We have officially released our roadmap, outlining the development plan leading up to 1.0 & beyond. There is no bug fixing update this week but the team has been working on improving stability, fixing bugs and focusing on quality of life improvements to the game. This unfortunately delays us getting to the "fun stuff" of adding new items, features, etc. but is a necessary step in the development process. Some deeper information on our immediate goals are below!
Server Browser
We initially underestimated a number of things regarding matchmaking. Our first concern was ensuring people had others to play with and the original plan was to funnel ALL players into three regions; NA, EU and Asia. What we did not take into full consideration is how unplayable the game is if you cannot communicate effectively. This meant people with different language backgrounds were unable to communicate effectively and if you don't speak your fellow players’ language then the game is frustrating and the experience falls apart.
To mitigate this, we opened 6 regions: NA, SA, EU, RU, KR and Asia. The downside of that was: no visibility into how many players were on, the small community is again now split even more and lobbies are hard to fill up.
The team immediately decided that the system had to be changed, and promptly started working on a system overhaul. We want to allow players to be able to control who they play with, what language, in what regions, easily and with more visibility. Our first content patch (scheduled for Thursday Feb. 28th) will include a server browser to give players this control.
Feedback & Bugs
Project Winter is an early access game in the truest sense of that term, the game is not finished. We released Project Winter fully anticipating that there will likely be inherent gameplay problems, bugs, and features that will need to be reworked. We are fortunate that our community has been amazingly receptive and communicative. We thank those that have helped with suggestions and bug reports, this helps us ensure we are going in the right direction and ultimately shapes how we develop the game. Thankfully, almost everything that has been brought up already has a plan in place to solve these problems through various mechanics.
Expanding Survivor’s and Traitor’s Roles
Escape Flow
Today’s version of Project Winter was our most solid iteration in terms of gameflow. We want to make this experience more varied, as variety is the spice of life! Looking forward expect the “escape” flow to differ from what you are used to. While some maps may follow the standard repair x task, repair x task, escape flow - others maps will start to come into play where the repair tasks can be more complicated, combat based, forces survivors to split up, etc.
Deception Flow
Another goal of ours is to give players more options when it comes to deducing player roles. A few items in the works right now:
Professor’s Lab/Truth Serum: A special bunker that needs survivors to split up and coordinate in order to open. Inside there will be a truth serum item which can be used on a fellow player to reveal their role (survivor or traitor) only to the player that administered the serum.
Console Overload: When opening a bunker, traitors get the choice to “overload” the console. This sets all the consoles back to the off position and will have a cooldown on being used again.
Armory Bunker: Another special bunker that requires separation and coordination, but reveals more powerful weapons such as a silent crossbow and automatic rifles.
Traitor Disguise: Traitors can swap clothes with a deceased character to try to fool the other survivors.
New airdrop abilities for Traitors.
As we continue to develop Project Winter, we encourage you to join our Discord and chat with us! The team is committed to getting these features in and even looking to grow the team to make it happen even quicker!
Hope to see everyone in game! As a friendly reminder we have an MVP Challenge starting every Friday afternoon (Eastern time) where the winner gets a free copy of the game to give to a friend and 20,000 survivor points to get some new cosmetic items! Join us in Discord to participate and see you there!
Project Winter Team
Hotfix update v0.1.6567 released!
Bug fixing update! Focus for this week was continuing work on our server browser and smashing bugs. While the server browser isn't quite ready for release, we did resolve a number of bugs and wanted to push an update.
Bug fixes : 0.1.6567
- Fixed a bug where it was possible to get stuck near an escape vehicle
- Fixed an issue where a player could become stuck in place after stepping in bear trap while in downed state.
- Fix "Hunter" achievement and "Prospector" progression tier not tracking correctly
- Wolves are now correctly tracked as wildlife
- Fixes this issue, “Objective Finder can get stuck pointing straight up after being activated”.
- Fix damage calculation for deployables (bear trap, landmine) on resource nodes and animals
- Increased bolt action rifle damage
- Decreased semi-auto rifle damage
- Increased throw damage on pickaxe, axe, and sickle
- Radio static will now properly stop if someone is transmitting when the player dies
- Possible Fix for disconnects during load
- Possible fix for contextual options not working
- Fix for best region picking not working properly
- Fix traitor proximity audio being quieter than survivors
- Changing the icons to be more descriptive on the crafting station, stove, exile station and map
- Bunkers will have snow pfx when blizzard is triggered
- Fix tools and guns disappearing on customization screen when changing hair or skin colour
- Fix for crafting tables not selected the previously crafted items automatically.
- Fixed an issue where the ranged weapons could hit the ghosts.
- Fixed an issue where the bear attacking a player would cause the camera to shake on another clients machine.
- Fixed a bug where the graphic settings were not applied to cams inside the bunkers
- Fix timer still showing and animation continuing to play if knocked down while consuming an item
- Fix mute button text not localizing and not switching to "un-mute" when pressed in the lobby
- Fix issue where gun wouldn't reload if the player was attacked while shooting and entering the safezone around the cabin at the same time
Join us in our Discord for our weekly MVP challenge! Get the highest MVP score in a 24 hr period and you can win a copy of the game to give to a friend and 20,000 survivor points to spend on yourself!
See you all in game!
-Project Winter Team
Hotfix update v0.1.6516 released!
In our effort to squash bugs as fast as you are finding them, we have a brand new bug fixing patch for the weekend!
Change log:
Wolves are now counted for progression tasks targeting animals
Harvesting bushes and trees with a pickaxe progression task now tracks herb bushes in addition to berry bushes
Fixed a bug where survivors can board the escape without it being called
Actually fixed the in-game exit message this time
Fixed crash when typing in text chat with various languages
Thai characters added, though no localization
Improvements to Chinese character set to add more characters
Improvements to multi-language support for names/chats
Improvements to recycling
Fix which should make the Caribou animate correctly
Additional minor bug fixes
Remember if you have any issues or want to chat with the community, we are all over in Discord, so drop in to chat.
For the next 24 hours we will be capturing the best MVP scores from the game and giving away a FREE KEY as well as 20,000 survivor points for the best MVP score!
Good luck and have a great weekend!
Project Winter is LIVE!
Project Winter is officially live! Don't forget to tell a friend, so you can betray them of course!
In preperation for Early Access launch(10AM PST), Project Winter has been updated to v0.1.0.
Update log from beta build 0.0.104 includes:
- Proximity voice chat issue fixed
- In-game quit message reworded
- Steam item store hooked up in game
- Ability for host kick people from the lobby
- Contextual action getting stacked a number of times is fixed
- Some translation fixes
- Bug with contextual action when repairing not filling fixed
- Animal AI should have smoother animations
- Map balancing - Some rockwalls have been replaced with distractible co-operative actions others have been removed
- Voice activation bug fixes
-Problem with ammo not being synchronized to each of the client for the ranged weapons fixed
- Audio polish
- New items added
Looking forward to seeing everyone in game! If you encounter any issues please let us know in the Steam discussions or our Discord: http://discord.gg/projectwinter
- Project Winter Team
Beta has ended! Project Winter out on Feb 7th!
Thank you for everyone who participated in our beta this weekend! It was a blast playing with all of you. We have received an enormus amount of feedback and bug reports that we will be working on!
If you enjoyed the game, please add us to your wishlist to be updated when we release this Thursday!
Thanks again everyone, see you in game soon!
-Project Winter Team
Project Winter Beta live for the weekend!
Our beta is now officially live for the weekend! The beta will be open until 11:59PM EST on Sunday, February 3. If you have not signed up yet, you still can here. Keys will be sent out in waves over the weekend!
Please join our Discord for updates and to chat with other players as well as the dev team!
Have fun betraying your friends all weekend ːsteamhappyː
-Project Winter Team
Project Winter Beta begins this Friday!
Get ready to join us in some backstabbing betrayal during Project Winter's beta test February 1st - 3rd!
If you have not signed up yet, please do so here. We will be sending out keys Thursday and servers will be set live around 12:00PM EST on Friday.
Don't forget to join our Discordin order to get updates and chat with us while you play!
See you in game!
- Project Winter Team
Final closed pre-beta test happening tonight 5pm-12am EST!
Hey Everyone,
Just a reminder that the final closed pre-beta is running tonight and tomorrow night 5pm-12am EST. The signup for the pre-beta is CLOSED so we will be giving out no more keys. If you have not already signed up you can still sign up for our open beta here, this open beta will be happening from Feb 1-3. To all of those who have signed up, good luck in your games tonight, and remember... trust no one.
