We’ll be releasing our v1.10 update directly to the stable branch today. We have done a good deal of improving and fixing here. A lot has gone into 1.10 and we want to get it tested by as many people as possible right off the bat, so here you have it. The focus for this and coming builds has been early game and polish, a task which isn’t always exciting for people interested in our development. It’s also not always a quick process Sometimes the last 10% of a feature can take just as long as the first 90%.
We’ve made major changes to our quick guide and game introduction. We’ve added the ability to swim (finally) and we totally reworked the in game chat system. We’ve added a hardcore/normal gameplay setting allowing those who wish to play a bit more casual and spawn at home. The game is starting to really shape up, we’ve relied greatly on your feedback and thank you for continuing to provide it. Have a good play through here with 1.10 and get back to us as soon as you can with feedback.
Swimming
Terribly sorry, that’s the best way to start after having tested the swimming implementation. Wow, was that needed! It really brings the world to life not having to constantly worry about death when you’re near a body of water. Andre spent the week adding all the finishing touches to the swimming mechanic. Proxy animations have been added so you don’t look like Jason Voorhees walking across Crystal Lake anymore. Stamina now affects how far you can swim before you start sinking so don’t go thinking you can swim right off the map. Players will be able to freely dive for quite a few seconds before taking damage to drowning (underwater caches, perhaps?!). You’ll receive ‘warning gulps’ before drowning to alert you to make your way to the surface. Now it’s time to start thinking about boats and fishing!
[previewyoutube="4IfxQOqzNeo;full"]
Chat Improvements
As you know, the in game text chat can be at times useless. There are a good amount of issues with the current system, enough to require a total rework. The chat in the game now is dark, the text is hard to read and there is a good deal of console information cluttering it up. The system doesn’t match the inspect style and just doesn’t provide a good experience.
We’ve introduced a new chat and think it will work for us much better. We’ve introduced a gradient style background matching that of our inspect menu and the coming help system. They system will be sleeker while at the same time being clearer to use. We’ll be removing the console clutter as well. Information like “Jayty has joined the server” will now display in the small notification area on the top left side of the screen.
Setting Home (Game Modes)
For a very long time now, many of you have requested a home feature. Coming in v1.10, this will be possible. The game foundation is changing slightly. With much consideration, we’ve decided to try and provide a game mode for all players. We will be introducing two gameplay modes standard and hardcore.
Standard and Hardcore Game Mode
Those that want a more casual experience will find that standard mode's ability to ‘set home’ dramatically changes the gameplay. In a lot of ways, Survive the Nights was always meant to be a hardcore survival game. On the other side of that coin, setting a spawn point inside a structure allows you and your friends to jump right back into the action.
The player will now be able to walk into any structure in the game, find themselves some cloth, craft a sleeping bag and place it on the ground inside the structure. Doing this will provide a notification in the top left corner informing the player that a home has been set. Your friends will also be able to set homes in the same structure. In many ways, this is the start of a group system that we’ll flesh out in the future.
Home set and home removed notifications
This changes the gameplay for sure, allowing for rapid respawns and getting right back to killing that night's horde or onslaught. This, in many ways, is what we originally wanted for STN. A good chunk of the game is based on our experience with Call of Duty's World at Wars' Nazi zombie map. We were completely addicted to the action and the idea of ‘holding down’ a structure. There are quite a few more changes to both modes we’ve listed below.
Hardcore mode will provide harder zombie hordes, no ability to set home and reflects what we have running on our current official servers. Hardcore mode will allow for more zombies to be ‘alive’ at the same time. This is something that wasn’t possible before.
A lot more has gone into this and James will cover it nicely in the upcoming devlog. We hope to have an experimental build out in the near future and there will be a good deal of testing needed here.
Other Changes and Fixes
Hordes will now start around an hour later than before.
Lower difficulty hordes no longer start later than more difficult hordes. This makes playing with friends easier when you have mixed horde levels.
Homes will now show up on the map and via the inspect menus compass.
Horde arrival window reduced from 0-4 hours to 0-3. Hordes will arrive later but arriving hordes won’t take as long to get to you.
Spawn at home or near death options added on death
Death Screen on Standard Mode (spawn at home or near death)
Compass Improvements
Currently in the game you have two compass options. A DIY compass you can craft with a few bits and a found compass. The only difference between the two currently is the speed at which your position is displayed. The DIY compass is far slower than the one you can find in the world. When the player opens the maps, the compass takes time to calibrate. The time it takes is the difference between the two. This system works and it’s pretty unique but it’s not very intuitive and for the most part, takes far too much time and effort.
We’ve decided to implement a new compass system. Once the player finds a compass in the world or crafts one, they’ll be able to see their position on the inspection menu. Currently the inspection menu is defaulted to ‘F’ . It's the menu that comes up when you want to inspect anything on your person or your stats. You’ll be able to see the direction, your home and approaching hordes.
[previewyoutube="nozdfdX0Ato;full"]
Map Improvements
Map improvements have also been made. Andre has improved the visuals and mechanics. Below is a snippet from our Changelog and a good chunk of the changes made here.
Player position is now a blue arrow which matches rotation of player.
Player position ping animation improved.
Player position increases in size when zooming out so it’s easier to see when zoomed out.
Zooming should now go where cursor is pointing.
Movement is smoothed out when zooming in and out.
Removed need to scroll 8+ times to fully zoom in, should now be 2-3 times.
Panning now more responsive, removed extremely long elastic movement effect.
Updated look of map border to match look of new UI.
Fonts changed to American Typewriter.
Improved resolutions of text.
Added stationary directional symbol to show where north is
[previewyoutube="ps_MeAjInQI;full"]
Animation Improvements
Part of the quality of life improvements and general game improvements we’ll be focusing on in the coming updates is fluidity. Weapon animation speeds were something that needed addressing. John has spent the week tweaking and changing animations and animation speeds. He's made reloading animations around 1.5x faster than they’ve been in the past across the board. You’ll also notice a new last round and partial clip reload animation.
There have been a load of animation improvements in 1.10 and we’ll continue to improve them across the board as we move through further development.
New mid clip reload
357 Old Jamming
357 New Jamming around a second quicker and more fluid
Bateman Old Jamming
Bateman new jamming around 4 seconds faster
Along with reload animation tweaks and speed tweaks we’ve adjusted cleaning speeds on all weapons.
Clean Lengths
ARG 15 - Old: 14.6 | New: 9.1
Clintchester - Old: 11.3 | New: 6.9
Double Barrel - Old: 9.8 | New: 6.0
Double Barrel Sawn Off - Old: 9.8 | New: 6.0
FRKS - Old: 9.9 | New: 6.0
Pump Action Shotgun - Old: 9.6 | New: 6.0
R-6804 - Old: 8.0 | New: 4.8
357 Magnum - Old: 5.2 | New: 3.0
Bateman - Old: 5.9 | New: 3.4
Lola And Garry's Iron - Old: 8.0 | New: 4.8
Rauser Rig - Old: 7.8 | New: 4.8
Zombie Fixes
Looking through player created tickets we’ve noticed and have personally run into stuck zombie issues. This occurs a lot around intersections and complicated world areas. The majority of the issue was due to an AI vision check being reversed. That has been sorted and it seems to have fixed the issue during internal testing. Below is an example of of the current issue or a variation of it at least. If you have any further issues like this when version 1.10 is released, please share with the team as soon as possible.
Player Relevancy
Some of you have surely experienced player relevancy issues. As an example, you and a friend are playing and you can’t see your friend but they can see you, etc.. This issue has persisted in builds for some time and has been a nightmare to pin down. James spent some time this week altering the scope of our network backend while hopefully fixing potential culling issues. This we feel should greatly improve the stability of player position relevancy and hopefully sort the majority of our issues there.
Survive the Nights is a beast of a project for a small team like ours especially when it’s your first. Unity is a fantastic engine and has allowed us to bring our vision to light. It is, however, not a total answer. When we started development Unity didn’t have a network solution. We obviously needed one as we were making a multiplayer game. Our choice at the time was a rather popular asset called uLink. uLink allowed us to network the game and get the ball rolling when it comes to extended multiplayer development. The team behind uLink has since moved on and we now have access to the source code. This has allowed us to expand on the asset and make tweaks specifically tailored to Survive the Nights.
As mentioned above, we’re hoping that recent tweaks made to the source will fix player relevancy issues. At the very least, the tweaks made for v1.10 will allow us to move forward with greater confidence that the issue lies higher up in our code rather than an issue with uLink.
Crafting and Nutrition Changes
As you know, we’re working through quality of life issues. We’ve set out to dedicate a good chunk of our coming updates to improving our core mechanics. This includes early game improvements.
Crafting and nutrition is something we will be having a good look over. We’ve started adjusting workbench requirements, adjusting hydration levels to canned goods along with adding and removing some recipes. We’ve removed the workbench requirements for fortification materials. We feel this really impeded the flow of crafting. You no longer need to find a workbench to craft the materials needed for a fortification, only the fortification itself. This will allow the player to be ready to craft fortifications when benches are found rather than first having to craft all the materials for it.
Removed workbench requirements on:
Plywood
Plywood reinforced
Metal Planks
Sheet Metal
Crafting Changes
We’ve also altered the scrap requirement to craft steel pipes from 5 to 3 scrap metal. We’ve made some drop changes with these tweaks and in preparation for the coming compass and home improvements.
Compass We’ve moved away from the dual compass setup. You’ll no longer find a DIY Compass recipe in the crafting list. This has been replaced with a recipe for a standard compass. This just simplifies things and removes confusion.
Sleeping Bag We’ll be fleshing out and discussing the new “Home” system in the next devblog. James will also go over it with the 1.10 devlog. We have re-added the ability to craft a sleeping bag in 1.10 as this will be the item you place to set your home and be exactly where you respawn.
If you have any crafting change suggestions, feel free to share them with the team via the suggestion ticket (F1) in game.
Nutrition Changes
We’ve decreased the hydration rate of all canned goods to make water harvesting more realistic. Some of our canned goods were giving players more that 50% of their daily requirements for hydration. This is no longer the case. Most cans will now provide 2-3% of the daily requirement. This is just enough to save you from taking damage should you need a can in an emergency.
In Summary
These changes are just some in a long line of planned early game changes. The core of our project is rather impressive. We’ve got a solid foundation to work on and small tweaks and improvements are going to be what sets STN apart from others in the genre. Our goal is to focus our efforts on early game improvements for the time being, improving before adding. That doesn't mean we don't have grand schemes and plans for the project. There's still quite a bit to add and a lot of what we're adding and tweaking now will allow for that.
Item Highlighting
Andre has added a quick and easy change to our highlighting system. This little tweak really shines in the project making harvesting just a little bit clearer, especially for new players. Searching harvestable items shows a blue icon, info icons are now red, locks are orange and containers remain white.
Last Chance System
Adjustments have also been made to player damage. James has added a 'last chance' based system. What this translates to in game is the damage being clamped down to 1. If you take a hit with 10 health left, you won't die. You'll be taken down to 1 health allowing for another second to fight or flee.
In testing it feels right. We've found ourselves feeling 'lucky,' taking out a zed with 1 health left and making it out of sticky situations. Of course this doesn't always guarantee your safety. Let's face it, you're not going to last long with just 1 health but a wise survivor always carries a few bandages.
Patch Notes - Alpha 1.10
Guide Overhaul
Removed trailblazer guide step.
Reordered the quick guide.
Changed the quick guide to be per object based rather than 2 set pages of tasks.
Added support to quick guide to show the amount of items required and the amount currently in the inventory.
Adjusted guide to be more specific and detail oriented to help guide new players.
Fixed issue where quantity of item in crafting recipes would incorrectly display less than was in the inventory.
Swimming
Added swimming system with ability to dive under water.
Home / Base Setting
Added functionality for choosing where you respawn after death. Player can now choose to spawn at home or near their death location.
Added home setting functionality via the sleeping bag. Crafting and placing a sleeping bag in a structure now claims the building. Upon death the player can choose to respawn at home or near their death. Loot and AI also no longer spawn in a claimed structure.
Claimed structures now show on the map as a little home icon.
Last placed locks no longer show on the map. This has been replaced for the home base functionality.
Chat Overhaul
Complete chat UI overhaul to simplify design and make the system clearer and easier to use.
Overall Health
Overall health can now be raised within a window of time rather than exactly at sunrise. This gives the player time to address their stats.
Made overall Health staying the same more lenient.
Murders committed in day is no longer considered for overall health changes. Mental state is used instead.
VFX
Improved burning club fire particles.
Fixes for stretching of fire particles on wooden club.
General Quality of Life
Removed hand warming mechanic as it wasn't very good and interfered with weapons.
Work lamps disabled until electrical update.
Wooden club strength increased.
Removed various hints that were bombarding the player with information.
Reworded various hints that were overly complex.
Fix for issue where you can’t always place the campfire grill on the campfire
Adjusted hydration levels to canned goods.
Removed burning to cooking mechanics to reduce confusion.
Removed stick/kindling requirements on fires. (wood stove, hearths, barrels and campfires)
Fixed the yellow highlighting of harvest machines in the tutorial steps not working on various items
Building interiors now load while in the loading screen.
Improved entry into game loading times.
Improved network culling in relation to player to player visibility. To improve scenarios where other players are not visible.
All Gun Cleaning Animations have been sped up by 1.5 times faster.
Improved issue where vehicles would lag and glitch when driver experienced lag.
Lowered the crafting times on various high frequency items like bandages.
Sped up consuming of items across the board by 15-25%.
Improved system for allowing interactions to still succeed if animation isn’t quite finished.
Picking up items is now slightly quicker.
Fix for scope blurring staying on while health is low
Fixed collision and grass on police station gardens
Increased damage effects for low health
Fixed player floating before joining causing the player to fall slightly on every join.
Crafting
Removed workbench requirements for fortification parts IE you don’t need a bench to make plywood but you need one to make the plywood fortification.
Removed workbench requirement for Plywood.
Removed workbench requirement for Reinforced Plywood.
Removed workbench requirement for Metal Plank.
Removed workbench requirement for Sheetmetal.
Reduced Scrap requirement from 5 to 3 on metal pipe.
Removed the DIY compass.
Added a standard compass recipe.
Re-added the sleeping bag recipe and drop.
Hordes
Earliest horde start time now 1 hour later than before.
Lower difficulty hordes no longer start later than more difficult ones.
Horde arrival window reduced from 0-4 hours to 0-3.
AI
Fix for zombies stop and are unable to reach the player in certain scenarios
Animations
Lowered the animation for inspecting on the M-357 so that it's not blocking vision.
Fix for animations not playing when doing in hand actions like consuming.
Lowered the hands slightly in the inspect animation when having nothing equipped.
UI
Fix for time saying “-” at midnight.
Improved new day UI to make it easier to read.
Improved UI ordering for game entry to make it easier to digest.
Improved map panning and zooming functionality.
New compass UI added which shows when inspecting.
Compass UI shows position of set home.
Compass UI shows position of current horde.
Consumables now default to Place button instead of drop.
Improved frame rate while in the inventory screen.
Added colors to item hover icons to make it easier to spot the difference.
Solo and Host tabs no longer grey after getting disconnected to menu.
Drop button now always says drop while in the inventory. Previously the word was changed to 'cooking' 'purify' etc however the functionality was still drop.
Created and applied missing GUI artwork (hammer, scrap metal, fan belt, spark plug, cooking pot, coal)
Scroll position is now set to the top when opening the inventory to prevent scenarios where it appears as though the inventory is empty.
Clicking the search field in the inventory now scroll to the top of the list so that the top item isn’t hidden.
Changed text displayed for current overall health. Now changes between Very Weak, Weak, Average, Strong and Very Strong
Mouse clicking outside of the inventory window now closes inventory.
Cancelled interactions like consuming now notify the player more clearly.
Fix for unarmed or melee notification staying up indefinitely after moving from weapon with low ammo/condition
Pickups
Removed water purification tablets as they generally only added confusion.
Environment
Tweaks to ambient lighting to make interior lighting more accurate
Removed logoff from bus stop
Sounds
ARG15 reload sounds now line up correctly.
Volume sliders now provide improved control over volume.
Fix for music being muted when joining for the first time.
Special Promotion - 60% Off Sale
Survive the Nights is now 60% off for two weeks until Thursday, October 7th. If you have any questions before purchasing, please join our friendly community on discord.
Thanks for the continued support and continued issue and suggestion reporting :). Below are some helpful links to anyone new and interested in the game. If you'd like to follow a bit closer, please consider joining our Discord. We're here, we're listening!
Devblog 52 - New Quick Guide | Spawn Adjustments++
Hello everyone,
I apologize for the lack of a blog last week. When it comes to bug fixing and early game polish, sometimes what the team is doing just isn’t very interesting and can be difficult to write about. We’re making some great progress on version 1.10 and we hope to have an experimental build out this week coming or the one after that. This early game focus has really given the team the confidence that we have something special here. We’re incredibly excited to get the next stages of polish on what we think is a fantastic early access project.
New Quick Start Guide
James has done a great job wrapping up the new quick guide system and it has really turned the initial experience around. We’ve adjusted new player spawns and, starting in version 1.10, all new players (those who haven’t completed the guide) will spawn directly in starting camps. You’ll have everything you need in the camp to get you going on the guide.
The guide itself has been completely reworked from what’s required of the player to complete the guide to the position and layout. As mentioned before, this guide will tie in with our new help and quick video system. It should be so much easier for a new player to pick up Survive the Nights and get right into the action now.
A quick preview of some of the new guide objectives
The system tied in with inventory highlighting and quick video
One of your last tasks will be setting a home
Spawn Adjustments
We’ve tweaked spawns in the past but this time it’s just a bit different. The new player spawns have all been moved directly into the campsites. From our research we’ve discovered that a good deal of new players don’t actually find starting camps despite spawning on a trail leading towards one.
There are a few issues at hand here. Our trails need a good deal of work. Some of them are not very trail-like even though we’ve improved them with the recent graphical update. Players sometimes just take their own way and don’t walk towards a camp. Most of these players die and we’d imagine a lot of them aren’t happy about it.
We’ve always intended for new players to get to those camps. It’s a big part of getting them going. The player learns how to start a fire, purify water, harvest (wood, cloth and metal), they can craft a weapon, they learn that fire heals, that wooden clubs also function as torches to provide light on dark nights. The camps are rather safe and zombie spawn free for the most part. If the player spawns at night a campsite is the safest place to be. New spawns will sort this issue out and everyone getting into a Survive the Nights server for the first time will now spawn right in a camp and have the added bonus of a brand new quick start guide to steer them in the right direction. James will be covering both the guide and new player spawns in the coming vlog in greater detail.
Animation Tweaks and Improvements
John has been cracking along sorting out some of our animations. He has reworked nearly all weapon animations now. Most weapons have now had a once over on the reload, jamming and cleaning animations. We’ll continue to make progress and improvements with animations as we move through these polish builds. Below are a couple of quick examples of the improvements being made including the jamming animation on the 357, Rig and Bateman.
357 Old jamming
357 New Jamming around a second quicker and more fluid
Bateman old jamming
Bateman new jamming around 4 seconds faster
We'll continue to work on improving early game mechanics and fixing all the bugs you guys have found over the last few builds. Thanks again for the continued support and issue reporting.
Devblog 51 - Setting Home | Compass & Map Tweaks++
We’ve continued development on v1.10 and have made progress with compass mechanics, putting finishing touches on the new home mechanic and fixing a bunch of smaller issues. This blog is only a small glimpse at what we’re getting done. Check out the changelog for more information. Everything seen below is a work in progress and subject to change, most of which is usually made with your feedback.
Setting Home (Game Modes)
Many of you have requested a home feature for a while now. Coming in v1.10, this will be possible. The game foundation is changing slightly. With much consideration, we’ve decided to try and provide a game mode for all players. We will be introducing two gameplay modes standard and hardcore.
Standard and Hardcore Game Mode
Those that want a more casual experience will find that standard mode's ability to ‘set home’ dramatically changes the gameplay. In a lot of ways, Survive the Nights was always meant to be a hardcore survival game. On the other side of that coin, setting a spawn point inside a structure allows you and your friends to jump right back into the action.
The player will now be able to walk into any structure in the game, find themselves some cloth, craft a sleeping bag and place it on the ground inside the structure. Doing this will provide a notification in the top left corner informing the player that a home has been set. Your friends will also be able to set homes in the same structure. In many ways, this is the start of a group system that we’ll flesh out in the future.
Home set and home removed notifications
This changes the gameplay for sure, allowing for rapid respawns and getting right back to killing that night's horde or onslaught. This, in many ways, is what we originally wanted for STN. A good chunk of the game is based on our experience with Call of Duty's World at War’s Nazi zombie map. We were completely addicted to the action and the idea of ‘holding down’ a structure. There are quite a few more changes to both modes we’ve listed below.
Hardcore mode will provide harder zombie hordes, no ability to set home and reflects what we have running on our current official servers. Hardcore mode will allow for more zombies to be ‘alive’ at the same time. This is something that wasn’t possible before.
A lot more has gone into this and James will cover it nicely in the upcoming devlog. We hope to have an experimental build out in the near future and there will be a good deal of testing needed here.
Other Changes and Fixes
Hordes will now start around an hour later than before.
Lower difficulty hordes no longer start later than more difficult hordes. This makes playing with friends easier when you have mixed horde levels.
Homes will now show up on the map and via the inspect menus compass.
Horde arrival window reduced from 0-4 hours to 0-3. Hordes will arrive later but arriving hordes won’t take as long to get to you.
Spawn at home or near death options added on death
Death Screen on Standard Mode (spawn at home or near death)
Compass and Map Changes
As mentioned in a previous devblog, we’ve removed the DIY compass, added a recipe for a proper crafted compass and improved the visuals. You’ll not be able to pull the inspect menu (f) and see a visual game compass on the top of the screen. This compass will inform you of your home location along with zombie horde direction. We will likely expand on the compass feature with a little player feedback.
Map improvements have also been made. Andre has improved the visuals and mechanics. Below is a snippet from our Changelog and a good chunk of the changes made here.
Player position is now a blue arrow which matches rotation of player.
Player position ping animation improved.
Player position increases in size when zooming out so it’s easier to see when zoomed out.
Zooming should now go where cursor is pointing.
Movement is smoothed out when zooming in and out.
Removed need to scroll 8+ times to fully zoom in, should now be 2-3 times.
Panning now more responsive, removed extremely long elastic movement effect.
Updated look of map border to match look of new UI.
Fonts changed to American Typewriter.
Improved resolutions of text.
Added stationary directional symbol to show where north is.
[previewyoutube="ps_MeAjInQI;full"]
We'll continue to work on improving early game mechanics and fixing all the bugs you guys have found over the last few builds. Thanks again for the continued support and issue reporting.
Hope you all have had a great week. We’ve had another productive one. James has been working on a few of our long standing issues with player relevancy. Andre has been improving map and compass functionality and I’ve spent time this week tweaking crafting recipes. As always, these blogs are just a tiny glimpse at what’s going on behind the scenes. If you are interested in exactly what we’re up to, check out our changelog.
Player Relevancy
Some of you have surely experienced player relevancy issues. As an example, you and a friend are playing and you can’t see your friend but they can see you, etc.. This issue has persisted in builds for some time and has been a nightmare to pin down. James spent some time this week altering the scope of our network backend while hopefully fixing potential culling issues. This we feel should greatly improve the stability of player position relevancy and hopefully sort the majority of our issues there.
Survive the Nights is a beast of a project for a small team like ours especially when it’s the first. Unity is a fantastic engine and has allowed us to bring our vision to light. It is however not a total answer. When we started development Unity didn’t have a network solution. We obviously needed one as we were making a multiplayer game. Our choice at the time was a rather popular asset called uLink. uLink allowed us to network the game and get the ball rolling when it comes to extended multiplayer development. The team behind uLink has since moved on and we now have access to the source code. This has allowed us to expand on the asset and make tweaks specifically tailored to Survive the Nights.
As mentioned above, we’re hoping that recent tweaks made to the source will fix player relevancy issues. At the very least, the tweaks made for v1.10 will allow us to move forward with greater confidence that the issue lies higher up in our code rather than an issue with uLink.
Crafting & Nutrition Changes
As you know, we’re working through quality of life issues. We’ve set out to dedicate a good chunk of our coming updates to improving our core mechanics. This includes early game improvements.
Crafting and nutrition is something we will be having a good look over. We’ve started adjusting workbench requirements, adjusting hydration levels to canned goods along with adding and removing some recipes. We’ve removed the workbench requirements for fortification materials. We feel this really impeded the flow of crafting. You no longer need to find a workbench to craft the materials needed for a fortification, only the fortification itself. This will allow the player to be ready to craft fortifications when benches are found rather than first having to craft all the materials for it.
Removed workbench requirements on:
Plywood
Plywood reinforced
Metal Planks
Sheet Metal
Crafting Changes We’ve also altered the scrap requirement to craft steel pipes from 5 to 3 scrap metal. We’ve made some drop changes with these tweaks and in preparation for the coming compass and home improvements.
Compass We’ve moved away from the dual compass setup. You’ll no longer find a DIY Compass recipe in the crafting list. This has been replaced with a recipe for a standard compass. This just simplifies things and removes confusion.
Sleeping Bag We’ll be fleshing out and discussing the new “Home” system in the next devblog. James will also go over it with the 1.10 devlog. We have re-added the ability to craft a sleeping bag in 1.10 as this will be the item you place to set your home and be exactly where you respawn.
If you have any crafting change suggestions, feel free to share them with the team via the suggestion ticket (F1) in game.
Nutrition Changes We’ve decreased the hydration rate of all canned goods to make water harvesting more realistic. Some of our canned goods were giving players more that 50% of their daily requirements for hydration. This is no longer the case. Most cans will now provide 2-3% of the daily requirement. This is just enough to save you from taking damage should you need a can in an emergency.
In Summary These changes are just some in a long line of planned early game changes. The core of our project is rather impressive. We’ve got a solid foundation to work on and small tweaks and improvements are going to be what sets STN apart from others in the genre. Our goal is to focus our efforts on early game improvements for the time being, improving before adding. That doesn't mean we don't have grand schemes and plans for the project. There's still quite a bit to add and a lot of what we're adding and tweaking now will allow for that.
Item Highlighting
Andre has added a quick and easy change to our highlighting system. This little tweak really shines in the project making harvesting just a little bit clearer, especially for new players. Searching harvestable items shows a blue icon, info icons are now red, locks are orange and containers remain white.
Last Chance System
Adjustments have also been made to player damage. James has added a 'last chance' based system. What this translates to in game is the damage being clamped down to 1. If you take a hit with 10 health left, you won't die. You'll be taken down to 1 health allowing for another second to fight or flee.
In testing it feels right. We've found ourselves feeling 'lucky,' taking out a zed with 1 health left and making it out of sticky situations. Of course this doesn't always guarantee your safety. Let's face it, you're not going to last long with just 1 health but a wise survivor always carries a few bandages.
We'll continue to work on improving early game mechanics and fixing all the bugs you guys have found over the last few builds. Thanks again for the continued support and issue reporting.
Devblog 49 - Swimming | Animation Improvements | AI Fixes++
We’ve made great progress burning through issues and making improvements to core mechanics. James has been working on the ‘home’ system for the new gameplay styles. John has been tweaking and improving animations. Andre has put some polish on the swimming mechanics and I’ve spent my time working on the upcoming improvements to our guide system. As always, feel free to check out exactly what we’re up to via our changelog.
Swimming
Terribly sorry, that’s the best way to start after having tested the swimming implementation. Wow, was that needed! It really brings the world to life not having to constantly worry about death when you’re near a body of water. Andre spent the week adding all the finishing touches to the swimming mechanic. Proxy animations have been added so you don’t look like Jason Voorhees walking across Crystal Lake anymore. Stamina now affects how far you can swim before you start sinking so don’t go thinking you can swim right off the map. Players will be able to freely dive for quite a few seconds before taking damage to drowning (underwater caches, perhaps?!). You’ll receive ‘warning gulp’s’ before drowning to alert you to make your way to the surface. Now it’s time to start thinking about boats and fishing!
[previewyoutube="4IfxQOqzNeo;full"]
Animation Improvements
Part of the quality of life improvements and general game improvements we’ll be focusing on in the coming updates is fluidity. Weapon animation speeds were something that needed addressing. John has spent the week tweaking and changing animations and animation speeds. He's made reloading animations around 1.5x faster than they’ve been in the past across the board. You’ll also notice a new last round and partial clip reload animation.
New mid clip reload
Along with reload animation tweaks and speed tweaks, we’ve adjusted cleaning speeds on all weapons.
Clean Lengths
ARG 15 - Old: 14.6 | New: 9.1
Clintchester - Old: 11.3 | New: 6.9
Double Barrel - Old: 9.8 | New: 6.0
Double Barrel Sawn Off - Old: 9.8 | New: 6.0
FRKS - Old: 9.9 | New: 6.0
Pump Action Shotgun - Old: 9.6 | New: 6.0
R-6804 - Old: 8.0 | New: 4.8
357 Magnum - Old: 5.2 | New: 3.0
Bateman - Old: 5.9 | New: 3.4
Lola And Garry's Iron - Old: 8.0 | New: 4.8
Rauser Rig - Old: 7.8 | New: 4.8
Zombie Fixes
Looking through player created tickets we’ve noticed and have personally run into stuck zombie issues. This occurs a lot around intersections and complicated world areas. The majority of the issue was due to an AI vision check being reversed. That has been sorted and it seems to have fixed the issue during internal testing. Below is an example of of the current issue or a variation of it at least. If you have any further issues like this when version 1.10 is released, please share with the team as soon as possible.
Zombie stuck (fix coming in 1.10)
We'll continue to work on improving early game mechanics and fixing all the bugs you guys have found over the last few builds. Thanks again for the continued support and issue reporting.
Happy Friday the 13th! We’ve spent the week working on issues and game improvements for 1.10. A lot of what’s being worked on for these updates isn’t very devblog worthy. Unfortunately, bug fixes don’t make for very exciting devblogs. We’ll discuss just a few of our planned changes below, what we’re working on and what’s to come.
Compass Improvements
Currently in the game you have two compass options. A DIY compass you can craft with a few bits and a found compass. The only difference between the two currently is the speed at which your position is displayed. The DIY compass is far slower than the one you can find in the world. When the player opens the maps, the compass takes time to calibrate. The time it takes is the difference between the two. This system works and it’s pretty unique but it’s not very intuitive and for the most part, takes far too much time and effort.
We’ve decided to concept and start implementation of a new compass system. Once the player finds a compass in the world or crafts one, they’ll be able to see their position on the inspection menu. Currently the inspection menu is defaulted to ‘F’ . It's the menu that comes up when you want to inspect anything on your person or your stats. The current concept includes the ability to display a graphical N,E,S,W compass on the top of the screen. Along with the general direction, Andre has included the functionality to add icons of all kinds.
We’ve yet to decide what this new implementation will mean for the dual compass types. Our current ideas include DIY compasses showing fewer or limited icons with the opposite being true for the found compass. The video below is a showcase of a work in progress feature and may not represent the final product. If you have any ideas for improved compass features please feel free to share them with the team.
[previewyoutube="nozdfdX0Ato;full"]
Chat Improvements
Andre has made further progress on chat improvements this week. The task is actually harder than it may seem. We’ve tied a lot of important ends and odds into the chat system and converting them all to a new and improved system takes a bit of time. The job is getting sorted now and Andre made great progress this week. The concept you saw a couple of weeks ago has been implemented and it’s currently being tied into all of our chat based mechanics.
[previewyoutube="2DACApiAUXs;full"]
Tools of the Trade
A lot of what we do first needs doing, if that makes sense. Unity is a fantastic tool and we’ve relied on the community and numerous assets during development. We’ve also created a fantastic amount of in house tools from fence and power pole placement systems to loot spawners and general design managers. We’ve essentially developed a game engine inside of a game engine mostly out of need but also with the idea of modding in mind. If we make tools that are easy for anyone on the team to use they should be no issue for a player to use further down the line. Below is an example of a tool Andre has created for the dynamic help system. This system will allow any of us to easily extend the help system. Ideally we’d have a fully integrated in-game help system so you’re never leaving the game to get assistance.
Using the Unity timeline feature Andre has made a simple cation system possible. The ability to easily add captions to any gif/video will allow for quick and easy feature expansion. Like a lot of the tools we create, this one is future proof (for now at least).
Unity timeline and help video captions
This is the scriptable object that will allow for quickly updating the help system. Allowing for quite a good deal of customization.
Title: The title of the help gif/video.
Video: This is where you’d drop the actual file.
Captions: This gameobject would have been saved via the caption system seen above and include all the needed captions for the gif/video.
Help Image: No video? No problem we can also use a screenshot or diagram etc.
Help Info: This is the text displayed in the large help window in the menu.
Scriptable in-game object
We'll continue to work on improving early game mechanics and fixing all the bugs you guys have found over the last few builds. Thanks again for the continued support and issue reporting.
We’ve had a decent week making progress on 1.10. Andre has spent the majority of the week working on swimming and it’s coming along great. James has been working on hardcore and standard modes and John has been polishing up some animations and adjusting manipulation speeds.
Swimming
It’s happening! Swimming has been missing since day one. As much as we didn’t think it was a big deal (easily avoidable), wow, it really does make a difference. Originally we didn’t know exactly how the mechanic was going to work out and just what we could pull off. Andre has done a fantastic job so far and we already have an excellent base for the feature. You’ll be able to swim, dive and see underwater. Stamina will take effect and you’ll only ever be able to go as far as your stamina allows before you take damage. We’ll expand on this feature and tweak it as you all provide feedback.
[previewyoutube="bt5qlbJcbt8;full"]
Improved Animation Speeds
Many of you have requested that we speed up world interaction slightly. John has spent the week tweaking animations/manipulations and we’ve come to what we feel is a nice spot. Generally most things have or will be sped up over the coming quality of life patches. Weapon reload is a big request and that’s what we’ll showcase below. Reloading and cleaning/gun interaction speeds being tweaked slightly like this seems to make a dramatic and enjoyable difference in game. We’ll tweak further with player feedback. Currently speeds are around 1.5x faster than their original state as shown below.
ARG Cleaning animation (OLD)
ARG Cleaning animation (NEW)
In Game Guide System
As mentioned last week we plan on introducing a dynamic in game guide for new and returning players alike. Andre has begun the visual implementation of both the in-game even based guide and the menu based guide. The system is being developed in such a way that we can easily expand on the system should the community request more guidance. Please keep in mind everything in our devblogs is subject to change and under constant development. We’ll keep you posted on features as they develop throughout the builds life cycle.
In game event based system
Menu based guide system
Additional Bug Fixes
A lot of what’s going into the next couple of updates isn’t pretty and shiny. There’s not a lot of great preview pictures or gifs/videos. We’ve spent the last week going through our internal ticket list and cleaning up all of your reports while working on some of the most requested fixes and tweaks. Below are a few of the things that we’ve fixed in the last week or so. As always, you can follow along via our changelog.
Vehicle issues: Vehicles have been problematic for a few builds now. Driving as a passenger is very glitchy. Player lag is currently felt hand in hand with a vehicle/player rotation issue. James has sorted this rotation issue and driving is far smoother than it has been in some time if not ever. There are currently other issues to take into account when it comes to driving and sector loading and we’ll be doing so shortly. That being said the experience is improved tenfold and you should notice it instantly when cruising with friends.
Inventory scrolling issues: Currently you can end up in a situation where your inventory is expanded above the top edge of your screen. This can cause the player to have to scroll up to see a single item sitting at the top of the list. It can cause the player to assume they have nothing in their inventory when they actually do. This issue has been sorted and you should now always see the first item in your inventory space.
Removed logoff from bus stop: This has been a confusing sticking point for some time and as we removed bed logoffs this feels fitting. Remember, you can currently log anywhere in the world.
Increased damage effects for low health: We’ve added the critical stat notification and thought an improvement to the low health effect was called for (previously not noticeable or working in some builds). Andre has reworked and improved the low health effect and it’s far more noticeable now.
[previewyoutube="SxIjCndFyG4;full"]
We'll continue to work on improving early game mechanics and fixing all the bugs you guys have found over the last few builds. Thanks again for the continued support and issue reporting. Below are some helpful links to anyone new and interested in the game. If you'd like to follow a bit closer, please consider joining our Discord. We're here, we're listening!
We’ve had a productive week. We’ve spent time cleaning up the issue tracker while gathering new and duplicated backlogged issues alike. The team has put together the attack plan for our next version. We’ve decided while there may be major issues fixes going in, we’re not moving to a major build and will continue to use the 1.10.44 format. Our next version will be called 1.10.
James has released the 1.9 devlog which we posted on YouTube. We updated the last devblog to showcase the video but we’ll include it in the post below in case you’ve missed it.
[previewyoutube="BkGeVCfuVRM;full"]
This week's devblog will be a bit different. As we’ve mentioned above, the team has spent the week taking notes and planning for 1.10 and setting up our workflow. We’ve concepted a few ideas for quality of life improvements and have put together a massive bug fix list. Below we’ll go over just a few of the planned fixes and additions, a preview for 1.10.
Early Game Improvements
A big part of the early game experience is well, the first hour or so of the game. Quite a few players seem to struggle with early game mechanics and game flow. This is something we’ve wanted to address for some time and 1.10 seems a perfect time to do so. We’ll be introducing a sleek and simple help system. This system as we’ve concepted it will be interaction based along with a complete menu system. New players will be guided with simple easy to understand gifs and also have access to a built in menu based game guide. This will be toggle based and returning players shouldn’t worry about annoyance. We’ll include a couple of concept shots below. Please keep in mind we're in the first days of concepts here and all of this is subject to change as we move forward.
Menu guide concept
Interaction based guidance will trigger when near a fire
Swimming
After careful consideration, we’ve decided to remove the water entirely and replace it with lava. This removes the need to swim at all... ːsteammockingː Swimming has been an issue since the start and we’ll be addressing that issue in 1.10. We’ll be introducing a basic swimming system, it won’t be over complex. We may or may not initially introduce a diving system. We’ll have to see how it goes. We’ll likely introduce the mechanic with a velocity based dive system so you go under when jumping from heights adding a bit more realism. The player will swim along the surface of the water plane until they run out of stamina at which point they will start taking damage and drown. This will answer some abuse concerns right off the bat and we’ll tweak the mechanics should there be a need to do so.
Chat Improvements
As you know, the in game text chat can be useless at times. There are a good amount of issues with the current system, enough in fact to require a total rework. The chat in the game now is dark, the text is hard to read and there is a good deal of console information cluttering it up. The system doesn’t match the inspect style and just doesn’t provide a good experience.
We’ve concepted a new chat and think it will work much better. We’ve introduced a gradient style background matching that of our inspect menu and the coming help system. They system will be sleeker while at the same time being clearer to use. We’ll be removing the console clutter as well. Information like “Jayty has joined the server” will now display in the small notification area on the top left side of the screen. Below is a concept of our plan for the new chat and you should see that in the 1.10 build. Keep in mind, this is all subject to change and we’ll be doing our regular weekly updates to keep you up to date with exactly what is going on.
Chat Concept
Hardcore and Standard Game Modes
There’s a divide, a pretty big one actually. The community seems split between hardcore and casual players. A couple of updates ago, we introduced our game mode system and in 1.10 we’ll be expanding on both sides of the token too. We’ll be introducing new mechanics to standard game modes and hardcore modes. The ability to easily develop both modes will allow us to trial and error some of the features you see in coming builds. Nothing is set in stone here and, as always, we’ll take community feedback and adjust as we see fit.
Hardcore Hardcore mode will now truly be so. We'll be introducing a proper perma death system. Your player and world will completely refresh on death the database will be removed and you’ll need to start from scratch. We’ll be improving and fixing some horde issues. We’ll be making hordes more difficult and tweaking horde numbers. Previously, there were some balance issues with hordes making later stages impossible to complete. This will be addressed and sorted out in 1.10. We’ll likely introduce more hardcore features in this build and we’ll keep updated via our weekly devblogs.
Standard Gameplay Looking for a more casual experience? We have the ability to accommodate both play styles even with our small team this doesn’t really slow us down. Most of us (a2z) prefer the hardcore game mode. This is how we envisioned the game, however, not everyone is looking for a hardcore experience. It’s a lot easier to make things easy when you’ve already made them difficult, if that makes sense. We’ve decided to give the player that option. Standard gameplay will be a far more casual experience while still retaining the challenge and gameplay creepiness.
The major difference between the modes is permanent death and the ability to ‘claim’ a home base. The concept as it stands will allow the ‘standard gameplay’ player to respawn at a fortified base. This base or ‘home’ system will also disable spawning zombies without the need for fortifications. These are early concept ideas and as mentioned above we’ll be expanding on these ideas during the development cycle. If you have any ideas for hardcode and standard gameplay features, feel free to share them.
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Thanks for the continued support and continued issue and suggestion reporting :). Below are some helpful links to anyone new and interested in the game. If you'd like to follow a bit closer, please consider joining our Discord. We're here, we're listening!
We’re releasing our 1.9 update to our default Steam branch today. This update focuses entirely on player reported bugs and quality of life issues. It’s not our last quality of life update. In fact, you’ll see quite a few more in the coming months. We’ve tried to get a nice chunk of issues sorted here and done so quicker than our typical update cycle.
We will be following this quality of life with another as soon as possible and we’ll discuss more of exactly what we’re doing in the coming devblogs. James has put together a vlog for this update but it’s not ready yet and we didn’t want to hold up builds so expect that in the next couple of days. Below we’ll review some of what’s gone into 1.9. As always, follow along via the changelog for up to date information.
[previewyoutube="BkGeVCfuVRM;full"]
Inventory Improvements
While we really do love our clean HUD and lack of anything on the screen most times, it can be really frustrating and rather confusing when your stats get critically low. This week James has set out to improve this issue. In the coming 1.9 build you’ll notice these changes, any critical stat will show on the screen. This should help when it comes to knowing exactly what’s going on, you’ll be far less likely to get caught out when you see a critical stat pop.
Along with this improvement, James has implemented the ability to adjust stats directly from the stat read out in the inventory booklet. You’ll notice a search function now when hovering over any of the available stats. This really speeds up the process and makes sorting through the inventory for a required item far less time consuming and tedious.
[previewyoutube="zZy-xsamczg;full"]
Lock Improvements
If you play the game you know it can be a real pain to open a fully locked structure door. It’s also no walk in the park to open a container with more than a single lock. Our lock mechanics have been improved. James has introduced a system that allows the player to open all the locks on a structure door or container at once.
In 1.9, all locks that a player has access to are now automatically unlocked where possible. They will also re-lock in the event that they were unlocked using this new system.
The main consideration when adding this was regarding chunkiness without adding complexity. Initial concepts introduced a ‘Hold' function on doors/containers but this required extra hover information and added a step to opening the door which arguably made things once again clunky.
Ultimately, James implemented the lightest weight system possible and given the easiest use possible. For all intents and purposes the player shouldn’t have to learn anything for this system to work. It should make the locks feel like a supplement overall instead of a required hindrance.
[previewyoutube="aHe1FXtCEqg;full"]
Crafting Improvements
We’ve taken some feedback from the community via discussions and tickets and James has made quality of life improvements with our crafting systems. Just adding a bit of polish to the system making it more user friendly and intuitive.
Some of the improvements made; buttons for cycling through the ‘all’ ‘favorites’ and ‘help’ tabs are now toggles. The search field no longer clears all the craftables. Now when searching you’ll start with a full list and the search will narrow down the field. You’ll notice tools and recipe item icons can now be selected to navigate to the item's recipe. This adds a good deal of fluidity to the system. The greyed out items are now highlighted to make it clear you can still view the items recipe. There’s a lot going on with the system and we can and will improve more as we move forward. The first video below showcases some of these improvements.
[previewyoutube="tVPADGcfk-4;full"]
Along with general improvements, James has added nested craftables. You’ll no longer need to back out and search for a recipe’s missing ingredient. The player can now simply click the icon or ingredient to be directed to its crafting recipe. This should save a great deal of of time and makes things feel just that much more user friendly.
[previewyoutube="0UUsd5rwOzI;full"]
Weapon Sight Improvements
The community has been mentioning the zoom and blurry scope issues. Andre has spent some time this week improving all of the scopes in the game.
He has reduced the amount of zoom in the apug/compact scopes and increased the amount the FOV is zoomed in instead. This allows for more screen area to be taken up by the scope and for less pixilation caused by the magnification shader. Doing so also required some of our FPS models to be tweaked to accommodate new zoom methods.
[previewyoutube="QPycJfXrhV8;full"]
New Stat UI
We’ve reworked the entire ‘inspect’ notification system. Making quite a few improvements along the way. We’ve redesigned the status notifications and reorganized them. This has made them both more compact and sleek along with being more consistent with the inventory booklet. The change makes the stats look less like a hotbar.
Along with these visual changes, we’ve also improved the functionality of the inspect menu. The player will be made aware of the most critical stat and now have a hotkey option “G” to open the inventory to a stat specific item list. If you’re low on calories and you’ve got a blinking calorie stat, pressing “G” will open the inventory and show anything you can eat.
In conclusion, we feel these changes make the entire feature more useful and sleeker. The updates are in real time and the player can more easily understand at a glance just what’s going on. Next week we'll showcase the weapon UI improvements. There are more UI changes you’ll notice in 1.9 and if you have any suggestions please feel free to share them.
Player Death Improvements
We’ve had some long standing, highly reported and very annoying backpack issues. They mostly revolve around the player's death and how and what happens to their backpack and weapons. We’ve had issues with floating backpacks and big troubles when players are killed inside vehicles, more so if they’re moving.
The fix for this vehicle issue was considered from the implementation time vs the end result. The solution we landed on works and was quick to implement. The player is now moved to the step out position as they die and the rag doll and backpack spawn at that location. The alternative would have been to parent or join the rag doll to the vehicle or animate him in a dead state and somehow attach the back to the player inside the vehicle. This could have been a massive can of worms and could be something to consider for the future perhaps. As it stands, the system works much better and you should see far less issue around the backpacks in general.
Player Backpack On Death
Vehicle Death
Moving Vehicle Death
Continued Placement
The community has asked for this for some time now. Currently, the player opens the inventory and places a free placed fortification. The player then needs to open the inventory again to place another fortification. James has come up with a way to easily implement continued placement while you have multiple of the same item. This solution does still rely on adding the items to the world but because of that the implementation is tiny. The player can continually place the fortification they’ve selected until they press escape.
This change should make placing fortifications more fluid and less of a chore. If you have any suggestions for further improvements to the placement and fortification system, please feel free to share your ideas below.
[previewyoutube="cw1TPSfqyRI;full"]
Weapon Melee Attacks
When zombies are all over you and too close to fire at you can now use weapons for a melee attack. Many of our supporters have requested this feature and Andre and John have sorted it out for 1.9. Melee attacks are automatically assumed when AI or players are too close to each other. You’ll automatically smack zeds unless you aim down sights. We feel this is the best solution as it still allows the player to play as they see fit. It’s incredibly useful when you’ve run out of ammo and don’t have a melee weapon.
Weapon melee attack on zombie
Weapon melee against player
Harvest Improvements
As some of you know, our world is very interactable. From trees to fences, a lot of what you see can be interacted with in one way or another. The issue for some is they're not aware of this, perhaps due to the fact that it's not that common in games. We set out from the start to make nearly everything you see usable in some sense and we'll continue to improve and develop that feature. In 1.9, you'll notice that harvestable props are now highlighted. Andre has created this system and I've spent the last week or two getting back into the project and adjusting and adding new 'harvest machines' to existing props that previously didn't serve a purpose.
Harvest Highlighting
One of many new scrap metal harvest points (much requested)
Patch Notes - Alpha 1.9
General QoL
Disabled water bottles drops to simplify the water systems overall.
Added AA batteries to barber and bar locations.
Set the empty water bottle to non spawnable.
Added more server regions for server list.
Fixed damage and death image effects not working
Damage effect now gets more intense when health is low
Placement mode now stays active to allow continued placement without having re-open the inventory.
Searching the server list now turns off 'show popular servers' so that results are more accurate.
Server config now accepts string quotes around starting items. It also still works without.
Removed double slash when cycling through previous chat inputs.
Overall health now has a low of -5 instead of 10.
Scrolling through weapons is now much faster.
Scrolling through weapons/tools now skips empty slots and scrolls directly through weapons in the same order they are sorted in.
Removed the use of expert spawners that are out in the wild.
Increased the threshold for the guide completion spawn point to get relevant players back to the spawn camps when they don't know how to play the game.
Shift pickup items now pickup on interact key down so that shift doesn’t need to be pressed when releasing the key
Added new dynamic stamina tweaks that mean the player never becomes fully exhausted from sprinting and performing average tasks.
Shadows from fires are now properly affected by the quality settings.
Campfire now places on inclines more easily.
Name tags now disable when a player dies.
Name tags now move down when the player is in a vehicle.
Players are now placed at the step out position when they die to prevent rag doll conflict with the vehicle.
Players backpacks now fall to the floor when the player is killed.
Can now use sharpening stones on the equipped item. The same as using a cleaning kit.
Shift pickup items now pickup on interact key down so that shift doesn’t need to be pressed when releasing the key
Increased the threshold for the guide completion spawn point to get relevant players back to the spawn camps when they don't know how to play the game.
Inventory management
Changed machine parts filter to -parts.
Machines now auto filter compatible parts when opening the inventory.
Changed the little search icon to a button when in the crafting tab.
Fixed issue where closing the inventory while items were filtered would freeze the player in position.
Clicking on the top category tabs now clears the search field.
Clicking the search field now pushes you to the all items tabs for clarity.
Weapons are now placed inside of backpacks when players are killed.
Can now use sharpening stones on the equipped item. The same as using a cleaning kit.
Increased the max stack size from 10 objects to 50.
Nail boxes now hold 500 instead of 75.
Screw boxes now hold 500 instead of 75.
Screws and nails are now taken from part boxes before using new boxes.
Ammo is now taken from part boxes first.
Resource based items like nails and screws are now combined on pickup to stop multiple part boxes.
Filtering items in the inventory now shows clearly when the filter returns nothing.
Button for cycling between ‘all' ‘favs’ and 'help’ have now been converted to toggles.
Using the search field no longer clears all the craftables but instead starts with a full list and narrows down.
Tools and recipe items can now be selected to navigate to that items recipe.
Improved layout of tools and recipe.
Greyed craftables now highlight to make it clear to the player that they can still be clicked to see the recipe.
Items on the right page now only have the 'search' icon when there are recipes that include the item.
Pinned craftables icons are now correct way around.
‘All' ‘Fav’ and 'Help’ tab are now saved between sessions.
Fortified Structures
Locks no longer need to be snapped closed for a structure to qualify as fortified.
Fully fortified flag to stop zombies spawning in structures is now more lenient.
Fully fortified structures no longer spawn loot.
Harvesting
Reworked majority of harvest machines
Added standardized loot to all junk piles and harvest machines (Wood, Scrap Metal and Cloth)
Removed harvest settings with multiple pointless props like empty water bottles and tinder
Added small, medium and large variants to appropriate small, medium and large junk piles and props
Added harvesting to various new items
Added item hovers to various objects like sofas/bushes to make harvesting more clear
General Item hover positions improved on harvest machines
Optimized various trash pile models
Optimized cargo containers with trash piles
Beds no longer serve as log out machines but instead are used for harvesting rags
UI
Updated the stat descriptions in the inventory.
Overall health is now displayed as a progress bar instead of just values.
Horde map icon is now clearer and shows direction of horde.
Death Icon on the map is now clearer so that it is not confused with horde icon.
Updated look of UI used for displaying weapon information and moved UI to bottom right corner.
Information in weapon UI now goes slightly red when ammo or condition is low and fully red when at zero.
Weapon UI now displays name of the equipped weapon.
Same UI is now used for both guns and melee weapons.
Added filter shortcut to allow players to quickly improve their most critical stat.
Player stats UI now shows when joining game
Time UI now displays current hour and is more compact
Horde progress UI reworked and moved in with the other stats UI
Updated hints to reflect change from ‘firewood' to just 'wood’
Removed old safe logoff tips from the loading screen.
Added new highlighting system for showing harvest machines.
Stamina now syncs more accurately.
Small notifications now more compact and updated to match new UI style.
Hint notification updated to match new UI style.
New UI added for player stats that’s more compact and lines up better with the inventory.
Player stats UI now updates in real time for more accurate information.
Most critical stat now stays up in the new stats UI to show what needs fixes
Reordered stats so they show in a more understandable order.
Added highlighting to the current most critical stats.
Added filtering of item of items based on the current most critical stat.
Overall health is now displayed as a sliding scale which makes it easier to read and understand.
Sickness and mental state are now displayed as a string like ‘Anxious' or 'Sick' instead of as a value
Updated the hydration icon.
Weapons
Guns now perform a melee attack when close to an enemy.
Fixed ARG15 scope glass flashing when shooting
Added new craftable metal pipe weapon
Tweaked settings of APUG sight
Tweaked settings of Compact sight
Reduced zoom in magnification materials to reduce pixelation in scopes
Reduces glass opacity in apug slightly
FPS models tweaked for APUG and Compact sight to reduce the black border introduced by the lack of zoom, interior faces are deleted and tweaked model to reduce black border as much as possible.
Locks
All locks on doors now unlock when interacting with a door handle (Subject to players access rights on locks)
All locks now unlock when opening a a storage container (Subject to access rights)
Added smart re-lock system which closes all locks on containers/doors when finishing interaction. (Only lock automatically when unlocked using new auto unlock functionality.)
Doors can now be slammed from the handle
Crafting
Simplified crafting by removing multiple methods of crafting the same items. Items are instead now crafted using more logical progression.
Simplified the naming on several craftable objects.
Removed recipes for putting dirty rags into canteens of water.
Rags can now be cleaned using just clean water via the crafting.
Disabled the sharpening stone recipe for now. You can't get stones so this is just a frustration. (Will be properly reintroduced)
Removed Timber drop in favor of common 'Wood' item for simplicity.
Renamed tinder to sticks to make it more general and provide more diverse uses.
Renamed Firewood to Wood to simplify recipes and make the raw materials in the game more useful.
Fully disabled the hatchet to remove the complexity around having multiple tools do the same job.
Disabled rag canteens for simplicity.
Disabled washing liquid.
Rebalance of crafting progression to simplify and improve usage flow.
Environment
Fixed clipping metal sheets on dumpster trash pile.
Fixed floating bottle under bedside cabinet.
Snow and rain no longer enter the police station.
Fixed shiny wood material in the comedy club.
Fixed various floating design around the world.
Fixed various terrains and grass clipping issues around the world.
Fixed various structure mesh and texture stretching issues.
Particles
Snow particles optimized
Fixed particles popping in instantly and improved bright snow particles.
Sounds
Added sound effect when health is low to inform of low health
Fixed very loud zombie screams in police stations
Lowered loud horde zombie ambient sounds
Cooking volume lowered to fix loud cooking noises when cooking many items.
Chicken volume rebalanced.
Armory and cell doors are now affected by the volume sliders.
Weeklong Deal - 35% Off Sale
Survive the Nights is now 35% off until Monday, August 2nd. If you have any questions before purchasing, please join our friendly community on discord.
Thanks for the continued support and continued issue and suggestion reporting :). Below are some helpful links to anyone new and interested in the game. If you'd like to follow a bit closer, please consider joining our Discord. We're here, we're listening!
Survive the Nights is now 35% off for the week until Monday, August 2nd. If you have any questions before purchasing, please join our friendly community on discord.
