Hey there, we just pushed Patch 1.05! It includes fixes, and most important some new weapon-balancing tweaks. We're looking forward to playing with all of you and trying out this new set of changes.
- Attempting to mitigate the death-counter overflow (needs loads of testing due to funky VM behavior) - Pistol damage has been recalculated completely, more buff and balance across the board - Several other weapons have been tweaked according to a new, internal DPS table - Fixed the grenade-cooking bug when sprinting - Fixed the grenade-exploding bug when switching from primary to secondary fire - Fixed the HUD settings not saving after quitting the game - Lots of other tiny things to prepare for 1.1 and fixes
Now, we've been EXTREMELY busy working on 1.1. That's going to be the first big update. It'll introduce a whole bunch of crazy new features and visuals - but most importantly polish across the whole board.
We've also been doing some internal road mapping towards the other updates. May I spoil that we might have some promising ideas for a single player? I think so!
If you've been following us on social media, you will have seen these already:
If you haven't, please follow us on Twitter and Facebook! We try to post regularly. See you in-game soon!
The first day of release went pretty well!
We've already been working on adding in some improvements that you have suggested.
Pushed the first version of the SDK files
Fast-switching by default, due to the intense gunplay
Tweaked melee weapon damage and range (increased)
Made the team-score counter more readable
Increased the lifetime of the chat-window from 4 to 8 seconds
Opposing team-members will show up in red when they're inside a car, team-mates remain green
Improvements to team-switching, in both functionality and visual feedback
Improvements to movement prediction involving several map entities
Akimbo weapons now alternate on Primary-Fire, with Secondary replacing the Tertiary
Changed the default of sv_reloadstyle to 1 due to popular demand
Added in the mouse sensitivity option in the Controls menu that we overlooked
Temporarily disabled ambient sounds because they were clearly too much on maps like ramshackle and vats.
Toned car bounce down a bit
Fixed a shader typo with the 556 ammo
Fixed hand-skins disappearing after video-settings have been changed/applied
Fixed clamping of 2D graphics in the menu and HUD
Fixed not being able to issue 'kill' when spawning
Fixed HUD style/colors not saving before quitting the game
Fixed the bug in which mixed akimbos didn't display properly
Hope you're enjoying it so far. We're working on refining some of the above features even more, but that takes a bit more time!
A few of you found the cars to be a little too over-the-top and that some think you shouldn't be able to push them around as much...
while we found it funny and fitting at first, we can see where you are coming from.
Regarding the map RAMSHACKLE, there is a drastic change to that map coming. Vehicles were originally not part of the original map design, that was us experimenting and it didn't work even in the last weeks of testing for us personally. However we weren't sure whether or not spending the time on cutting it down was justified for the initial release.
The map is just too big for normal gameplay and too detailed for a vehicle map. So for now we've removed Ramshackle from the official server rotation while that's being addressed.
The Wastes - Released!!!
It's been 3 years since we started this journey. It feels quite a bit longer than that thinking about it.
It was just 2 people, Marco and I who thought that The Wastes needed to come back. The original team loved the idea and gave us their full blessing.
Other than that, it was just us two. Hacking away and trying to make something fun and crazy. We're very happy to present the release of The Wastes.
A lot of experience has been gained along the way and I'd like to spend some time talking about it. Making a game is extremely difficult. We knew that as modders, but never truly faced the same sort of pressure until now. The industry, in a lot of ways, is in a tough state for a lot of players.
Without going into much detail, we all know that there are a lot of developers pushing technologies and business models that aren't very appealing to many players. Most just want to buy a game and not worry about the state it's in. We didn't go into Early Access a year ago, because we wanted to send a message to people. That game-development can be handled differently. While this puts enormous pressure on us, the developers, we believed it was worth it. We hope you, the players, appreciate this philosophy and hopefully spread the word.
Now, since it's finally here, let me outline our future plans for the game!
Technically speaking, this is The Wastes 1.0. This release marks the introduction. It is the base-game that we wanted to deliver at launch. Surely, there are loads of other things we wanted to put in, but couldn't bundle it into the release right away. We've got a bunch of weapons, game-modes and levels in the pipeline. All of those will be included in future updates. For free.
Generally, we'll be focusing on YOUR feedback. We're very much open to tweaking things and putting our resources into places you'd love to see us work on the most. This is just the beginning!
Development Diary: A Visual Interface Guide
Hello everyone!
To give you a feel of the game, I'd like to guide you through our interface. We loved the original look and feel of the mod version, however it was rather limited by engine and interface restrictions in GoldSrc modding at the time (for the main menus at least).
And after all, we aren't simply porting a mod, we're making a true game in the spirit of 3D accelerated shooters of the early 2000s!
Pictured above: The original mod menu.
We loved the idea of the screen-interface that the mod tried to implement a lot. Sadly GoldSrc didn't really allow you to modify the layout of elements back then. So we went to the drawing board and tried to create something with a familiar look but a refined feel that'd beat the original design of not just the mod, but the game it was made for.
Pictured above: Game version, with a hint of skeuomorphism.
If you're going to put in a screen, we figured it needed some buttons as well. Those buttons on the left provide an easy way for you to go through the main menu categories. Inside those categories you'll find sub-menus which will be remembered for when you switch between categories - giving fast access to all essential options. That's something the original menu didn't do, because you'd have press "Back" many, many times in order to go from graphics options to let's say, creating an Internet game.
Click the above thumbnails to enlarge...
The spawn menu was quite messy. The GoldSrc VGUI menus are a great framework, but the mod implementation lacked personality that the mod needed. Supporting multiple resolutions properly also required fiddling to get the layouts just right, so in the end compromises were made. We went back and looked at some of the ideas the team had and came up with a much more unified design with a less drab interface.
Combining main interface and message of the day into one.
We also made it so that the current layout is very clearly visible.
Here you can also see what displaying weapon information looks like . We're still refining that one to give more helpful information about the Primary/Secondary/Tertiary weapon functions. So stay tuned.
The mod sported a very big heads-up-display at times. While we liked the look, we did want to minimize the default configuration a little bit to be not as overwhelming.
Pictured above: Same place, over 15 years later.
The heads-up display of course, is not just that single design. No way.
We offer players the ability to customize the look and feel as much as possible, while not over complicating things too much. We had the idea of creating one design for every faction in the game's lore... so we're giving you, the player, free rule to choose whatever design you want. You can choose the interface colors as well. With more options to be added.
Going into a vehicle expands the interface to its full size. With all the gauges, bells and whistles attached.
We love the idea of making the game modifiable without having to tinker around the internals too much. We'll be shipping with a simple plug-and-play system to installing and choosing skins for the player hands and eventually weapon designs as well. We've got a lot of content you'll be able to pick and choose so that you can make the game your own. We hope all of you will create amazing skins and content using the system in place.
This was a quick overview about the look and feel of the interface. There are of course lots of minor elements we couldn't cover (we also don't want to spoil any surprises!).
Oh and by the way, if you'd like to communicate with us and see what we're up to - you're invited to join the official Vera Visions IRC server! We're online most of the time and occasionally post exclusive pictures (and sometimes videos) there. So spread the word and get hyped!
Join The Wastes' IRC: Server: [noparse]irc.frag-net.com:6667[/noparse] Channel: #wastes Steam Discussions
Edited: We now use IRC exclusively, sorry for anyone affected by this change. Thanks for your participation and we hope to see you in our IRC channel!
Connect with the developers behind (or in front of?) The Wastes!
We're opening up our IRC server to the public for anyone that's interested in connecting with us or keeping up with progress and any other news related to the game!
Join The Wastes' IRC: Server: [noparse]irc.frag-net.com:6667[/noparse] Channel: #wastes
Edited: We now use IRC exclusively, sorry for anyone affected by this change. Thanks for your participation and we hope to see you in our IRC channel!
