PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

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Most of us should see the greatest improvement as Unity improves its usage of multi-core processors.
Even the slowest potato these days has more than one processor core. Given the voxel nature of 7dtd the more cores you can throw at those calculations the better. The single-threaded nature of Unity has been a weakness that's become more apparent over the past few years as developers, such as TFP, have pushed the engine further than it was ever envisioned to go. To be honest, they should have been improving multi-processor support about five years ago but better late than never.
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Unity is not single threaded. You can use as many threads as you wish in Unity. The Unity API itself is (was? I haven't followed unity all that closely the past couple of years) not thread safe, but that does not mean you could not use multiple threads for things such as calculations and the the like. The Unity team is aware of the underlying API and it's issues, and they are working on making everything thread safe.

That being said, 7DTD had 1 major issue holding it back: It targeted DirectX 9. DirectX 11 provides several improvements to the API that allow it to be utilized with multiple threads. Madmole hinted on twitter that they moved to DirectX 11 for Alpha 17, so I expect there is some ongoing work to improve performance.

Another thought: Thread management is a complex task. You have to be able to determine which parts of your application would be able to benefit from splitting out into a new thread. At the end of the day this is much more complex then it sounds. It is a headache even for us veteran programmers. If TFP is lucky, they will have a few 'easy targets' to split out. If not, well...

 
Loot issues:

I just got attacked buy a hoard of two dozen fallen solders. A few hazmat and once nurse. I managed to kill them all but hardly any of them had any loot.

All that body armor and on each. It would have thought to get more.

I just think there should be more loot. After all they are a bit harder to kill wearing all that body armor.

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Unity is not single threaded. You can use as many threads as you wish in Unity. The Unity API itself is (was? I haven't followed unity all that closely the past couple of years) not thread safe, but that does not mean you could not use multiple threads for things such as calculations and the the like. The Unity team is aware of the underlying API and it's issues, and they are working on making everything thread safe.
That being said, 7DTD had 1 major issue holding it back: It targeted DirectX 9. DirectX 11 provides several improvements to the API that allow it to be utilized with multiple threads. Madmole hinted on twitter that they moved to DirectX 11 for Alpha 17, so I expect there is some ongoing work to improve performance.

Another thought: Thread management is a complex task. You have to be able to determine which parts of your application would be able to benefit from splitting out into a new thread. At the end of the day this is much more complex then it sounds. It is a headache even for us veteran programmers. If TFP is lucky, they will have a few 'easy targets' to split out. If not, well...
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I can't imagine having to go back through something as vast as 7D2D and figure out where and how to properly thread out tasks. It sounds... daunting... I barely scratch the surface with threading and only on rather simple stuff to better utilize network bandwidth. But jeez... This? Pass. GL TFP! lol

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Loot issues:

I just got attacked buy a hoard of two dozen fallen solders. A few hazmat and once nurse. I managed to kill them all but hardly any of them had any loot.

All that body armor and on each. It would have thought to get more.

I just think there should be more loot. After all they are a bit harder to kill wearing all that body armor.

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I'm just hoping that when we get to beta or closer to it, when balancing becomes a real focus, that loot starts to take on some game stage calculations. Later game stage = greater loot. So those guys would have a splash more stuffs.

 
pfff, i am tasty Bread,

not such a patetic impostor

41fQ76qKHuL.jpg


 
Unity is not single threaded. You can use as many threads as you wish in Unity. <snipped for space>
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You can create your own threads but until very recently core parts of the internal engine were on a single thread and there was nothing you could do about it.

 
I'm just hoping that when we get to beta or closer to it, when balancing becomes a real focus, that loot starts to take on some game stage calculations. Later game stage = greater loot. So those guys would have a splash more stuffs.
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This might incur the wrath of Guppycur

 
Perfect explained
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So Eeyore... But as bread...

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This might incur the wrath of Guppycur
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That's alright. His wrath comes from the toilet. I'm sure I'm fairly safe while he's spewing crap from both ends... Even if aimed at me. :D

Otherwise, his ass has one hell of an arm to reach me! :o

 
This might incur the wrath of Guppycur
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How would loot change in a real world scenario? if I break into a house my skills and tools for finding stuff might be better but the loot I find should not change based on my level or skill.

what you find in a trunk using a crowbar to open it vs me with a wrench or a lock pick will not change the content. I do see a reason for some sort of burglar skill that would allow you to open certain locked containers with tools.

So picture this scenario:

- TFP adds Burglar skils as a perk?

-- you try and open a truck or safe without the perk and risk destroying the loot.

-- you raise the skill and now you can open a locked safe or truck with little risk to the contents.

-- there are already perks for loot quality.

 
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