Grandpa Minion
Active member
no need to worry his mod is going public soon everyone that doesnt know will know soon enough.
PC Alpha 21 Discussion Overflow
- Thread starter meilodasreh
- Start date
Grandpa Minion
Active member
if the mod was made public already i wouldn't hesitate to mention the maker but most multiplayer server owners 100% know who he is..... when he releases it for everyone to have, i sure hope the pimps give this coder the credit he deserves. But yeah it exists right now.
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Roland
Moderator
Cool! I look forward to its release. Thanks for starting the prerelease hype train
szalkerous
New member
Just came back to cheerlead the team on A21! 
Pernicious
New member
I wouldn't hold your breath.... I'm not a software dev, but have some knowledge of computer systems architecture and why parallel programming is so difficult and inefficient. There are limited ways you can modify precompiled code to make it more efficient. Some have been tried already - e.g. disabling features or modding out blocks that are computationally expensive.Cool! I look forward to its release. Thanks for starting the prerelease hype train
I'm reading his post in a sing song "I know something you don't know!" Tone, and if such a mod exists, I am expecting it to be just a compilation of those aforementioned techniques.
I have been proven to be too cynical in the past before though, so I may be pleasantly surprised.
Pernicious
New member
Depends how it is made. Some server side performance mods for example, "improve" performance by reducing server to client netcode updates to preserve CPU utilisation. On single player games this is unlikely to have any much of a performance impact.
However, Grandpa Minion mentioned that the mod had to do with utilising more cores. If so, and you have more than 4 cores in your PC, this is likely to help. But writing efficient multi-threaded applications is difficult enough when you are writing it from scratch, let alone modding.
Imagine driving 4 cars down a freeway, when each car needs to communicate with the others in order share snacks, directions, toilet breaks, and fuel stops, and no car is allowed to get too far ahead or behind of any other car. That's multi-threaded programming. The whole convoy moves at the pace of the slowest vehicle - and then some inefficiencies on top.
You'd think it's fairly simple to get two different zombie AI's to take a thread each, but each one has to figure out what path it wants to take, considering the other zombie's path (so they don't both try to share the same space), and they need to keep checking if the blocks are still stable, if they are being hit by traps, bullets or players, and if they are still heading towards a valid target.
It is far easier to give each Zombie an identifier, and then have a single process sequentially decide the actions of each Zombie, because now that a single thread is control, you can make decisions like "since zombie 10 has already moved and occupied that space, Zombie 11 needs to repath around it". Often when programmers do this, they will divide the game up into "ticks" and then give each Zombie a time budget so that they can fit all calculations within a single tick and make the game look real time.
This is why I'm very skeptical of Grandpa's claims. While I don't doubt some performance tweaking by mods can be done, it won't be by multi-core optimisation (not to mention that in practice, if you optimise for multi-core, your CPU utilisation should go up, not down as you are now using MORE of the available resources, not less). If the mod exists at all, it looks like efficiency optimisations, not multi-core optimisations.
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Gamida
Hood Ornament
Not sure about you but at my age I would be thinking more of the toilet breaks than the snacks.
Pernicious
New member
I have two kids and doing a 4000km trip over 3 weeks (Sydney to Kangaroo Island, via inland roads, then back via the Great Ocean Road, Melbourne and Canberra). Trust me, at this stage of life, both, plus internet connections so thenkids can watch Netflix/play games are life saving essentials.
Good thing I bought an 11dB antenna for my 4G/5G modem before I left!
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Grandpa Minion
Active member
hello, i can assure you the mod does exist. It also will work on SP since it makes the game run on multiple cores doesnt matter if your on single player or multiplayer. Also im currently running the mod on [NAPVP] NORTH AMERICA PVP server if you want to see it in action just join. The mod has allowed us to have 100+ max zombies with over 50+ player online with high fps and no issues. As i said earlier the mod is still being worked on by the coder once its done he has told me he plans to release it to public AND YES ITS EAC COMPATIBLE people wont have t
o turn eac off for it to work.
Survager
Tester
Sorry if this questions has already been asked, I'm having a hard time finding an answer.
1. Will the 20.7 update that was announced on the stream break old saves made in version 20.6?
2. Will players need to create a new game after Alpha 21 is released if they start a new game after 20.7 is released?
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beerfly
Colony Rounder
Answered by faatal:
1 - A20.7 has a few minor changes to reading the world file header. It will not effect existing A20 saves. It will simply show A21 saves in the list without throwing errors.
2 - A20.7 saves are the same as 20.6 saves. A21 will not read those saves due to many changes that are not compatible.
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Riamus
Well-known member
I don't think it was related to twitch. The comment about twitch at that point was to say they aren't the same 20.7 version. Unless I misunderstood, it was a bug that would occur when you swapped between experimental and A20. But I'm thinking it will be safe with current saves, though I'd recommend making a backup just in case.
beerfly
Colony Rounder
You are right. Backup is indeed a must. Gotta see the stream again btw, I was a bit sleepy in the morning when Lathan talked about that in the beginning. Just out of curiosity.
Roland
Moderator
It's definitely not in A21-- but in the future? Quite possible! Rick has always been a fan of fast travel mechanics so it wouldn't surprise me and it would be a good use for the helipad and nearby radio. But I really have no idea if it is a sure thing or not. Nobody is talking about it on the dev team but that could be mostly because it is all A21-focused right now.
Crypted
New member
I was talking about when Rick said teleport pad then changed It to helipad and then Lathan's face expression. We won't know for sure until Alpha 22 I guess.
Melange
Active member
Holy cheating algorithms! My momma often said that those who speak of the worst are often guilty of even worse transgressions. Those of us who have played by the rules are automatically debunked? Nah, in your dreams. Too many of us have played faithfully and truly, and offline hours aren't even included in the tally. But if it makes you feel better about the accomplishments of others, get stuffed.