A17 Early Streaming Release Notes

[Red Eagle LXIX]

A17 Early Streaming Release Notes - 2016-05-28

A17 Early Streaming Release Notes - 2016-05-28[7daystodie.com]

Originally posted by The Fun Pimps:

Hey Survivors,

We hate to disappoint you, but Alpha 17 is not out yet. We’re putting out the release notes early because we know you folks like to read them beforehand, and while your reading them you can watch A17 live on our Streamer Weekend[7daystodie.com] which starts tonight. Not to worry if you want to get your hand on it early public experimental release that will follow on Monday. Check our forums for more information on that.

Hard to believe but it’s been nearly a year and a half since our last major update. That said, this has been our longest and largest update so far. On top of that, it’s the biggest content drop we’ve ever done. In the future, you can expect shorter 3 month build cycles as we have done all the heavy framework changes we wanted to do in this build.

Please remember that this is an experimental build, so it is not without issues. It still needs bug fixing, balancing and optimizations. More optimizations are coming, so if you are not getting the performance you did in previous builds, we highly recommend you lower your resolution and view distance as the first steps. Our team has commented how much better the game looks than previous builds even with a lower resolution and view distance as the HD textures, PBR and distance trees have really changed the game. If you’re still not seeing enough performance, lower reflection quality and tree quality.

Problems aside, Alpha 17 is great and in the spirit of getting Alpha 17 it into the hands of our community, we opted to get it out sooner to help us in our goal of a stable version out before the end of the year.

We are extremely excited and proud of this build which was a huge team effort and we believe it truly is a new game. Now without further ado, here is a complete list of Alpha 17 release notes!

[SylenThunder]

Originally posted by Karak Sonen:

Originally posted by JimmyIowa:

I think it means that if there is no path to the player, then they will attack blocks (player made, or ground) in the area. This is a great improvement since it will mean stilt bases aren't god mode anymore. If they can't reach the player, they will attack the stilts. Also probably means "digging", if they can't find a path to a player.

But this was in A16 as well. Zombies dug, and attacked blocks to under you. But i think you have a point, they might now attack stilts even if they aren't directly under you.

Any "digging" was incidental. It was because the block was in front of them.

Attacking structure supports under you was basically the same.

In a17, they will do it on purpose.

[LittleBlueDuneBuggy]

Originally posted by SylenThunder:

Originally posted by Karak Sonen:

But this was in A16 as well. Zombies dug, and attacked blocks to under you. But i think you have a point, they might now attack stilts even if they aren't directly under you.

Any "digging" was incidental. It was because the block was in front of them.

Attacking structure supports under you was basically the same.

In a17, they will do it on purpose.

Dammit, I was writing this, but I deleted it because I couldn't word it without sounding like a ♥♥♥♥. Even after I deleted all the expletives, it still sounded bad.

[Druuna]

So after watching a streamer I saw settings for opacity and Ui-size, what sounds like a scaleable Ui. Great news for me :D

[BigRowdy]

The one thing I really hope they fixed in 17

the mem bloat. it is tiring to play for an hour or two and then have to quit to let my computer decompress.

[...👑 JOST AMMAN 👑...]

I think that's in. Madmole also said they introduced something called "texture streaming" (?) which helps to save memory compared to A16.

[SylenThunder]

Originally posted by BigRowdy:

The one thing I really hope they fixed in 17

the mem bloat. it is tiring to play for an hour or two and then have to quit to let my computer decompress.

Originally posted by Jost Amman:

I think that's in. Madmole also said they introduced something called "texture streaming" (?) which helps to save memory compared to A16.

Plus Unity shouldn't have the hard cap at 16GB anymore that causes servers to crash.

[Xype]

Originally posted by SylenThunder:

Originally posted by BigRowdy:

The one thing I really hope they fixed in 17

the mem bloat. it is tiring to play for an hour or two and then have to quit to let my computer decompress.

Originally posted by Jost Amman:

I think that's in. Madmole also said they introduced something called "texture streaming" (?) which helps to save memory compared to A16.

Plus Unity shouldn't have the hard cap at 16GB anymore that causes servers to crash.

That was fixed in 5.4.1 way back in 2016, are they just now updating the engine to that or higher?

[HunterSouls]

Originally posted by Xype:

Originally posted by SylenThunder:

Plus Unity shouldn't have the hard cap at 16GB anymore that causes servers to crash.

That was fixed in 5.4.1 way back in 2016, are they just now updating the engine to that or higher?

That why i prefer Unreal engine rahter tehn unity mobile games

[SylenThunder]

Originally posted by Xype:

Originally posted by SylenThunder:

Plus Unity shouldn't have the hard cap at 16GB anymore that causes servers to crash.

That was fixed in 5.4.1 way back in 2016, are they just now updating the engine to that or higher?

Yeah, I think we were on 5.3.8 or something similar before. Now it's on 2018.2

Originally posted by HunterSoulsPT:

That why i prefer Unreal engine rahter tehn unity mobile games

Unreal hasn't supported a fully 3D Voxel world until recently. It wouldn't have been possible to make this game as it is on Unreal back in 2013.

[Xype]

People get the wrong idea about unity due to bad devs. Unity is a great engine it just isn't beautiful out the gate like unreal, however with a couple hours of settings tweaks you can get the same quality easily. I think for the voxel system unity was a better choice, the unreal voxel systems are terrible ones kinda like that ultimate terrain asset in unity. What I am curious about is the possible use of ECS on voxels could be a real game changer, but that is a lot of work don't expect to see that here.

[Dies Fourth]

Originally posted by DthBlayde:

christ, this is going to be more reading than I do in a week...

this is more reading than ive done in the last 15 years of my life lol

[Ghostlight]

Originally posted by LittleBlueDuneBuggy:

AI and Pathing

We’ve completely overhauled the enemy AI and pathing, writing an entirely new A-Star pathing system that rocks. Enemies can do many things in this system including:

New path calculations based on distance vs destroying blocks and uses the block health including block downgrades
New movement, turning and target estimation
New obstacle detection to better path around or destroy
New jumping across gaps and up onto ledges (Spiders have a long jump)
Improved jumping onto obstacles
Updated jump animations with three separate parts
Improved handling of stairs
Improved ladder climbing, including skipping rungs
New digging down if their destination is below them and they can’t walk to it
New destroy area mode, when players can’t be reached
New group damage bonus, when AI are close together
New Vulture AI including circling, attacking the weak and re-positioning in combat. New Radiated Vulture
Improved sleeper spawning and tracking. New types of sleepers
All sleeper spawns are now game-staged to up the challenge as you level up or party in a group

I'd trade all that to know if they have stopped zombies spinning round in circles when crawling on spikes....

[LittleBlueDuneBuggy]

Originally posted by Ghostlight:

Originally posted by LittleBlueDuneBuggy:

AI and Pathing

We’ve completely overhauled the enemy AI and pathing, writing an entirely new A-Star pathing system that rocks. Enemies can do many things in this system including:

New path calculations based on distance vs destroying blocks and uses the block health including block downgrades
New movement, turning and target estimation
New obstacle detection to better path around or destroy
New jumping across gaps and up onto ledges (Spiders have a long jump)
Improved jumping onto obstacles
Updated jump animations with three separate parts
Improved handling of stairs
Improved ladder climbing, including skipping rungs
New digging down if their destination is below them and they can’t walk to it
New destroy area mode, when players can’t be reached
New group damage bonus, when AI are close together
New Vulture AI including circling, attacking the weak and re-positioning in combat. New Radiated Vulture
Improved sleeper spawning and tracking. New types of sleepers
All sleeper spawns are now game-staged to up the challenge as you level up or party in a group

I'd trade all that to know if they have stopped zombies spinning round in circles when crawling on spikes....

They said they did. Dogs included.

[NegativeX]

Originally posted by Red Eagle LXIX:

• Performance in recipe searches was fixed to allow large numbers of recipes

O M G

FINALLY! That is one thing that always annoyed the everloving crap out of me on heavily modded servers w/ a ton of recipes. The constant hitching gave me a headache.

And Jesus Christ at the total amount of patch notes.

This is like dozens of seperate updates rolled into one. I now understand why this took a year to roll out. This is an entirely new game.

MM wasn't kidding when he said this could be a DLC unto itself.

[Dies Fourth]

Originally posted by LittleBlueDuneBuggy:

Originally posted by Ghostlight:

I'd trade all that to know if they have stopped zombies spinning round in circles when crawling on spikes....

They said they did. Dogs included.

I also heard on the stream i watched this was fixed.