It's been a busy month with family visiting and Christmas on the horizon, but I have the first part of a large update for you peeps, so let's get into it! The update is featured on Civilian AI prior to being involved in a zombie apocalypse (when they are red at the beginning of the sim) and trying to make a more in-depth world that the sim can take place in. On that note:
Some civilians now have jobs! They will go to work and go back home again. At the moment it's rather simplistic in that civilians designate random buildings as "home" and "work" buildings and after a certain amount of time they will go back and forth between them, but it does mean civilian traffic patterns will be different from the previous civilian AI which was to randomly patrol the sidewalks and buildings. I do want to allow certain places to be designated as "home" rooms and "work" rooms so that civilians will go to specific places to work and a lot of updates are going to be focused on things like these in the future.
The main thing that has been absorbing time has been that I've written a large refactor of the AI regarding how civilians find their way around so that I can add a lot more future interesting updates, so there's not that much to see this time around but a lot of work has gone on under the hood and things should progress quickly from here on!
The way this refactor works is that I have given civilians a way to find their way properly into the interiors of buildings. In the above image they would stand in these red lines and it would count as being inside the building space and it would count as "being at work" but now the system will detect that the entrance is around the other side and they will go around and use it properly. Here is another example:
The military are still using the old system at the moment so they might still get stuck but I will be working this new system into their AI for future updates!
I'm going to be taking a week off for the holidays so there'll be no update next week but I'm going to be looking forward to bringing you lots more updates to DeadOS in 2023 and I hope you are enjoying the direction the game is going.
Version 0.13.2b is now live!
Oops. I left a mistake in the code that caused the block editor to crash when it was opened up. It's fixed now though! See the previous patch notes for all the recent updates with this latest patch!
Version 0.13.2 is now live!
Hi everyone! Got a small update for you this week but also more information on what is coming soon!
First off, I've added a new building to the game!
I'm soon going to be working on a system that gives each civilian some kind of job/occupation/task that they are going to be doing, like shopping, going to work, going home, etc to try and make a more immersive sim, and part of that means I'm organising all the buildings into different categories (retail, work space, apartments, police station, etc). As a part of this I've added this new building as there was only 1 apartment type of building and this new indoor apartment area adds a bit of variety as I think there needs to be more living space in the sim. The job system is still a work in progress and isn't ready yet but I hope you'll find it adds more to the sim when it comes along!
Also fixed some things with the block editor:
Fixed block editor checkboxes stealing arrow key input from camera. Fixed doors and windows not being removed properly in the block editor.
Thanks for playing and I hope you enjoy the game!
Version 0.13.1 is now live!
Hi everyone! A rather small quick update this week because I wanted to fix a mistake in the previous build. There are some new features though!
The fix is for the new reset option, there was an issue where the reset wasn't resetting the amount of time it takes for humans to turn once infected and they were all turning instantly on reset, oops! That is fixed now!
Other changes:
I've changed the max amount of time that people can be infected from 500 to 1000 and changed the default value from 250 to 500. I think having slower rates of infection will be making some of the upcoming updates more interesting.
The other change is that cars can now be destroyed when they hit too many civilians, they will no longer plow through infinite amounts. The current rule is there's a 20% chance the car will be destroyed when people get hit, I may consider allowing people to change that chance in the future.
I'm working on something I hope you'll find interesting in the upcoming weeks, but until then thanks for enjoying the game!
Version 0.13.0 is now live!
Hi everyone! Got an important change for you this week!
First off, I'm changing the status from Alpha to Beta. This doesn't really mean anything is going to change in terms of how the game is being made, it's just been enough time that I think it isn't an Alpha anymore and is now closer to a Beta. It's worth me saying that even when it's been released out of early access that doesn't mean I will consider it to be the end of the project! Ok so enough about that, on to the main change:
Resetting the sim!
Previously when you were finished in a simulation you have to respawn in new citizens, reallocate your cops, zombies, etc. This can still be done with the "New Population" button but from now on pressing Reset means that your original setup is restored to it's original place. This will hopefully save a lot of time when you want to set up specific scenarios and run them over and over! I'm still going to be adding to this a little to allow people to make more changes when resetting.
A lot of work has had to go into trying to prevent bugs with this kind of resetting so if you find any bugs as a result, please let me know in the Steam discussions!
Thanks everyone and I hope you enjoy the latest update!
Version 0.12.5 is now live!
Hi everyone! Got a small update for you this week!
I'm working on a new feature to reset the sim in a way that it remembers your setup but that isn't quite ready yet so for this week it's a lot of small fixes and tweaks until that is hopefully ready next week!
The main thing in this update is UI changes. Buttons have been rearranged and new things appear to help the user figure out what's going on when they set up their simulations.
I've added a warning message for when no cops have been assigned as I've noticed sometimes users have tweaked settings and forgotten to actually allocate cops. To help with this I've also added a little prompt that appears when you assign cops and zombies so that you can tell your changes have been made.
Other changes:
City block setup screen now shows 8x8 instead of just 8 to be clearer about the size of the city that is being made.
The find person tool no longer automatically locks the camera onto the unit it finds. It still moves the camera to the person but doesn't lock it to track mode.
Moved some buttons around.
I hope you enjoy the latest update and are looking forward to the next!
Version 0.12.4 is now live!
Hi everyone! Got a bunch of small features and changes for you this week!
Added a little mouseover tool to help people click on the units easier. It glows when you mouseover a unit. If you dislike this feature or simply want to turn it off you can in the options screen under "Disable Mouseover FX":
Another visual change - I noticed people were having problems finding the police station so now that is a lot more noticeable in the overlays:
Other patch notes:
It is now written in the log for units when they starve to death as a zombie. Car smoke is no longer visible over the nuke visual effect Fixed a bug where the zombie settings were displaying the incorrect starve settings.
Another side note: DeadOS has reached 1000 sales while in Early Access!
Thank you all so much for taking this journey with me so far, and I hope you will be pleased with all the things to come from here forward.
Version 0.12.3 is now live!
Hi everyone! Got some more sounds for you this week!
This week's sounds are all car focused, mainly honking in traffic, skidding noises, crashing noises, sounds when running over pedestrians, etc!
I hope you enjoy the new sounds and find it makes the experience a little more immersive.
Version 0.12.2 is now live!
Hi everyone! Got a small update for you this time because I've been a bit sick and had to work on some other things but believe me I'm still committed to the project!
This week I've added some new sound effects on top of the ones previously added, namely one for when doors are being broken and two others for when a window is being attacked and when it is smashed.
I hope you like the new sounds that are being added and I look forward to bringing more AI based updates soon!
Version 0.12.1 is now live!
Hi everybody! I have an update I hope you are all going to like!
I've added more sounds to the game! I plan to add more over upcoming updates but at the moment we have:
Gunshot noises Helicoper buzzing Various screams of panicked citizens Zombie groans
I plan to soon add doors and windows being broken, as well as car horns + crashes.
I've gone with a style that I think fits the game's retro theme which is a slightly bit crushed version of the sounds. Don't worry though, if the sounds aren't for you I've added a Mute SFX button in the Options screen so you can have your silent simulations if you wish:
I hope you enjoy this latest update and I'm interested in knowing what you all think!
