Hello all,
Thanks for checking out our 17th devblog! Progress is moving along nicely on 0.10.xx. We hope to have experimental builds out in the next week or two. We've had some feedback and the issues found are being worked on. If you're testing 0.9.22, please share any issues you find on our tracker or come share on our Discord. Below we'll discuss a few upcoming features and exactly what the team has been working on.
We'll be keeping this devblog on the short side this week. Everyone is hard at working wrapping up the last sprint for 0.10.xx. We have some updates to showcase and talk a bit about.
Hotkey Preview
Hotkeys have been in for some time but not had much attention dedicated to them. We've improved the system now as you can see in the video below. The keys are now item class specific. Each key represents a category, handguns, rifles, shotguns etc. Pressing the key multiple times cycles the category.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gor8DotHjhU
Vehicle Progress
Although vehicles will not be a feature in 0.10 their backbone has been in the works for some time and we'll slowly be introducing the mechanics in the coming updates. James has spent the week working on a number of things, vehicle wise it has been follow through physics. You can see in the .gif below as the player leaves the vehicle, it continues on its path although it's slightly exaggerated for testing purposes ;)
Achievements and Steam
You'll see the initial batch of achievements come in the next couple of updates. They'll tie in to our planned 'tutorial' which involves new players and starting camps. We've been creating a bunch and you've already seen some. Here's test integration getting them working on backend. The ones below are only concept and will likely be changed.
Loot Spread and Crafting Balance
As some of you have noted, loot balance isn't fantastic at the moment. Physical loot is spawn and spawning well, just not in a balanced manner. It's also not area specific which is something we've wanted to do from the start. James has been working on loot spread and you can see some of that work here in action. This among many things will allow us to track and tweak loot around the world. We'll be introducing more loot specific structures/areas and tweaking loot balance as we move through alpha builds.
We've also been tweaking craftables and begun to balance the initial introduction to them. This will be a long road. There are a lot of craftables in the works and even more planned. We'll need to work off some type of base stat. Jos put together a quick system that allows us to track a craftable's difficulty. We'll introduce future craftables and machines based on this or a slightly tweaked system.
Cooking Improvements
You'll see quite a few cooking improvements in the coming builds. Below you can see two of them, the new camping grill and can mechanics. The grill is much easier to craft, place and cook on. The larger surface allows you to cook more and easily place and remove food. The cans no longer require a can opener. You can also place them over a fire and cook them open with a satisfying animation as seen below :)
Can popping fun!
Thanks much for checking out the devblog. We hope to have .10 in an experimental stage in the coming weeks. Always, thank you for the continued support. The project has come a long way and we're excited for the coming months leading up to our public alpha release!
Links
Discord: https://discord.gg/survivethenights
Forum: https://community.survivethenights.net
Twitter: https://twitter.com/STNgame
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/STNgame
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/a2zinteractive
Website: https://www.survivethenights.net