Hello Survivors, Our Head Developer has started streaming his work on Twitch! We encourage everyone to tune in if you have any questions, comments, or concerns about the game! Additionally we want to just spend time with you all! Follow this link if interested!
Hello Survivors,
Our Head Developer has started streaming his work on Twitch! We encourage everyone to tune in if you have any questions, comments, or concerns about the game! Additionally we want to just spend time with you all! Follow this link if interested!
Hello Survivors, Our Head Developer has started streaming his work on Twitch! We encourage everyone to tune in if you have any questions, comments, or concerns about the game! Additionally we want to spend time with you all! Follow this link if interested!
Hello Survivors,
Our Head Developer has started streaming his work on Twitch! We encourage everyone to tune in if you have any questions, comments, or concerns about the game! Additionally we want to spend time with you all! Follow this link if interested!
Hey Survivors, We've got a brief update covering the progress that's been made on the game since the release of our foundational update that came out in the middle of March. You can read the entire update here: We thank all of our players from the bottom of our heart for the cont
Hey Survivors,
We've got a brief update covering the progress that's been made on the game since the release of our foundational update that came out in the middle of March.
Hey all, Just a minor hotfix to address crashing issues related to item icon generation / connecting to a dedicated server. - Fixed floating DMF warehouse props. - Fixed floating barrels in Dominion - Fix various crashes related to item icon generation.
Hey all,
Just a minor hotfix to address crashing issues related to item icon generation / connecting to a dedicated server.
- Fixed floating DMF warehouse props. - Fixed floating barrels in Dominion - Fix various crashes related to item icon generation.
Survivors, It’s been a while since we’ve posted anything, as we mentioned in our last post, we just didn’t feel comfortable or justified in promoting or talking about the game publicly in any sort of way that would lead to people buying it with the state that we launched in. This
Survivors,
It’s been a while since we’ve posted anything, as we mentioned in our last post, we just didn’t feel comfortable or justified in promoting or talking about the game publicly in any sort of way that would lead to people buying it with the state that we launched in.
This is because as people who enjoy playing games, we didn’t feel just in promoting a game in a state that wasn’t enjoyable by any means. We truly felt like we let people down and that’s not what we wanted from our launch.
To put it bluntly it’s clear that a lot of people care about this game and that our communication and the state of the game was terrible. This post and our latest vlog cover what we’re doing to address both the game and our communication with the community.
DEVELOPMENT VLOG 14
Before we dive into the specifics, be sure to check out the latest development VLOG which covers a lot of what we want to dive into with a lot more depth than what we’ll be diving into.
We’ve added channels to our Discord to keep people up to date with development, we’ve got a channel that includes all the commits being made to the game as they’re being made to the game as well as a channel to keep people up to date on the builds that are going out.
We’ll be expanding this automation to X / Twitter / Xitter to keep people up to date and informed, if you have any suggestions on where to report these updates, please let us know.
Not only that, but we’ve also made our issue tracking completely open and public. You can view the issue tracker for the game here: https://github.com/QI-Software/deadmatterpublic/ or for the website here: https://github.com/QI-Software/qi-website-public/
We’ve reviewed the bans that were issued on our Discord and on the Steam Discussion forums and have unbanned hundreds of users from both platforms.
It’s clear that upon reviewing these that there were a lot of people that were banned that should’ve not been banned hence we’ve revoked the bans on hundreds of people that we felt were wrongfully banned from the community.
Lastly, you can expect regular update posts at least once a month from us and for those posts to be shared across all our social media platforms. We’ll also return to making vlogs on a much more regular basis to help keep people up to date and informed but there’s no strict schedule that we’ll be following for them.
CHANGELIST
We migrated backends in the middle of the update, and we’ve still got some work to do so we don’t have a fully detailed list of changes.
Quite frankly there’d be a million thousands of little changes to post about and we’d rather cover the meat and potatoes while letting people figure out what else was updated by simply playing the update.
APPEARANCE CUSTOMIZATION
Our old character creation lacked the ability for you to customize the appearance of your character in any way whatsoever. We’ve opted for a more limited customization schema to keep things realistic. You can pick one of 50 faces with both male and female characters now being supported. You can currently customize the skin tone, eye color and hair color of your character.
We’ve also updated the first-person hands so that they use the metahuman hands offering better shading and increased immersion while playing as your character.
HARDCORE MODE
We’ve added a hardcore mode to the game. When Hardcore mode is enabled, container-based loot will never respawn, loot that is found in the world will take 5x longer to respawn. Additionally, you’ll take twice as much damage as a player. Since loot is never refreshed in hardcore mode, any item you place in a container will be saved until it has been removed.
SERVER PERFORMANCE
We have significantly improved the server performance; our server is on average about 500% faster than before. We’ve still got a little way to go to make sure that dedicated server performance is bulletproof but this is the first major step in the right direction for server performance.
COOKING
Campfires, BBQ grills, fireplaces, portable camping stoves, household gas and electric stoves can be found throughout the world as useable cooking surfaces. Non-electric cooktops require a burnable fuel source to operate. Burners on cooking appliances can be toggled on and off provided they have an adequate source of energy. Cooktops take thermal inertia into account, requiring you to wait for your cooking surface to heat up for your food to start cooking. To cook food, you simply place it on a cooking surface such as a frying pan or the surface of a grill.
GARDENING
You can now grow your own crops that can be used for food or utility such as growing hemp for a source of cloth. Seeds can be found in the world or by harvesting bushes and can be planted in a gardening plot that you build yourself or a gardening plot found in the world. Gardening plots that are outdoors will be automatically watered when it is raining.
CAMPING
We’ve added a new set of items geared around the camping experience, you can now find items such as lanterns, tents, sleeping bags, cots, camping chairs and even a portable cooking stove. You can deploy these objects in the world at a campsite or even inside of a building that you’ve claimed depending on your needs.
BEDS
You can now sleep in sleeping bags, beds, or portable cots. If you’re in singleplayer, time will advance approximately 8 hours. If you’re in either Singleplayer or Multiplayer your stats will be restored.
CLOCKS
We have added a ton of clocks to the game, from digital clocks that can be found on appliances such as radios and electric stoves. We’ve also added analogue clocks such as wall clocks or grandfather clocks. You can use these to tell what time it is in-game.
TRADING
Trading has been completely overhauled from the ground up to provide an easier experience for the player and one that is overall much more functional than before. Dialogue with NPCs should also feel much more immersive as we’ve done a bit of work to polish that up for this patch.
WORLD BORDER FENCE
We’ve added some concrete fences to block off the parts of the map that are currently not suitable for play, we’ve also walled off the Canmore hamlet for the time being as well since most of the buildings are in various stages of completion.
NEW LOCATIONS
We’ve fleshed out the river area near the Canmore Hamlet, sprinkling in about a dozen or so points of interest in the area. We’ve also gone a step further by adding the fan favorite Grotto Mountain bunker back into the game as well as a brand-new bunker in the Seebe region.
ENTRY
Doors leading into buildings that can be claimed now have a 90% chance of the doors being locked, this means that if you don’t have a lockpick handy that you’ll need to pry open the windows with a crowbar or break them to climb inside.
Doors can typically be unlocked from the inside, allowing you to let your friends in once you’ve gotten inside. Areas with rare loot such as KP Research, Gamma Mike, Willow Rock Bunker, and the Federal Stockpile may require keys or cutting open fences or a combination of both to access.
FLUID CONTAINERS
You can now find various fluid containers in the world such as fuel tanks, sinks, toilets, etc. You can refill your water bottle from these sources or drink directly from them. You can also drink water directly from the rivers found on the map.
CLAIMS
We have completely overhauled the claims system from the ground up, our old claims system was barely functional to begin with and was plagued with crashes when it did work. No longer is this the case, to claim a building simply find a claim marker (electrical box with a small light in it). Once you’ve claimed a location, you’ll need a hammer to build things made from wood or a welding torch to build things that are made from metal. You’ll need a mallet if you plan on doing any repairs or if you want to upgrade your doors.
If players are a concern, you can find NERA barricades at Gamma Mike or the Federal Stockpile. These barricades are unique as they can only take damage from explosives which can be found at a few locations in Quaite Valley.
GUNPLAY
We have completely overhauled the ADS system and the math being used to drive it, as well as cleaning up how ADS interacts with recoil. Recoil has been overhauled and should now feel much more impactful and much less janky.
FOV punching has been fixed so that bolt/pump action weapons don’t have this weird FOV change until you cycle the action.
Idle animations are now driven using a procedural animation system which is the same system being used for a new iteration of the weapon inertia. On top of all of that we’ve also fixed the way that audio is playing when interacting with your weapon so that audio cues like inserting shells into a shotgun play much more consistently than before.
ANIMATION FIXES
Lever action rifles such as the 1895, 1873 and the 1887 have had their animations fixed up and now generally function as intended. This is alongside some much-needed fixes to the C7 and the C8 which no longer spawn with their attachments in a completely broken state.
We have also fixed the R700, the MP7 animations and the HK416 not playing their animations correctly and they have been added to the loot tables.
OPTICS
Optics such as red dot sights and scopes should now also be functional with all fake zoom being removed for the time being. This is primarily because it was distorting the image to the point where it was rendering the optics nearly unusable.
INTERACTION ICONS
Interactions now have icons to help build familiarity with the various interactive elements in the game, interaction icons also provide feedback to the player by informing them if they’ve searched a container or not.
CONCLUSION
We’ve used this painful period of radio silence to reflect upon our values as a studio, what our fans expected in terms of the game and what our fans expect in terms of communication. In our opinion, any communication from us that wasn’t accompanied by major changes and fixes being brought to the game, would at that point be the wrong move and would only add fuel to the fire. Not only that, but people already heard us say that we’re going to fix this, and it was time for action, not talking about action.
We’ll catch y’all on the next update post. For now, stay safe out there and have fun.
Performance Update #2 Survivors, We’ve gotten another performance patch put together, we felt that now the major crashes are out of the way, it would be better for us to address performance since users on low-end hardware were still struggling to run the game properly. We’ll be k
Performance Update #2
Survivors,
We’ve gotten another performance patch put together, we felt that now the major crashes are out of the way, it would be better for us to address performance since users on low-end hardware were still struggling to run the game properly.
We’ll be keeping an eye out for feedback with regards to performance on this one, if you’re still experiencing performance issues on the client, please let us know what your specs are and where you encountered problems and we’ll be happy to investigate it.
Next patch we’ll be attacking the performance of the dedicated server, rubber banding as well as persistence so that your progress is always saved when you’re playing the game.
Thank you all for the support and patience demonstrated on this release thus far.
-QI Games
Performance
Significant reduction in the amount of overdraw, unlocking significantly better framerates on older hardware while also allowing newer hardware to run the game on Epic.
Scalability settings have been tweaked, allowing you to more easily fine tune your graphics configuration.
Convolution bloom has been replaced in favor of a cheaper bloom shader.
Animated doors are now slept, and woken up only when interacted with, reducing overhead on the game thread.
New Features
You can now unpin magazines if you have a screwdriver in your inventory. To do this, simply have the screwdriver on your person and then right click on any pinned magazine.
New foliage has been deployed between DMF and Dominion to try and breathe a bit more variety into the game.
Health now regenerates over time if you’re properly hydrated and energized.
Selecting a toolbelt item is now done via a radial menu that is summoned when pressing left alt. This allows us to more easily communicate information about the item you’re attempting to draw, as well as making sure something gross like ALT + 8 is not an input you have to suffer with.
Known Issues
Naked Players are Invisible: Players not wearing any clothes are invisible, we’ll be implementing a proper culling system for the clothing for the next update.
Item Drop Bugs: Dropping certain items currently results in you no longer being able to pick them up, we will be addressing this in the next update.
Container Interaction In Multiplayer: Containers appear to have issues being opened in multiplayer, it seems if you move around that you should be able to access a container.
Infected Still Too Slow: Infected have not had their movement speed updated yet, we’ll be doing this for the next update.
Bug Fixes
Vehicles now function correctly in multiplayer, pass in `-EnableVehiclesOnDedicated` when booting up your server to enable them. We will be enabling them on the official dedicated servers.
Textures should be a lot less blurry, as we’ve increased the max number of uploads to the page file cache per frame.
Fixed lighting in the shooting range.
Removed broken meshes from the shooting range.
Structure selection crashes on both server and client should now be resolved.
Audio submix settings have been updated, resulting in audio sounding a lot less ‘crushed’ than before.
Various tweaks to ambient sound volumes for the following locations:
Dick’s Diner
Willow Rock Bunker
Duke’s Radio Station
Dusty’s Gas Station
Antique Shop (DMF)
Cabins and Campgrounds
Brass Ram
Bow Runner Rafting
Bighorn Hotel
Baymag Industrial Plant
Bugs with the medical UI have been addressed.
Rebinding keys should generally work as expected.
Plank item size and weight have been reduced.
P90 magazine no longer glows
Crafting now works as expected in multiplayer.
Replaced “HELLOOO” tooltip that was popping up on certain Item Actions.
Increased volume of flesh impacts, ie: a baseball bat to the head.
Footstep sounds should no longer play while swimming or noclipping.
Medical Statuses now appear on your HUD.
You can now press H to open the medical menu.
Trees have been cleared from underneath most of the powerlines on the map and replaced with much shorter trees.
Vehicle doors are now predicted and should not result in stuttering when being opened / closed.
Passengers riding in a vehicle no longer desync from the driver position.
Added an easter egg in the new forest environment.
Finding a compass should be much easier than before.
Flashlights have had their intensity and brightness tweaked.
All bandages are now stackable up to 5.
Fixed issue with Scrub Pants being mistakenly labelled as Sweat Pants
HLODs have been rebuilt.
Removed buggy vehicle spawn from Seebe.
Added 5 additional vehicle spawns to Seebe.
Fixed issues where the post-processing volume on the map was forcing lumen to be enabled.
Fixed issue where the audio for the locomotive being used to power dominion was not loading in correctly.
Removed tweaks to the toe in the tonemapper, giving the game more vibrancy with it’s lighting.
Fixed broken target materials.
Fixed targets being too close in the shooting range.
0.11.1 - Post Launch Patch Survivors, This patch which is largely focused around bug fixes and performance, addressing the feedback we've received since the launch. There’s about 70 changes for you to sink your teeth into with the full change list at the tail end of this post. Th
0.11.1 - Post Launch Patch
Survivors,
This patch which is largely focused around bug fixes and performance, addressing the feedback we've received since the launch. There’s about 70 changes for you to sink your teeth into with the full change list at the tail end of this post. Things should be running more smoothly, as issues with CPU & GPU performance and crashes have been addressed.
Key Changes and Improvements:
Optimization: Our game footprint is now trimmed from 153GB to a sleek 48GB.
Stability Boost: Addressed multiple crashes to offer a more consistent gameplay.
Visual Fixes: Gone are the days of low-poly infected, as our infected no longer look they came straight out of 2004.
Audio Changes: Various audio-related fixes from the infected to the weapons have been deployed.
Gameplay Refinements: We’ve taken steps to improve the gunplay, with ADS behavior being tweaked as well as infected being tweaked to more aggressively seek out their targets.
Known Issues:
Foliage Performance: Grass is currently really heavy on the GPU, especially when combined with shadows. This issue can very in severity in different locations in the world. We will be addressing this over the next couple of updates once we diagnose the root cause of the issue. We highly recommend you set your foliage quality to low for the time being.
Tree HLODs: Trees have their distance representation disabled for the time being.
Naked Players are Invisible: Players not wearing any clothes are invisible, we’ll be implementing a proper culling system for the clothing for the next update.
Item Drop Bugs: Dropping certain items currently results in you no longer being able to pick them up, we will be addressing this in the next update.
Container Interaction In Multiplayer: Containers appear to have some minor issues being opened in multiplayer, it seems if you move around that you should be able to access a container.
Infected Still Too Slow: Infected have not had their movement speed updated yet, while we've improved their behavior a bit, they still need some work to form more of a threat.
Thank you for your patience, understanding, and belief in Dead Matter. Together, we'll ensure that this world we've created not only survives but thrives.
-QI Games
Full Changelist
Remove redundant file size, bringing the total install size down from 153GB to 48GB.
Fixed infected using extremely low poly meshes causing them to look like N64 characters.
Fixed passengers being able to drive vehicles.
Fixed vehicle cameras bugging out on slopes.
Fixed issue where players were not being removed from the Pitbull simulation, causing infected to pile up on dead or disconnected players.
Changed default spawn points to Dead Man’s Flats and Exshaw Community
Fixed “HeaderName” showing up in the video settings.
Fixed lighting in character creation being overblown due to external lighting leaking in.
Fixed Inventory Preview in Character Creation not being fully visible.
Fixed clicking “Skip Tutorial” would still ask you the next time you went to the MainMenu.
Fixes to the weapon audio to align them with the audio found in 0.6
Fix crashes related to the AllocateStackVT.
Removed various glowing decals around the map.
Added missing buildings to Pasko Lake
Replaced some placeholder buildings in Seebe with proper equivalents.
Replaced Unreal Engine driven overlap detection with a system specifically written for Pitbull.
Increased infected perception radius.
Tweaked all swimming volumes to properly match the water surface.
Fixed swaying being inappropriately applied while aiming down sights, scopes should be more viable now as well.
Fixed certain sound cues not playing on the weapons, removed audio filtering to bring audio closer to parity with 0.6.
ADS behavior has been tightened up and should be less frustrating.
Vehicle count temporarily reduced to 17 vehicles.
You must pass `-EnableVehiclesOnDedicated` to your servers command line if you wish to experience them in multiplayer (do this at your own risk).
You can no longer run through infected without taking damage.
Enable IO store for more efficient level streaming.
Temporarily removed foliage HLODs.
Fix various crashes related to video settings.
Removed NIS.
You can now carry the basic med-kit in your pockets.
Lockers should now spawn backpacks.
Tutorial map had a cleanup pass for all of the logic in the level and should no longer contain any issues.
Disinfectant Bottle now has the Disinfectant Tag for Crafting
Restricted /yeet to developers only.
Default FOV has been updated to match 0.6
Issues related to opening the tutorial, quitting partway through and the infected being frozen have been resolved.
Dedicated server performance has been improved, resulting in a decrease of rubber banding.
Brush axe has had it’s materials fixed
Settings should now properly reset to defaults.
Melee bashing has been temporarily disabled.
Tactical attachments have been temporarily disabled pending a new system to manage more complex weapon attachment logic.
Voip has been mapped to V.
Drawing your fists is now mapped to C.
Missing emissive materials on the ceiling lights has been fixed.
Dominion has had it’s lighting revised.
Dominion should feel easier to navigate, with less clutter blocking the path towards important characters.
Added Dominion’s power source to the game.
Shift+Clicking now plays the item drop sound when quick-moving items to your inventory.
Flashlights have had their intensity and source radius tweaked.
Aiming down sights and reloading should now function correctly.
Vehicle seat positions have been adjusted.
Fix lighting in Character Creation.
Upped nanite max nodes to prevent a buffer overflow.
Fixed locked door in underground bunker that was causing crashes when interacted with.
Light no longer leaks into the item icon capturing.
Fixed a crash related to GetPlacement() accessing an invalid item.
Fixed crashes related to the InventoryManagerComponent
Fix crash related to the gauge system when respawning in multiplayer
Added barriers on roads that lead to nowhere.
Cheat commands are now restricted in singleplayer, you must manually enable cheating by executing `dm.EnableCheats 1` in the console.
Fixed infected idle audio not playing.
Fixed missing materials on the GWagon
Fixed infected not colliding with vehicles when being ran over.
Rebuilt HLODs (excluding foliage).
Removed duplicated foliage where trees would be often found inside of other trees.
FPS and Ping Counters are back in, and can be enabled via the settings menu.
Removed PlayCustomMap UI and SandBox folder from the AssetManager.
Fixed up bush collision sounds.
Fixed duplicated trees being placed ontop of one another.
Time of day and weather should now save and load correctly.
Added tooltip info to Knives, Hammer and Screwdriver. Fixed tag name using a crafting type.
It should be easier to exit a vehicle if you’re a passenger or driver.
Corrected sun angle to match the region in Alberta that the games take place in.
Fixed issue in DMF where bullets were getting absorbed by a quest related actor.
