PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[Scyris]

Not sure if this has been mentioned already, but wondering if the permanent fog bug in 16.4 (latest on steam) could be fixed? It seems after you've been playing for a while, at some point it will get foggy and the fog then never lifts. It sticks through all biomes and never ever gets clear, day or night. Have to exit the game and reload and then it's fine again until it gets foggy again.
Makes it really annoying to have to quit and load all the time just to be able to see more than 20 blocks in any direction. Can't see any airdrops as you're visibility is cut off severely, and just makes everything generally dull and boring to look at.

I'm sure this isn't the intended behavior, because the first few hours of playing are fine, and after you exit and reload everything's so clear.

If it was single player you could hit F1 open console and type

weather clouds 0

to clear that fog instantly. I get that fog in SP all the time, and it doesn't go away sometimes even on reloading the game. Only 8 gb of ram though.

 

[Aldranon]

Wow. This. Right down to the paper bag.

Was that a slow roast for a delicate crunch or a quick fry for a crackly crunch?

 

[toxicbubble]

If it was single player you could hit F1 open console and type weather clouds 0

to clear that fog instantly. I get that fog in SP all the time, and it doesn't go away sometimes even on reloading the game. Only 8 gb of ram though.

I think that disables all weather, or at least clouds permanently until you exit. I don't mind some fog sometimes, there should be periods of low visibility. That's why I exit, and reload, so the weather will still cycle properly, until the permanent fog gets stuck on again.

I'm happy that there's two or more workarounds, but hopefully by mentioning it here it might get fixed properly in A17 as well thanks for the suggested workarounds though!

 

[Odetta]

You know what would be awesome, but probably not possible?

Distant Weather:

- Seeing the mountain tops covered in mist/fog

- Seeing a giant dust storm loom closer and closer to your area

- Seeing a blizzard up ahead in a nearby town

- Seeing massive rain/thunder clouds drenching the desert

- High tailing it out of dodge when you see that radiation storm closing in on you

Maybe the sequel.

 

[trielkee]

Now that would be really something. Great idea.

 

[archergod]

You know what would be awesome, but probably not possible?
Distant Weather:

- Seeing the mountain tops covered in mist/fog

- Seeing a giant dust storm loom closer and closer to your area

- Seeing a blizzard up ahead in a nearby town

- Seeing massive rain/thunder clouds drenching the desert

- High tailing it out of dodge when you see that radiation storm closing in on you

Maybe the sequel.

Well, it sounds good, but people are complaining of lag without it. So, no I don't want it.. as I cannot afford a $3000 game rig and yet complain of it's lag

 

[beerfly]

This with the weather sounds possible

How about seasons, I remember a discusion about season to bring better experience in farming , traveling..

 

[Tilleen]

Do they have a plan?

They have 5/12 th of a Plan.

 

[archergod]

This with the weather sounds possibleHow about seasons, I remember a discusion about season to bring better experience in farming , traveling..

Season is good, but based on starvation mod, where you have to take care of crop for water and rain, I won't like it much. The main essence of game is zombie killing.. if I have to spend more forced time on farming then it is no better than farm ville .. anyone remember that?

 

[beerfly]

Season is good, but based on starvation mod, where you have to take care of crop for water and rain, I won't like it much. The main essence of game is zombie killing.. if I have to spend more forced time on farming then it is no better than farm ville .. anyone remember that?

Zombie killing will always be a big part of the game and i dont think will make our lives harder , more like to think in the future.. Nothing bad at all.

 

[KingSlayerGM]

Well, it sounds good, but people are complaining of lag without it. So, no I don't want it.. as I cannot afford a $3000 game rig and yet complain of it's lag

Well, fornite has distant storms... and it runs everywhere (almost)

 

[archergod]

Well, fornite has distant storms... and it runs everywhere (almost)

never play that game, but I am pretty sure they do not have Digging a ground .. they can have destroyable Doors, but maybe not each and every block been destroyed. Rendering a calculatoin with Mist and fog is way too complex of GPU and hence then lag will occur.

It still can be added, but if in a16/17 we are talking about optmizing then surely it take them much more time and 2-3 times better hardware to get it smooth game play.

 

[Menace312]

Well, it sounds good, but people are complaining of lag without it. So, no I don't want it.. as I cannot afford a $3000 game rig and yet complain of it's lag

I never had lag, or what I perceived as lag, do to changing weather??!??

World generation lag - yes.

Micro stutter lag - yes.

Too many players for the server to handle = lag - yes.

But not for the weather... You sir may need a new PC regardless...

 

[toores]

In the meantime:IF you have 16gb ram: Run it off a server in the background on your same rig you play the client on. Nominal increase of ram doing it this way. Plus it plays smoother.

Temporary problem solved.

I wish i knew that. I've also been doing regular restarts to the game when i have longer sessions.

 

[The Gronk]

Volumetric weather shouldn't be too hard to do and the effect would look good on distant terrain. Weather is a relatively large scale phenomena, or at least it can be for these purposes. I doubt you'd have to measure a weather pattern such as a cluster of clouds at anything less than 100-250m.

Being able to see a storm looming on the horizon would add a lot to immersion, a pendulous red and black cloud slowly covering the entire sky would be a potent warning that horde night is upon you.

 

[toores]

You know what would be awesome, but probably not possible?
Distant Weather:

- Seeing the mountain tops covered in mist/fog

- Seeing a giant dust storm loom closer and closer to your area

- Seeing a blizzard up ahead in a nearby town

- Seeing massive rain/thunder clouds drenching the desert

- High tailing it out of dodge when you see that radiation storm closing in on you

Maybe the sequel.

Distant weather might be hard to accomplish... idk.

I'd like to see global weather that doesn't change on the biome borders when you go back and forth. At the moment it breaks the immersion a bit when you drive between biomes and the weather keeps bouncing. Ideally there could be separate "weather biomes" that slowly move across the map and bring different conditions.

Of course rain would turn to snow when temp is below 0 Celsius and wind would cause different visual effets in differet biomes (sandstorm vs snowstorm).

EDIT:

+ little details that would add much to the game world, like wet surfaces that remain for couple of hours after rainfall, maybe coupled with more vivid colors until it all dries. Maybe some puddles. And snow that covers and melts much more slowly.

 

[Maguvas]

As far as we know, they haven't really begun with building background story until recently. In A16 the pharmaceutical tower is one of the locations suspected to be part of the background hints but who knows? We probably won't get much spoiler info from the developers (and that is as it should be).
In A17 they have rebuilt/upgraded the quest and dialog system, one reason probably being the ability to now tell a story in dialogs and quests. You will find that in Navezgane mostly, not RandomGen

See also the known features list Roland keeps updated on the first page of this thread.

Thank you and indeed I'm monitoring the features list continuously: I subscribed to the forum just because I felt that something about plot and story is not there. Anyway this game is a sandbox and a story is not needed so as of now I must thank the devs because also considering a story in a sandbox game is not as usual as someone may think.

So thank you for any enhancement about this in the game.

 

[Maguvas]

It sounds like we're not going to get a story on how the apoc started, just what's going on now... two factions, the Duke's and White River, each competing for resources... White River is the neutral/friendly, and the Duke is the bad guy. That painting MM keeps showing of an old white dude has something to do with the White River faction, maybe indicating faction friendly areas... beyond that, no clue.

Yeah I've read about the factions and it is definitely interesting and it'll add depth to the as is world. I hope anyway factions shall be designed more like Gothic 1/2 games where it was not immediately clear to know if someone is good or bad.

As far as I remember the best games where factions are implemented are Gothic, Morrowind and Fallout New Vegas: in these games factions are deeply nested into the game world and also in the plot evolution they were not just 2ndary quests generator like in many other games. I'm sure 7d2d will do even better!

 

[Maguvas]

Right, we don't really have much info on work about backstory apart from "Backstories for many of the POIs". And it could be those poi backstories are just about white river and Duke
But backstory about the apocalypse for me is something like the low hanging fruit of story contents, I would find it suprising if they don't put it in now.

To me it would be nice to have both backstory, current hints and maybe some crumb for an evolution in the future... maybe some NPC scientist that at a certain day flies away to save or destroy another city. You'll meet him again in a DLC or in 7d2d2.

- - - Updated - - -

I hope there are more tidbits lying around for the apoc origin, kind of like how the newspapers on the ground talk about it a bit. That'd be cool to figure the whole thing out based on those types of random clues.

...do you believe me if I say that my first game was spent in treasure hunt for newspapers? Found just the two of them: flu and nuclear. Definitely a topic to enhance.

 

[Maguvas]

Sequel and new game are not mutually exclusive. think franchise .... 28 days to die - mutations, updated gear and environments, could be a western, sci fi, or anything. cut the zombies (or not) add mutants, aliens, introduce backstory to 7 days today (alien virus?).
wonderful thing franchises.

Agreed 100%