PC v1.x Developer Diary

[falloutcloud]

The answer was already provided in the FAQ you apparently didn't read. I don't understand why it is so hard for people to look before asking.

I cannot understand how someone asking a question would frustrate you that you felt you needed to respond this way. You could have chosen to simply not answer or answer in kind and remind everyone that there is an FAQ where these are found. As a moderator you lead by example. If this is the way you handle questions, then it is only a matter of time till others feel they can respond the same.

 

[bdubyah]

Stamps also need improvement and more variety.

Especially those river stamps. Er, I mean stamp. :laugh:

Cities and stuff look good, but two things stick out to me: the wilderness POIs seem to be perfectly spaced apart from one another. And the roads look...a bit odd.

 

[zztong]

But this system can be significantly expanded to entire POI segments.
For example, for one house, you can make several options for the second floor. Moreover, they can be exactly the same from the outside, but only the internal layout, the player's path, and the location of the main loot will change.

I love Parts. I use lots of Parts. What you say is entirely true if you want to make variant floors with some copy/paste. Something more intricate, such as alternative rooms within a floor, can take a lot of planning. Your parts have to be cubic, so you can't have a complex shape to the Part. You probably have to be careful with your sleeper volumes to keep them contained to the Part for your own sanity, then be careful not to have any other volumes overlap the Part -- more easily done with a "floors as Parts" approach; not easy with a more intricate layout.

I too wish TFP used more Parts, especially on Tiles. They can reduce the "Flintstone Effect" when driving around Rural outskirt Tiles. Maybe that Tile with the dogleg in the road and the pond could get a half-dozen Parts for that spot.

I don't think I'd run back through all the established POIs and make variants for all of them. Maybe a couple of them every release and I'd probably confine the approach mostly to higher tier POIs to try to keep the "end game" players engaged a little. Humans are pretty good at remembering layouts though, so 4 variant Basements for the Crack of Books POI are going to be learned pretty quickly.

I'd have to check, but it used to be that Part randomization was being done by RWG, where as it would be nice if POIs would randomize their Parts each time a Quest was started.

As far as loot, they can already place loot in different places.  Any object, including loot, can be done as a part, allowing it to be randomized.

Yeh, I've dabbled with randomizing loot and then I took it all out. The trouble is to make sure the POI will have any loot you have to have a default location where there will be loot for sure if none of the randomization hits -AND- you have to be willing to have a POI give out either too much loot or no loot at all. There's no way to say "make sure at least one Part named 'Loot' spawns."

The problem with loot is that they do a large loot room.

Yeh, moving the loot around probably works against TFP's "dungeon path" approach unless you replace an entire floor then you've got a shot at having an alternative dungeon path. As I'm not usually a "dungeon path" designer, I like to scatter the loot about the place.

 

[zztong]

The time to create a manual variation of a POI versus a new one really isn't a significant savings in time.  Yes, the basic structure is complete, but most of the time gets spent on the internal designs, so there's not a lot of savings.  And having the same building with just different floor layouts won't feel as unique as an entirely different building.

I think it depends on if you started out with a plan to use Parts or you were trying retroactively mix them in. If you planned in advance AND you were going to make alternative floors (not rooms) I think you could make an alternative floor in a reasonably fast amount of time. If you didn't plan it, you'll probably get tangled in complications that have ramifications. For instance, the definition of zombie volumes tends to cross floor boundaries, else you get zombies popping into existence around the player when they reach the top of the stairs. I think this is what you're getting at.

For small POIs, I think it's best to just make more POIs, not because it would be slow, but because there's just not a lot there to meaningfully randomize. You might as well just randomize holes in walls, or something.

RWG highway generation uses a new algorithm.
RWG highway generation allows double connections between towns.
Added RWG big cities can have two gateways per side.
Added RWG big cities generate a highway bypass ring.

Oh gadzooks. And I thought the 8 Gateway Tiles I made created enough variation for an 8k map. I'm not complaining. I embrace the challenge.

 

[Riamus]

I'd have to check, but it used to be that Part randomization was being done by RWG, where as it would be nice if POIs would randomize their Parts each time a Quest was started.

Pretty sure it randomizes with a quest reset.  Otherwise, you wouldn't get different cabinets/etc open or closed each time.  Unless helpers function differently than parts.  If that's the case, I have no idea. 

 

[Adam the Waster]

More changes for RWG coming in 1.0:

RWG highway generation uses a new algorithm.
RWG highway generation allows double connections between towns.
Added RWG big cities can have two gateways per side.
Added RWG big cities generate a highway bypass ring.

This is a 10k, many towns with 30% wasteland. Generated in 1 minute, 12 seconds. Has 4 of the new big cities.

View attachment 30435

I have a question.  Will one day if possible.  

Will natural Terrain, like more rivers and connected rivers with bridges? 

Canyons, larger mountains, inland lakes deeper in the map, craters in the wasteland aka nuke craters 

if some of it in even possible? 

I think it would be cool to see people doing challenges.  Maybe settings were 80% of the map is water

 

[Old Crow]

I have a question.  Will one day if possible.  

Will natural Terrain, like more rivers and connected rivers with bridges? 

Canyons, larger mountains, inland lakes deeper in the map, craters in the wasteland aka nuke craters 

if some of it in even possible? 

I think it would be cool to see people doing challenges.  Maybe settings were 80% of the map is water

I'm picturing a RWG map that is just several islands with cities and a lot of water. I like it.

 

[khzmusik]

I cannot understand how someone asking a question would frustrate you that you felt you needed to respond this way. You could have chosen to simply not answer or answer in kind and remind everyone that there is an FAQ where these are found. As a moderator you lead by example. If this is the way you handle questions, then it is only a matter of time till others feel they can respond the same.

Unfortunately I agree. With 1.0 happening, there will be a big influx of people who do not know about the official channels for information. (In fact that link was the first time I ever saw that FAQ page, and I've been playing the game for a decade.)

@SylenThunder while I understand you're probably used to dealing with cranky old-timer @%$#s like myself, please keep in mind that once 1.0 drops, 99% of the people who ask questions here will be total noobs. So please make an effort to be forgiving of their understandable ignorance, and try not to be dismissive. Thanks!

 

[XCOUNTRY]

I have a question.  Will one day if possible.  

Will natural Terrain, like more rivers and connected rivers with bridges? 

Canyons, larger mountains, inland lakes deeper in the map, craters in the wasteland aka nuke craters 

if some of it in even possible? 

I think it would be cool to see people doing challenges.  Maybe settings were 80% of the map is water

There was a brief period in RWG where bridges generated (albeit poorly) over rivers back in A17 I think. You also got frog and other wetland sounds along the shores of lakes and stuff too. Would love to see that make a return @faatal

 

[DaVegaNL]

More changes for RWG coming in 1.0:

RWG highway generation uses a new algorithm.
RWG highway generation allows double connections between towns.
Added RWG big cities can have two gateways per side.
Added RWG big cities generate a highway bypass ring.

This is a 10k, many towns with 30% wasteland. Generated in 1 minute, 12 seconds. Has 4 of the new big cities.

View attachment 30435

Awesome! Is the burned forest making a comeback"?

 

[Laran Mithras]

Awesome! Is the burned forest making a comeback"?

It is.

Necessitating a Burnt Forest playthrough, of course.

 

[zztong]

Pretty sure it randomizes with a quest reset.  Otherwise, you wouldn't get different cabinets/etc open or closed each time.  Unless helpers function differently than parts.  If that's the case, I have no idea.

I think you're right. It didn't do that at first, but I think we got that in A21.

 

[stallionsden]

I think you're right. It didn't do that at first, but I think we got that in A21.

Yes a21 fixed that issue that was there in a20 thankfully and the room random I did with the casino worked great in what it was designed to do maybe not on such a big scale tho lol

 

[Adam the Waster]

There was a brief period in RWG where bridges generated (albeit poorly) over rivers back in A17 I think. You also got frog and other wetland sounds along the shores of lakes and stuff too. Would love to see that make a return @faatal

I just called that the swamp.

Towns could spawn in the river biome. I just called it a swamp

Also i remember seeing a bridge load sideways, I tried to connect it and it fell apart

 

[Annihilate]

Hi, I've been watching this thread for months as my SO and Brother love playing this together with me on split screen. Digging deeper after the trailer I've discovered that split screen is being removed for consoles. 

This is devastating. 

Is there any word when or if this will be re added at a later time? I never play the game alone and I don't have a home Internet connection so split screen was my main pull for this unique game. 

I hope someone responds with some good news.... 

Feeling Halo flashbacks...

 

[MichaelL.]

I love Parts. I use lots of Parts. What you say is entirely true if you want to make variant floors with some copy/paste. Something more intricate, such as alternative rooms within a floor, can take a lot of planning. Your parts have to be cubic, so you can't have a complex shape to the Part. You probably have to be careful with your sleeper volumes to keep them contained to the Part for your own sanity, then be careful not to have any other volumes overlap the Part -- more easily done with a "floors as Parts" approach; not easy with a more intricate layout.

Also - unless there have been changes - sleepers that spawn inside a part do not count towards the clear count of the POI when doing quests.  What I haven't experimented with is having a sleeper volume for the POI that extends into where the part would spawn - not sure if those sleepers in the part would be counted for the POI's clear quest - I'm going to guess not....?   

 

[SylenThunder]

Hi, I've been watching this thread for months as my SO and Brother love playing this together with me on split screen. Digging deeper after the trailer I've discovered that split screen is being removed for consoles. 

This is devastating. 

Is there any word when or if this will be re added at a later time? I never play the game alone and I don't have a home Internet connection so split screen was my main pull for this unique game. 

I hope someone responds with some good news.... 

Feeling Halo flashbacks...

Yeah, there is a thread on this already in the Console section.





Also to quote one of the developers from that thread...

Split screen is a memory issue and a performance issue.

A typical gaming PC will have 16+8 GB RAM.

Xbox series X has 16 GB of total RAM, but only around 13.5 GB available for the game. PS5 is similar. That is not great.

Series S has 10 GB total RAM, so even worse. We use half res textures and medium quality settings on S, which manages to fit into RAM while allowing for some memory growth as you play the game for hours. This was only achieved with a lot of memory optimizations to the point we have basically run out of big things to optimize. We can squeeze a bit more, here and there, but diminishing returns.

Performance wise, you have to have a render a different part of the world, which uses a lot more CPU and GPU.

Having split-screen on the console would also go completely against aligning the console version directly with the PC version to enable full cross-platform play.

 

[Adam the Waster]

A new skyscraper coming to 1.0 by Hernan. If you haven’t heard 1.0 is launching in June on PC and July on PS5 and Xbox X/S series.

I NEED IT!!!!!!! 

 

[beerfly]

Holy zombies this looks like my A19 base, but painted in black and 9 levels high..

Love it, another good one !

P.s. remember to take screenshots of your bases before wiping for another alpha

 

[Kalex]

Does anybody know if the night-vision will be converted into helmet mod in 1.0?