PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[Rassilon]

I see a problem with that being quite taxing on somepeople, but im sure someone will develop something for it even if the devs dont.

But just imagine a Metropol/Big City in a post-apocalyptic world. Raiding all the Apartments, stores, Skyscrapers of many kinds and beeing coutious of all the Zombies roaming the abonded Homes of Dead People.

Maybe like in I am Legend for comparsion.

And not the whole map has to be covered in this city, but like 2/3 of it with the Rim beeing wilderness or suburbans.

Just thought of it as an Alternative RWG-Configuration, with the current one still available.

 

[Maharin]

Idea for Post-Release
Hey Folks and Staff.

I wondered if we could get an alternative Random World Design after the game goes Gold.

Right now, it ( more or less ) generates a Map with about 20 tiny cities scattered across the map.

How about an alternative Design, that only generates 1 City, but this one really huge ( Dozens of Scyscrapers etc ) with Wilderness and/or Suburbans at the rim?

You can already adjust the size of cities in the XML files (rwgmixer.xml to be specific). A full map city would create horrible lag on a super computer.

 

[Torroc]

im not saying it would not be a bad idea, but what im saying is this. think of the system preformance required for something like that, i say this becouse look at most survival games takeing place in 'big' citys more then 90% of the time you cant go in to all of them becouse of the weight it would have on performance and what could be rendered at one time. its not that i wouldnt want some bigger citys its more so along the lines of what can be handled.

 

[Rassilon]

You can already adjust the size of cities in the XML files (rwgmixer.xml to be specific). A full map city would create horrible lag on a super computer.

im not saying it would not be a bad idea, but what im saying is this. think of the system preformance required for something like that, i say this becouse look at most survival games takeing place in 'big' citys more then 90% of the time you cant go in to all of them becouse of the weight it would have on performance and what could be rendered at one time. its not that i wouldnt want some bigger citys its more so along the lines of what can be handled.

Ok, you have some valid points that i didnt see. But maybe it would be possible to integrate sliders ( Post release, i know it will be some piece of work )

Sliders would go:

Ammount of Cities, Ammount X out of a max of Y and

Size of Cities, Ammount X out of a max of Y

I dont want to screw in the XML Files, afaik it makes your Server in the Modded Categority and since i only play on a MP Server where we want to stay "vanilla" in the Browser.

Well, i know its low priority, but maybe the Devs can do something like that in the future when the Early Access goals are completed

 

[Torroc]

we did have sliders at one point, we even could input custom numbers a long time ago. i wouldnt mind seeing a return of both of these, becouse editing the xml files can get tiresome.

and if you dont want ot screw them up, make a backup, i have so if i screw something up delete what i have done, then paste the orginal file

 

[Maharin]

Ok, you have some valid points that i didnt see. But maybe it would be possible to integrate sliders ( Post release, i know it will be some piece of work )
Sliders would go:

Ammount of Cities, Ammount X out of a max of Y and

Size of Cities, Ammount X out of a max of Y

I dont want to screw in the XML Files, afaik it makes your Server in the Modded Categority and since i only play on a MP Server where we want to stay "vanilla" in the Browser.

Well, i know its low priority, but maybe the Devs can do something like that in the future when the Early Access goals are completed

Best thing you can do is mess with the XML files in single player and come up with settings you find interesting. Then get some help setting up a server with those settings if you want to share them with others. Or post your changes to the mod forum. You might find it fun to learn and mess with the XML files... a lot of people do once they start messing with them. Again, the mod forum can help make it all a lot easier to learn.

Until things are optimized it is hard to say how bad it would get. The new sky scrapers create a lot of lag so if you end up with too many of them then you could create an unplayable area of the map. Even an excessive number of hotels can create problems and they are much less intensive than the sky scrapers.

After another round or two of optimizations they might be able to find a way to significantly reduce the lag issues but we'll see. A big part of the problem is that everything is a voxel that can be altered. Optimizing with that level of customization is no easy challenge.

 

[Pille]

Just some numbers for you guys (gained during a walk through Slaanhattan (very big city)): Memory consumption in a really big city is >16 GB. FPS are 40% - 60% lower (compared to vanilla cities).

 

[Aldranon]

To make a really large city with Unity you would need to "Bake" each and every building using occlusion culling. All windows should be translucent at best.

Then, you would have one smoking fast game with a big big city!

Edit: Then Bake the whole city using only street level as the view points and to hell with anyone that wants to fly around (or zipline).

 

[The Gronk]

Ok, you have some valid points that i didnt see. But maybe it would be possible to integrate sliders ( Post release, i know it will be some piece of work )
I dont want to screw in the XML Files, afaik it makes your Server in the Modded Categority and since i only play on a MP Server where we want to stay "vanilla" in the Browser.

Well, i know its low priority, but maybe the Devs can do something like that in the future when the Early Access goals are completed

You want to modify the game far beyond the original design parameters and yet still have it tagged as vanilla in the browser?

Such a resource heavy modification to the game would be very far from vanilla, regardless of how the parameters are set.

 

[Rassilon]

You want to modify the game far beyond the original design parameters and yet still have it tagged as vanilla in the browser?
Such a resource heavy modification to the game would be very far from vanilla, regardless of how the parameters are set.

Thats why i asked for an ! Alternative ! RWG Configuration made from the devs when they are done with everything else, my dear.

 

[The Gronk]

Thats why i asked for an ! Alternative ! RWG Configuration made from the devs when they are done with everything else, my dear.

That's obviously not going to happen any time soon given the current limitations of computers.

Give it a go, it's only xml, see how your computer reacts to running a server of a huge city. No software house in their right mind would be keen to put their name to such a slow and jittery game.

 

[Tin]

Thats why i asked for an ! Alternative ! RWG Configuration made from the devs when they are done with everything else, my dear.

I wouldn't be surprised in the least that we'll get something similar to alter and tailor the play map to fit mostly what we want in settings and options. Most of the things you are asking for can already be done..playable? not always. The huge mega city deal? probably not to the extent you want it but close. PPL are already doing such things in one form or another, so it's possible.

 

[SnowDog1942]

Major POI overhauls, completely reworked quest system that allows NPC to give quests, the motorcycle, new buffs system along with applicable buffs to weapons clothes etc, the addition of weapon modifications as well as confirmed Mini Bosses in pois? Those just aren't graphical changes (which we are getting too with the new unity upgrade) there is WAY more to be excited about this Alpha than the past 3 combined.

POI overhall? ok the so house i see 2000 times...will be a different house i see 2000 times. with a stronger zombie in 1 room aka miniboss

Motorcycle... reskinned minibike

weapon mods? 10 percent more ammo mod... shoot 2 percent quicker....etc not a big deal... i could live without... easily

Those 3 combined are not as cool as the random gen overhall from A16... or electricity/traps...

 

[The Gronk]

POI overhall? ok the so house i see 2000 times...will be a different house i see 2000 times. with a stronger zombie in 1 room aka miniboss
Motorcycle... reskinned minibike

weapon mods? 10 percent more ammo mod... shoot 2 percent quicker....etc not a big deal... i could live without... easily

Those 3 combined are not as cool as the random gen overhall from A16... or electricity/traps...

What you call a minibike re-skin is actually a full overhaul of the vehicle physics engine with knock-back and ragdoll which opens the way for far more vehicle types in the future.

 

[Tin]

POI overhall? ok the so house i see 2000 times...will be a different house i see 2000 times. with a stronger zombie in 1 room aka miniboss
Motorcycle... reskinned minibike

weapon mods? 10 percent more ammo mod... shoot 2 percent quicker....etc not a big deal... i could live without... easily

Those 3 combined are not as cool as the random gen overhall from A16... or electricity/traps...

I see this update mostly as a Dev and modders "Quality of Life" update but a needed update none the less. I also think/feel they have some surprises they aren't telling us about. Could be wrong but that's just what it seems like.

I'm excited for its release because of all the possibilities it seems like I can do with it and can't wait too see what they do with it themselves.

 

[Rassilon]

POI overhall? ok the so house i see 2000 times...will be a different house i see 2000 times. with a stronger zombie in 1 room aka miniboss
Motorcycle... reskinned minibike

weapon mods? 10 percent more ammo mod... shoot 2 percent quicker....etc not a big deal... i could live without... easily

Those 3 combined are not as cool as the random gen overhall from A16... or electricity/traps...

I think you might be either trolling, or severly underestimating these featues:

- POI Overhaul: New Textures, new Blocks, new Dungeon System with Minibosses: This will be amazing for Immersion, Challenge and Variety. And who says they dont add POIs too? Of course they are!

- The Hog is a Beast of an Machine and with the new Mod System it will get Attachments that will alter its stats or add Features too it. Besides the whole Vehicle System got an promising Overhaul.

- Weapon Mods: As allready discussed on prior pages: The Potential this new System adds is stunning. Not only Firerate or Clip-Size but all kind of stats can and will be altered with Mods of varying Quality that you need to find, trade or fight for. and as far as i understood, the Mod System can and will be applied to gear too.

- Those 3 combined are as cool as one can wish. Together with the new Animations and the new AI ( Bandits, NPCs, Factions ) it will add to an amazing new world in 7 Days to Die.

 

[Ouch Quit It]

Maybe disappearing minibikes will be fixed. And spinning zombies. And temperature system. And water. And...

MTFGA...show us something.

 

[Gazz]

You want to modify the game far beyond the original design parameters and yet still have it tagged as vanilla in the browser?

In this case it's actually no trouble at all.

You just have to generate the entire map, then upload all the region files to the server.

Then you can run that with the vanilla XML.

Should work. Kinda. Sorta.

 

[Xeen]

Okay so currently powerful multicore CPU's are prohibitively expensive to the average consumer mainly because the average consumer doesn't need a 16 core (AMD) and 18 core (Intel) beast of a CPU so they don't mass produce them and as we all know if something isn't mass produced the costs associated with that product remain high which is passed down to the consumer.

The technology to support extreme resource intensive games does currently exist however the average consumer can't afford the hardware needed to play it.

This is the same quandary that Blizzard ran into when they were building WOW and it's why they chose to use outdated graphics on release of the game, not because they couldn't do better but because they wanted millions of people to play their game and the average person didn't have better than entry level CPU (think intel core 2 duo CPU) and entry level gaming graphics card at the time (think Nvidia's 50 series cards) so what would you do if you wanted the most subscribers you could possibly get to play your game?

That being said could the fun pimps build this crazy insane massive city that would immerse us in zombie heaven and does the hardware exist to run it at 30+ FPS? Yeah of course it does but only about 2% of their customer base could afford the computer necessary to play it.

What do we take away from this?

There are two possibilities here.

1) We have to wait until the average consumer catches up a little bit before we can have what we really want.

2) The fun pimps could go ahead and give us the options to do what we want knowing that only 2% of their customers can actually play it.

Personally I like the second option but only time will tell if they will cater to the top 2% or not.

 

[The Gronk]

What do we take away from this?

There are two possibilities here.

1) We have to wait until the average consumer catches up a little bit before we can have what we really want.

2) The fun pimps could go ahead and give us the options to do what we want knowing that only 2% of their customers can actually play it.

Personally I like the second option but only time will tell if they will cater to the top 2% or not.

As was mentioned before, it possible to do it now but also not a good idea. If it becomes a standard option in the GUI to generate a huge city then some mouth-breathing <expletive deleted> will do it and complain that it's running slow on their ras-pi based server.