Hi survivors,
we are coming closer to the public Early Access Release of the “new” Deadly Days. The alpha branch contains the newest version 0.10.6a which includes the following changes.
Overhauled survivor AI
We made some major changes on the AI. The survivors are now able to fight against zombies on their way to another target. Example: You send your survivors to loot a house. On their way they now shoot zombies the encounter while running. This is useful in all kind of situations.
Furthermore we changed that survivors now ignore survivors when sight checking. This makes the survivors much more efficient when fighting in a group. Since we don’t have friendly fire this is fine.
Survivors now automatically pick up parts and common weapons in their vicinity. Furthermore we added some sort of magnetism, so loot slowly is pulled towards survivors.
We also adjusted the pathfinding of our survivors. They no longer look like drunks when walking around corners.
All this makes the survivors more efficient, competent and autonomous thus we need your feedback regarding balance now.
Thanks to GeoffSmites for the suggestions and ideas!
Changed command structure
In the course of changing the AI we also changed the whole command structure. Basically there is now only one command: Focus. It behaves like the previous “Regroup”, but it stays until you remove it. This allows to defend areas (useful in front of conquer buildings). In combination with the other mentioned AI changes you can really have a devastating squad now :)
Another change in this course is that we added auto-following the leader now. Like this your squad will stick together more. We are considering to add a toggle to enable / disable it thus staying in a group reduces loot a bit. What do you think? Is it needed?
For now we also got rid of the “Focus enemy” command since it was rarely used and you can archive the same effect now with setting the “Focus” on the area of the enemy to focus on.
New graphics!
We finalized the special power and basic ability graphics. Now open the game and find them all ;)
Overhauled powers
We also started polishing some of the powers to be more interesting visually. We changed “Invincibility”, “Speed Boost”, “Crossfire”, “Map Freeze” and the “Orbital Laser”.
Improved inventory UI
We made some tweaks to the inventory UI. We made the inventory more consistent, moved the cancel button and changed the sell all buttons. Furthermore we won’t sort your inventory again when you just want to switch to another character. Also the item and weapon inventory got a little header.
New Main Menu
The main menu got a new design. We’d love to hear your opinion!
Energy orb loot feedback
We added an effect that splashes energy orbs into particles that fly to the respective ui position.
Further changes
- Added weapon muzzle flash effect
- Improved animation when entering / leaving house
- Improved color of anti zombie gas
- Changed that lootable houses are now just spawned if there is enough space in front of house
- Re-balanced railgun to also target enemies through buildings
- Fixed speed boost stacking persistently
- Fixed that selected progression path wouldn’t be persisted when you leave game during run
- Fixed animations breaking, especially energy orbs in final mission
We are eagerly waiting for your suggestions, balancing feedback and maybe bug reports. Whatever it is just drop us a comment or join the Discord (https://discord.gg/4KCf5zt). We’d love to hear your opinion!
- Your “Deadly Days” team