PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[Hek Harris]

Oh, you said 'crap'! Didn't you mean... Merde?

Haha. I thought "crap" wasn't such a bad word. No little hearts to censure me

Doesn't work with ♥♥♥♥ <---- Look !!!

 

[Gazz]

Dont know where you got that from, but it is not true. Actually it is very easy to do.

So now we have "super complicated" and "very easy".

Does anyone want to get a pool going? =P

Personally I doubt "very easy" because when you queue a workstation task where part of the ingredients decay during production you need a lot more storage capacity to catch the decayed items plus all the other recipe ingredients that were allocated but then could not be used up.

 

[Hek Harris]

Also need a food spoilage journal entry so that people can not read it and complain about it on the forum.

So true ^^.

And what about all the wold containers that contain food? How can this possibly not have all decayed? It would be down to cans and maybe some corn meal.

Canned food are sometimes poisoned and it's fine. But meat or vegetables in containers should be removed IMHO.

 

[Odetta]

And what about all the wold containers that contain food? How can this possibly not have all decayed? It would be down to cans and maybe some corn meal.

Which makes sense and with going the route of food preservation, a enhancement to looting food in POIs. With that comes a lot more preserved food items you can add to loot containers in the form of cans, jars of fermented or pickled food, jellies, jams, preserves and candies. Jerkies too.

 

[Skuriles]

Nice to see that I'm not the only one waiting for an improved A17.2 and playing CK2 instead

(used the map generator tool and started a shattered map with one ruler for each county, no dukes or kings => awesome how the continents build up)

But B2T

 

[DaVegaNL]

Nice to see that I'm not the only one waiting for an improved A17.2 and playing CK2 instead(used the map generator tool and started a shattered map with one ruler for each county, no dukes or kings => awesome how the continents build up)

But B2T

Hehe nice.. Haven't tried that feature yet. Currently trying to recruit some more people in a plot to kill my wife, without anyone finding out..

Harder than one might think ^^

 

[HeLLKnight]

Any word on that supposed experimental test that was gonna greatly help with performance? Or was it too game breaking to implement?

I really hope they are trying to update Unity to 2018.3 because new terrain system sounds too good: https://blogs.unity3d.com/es/2018/10/10/2018-3-terrain-update-getting-started/

They claim more than a 50% reduction in CPU costs plus big improvements in quality

before-after, identical triangle count:

 

[Hek Harris]

Currently trying to recruit some more people in a plot to kill my wife, without anyone finding out..Harder than one might think ^^

Try the dark web :distrust:

 

[DaVegaNL]

Try the dark web :distrust:

Nah, don't have any torches or a mining helmet with me.

 

[spacepiggio]

I buy a "o"

Originally Posted by Roland


HINT:

 


I__ D____ W____ I__ D____

No chatter that I've seen about an impending release.

Its Done When Its Done

Freakin Nubes...

I know I have asked like a 1,000 times but can we please get another Timer on the Forge.


Here is a hint where I think it should go.


In the Big Black Background where you Add Fuel there is a TIMER.


Please Add A Timer in the Big Black Background where it says,


SMELTING

 

[meganoth]

When everyone complaining about stamina drain, guess what was adjusted in 17.1? After the 2016 review trashed the game saying ugly, dated graphics, guess what the next focus was on? Everyone stating how easy the game is, then this alpha, Z's are falling on top of you from rafters and spawning behind you, finding you no matter where you are. I ran a dedi server for couple years. So yes, I do understand. We all obviously love this game, but after 4 years of playing, still no end game or bosses, or reason to explore. its still feels like half the game is waiting for the next Alpha and reading these forums.

The problem with your argument is that users are complaining about almost everything. ANY change done by TFP can therefore be atrributed to users complaining. In the same paragraph you talk about them listening too much you complain about them not listening to complaints about end game (there have been lots of users complaining about end game)

Case in point: You say 2016 review, that was the time of A15. The next version, which you say has been about graphics, is Alpha16, which to my knowledge was about everything BUT graphics. I may be wrong, so please tell me what graphics focus you are talking about. See also an independent source on what A16 was about: https://www.greenmangaming.com/blog/7-days-die-whats-alpha-16-update/ . The only dedicated graphics stuff according to greenmangaming were a few new animal textures and the painting tool.

Generally TFP have shown that they implement features because they want them (you can ask a lot of forum users who spam their dissatisfaction with TFPs direction), but balance the features according to feedback. Which is one of three big reasons you do early access.

NPC's, World events, Battle arena, ect...

Aaah, so you want to play World of Zombiecraft! :cocksure:

 

[Gazz]

The problem with your argument is that users are complaining about almost everything. ANY change done by TFP can therefore be atrributed to users complaining. In the same paragraph you talk about them listening too much you complain about them not listening to complaints about end game (there have been lots of users complaining about end game)

Some people need to write "correlation does not imply causation" 100 times.

Thing that is obviously not working very well is being worked on said local man.

 

[meganoth]

There is a lot of quirks and thoughts needed for spoilage to be done logically. From a gaming perspective, really need to ask if the effort is worth it. Would the majority of players find spoilage fun? While I thought it was fun in concept, in Starvation it turned into more of annoyance to deal with then a fun challenge.

The problem with these minigame concepts is that often it is just grindy micro-management without any complexity. See the weather/temperature minigame in A16, where the decision to change clothes when you got hot or cold was absolutely trivial and because of that not fun. In A17 at least it involves a small decision whether you want to be more resistant to heat or cold. And less grindy micro-management. And consequently there have been much less protests about the weather system.

Food spoilage as a balancing tool for food has a use, I really don't see where non-trivial decisions can be placed though to make it a "fun" mechanic

I really hope they are trying to update Unity to 2018.3 because new terrain system sounds too good: They claim more than a 50% reduction in CPU costs plus big improvements in quality

before-after, identical triangle count:

Are you sure that would work with Voxels? Are you sure the 50% reduction is in game play, not generation?

 

[OzHawkeye]

The problem with these minigame concepts is that often it is just grindy micro-management without any complexity. See the weather/temperature minigame in A16, where the decision to change clothes when you got hot or cold was absolutely trivial and because of that not fun. In A17 at least it involves a small decision whether you want to be more resistant to heat or cold. And less grindy micro-management. And consequently there have been much less protests about the weather system.

Truth that. This is the first Alpha since the weather system was introduced that I didn't just turn it off in the console or mod it out of the XML's. Now, I deal with it early game, knowing that I can perk into (and gear up) to eventually more or less eliminate it (I still have one item of clothing to swap around if I go Desert-Snow or back).

A17, for me, massively improved weather, by making overcoming it a legit goal and spec choice.

 

[ltbrunt]

As a long time 7DTD player and at 4000 hrs I feel with this latest build the game is almost perfect. Outside of the bandits is 7 days to die close to being finished?

I know there are tons of things you guys are working on but right now the game feels like a near finished product.

 

[Wardronex]

Truth that. This is the first Alpha since the weather system was introduced that I didn't just turn it off in the console or mod it out of the XML's. Now, I deal with it early game, knowing that I can perk into (and gear up) to eventually more or less eliminate it (I still have one item of clothing to swap around if I go Desert-Snow or back).
A17, for me, massively improved weather, by making overcoming it a legit goal and spec choice.

When I am Hot I take off clothing.

When I am cold I put on more clothing.

Previous weather just needed a tiny bit more tweaking and it worked just like end game(after spending points in) does now.

All I needed was to add or remove a coat. which Is why I reintegrated it back into this alpha.

I do not see this as a legitimate thing(skill/perk) to be forced to waste points on.

To me it is common sense.

 

[crossed]

The problem with these minigame concepts is that often it is just grindy micro-management without any complexity.

They should give no options to deal with food spoilage = no micro management.

Except of course for getting off your butt and finding some fresh food every now and then, instead of living off your gigantic stack of food that you hoarded up months ago.

But I agree that as long as there are vending machines, traders and you can make a living as a woodcutter there's not much point introducing new mechanics to make the survival aspect more challenging.

 

[Gareee]

2000+ hours, and only used a vending machine once.. for water when I couldn't find any in a desert day one.

We DO however use the traders now more often with the quest system and buying htf items like a tool n die set.

It might be good to nerf the trader payouts a LITTLE though, and increase the buying cost of produced items to encourage those types of gameplay, selling the higher tier crafted foods for significant amounts.

...and we want more quests! They are a good way to stretch out the mid/end gameplay, doing something significant. Maybe delivery quests in the higher quest tiers, picking a fetch/clear up a few miles away, and delivering it to another trader to get the reward there (and discover the other trader locations)?

Or a quest to craft something and deliver it, like electrical components, or vehicles? (Like deliver 5 bikes, 3 power generators, or 10 spotlights)

A reason to scrounge more for parts to fullfill quests.

It could even be food delivery to a static npc in a building somewhere.

 

[HeLLKnight]

Are you sure that would work with Voxels? Are you sure the 50% reduction is in game play, not generation?

Let's read:

UNITY 2018.3 On the performance side, we added a GPU-instanced render path for terrain. In most cases, instancing yields a dramatic reduction in the number of draw calls issued. Many of our tests saw more than a 50% reduction in CPU costs (though, of course, actual numbers will depend on your platform and use case)

They talk about render path, so for me this means ingame, not generation. Also the performance improvement comes from a dramatic reduction in "Draw calls" which is one of the most expensive cpu tasks at any game. If you have to many draw calls, you end very cpu bottlenecked. And we know 7d2d is cpu bottlenecked for sure, but only a dev can tell us how important would be to reduce terrain draw calls in this particular voxel game. Even if 7d2d is not pushing draw calls too much now, as far as I understand jumping to Unity 2018.3 would allow devs to put a ton more objects on screen and not killing our cpus.

On the other side, we know that 10-20 zombies on screen annihilate fps even on the best machine in the market, and Faatal talked a few times about they are trying to improve the character controller. Also we know Unity has occlusion culling system, but madmole confirmed the game doesn't have this implemented yet.

 

[Silbendy]

2000+ hours, and only used a vending machine once.. for water when I couldn't find any in a desert day one.
We DO however use the traders now more often with the quest system and buying htf items like a tool n die set.

It might be good to nerf the trader payouts a LITTLE though, and increase the buying cost of produced items to encourage those types of gameplay, selling the higher tier crafted foods for significant amounts.

...and we want more quests! They are a good way to stretch out the mid/end gameplay, doing something significant. Maybe delivery quests in the higher quest tiers, picking a fetch/clear up a few miles away, and delivering it to another trader to get the reward there (and discover the other trader locations)?

Or a quest to craft something and deliver it, like electrical components, or vehicles? (Like deliver 5 bikes, 3 power generators, or 10 spotlights)

A reason to scrounge more for parts to fullfill quests.

It could even be food delivery to a static npc in a building somewhere.

What about a quest to deliver to POI where you have to restock the vending machines. That would then answer the question of how do they constantly get restocked.