PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[DUST2DEATH]

So my question is this:

As they get closer, do they dump the previous texture out of memory and load the next highest resolution, OR does the texture simply get updated with more resolution, becoming more sharp and distinct as it comes?

And regardless of either answer, I have a further question.

Say a zombie at three hundred meters is 3 pixels high, does that mean they are only a few colors as there s NO way to tell distance but as they load in they take up more space. (Yes, of course.) - How does that play out when I have five zombies around me, one in my face, the others spread out over 15 meters distant, and then thirty more come RUSHING at me. Will the variation in calls for texture loading cause performance stutters as each different zombie calls on different textures as they are dumping in and out of memory.. or does it simply update as they go, creating a sort of smooth incline so there's no noticeable performance hits.

I ask because the changing ranges, and thus changing the level of detail on textures and high speed database calls and load times might be a problem. It's fine if they're all distant, or spread out even.. but if they're coming in so it takes more and more for the various textures might be a problem.

Long story short, how is texture streaming handled, and what kind of performance hits can we expect when being rushed by large nubmers of zombies spread out over a large distance?

Sorry for all the rambling. My head is still spinning hours later after watching the vid.

I interpretted what MM said as that mip maps were now working correctly.

 

[toores]

Thanks for watching the video! There was just so much to talk about and not enough time to explain properly everything. Its like we switched to unity 2018 and kind of had some broken ass graphics so there was video blackout for a while. Things are starting to look presentable again so and a lot of systems have been coming online during the video blackout so now there is just like so much new stuff to cover, I crammed 2 months of videos into one, but things will be explained as time goes on.

Oh so much stuff to cover!... of course you could do another video today

Anyways, since gore blocks are gone, there is no need for bodies to ever disappear from damage after "death". Just use the despawn timer.

 

[Genosis]

After watching the video and reading (a reasonable amount) of the comments since, I have to say I am actually in favor of the loot modification from the zombies. We didn't see any loot in the video, but I am ok with items from zombies being less common, and often a result of "boss" zombies which would give more an incentive to tangle with them.

Where I am coming from is this:

This was *one* of the chests of loot from one horde night. I setup a base with traps in a killing pit, and killed over 200 zombies that night (I think). As you can tell from the image, it took quite some time to clear out. Sometimes looting and base repair took until the afternoon of the next day. This may be an extreme case, but zombies should be a threat standing BETWEEN you and your objective, not being walking loot pinatas.

That being said, I am concerned about the bone/flesh situation. I use a ton of glue for making duct tape/paper, etc to feed my turrets and repair kits among other things, so I am hoping animals are not my only recourse unless we have animal trapping in the game.

Overall impression is that I am very much excited to play A17 when it is "finished", I look forward to exploring Navezgane with fresh eyes before heading out to random gen. I am impressed with how revitalized it looks, it must have taken a lot of man hours to go over all the minutia involved.

The refreshed POI's are a big departure from the cookie cutter homes I have looted a thousand times. Traversing through Diersville feels so engaging now, looks like a more more organic community instead of a grid of cut and paste homes. Can't wait to crack them all open!

Side note, love the sticky arrows. One of my favorite elements of Skyrim was the "vanity shots" checking out my accuracy after a battle.

Anyhow, I am choosing to stay optimistic despite some concerns. I look forward to seeing what experience the FunPimps have crafted for us and where their vision of the game is going, as well as what "secret features" have been teased earlier. (Are we finally getting "Zombie-Control" in multiplayer as mentioned in the kick-starter campaign? . )

 

[KingSlayerGM]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned something potentially important from the new video yet.
View attachment 24999

Look at "Server Visibility." There's a white arrow on the left, indicating you can choose other options in that direction. There's a gray arrow on the right, indicating no further options in that direction.

Now look at "Max Players." There are white arrows to the left and right, which indicates you can choose other options in either direction.

As in, in the direction of fewer than 8 max players... and the direction of greater than 8 max players.

It's safe to assume whoever designed the new front end UI didn't make up numbers. He or she had the number of players the game will support in mind when creating this UI element.

So the video may reveal that Alpha 17 will officially support more than 8 players. I know lots of servers already exceed the stated 8 player limit already. But this would still be welcome news, if performance & optimization has improved so much that TFP are confident enough to say more than 8 players are now officially supported.

Wow, nice finding! I hope it's true

 

[Tearstone]

I interpretted what MM said as that mip maps were now working correctly.

I wasn't asking about x or y working correctly. I was asking how it's implemented and under a certain set of conditions, how will it affect performance. I.E. Stutters and lag under certain conditions.

I'm asking how it functions 'correctly,' and how that is going to affect gameplay in worst-case scenarios.

 

[KingSlayerGM]

So I watched the new video posted today... well yesterday I guess now. And I noticed one thing when the chat box was brought up. Global seems to be in brackets. Does this hopefully mean that there will be possible channels? Local, or otherwise? Or is it just there to look pretty . I know there's the party and whatnot. Just wasn't sure if a possible local or more coming with it or not!
Definitely a feature I've been hoping to see added in, but I also know you guys have a lot on your plates as is.

Yes, there are now Global, Friends and Party chats

 

[unlike them]

OMG, A17 is the biggest gamechange since forever and people are crying about bones and rotten flesh?

Like most of you, I have thousands of hours, but when A17 drops I'm gonna start on easiest difficulty, because after MM video I feel scared and all my experience is gonna work agains me. The game feels so different:

We can run for a very short time and it makes us lose hunger/hydration, suddenly it compensates for the much smaller map. Also POIs take much longer to loot. A rather drastic change of game pace, we need to adapt. Makes vehicles even more valuable.

Melee combat will take a long time to master.

Underground and stilt bases are no more safe. Biggest game change (for me).

Zeds not dropping loot... My inner hoarder screems, but I can see the reasoning and I agree with the change.

The new character system (attributes, perks, metabolysm) not really shown in the video, the weapon overhaul, it is the great game changer, it makes me so happy.

I'm not much worried about balance, it is the modders job and there are a bunch of modders who know their ♥♥♥♥ (crap). Sorry for those who refuse to play mods.

Happy to hear about unlimited memory for textures, I almost upgraded to 32G memory, but now I think I'll wait and see, maybe 16G is enough for Ravenhearst.

Thank you MM for the video, it makes it easier to wait, I have to agree the game is not ready even for experimental. Thank you faatal, you doing a great job, both on game and on forums.

 

[Robbing Zombie]

Ooo! Thanks for the video! Watched that one and some others that came after on youtube and got really excited. Got some new fun ideas for base building again. Take your time and perfect the A17 so we'll have an even more decent game

 

[dhlmaster]

Nice video! I am loving all of the changes. There's a few things I may not be sure about, but I am eager to play and see how it goes. I'm mostly excited about the fact that so many things have changed and it will be like playing a new game. Aside from a few obvious bugs that I'm sure will get fixed, it looks like the game is ready to play. I hope we have it in our greedy little hands sometime soon.

P.s. I wasn't originally excited for sticky arrows when it was stated that they couldn't be picked up. I'm really happy to see they fixed that!

 

[ColdGate]

This disturbes me much more then removed gore blocks:

- Cannot run in any direction but forwards. Rapid backpedaling is gone. 8/26/18

Is this really necessary? Cant imagine what reason to make this change, and not sure that new powermoves worth to lost this.

 

[forger]

Arrow retrieval: That CAN lead to an inflation of arrows, making them too abundant. The cost of making them needs to go up then. It could be a skill: "Steady Pull" -> % of arrows that break when picking them up again.

Looks like they could use a larger collision box too, to make it easier picking them up.

agree on despawning zombies but about arrow loot - i play on insane, no airdrops, 25% loot and modded gamestage.xml, am always low on arrows, you, obviously, never even thought to make your game more interesting with settings.

next time try playing with 25% loot and you will love new arrow addition, is that need to be locked behind a certain skill? do you need a skill to pull out arrow from dead body? if so then yeah, let's make another skill point waster

 

[unholyjoe]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned something potentially important from the new video yet.
View attachment 24999

Look at "Server Visibility." There's a white arrow on the left, indicating you can choose other options in that direction. There's a gray arrow on the right, indicating no further options in that direction.

Now look at "Max Players." There are white arrows to the left and right, which indicates you can choose other options in either direction.

As in, in the direction of fewer than 8 max players... and the direction of greater than 8 max players.

It's safe to assume whoever designed the new front end UI didn't make up numbers. He or she had the number of players the game will support in mind when creating this UI element.

So the video may reveal that Alpha 17 will officially support more than 8 players. I know lots of servers already exceed the stated 8 player limit already. But this would still be welcome news, if performance & optimization has improved so much that TFP are confident enough to say more than 8 players are now officially supported.

almost basically the same as in the a16.4 settings. just looks different now and a couple more choices.

server visibility (as Roland and I have stated before) are... "not listed, friends only, public (default)"

max players are: "1 player, 2 player, 4 players, 8 players (default), 16 players" (16 is also in the a16.4 as i show in screen shot link)

https://imgur.com/a/l0lKKnG

i hope this helps

side note: on menu like this... the white text is default and yellow when changed (to let you know something has changed or not at default settings) which doesnt mean you cant change it... its just confirmation of not being at default.

 

[Crater Creator]

With the one-off posts out of the way, it's time for my regularly scheduled feedback on the video.

• Are characters using the new shaders now, or just the environment? For instance, I notice the textures on the Decayed Mother in this shot look matte. In other games, specularity would be used to make her head wound 'glisten'. On the bright side (ha), you can actually see detail on all the zombies when they're standing in broad daylight! As I've brought up before and Madmole has agreed, shadows in A16 have been too dang dark. So while characters may have been too bright in this video, I really, really hope TFP don't go overboard and make them too dark again. P.S. Bring back ambient occlusion ASAP, please. ray:
   
   
  
• I noticed there are now green colored backpacks, which I didn't think we had now. Is this the tinting feature in action?
   
   
  
• I'm totally stoked that when you repair an item, it's put back on your belt where you had it before! I have to wonder if this 'inventory memory' also applies to crates, as many have requested over the years.
   
   
  
• It's neat that the steel arrowhead has a different look in the inventory. At first I thought it was a spear tip... which reminded me how much I'd like a spear to poke through iron bars.
   
   
  
• Did anyone else think the chopping sound was out of sync with when the stone axe actually hit something in its animation?
   
   
  
• Recovering arrows rocks! For once, feedback is universally positive. We all owe Roland an apology. In the end, Everdeen turns out to be the big winner after all. :first:
   
   
  
• I'm glad left click will be used more for 'main action' commands now. That's always been the standard as long as there have been two-button mice to my mind. I think Minecraft's controls, like right click to place a block and q to drop an item, are backwards and shouldn't be imitated.
   
   
  
• When Madmole hit that boar, it was so funny, even his character was rolling on the floor, giggling and clutching his sides.
   
   
  
• As I've worked on some prefabs of my own now, I really appreciate the expanded options for furniture etc. The alternate nightstand is particularly useful since the current one fills in for a lot of different things; and the radiator, satellite dish, and wooden shelves will also be great for added variety.
  

 

[bloom_meister]

I'm sure you'll just fire off another "good for you" in reply to this but I have always felt that in a survival game it really is dumb to give incentives to hunt and kill zombies. If running away is just as viable as attacking then the game is getting closer to the way it should be, imo.
Loot tables can be altered to provide more brass. There can be corpse loot boxes added if necessary that give bones and flesh. Changing it as they have has some real benefits that make up for the downsides which as I noted can be firmed up in other ways either by the devs or through modding.

The zombies were once people, some of those people, especially the ones who survived the initial mass death, eg. Soldiers, will quite reasonably have equipment on them that other survivors would want, I could point out to you many MANY movies and episodes of the walking dead where survivors enter areas to kill zombies such as soldiers and police in order to get their guns and ammo from them so maybe for you its dumb and maybe that's why you'd be just another corpse with nothing on it.

 

[bloom_meister]

The game is shifting from improving weapons from a number like 510 to another number like 600 to improving weapons by adding attachments to them. The tiers were changed to reflect durability and number of attachment slots. Once that change was made as far as damage and accuracy was concerned a 150 gun was just the same as 550 gun. All guns of whatever color will do the same base damage and the only advantage of a purple gun will be six slots to fill up with attachments to make the gun more badass than it ever was before even though it had the number 600 associated with it. As much fun as it was in pre A17 alphas pushing numbers up to even higher numbers I think that the mod attachments will be a more interesting and deeper experience.


Why? I'm interested in why you think that the recovery rate of health should not be tied to hydration and what makes it bad design.

I dunno...You still find a ton of the same type of junk you got from zombies but now they are in backpacks, cars, cupboards, etc. I have found whole guns almost every time I've done a first day start. I get not everyone is going to like it though.

Maybe....It's definitely harder now.

These are good points. I didn't like the remapping of the use button either. As for the dungeons...your mileage will vary. I find them highly entertaining and if you destroy everything you can get a lot of useful materials. Some people will skip the dungeons and some won't. Some people will fight all the zombies and some people with stealth through. Some will engage the zombies when they wake up and some will avoid and run and loot fast and get away with what they can. Now that zombies don't commonly have loot everyone can try all those tactics and not feel like they're missing out on stuff. But, yeah, some will hate it.

Sorry but I disagree 100% with you on this. Removing the onscreen text that would give away if a zombie was finally dead or not along with no HP bar make it so much better. You're pretty sure you can tell if a fantasy undead creature is really dead or not? On what are you basing all this experience pray tell? That Walking Dead Documentary...?

You like your numbers. Nobody can argue that someone else's preferences are bad so hopefully you can mod in your preference. I don't care about exact numbers. If I see the bar is half empty that is all I need to be able to process that I'm at 50%.

If you spend all the points you get from doing the tutorial quest on your strength attribute you will gain 10 inventory slots right then which puts you 5 slots beyond where the A16 max slots is and that should be before 10am on Day 1. So no need to worry over that.

Rage quit now.

So many of the improvements are under the hood and coding changes that I doubt there will be anyone who will look at what they can see on the surface of the game and say that it was equal to what a year of work (in their opinion) should look like. I'm already mentally prepared for the onslaught of salt in that regard. Unfortunately, it will be those same people who will later praise and laud the modders for all their contributions not realizing that it is precisely what TFP did all year that has made it possible for modders to do more than they have ever been able to do in the past.

Thanks for the somewhat detailed response Roland.

Guns - I did not criticise the attachments change which looks mainly very good however I think my original point stands

HP Bars - you cannot justify this change by talking about how you dont like HP bars because no Alpha has had HP bars, sure you guys have played with them in the development of A17 but it seems they didnt not make the cut so you cannot use the lack of them to justify not being able to tell if something is dead.

Player HP numbers - Everyone will mod them back in, this should tell you that you are wrong but, sadly, it wont.

Backpack - If you can indeed reach A16 parity (or close to) this early, then you have indeed negated any worries I had there and this will be a good change though again I find it interesting that as you have removed huge amounts of loot from the world (zombie loot), you give us a bigger backpack. Perhaps you guys need to look up 'irony'.

Runspeed - I am going to assume this is a joke because you wont believe the backlash if its true.

 

[Genosis]

Question for @Roland, @madmole or whoever is in the position to reply:

Watching the video with my wife has her potentially excited about the new textures. Has the painting palette and available decor items expanded in A17 with the updated art work? She's eyeballin some new wallpaper and sidings, along with various new pieces of furniture.

Yes, this is basically a building/decor simulator for her while I build the defenses and hunt for materials. "Bring my back some paint, babe" is a frequent request.

- - - Updated - - -

Runspeed - I am going to assume this is a joke because you wont believe the backlash if its true.

Wasn't it stated on a video or in a dev reply some time ago that run speed has increased, but so has stamina usage? Basically going from a jog to a full sprint with the associated drain on overall stamina? I'm unsure if this has since changed in planned design, but I distinctly remember this being said.

 

[mr.devolver]

The zombies were once people, some of those people, especially the ones who survived the initial mass death, eg. Soldiers, will quite reasonably have equipment on them that other survivors would want, I could point out to you many MANY movies and episodes of the walking dead where survivors enter areas to kill zombies such as soldiers and police in order to get their guns and ammo from them so maybe for you its dumb and maybe that's why you'd be just another corpse with nothing on it.

In the event that this world will be hit by the zombie apocalypse, this will become a matter of important personal choice - To walk with empty hands and pockets or not to walk with empty hands and pockets, kinda like a new religion with full of believers who believe that their God with empty pockets will protect them with his bare hands as long as they stay modest with empty pockets and empty hands too. Walkers won't be walkers anymore, but believers in empty pocketed God, mark my words.

- Oh look, another empty pocketed fool. Carl has a loaded revolver in his hands, empty pocketed fool as his name suggests has what? Empty pockets, that's right! Carl lives, empty pocketed fool turned into a zombie. Do you understand that difference now, Carl?

- Yes, dad.

 

[crazywildfire]

I actually don't mind the new bar system or not knowing if the zombies are dead for sure. So I will not be modding anything on that but then again I'm not "everyone" so......

 

[trielkee]

Although I'm sad to see the gore blocks gone because I think cleaning up after fighting a horde was more of a feature than a chore, this is the best decision they could've done to bring survival to a truly next level. Always found it silly that zombies carried door knobs, car engines and the like.

You shouldn't be able to engage more than two zombies easily and play what is basically whack-a-mole for brass and other resourcess that make the game easier even further. There should always be a risk involved before engaging zombies no matter the player level, making you think hard if it is worth going in that particular POI, not knowing if it contains that much needed resource. So it basically removes easy means of getting loot and actually puts players at risk while they go and scavenge for resources to repair their base and make ammo for the next horde night.

I hope in the future TFP take it one step further and remove the loot from zombies altogether, make the game harder, resources scarcer. It is slowly shaping into a real tough zombie survival game.

 

[Jedo]

Player HP numbers - Everyone will mod them back in, this should tell you that you are wrong but, sadly, it wont.

I won't mod them back in. *argument dismantled*

Backpack - If you can indeed reach A16 parity (or close to) this early, then you have indeed negated any worries I had there and this will be a good change though again I find it interesting that as you have removed huge amounts of loot from the world (zombie loot), you give us a bigger backpack. Perhaps you guys need to look up 'irony'.

I think you need to look up 'irony.'