Yet Another Development Update — February 2024

27 Feb 2024Developer post

Source: Steam Community (opens in a new tab)

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Welcome, Survivors!

We hope you're enjoying the 0.5 update so far. Here's another round of news and interesting tidbits from behind the scenes of Yet Another Zombie Survivors' development process. Not all of today's news is happy, but we hope you'll enjoy reading it anyway.

Epitaph to Sanji the rabbit

Unfortunately, we have to start this devlog with some bad news. It is with a heavy heart that we let you know that our mascot, which you have grown to love, has recently passed away.

Seven-year-old Sanji suddenly fell ill overnight, and as it turned out, he had contracted a bacterium that rapidly worsened his condition. Despite the veterinarians' quick response and efforts, our friend could not be saved. The bacterium attacked the nervous system and in just three hours Sanji was gone. He was loved to the end, and just before he died, he ate his last, favorite treat - a slice of banana.

We're sure he's not suffering now as he binks through the clearings full of endless carrots and potatoes. He was always a sweetheart, quiet and eager to be petted, and will be remembered as such. His legacy lives on as he left behind two other loving family members - Chopper & Nami - who are also rabbits.

Thank you for all the potatoes you've fed him. Let's keep him in our minds and hearts from now on.

Upcoming new map

At the time of writing, we're hard at work on the next map, which will feature a forest-like environment.

You'll face more challenges than before, as well as brand new enemies and modified versions of the old ones. We've got a few ideas for fun stage hazards and interactions, but we'd also love to hear your thoughts on what and how to challenge you in this new area.

As for the name, it's a temperate forest at night, full of zombies and mutated creatures. It's not set in stone, but we found a name that stuck pretty well: Green Hell. Is it a good one? Let us know in the comments.

We'd love to share more, but this is all a work in progress, so we don't want to hype something that may or may not get added. We hope you'll jump into the public beta as soon as it's available to give us your feedback on the new map and its content. Actually, you can join the beta right now, as we're currently testing the performance updates - but about that...

Major performance improvements

With the help of our friends at HyperStrange, we've been working hard to improve the performance of the game and the engine itself.

We're happy to report that from both our testing and feedback from our public beta, the improvements are really noticeable. Depending on your hardware environment, you can expect a 20 to 100 percent framerate improvement in upcoming versions of the game!

For example, the Steam Deck can now run the game at a 50-70 FPS (depending on your graphics settings) most of the time, whereas it used to stick around 20-40 FPS in the previous versions. There's still the issue of framerates getting lower and lower the longer you play the modes with no time limit, but that's something we'll continue to work on in the future.

We're still working on the issue of vertical sync capping the framerate at low values on some devices, so some players will need to disable it (easily turned off in the game's options) for smoother gameplay. If you experience weird stuttering or FPS drops in the game, please disable vertical sync and set the framerate limit to your monitor's display value (Hz). This should help!

Item pool customization

Another promise we've made, and one we intend to keep, is to give players the ability to customize the ever-expanding item pool. Starting with version 0.6, you'll be able to customize the potential item chest content. Players will be free to disable (and enable) any item they wish, as long as the total pool remains with at least 40 items.

This is just one of many changes to itemization to come, as we're committed to making items yet another fun way to interact and customize your runs. We'll be adding new items as well as tweaking the stats of the old ones, and even tweaking the ones that aren't your favorites or are considered a bit bland.

A new Awesome Dev appeared!

What is that rustling in the tall grass over there? A shiny, legally distinct pocket creature?

Not at all! It's a new Awesome Developer joining the fight for awesomeness! Adam has recently joined our (tiny but mighty) team as a new programmer. Here's a word from him to you:

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Hello everyone, my name is Adam! Obviously I'm a gamer. I've been playing and enjoying different genres since I was young - e.g. Racing, RPGs, Adventure, Strategy, Shooters, Stealth... and so on - mostly on PC, but also Mobile, Quest, VR and lately Steam Deck 🙂 I've always been curious about modifying, modding and creating games - that's why I became a programmer. At Awesome Games Studio I'll be helping the team with the development of YAZS and other upcoming titles 😉 I hope you enjoy my contribution and will have a great time playing YAZS!

You'll find Adam mostly working on a separate project of ours, BUT he will jump in from time to time to help Mariusz (and his two dogs) program YAZS. He's actually the one behind the item pool customization integration.

Stay tuned for version 0.6 Beta!

As mentioned, we're still adding ones and zeros for the upcoming update, and it's coming together nicely. Be sure to keep an eye out for the 0.6 public beta test, as it's definitely coming in March.

In case you missed the last few news posts about the game, we're also continuing to work on a new skill trees / meta progression rework that will allow us to easily add new fun nodes and modifiers to the game in the future. Since this requires a lot of planning and balancing, it will most likely come in a future update (we hope to have it implemented in version 0.7).

We're also working on adding a promised Encyclopedia/Codex feature to the game, which will list all the important information and details that players will want to gather and read. Be sure to keep us updated on what you would like to see detailed in the in-game codex (could be anything from tutorial information to the number of potatoes taken).

On the topic of information and encyclopedias, the Yet Another Zombie series also has an official wiki that was recently launched, which we invite you to browse and expand as we go along with the game's development: https://yetanotherzombie.wiki.gg.

If you'd like to, be sure to hop on any of our social media profiles and/or our Discord server:

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