Development Update (07/08/2024)

Hi!

I'm going to share this same post here which was on Youtube and add a little more details to some of the topics.

Youtube post

Hi, here's a quick development update.

I'm currently finishing up the second map expansion (Highway) and adding all kinds of new POI's to the maps. In the screenshot you can for example see an abandoned fish market that is inspired by IRL-location near the Highway map area.

Some of these new buildings are rather massive and will require large amount of new props / assets, so there will be some "entrance restrictions" with the upcoming last public demo.

In other words, I will make some of these new map segments in multiple phases. Speaking of the last demo, these map expansions are basically the last remaining feature, there's still bunch of work left but they are coming together rather quickly.

I think September is going to be my target month for this last demo and I'm really excited to hear your feedback on these new features.

Here's an initial feature list for this upcoming demo:

- AI overhaul
- Map expansions
- Task system
- Crafting system
- Armor system
- Dynamic ambient
- Ammo types
- Starting kits
- New trader (Doctor)
- Multi-shelter support
- New weapons & attachments
- New items

Patreon details

Like mentioned in the post above, I think September is going to be "sweet spot" month for this last Public Demo. I have basically done some rough calculations on how long each map expansions is going to take and it should be doable at end of September.

The most time consuming thing currently is modelling and texturing new props since I only use custom-made assets, so there's no shortcuts available like purchasing some assets packs etc.

I could really speed up the development by using external "general assets", but I really try to avoid that since if you start piling up external assets it's easy to loose "uniform visual look" and have all kinds of issues when the assets are not tailored for your project.

In other words, I'm going to stick with this custom made workflow even if it's sometimes really time consuming for a solo dev.

Then I would also like to cover few things about this upcoming performance dev build that I'm going to share here on Patreon.

Firstly, I definitely think that I should make certain development tools in the future to make these dev builds more easier for me. Currently, it's kind of unnecessary complex to switch from "under construction" to playable builds.

To elaborate this a bit more, when developers are making new features (like these map expansions), there's all kinds development tools and placeholders visible and removing those for playable builds and placing them back manually after the builds is far from ideal.

I already have multiple solutions in mind on how I can improve this dev build workflow and I will be adding these custom tools to the project probably after this last demo.

I will most likely finish this Highway map expansions first and then provide you that performance dev build, since there's no rush with that and then I don't have to remove the current tools in the middle of the map building process etc.

On top of this, I will most likely also update the engine version for this dev build since it should fix some of the hardware issues that were present with the previous public demo.

-Antti (Developer)