Hello all,
We’re moving our experimental branch to default today. 0.5.16 will become 0.6.16. The update below will go over what we’ve been up to (sorry for the delay!!) Along with what has changed in 0.6 and what to expect in the future.
This update has been a while coming as we've not updated in over two months to our default branch. There have been massive development and backend changes, some of which took a bit longer than expected. Lots of work has gone into network relevance. We’ve added measures to stop player states from syncing when players are far away from each other. This will disable far away players saving on some performance. The same has been done with all drops, all physical loot dropped and spawned will cull via our systems completely clearing them from the client. Quite a bit more has gone into the project network wise and will require a great deal of backer testing. You’ll find our current changelog below, it’s a great way to hunt for bugs. As always please leave any issues on our tracker so we can get them fixed! 📷
Now that physical loot is possible, we’ve expanded on all the in game shops. Creating loot specific shops i.e. convenient stores for drinks/food, pharmacies for meds, hardware stores for fortification loot, etc. Nearly 250 shop specific props were added to help rework and redesign shops with more planned for the future! This all needs a great deal of expansion and tweaking, something we’ll work on over the coming months but it has now been reworked and introduced. Below are a few shots of physical loot systems and specific (backer named) shops in game.
With the introduction of this new culling and relevance system, loot that is dropped from the inventory with the [Drop] button will be decay over time. Up until now, there has been zero cleanup on servers. Every item spawned, used and dropped around the world stays on the server. This new system will ease server load. Players that want to keep their goods will need to use placement mode after dropping them. This will shortly be made more user friendly with the introduction of a place mechanic right in the inventory.
There have also been some massive team changes, all for the good! We're moving on up! As many of the close followers may know in the beginning our team was working from home. A handful of us worked what hours we could to put our concepts together. After the amazing success we had with Kickstarter, we were able to move to the project full time. We rented a small corner office in an industrial park just East of the city of Hull in the U.K. The office was 120 square feet and as many of our past interns will confirm, not the most comfortable or creative space. The office was attached to what was essentially a noise manufacturing plant and across the road from a chemical park which wasn't the most inviting work environment. Aside from the aesthetics, the space made expanding the team impossible.
In the beginning of June, we had the opportunity (also due to leases expiring) to leave our tiny office. The team has moved to the center of Hedon just east of our former location. The space is amazing although it has come with its fair share of work. Vacant for the last 5+ years, it was in rough shape but this would later play to our advantage. Luckily John and James have had their fair share of experience with carpentry and general construction being their now former livelihoods. With the help of Andre, Jos and some friends/family, the office quickly became the team's nightly project! We're happy to say we're done and incredibly pleased with the results. We have only the dedication and continued support of the community to thank for this opportunity. It will not only give us the opportunity to work in a beautiful creative space but allow us the option to expand and bring in additional developers post alpha release! Below you’ll see a time lapse of everyone painting the mural in our new office.
Changelog 0.6.16
Hot fix 0.5.16
Fixed issue where spawned items wouldn't spawn with resources (ammo boxes would be empty and have no weight.);
Fixed issue where spawned items could start with 0 condition which resulting in them being able to have negative condition.
Fixed purifying water with purification tablets.
Removed duplicate gauze drop.
Fixed names of instant potatoes.
Fixed beets that had duplicate names.
Fixed energy bottles drinks which had wrong names.
Hot fix 0.5.15
Added physical spawner locations to residential building interiors.
Fixed moulding in strip malls that were out of place.
Changed strip mall interior loading range so that it’s not so obvious when it turns on.
Removed double bar prop in string mall variant 3.
Fixed missing pole on gas station sign.
Rain no longer falls through large popov grocery stores.
Fixed shelf that was clipping in variant 3 popovs.
Counter in popovs now have collision.
Increased the range that the interior loads in at for popovs.
Interacting with the generator no longer plays the take animation.
Fixed clipping tool boxes on large building roof top.
Collision with fence on top of large building roof top now works.
Zombies no longer walk through large apartment blocks.
Shopping cart LOD transition improved.
Moved sink cabinet in house_9 that wasn’t against wall.
Fixed floating shadows when having the r-6804 equipped.
Zombies should be jumping into swimming pools again.
Fixed issue where some trees wouldn’t spawn appropriate pickups.
Improved floors material in school building.
Fixed terrain where it was clipping with floor in terrain 44 and 52.
Removed lawn mower prop as it was low quality.
Moved props that were blocking several electricity meters.
Cooking items no longer duplicate.
Missing door slam open sound assigned.
Fixed MRE drop and reduced overall stat gains.
Fixes to type names on energy drink drops.
Fixed typeName on potatoes cooked.
Fixed typeName on beets cooked.
Tree piece pickups are now the correct scale.
General
• Gravity now instantly activated on items that exit placement mode..
• Easy way to access Inventory crafting and guide tabs. Inputs i o and p now open the inventory to relevant tab.
• Fix for infinite stamina glitch when locking inputs.
• Inputs no longer get stuck when entering/exiting chat.
• Command accepted no longer goes in to the chat multiple times when inputing a command.
• Stopped all player stats being able to go negative or higher than their max amounts.
• Switching weapons has been optimized.
• Reduced radius in which zombies are cleared up when a player spawns nearby.
• Fixed errors when attempting to remove items from the world.
• Fixed scenario where you could enter game, exit and then rejoin but not keep your persistence.
• Fixed issue where starting items weren't persistent through relogs.
• Fixed persistence issue with attached objects in the inventory. Previously if you dropped a gen, added a part, picked it up and then dropped it again the parts would be back to 0/1 (Other than the fuel tank)
Physical Loot
• Added physical loot system which spawns relevant loot around the world.
Network Culling and Performance
• Added player network relevance system which stops state sync when you get far enough away from each other. This limits bandwidth and disables the character model as well.
• Added pickup network relevance that makes network aware pickups on only relevant to the players within the set range. This also turn off the models which saves on rendering and LOD calculations.
• Added pickup placeholder system which turns pickups into none network aware objects when no player is relevant.
Music
• Full music soundtrack added.
• Adaptively changing music based on time and situation.
UI
• Improved server search and 'Clear History' buttons layout.
• Added Server filter toggles to server selection menu. Options include: Compatible, Private and unofficial servers.
• Player list is forced off when being disconnected from the server.
• Added triple monitor support for all menus.
Item Placement
• Pressing enter/return now exits placement mode.
• Smoothing added to items that are in placement mode so that they’re not as jittery.
• Fully disabled plastic tote pickup until spawn-able containers are implemented.
Crafting
• Animal trap crafting recipe now takes 4 planks.
Items
• Removed all consumable portions
• Changed consumable stats to reflect portion removal
• Renamed all drops favoring a standard (Pot) (Can) (Cooked) name convention
• Renamed internal drop names to reflect portion removal and new name convention
• Removed cookable dirty variants and pointless dirty variants
• Fixed all broken cookable variants (everything should cook now)
• Adhesives bandages weight updated to make it more realistic
• Empty water bottle weight updated to make it more realistic.
• Gun cleaning kit weight updated to make it more realistic.
• Saucepan of boiling water weight fixed to match other items.
Environment
• Shop specific props added. 250 new items in total.
• Large grocery stores have been fully redesigned.
• Added new rooms in large grocery stores to make them more realistic.
• Strip malls have been fully redesigned using new props with all new pharmacy, bar, weapon, hardware stores and more.
• New store signs have been added. Most take power and can be lit.
• Gas stations redesigned.
• Strips malls variant have been evenly spread between towns to fairly distribute loot.
• Collision with shower head fixed.
• Parking islands now have collision.
• House_5 interior now has collision.
• Added electrical breaker and meter panels to house_4_variant_2.
• Fixed door alignment in House_Old_House_variant_2.
• Improved textures in junk pile.
• Kitchen cabinets are now easier to access and open.
• Fixed floating cabinet in large exterior junk pile.
• Added collision to door frames in school building that were missing.
• Raised message board that was stuck in the ground.
• Removed remnant collision from carports on plaster variant houses.
• Fixed trash bag variants that where incorrectly showing interaction information.
• Fixed gaps in windows in Old_House variants
• Moved tree that was clipping building
• Moved clipping rain barrels from building.
• Moved trash can that was clipping the ground.
• Added design to rooftop.
Particles
• Improved fluorescent light smash particle.
AI
• Zombies now jump into swimming pools.
Admin
• Added /chat on/off command which enables or disables the chat globally.
Weapons
• Reload sound fixed on r-6804.
• Shotguns can now damage locks.
What’s to come!
The next default build will be 0.7.x. This build will focus on some optimization and feature polish. It will be a quality of life patch that’s a bit over due now. We’ve been grinding away reworking systems. Now that players are giving us feedback, we're trying to find better ways to do things. It’s become time to put that research to work and give the current build a good once over. We’ll focus the month's update basically on getting our mechanics ready for the 0.8.x update. This update will focus on fortifications, a massive part of what Survive the Nights will become.
We’ll be introducing a feedback system in a close future update. The system will allow players to give the team direct feedback as to how features are working or aren’t and how players think they can be improved. This system will allow us to collect data in a more reasonable manner. Right now, the majority of information fed back to the team is issues. We’re working on a better way for you to share your opinions with the team directly and without having to do so on an open forum.
As always, thanks so much for the continued support. The team is excited about the upcoming months, the build and the opportunity our new space will give us to expand. As many of you already know, we’re always available for a chat on our Discord so come on through and say hello, share your ideas or get answers to any questions you might have!