Happy New Year from our Team!
Factions & Civilian Management Delayed till February
So we started on Civilian Management during the first week of January and realized the more and more we implemented code for the Cannibals and the other 2 sub civilians factions we realized that a lot of core systems needed improvement from Hearing/Seeing to how the fog of war system is utilized to properly handle their implementation. While it is not preferable to have to do a bit more cleanup work from the community/gamer side of things in terms of content this is completely required regardless, as we expect Epic Games to release Unreal Engine 5 in the next 1-2 months and the changes we are doing now will overall make our job of shipping new content more efficient in the future.
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/unreal-engine-5
Breakdown of Civilian Management & Factions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj6CCaagp20
We expect Civilian Management to be implemented now sometime mid February with Pierces faction following shortly after and Natalie last. Now lets go onto all the fun stuff we've been doing for the last 2 months since the last letter to the Producer
https://steamcommunity.com/games/979640/announcements/detail/3111421207515883471
Factions Concept Art
Anarchist Light Technical Vehicle
Anarchist Medium Armor Transport Unit
Anarchist Heavy Armor Battle Garbage Disposal Truck
Anarchist Transport Helicopter
Police Light vehicle
Police Medium Transport vehicle
Updated Factions Notes
Factions will work off a different currency system then CERC
As it stands right now for the factions we plan to make Pierce like the British from COH 1 highly mobile decent pop count. He'll never be able to outmass you but its all about positioning and determining the best time to attack he'll rely on vassalization of civilian groups and recruit out of them to maintain his losses.
Natalie has finally been decided after weeks of debate (Lowest pop count)and she will operate in disguise at random interior zones of the map we will be adding next . She will steal vehicles from the world and convert them to scrap to build vehicles from the four classes of vehicles she gets.
Her units will only reveal themselves when they are in a position of power or they are forced to. So you'll have to investigate in every game where she is occupying by locating where stolen cars from the map are being taken. There will be 3 possible locations per island she could be operating out of that will be hallowed out and given interiors Civilian groups will also occupy these spaces at times as well
Oh and Natalie can also steal vehicles from other factions to scrap them for her vehicles
We will be working to add in all about 2 dozen new weapons for the factions/civilians including melee weapons. There will be unique signature weapons coming to all Faction Leaders including Winters in the future.
Officer:
MP5a4/m4 var
R870
Glock 18
Swat:
M249
M4 Var
Vector
Riot Shield w/anygun.
Glock 18
AT4
Scout Sniper:
l96a2
Sig 716
------
Conscript:
pp-19
ak74u
Sapper:
Mp9
px4
rp7
Survivalist:
Ak-12 var
SKS
Mocap Operations have begun to replace all animations in the game with more realistic fleshed out movements.
Airsoft Gun Ref (NOT REAL GUNS)
Engine Cleanup for UE5 & Upgrading Core Systems
We currently utilize an older system called "Pawn Sensor" in UE4 which is a much older method of handling senses like hearing and seeing and the system isnt very robust so we opted to make the switch to the Peripheral Sensor Component so it can better support unique structures/objects that aren't base characters derived from a pawn natively without any overriding of Epic's game engine code + be on the optimal track for what they are now focusing as their preferred AI sense approach.
In upgrading this system it will make revealing gas towers and taller structures and how they are revealed far more efficient.
This adjustment required us to rewrite a lot of systems and brought along optimizations that make our hearing/seeing code a lot more efficient since the underlying function calls were reorganized and are far more efficient. We also made the switch to convert all CERC units to a CrowdManagerComponent which is a more intelligent manner of making units path find around each other but is a bit more expensive. See Gyazo differences below.
We turned on CERC collision towards each other after this adjustment and now units can no longer walk through each other and should path find a lot more efficiently around each other. More work will likely be needed to overhaul this where its needed in the future but its a solid step in the right direction.
V2 (Unit Collision Enabled - Crowd Manager Active)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suKNX01_5co
V1 (Unit Collision Disabled - Crowd Manager Deactivated)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moNQopzBFpE
We also took the time to revise the wall placement/building placement tool
We revised the wall rotating tool for facing fences how you wish
Music Player has been improved and the Music Looping Bug is now resolved
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0qqdT9va8A
Who are the LT's?
They are effectively Chelseys right hand in running her forces in Pandemic mode and each one is given control of a part of her army to expand as they see fit but ultimately answer to her. For their loyalty she has given each one a different mutation that will make each one play differently. Each one has a different backstory, from a Shadowy Organization called Fenrir (perhaps she's part of a recon force investigating Chelsey...), being the unfortunate Chief Surgeon at the Hospital Chelsey reported to duty before she lost her mind to an LT of Pierce they all now answer to their new master Chelsey through the Pangu Virus.
LT 1 for Chelsey is now done and awaiting implementing/ Animation Pass
LT 2 for Chelsey is now done and awaiting implementing/ Animation Pass
Male Infected W.I.P 01 (Will replace current infected versions after the UE5 engine upgrade)
Male Infected W.I.P 02 (Will replace current infected versions after the UE5 engine upgrade)
Male W.I.P 01 (Will replace current versions after the UE5 engine upgrade)
Gas masks will no longer be an upgrade in the future but be unlocked by default
Respirators are coming with upgradable filters. The filters when upgraded will increase how long you can stay inside highly contaminated zones. The CERC Scientist will naturally have a Oxygen limit that is 3-5 times longer then the other units and will not require any upgrades.
Female and Male Assault are done and are getting some last minute adjustments to their shoulder pads for extra protection
Other notable changes coming down the pipe.
Scout Car
The Scout Car that can be spawned from the CERC Tent/Motor pool will be replaced with a Scout Hummer and the Scout Car will be removed and added to an airborne call in tree when we revise doctrines and add more abilities for players. We want to implement a modular Hummer similar to the Atlas that is oriented towards Squad/Infantry Combat/Support since there are so many configurations we are also going to implement a Medical Humvee that buffs medics in their radius and stops them from running out of energy when they are in the Humvees radius.
Greg/leviathan
We will be revising the leviathans so they are more defensive in nature and a bit less frustrating hopefully. When players are turtling/hiding in a corner and have sealed off an Island/space they will seek to build tunnel networks and create sinkholes similar to the Locust from Gears of War to make tunnels for infected to utilize for sneak attacks behind enemy lines or emerge in populated zones and launch attacks. Luckily this update will not come till we have implemented a DNA research tree oriented towards tracking leviathans and killing them via special weaponry. To sum up the changes we will be adding a loadout to the Blackhawk that will allow you to "pulse" the ground nearby in a large radius and scan for underground movement/tunneling when the leviathan or a tunnel is discovered you'll be able to launch a new secondary attack from the Blackhawk that will fire a "bunker buster" type missile from its loadout on one of its wings underground to target his tunnels and him. It should be noted that this Greg hunter weapon can be utilized to finally put the Worms on notice and even hurt/kill them when they are sleeping under the ground to heal in-between battles.
M16 is getting a slight retweak to the grenadier barrel + M203 loadouts will be added
We are also discussing Melee Weapons & Secondary Weapons relating to pistols more details will follow in the future.