Devblog 46

We're making changes this week. We're no longer going to release updates on a Friday, because it's stupid. We're going to be pushing our update out on Mondays. The devblog will stay on Fridays. The aim is to have it all ready by Friday on the dev branch, so that the early adopters that have joined the dev branch can test it all weekend, then we can fix any last remaining bugs before making it live on Monday. Which then gives us better opportunities to fix bugs during the week. What we really want to do is encourage more people to join the dev branch, so our stuff gets tested more before being pushed to the main branch.

We've removed the automatic health regen on building blocks. Freshly placed building blocks now have full health and upgrading a block gives it full health. You can repair a block with the hammer but it's going to cost you a fraction of the resources.

We have added a new tier of building. It's called the 'twigs' tier. It's weak and it's cheap. The idea is that you can quickly and cheaply lay your building out before proceeding to upgrade it. These blocks are very weak - so if you make a mistake it doesn't take long to smash one to pieces.

We've also bought back durability - like in legacy. The idea behind durability is that it will punish you more if you're using a weapon wrong. For example, if you're using a hatchet to try to break down a stone wall it will wear out a lot faster than if you're using a pickaxe. This should make it more challenging for hatchet raiders, especially if you have upgraded walls. Because this is a big change please don't expect the balance to be perfect straight from day one. It's something we're going to watch and nudge the values around until it works.

Tom, Goosey, Alex and Helk have done an awesome job bringing the pump shotgun to the game. It feels really meaty to use, like something from the original Quake.

To make raiding more possible in the higher tiers, and to meet our baseline goals, we have added back explosives. The exact ingredients required to make explosives and the charge still need balancing, but the basics are all in. We're not sure whether tossing it will stay, or whether you'll have to go up and place it.

Alex's ambient sound system is in! Currently it factors the biome you're in and the time of day. There's a base layer of ambience for each biome and a collection of one off sounds that are randomly triggered to break things up a bit. The map no longer feels like an empty game world, it feels like a world that is full of stuff.

Late in the week we worked out the foundations of gibbing. This is something we were sorely missing, and something that was going to get harder and harder to implement the longer we left it. Vince made some test gib models and I hooked it up. And it works! These gib models aren't 'done' - they were just made to test the theory of the system. We can start working our way through the models now, creating gibs for them.

There's been a couple of changes to movement. You can no longer sprint sidewards, diagonally or backwards. And you can't use your weapons while sprinting. This brings the movement in line with Legacy and it makes melee fights more feasible and interesting. It also gives you an opportunity to bitch about how the movement in Legacy was terrible and this is a step backwards, even though you'd posted the exact opposite thing a month ago.

• Fixed walking/running stopping when closing inventory menu
• Fixed chat box opening again on submit
• Chat has scrollable history
• Can click on avatars in chat to view steam profile
• Fixed too many vertices in canvas error if lots of chatting
• Fixed cancelling queue'd craft not returning resources
• Crafting can no longer take from or give to wearables slots
• Items are not destroyed if inventory is full - they're dropped into the world
• If furnace/campfire is full, will spit out items instead of losing them
• Added drop notice
• Added F2 options to hide hud/chat/branding
• Can toggle nudity censor in F2 menu
• F2 menu settings are now saved properly
• Added roof block
• Fixed supply drop parachute not closing
• Added explosives
• Added timed explosive charge
• Added Voice UI
• Added unique loot panels
• Can now loot player corpses clothing
• Added Building Privilege UI notices
• Fixed damage info being sent to the player delayed
• Added low health/bleeding overlay
• Added radius to some projectiles (arrows, shotgun pellets) easier to hit
• Fixed scrollwheel not skipping over items that can’t be held

My main hope for this week was that I could get some of the issues with the new UI fixed. But then we got a bit more ambitious. A lot of gameplay stuff. A lot of under-the-hood changes that are making our lives simpler. And a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff. We're aware that some of the stuff we've added isn't balanced. Balancing isn't something that we can get right on the first release. It's something that gets normalised through playing and iteration. So please don't be the guy who freaks out on reddit. Next week - more of the same. I'm hoping to get the network system transitioned to raknet - which should fix a bunch of network related problems people are having - and will probably add some new ones that people aren't having right now.