PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[Guppycur]

I remember we had a user once who had a philo masters, or maybe even phd. Thought he could debate. He couldn't.

 

[Aldranon]

I remember we had a user once who had a philo masters, or maybe even phd. Thought he could debate. He couldn't.

There was a name for the philosophy of argument, I don't remember what they called themselves. The end was not to win the argument, because if you win, then you take the opposite point of view and argue that!

A pretty good way of getting as close to the truth as current understanding allows.

 

[wicketness]

I want pretzels for A17 Or riot.

 

[Royal Deluxe]

Pretzels..... hmmm mjam, i think i have some here, nice idea

Damn no Pretzels here.

But i got Royal Deluxe Cereals^^

 

[Guppycur]

There was a name for the philosophy of argument, I don't remember what they called themselves. The end was not to win the argument, because if you win, then you take the opposite point of view and argue that!
A pretty good way of getting as close to the truth as current understanding allows.

Yeh, no.. This guy just thought he could bring his Facebook post skills to the big boy table.

 

[DaVegaNL]

what im joking about is how lazy devs are. *when you hire more people just to work even slower*

Dude. If you are being critical, show it in a more constructive way. That way, you catch the same amount of flak, but at least it's constructive.

 

[DaVegaNL]

Would you idiots shut up about how you feel progression should be compared to where it is? If you're not the PM for the game, nobody cares about how you would do it or your opinion on the game's progress. They are clearly working on it as evidenced by comments by multiple devs meanwhile you dumbasses can't get over the time length between releases.
EDIT: IMO the reputation system was ruined by the participation trophy thread.

Wow. Such constructive feedback. Wow.

 

[DaVegaNL]

5 years of German and all I got is
Ich Weiss nichts

Ich habe keine Beine

Pretty difficult to walk that way, mate!

 

[Prisma501]

Would you idiots shut up about how you feel progression should be compared to where it is? If you're not the PM for the game, nobody cares about how you would do it or your opinion on the game's progress. They are clearly working on it as evidenced by comments by multiple devs meanwhile you dumbasses can't get over the time length between releases.
EDIT: IMO the reputation system was ruined by the participation trophy thread.

Hey man. I took Gazz's advise on adding users to ignore list and i must say that is making forum life a LOT less toxic for me.

Its userprofile -> add to ignore list. Easy peasy. No more crap visible from the mikee's and davega's and all those < 15 posts badly raised kids. They go on there on first read too. Loving it from the minute i started using that handy feature.

Cheers

 

[-Holo-]

What a lot of the impatient complainers here seem to not know or forget is that I personally handle a LARGE portion of the systems in this game, how they are designed and how they work together. If I were to explain it all most of your eyes would simply glaze over, trust me. I now (as of A17) handle Animation Code support, Buffs, avatar controllers, entity stats systems, and UFPS on top of already owning RWG, UMA, items, progression, crafting, xui.
So yes, we added more people. That's not going to speed things up, it's simply going to make it better quality. Having 20 heart surgeons in an OR doesn't speed up the operation now does it? It does however ensure a better quality result as more people are looking at things.

People can complain about timelines all they want. We finally figured out what all systems there would be, sat down with our new Game Designer and balanced things out and discussed how they talk to each other, I wrote the new min effect system to encompass all desired functionality so that we can easily expand with little or no code support in the future. Providing not only backward compatibility, but more things modders will be able to edit from xml, making a better experience for A17 and beyond.

So sure, it's going slow, but that's because we redistributed the systems and I took over more for this alpha to get a solid framework in.

Sorry had to pull out my +1 club of common sense there. Back to the staff of kindness. lol

Note: Money helps me live but it has never been and will never be my goal personally. I've reached my goal. Make games for a living. Everything else is icing on the cake for me.

This is not specifically A17 question, but seeing that you are a system-mastermind of many things™ perhaps the best person to ask about Unity's odd performance issues?

It's something I have noticed in every single Unity game that offers "unlimited" building, 7 Days, Kerbal Space Program, Empyrion, Planet Explorers and more that I can't recall the names of just now, (Yes, I'm a sucker for survival/crafting games ) but as soon as a certain point of complexity is reached, the engine chokes and framerate drops.

I always keep track on how much resources are used from the computer (hurray for MSI afterburner and logitech g19), and it's not limited to the computers power, plenty of ram free, no cpu cores are even close to being maxed, generally over half the vram is free and the graphicscard is not being utilized nearly fully.

(in 7days one example would be the skyscrapers where the framerate is cut in half but no strain is put on the hardware)

Is this something that's on the radar, and more important, is it something that can be fixed/lessened?

/Holo

 

[archergod]

Can I suggest change of thread name from "Developer Diary" to "Critise developer here" ..

At end of day it is their game, if you feel they are slow. Go play something else. if you think they leave bug, why you bother. If you still bother I am sure Fun pimps like my next words, Go invest in their team, your $20 purchase won't ask them to go your way. But your $20Million will surely. Then they will follow your advice and make a game for you.

For me, I will wait for what they come up with. If they can make A16 playable for me with all bugs and progression Issues and all bad graphics, I Am sure a17 give me enough that I can play it for my limited time rest all is whatever ...

 

[sillls]

This is not specifically A17 question, but seeing that you are a system-mastermind of many things™ perhaps the best person to ask about Unity's odd performance issues?
It's something I have noticed in every single Unity game that offers "unlimited" building, 7 Days, Kerbal Space Program, Empyrion, Planet Explorers and more that I can't recall the names of just now, (Yes, I'm a sucker for survival/crafting games ) but as soon as a certain point of complexity is reached, the engine chokes and framerate drops.

I always keep track on how much resources are used from the computer (hurray for MSI afterburner and logitech g19), and it's not limited to the computers power, plenty of ram free, no cpu cores are even close to being maxed, generally over half the vram is free and the graphicscard is not being utilized nearly fully.

(in 7days one example would be the skyscrapers where the framerate is cut in half but no strain is put on the hardware)

Is this something that's on the radar, and more important, is it something that can be fixed/lessened?

/Holo

Something is bottlenecking the game. I don't know what it is but you may need to talk to a computer guy. Could try Best Buy, The Geek squad, at the store.

I've also found this link that may help: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/electronics/geek-squad/pcmcat138100050018.c?id=pcmcat138100050018

I have never used this link though and recommend that you call the store and ask for The Geek squad.

 

[Menace312]

This is not specifically A17 question, but seeing that you are a system-mastermind of many things™ perhaps the best person to ask about Unity's odd performance issues?
It's something I have noticed in every single Unity game that offers "unlimited" building, 7 Days, Kerbal Space Program, Empyrion, Planet Explorers and more that I can't recall the names of just now, (Yes, I'm a sucker for survival/crafting games ) but as soon as a certain point of complexity is reached, the engine chokes and framerate drops.

I always keep track on how much resources are used from the computer (hurray for MSI afterburner and logitech g19), and it's not limited to the computers power, plenty of ram free, no cpu cores are even close to being maxed, generally over half the vram is free and the graphicscard is not being utilized nearly fully.

(in 7days one example would be the skyscrapers where the framerate is cut in half but no strain is put on the hardware)

Is this something that's on the radar, and more important, is it something that can be fixed/lessened?

/Holo

Its hard to pin down, right?

I've noticed it too...

It doesn't seem to matter much what you do in the graphical options. It seems you just get to a point, where there are too much going on, calculation wise, and you get the microstutter.

As you point out, I think its a limitation in the Unity engine.

Now... Im in no way a game programmer, but the voxelbased Unity engine is complex, and a new idea, and they are actively updating it... So it may get better eventually.

But! All that said... I haven't really been able to find any info on this online?

So maybe Unity themselfs are scratching their heads over this?

Or maybe the survival games using the engine are all badly optimised at this point (unlikely this).

Anyone in the know?

 

[DaVegaNL]

What a lot of the impatient complainers here seem to not know or forget is that I personally handle a LARGE portion of the systems in this game, how they are designed and how they work together. If I were to explain it all most of your eyes would simply glaze over, trust me. I now (as of A17) handle Animation Code support, Buffs, avatar controllers, entity stats systems, and UFPS on top of already owning RWG, UMA, items, progression, crafting, xui.
So yes, we added more people. That's not going to speed things up, it's simply going to make it better quality. Having 20 heart surgeons in an OR doesn't speed up the operation now does it? It does however ensure a better quality result as more people are looking at things.

People can complain about timelines all they want. We finally figured out what all systems there would be, sat down with our new Game Designer and balanced things out and discussed how they talk to each other, I wrote the new min effect system to encompass all desired functionality so that we can easily expand with little or no code support in the future. Providing not only backward compatibility, but more things modders will be able to edit from xml, making a better experience for A17 and beyond.

So sure, it's going slow, but that's because we redistributed the systems and I took over more for this alpha to get a solid framework in.

Sorry had to pull out my +1 club of common sense there. Back to the staff of kindness. lol

Note: Money helps me live but it has never been and will never be my goal personally. I've reached my goal. Make games for a living. Everything else is icing on the cake for me.

Thanks for the update! Since RWG is on your plate as well, can I ask if you did something noteworthy on it over the past few months? Just curious!

- - - Updated - - -

Hey man. I took Gazz's advise on adding users to ignore list and i must say that is making forum life a LOT less toxic for me.
Its userprofile -> add to ignore list. Easy peasy. No more crap visible from the mikee's and davega's and all those < 15 posts badly raised kids. They go on there on first read too. Loving it from the minute i started using that handy feature.

Cheers

I'm getting flashbacks from my teenage years, when blocking people on MSN Messenger was all the rage. Then unblocking them. Then blocking them. Such maturity.

 

[Prisma501]

Its hard to pin down, right?I've noticed it too...

It doesn't seem to matter much what you do in the graphical options. It seems you just get to a point, where there are too much going on, calculation wise, and you get the microstutter.

As you point out, I think its a limitation in the Unity engine.

Now... Im in no way a game programmer, but the voxelbased Unity engine is complex, and a new idea, and they are actively updating it... So it may get better eventually.

But! All that said... I haven't really been able to find any info on this online?

So maybe Unity themselfs are scratching their heads over this?

Or maybe the survival games using the engine are all badly optimised at this point (unlikely this).

Anyone in the know?

There is a piece of info on improving performance in there. Its still evolving though, but i think the underlying unity engine will give us the boost to overcome those performance hurdles eventually.

https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/07/11/introducing-unity-2017/

Cheers

 

[Xeen]

So you want 7DTD to perform better, build a faster computer core.

When it comes to CPU's there are two metrics that really matter, how many parallel calculations can be done and the speed at which they can be completed.

Specifically since many calculations are required simultaneously the speed at which they can be completed is the metric in which we define performance of the game.

The short explanation is your CPU matters, lets use the Intel Core i7-7820X Skylake-X 8-Core 3.6 GHz LGA 2066 for this example, while it is not Intel's flagship it is the most robust most capable i7 ever made.

Without getting into a bunch of mind numbing numbers and statistics suffice it to say that this CPU is a beast capable of destroying the most demanding games.

There are two sides of the coin and the graphics card isn't the end all and be all of frames per second, if you want to go fast build a faster computer core and then add a state of the art graphics card.

 

[Menace312]

There is a piece of info on improving performance in there. Its still evolving though, but i think the underlying unity engine will give us the boost to overcome those performance hurdles eventually.
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/07/11/introducing-unity-2017/

Cheers

Thx prisma, I have been stalking that blog a bit too . Nothing concrete though...

It seems to be a work in progress.

But that's hardly surprising with the Unity guys...

They seem to have a lot of loose ends, or possible features...

Depends on your preferred way of looking at it

 

[Menace312]

So you want 7DTD to perform better, build a faster computer core.
-snip-

If this was directed towards me, I will point you to the original OP's post. That was Halo.

If you read that, you'd know that the PC is not the factor here...

I know PC hardware young Padawan...

 

[StompyNZ]

If I were to explain it all most of your eyes would simply glaze over, trust me.

I can vouch for that, I often have no idea what you are saying and I'm not a novice at coding

 

[Xeen]

If this was directed towards me, I will point you to the original OP's post. That was Halo.
If you read that, you'd know that the PC is not the factor here...

I know PC hardware young Padawan...

It wasn't directed at anyone in particular, just at anyone wondering why their game doesn't run very well.

I have a gaming rig with said CPU and it runs 7DTD flawlessly at max settings, even with the advanced visual processing toys turned on.

As far as the young Padawan comment goes, lol I've been building computers since 1995, most of the kids that post here weren't even born yet.