PATCH ANALYSIS
Jaws of Extinction 0.2.9.0 is now available on both staging and main branch! MOre big changes and new features at the same time as our usual optimisation pass over everything in the world, this includes new grass meshes, removal of birds and the new fish, that unfortunately did not make it to the main branch this time around, but nevertheless when we have them on our new AI Version 3.0 system, there will be more fish and birds we know what to do with.
WHAT HAS BEEN THE FOCUS FOR THIS PATCH?
NPC SAFEZONE GUARDS
There are some new faces in town. Head on over to Hanouten Safezone and you’ll find guards now occupying the towers armed with firearms. If any Wanderers get too close to the gates, the guards will react quickly to stop the threat.
The addition of firearms to NPCs opens the gate for further NPC types who can use weapons. The weapon system for NPCs is closely related to the player’s weapon system, meaning that any NPC has the potential to use any firearm.
AUTOSAVE & MULTI-SAVE FILES
A feature regularly requested by the community, we are pleased to announce that players will now be able to have save and load multiple save files.
Additionally, the game will autosave every 15 minutes. Up to five auto-saves will be saved every 15 minutes. The oldest file will be overwritten when a new autosave is made.
The game can also be saved manually though the pause menu [ESC], when placing a sleeping bag down, or when the player exits the game.
When in the main menu, selecting ‘Load Game’ will open a menu displaying all previous saves and a collection of header data about that save file (date, version number, etc). Loading from the in-game pause menu will always load the most recent save file.
The new additional data saved to each save file allows us to determine what version of the game you are running and will notify you if the file is out of date. This does not stop you using the save but will make you aware of issues using the save file may cause.
MELEE WEAPONS AND OPTICS
Not normally something that go together in a sentence, but we have done some additional work on melee weapons, by adding new sound effects when swinging and caving heads in, we also added two new craftable baseball bats, that you can also find laying around the world if you are lucky. The melee weapons now use an experimental way of detecting when it has hit something, but we will be continuing work on this for the next patch.
Additionally updates have been made to optics when aiming down sight as well as a bunch of fixes and improvements to the ADS system itself, we still have that world offset shack on the attachments, but the overall visual look to them looks 100x better. You can now also ADS when in third-person by holding aim (Right mouse button) and tapping spacebar to toggle between ADS and shoulder.
STAGING BRANCH
During the last patch we trialled an exciting new way for testers to experiment with upcoming updates sooner and an opportunity for us to get prompt feedback on new content. The staging branch is a preview version of the game for the next patch which gives us some freedom to have systems tested ahead of release in to the main patch without risking breaking the main game. If you would like to try out the Staging Branch please follow these steps. Also, please be sure to give us your feedback and help us iron out any issues ahead of the next patch!
See link below for instructions on how to move your version to the staging branch.
PLAYER TEMPERATURE
We reworked and implemented an updated version of the temperature system in the Staging Branch last week. The initial response suggests that many of the issues the temperature system have been much improved (although we are aware that some changes are going to be necessary down the line as well). The updates made on the Staging Branch have now been integrated in to the current update. For full details on the changes made to temperature and how we’ve brought the system closer to a real-life model of human body temperature, check out the info released earlier in the week:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/617850/announcements/detail/1608264109175353051
NEXT PATCH
Next week we will be continuing work on the melee system and further build upon the remaining UI elements such as the ‘Skills’ tab in the inventory.
Additionally, over the coming weeks we will be continuing to expand the AIV3 system to update the Wanderers from AIV2. This change will see a number of optimisations in addition to various new functionalities such as allowing Wanderers to vault over obstacles and the first sightings of Special Infected.
WHAT’S COMING UP SOON
For more details on what's to come you can always visit our websites road map. But for a quick overview, here is what our focus will be over the next few months:
- Performance
- AI Version 3.0
- Additional protagonists
- 4 player coop
- Exclusive DLC Apparel redemption
THINGS TO REMEMBER BEFORE PURCHASING JOE
As we have stated from day one of our unlisted launch on Steam, JoE is heaverly in development by two developers and a single 3D artists. We know it is very performance demanding and many bugs coming out of the woodwork, please make sure to read the following statement from our Steam store page before your purchase, as always all your support is appreciated.
BEFORE YOU PURCHASE: AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM THE DEV TEAM
In the spirit of our ethos of transparency and integrity we want you to know that our game is at ALPHA stage in EARLY ACCESS and will therefore contain many bugs and have performance issues on low to mid-end machines. We’re really proud of how it plays so far (it’s a lot of fun!) but if your rig DOES NOT meet the RECOMMENDED spec then the game may not perform well and as much as we appreciate your support we would suggest that you wait until later in development before you invest your money. We don’t want you buying something that’s going to disappoint you.
Please also be aware that multiplayer is not yet implemented. This is under development and planned for Q4 2019.
COMMUNITY LINKS
Steam Community Forums
Official JoE Discord Server
Official Twitter
Official Facebook
Version 0.2.9.0a patch notes: https://steamcommunity.com/games/617850/announcements/detail/1608265467538537603