Information from the developers diary about new features for those who are interested.
Hard at work on Labor Day
So TFP continues to work hard on the 9.2 patch despite it being labor day, but you could say its a labor of love for us so it’s not really work if you love what you do, which we do so much.
Here is the new nail gun Joey our lead artist modeled. I’m integrating it into the game. It upgrades a frame with one shot and kils zombies pretty well. I can’t guarantee it will make it into 9.2 as there is some work to do but its cool nevertheless
Ok some people are asking what changes we’ve made. Quite a few. The biggest game changers are we now have a biome spawning masks, pathing & AI, and feral night hordes.
Biome Spawning Masks.
These basically make it so when you clear an area of zombies that area will not spawn zombies again for about 5 days. This gives the player breathing room to build a house or fort, or just stop to craft some things and have a breather from zombies. It is not a free pass from wandering hordes or noise triggered hordes. It also forces the player to travel to hunt as you clean an area out, there won’t be animals there for a while either so before I’d just sit and base build and snipe a deer every day and have stocks of food galore. Now you have to get off your butt and go hunting just like in real life.
Pathing and AI
Several improvements to pathing have been made. Its just an early start to a grander scheme but zombies don’t weave back and forth as much and path straighter, they will only walk off a ledge a certain height, they can get through doors easily now. They jump over fences instead of getting stuck and aren’t spinning circles any more. They get to where they are supposed to get now. We still need to improve staircase and long distance pathing but that is part of the grander scheme I mentioned.
I upped the speed of one walk type, the cripple looking walk with the long stride. These guys and gals are annoyingly fast now so you have no time to loot any more. They are in your face causing problems and reaching you faster than you anticipated they would. They look normal… but somehow a very slight speed adjustment has been a big game changer.
Feral Night Hordes
Added feral night hordes. Once per week zombies get really hungry and become feral. These feral night hordes can sense players and will find them regardless of how well they are hiding. Every week the horde grows in numbers until the 7th week.
This is just the first version of feral night hordes but we plan on adjusting their numbers based on how well the player is doing down the road. Also once we get the regional sound/noise/smell system working this will determine where the hordes end up going. So a smart survivor can duck or divert the feral night horde.
To me the early system is already great though. It gives you a reason to stock up on ammo and build the best base you can. Even in the aftermath I was happy repairing my base and looking forward to day 14 to see if I can make improvements to my base that make it easier to defend against the increasing zombie threat.
There’s a lot of other fixed and little things we’ve added too.
So TFP continues to work hard on the 9.2 patch despite it being labor day, but you could say its a labor of love for us so it’s not really work if you love what you do, which we do so much.
Here is the new nail gun Joey our lead artist modeled. I’m integrating it into the game. It upgrades a frame with one shot and kils zombies pretty well. I can’t guarantee it will make it into 9.2 as there is some work to do but its cool nevertheless
Ok some people are asking what changes we’ve made. Quite a few. The biggest game changers are we now have a biome spawning masks, pathing & AI, and feral night hordes.
Biome Spawning Masks.
These basically make it so when you clear an area of zombies that area will not spawn zombies again for about 5 days. This gives the player breathing room to build a house or fort, or just stop to craft some things and have a breather from zombies. It is not a free pass from wandering hordes or noise triggered hordes. It also forces the player to travel to hunt as you clean an area out, there won’t be animals there for a while either so before I’d just sit and base build and snipe a deer every day and have stocks of food galore. Now you have to get off your butt and go hunting just like in real life.
Pathing and AI
Several improvements to pathing have been made. Its just an early start to a grander scheme but zombies don’t weave back and forth as much and path straighter, they will only walk off a ledge a certain height, they can get through doors easily now. They jump over fences instead of getting stuck and aren’t spinning circles any more. They get to where they are supposed to get now. We still need to improve staircase and long distance pathing but that is part of the grander scheme I mentioned.
I upped the speed of one walk type, the cripple looking walk with the long stride. These guys and gals are annoyingly fast now so you have no time to loot any more. They are in your face causing problems and reaching you faster than you anticipated they would. They look normal… but somehow a very slight speed adjustment has been a big game changer.
Feral Night Hordes
Added feral night hordes. Once per week zombies get really hungry and become feral. These feral night hordes can sense players and will find them regardless of how well they are hiding. Every week the horde grows in numbers until the 7th week.
This is just the first version of feral night hordes but we plan on adjusting their numbers based on how well the player is doing down the road. Also once we get the regional sound/noise/smell system working this will determine where the hordes end up going. So a smart survivor can duck or divert the feral night horde.
To me the early system is already great though. It gives you a reason to stock up on ammo and build the best base you can. Even in the aftermath I was happy repairing my base and looking forward to day 14 to see if I can make improvements to my base that make it easier to defend against the increasing zombie threat.
There’s a lot of other fixed and little things we’ve added too.