@ShockDev here with a Just Survive update. I appreciate that you enjoy reading these updates and keep asking for more! I have fun writing them!
By the time you read this, the Live server should have been updated with the latest data direct from the Test Server. I really want to point out that we’re doing our best to provide you with the most stable updates possible. This is why we’re tightening up our publish rules a bit for Test server. With the exception of emergency hotfixes, updates should be available on Test server for roughly a week before going live. This gives us enough time to react to player discovered issues.
We’re working on a handful of initiatives right now. Most of these revolve around tightening the core game play experience, identifying systems that need a “once over,” and going completely experimental with systems that are just not working out as we hoped.
This leads to my first topic…
Experimental servers Very soon, you will see a few experimental servers going live. These servers are specifically being put in place to test out things we would normally be hesitant to try on the live environment. During team discussion, features/fixes which seem like reasonable ideas on our side will be discussed, but no matter how we vet it on our end, after going live, said feature doesn’t always work out as imagined. Hence, the experimental server! Here is how the experimental servers will play out:
•Experimental features/fixes/tests are scheduled for deployment on these servers.
•We publish and observe the change for some time. Usually a couple weeks.
•We then make a decision as to how we want to implement:
1.The feature graduates to official live status and is scheduled with a live update
2. We remove it, revise it or just straight burn it in a fire
Typically, experimental servers will be focused on a single or related set of changes to insure accurate analysis on our end.
No base building + more Zombies This is our first experimental server test. We’re going to turn off the ability to build structures and crank up the zombie count. We believe this experiment could lead to a very cool ruleset server in the future. Let’s see how it plays out! Tell us what you think.
Zombie AI We’ve been talking about Zombie AI changes for some time now. The reality is, it’s a huge system which significantly affects the way zombies operate in our game. A lot of the code base has been released in smaller chunks over the last couple months. Although we refer to it as Zombie AI, it’s really a system for all non-player controlled creatures. It’s currently only connected to the zombies though. At some point soon we’ll transition this system over to the wildlife. This may give you some insight as to why we’ve been holding back on making sweeping changes to the wolves, bears...etc. We really just want to quit tinkering with the old system and do it right with the new AI codebase. Zombies will be aware of bases and structures in the near future also. This should increase the threat level to your constructed safe havens. When there’s a zombie situation outside your base, you’ll actually need to deal with it.
Spawn Points We’ve been watching player patterns regarding respawning. Basically it goes something like this. “/respawn...did I get a good drop…No?.../respawn again.” Eventually, after some time, you end up with a spawn point you are happy with. We’re making some changes to make this a more ideal experience for all players and we are instituting that all the spawn location manifest around POI regions. So, your starting point will be within one of the following areas:
Villas
Dam
Radio Tower
Wilderness Camp
Desoto
Wake Hills
Bumjick
Runamok
LonePine
Ranchito Taquito
Cranberry
Pleasant Valley
Bubbas
Hemingway
Military Base
Governor’s Mansion
I understand this doesn’t mean much for veteran players who know the map in precise detail, but the main goal here is to help new players as well as casual players to get their bearings faster. This change will go to the Test server fairly soon.
But wait! There’s an additional component to this change which we’ll be testing on the “Experimental Servers”. Upon death (or character create), you’ll be presented with a map of the world. This map will have a handful of spawn regions based on the POI’s above. You will also see a marker representing your last death point. With this interface, you can choose a respawn region and get back to the action at an accelerated pace. This should also help foster timelier group play sessions. Keep in mind; we’re not talking pin point accuracy respawning. It’s literally a random spot within a POI region.
Z2 Map I wanted to touch base regarding Z2 just to clarify a few things. I’m sure most of you read Chris’s KOTK Producer update last week. He mentioned that KOTK would be getting Z2 before Just Survive. There is a very logical reason behind this. As you all are aware, our loot spawning and balance has been a challenge over the past year for survival. Without going into too much detail, we essentially over engineered the original system for Just Survive. We gave it so many tuning knobs, it became a beast to manage when we needed just a simple change. Often, the output would be completely contradictory to the result we had in mind! That being said, we’re reworking the way item spawns function in Just Survive. We want to be able to implement this new system on Z2 and completely avoid the legacy mechanic. This will put us in a much better position to react and tune the game going forward. This system has been in progress and should be available for our designers to use by the time Z2 is ready for population. So, although both teams (KOTK & JS) are populating Z2 around the same time, Just Survive is a significantly larger task and will naturally take longer to complete. AS we dive in, I will give you updates on progress.
That sums it up for me this week! See you in game!
Steve George
Game Update 4/28
Servers will be coming offline on Thursday 4/28 for approximately 2 hours
Added decay to rabbit traps. They will decay in about 2 and a half days.
Moonshine should now be correctly named.
Metal bar bulk has been reduced to 25 down from 50.
The crafting radius of Workbenches have been reduced slightly.
Borscht will now stack.
Repairing vehicles with a wrench should now work more reliably. The amount repaired is now based on a percentage of max condition rather than current condition.
Happy Face Boots and Skin names are now consistent.
Deer Scent will now last for 10 minutes rather than 18 seconds.
The timer for eating blackberries was reduced to half a second instead of 1 second.
A new recipe called "Handful of Blackberries” has been added which allows you to combine 10 blackberries. When eaten they will give you exactly what you would have gotten if you had eaten the blackberries separately.
Added scrap metal as a reward when you eat canned food.
Punji Sticks can now be damaged on PVE servers when not on a Foundation.
The All-In-One Cold Medicine description has been updated to indicate it only slows, not reduces the amount of H1Z1 virus level rate.
Rigged Lighting should now work more persistently.
A bug which prevented a stick from turning into coal has been resolved.
Biofuel which was not despawning after an explosion should now despawn.
Landmines that explode when being shot have a longer explosion animation.
Quest items spawning in the military base have been replaced with wearable items.
Office Cabinets should now properly appear in the inventory screen.
Picking up the Wasteland Helmet should no longer play the picking up ammo audio.
Charcoal should now burn the proper 40 minutes.
The His Regards machete first person attacks should be improved.
The Woodland Ghillie Suit boots now have the correct texture.
Modified AK47 with Toxic skin can now be repaired
EZW crate will now drop in the game
Players can drop the Modded AK-47 from their weapons slot
Animals should now give meat and fat when killed with a Fire Axe.
The Makeshift Bow can now be repaired reliably.
Producer Update for April 20th, 2016
Hi everyone, and thanks for taking the time to give this a read. I know that many of you have poured countless hours into H1Z1 and all of the developers thank you for that.
Before I get into things, I wanted to make sure everyone caught the announcement about King of the Kill being at this year’s TwitchCon.
Z2
I promised an update on Z2 recently, so let’s start there. If you are new to things, Z2 is the codename for an all new map being built to replace the current map (Z1) in the game. While this update note is specific to King of the Kill, Z2 will be used in Just Survive as well; more on that below.
Compared to any other single feature, Z2 is the most resource intensive to develop. It has the largest single team working on it, and it will be in development for many months in total. With an 8km x 8km playable space, it is easy to see why it needs so much effort. Every part of the map needs to be populated with terrain, trees, grass, stumps, rocks, gravel, houses, buildings, roads, etc. Every single one of those assets has been rebuilt from the ground up, started entirely from scratch.
It is also being re-architected in comparison to Z1 so that when we optimize it, it can provide better performance. It is coming alongside some updates to our lighting and other rendering systems, the visual quality of the map will be a significant increase in quality.
As I mentioned, the process of building a map of this size takes many months. The general order of development looks as follows. There are some simultaneous activities here, but this is the rough order things are worked on.
Each sector of the map is being designed to have a POI. Those are being added in to compliment the major POI’s (like the dam and Pleasant Valley). This is being done to provide something of interest in each area and provide a lot of gameplay and discovery to go along with it. In the King of the Kill, no matter where you spawn, you will not be too far from a POI (some more major than others) to go explore and loot.
A lot of the early work that has been shared publicly was done as tests to new systems and tools to get ready to go into full production of the map (which is where we are now). I can understand some frustration in that the map was talked about quite some time ago and then not really mentioned since then. We are definitely hard at work on it, reviewing it regularly and making changes to accommodate the feedback from those reviews.
I am sure that what you care most about is when you will get to see it. We are working on a plan right now that will get it out sooner rather than later (although that doesn’t mean tomorrow, sorry!). We are going to embrace the Early Access part of H1Z1 and get the map up prior to it being complete. That means that when we release it, some of the buildings will probably be bright white (as we layout a map we work with white buildings to represent buildings that will be added later by artists), and other areas may not be fully fleshed out. But you will see it develop in real time as we continue to update other parts of the game. Doing this allows us to collect feedback and make changes as we go along.
A special note for Just Survive players: there are some additional steps that we have to go through to make the map work well in Just Survive, so we will likely release it in King of the Kill first, get it ready for Just Survive, and then release it into Just Survive. This is simply so we can get it out quicker. If we waited on both until it was ready for both, we would just be holding on to one, and we don’t want to do that.
We will continue to share progress in these updates, as well as our monthly art videos that we share. Follow @H1Z1JustSurvive and @H1Z1KotK on Twitter; they will sometimes provide you with a sneak peek from our artists at work in development. In fact, here’s a sneak peek right now:
Ignition
Please join our Test servers this weekend for another look at our new mode, Ignition. This is likely our final test run of the new mode, so get in now to check it out and give us some feedback. Our plan is to do this last test, make a final iteration on the mode, and then add it to the Live servers for regular play in early May. Again, we’re embracing the Early Access part of this and want to get it out; we will continue to tune and iterate, but we believe that it is close and ready for large scale play.
Cameras and Combat
Cameras and combat continue to be a heavy focus for us. A lot of times they go hand-in-hand. We are reviewing every video that we can find where someone is confused as to why a combat encounter resulted the way it did. In some cases we have found bugs, some have highlighted problems with our feedback systems, and some just are not clear enough to the player when those situations played out correctly. We are slowly rolling out changes and monitoring to see if there was an impact or not to continue to make this better. When I am really confident that everything is working as expected, I will wrap up everything that we did to address it.
Working their way up to our live servers now are some changes to make the camera smoother going through doors and prevention of camera going through walls and other objects, as well as some improvements to the camera while in vehicles to make it less “shaky.”
New Crate
We have a new crate coming online next Tuesday, April 26th. We have a small team of folks who work on the items that go into crates as well as building items that we can use as rewards in future systems. Whenever they get enough items that we can pull them together into a new crate, we go ahead and do that. This particular crate is a little bit more on the wild side, all being themed around big time Wrestling. Called the Extreme Zombie Wrestling (EZW) Crate, it is a collection of wrestling-themed items like masks and tights. My favorite is the champion’s belt. It actually is a skin to go in place of body armor, so if you find body armor in the world and have the belt to skin to it, you get a pretty sweet look going on.
Hi everyone, and thanks for taking the time to give this a read. I know that many of you have poured countless hours into H1Z1 and all of the developers thank you for that.
Before I get into things, I wanted to make sure everyone caught the announcement about King of the Kill being at this year’s TwitchCon.
Z2
I promised an update on Z2 recently, so let’s start there. If you are new to things, Z2 is the codename for an all new map being built to replace the current map (Z1) in the game. While this update note is specific to King of the Kill, Z2 will be used in Just Survive as well; more on that below.
Compared to any other single feature, Z2 is the most resource intensive to develop. It has the largest single team working on it, and it will be in development for many months in total. With an 8km x 8km playable space, it is easy to see why it needs so much effort. Every part of the map needs to be populated with terrain, trees, grass, stumps, rocks, gravel, houses, buildings, roads, etc. Every single one of those assets has been rebuilt from the ground up, started entirely from scratch.
It is also being re-architected in comparison to Z1 so that when we optimize it, it can provide better performance. It is coming alongside some updates to our lighting and other rendering systems, the visual quality of the map will be a significant increase in quality.
As I mentioned, the process of building a map of this size takes many months. The general order of development looks as follows. There are some simultaneous activities here, but this is the rough order things are worked on.
Each sector of the map is being designed to have a POI. Those are being added in to compliment the major POI’s (like the dam and Pleasant Valley). This is being done to provide something of interest in each area and provide a lot of gameplay and discovery to go along with it. In the King of the Kill, no matter where you spawn, you will not be too far from a POI (some more major than others) to go explore and loot.
A lot of the early work that has been shared publicly was done as tests to new systems and tools to get ready to go into full production of the map (which is where we are now). I can understand some frustration in that the map was talked about quite some time ago and then not really mentioned since then. We are definitely hard at work on it, reviewing it regularly and making changes to accommodate the feedback from those reviews.
I am sure that what you care most about is when you will get to see it. We are working on a plan right now that will get it out sooner rather than later (although that doesn’t mean tomorrow, sorry!). We are going to embrace the Early Access part of H1Z1 and get the map up prior to it being complete. That means that when we release it, some of the buildings will probably be bright white (as we layout a map we work with white buildings to represent buildings that will be added later by artists), and other areas may not be fully fleshed out. But you will see it develop in real time as we continue to update other parts of the game. Doing this allows us to collect feedback and make changes as we go along.
A special note for Just Survive players: there are some additional steps that we have to go through to make the map work well in Just Survive, so we will likely release it in King of the Kill first, get it ready for Just Survive, and then release it into Just Survive. This is simply so we can get it out quicker. If we waited on both until it was ready for both, we would just be holding on to one, and we don’t want to do that.
We will continue to share progress in these updates, as well as our monthly art videos that we share. Follow @H1Z1JustSurvive and @H1Z1KotK on Twitter; they will sometimes provide you with a sneak peek from our artists at work in development. In fact, here’s a sneak peek right now:
Ignition
Please join our Test servers this weekend for another look at our new mode, Ignition. This is likely our final test run of the new mode, so get in now to check it out and give us some feedback. Our plan is to do this last test, make a final iteration on the mode, and then add it to the Live servers for regular play in early May. Again, we’re embracing the Early Access part of this and want to get it out; we will continue to tune and iterate, but we believe that it is close and ready for large scale play.
Cameras and Combat
Cameras and combat continue to be a heavy focus for us. A lot of times they go hand-in-hand. We are reviewing every video that we can find where someone is confused as to why a combat encounter resulted the way it did. In some cases we have found bugs, some have highlighted problems with our feedback systems, and some just are not clear enough to the player when those situations played out correctly. We are slowly rolling out changes and monitoring to see if there was an impact or not to continue to make this better. When I am really confident that everything is working as expected, I will wrap up everything that we did to address it.
Working their way up to our live servers now are some changes to make the camera smoother going through doors and prevention of camera going through walls and other objects, as well as some improvements to the camera while in vehicles to make it less “shaky.”
New Crate
We have a new crate coming online next Tuesday, April 26th. We have a small team of folks who work on the items that go into crates as well as building items that we can use as rewards in future systems. Whenever they get enough items that we can pull them together into a new crate, we go ahead and do that. This particular crate is a little bit more on the wild side, all being themed around big time Wrestling. Called the Extreme Zombie Wrestling (EZW) Crate, it is a collection of wrestling-themed items like masks and tights. My favorite is the champion’s belt. It actually is a skin to go in place of body armor, so if you find body armor in the world and have the belt to skin to it, you get a pretty sweet look going on.
Game Update Maintenance 04/13
The Just Survive servers will be coming down tomorrow (4/13) at 3:00AM Pacific (10:00 AM GMT) for approximately 3 hours. All character and server data will be wiped in preparation for the update. Players can note the following changes:
The following servers will be converted to base restricted building:
Game Update Maintenance 04/13
The Just Survive servers will be coming down tomorrow (4/13) at 3:00AM Pacific (10:00 AM GMT) for approximately 3 hours. All character and server data will be wiped in preparation for the update. Players can note the following changes:
The following servers will be converted to base restricted building:
Producer's Update 4/12
Hi everyone,
The Test server has been getting a few updates over the last week and now it’s time to bring all of that to the Live servers. The update should be coming tomorrow 4/13.
We are making some changes about the recursive destruction based on your feedback. We will be taking this feature out of tomorrow’s publish to do some additional design work before implementing it again. Thanks to everyone who took the time to jump onto the Test server and provided feedback. It’s this type of player interaction that we hope to foster more of moving forward.
Right now we are working on a few new things for Just Survive that you should see come to the Test server in the near future. We’re in the process of integrating our AI system (used currently with zombies) into the other creatures of the world (Deer, wolves, bears..etc). This change should address a lot of issues we are experiencing with wildlife currently. We will be applying the limited area build rules to all PVE servers. If the base decay works as planned and frees up the world from cluttered bases we want to start increasing zombie density by raising global NPC caps.
The update will come with a full player and world wipe. With the dupe bug fixed and the base decay being added we think now is a great time to jump back in to Just Survive and stake your claim.
Patch notes for the update will be coming soon. Keep an eye on Reddit and our social channels for that announcement. Thanks!
Test Server and Game Update Information
Hey Everyone,
The Test Server has just received an update with a pretty good amount of new features including changes to base building you may have read about in last week’s Producer’s Update. Now it’s your turn to jump in there and hammer on it.
Some of the new features we introduced to base building are dependent on the amount of time they live on the server so in order to ensure those are tested properly, we are going to be pushing back the publish to the Live servers into next week. We feel it’s important to give the community enough time to experience these changes and provide valuable feedback we can use to improve the update. Pushing that update into next week was not our intent, but it will help create a smoother transition onto the Live servers.
As a reminder, the publish to the Test server and subsequently to the Live server will require a full server and player wipe. We cracked the dupe bug and a wipe will help reset the world’s economy of resources. The new speed of base decay will help the world maintain its apocalyptic atmosphere and help it feel less cluttered. With a more open world we will be able to further test the potential for higher and higher zombie population, improving their AI and making them an actual threat. We are internally working on getting the zombies to attack player made structures, another reason you’ll need to upkeep and defend your base.
Finally, for those of you who carefully watch the Test server we are going to start making incremental updates that may not always be player facing. Sometimes we need to fix an exploit, test a server performance change, or tweak some other internal system. When there is a patch with player facing changes we both want and need your feedback on we will provide notes on those.
Thanks to those of you who actively jump into the Test server and provide feedback. Please keep your reports centralized in this thread for easier accessibility.
There are a few more changes we'll add to this thread a little later today and as always we look forward to your feedback!
Hotfix + Downtime 4/1
Just Survive and King of the Kill servers will be coming down tomorrow (4/1) at 3:00AM Pacific for approximately 4 hours.
There will be additional bug fixes coming for the next patch, tentatively scheduled for April 6th. Tomorrow’s hotfix will address the following issues:
•(KotK & JS) Fixed some camera clipping issues while using a higher FOV setting.
•(KotK & JS) Fog density has been reduced significantly
•(KotK & JS) Fixed mouse wheel rotation issues and general responsiveness
•You no longer need a compass in your inventory to see your heading. Heading will always be shown.
•Tombstone no longer explodes in Box of Destiny
•We've added a setting in the option panel to silence proximity chat while in the Box of Destiny. Proximity chat will be available when the round begins, even with this checkbox selected
•Vehicles have been removed from the Box of Destiny to improve the overall experience
Producer's Update March 31st
H1Z1 Quick Hits for March. 31st, 2016
Hi everyone!
Steve George (@ShockDev) here with a quick update regarding H1Z1: Just Survive. I know some of you are thinking, “Wait a minute, why isn’t Executive Producer Chris Wynn writing this?” Simple. Chris and I share many duties across the H1Z1 franchise, but Just Survive is my primary focus so it makes sense that I provide the dev updates for that team and give you insight into how things are coming together.
To begin, I want to thank you all for transitioning with us when we spun-off Just Survive and King of the Kill as two separate products back in February. The overarching goal has always been to regularly iterate on Just Survive based on its exclusive needs. The reality is we still have many issues to resolve which are pertinent to both games. This is the main reason you are still seeing live updates for both products in synchronization. We are two separate teams; however, there are many of our technical process that can be synced with one another, which is why for the time being you will see some hotfixes that address issues on both titles.
Also, thanks to those of you that helped us identify duping issues. We’ve identified it internally and are actively working to get that fix in game
Current Focus for Just Survive
Base building is an important part of Just Survive. We want you to feel like you’re staking your claim in this world. Base building in its current state has left the world cluttered and messy. We hope the following changes will help keep the atmosphere of Just Survive more aligned with our original design for the game. You can expect more changes and features added to base building in the future. Some upcoming additions:
Base Decay There has been a lot of discussion on our end regarding ways to keep the world free of derelict bases and other structures. One of the things we’ve identified is the length of time it takes for a base to decay and disappear. Keep in mind while you are reading this, we’re not trying to make it more difficult to maintain your bases. In Just Survive, we have property which we want you to build on but there should be some general guidelines to the use of this property. We believe that if you want to own a base in the world, you need to login and play at a reasonable frequency. At this time, with “reasonable,” we mean about once a week. Going forward, anything beyond this play frequency will result in your base decaying. So, in a nutshell, log in weekly and repair your base at a bare minimum and this change should have zero effect on you.
Base Destruction Recursive base destruction is being turned on. What does this mean? When something is destroyed, anything attached to that unit is also recursively destroyed. So if you build a stack of items on top of each other and destroy the bottom one, everything above will also destroyed. This may sadden those of you that build stairways to heaven or those that use sleeping bags as roof tiles, but those are examples of unintended functionality. More importantly, this feature will help facilitate cleaning up the world and mean no more random floating base elements
Limited Base Building Servers Due to positive community feedback on the matter, we’re converting 5 more servers (2 EU) to limited base building worlds. The following servers will all be converted to PVP worlds:
•Decay
•Fiend Fire (EU)
•Axe Away
•Barricade
•Belgrade (EU)
Release timing for these changes:
Tentatively April 6, 2016
Additionally, you can expect an update to the Live servers with more bug fixes very soon. As always, for this post and those in the future, I look forward to feedback from the community!
Hotfix March 11th
We've updated the game to address a few outstanding issues. Players can note the following changes:
Dragging an item in the inventory while holding the Shift key will once again display an item count window.
3rd person camera collision with walls within interior spaces should be improved.
Players will find it more difficult to see through ceilings.
