Development Update June 2013

June 24th, 2013 by Xendrid Hello Survivors! The burning question right now: Where is the Steam release? The short answer is close. The long answer being: There are two major issues we need to get resolved before we feel like we can pull the lever. The first being Steamworks integration. We are waiting on some emails from Valve right now to get us up and running at full capacity on the Steam pipe. The second issue is an elusive, major crash bug.

Let us talk about what is included in 1.07 shall we? We have two new survival maps, nms_ransack by Lou_Saffire and nms_notld by Payne. Ransack is set in a dense urban environment centered around a convenience store. NotLD (Night of the Living Dead) is the most accurate adaptation of the set from the classic 1968 Romero film ever created. The objective maps we have in development are not ready for the release, unfortunately. They will be patched in post-release.

Xendrid has been learning how to animate and has replaced the zombie run animation with a motion captured run. We plan to add several more run animation variants post-release as well as overhauling the climbing, shambling, and attack animations. The first versions of our own custom player animations are finished. They need to be coded in the game however and may not make it into the initial release since the crash bug is top priority. One of our new texture artists Porky-da-Corgi has been creating new texture variations for our zombies. He isn't finished with all the zombies yet, but post-release patches will see each zombie having three or more alternate variants. Though the Steam release won't be featuring any new playable characters or NPCs, longtime member, CYN, our new lead character artist and our newest modeler Plasmid are working on some fresh content. We'll post some media on those in the coming weeks. The Deerhunter bow and CZ858 are fully functional in-game. In order to give the player better feedback we implemented a highlight system for all items. The highlight will appear green if you are able to pick up the item/weapon. The highlight will appear red if your inventory is full. This is just the first step in removing the clunkyness from the flow of the game.

The team has been brainstorming achievement ideas. Maxx has already created a plethora of achievement icons. We are also putting together Steam trading cards!

ATTENTION COMMUNITY MAPPERS...

The Steam release will not be compatible with current custom maps. We have been methodically cleaning out our material and models folders removing and remaking certain content. This means all current existing custom maps will be filled with missing textures and models. This is an unfortunate setback, but it is a necessary evil and will be better in the long run.

We'll be posting up a new dev-blog video later this week to showcase some of the content mentioned above. In the meantime, we handed out some keys to an early build of 1.07 to SeaNanners and Diction:

New Official Steam Group!