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After waiting what feels like forever, the pimps have put out an experimental version of their Alpha 17 release for everyone to try out.

It's a very different game to the previous alpha version that's for sure. I won't go over everything that has changed, here's a copy-paste from what I wrote before for those who missed the highlights:

They've updated Unity to bring in some massively improved lighting; texture streaming; a new party system to share XP, share quests and track their location and health; the quest system is brand new, which lets you pick up quests from traders and progress through tiered quests difficulties; the Navezgane map is more than double the original size; many new locations and many improved locations from the previous alpha; multiple new vehicles; overhauled AI system, which includes some scary sounding behaviours and absolutely loads more. To say they've been busy, would be a pretty big understatement.

Since they updated their version of the Unity game engine, it has come with issues in the Linux version. The famous Unity double-input bug is here to crash the party! If you find your character continues walking after you stop, or any other annoyances like that then you've got bugs! Not everyone will see it, some desktops don't. However, if you do have major input problems there is a workaround you can use for now.

Simply set this as a Steam launch option and enjoy the ride:

XMODIFIERS='' %command%

That's all you have to do to fix it, until they update their Unity version again.

As for performance, it's not great. Playable when you tweak the settings, but they sorely need to spend some more time optimising it. Seems to look quite a bit better now though!

To access it, simply opt into the unstable build from the Beta tab of the Properties window for the game on Steam, no password is required.

You can find 7 Days to Die on Humble Store (on sale) and Steam.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Lintux Nov 20, 2018
yes, and the Vulkan is total broken. Performance on Win10 is 150% better on my System with a RTX2080TI than on my Archlinux....
Liam Dawe Nov 20, 2018
Quoting: Lintuxyes, and the Vulkan is total broken. Performance on Win10 is 150% better on my System with a RTX2080TI than on my Archlinux....
See one of the team's comments on our previous article about Vulkan.
Ehvis Nov 20, 2018
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It's interesting that this game doesn't have the input bug for me. But Planet Nomads does. I wonder set of circumstances causes this.
Alloc Nov 20, 2018
QuoteThe famous Unity double-input bug is here to crash the party!
Did you actually test it or was that a generic assumption from other games? Just curious because I had an eye on that Unity issue and while I never got it myself one of our QA got this when we were running on the 2018.1.* release cycle. But that issue was reported to be fixed in Unity 2018.2 and no one was able to reproduce it after we updated.
Liam Dawe Nov 20, 2018
Quoting: Alloc
QuoteThe famous Unity double-input bug is here to crash the party!
Did you actually test it or was that a generic assumption from other games? Just curious because I had an eye on that Unity issue and while I never got it myself one of our QA got this when we were running on the 2018.1.* release cycle. But that issue was reported to be fixed in Unity 2018.2 and no one was able to reproduce it after we updated.
Yes, confirmed across two completely different computers. I would never, ever write such a thing I haven't seen first-hand as if I have. As mentioned, it's a bug that doesn't happen across all distros. It happened on Sin's Streaming PC and my secondary PC, while it didn't show up on my main PC. Also seen reports of people with it in our Discord. I was thinking it was a performance problem since it didn't happen on my main PC, but using the workaround on Sin's PC instantly fixed it.
Alloc Nov 20, 2018
Yeah, just wanted to be sure. Thought that if one machine had the bug in 2018.1 but not now it would be fixed ... didn't expect it to be yet another different issue :(
Xpander Nov 20, 2018
No input bug for me but im using MATE desktop.

Anyway the game performance is just shitshow.

2560x1440 all maxed 23-40 FPS
2560x1440 all maxed, except shadow reflections, trees high, 43-65 FPS
2560x1440 all low, except textures full, 60-100FPS

1920x1080 all maxed 33-45 FPS
1920x1080 all maxed, except shadow reflections, trees high, 53-85 FPS
1920x1080 all low, except textures full, 80-130FPS

thats with a Ryzen 7 1700X @3.9Ghz and GTX 1080Ti

GPU is barely even used on max settings, 40-50% utilization only.

using taskset -c 0,2,4,6 improves perf about +5 FPS on 1440p and +10 fps on 1080p

seems they haven't done any CPU optimizations with this game at all..

edit: It seems that shadow reflections and trees are done with CPU not GPU, but not having more threads to use for this will cause the huge performance drop. as setting trees to lowest and disabling shadow reflections yields good FPS and even GPU usage goes higher then. 70-80% utilization then.


Last edited by Xpander on 20 November 2018 at 12:53 pm UTC
Gryxx Nov 20, 2018
Quoting: Lintuxyes, and the Vulkan is total broken. Performance on Win10 is 150% better on my System with a RTX2080TI than on my Archlinux....

https://steamcommunity.com/app/251570/discussions/0/1734343065614146604/?ctp=30#c1750106661719696376
g000h Nov 21, 2018
Does anyone have familiarity of jumping around on versions of 7DTD ? I quite like the idea of trying out the new experimental build but don't necessarily want to lose my current game state on the stable build.

Looking at the relevant directories on my system, it looks like this is where the Save Games sit:

 ~/.local/share/7DaysToDie/

And then my main (stable) game application files are here (this is a non-default location for the Steam Library Folder):

 /home/games/steam/steamapps/common/7\ Days\ To\ Die

Would you suggest copying/archiving both of those and then installing the experimental? If I want to restore the stable version, I'd delete and over-write those folders with the stable copies?
Gryxx Nov 21, 2018
Quoting: g000hDoes anyone have familiarity of jumping around on versions of 7DTD ? I quite like the idea of trying out the new experimental build but don't necessarily want to lose my current game state on the stable build.

Looking at the relevant directories on my system, it looks like this is where the Save Games sit:

 ~/.local/share/7DaysToDie/

And then my main (stable) game application files are here (this is a non-default location for the Steam Library Folder):

 /home/games/steam/steamapps/common/7\ Days\ To\ Die

Would you suggest copying/archiving both of those and then installing the experimental? If I want to restore the stable version, I'd delete and over-write those folders with the stable copies?
Yes.
You can use this to help you copy that.
Saves should remaing untouched- they are clearly visible in menu as previous, incompatible version. But backup is never a bad idea.
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