PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[DaVegaNL]

Most of the extra work will be done by the distant terrain system which is far faster and more efficient than the local terrain system. The slowdown should be negligible.

Yeah but in A16, this slowdown is real. If you enter a city with multiple skyscrapers, you'll be getting a big hit to your performance for a certain time. Have the systems regarding this issue been changed in A17 (distant terrain, like you mentioned)? If not, then there will be similar performance issues in A17. Worse, even, since there are more settlements.

 

[The Gronk]

Yeah but in A16, this slowdown is real. If you enter a city with multiple skyscrapers, you'll be getting a big hit to your performance for a certain time. Have the systems regarding this issue been changed in A17 (distant terrain, like you mentioned)? If not, then there will be similar performance issues in A17. Worse, even, since there are more settlements.

The slowdown you're seeing is due to the local terrain system, not the distant terrain system.

Okay, let's put this into perspective. Each settlement is around 1km^2 in size, depending on your settings the local terrain system is around 0.5km^2 at most. Each settlement should be around 1-2km apart. You'll never show more than a portion of a single settlement on the local terrain system at any given time.

The problems with large buildings being shown by the local terrain system will still be there but you will never show more buildings than you do now. Large buildings on the distant terrain system aren't a problem because it's a static, simplified, mesh instead of a fully rendered voxel building.

There's been a distant terrain system in place for quite some time now. You know when you go out scavenging, come back, and there's a mesh covering where you've cleared blocks for your base? Most noticable by a vertical surface with bands of colour if you've dug a trench. That's the distant terrain system not being destroyed when you get too close.

 

[DaVegaNL]

The slowdown you're seeing is due to the local terrain system, not the distant terrain system.
Okay, let's put this into perspective. Each settlement is around 1km^2 in size, depending on your settings the local terrain system is around 0.5km^2 at most. Each settlement should be around 1-2km apart. You'll never show more than a portion of a single settlement on the local terrain system at any given time.

The problems with large buildings being shown by the local terrain system will still be there but you will never show more buildings than you do now. Large buildings on the distant terrain system aren't a problem because it's a static, simplified, mesh instead of a fully rendered voxel building.

Thanks for the analysis! My issue is not with the magnitude of the slowdown, but with its frequency.

The slowdown occurs in both our analyses due to the fact that resource-consuming buildings are located in the local terrain system. Makes sense. If the POI/city density gets increased, one can expect more instances of this slowdown occurring over a given timespan (the magnitude of this slowdown is not affected). Hence I'm expecting more often slowdowns and performance issues, not per se stronger ones.

I would prefer a 30 FPS drop every 10 minutes over a 10 FPS-drop multiple times a minute.

 

[The Gronk]

Thanks for the analysis! My issue is not with the magnitude of the slowdown, but with its frequency.
The slowdown occurs in both our analyses due to the fact that resource-consuming buildings are located in the local terrain system. Makes sense. If the POI/city density gets increased, one can expect more instances of this slowdown occurring over a given timespan (the magnitude of this slowdown is not affected). Hence I'm expecting more often slowdowns and performance issues, not per se stronger ones.

I would prefer a 30 FPS drop every 10 minutes over a 10 FPS-drop multiple times a minute.

A POI is usually a single building in the countryside, it's rare to find a skyscraper on the side of a hill. There's likely to be a few changes to the settlement generation system but, thankfully, the buildings of a town in that part of the world are usually low and spread quite far apart (especially for someone used to urban British living).

You should be able to avoid large buildings and fps drops pretty easily if know what's causing the problem. I sometimes play purely in the countryside, only going to small towns when absolutely necessary. If there isn't enough countryside between POI's and towns it should be pretty simple to spread them out a bit in the xml. With the correct settings in the new system you should be able to generate a map with even fewer causes of fps drops and more countryside than you can throw a pile of silage at.

 

[sillls]

I swear they purposely do things every alpha update to mess with the timing so you have to relearn how to melee. This time will be no different with the added variables of:
1) You just don't know when they're really dead now with the ragdolling and removal of the enemy HP bar

2) They can hit mid-animation which makes for getting sucker punched if you're battling the way you're used to

3) You have to have the cursor exactly on them when the hit lands to actually hit them. Hits are much less forgiving.

4) Power attacks are tempting but tough and you will take hits trying to land them.

I'm just warning people to have medkits and beer handy during the first few hours of new-update-melee-timing-adaptation because the learning curve is real.

Sometimes you can't tell if zombies are dead (really dead) in Alpha 16.

I was facing off several groups of a hoard that chose to attack me in daylight at my new fort. The angle of attack was through were a river joined.

The one in the last group, a former cheerleader, last of one of the groups, attacked. I hit it and it went down. Then hit it again, knocking her arm off. It did not make a sound. So I was facing down two Big Hungry zombies coming up the bank when I get hit in the side by the one arm zombie.

Totally messed me up and had to change angles of attack. Still won though.

But anyways... To Roland and TFP's who (think) they can made the next group of zombies challenging. I say BRING IT!

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Ambient occlusion and occlusion culling are two different features.
Ambient occlusion:

Occlusion culling:

Wow nice. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Unkfester.pm]

Navezgane is 32 km^2, and random gen will be 64 km^2 so it will be twice as big.


I have one question. This map will be 8000x8000m, so when i will generate new map on single player I will be dropped just in the middle of it or in some range from the middle? It will be possible to be dropped just next to the edge or not?

ps. its so damn hot these days, cant focus properly, so many mistakes...

It would be great if they joined edges of map so if you left on East side of map you would seamlessly appear on west side. Same north/south

 

[The Gronk]

It would be great if they joined edges of map so if you left on East side of map you would seamlessly appear on west side. Same north/south

Wrappable terrain would be cool but it's a nightmare to set up the noise generators for it, more so when the terrain size is adjustable.

 

[Gareee]

AO just looks SO much more realistic.

My wife (a gamergirl aka Teamhair) was reading over my shoulder about mapgate yesterday and commented, "Why did they invest so much time adding more vehicles when we can just run across the map in a day now?" She really loved the exploring and discovering aspect of the game before, and hunting for resources we needed in a htf biome.

I Hope we CAN just increase the generated size in options, and then just live with the longer generation time.

IMHO to make obtaining vehicles more valuable game play wise, you need a play reason to have them. If you can completely cross the map on the bicycle or scooter in a day, there isn't much value to work towards getting the chopper or 4x4. Initially, to try them, hell yeah. But longer term play wise, I'm not so sure? Maybe if they have significantly more storage for those big poi loot, but obtaining the additional backpack slots kind of negates that. Anticipating people spending more gameplay time exploring big pois is also devalues gameplay to get the new vehicles because you might no longer need them with the reduced default map size.

It could well be the older poi generation density was far more like real life than the new. If I drive for instance, from our town (small, pop of 9,000) to the nearest large town (Atlanta) Most of the 3 hour drive (180 miles) is woods or empty land. We pass through 2 smallish towns, and probably 40 poi locations strip malls... chain places.... tourist traps, but we can easily drive for 15 minutes and see nothing but empty roadsides.

If we were however down in Florida near Disney or Orlando, we couldn't drive more than a minute without seeing some place to stop along the road. But I do recall just completely blocking out and ignoring all that "higher density" to get to a specific location.

I really liked seeing a big empty desert or mountain area that I'd have to struggle to get across in a16. I won't miss those huge lakes though that took an entire day to cross.

Roland, could you at least confirm that we CAN increase the initial map size generation in rgw without making the game unplayable?

That would probably put an end to the speculation and discussion of mapgate.

Then we can all female dog about AO being removed instead...

 

[Gareee]

Wrappable terrain would be cool but it's a nightmare to set up the noise generators for it, more so when the terrain size is adjustable.

I'd rather just see working hazmat suits, and irradiated biomes on the outer edge. If the suits only blocked say, max 90% of radiation, that would limit people being able to travel too far into it, and unique valuable resources could be put into it to make it a valuable area to risk exploring t least some.

 

[Xeen]

Vehicles have value regardless of the map size because you can redeploy at speed and store more loot and will have even more value once the multi-passenger feature is implemented.

 

[Tin]

I would like TFP to attempt a planet 7d2d.

Nothing as big as the Earth or anything, just enough so the player can't realize the curve while traveling that much.

Eventually the planet would be fully generated, unlike how it is in A16.4(b8), where it basically can continue to gen as long as you have enough space to do so, gobbling up more and more resources till eventually it crashes.

 

[trielkee]

Liking the planet idea.

 

[SnowDog1942]

AO just looks SO much more realistic.
My wife (a gamergirl aka Teamhair) was reading over my shoulder about mapgate yesterday and commented, "Why did they invest so much time adding more vehicles when we can just run across the map in a day now?" She really loved the exploring and discovering aspect of the game before, and hunting for resources we needed in a htf biome.

I Hope we CAN just increase the generated size in options, and then just live with the longer generation time.

IMHO to make obtaining vehicles more valuable game play wise, you need a play reason to have them. If you can completely cross the map on the bicycle or scooter in a day, there isn't much value to work towards getting the chopper or 4x4. Initially, to try them, hell yeah. But longer term play wise, I'm not so sure? Maybe if they have significantly more storage for those big poi loot, but obtaining the additional backpack slots kind of negates that. Anticipating people spending more gameplay time exploring big pois is also devalues gameplay to get the new vehicles because you might no longer need them with the reduced default map size.

It could well be the older poi generation density was far more like real life than the new. If I drive for instance, from our town (small, pop of 9,000) to the nearest large town (Atlanta) Most of the 3 hour drive (180 miles) is woods or empty land. We pass through 2 smallish towns, and probably 40 poi locations strip malls... chain places.... tourist traps, but we can easily drive for 15 minutes and see nothing but empty roadsides.

If we were however down in Florida near Disney or Orlando, we couldn't drive more than a minute without seeing some place to stop along the road. But I do recall just completely blocking out and ignoring all that "higher density" to get to a specific location.

I really liked seeing a big empty desert or mountain area that I'd have to struggle to get across in a16. I won't miss those huge lakes though that took an entire day to cross.

Roland, could you at least confirm that we CAN increase the initial map size generation in rgw without making the game unplayable?

That would probably put an end to the speculation and discussion of mapgate.

Then we can all female dog about AO being removed instead...

I cant see them reducing the map size so drastically just to shorten the one time generation. That would make the decision stupid. Right now the decision sucks but its not stupid, they HAVE to have more of a reason beyond a one time per map creation time decrease.

 

[The Gronk]

I cant see them reducing the map size so drastically just to shorten the one time generation. That would make the decision stupid. Right now the decision sucks but its not stupid, they HAVE to have more of a reason beyond a one time per map creation time decrease.

Minimum system requirements.

The basic game should run reasonably well on a potato, anything after that is icing on the cake. Depending on how much processing power you have generating a map may take far too long. How many players are willing to let the map generate for 2-3 hours before they even play their first game?

 

[lord_ahriman]

Navezgane is 32 km^2, and random gen will be 64 km^2 so it will be twice as big.


I have one question. This map will be 8000x8000m, so when i will generate new map on single player I will be dropped just in the middle of it or in some range from the middle? It will be possible to be dropped just next to the edge or not?

ps. its so damn hot these days, cant focus properly, so many mistakes...

I'm almost 100% sure Roland said few weeks ago Navezgane map is bigger now.

Btw, does anyone have an idea about "how many skill points till lvl 200 do we have now"?

 

[SxR]

Oh uh by the way now that we're talking graphical features, has long distance been fixed yet? :x

 

[Gareee]

0 byte 7 days steam "update" is just a cruel joke.

Stop that, Madmole!

 

[The Gronk]

0 byte 7 days steam "update" is just a cruel joke.
Stop that, Madmole!

MadMole is an artist, and a pretty good one at that, but he ain't no code-monkey. I doubt he could do that if he tried

 

[art1336]

Snark away, i wont be making another comment on after this. Pointless reading.
- i had my spine fused 24th Feb 2008. No pain for 3 years than gave out again. On disability ever since. Im 2 metres tall and 110kgs. Spend most of my days in bed. Only relief is playing 7days from my bed.

I hate to hear that Matt. I wish you a speedy recovery from your surgery, even if you aren't reading it.

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I just read on the first page that the "Blimp" was cancelled with disappointment.
I didn't know this was ever really a thing... But more over. Disappointed. Really?

I'm actually looking forward to the Gyrocopter though. Should also be faster than any blimp, by all rights.

Holy Mother of Trolland!?!?!?!?!!?! Blimps?!? I don't think I've ever heard that mentioned. Where did someone talk about that, if any of the devs did? Is he just trolling us again? Roland's trolling, gotta be...

 

[Xeen]

Minimum system requirements.
The basic game should run reasonably well on a potato, anything after that is icing on the cake. Depending on how much processing power you have generating a map may take far too long. How many players are willing to let the map generate for 2-3 hours before they even play their first game?

What do you consider to be reasonably well, IMO anything under 45 FPS on high settings isn't reasonably well, you must have low expectations.

Furthermore anyone who is playing this game on a potato while expecting The Fun Pimps to produce miracles don't have reasonable expectations.