didn't come here to do any complaining or reporting or anything.. just came to check and see if their were mentions of optimizations (which of course, i'm sure they are always optimizing some.. but very notable bug fixes and optimizations likely would make it into patch notes).
To conclude.. no.. if my rig is above recommended specs but can't hold even 30fps, it's not playable. What really takes the cake is people thinking their experience with a game is the experience everyone else has, and everyone should have the same standards as themselves. Content-wise.. the game already meets my standards. Performance-wise, game at least needs to hold 30FPS, tho as a shooter i'd like closer to 60FPS, and would like the 30th/40th container i open to act like every other container i open and not freeze-frame me for 3seconds.
Roland
Moderator
As I said, there will always be people that claim the game is unplayable for them even after it is released. I wasn't taking issue with your claim that the game is unplayable by your own standards. I'm sure it is. I have no idea what all your settings are. Have you turned up the number of zombies alive at one time from the default of 8 to higher than that? Maybe that is part of the cause for such low framerates on horde night. But I don't know.
My point was that the game is not going to be much different than it is generally after it releases. Release day is not going to be some huge miraculous turning point. I'm sure they will continue to find optimizations and make gains in performance but there will be negative reviews after release that the game is not playable from perspective and expectations of some people. That is guaranteed. Regardless, the game has been and is being played for thousands of hours by thousands of people, hence my remark that it is already currently playable-- from a general perspective and not necessarily from any one person's perspective. You, personally, may feel that the game is not playable by your own standards and in that sense I can't argue with that for you.
I wasn't comparing Minecraft to this game on graphics or time spent in early access. My entire point was that Minecraft today from a playability standpoint is not a whole lot different than it was before it was released. On the day it released there was not some kind of quantum jump in performance and graphics over what it had been before it was released. Maybe I'll be wrong and one of the programmers will find that secret key to turn that will change everything. I'll be glad to be wrong in that case. I just think its best to keep expectations realistic. Every game I have followed that came out of early access had plenty of bad reviews from people who thought that Day 1 of official release was going to mean something grander and more glorious than it turned out to be and quite a few who actually accused the developers of failing to actually finish the game that they were now calling finished. Heck, we already get that now with people who get hung up on the phrase "stable branch" and what their personal expectations of that would be.
Interesting. My final paragraph had nothing to do with people complaining. It had to do with people's expectations and was a warning to not let them become unrealistically too high. Again, maybe I'm wrong and we will all be pleasantly surprised at the huge difference that the 1.0 designation will make. I have no issue with you complaining about 15 fps on horde night. You should complain about that. My post was not in any way trying to shame or dissuade people for complaining about their issues let alone trying to lump all people who have various complaints into the same type of complainer.
Patch notes won't be released for A21 until experimental releases. They won't be posted in this thread in any case. There are patch notes listed for each of the 20.x updates in their relative threads that you can peruse although major optimizations that are risky to save games are not going to show up until the next major update anyway.
AmishMan53
New member
@Roland To avoid a mile high post just not going to quote.
I can't wrap my head around the argument that a computer that meets the specs having the issues i presented, that anybody could consider that playable. That being said.. i still play it. Horde nights suck, but when i'm out in the middle of nowhere building a base or looting some areas it's not really that bad. Wasteland at night sucks too tho. My zombie count was actually brought lower to 6. The only setting that was raised upwards was loot quantity, at 150%. To be clear, ALL of my video settings are either at medium or lower, quite a few even turned off. By the term alpha, i do understand this can be expected. Cuz alpha has meaning, it's the stage of adding stuff, beta is technically optimization phase and ironing out bugs, and full release is when the devs think it's ready to be judged by the public. 9 years tho.. is where my gripe would be, and why i say anybody has a right to complain.
I digress on that tho, pointless to continue debating it. My goal was to present reasonable fairness towards the complaints of another person as people were attacking him for his complaint. I think it's fair to throw the "it's an alpha" argument out the window at 5 years, let alone 9.
"Patch notes won't be released for A21 until experimental releases". This thread isn't where this conversation started.. it got moved out of the dev diary thread. And patch notes are announced when they are confirmed as per the note at the top of the A21 Dev Diary, and only confirmed things get listed their. The only thing i knew coming here was that it's been alpha 20 for quite a while.
I can't wrap my head around the argument that a computer that meets the specs having the issues i presented, that anybody could consider that playable. That being said.. i still play it. Horde nights suck, but when i'm out in the middle of nowhere building a base or looting some areas it's not really that bad. Wasteland at night sucks too tho. My zombie count was actually brought lower to 6. The only setting that was raised upwards was loot quantity, at 150%. To be clear, ALL of my video settings are either at medium or lower, quite a few even turned off. By the term alpha, i do understand this can be expected. Cuz alpha has meaning, it's the stage of adding stuff, beta is technically optimization phase and ironing out bugs, and full release is when the devs think it's ready to be judged by the public. 9 years tho.. is where my gripe would be, and why i say anybody has a right to complain.
I digress on that tho, pointless to continue debating it. My goal was to present reasonable fairness towards the complaints of another person as people were attacking him for his complaint. I think it's fair to throw the "it's an alpha" argument out the window at 5 years, let alone 9.
"Patch notes won't be released for A21 until experimental releases". This thread isn't where this conversation started.. it got moved out of the dev diary thread. And patch notes are announced when they are confirmed as per the note at the top of the A21 Dev Diary, and only confirmed things get listed their. The only thing i knew coming here was that it's been alpha 20 for quite a while.
Roland
Moderator
I guess my argument boils down to the idea that your experience is not universal. The game is currently playable by a lot of people with a wide range of specs. We can’t know the settings and circumstances that everyone is using that makes the game unplayable to them but I will concede that the game may not be playable for you. I think we both agree that it isn’t ready yet and needs more work.
heh…people weren’t attacking him for his actual game related complaint. It’s nice of you to back him up though. I’m always happy to see kindness in the forum.
And why is that?
I was talking about the dev diary and not this thread. My reply to you was moved here as well. It isn’t the place to look for patch notes. They aren’t listed there. The list at the start is a confirmed features list and not a change log. Optimizations aren’t going to be listed there and neither are bug fixes that have happened. It is simply a list of confirmed features and changes relating to gameplay or content.
As I said if you want patch notes then look at the patch note report for each version once it releases. A21 patch notes with bug fixes and optimization changes won’t be listed until A21 experimental is released. The most recent patch notes we have are for A20.6 and they are in the A20.6 Stable thread
outhous
New member
:confused2: 
Jinx_DG
New member
By your own definition of "alpha" it's not fair (of you) "...to throw..." that "...argument out the window..." Has there been any alpha where new stuff has not been added?
Knowing the backstory and history of how this game and it's creators, may help you understand why it's been as long as it has. I'm sure someone else can explain it better, but take into account the brothers had an idea and started there goal of creating the company under which the game, you play today, would be developed, from scratch. Starting a bussiness is time consuming and complex, developing a game is the same, especially when funds are not unlimited. They've grown their dev team over the years and each new year has seen a new alpha with added content. The game still being in alpha hurts no one, and I for one have enjoyed playing all the "added stuff" each new alpha.
Last edited by a moderator:
AmishMan53
New member
Took this screenshot last night, fps in the top-left. I will repeat that it runs mostly well outside of horde nights. Aside from complete freeze frames opening a menu, that only happens occasionally, i maintain 40-60 fps outside of horde nights, with exception to some locations. Weirdly, sitting down and staring at a block so their isn't much to render does little for the framerate either.
After horde night ended and we cleared the zombies my fps went back up to 60. So i did a little test. Simply turning on the defense systems (got a fair amount of spotlights above this bunker, 4 smg turrets and a shotgun turret) reduces my fps down to 40.
Horde night is a key event of the game and the game is literally titled after it, and that is an unplayable framerate. By removing the defense systems i may be able to get playable frames, but then i'm not playing the game in everything it has to offer. Still.. i do love the game and hope for all these things to be fixed, however this is the exact reason why, in the years since i picked up the steam version, i have 188 hours logged, 99 of which has been invested in the past 3 weeks. I come back every so often to see how it plays, and try some of the content that's new while i'm at it. This is the longest stretch I've given it since my friend picked it up, but I likely would've only gone to day 14 or 21 with this experience otherwise. He's pushing through, he loves survival games, but his experience is worst.. often freezing for 15-30 seconds upon opening his menu or a container, which much like my experience, only happens occasionally. Gaming laptop with an APU, 8GB of RAM.
@Jinx_DG Reasons being what they are, theirs other actions that could've been taken. It could've been crowdfunded for example, not being released to the public until it's closer to the vision they have, both in content and optimization. So with alphas being what they are, yes it's the content adding stage, but most games also don't have public alphas in the first place, let alone this long of a public alpha. People are giving you money, and your reworking a system for a third time, while tons of players are still awaiting bandits that's been an idea at least since alpha 15 (let me clarify, I couldn't care about bandits, it's just a shining example). Much like Roland mentioned earlier, games often release content after the official launch as well. It's another decision they could be making, to polish and optimize everything they have thus far, and then add content after everything is running as smooth as it could be. And the throwing the argument out the window thing.. cuz 9 years.. again. Theirs a line to be drawn somewhere.. if the game still plays like crap when i'm 90 and on my deathbed, well.. the introduction of bandits won't mean anything at that point would it? 5 years might even be too lenient, when it involves it costing me something. Then again, i don't like the internet age of gaming anyway, far too many games release broken cuz of the "we can fix it later" attitude a lot of company's have.. and often the early access naming to me is just a safety net for that same mentality. That said, not all company's that use it does it feel like they are abusing it that way, and even TFP i would put in that sphere. I think this is a case of mismanagement to a degree, with reworking systems multiple times as evidence of that, but at the heart of it all, they want this done and a dream fully realized to perfection.
AmishMan53
New member
JCrook1028
New member
Actually is was titled after the infection that used to kill you after 7 days. There was no Horde Night mechanic at the time.
Riamus
Well-known member
Just to give you a likely cause of this specifically, every 20 minutes, there is a call for UnloadUnusedAssets. On my game, this always coincides with a freeze when opening a menu or container. In some cases, especially on the pregen maps, it can last up to 3-4 minutes, though on RWG maps, it is usually less than 10-15 seconds. Not sure that is any use for you, but wanted to give you a possible reason for that part of your problem. Press F1 during the freeze and when the freeze ends, if the last line says that, then you're experiencing the same problem I am.
As for the rest, I don't seem to have any extra lag during horde night even with many traps running at once and 30-40 or so zombies attacking at once. I'm on a computer that was mid range four years ago, so low level by today's standards. I'm not sure what causes the wide range of experiences in this game. Might be the server or specific computer hardware.
AmishMan53
New member
Tons of appreciation for addressing the issue and not picking at wording or trying to find some "gotcha" that some responses seem to be trying to do. I went diving into the .xml and config files seeing if their was a setting somewhere involving that, but unfortunately couldn't find anything. I'll keep an eye on the console tho anytime a freeze frame happens and see if i can pull additional information from it. Many thanks for that info.
I guess i have the question of how lengthy of play sessions you have. My friend and I was considering resetting the game completely before horde night to see if that helps with the fps. Through my searches i've seen many mentions of memory leaks, and issues some people have with crashes (something my friend was having) being fixed by getting more memory (in those cases the person upgraded from 8 to 16gb ram, causing the general consensus that you should have 16 minimum) and my friend happens to have 8gb. He however reduced all his graphics settings down to near rock bottom, even removing shadows, and since hasn't had those crashes (which can definitely point to memory related).
Riamus
Well-known member
I typically play for many hours at a stretch, and the game does definitely slow down for me after a few hours. Not sure if the amount of time is consistent or if it is random since I haven't tested it. I definitely do better on RWG maps and with the game on SSD instead of HDD. I was playing at medium settings but without motion blur since I hate that in games. I've recently started increasing settings and haven't noticed much slow down so far other than the normal. Definitely not good around downtown in certain large cities or where there are skyscrapers, of course.
