PC V2.0 Storms Brewing Dev Diary

[zztong]

I'm not sure what you mean about the kit being its own inventory, though.

The special armor slot you mentioned. I guess I thought it was a kit slot, or something. Basically, it won't take up a spot in the general inventory unless you feel like putting it there.

The suffering seems to be that you'll start taking damage after a few minutes.

Interesting. So this is the part we're not sure about how it works then? So we're not sure if the rate damage is received is tied to things like weather events, if you're in a shelter, if you're near a heat source, etc?

 

[khzmusik]

Picture a dark hole in a wall. Now picture a zombie.

Worst ASMR ever

 

[Riamus]

The special armor slot you mentioned. I guess I thought it was a kit slot, or something. Basically, it won't take up a spot in the general inventory unless you feel like putting it there.

Interesting. So this is the part we're not sure about how it works then? So we're not sure if the rate damage is received is tied to things like weather events, if you're in a shelter, if you're near a heat source, etc?

Ah, I see what you mean.  Yeah, faatal said it had its own slot.  Since the only slots we have now are armor, I just called it that, but it could be called something else.

faatal didn't say if damage would be mitigated by being inside, though if it is, it would defeat a lot of that.  It would be more realistic (other than for radiation in the wasteland), but if you can just leave one POI and go into another to avoid damage, it defeats the purpose other than when traveling.  And if it only starts doing damage after a few minutes like faatal said, even traveling wouldn't be a big deal unless you want to go a long ways.  But he didn't give any indication of how that could work, and it's possible it's still up in the air.

 

[zztong]

faatal didn't say if damage would be mitigated by being inside, though if it is, it would defeat a lot of that.  It would be more realistic (other than for radiation in the wasteland), but if you can just leave one POI and go into another to avoid damage, it defeats the purpose other than when traveling.  And if it only starts doing damage after a few minutes like faatal said, even traveling wouldn't be a big deal unless you want to go a long ways.  But he didn't give any indication of how that could work, and it's possible it's still up in the air.

I could try to read a lot into it, but there's not a lot of clues to work with, so probably not worth the brain power at this point. The only goal we can derive is to reinforce biome progression.

Weather events would be interesting depending on the effects. If you were sometimes forced to take cover -- kind of like the big sandstorm in Conan Exiles -- then your plans would be interrupted and you might have to take refuge in a hostile POI or dig down into the ground for cover. But I don't see anything like that being mentioned.

Of all the effects people have suggested, Radiation is the least interesting to me, mostly because I don't think it would realistically be a factor by the time you get a player character running around in the world being presented. (I won't elaborate for fear of getting off topic.) This is one reason I'd like to see a way to control it biome-by-biome. Whatever effect they inflict in the burnt forest is what I'd be tempted to use in the wasteland.

 

[Adam the Waster]

Ah, I see what you mean.  Yeah, faatal said it had its own slot.  Since the only slots we have now are armor, I just called it that, but it could be called something else.

faatal didn't say if damage would be mitigated by being inside, though if it is, it would defeat a lot of that.  It would be more realistic (other than for radiation in the wasteland), but if you can just leave one POI and go into another to avoid damage, it defeats the purpose other than when traveling.  And if it only starts doing damage after a few minutes like faatal said, even traveling wouldn't be a big deal unless you want to go a long ways.  But he didn't give any indication of how that could work, and it's possible it's still up in the air.

A kit system would be cool. 

Sacrifice resistance for extra buffs 

 

[faatal]

I thought they had retained some team in Perth Australia. Maybe I have that mixed up with something else.

Our console team is another company and they even help us work on general features, optimizations and bugs besides console, so hiring them to do console actually speed up PC dev. Our TFP programmers work 99% on PC, many of them never touch console. We do not plan features based on console. We tell the console guys to make it work and if it does not, we don't go removing it from PC. Examples of console limits - world sizes, max player counts, mods, dedi servers, save game total size.

Over half the stuff on the internet guessing how we do development is wrong, because they don't work here and/or have no clue about game development.

 

[HammerDano]

Our console team is another company and they even help us work on general features, optimizations and bugs besides console, so hiring them to do console actually speed up PC dev. Our TFP programmers work 99% on PC, many of them never touch console. We do not plan features based on console. We tell the console guys to make it work and if it does not, we don't go removing it from PC. Examples of console limits - world sizes, max player counts, mods, dedi servers, save game total size.

Over half the stuff on the internet guessing how we do development is wrong, because they don't work here and/or have no clue about game development.

(serenity now)

Are you saying we are not getting dedicated servers? 

 

[faatal]

But Faatal is neither the spokesperson for TFP or the one deciding the release schedule of updates. He's "just" one of the many people working passionately on this game and likes to explain what he's been working on to players who are excited to hear about it.

If you're expecting official updates or schedules from him, you're barking at the wrong tree and only discouraging TFP employees participating in these threads. 

I love reading Faatal's posts about what things are coming and how he's doing them. It would really be a loss for this forum if he stopped participating because some see his posts as "vague blurt" and "BS".

If it were up to me I would never give a date for anything. Approximations are ok, but even those are often misread as some guarantee.

Most people don't understand that game dev has a lot of magic like research to it that no one can say how long it will take. A fresh example is I started on something last Friday that I thought would be a few hours improving idle<>walk<>run anim blending rates as the existing lerp on top of a lerp looked like a bad way to do it and caused a still moving bug when we turn off AI while testing. A few hours later I did not like how the new linear rate change looked. Saturday, I think I can get this done in a few hours and 9 hours later I still don't like it after trying many techniques. Today after most of the day I was mostly happy and decided it was good enough. Estimating coding time on new or rewritten features is like going to a casino. My advice these days to programmers is just say x2 or x3 of whatever you think it will take. In the case of that change it was x7.

I would not leave the forums over some user, it would be the other way around.

So the long waited Dedicated server's option to play with all your friends;  is being pushed off beyond end of Q1  to sometime month(s) down the road?

It is working and we are trying to get it approved by MS and Sony. You can probably guess what they do if they don't like how you did something. No approval for you. Try again, maybe we will like it next time. Dedicated servers have security considerations on console that they do not take lightly.

 

[faatal]

Just as long.  They didn't stop working on PC to do anything with console.  At most, maybe it would save a few months at most just for optimizations that they might not have done had console not been planned and those optimizations are still good for PC players as well.  Permission has nothing to do with how quickly the game is finished.  It just determines how quickly 1) the console version could be sold, and 2) when you can do crossplay.  That doesn't change development time in any way.

Console optimizations are mostly good for PC, but occasionally a console optimization will save memory at the expense of performance. We have the console devs leave those off for PC.

People also don't understand game optimization. All complex games are optimized or they would run at 1 or 5 FPS, be a stuttery mess and be unplayable. That is why you never wait until a game ships to optimize it or you or your testers could not even test it! I see game reviews all the time with "they didn't optimize the game" or "optimize your game dude!". What they really want is additional optimizations. Those last half, diminishing return optimizations that are harder and harder to get or take more and more time, which is why there is always a cutoff point of good enough.

I wouldn't make that assumption. I thought TFP wanted a single code base. If so, changes coming from the console developers would have to be integrated back into the PC. There would likely be some tough decisions. I would also imagine that there would have been time needed for any console developers to get to know the code and I could see that being facilitated by the PC team.

Related to what I understand of your larger discussion with @HammerDano, we're all on the outside of that development effort looking in through frosted windows. I'm sure most of us would all enjoy more communication. But lets not go insane over the fragments we read. That stuff is probably changing week-by-week as the developers mess with it, then possibly again after their QA team starts playing it and giving feedback.

Maybe I should be labeled a "defender of TFP", though I've certainly disagreed with them in the past. But at however many hours I've got in the game, I'm a satisfied customer.

I sometimes wonder if the prerequisite for reading these forums, Steam, or Reddit should be a couple of beers and a bit of the wacky weed.

Sure, it takes about 2% of my time reviewing console dev changes and giving feedback and half of those changes are for general bugs that also effect PC anyway. Our console devs are skilled programmers. They help a lot.

 

[faatal]

Worst ASMR ever

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response? Creepy!

We are working on a new doc of 2.0 features as I generally only like to hint at spoilers for my own stuff and not other dev's. Hopefully that gets posted *soon and we start our 2.0 dev diary.

  *soon does not indicate or guarantee any actual amount of time. Use with caution and plan accordingly. Have a nice day!

 

[Roland]

(serenity now)

Are you saying we are not getting dedicated servers? 

He was not saying that. He did say that dedicated servers are working and awaiting approval from Microsoft and Sony. 

 

[Adam the Waster]

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response? Creepy!

We are working on a new doc of 2.0 features as I generally only like to hint at spoilers for my own stuff and not other dev's. Hopefully that gets posted *soon and we start our 2.0 dev diary.

  *soon does not indicate or guarantee any actual amount of time. Use with caution and plan accordingly. Have a nice day!

Instead we got mine also I'm stealing this quote 

 

[HammerDano]

He was not saying that. He did say that dedicated servers are working and awaiting approval from Microsoft and Sony. 

Thank you,

 it was included in a list of things that were not done or being done, and I responded before he continued, and addressed this. He also wrote that they were trying to get what they had for dedicated crossplay approved, but, indicated it was not happening and they might have to try again. How long does that take?... hopefully not as long as we have already waited. Hopefully it is, as he indicated, something they could address by beefing up the security on what they already have to alleviate concerns. I am left with the feeling it won't be this month or the next.

 

[Arez]

My advice these days to programmers is just say x2 or x3 of whatever you think it will take. In the case of that change it was x7.

I saw something about that. I don't remember if it was a bank or some kind of financial firm but they had a really bad customer service reputation because customers would receive things later than what they were promised. The company couldn't do anything about it, so instead of promising that their stuff would get to the customer in 2 days, with it ending up really getting there in 3, they started telling them it would get to them in 5 days. 

After that their customer service rating went through the roof, even though deliveries took the same amount of time.

• You can spend some amount of time in a biome, but time dictates if you suffer, somehow.
  

So faatal said the hazards start killing you within a few minutes, but you have to go into the biome unprotected to complete the challenges. So the two ways I can see that working is either all the challenges can be done faster than the hazards can kill you, or each individual challenge completed buys you more time to do the next challenge. 

 

[4sheetzngeegles]

I still like the idea of the upgradeable kit, but with every biome having radiation that makes death an absolute.
Health stamina and carry capacity, reduced overtime, at a greater rate than food can replenish, Rad poisoning
would render first aid kits null, Food and water to 20% efficiency until you return to the forest, clear the
radiation and heal to 100%. Weather in Vanilla desert burnt waste constant raise to 200 degrees by day 180 by night,
snow 20 degrees by day 0 at night. Add wetness debuff. The only two things that can counter the debuffs are, fullfilling
all tasks and upgrading the kit, or using the on off switch.

The weather protection buffs on armor removed, only liner mods to give a couple of extra seconds, or questing to get a
little red pill. That pretty much works as a timer. So it will probably take multiple excursions into the no lone zone
to complete a task. I'm just waiting for the kit, I wrote 2 pages to interlink it all, with everything else that already
exists. Once the kit is upgraded to allow biome entry, you only have to deal with the fog, limited distant visibility, Radiated

entities, contaminated resources, and scout hordes.  Good Times are here again.

 

[meganoth]

So faatal said the hazards start killing you within a few minutes, but you have to go into the biome unprotected to complete the challenges. So the two ways I can see that working is either all the challenges can be done faster than the hazards can kill you, or each individual challenge completed buys you more time to do the next challenge. 

Third way: You have a limited time in the zone (which probably can be increased with pills, food, or specific wearable items). And you need multiple excursions into the zone to fullfill a challenge.

I still like the idea of the upgradeable kit, but with every biome having radiation that makes death an absolute.
Health stamina and carry capacity, reduced overtime, at a greater rate than food can replenish, Rad poisoning
would render first aid kits null, Food and water to 20% efficiency until you return to the forest, clear the
radiation and heal to 100%. Weather in Vanilla desert burnt waste constant raise to 200 degrees by day 180 by night,
snow 20 degrees by day 0 at night. Add wetness debuff. The only two things that can counter the debuffs are, fullfilling
all tasks and upgrading the kit, or using the on off switch.

The weather protection buffs on armor removed, only liner mods to give a couple of extra seconds, or questing to get a
little red pill. That pretty much works as a timer. So it will probably take multiple excursions into the no lone zone
to complete a task. I'm just waiting for the kit, I wrote 2 pages to interlink it all, with everything else that already
exists. Once the kit is upgraded to allow biome entry, you only have to deal with the fog, limited distant visibility, Radiated

entities, contaminated resources, and scout hordes.  Good Times are here again.

Are all these details facts or your ideas how it could work? If the former who or what is your source?

 

[meganoth]

please... what are you trying to say? it is a real mixed message. "whoever said it won't get optimized until the end is only mostly right?"... "It will get some optimizations...but nothing great...and we don't know when". 

Faatals posts probably answered this already, but if not, some clarification: 

Optimizations often have diminishing returns. Programmers measure which parts of the program are taking the most time. Then they try to optimize those parts first because that promises the biggest savings. The longer they optimize the more they have to optimize parts that didn't take much time in the first place and give less and less savings.

Example: One routine gets called a 100 times per frame. Another routine gets called 10 times per frame. The first routine will get optimized first and by reducing the time it takes by 0.1ms per call they increase FPS by a whooping 10%. Later they try the latter routine and also reduce the time it takes by the same 0.1ms per call. This time the FPS increase is only 1%.  

The result is, at the end of development they probably will use quite some time to look for more ways to save some time here or there, but the players who don't know this won't really appreciate the few FPS more that all this effort will achieve.

 

[Gamida]

If it were up to me I would never give a date for anything. Approximations are ok, but even those are often misread as some guarantee.

Most people don't understand that game dev has a lot of magic like research to it that no one can say how long it will take. A fresh example is I started on something last Friday that I thought would be a few hours improving idle<>walk<>run anim blending rates as the existing lerp on top of a lerp looked like a bad way to do it and caused a still moving bug when we turn off AI while testing. A few hours later I did not like how the new linear rate change looked. Saturday, I think I can get this done in a few hours and 9 hours later I still don't like it after trying many techniques. Today after most of the day I was mostly happy and decided it was good enough. Estimating coding time on new or rewritten features is like going to a casino. My advice these days to programmers is just say x2 or x3 of whatever you think it will take. In the case of that change it was x7.

I would not leave the forums over some user, it would be the other way around.

It is working and we are trying to get it approved by MS and Sony. You can probably guess what they do if they don't like how you did something. No approval for you. Try again, maybe we will like it next time. Dedicated servers have security considerations on console that they do not take lightly.

 

[SylenThunder]

Thank you,

 it was included in a list of things that were not done or being done, and I responded before he continued, and addressed this. He also wrote that they were trying to get what they had for dedicated crossplay approved, but, indicated it was not happening and they might have to try again. How long does that take?... hopefully not as long as we have already waited. Hopefully it is, as he indicated, something they could address by beefing up the security on what they already have to alleviate concerns. I am left with the feeling it won't be this month or the next.

There is no "standard" here.  Sony and MS will sometimes approve things in a few hours. Sometimes they will take weeks or months. There is no rhyme or reason to it.  Supporting any cross-platform game has this kind of struggle with Sony and Microshaft. You see it a lot when the PC version of a game has an update, but it doesn't end up releasing to Consoles until days or weeks later. I've seen this with Ark quite a lot, and with some other games that I have hosted that support cross-platform play. Trying to remember how long it took for Valheim to get it approved, but I wasn't hyper-focused on their development at the time.

 

[Dead Smarty]

Supporting any cross-platform game has this kind of struggle with Sony and Microshaft. You see it a lot when the PC version of a game has an update, but it doesn't end up releasing to Consoles until days or weeks later.

Kind of sad to see that most of my fellow console gamers tend to first blame the devs, then all other platforms and their own platform only if everything else is debunked. Platform holders should realize that accepting titles to their shop also brings some accountability and not just grab that 30% cut from sales and "cosmetic only" live service crap.
The way Sony (in my case) is handling crossplay only works for completed, relativly simple games and not for anything in early acces with regular updates. I see crossplay more and more of a burden, frustrating users as well as devs.