Friday September 3rd,
Hello everyone, hope you’ve all had a good week. We’ve continued development on 1.10 making 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 so pay attention!
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 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.
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.
Links
Discord: https://discord.gg/survivethenights
Changelog: https://changelog.survivethenights.net
Twitter: @STNgame
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/STNgame