0.4.5 is live! This latest update adds several new big features as well as taking a significant step forwards in addressing performance issues. Chief among these is the new ocean and lakes system. As well as being a major visual and performance improvement, the ocean update comes packed with new features such as boats, fish, fishing and a brand new integrated weather system that affects the waves.
Additionally, the next iteration of the AI has arrived. Many old versions of the NPC cast have already been replaced with improved versions. These new versions have better overall performance, no lag spikes when spawning and have received many improvements from animations to AI decision making. Weapons, damage and hitpoints have been completely rebalanced along with the new NPCs.
These features are just the tip of the iceberg - the update contains heaps of new features, performance improvements, bug fixes and visual updates.
Developer Comment:
It is highly recommended to start a fresh game as some mechanics, craftables and items may be bugged or not be available if using out of date game save files.
HOTFIX 0.4.5.1a - Available NOW on Stable (STEAM)
• Fixed camera transition when releasing free-look which was not always smooth
• Fixed various errors relating to shovels and digging
• Removed legacy assets still used by player character which may have affected performance.
• CPU optimisations for NPC controllers.
• Updated door pop-up visuals for both visuals and performance
• CPU optimisation for costly process counting ammo while player has a weapon equipped.
New Oceans, Lakes, Boats & Fishing
Jaws of Extinction’s original ocean system was dull, completely stationary and a remarkable drain on performance. Now take a look at the new and improved ocean system which is full of life - both aesthetically and literally.
New Oceans and Lakes
• Added a new ocean and lake system. Ocean has physically undulating waves.
• Wave intensity integrated with new weather system
• Added fish which swim in the ocean and lakes. The species of fish depends on its location.
• Added water shore decals around the coast for an improved appearance.
Boats
• Drivable RHIB Power boat added
• Added boats with an acceleration simulation depending on speed.
• Added drivable rowboats
• Added boat oar as a lootable item (only used for boats currently but will be used as melee weapon as well)
Fishing
• Added new feature: Fishing.
• New craftable - Primitive Fishing Rod.
• New craftable - Nylon Line.
• New craftable - Metal Hook.
• Players can now catch fish using primitive fishing rods in lakes. Trout, Bluegill and Mackerel can be caught in the ocean. Perch, Roach and Pike can be caught in rivers and lakes.
• Fishing in lakes and rivers or the ocean will provide different types of fish.
• Fishing zones have been added around lakes and rivers to increase the chances of higher value fish. Use a fishing rod in one of these areas if you want a chance at catching a monster.
• Fishing requires bait. Find worms to use as bait in order to fish.
• Dirt piles now have a chance of giving worms.
• Leaf piles now give a chance of a small amount of worms, not as good as mud piles
• Player can now dig into dirt with a shovel to dig up dirt piles that will give dirt and worms
• Fishing Rods are placed into the Wildcard Inventory Slot (which the bow uses). Take out the fishing rod like a weapon to use it.
• Some traders will purchase caught fish from the character.
AIV4
The latest update for Jaws of Extinction’s NPCs is a complete overhaul of systems aiming to irradiate persistent performance issues while also making the AI more robust and interesting. We title NPCs using the latest AI system ‘AIV4’.
• New AIV4 infected and animals.
• New NPCs have significantly improved performance (no more spikes when spawning).
• NPCs found around the world are more persistent, meaning that the player can leave and return to the area and still find the same NPC, or NPC’s body, where they left it.
• New NPCs have stronger combat dynamics. Combat animations (such as knockbacks) are more robust.
• Arrows shot into NPCs will now be added to their inventory for collection.
• Arrows shot into the new NPCs can no longer block other incoming projectiles.
Rebalanced NPC Statistics
• NPCs HP and player weapon damage has been completely rebalanced.
• Instant kill headshots and heartshots have been removed from Infected. Headshots deal 50% extra damage.
• If an Infected dies from a headshot, their head will explode with spores.
• Standard infected now have 200HP
• Rebalanced HP for all animals. Any instances of 1HP deer have been fixed.
• Hanouten has somewhat less infected now since it is a starting area. More infected will be found further outside.
Infected
• AIV4 Infected have replaced all original spawners on the map. Infected no longer spawn from static spawners and can roam around freely
• AIV4 Nests have now replaced AIV3 versions. They function the same but more optimised
• Removed some nests from Hanouten for balance reasons
• Fixed issue preventing nest map-markers being re-added to the map after the first time.
• AIV4 infected can be taken down from behind with a knife like previous versions.
• Removed nest spawner near Sen's wreck
Animals
• AIV4 Rabbits, Deer and Hogs have now replaced their predecessors. They are generally faster and more capable. They also are much more spread out around the world.
Bear
• Improved bear collision so that the player cannot stand inside the bear and avoid taking damage.
• Bears now respond to audio disturbances. Sneaking around bears is possible, just very difficult due to their very wide vision cone.
• Bumping into the body of a bear if it is unaware of the character will now alert the bear.
• Bears now included in kill statistics
• Increased bear attack speed
• Increased bear's on-the-spot turning speed so that the character cannot run around the bear in circles to prevent being hit
• Bear rotations are no longer locked while attacking, which would allow every attack to be avoided.
• Bears can now attack vehicles
• Bears now use improved melee detection. Prevents instances where bear hits can register multiple times per claw swing.
• Fixed bear idle behaviours not running
• Fixed bears not retargeting player after they have entered/exited a vehicle
• Improved pathfinding for bears when in difficult to navigate locations
• Fixed bears not receiving melee damage (although we can hardly recommend trying it)
Old NPC Types
• Old crocodiles removed due to integration issues with new water and AIV4 system. New and improved crocodiles are on the way
• Fixed Headshot and heart shot audio for human NPCs which now has proper attenuation
• Old NPC system is still used for quests and human enemies. These will be phased out when possible.
Weapon Rebalance
• Headshots on humanoid enemies (i.e. Infected) deal extra 0.5% damage
• 7.62 rounds now deal 49 damage
• 5.56 rounds now deal 43 damage
• 5.7x28 rounds now deal 35 damage
• 9mm rounds now deal 46 damage
• .45 rounds now deal 54 damage
• .40 rounds now deal 49 damage
• .22 rounds now deal 47 damage
• Basic Arrows now deal 90 damage
• Steel Arrows deal 120 damage
• Reduced AK fire rate from 7 to 6
• Reduced MK18 fire rate from 18 to 12
• MK18 Recoil Rise increased from 1.8 to 2.8
• Baseball Bats now deal 45 damage on impact
• Spiked Baseball Bats now deal 47 damage on impact
• Metal Baseball Bats now deal 49 damage on impact
• Wire Baseball Bats now deal 51 damage on impact
• Shovels now deal 47 damage on impact
• Hand Axes now deal 47 damage on impact
• Improvised axes now deal 42 damage on impact
• Pickaxes now deal 55 damage on impact
• Improvised Pickaxes now deal 45 damage on impact
• Machetes now deal 47 damage on impact
• Expandable Batons now deal 38 damage on impact
Optimisations and Support
• New performance friendly ocean and water system
• New AI systems for NPCs with overall improved performance and fixed lag spikes when spawning.
• CPU optimisation for waterfalls
• CPU optimisation for bears
• CPU optimisation for train
• CPU optimisation for first-person arms while not in first person
• CPU optimisation for breakable tape
• CPU optimisation for wind turbines
• CPU optimisation for some non-dialog NPCs
• CPU optimisation for security cameras
• CPU optimisation for aquatic manager
• CPU optimisations for HUD
• CPU optimisations for particles
• CPU optimisations for the inventory model viewer
• CPU optimisation for the minimap
• CPU optimisation for camera management
• CPU optimisations for crosshair
• Minor CPU optimisation for birds
• World mesh render distance and LOD optimisations
• Volumetric clouds have been exchanged for 2D base clouds. This improves performance and fixes the blue halo created around trees at night
• Removed unused physics assets used during Halloween Event with a fair CPU saving
• Performance improvements from turning off volumetric shadow on sun and moon light
• Reduced the Dynamic shadow distance from 20k units to 10k units
• Reduced the Shadow cascades from 3 to 2
• Made shadows occlusion tint slightly brighter.
• Weather effects from landscape material removed
• Tessellation replaced with Parallax bump offset effects on roads to improve GPU performance.
• Weather system is disabled by default to save performance issues. It can be enabled in the options at player’s discretion.
• Cleanup of various no longer used assets included in game package
• Cleanup of old grenade system and HUD elements still included in game package
• Cleanup of assorted content relating to old building system
• Upgraded game engine - Unreal 4.26.2 > 4.27.2
• Added AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution Support
• Temporarily disabled F1 Bug Reporter due to incompatibilities with UE4.27
• Remove exit save due to assorted issues.
Added
• Added new South Eden Nadir Police District
• Added lockpickable police lockers containing a chance of weapons, ammo, outfits and attachments.
• Police Station now has a puzzle to unlock the armoury to reveal epic loot.
• Police baton now spawns in police lockers
• New Dripping Donuts store.
• Added new consumable donuts.
• Jetty added to Survivor camp at James Bell's location
• Added wet mud decals around lakes and ponds
• Added cliff rocks around Hanouten lighthouse pond
• New POI location added "Eden Logistics".
• New POI location added "Abandoned Warehouses".
• Roads now lead to the new port and military base.
• New POI location Eden military port.
• New location Eden military base.
• New Bayou Military Base layout complete (no loot or NPCs yet)
• New East Bayou safezone location (no NPCs yet)
• East part of the Bayou has been developed ready for the new safe zone
• New Weather System added with updated material functions, post process effects and snow deformation. For performance reasons, this is disabled by default but can be enabled by players in the options.
• Added snow and puddle interaction system to characters and NPCs
• Added new world and environment settings menu under options, includes enabling weather and sky mode. These settings will require the world to be reloaded to take effect.
• Added new loot drop manager - this manages spawn chances to decreases the chance of items appearing that have already been found
• Crowbar tool added (currently only used to open wooden crates and scavenge pallets).
• Wooden crates and high tier loot containers now require a level or just a crowbar to open them
• Added ten additional items to locked tool boxes and chests to reduce the chance of getting lots of the same items
• Added corn to the game that can currently be found in corn fields and can only be eaten (uncooked) currently.
• Corn fields added to farm near The Ridge
• Added slight camera motion with melee attacks
• Additional vehicle spawn locations added
• Added 26 bee nests around the playable area. In the future these bee nests will appear at random.
• Added new digging system. Look at the ground with a shovel and press action button [F] to dig.
Updated
• Mini-map and inventory map updated with new areas and visuals.
• Updated Crossbridges church exterior and interior
• Improvements for cliffs around rivers
• Finished missing cliff faces around Hanouten.
• Updated one of the large houses that was missing interior furnishings
• Shadow darkness has been adjusted for the interiors of houses
• Disabled snowmen from spawning from the Winter Event
• Player can no longer do melee attacks while crouched
• Military crates now randomly change locations and randomly change the required level to open
• High tier loot boxes (like at the airfield) are now level locked. They will have a required level to be opened.
• High tier loot items like rifles and clothing are now level locked. These items will not spawn in containers unless your scavenging level is at the required level.
• Adjustments made to the item/interaction icon to stop unused information being displayed and then hiding immediately after.
• Military crate manager updated to improve locked chest placement and items.
• Rentable unit doors will now allow the player to exit the unit through the door if the player is locked in by the system
• Rentable doors, player placed and selected doors now automatically close when the player moves away from them.
• Improved road materials through Backwater Beacon safezone
• Improved dirt and sand road/path materials blending with the landscape
• Rebalanced vehicle HP values
• Van and Skoda removed from the possible vehicle spawns
• Traders now have the functionality to value items by weight.
• A large chunk of the Bayou has been removed
• Removed overlapping lootable containers across the map
• Removed the gold glow from window barricades that was part of an old system
• Improved shading on the Bayou trees so the distance tree billboards are not so out of place
• Updated textures on the dam
• Removed road barricades on the dam
Fixes
• Fixed kill stats not working for melee kills on infected
• Fixed raised leg issue when getting in to a bed
• Fixed being able to climb water volume in Sen’s basement
• Fixed interior building props overlapping
• Fixed static body character hair shader compiling incorrectly
• Fixed duplicated beds in some houses.
• Corrected missing cliff assets from ivy wall in Backwater Beacon safe-zone
• Fixed glass damage volumes affected leg inverse-kinematics
• Fixed cliff texture resolution being blurry
• Fixed all doors, chests and workbenches which were missing from houses map wide.
• Fixed issues with save data displaying the incorrect information in the game save list.
• Fixed custom objects not saving slot info
• Fixed custom objects not being deleted from slot
• Fixed incorrect save slot sorting
• Fixed 'Get Named Save Slot' function
• Fixed Sen’s basement doors reference on the water pump
• Fixed the same three items always spawning in tool chests
• Fixed reported issue collision stopping player from entering a shed unless crouched
• Fixed various errors relating to camera manager
• Fixed birds floating off into the sky when being killed by the player.
• Fixed horse inventory sometimes not initialising correctly when adding a saddlebag.
• Fixed horse inventories not saving
• Fixed issue when swimming in lakes not decreasing O2 or being able to swim up
• Fixed tutorial not popping up on survivor mode. Only Nomad mode, will have no tutorials
• Fixed being able to trigger stealth takedowns while already in a takedown
• Fixed shader not rendering correctly on the hilltop stream near the lighthouse and Bayou
• Fixed weather not being controlled by the settings menu correctly. Weather can now be turned on and off
• Fixed broken vertex painting on the roads
• Fixed vertex colours on road dirt
• Fixed road spline positions around the radio tower
• Fixed floating foliage near gas station
• Fixed grenades/throwables interacting with soft foliage, often causing them to stop mid-air
• Fixed the indoor buff notification stuck on screen after dying in a building. All Buffs are now cleared on death.
• Fixed weapons not appearing in correct place on player's back after saving and loading
• Fixed character being able to climb through objects and walls in the medical centre
• Fixed incorrect collisions on destroyed jet planes