Hey all,
We hope you guys are all wondering when and what will be the next step for Zero Caliber en route to its full release.
We know we still have a long road ahead of us, but with all the great feedback and suggestions we could gather from the community already, our team is now working harder than ever to make the game just like you all want it to be!
The next update will be a major one, scheduled around 15th March.
What can you expect from this update?
Disclaimer: all footage seen below are from the testing phase and don't represent their release state.
First part of a massive AI overhaul
Our AI -both enemy and teammate- isn’t perfect. We know that. Our team has been working very hard to bring new life to AI behaviour and animations and we are eager to show you its result!
Although still far from final, their behaviour will be much more lifelike: they received proper animations, be it regular movement, reloading, cover finding or aiming.
That, combined with a reworked aiming system means that they will move much more smoothly, and will behave more like a human instead of their current choppy nature.
We still need a lot of internal testing and bugfixing, but you can expect to fight a much more intelligent enemy starting from the next update!
Improved and fine tuned movement system to avoid possible motion sickness
Zero Caliber is one of the more intense titles out there when it comes to movement. This means that people prone to VR induced motion sickness might feel a little dizzy after longer play sessions.
We’ve already implemented a so called ‘Comfort mode’ to counter this (found in the options menu), as well as started to even out the terrain to avoid frequent and sudden up and down movements.
In the next update, you’ll see a few changes, namely:
- Slower base speed, slower strafing, slower backward speed
- Slower speed when crouching
- Player can only run when not aiming (depending on weapon type)
- Run can be automatically or by-input activated (can be set in the options menu)
We are hoping that this change will further help in countering motion sickness, and will also give a more realistic movement feel.
‘Timber’ rework
The game’s first campaign map, ‘Timber’ is currently very demanding performance wise. People with weaker PCs might experience FPS drops due to the huge gameplay area and all the details that can be seen at the same time.
We’ve decided to change the map’s layout. The mission’s length and aesthetics will remain the same, but the overall performance will be much more optimized across all the mission.
Initial setup guide
The game has a lot of options, which can all be found in the settings menu. To make things easier for players, we’ve implemented a setup guide, which will pop at the first start of the game (and can be skipped for experienced players).
This quick setup guide will help players to select the optimal graphical settings, preferred locomotion type (head or hand oriented, left or right hand, snap or smooth turn) and other important settings.
All these settings can be adjusted later in the options menu, but inexperienced players will have an easier time setting up the game in order to achieve the best experience possible.
Better hand animations
We’ve also improved the player’s hand animations. Pulling the trigger and reloading the guns will feel much more natural!
Steyr AUG
Our weapon selection will be expanded with yet another community favourite: the Steyr AUG bullpup assault rifle.
Based on your feedback, and the fact that we want to polish Zero Caliber as much as possible, we’ve decided to concentrate more on core mechanics and gameplay improvements for this update.
This of course doesn’t mean we’ll leave you without content updates! We’re also already working on two new singleplayer/coop maps that will be released a bit later.
The list of things we’re working on doesn’t stop here!
Our PvP mode is in the works too, we’re expecting a beta-ready state next month! Are you guys excited? We surely are and will count on all your feedback in this stage more than ever!
We’ll keep you guys posted about future updates as we progress.
If you have any questions/request/advice, feel free to contact us here on Steam, on r/xrealgames, on our Discord or our social media channels any time!
Thank you guys for your continuous support, and again, as we make the game for you it is essential to keep every feedback coming!
Daniel
XREAL Games Team