PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[Spectral Force]

A lot of stuff, code and content wise is being worked on. Large code bases always have plenty of bugs or less than optimal features, which will get worked on right up to any kind of patch or release day.

Can you elaborate as far as what the current most time consuming portion is? ie vehicle coding, ai, npc's?

 

[HIREDGUN]

Antivirus

Would anyone know why suddenly my anti-virus is treating the EAC thing like a bad thing? Got a bunch of warnings I was being invaded and the game would not run... :-(
Specifically, it is my laptop and that anti-virus.. this desktop could care less apparently... :-/

Which AV are your running?

I run AVAST with no problems and it is on the GMER technology with all the top are on.

I also have run it and recommended it to my clients (300+ installs with no issues, mostly.)

 

[Spectral Force]

All you had to do is read first/2 post

The microstuttering, I believe what you are referring to, is how far away from 0,0 you get? They added in something called dynamic spawning, which basically takes 0,0 with your character, so in theory this could lead to larger maps.

The minibike issue is due to it being a speed buff on your character in combination with an unoptimized game that can not process the loading of the chunks you are effectively running like the Flash through that unloaded area. I believe they mentioned a possible fix for this in the threads as well, something with pregenning the RWG like it does for Navezgame.

My opinion based on what I've read in this thread. I could be wrong.

 

[Roland]

The microstuttering, I believe what you are referring to, is how far away from 0,0 you get? They added in something called dynamic spawning, which basically takes 0,0 with your character, so in theory this could lead to larger maps.
The minibike issue is due to it being a speed buff on your character in combination with an unoptimized game that can not process the loading of the chunks you are effectively running like the Flash through that unloaded area. I believe they mentioned a possible fix for this in the threads as well, something with pregenning the RWG like it does for Navezgame.

My opinion based on what I've read in this thread. I could be wrong.

Shaking and crosshair misalignment was due to distance from (0,0) and was solved by moving to a dynamic origin point that follows you as you move.

Microstuttering was caused by garbage collection and UFPS camera has also been solved. There might be additional causes of the microstuttering that they will have to investigate but those were the two major sources.

Vehicles outpacing the chunk loading will hopefully be fixed with the new RWG pregeneration.

Three different issues all being worked on and all three solutions are mentioned on the first page.

 

[TheSurvivor]

The bar filled up awful fast today.

 

[Roland]

The bar filled up awful fast today.

....and now you've jinxed it...

 

[Spaceghost]

....and now you've jinxed it...

joke please

Two goldfish are in a tank and one says to the other, "I hope YOU know how to drive this thing."

 

[PiercedFromWithin]

The devs probably already know this but the way I handle this is to have each ai measure its origin offset from the last frame (use that to figure the actual velocity by dividing the offset by frametime), send that offset to the client if it has a different value than the previous value, along with the current actual origin. Then on the client set that actual velocity as the velocity, and find the offset from the client's current ai origin to the actual origin that was sent. Use that offset to add a secondary velocity to the movement each frame to catch up to where the ai should be, at any designated speed. This should keep your ai very close to where they actually are on the server.
Edit: Also if the actual velocity on the server becomes '0 0 0', you then tell the client the ai is stopping, and where it is stopping, then lerp to that point on the client.

Most of that went straight over my head, but if it works I hope they're listening or have a similarly effective solution. That was easily one of the most annoying problems I had playing the game co-op... made extra infuriating because it by definition never happens in SP.

 

[Kosmic Kerman]

Already fixed for A17 as far as I know.

I would say it’s more likely the microstutter was improved. Unity’s GC is always likely to cause some stutter. I think Kin said there were optimizations made that drastically reduced how much garbage was created in previous versions thereby reducing the load on the GC. The minibike on MP I have no idea about. However given that the vehicle system was ripped out and replaced. I’d imagine the old problems are probably gone but may be replaced by new ones.

 

[The Gronk]

I would say it’s more likely the microstutter was improved. Unity’s GC is always likely to cause some stutter. I think Kin said there were optimizations made that drastically reduced how much garbage was created in previous versions thereby reducing the load on the GC. The minibike on MP I have no idea about. However given that the vehicle system was ripped out and replaced. I’d imagine the old problems are probably gone but may be replaced by new ones.

The GC problem with C# isn't limited to unity, it's just more of an issue there. There are plans to improve the GC with a group of interested parties, including microsoft and unity, working to make it better. That was announced about six months ago although unity's new job system has manual memory allocation via c++ code so improvements will likely be seen in unity games in the next year or two.

 

[qprophet]

Those stories that you tell your friends later which stem from different mechanics working together to create a situation larger than themselves. Gestalt gaming
A simple example would be the bear that attacks the zombies chasing you and saves your low-level character from death. You can never pat him on the head to thank him but that big hairy murder-machine saved your life.

Those stories are even better when playing with your friends at the time.

Me: oh crap crap crap...stupid zombie....AAGHHH AGHHHHH!!!

...ha ha...HAHAHAHAHA!!!

Friend: What just happened?

Me: A bear just saved my butt from a zombie. ...****!

Friend: What happened now?

Me: ...GD bear killed me.

 

[Phoenixshade35]

I had a fun idea for a dev item, just for fun haha

Madmoles Beard - Face Item - You gain the strength from the beard of the legendary Madmole, you can now carry 50% more items per space in your inventory but due to your increased muscle mass and facial hair badassery, you move 15% slower on foot and in vehicles

 

[Snowydeath]

Which AV are your running?
I run AVAST with no problems and it is on the GMER technology with all the top are on.

I also have run it and recommended it to my clients (300+ installs with no issues, mostly.)

The problem is AVAST, why does anyone use garbage third party AVs anyway? They literally false flag half the ♥♥♥♥ you download these days anyway. Besides, Windows Defender gets just about anything you can catch from porn sites anyway...

 

[Russiandood]

you can now carry 50% more items per space in your inventory but due to your increased muscle mass and facial hair badassery, you move 15% slower on foot and in vehicles

Oh god, that is one thing I hope they don't add, weight limits. That's what I hated with ARK. I played it for an hour and came back to 7DTD cause I couldn't stand it.

 

[Phoenixshade35]

Oh god, that is one thing I hope they don't add, weight limits. That's what I hated with ARK. I played it for an hour and came back to 7DTD cause I couldn't stand it.

Mine wasn't about weight limits, more of a debuff for using a legendary Item with an awesome effect, can't have good without bad, if they did have weight limits I know there would be skills and stats to increase it, honestly if they add that down the road im ok with it.

 

[Gnomaana]

The problem is AVAST, why does anyone use garbage third party AVs anyway? They literally false flag half the ♥♥♥♥ you download these days anyway. Besides, Windows Defender gets just about anything you can catch from porn sites anyway...

This is what I try to tell EVERYONE. I haven't installed anything but Security Essentials, and then Defender when that went away, in years. The others are worse than the stuff they try to protect you from.

 

[NoamChomsky]

The GC problem with C# isn't limited to unity, it's just more of an issue there. There are plans to improve the GC with a group of interested parties, including microsoft and unity, working to make it better. That was announced about six months ago although unity's new job system has manual memory allocation via c++ code so improvements will likely be seen in unity games in the next year or two.

Problems with GCs aren't just limited to C# either, all of these problems are familiar to Java devs.

A language like Rust or Erlang that have much more strict concepts of object ownership can eliminate or greatly reduce the need to GC objects, while not requiring manual deallocation mistakes like C.

 

[RavenSyndil]

- - - Updated - - -

Which AV are your running?
I run AVAST with no problems and it is on the GMER technology with all the top are on.

I also have run it and recommended it to my clients (300+ installs with no issues, mostly.)

Running Avast on that machine. I ended up going in and entering exceptions for 7DtD and for EAC and then it would let it run. Just was not sure why it did this after running just fine for months. Maybe something updated in Avast and flagged something.. not sure (Google is my friend for fixing things like this, asked Google, walked me through the entire process!)

 

[RavenSyndil]

The problem is AVAST, why does anyone use garbage third party AVs anyway? They literally false flag half the ♥♥♥♥ you download these days anyway. Besides, Windows Defender gets just about anything you can catch from porn sites anyway...

All I had to do was tell Avast to make exceptions for 7DtD and EAC and it was perfectly happy. If you have something that works better, please tell me as I would rather protect my computers (have way too many of them) rather than have them all become bricks when someone does a hostile takeover and encrypts all my files until I pay them to let me have them back. (my solution to that.. wipe the HD, pull it from the system, take it to work and degausse it on the industrial strength degausser they have there, replace it with a newer, faster, smaller HD... but I am not so good at doing that in laptops.. desktops, no problem! LOL)

- - - Updated - - -

Anyway, thank you to everyone who tried to help me continue my daily reset of 7DtD until they release something new. I am trying to see how far I can get in about 2 hours of gametime each day, so when (if?) something new actually comes out, I can hit the ground running! :-D

 

[beerfly]

Didn`t expect that 7dtd zombie illness could go on our computers in a way to make them defend with their own antivirus software.

P.S. make difference between an antivirus software for home use and for public one. It is another topic tho