Alpha Version 0.2.25.0a - Now live
Lightning cracks across the sky as the rain buffets with renewed ferocity against the hastily erected wood planks above your head. But the raging tempest is the least of your worries. You know the rain only makes them more deadly… and you can hear their howls as they close in around you! Are you prepared to defend off the surrounding horde of infected beings, locked down and at a defendable location? You dread to think what could have happened if you were caught in the open. Are you ready… are you?
Face off against the new horde in patch 0.2.25.0. Ever so often, your skills will be tested so make sure you are ready when the storm hits. This update is cram packed with bug-fixes performance improvements and lighting adjustments.
Player
- Improved character’s ability to climb on building parts such as foundations.
- Players can no longer change viewmode (First Person/Third Person) while climbing a ladder.
- Added illumination to the tip of burning Fire Arrows.
- Increased accuracy of Steel Arrows.
- Energy drain now naturally depletes slowly. The rate of depletion increases while Stamina is regenerating. Energy no longer only depletes when Stamina is at zero.
- Hunger is now directly affected by energy and stamina being used.
NPCs
- Added a new horde storm world event. Occasionally during the night the weather will transition into a powerful storm, empowering the infected who will continually hunt you down until the storm passes. Outlast the onslaught or die trying. The infected spawning in the horde are separate from the normal infected spawns.
- Improved NPC’s ability to navigate player-built structures by climbing.
- Hazmat NPCs now drop loot bags mostly containing health and ammo related items.
Traders
- Traders will no longer refuse to sell items to the player until the integrity system is fully implemented.
- Trader stock quality has been tweaked. Poor, common and uncommon items have a 100% stock chance, Rare 90%, Epic 80% and Legendary items have a 50% chance of being stocked.
- Trader now supplies "Extreme Survival Backpack".
- All goods purchased from traders now start at 100% condition.
Items
- Houses now have manually placed item spawn locations to improve item spawning.
- Houses now have 30 possible locations where items can spawn.
- Loot from houses will now only spawn within the following categories: Domestic Kitchenware, Domestic Trash and Ammo. Clothing has been removed (now only found as a non-physical spawn in chests and drawers etc.).
- Updated the UI visuals when looking at a world item.
- Improved the location of the focus icon when focusing on a world item.
- Redesigned loot bag item spawn system to be more efficient and integrate better with upcoming skills system. Consequently, item drop balance will have changed.
- "Extreme Survival Backpacks" can now be repaired.
- Moved the starter handgun onto the boat and added Night Vision Goggles (NVGs) to the boat’s driving dash (for testing).
PBS (Player Building System)
- Plyboard building parts now require plywood boards to craft in addition to original resources.
- Added a Smithy Workstation to the build menu.
- Moved Storage Containers to the basic survival category.
- Campfire will now light when under protection of any viable weather protection e.g. floors, buildings and etc.
- Workbenches reorientated to face the player during placement.
Environment
- Added interiors to most garages with manually selected spawn locations. All remaining garages will be added over the next few patches.
- Dom’s Hardware exterior expanded with a claimable build area.
- Replaced store fire escapes with a simpler solution using ladders.
- Added building interior post-process for ambient lighting.
- Added ambient SFX triggers to trigger ambient animal sounds.
- Lighting adjustments to improve skylight capture, moon style and phase.
- Removed floating foliage around the cliff face near Hanouten bridge.
Vehicles
- Adjusted first person perspective on the ATV (quad bike).
- Can now look around while in First Person Perspective on ATV. Improve the lights on the ATV.
- Added new camera shake when impacting NPCs with the ATV.
- ATV now only needs four parts and fuel to start. Relevant slots provided in UI when interacting with the ATV.
Quests
- Added Sheriff Sen’s updated dialogue audio for the “Welcome to Eden-Nadir” quest.
UI
- Added recycle popup to queue up multiple recyclables.
Performance
- Disabled shadow casting from pathways and roads.
- Decreased draw distance on pathways and roads.
- Replaced basement houses all along beach road in Hanouten with better optimised types.
- Replaced street power lines using cable actors for more performant ones.
- Removed distance blur to improve visuals and performance.
- Optimised pine trees. Reduced draws calls and number of instance types used.
- Replace wall splines with landscape splines to reduce the number of calls on the draw thread.
Bug Fixes
- Temporary fix to stop stacks of meat vanishing when shift clicking into the campfire (shift click disabled in campfires until fix found).
- Fixed brambles causing climbing/projectile trace issues.
- Fixed storm ending shortly after it begins.
- Fixed terrain grip not showing in the details panel for footwear.
- Fixed container timer slots animating in all containers when using campfires and workstations.
- Fixed an issue where hunger was never going down.
- Fixed wind SFX playing when weather was not triggering a heavy storm.
- Fixed slots for ATV that needed correcting.
- Fixed trader not seeing all items for sale.
- Fixed being able to sell clothing equipped at the trader.
- Fixed loading game not saving inventory item shortcuts.
- Fixed environment decals appearing on character and NPCs
- Fixed character being able to freely rotate while on ladders.
- Fixed clipping issues occuring when mounting, dismounting and climbing ladders in First Person.
- Fixed character’s head clipping/missing while swimming in First Person.
- Tentative fix to prevent Infected audio cutting off prematurely.
- Fixed issue where deer corpses may be invisible to some players.
- Fixed missing footstep SFX while walking in first person with a bow equipped.
- Fixed inability to delete player built containers, garden plots and work benches.
- Tentative fix for window hatches not being removed when deleting windows.
- Fixed circumstance causing deleted player built objects to reappear when reloading a save game.
- Fixed NPC movement behaviours which would stop working if their destination is too far off the ground (e.g. if moving towards the player who is stood in a tall player-build structure).
- Fixed pickup items spawning with the wrong material.
- Fixed various NPC related errors.
- Fixed ATVs flying off NPCs when ramming into them.
- Fixed trader NPC sometimes spawning with floating weapon attachments on his back.
- Fixed arrow sometimes not appearing in character’s bow, often happening after changing arrow type.
- Fixed issue where fire effect would not appear on the tip of the Fire Arrow.
- Fixed issue causing arrows fired from the bow to spawn offset.
- Fixed bow not changing its arrow type unless requipped.
- Fixed audio attenuation of M16 bullets to not sound suppressed when heard at a distance.
- Fixed clipping in First Person when interacting with trash containers.
- Fixed issue preventing looking up or down while climbing a ladder in First Person.
- Fixed circumstance causing the player to stand still while switching weapons or reloading after having interacting with a ladder.
THINGS TO REMEMBER BEFORE PURCHASING JOE
We are aware that the game is currently very demanding on performance and bugs can cause problems during gameplay. JoE is in constant development by two developers and a single 3D artists. We are keen to resolve issues as promptly as possible, although please understand that they are to be expected as the game continues into development.Please make sure to read the following statement from our Steam store page before considering your purchase, as always 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 has been pushed back until Q1 / Q2 2020.
COMMUNITY LINKS
Steam Community Forums
Official JoE Discord Server
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