krazmuze

I have come to no conclusions that CPU is doing the 2D drawing, I simply pay attention to dev updates. The devs said there is a performance problem because the 2D sprite depth ordering has to be managed by the CPU, and that the solution is to pay the art cost of baking depth layers into maps and objects to make them 2.5D, thus the GPU has the information it needs to do the sprite depth ordering. This is not conjecture on my part and I do not need to be educating you, do that yourself by watching and reading their updates. They even deep a deep dive showing the depth map view as well as demonstrating skyscrapers. Disregard that cities have more zeds by default which is a CPU simulation so it will obviously interfere with CPU doing 2D drawing, but even if you kill all the zeds or spread the zeds out - cities have more sprite objects of different types with lots of different buildings with more floors and rooms, and obviously the drawing update rate increases the faster your speed. So obviously it would be dumb to add skyscrapers making that even worse, which is why it makes sense to be doing the 2.5D GPU optimization. Using the GPU is why all those 3D games you mention are far better performance despite being more complex 3D. 2D games use the CPU unless they convert their art to be 2.5D so the GPU has something to work with. This game has a lot of system simulation so it obviously already has a heavy CPU load. I will leave this thread so you can keep telling the devs they do not know how to profile and optimize their code, despite their past updates where they said they figured out the performance problem and the solution.

I like Pathfinder Second Edition for a TTRPG that split from D&D over a decade ago and has more of a focus on monster tactics options and customer options to combat them - here is a list of fun zombie variant abilities from that! https://2e.aonprd.com/MonsterFamilies.aspx?ID=103

If zombie respawns was done by map edge migration, with the lore that it increases with time due to the quarantine being violated and off map towns have got infected, that would make lore sense. Combine that with more frequent helicopter that circles the entire map to keep things moving will help. I think migration just controls when zed cross borders within the map. I turned it off. It makes zero sense for a building with no broken entry that you already cleared to have new zed hiding in the closet. Clearing the map is the 'win' condition. If things get boring then change towns. While I generally do not care for mods unless they stick to lore and fill in the gaps or fix the horribly bad UI, settings are there because different people have different playstyles . If you run a vanilla server good luck getting a discord to agree on which of the default vanilla settings to use - and forgot trying to get them to agree on which sandbox settings to use (even if they did agree there will always be the one that says well they missed the chat or nobody would let them talk so you need to change things to what they want). You would end up having different servers for each of the default settings, which increases your bandwidth/moderation costs especially with the hackers that know how to exploit moving characters and loot and dupe from easy servers to hard servers (bringing up ARK officials again...). But lets say you can outsmart them, you then find out that trying to appeal to every just splits your population limiting your growth potential from friend invites, but if you say I like survival setting then you restrict your population limiting your growth potential from friends saying I wanna play on builder mode. Say you agree on coop PVE only I guarantee you will get PVP griefers that cannot win on a PVP server that knows how to exploit PVE into non-cooperative warfare because they know at least there they can win. Bottom line if you got hardware, make a server that you want to play on with your rules. Start a social streaming to attract like minded to your server, theorizing that if they watch your channel they will come play nicely together.

While there are lots of trees, there are lots of the same trees so there is a magnitude less sprites to load than there is in the city where there are lots of many different things wherever you look.. So again this is not proof of your assertion that they are loading items in containers before opening containers. Besides trees themselves are containers that when "opened" yield variable logs, twigs, and branches so even if your assertion that all items are loaded is not mistaken, it would also apply to forests having to load a ton of log lists. Since that does not have bad performance that pretty much disproves your assertion. Instead it indicates that container item lists are procedurally generated on the fly themed to the container type and location and loot settings, the container is empty until you actually open it. It is the entire point of the (un)lucky trait to bias these item lists - so obviously they are dynamically generated and not stored on your HD. It only stores container lists once you have opened them, but if you have loot respawn on even those get time deleted. Floor container population is managed by deleting drop items on timer being the default, prevents multiplayer griefing by mass dropping items exploiting that they are visible in the open world. Default settings also cluster zeds into urban settings not forests so there are fewer zeds, so far less pathing to compute, combined with the sound vector indicating there is likely no line of sight because of all the trees, so it does not go beyond the sound vector into computing a visual pathing grid. Both cities and trees should implement sound diffusion, IRL it is actually harder to track sounds than in open plains - but that is similar RTX GPU load as light path tracing so obvious why a decade old game does not do it. They plan a forest map once they get the new blacksmithing so you can truly live off the grid - that will mean zeds everywhere - throw in some critters to track and hunt rather than just trap you will never know what that rustle over there is. Again you are trying to optimize it when if you go read the updates regarding the next major patch, they have already acknowledged the performance issue is due to CPU driven depth layering, and the solution is depth mappng baked in so GPU depth layering can be done. Then occlusion culling and like instance object replication basically becomes easily managed as well if they need to optimize it further, but that is likely more needed with 3D objects that have 3D geometry with lots of poly, edges and vertices to deal with combined with complex texture atlas wrapping. 2D sprites are just a single texture and no geometry. This is what will enable them to do skyscrapers with magnitudes more rooms and floors, they already tried it and mentioned they had to turn down the hordes because they was bigger than highway hordes! That is rule number one about coding, do not optimize things unless you actually know what the problem is.

It only needs to load the contents list of shelves and cupboards when you actually open the container, it certainly would be suboptimal if they had a master list of every item in the game saying what container it goes in. Much better to have a database hierarchy with a list of containers each pointing to a a list of their items in that container rather than searching a master list for items referencing that they are in this container. The only thing it needs to load dependent on contents is open shelf sprites as they have capacity used abstractions. They do not actually show you what is on the shelf though, while cupboards have no capacity variants. That capacity number can be stored in the top level database and then used to select the capacity sprite, but better to just store which sprite variant is being use since it needs to know what sprites to load anyways. There is no difference between a container sprite and a wall sprite - just need depth info to draw them in order - a container sprite is not more of a load than a wall sprite. When you click on them only then does it use the type of sprite to either load the container list to open the container, or give the bash wall menu option if you have the sledgehammer equipped. It is only those things in the floor "container" that need to get displayed as part of the open world, but you should expect bad performance if you are going to make a floor into ripped sheets storage and not use containers for things, as world design rarely has much loot left on the floor outside of special story scenes for performance reasons. Also manual decoration with placed objects show up in the floor "container", but that is also used sparingly outside of the player doing this in their base. (Use inventory to loot the floor container for faster looting as it skips the grab animation) Bethesda makes houses instanced containers because they know that players love dropping loot all over the floor in every house and decorate every place they visit - the upside is players like that in RPGs, the downside is no peeking in the windows. The devs have already said the reason for bad performance in the cities is the 2d CPU depth layering which is why they are changing to 2.5d GPU processing. They are going to need to do that for the big city skyscrapers they want to do. Obviously the faster you drive the more sprite layers you have to load/display per second with more object sprite layers in city as well as likely using the widest zoom which is again more sprite. (it used to be zoom varied with screen rez making 4k worse - but that is fixed). Instanced containers for houses is most certainly is a gameplay mechanic change because instancing houses breaks open world zed sight/sound pathing - so faking a window image does not help that, and fake window view also means that you cannot see how many zed are shambling inside the store using line of sight nor can they see you. Your fake window solution also ignores the sound vectoring which is a huge part of the game. Zombies/players peeking/hearing in/out windows is a huge part of a zombie game so you would not want instanced housing.

I think your analysis is off. The 2.5d depth buffering is for drastically improving the performance of what gets drawn on top of other things so it can be handled by the GPU, since it is currently a 2d game that means it is doing that layering now using the CPU. So when you are driving where there is lots of building there is lots of layering going on - because it is an open world game where in/out zeds can hear/see in/out so that hordes have the potential to form based on how loud your driving is. So you want to stop the possibility of doing drivebuy looking thru the windows to see what loot/zed might be in there and using your vehicle noise to draw the zeds out? You are basically changing it from an open world game to an instance building game where the outside and inside are different worlds - but the existance of the sledgehammer and burnt walls shows even that in/out distinction does not exist. The loot is already abstracted into how full or empty the shelves using clutter levels dependent on the room it is in, but you do not actually know what is in shelves until you open them but very useful for peeking into stores to see if looted by zeds, pcs or upcoming npcs. So already your premise that buildings are containers of visible loot hitting performance is wrong, because shelves are already instanced containers with visual abstractions it only needs to load how full it is and not what is in the shelf. Reallly annoying when you store dry kitchen goods in the living room, and it shows up as books though - but it serves purpose of marking shelves as already looted. The instanced building approach is not new, Bethesda has used it for decades because they love to have building with lots of loot both useable and collectable with much of it visible on the shelves without abstraction. Starfield was widely panned because every door is a loading screen, I guess people forgot over the past decade that Fallout and Skyrim was the same way. Otherwise if it was truly open world they would have to cut down on the loot to save fps, and it is no longer a Bethesda game if they did that! The problem with your idea for PZ is that zeds are attracted to the sounds of your car - so if they are in the building they should all get out and horde up to follow you down the highway - depending on how loud your driving skills and car is. Line of site is only used to compute a path but before that a general direction to head is based on sound. Your car even has a horn to force them to mob up as a distracting strategy to pull all the zeds to another area. If you remove that then you might as well replace the vehicles with a fast travel system, as the result would be the same - safe roads are skippable boring roads. Keep in mind that walls are not just used for buildings, tall walls are also used for security fences. So if walls closed off inside from outside algorithm is done I could wall a city block near the highway and completely stop the horde from getting on the roads - which means the horde can now push down tall walls is a vestigal new feature because they will not aggro on your noisy car in the first place? An idea would be to change the audio alerted zombie pathing when driving to use a single vector for the group (flocking) rather than individual vectors which you would still use for computing a line of sight path . This should work since zeds cluster into small crews when idle. That would not be useable on foot as pulling one zed from a group is an important strategy, but maybe for cars would work. But that is only worth looking at after the 2.5D GPU optimization for layering is in, as it is already known that will solve much of the CPU layering performance issue.

I was a map admin helping create a new map for a modest private server run by an IT guy who hosted a handful of survival games for dozens of regular players. I ended up needing help from the server admin though because some noob griefed my base out of existence somehow even though it was on the tutorial PVE island (mapmaker privileges got to pick bases first). Why? Because I was only on that account for farm chores, usualy I was on my map admin account and it blocked his view even though he put his base in months after mine he justified it as never saw me on despite knowing the server covered time zones and allowed alts. The server admin who provided the servers wanted nothing to do with moderation issues, and relied on volunteer players to moderate as his cost was in the broadband bill even though his IT hardware/support was 'free'. Needless to say I never stayed on the new map I helped make as I was done with volunteers not knowing how to do a job that they do not actually have. I finally learned the only way to enjoy survival games is solo or known friendly coop, much easier to agree on settings and mods and no moderation issues. Moderation is a skill set that requires professionals, it is a mix of babysitting, grade school teacher, and therapist to deal with the insanity that exist on socials and gaming if you go beyond your known circle of friends - especially survival games that attract griefers and exploiters due to the genre itself. Shame because the IT guy had become a good friend and they would do well with PZ if they could get some decent moderators.

"The only downside I see is that moderating and maintaining it is still lots of work and would need lots of volunteers/workers. " This is why your offer is not viable - support is always more expensive than the actual hardware itself. Given that the game starts with a screen saying to play on whitelisted private or coop servers and not unknown open servers (as they do not want to deal with support issues complaining about hackers) - this would be even more of a moderation task than games that have official anti-cheat systems. Just look at ARK Survival Evolved despite being the most successful survivor game in the past decade - they stiffed an official server provider bill payments as they was already running out of money to provide moderation support even though they used BattleEye protection hackers became the norm on officals. It got so bad they did a remaster and sold it as a new game with a 2yr roadmap for remastering all past DLC - and the server provider funded development in exchange for an exclusive monopoly on providing unofficial/official servers (and of course they incrased unofficial pricing blaming it on the unoptimized game hittting the server hard). The official server experience is so bad that rumours say it must be intentional solely so they can push the cost of moderation onto unofficial hosters and lessen their official server costs with reduced population. Official servers are the fastest way for devs to go broke in other words! You would be better off just listing as a vanilla unofficial server no mods. Since it is not official it will get less traffic, mostly because people expect mods on unofficial and only expect no mods on officials. So your support load should be manageable, even more so if you are a streamer playing unmodded as you will attract like minds that seek the same experience with other channel members.

Those familiar with classic isometric computer RPG had 'real time with pause' party play, where you could switch which character in the party is the leader that is assigned to your controller and assign an AI package to the others. The game already has pause feature allowing UI interactions without advancing time. Presumably AI packages will exist with upcoming NPC that they will be able to shoot, melee, ride etc so it is just an additional feature of those NPC for joining your party where you can control their AI package and follow, stay, or dismiss. The game is taking inspiration from the community builder genre (rimworld, dwarven fortress) with NPC schedules - but those games also have features to select specific NPC and have user controls overriding the AI - which happens often as the AI steers into chaos! The game currently supports solo party play using load add more, it also supports local coop play using additional controllers both features leverage the multiplayer code to have more than one player character in your saves. This is a rare feature in sandbox survival games to have solo play be more than just a multiplayer server with a single character so great that these features was added. The disadvantage of 'solo add more' is that if you logout in a car, and then use that car on another character you will login and find yourself outside where the car was. It is not possible to have a raiding party drive together, they must take different cars at different times. Of course there is pros/cons of splitting the party vs. staying together. Local coop play it is cumbersome to manage solo party play having to swap controllers to takeover the other character, but has the advantage the characters can stay together by frequently swapping controllers else you just leave someone behind just like 'solo add more' would. The problem with the CRPG genre is you most follow the scripted branching storylines, but adopting their solo party control features that adds optional ways to play than coop/multiplayer for a solo party type of play that is about unscripted emergent gameplay. This allows the solo player to create a reactionary narrative for their party which like writing a book is a very satisfying creative endeavor. Telling other players online what to do to fit the story in your head is highly frowned on in coop/multiplay party play and most people are really bad at improv. Even if stringent RP servers that have narrative rules exist for proper improv, the group usually cannot login together and actually play as a party at all the times you want to play I applaud the company for already recognizing that coop/multi is not for everyone and that solo parties are a valid playstyle.