PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[wolffblood]

well then. That's a lesson learned. Pipe bombs do no damage to zombies atm... ouch

 

[forgetful genius]

I love how so many folks are complaining about the FPS drop in their game. Welcome to my world of potato computing! I was rocking 20 frames under A16 at native laptop resolution and after dropping to an abysmal 6 frames in A17 I lowered my resolution the two notches that were possible and I am still rocking 20 fps. Loving this new alpha, thanks TFP. The new stats and skill trees allow for a more RPG feel, and that increases replay value. So much winning! For all you scaredy-cat players out there, it is possible to run insane/always run on 10 fps, just have to adjust tactics and timing.

Step 1 - Make game hard

Step 2 - Die often

Step 3 - Git gud scrub

Step 4 - Conquer the world

When I finally do upgrade computer/equipment I will be running around like a boss because the game just got gravy.

 

[Aldranon]

Well, you would kill the hordes as is, blood moon hordes, and all the zombies in POIs that I go in to loot. I've not once had to track down zombies for lvls, I get them as I play. Doesn't seem that restricting to me. Now if you are the person to build only, don't do any clearing of POIs and try to avoid zombies at all costs, then yeah, I can see it restricting. Thing is, that really hinders even building since you need to get things from POIs to get higher.

Oh, I go out specifically to hunt zombies now. Tap on a POI door, if the zombies come out, then its not a death trap POI and I clear it out.

Drop off excess loot in a chest on the street and continue. The slow moving zombies are only walking experience to me.

It could be better.

 

[Doombringer101]

Note to co-op players:

PARTY SHARED KILL RANGE in multiplayer options can be increased up to 10000m.

 

[The Batman]

I've never seen this on SP or local net MP games.
I said this 2 days ago:

"That could literally be lag. You send a pos update to server, delay, server spawns based on your position and tells client, delay, the client has continued to move and is in a new position, client spawns, you see.

This is all a fine balance between, latency, settings and performance impact, which we will need to continue to tweak. In a perfect world, the whole POI would spawn, before you got near it, but big POIs with all those spawned zombies would hurt FPS. I am making a few tweaks of values now, that might help."

It would be an interesting test, to spawn dark smoke where a zombie will be when you get near a POI, then replace with a zombie when it spawns and then see how many people see the dark smoke, meaning the spawn was delayed.

To me it feels like the spawn mechanism isn't working 100%. Sometimes it activates, sometimes you can loot entire buildings and the last cabinet spawns a horde in your face. If you've never seen it, that baffles me. Ever since sleeper system // POI spawning was changed in Alpha 14 or something it happens quite a lot.

But better some slow FPS when going near buildings then broken spawning right?

 

[ahulme]

Playing since 2013 and this is your first post ? WOW...

I love how so many folks are complaining about the FPS drop in their game. Welcome to my world of potato computing! I was rocking 20 frames under A16 at native laptop resolution and after dropping to an abysmal 6 frames in A17 I lowered my resolution the two notches that were possible and I am still rocking 20 fps. Loving this new alpha, thanks TFP. The new stats and skill trees allow for a more RPG feel, and that increases replay value. So much winning! For all you scaredy-cat players out there, it is possible to run insane/always run on 10 fps, just have to adjust tactics and timing.
Step 1 - Make game hard

Step 2 - Die often

Step 3 - Git gud scrub

Step 4 - Conquer the world

When I finally do upgrade computer/equipment I will be running around like a boss because the game just got gravy.

When you finally increase your specs, you'll experience 7DTD at 75 FPS and go crazy when it hits anything below 50 on horde night/general horde. You'll then understand how I feel when I read that you've been at 20 FPS... Wow

 

[jdizzy2010]

I've looted the whole butcher shop and then all the sleepers spawn lol. It was chaos running out lol

 

[layarion]

Feedback/Suggestion: Please stop backpacks from disappearing when they fall

Feedback/Suggestion: Please take the current "compare stats on items" system, and switch it from "a numerical difference between two stats" to "displays absolute values of the two stats" because your current system is counter intuitive. it displays better stats as red (like with stamina, and when comparing unequiped clothes to equiped clothes but not vice versa).

Feedback/Suggestion: Please allow perks that i'm high enough level to purchase, but don't have to points to buy yet, be displayed in NOT the same faded out color that indicates i can't get them. I have a hard time deciding if i want to do a certain path if i can't tell until After i buy the core perk if i'll be able to upgrade it.

Feedback/Suggestion: Please improve the description of the Sneak skills to indicate if i must be crouched to use them

Feedback/Suggestion: Please allow me to view the stats of things before i craft them in the fireplace/cook menu

Feedback/Suggestion: Indicate if Heavy Metal perk is exclusively for the Sledge Hammer

Feedback/Suggestion: in addition to the items stats, such as block damage and so on, include the absolute value of damage after all perks and temporary effects are added together

Feedback/Suggestion: I actually would appreciate some sort of sound to be heard, or a floating text indicator above the target if/when i get a critical hit. the blood spatter and animations currently aren't as um easy to see as i'd like. as someone who is unsure if i made that hit, i'd like to know so i can improve my aim.

Feedback/Suggestion: Put water and food on my HUD as tiny, thin bars.

 

[Zadwanaa]

Noted, don't cut through your farm on a damn bicycle unless you want to lose your crops lol. Not shooting for reality in the game huh? I beg to differ. Serves me right I guess... Gotta learn the new rules some how.
Edit -

WTF... Don't try to park your bike on a hill either. A ghost will start joyriding while you run behind to try to catch it. Is this for real? Comical and frustrating at the same time.

well yeah, there are zombies so of course there'll be ghosts that joy ride! Thats the only joy they get!

 

[cnconrad]

Can one of the devs explain why I need to punch my corn to harvest it?

Really not understanding that design change.

I still am not a huge fan of elimination of fertilizer either.

 

[Gareee]

Note to co-op playersARTY SHARED KILL RANGE in multiplayer options can be increased up to 10000m.

From what I can tell it works, but if you change it the hud meter no longer updates properly when you are in range.. maybe theres a setting to fix that as well? Some hordes are large, and IMHO we need at least 150% instead of the vanilla 100. We'll look at that and see if we need to up it higher.

 

[Aurelius]

Can one of the devs explain why I need to punch my corn to harvest it?
Really not understanding that design change.

I still am not a huge fan of elimination of fertilizer either.

Technically you don't have to punch it - you can use a stone axe and I'd bet some other tools too. And while I'm not one of the devs, I'm guessing they did it so you are forced to use some stamina when you harvest your crops.

-A

 

[Gareee]

Ok, we have 20 days under out belt, so I feel comfortable about giving feedback and observations now.

(Apologies, as this may be lengthy.)

First, I really like the perk progression. There needs to be clarification on requirements before selecting them, not afterwards to make it more user friendly.

The controller code still needs work. Its not unusual for it to loose focus in menus, and have to use the mouse left click and then the controller select to get back to normal behaviour. (I'm also still seeing the inability to select the trader options as the cursor is stuck in a small section in the middle of the screen. (PS4 Dualshock)

I just unlocked the bicycle at day 20... I think we should unlock it a few days earlier, maybe level cap 15 instead of 20.

We have resorted to making a temporary base and just hiding on horde nights on a roof of a disposable building. With zombie block damage as it is, I don;t see it even being practical to even attempt anything until we get reinforced steel. We camped atop the firestation. and Day 6 we had two bears inside tearing the place up with zombies. Day 7 Horde night, half the second floor is completely missing, and on day 18 so much wall damage has been done we can't keep with repairing it, and a corner collapsed!

The problem we are having is continuous screamer hordes.. before we even could make a forge. Its been non stop since day 14, with ferals, wights and irradiated... but we still can't make concrete, or significant ammo.

Defending the base is a sad joke...we are at default zombie horde number per player, and have dropped resolution down to 720p with antialiasing as recommended.... and at best on horde nights we are getting 17 fps, with drops to 5.

One player even just put a new processor in his wife's system, and she wasn't seeing anything better.

The only solution I can think of is dropping max zombie count to 30, and dropping horde night count to 4 or 5 per player. We'll see what happens on nigth 21 but if it isn;t any better, we'll just have to completely skip horde nights by manually changing the time. Its simply unplayable.

(This is on 4 different systems, our two with i7 processors and 1060s with 3 gb.)

We LOVE the quests, and the lower costs at the traders have made us actually use them now with the rewards. One request: Add quests with recommended player count in larger poi areas.. 4 people dropping in a building with standard doorways is just way to cramped... those feel fine for 2, but not 4 players.

Bugs we've encountered are one player seeing a dead animal, and the other seeing them standing, vultures always still stuck in flying animation after death, backpacks being found under those ghost trees that can't be damaged. (Digging under them made the pack fall into the hole and become reachable.)

Also, the game doesn't seem to remember the chosen resolution... it always selects 4k at launch now, and we have to manually reset it each time to 720p. (This didn't happen with the first a17 release.)

I also have a schematic for a polymer bow string, had the required weapon perk, all the ingredients and was at a trader workbench, and it kept saying I didn't know the recipe. Is that one bugged?

The game looks amazing, and the ai is great now...but the overpowered zombie block damage coupled with the better ai and stealth and the horrendous drop in framerate is just too rough. There wouldn't be any hope of fighting one zombie, let alone a horde with feral runners.

All 4 of the players tonight love the game and easily each has more than 1500 hours, but none of us see horde nights as even being playable anymore. we'll drop those settings mentioned, and drop down from nomad (We've been playing together nomad since a15 was released.) and we hope the combo of difficulty and settings will at least make the game playable.

Oh, and throwing rocks to lead zombies away is great fun, but It doesn't look like the spitting cop hears them. One request there.. the farcry or Uncharted preview arc on where we are tossing items to make that target site more visible.

Hope you guys get get frame rates up to make horde nights playable.

 

[GARGEAN]

It is not infinite zombies during the time. Time only effects the stopping of the remaining zombies once 4am arrives. Low game stages don't spawn that many zombies.

What about limiting number of Zeds not by night, but by hour? Like during early hordes it will be just 3-5 Zeds, during later more like couple dozens. Should not overwhelm and will last all night.

 

[Mechanimal]

I love to ride my bicycle, I love to ride my biiiiiiike.

The mouse-look steering is much nicer than I'd expected. I have somehow toggled it off though, tryin to ding the bell/horn while be chased by a vulture. Keyboard steering is rly not as nice by comparison, curious to see if remains true on all other vehicles. Anyone know the toggle key by chance? I'll just mash keys till I find it if not.

Tried applying dye, it went into a mod slot, but nothing happenified. Rly hope that gets implemented, but I don't rly mind the yellow, makes it easier to see it as it rolls down the hill away from you. Yeah, be mindful of where you dismount, though it is amusing.

 

[XCOUNTRY]

Can one of the devs explain why I need to punch my corn to harvest it?
Really not understanding that design change.

I still am not a huge fan of elimination of fertilizer either.

So that it takes stamina to harvest. You can use any tool as well, but they may use more stamina than your fists. Welcome to 7days-to-get-your-stamina-up-b4-you-die-on-horde-night layful: .

(To everyone else, I'm not complaining---I'm having a blast in A17)

 

[ahulme]

Playing since 2013 and this is your first post ? WOW...

I

Ok, we have 20 days under out belt, so I feel comfortable about giving feedback and observations now. (Apologies, as this may be lengthy.)

First, I really like the perk progression. There needs to be clarification on requirements before selecting them, not afterwards to make it more user friendly.

The controller code still needs work. Its not unusual for it to loose focus in menus, and have to use the mouse left click and then the controller select to get back to normal behaviour. (I'm also still seeing the inability to select the trader options as the cursor is stuck in a small section in the middle of the screen. (PS4 Dualshock)

I just unlocked the bicycle at day 20... I think we should unlock it a few days earlier, maybe level cap 15 instead of 20.

We have resorted to making a temporary base and just hiding on horde nights on a roof of a disposable building. With zombie block damage as it is, I don;t see it even being practical to even attempt anything until we get reinforced steel. We camped atop the firestation. and Day 6 we had two bears inside tearing the place up with zombies. Day 7 Horde night, half the second floor is completely missing, and on day 18 so much wall damage has been done we can't keep with repairing it, and a corner collapsed!

The problem we are having is continuous screamer hordes.. before we even could make a forge. Its been non stop since day 14, with ferals, wights and irradiated... but we still can't make concrete, or significant ammo.

Defending the base is a sad joke...we are at default zombie horde number per player, and have dropped resolution down to 720p with antialiasing as recommended.... and at best on horde nights we are getting 17 fps, with drops to 5.

One player even just put a new processor in his wife's system, and she wasn't seeing anything better.

The only solution I can think of is dropping max zombie count to 30, and dropping horde night count to 4 or 5 per player. We'll see what happens on nigth 21 but if it isn;t any better, we'll just have to completely skip horde nights by manually changing the time. Its simply unplayable.

(This is on 4 different systems, our two with i7 processors and 1060s with 3 gb.)

We LOVE the quests, and the lower costs at the traders have made us actually use them now with the rewards. One request: Add quests with recommended player count in larger poi areas.. 4 people dropping in a building with standard doorways is just way to cramped... those feel fine for 2, but not 4 players.

Bugs we've encountered are one player seeing a dead animal, and the other seeing them standing, vultures always still stuck in flying animation after death, backpacks being found under those ghost trees that can't be damaged. (Digging under them made the pack fall into the hole and become reachable.)

Also, the game doesn't seem to remember the chosen resolution... it always selects 4k at launch now, and we have to manually reset it each time to 720p. (This didn't happen with the first a17 release.)

I also have a schematic for a polymer bow string, had the required weapon perk, all the ingredients and was at a trader workbench, and it kept saying I didn't know the recipe. Is that one bugged?

The game looks amazing, and the ai is great now...but the overpowered zombie block damage coupled with the better ai and stealth and the horrendous drop in framerate is just too rough. There wouldn't be any hope of fighting one zombie, let alone a horde with feral runners.

All 4 of the players tonight love the game and easily each has more than 1500 hours, but none of us see horde nights as even being playable anymore. we'll drop those settings mentioned, and drop down from nomad (We've been playing together nomad since a15 was released.) and we hope the combo of difficulty and settings will at least make the game playable.

Oh, and throwing rocks to lead zombies away is great fun, but It doesn't look like the spitting cop hears them. One request there.. the farcry or Uncharted preview arc on where we are tossing items to make that target site more visible.

Hope you guys get get frame rates up to make horde nights playable.

Fully agree with everything here. Fun Pimps, fantastic work and great job with everything, but number one priority moving forwards, especially now that it's been close to 6 years in the development cycle, is to work on optimising processing and gameplay moving forwards. A stable 70 plus FPS on this game consistently would make this hands down incredible.

 

[ZehMatt]

One thing I'm curious about the future of this game is, will the networking be updated? I've been looking for the reason why the player positions update so late and when there's a rather bigger cap due to ping/server load you can actually see how the game tweens the player from the last known position to the new server position which looks silly when the update took longer than 1 second where it just moves thru walls. One thing is probably that its TCP which already adds quite the latency to single small packets. The next thing is that position updates are really simple messages with a new position, it would make more sense to the synchronize the player input state and replay that per tick so even late updates will at least show the correct path the player moved on.

So I guess the fundamental questions are:

1. Will it ever be UDP?

2. Will it ever use delta snapshots?

I would even offer my knowledge and free time to help out implementing it, its not like I did it the first time, now especially with the Steam P2P protocol its pretty easy.

 

[Mechanimal]

Are you guys waiting to update/complete the crafting menu? I am up to level 3 in cooking now, but when I go to look through recipes to see what I can make barely anything pops up under the Food tab as an option, even basic stuff I already know and make is absent. Is frustrating now because the perk unlock only mentions one or two new recipes in itself and I rly don't want to have to manually go through recipes for every single "could that be food?" item in my stash just to find out what's do-able.

 

[Jugginator]

I noticed the trickle was in there on Monday. We discussed and it was removed in b198.

Hate to tell ya, but the trickle is still there, and actually, the spawning literally stopped for my friend and I in our blood moon at 11:something PM. This was in b199 -- just happened earlier today.

Just saw you said they're not infinite during horde nights, sorry lol. I do think that it should be infinite during blood moon hordes, it's supposed to be the night of Hell *shrug*. I can always edit the XML but still, I think the "Be prepared to die" factor would drive more people to be interested in it (future attraction of players). Just my thinking, although.