Build 009 - "Blood, Sweat, and Tears" news - The Dead Linger

[Blog copied directly from our website, so formatting might be crazy in some places.]

Hello Survivors!
Build 009 is the largest gameplay-changing build we have ever added to The Dead Linger. Don't listen to us, though! See it for yourself! It's out, and the dev vlog, installation instructions, and patch notes are just below! We are also now on Steam Greenlight, and we would love to have your votes!

We've put our blood, sweat, and tears into this build. We hope you enjoy every minute of it.

Download Instructions

Please follow the instructions which pertain to your specific situation.

A) I've already downloaded and need to update my current game.
1. Run TDL.exe. (Requires version Build 003 or later. If you are that far behind, we recommend using step B instead.)2. You will be asked if you want to update.3. Click Yes.4. The game will begin updating. The patch is 71 MB in size. Progress is shown in the black command window.5. Once finished, you will be fully updated to the latest version.* Enjoy!

B) I've bought the game, but I haven't downloaded it yet.1. Ensure you are logged in to your Sandswept Legion account that was used to purchase the game. (If you have a code, redeem via the link in Step 2.)
2. Go to the BuyTDL page.
3. If you have purchased the game, you will be redirect to a download link, which will download the latest build in full.
4. Once done with download, run the installer.
5. Allow the game to update to its current patch version, if any.6. Enjoy!

C) I haven't purchased The Dead Linger yet.
1. If you have not purchased The Dead Linger, you can pre-order now to enjoy the Alpha, future Beta, and final release! If you purchase now, you never have to buy it again.
2. Once purchased, follow instruction set B.

Patch Notes:

Gameplay Changes:

• Massive Feature: Fall damage has been added for both survivors and zombies. Watch your step!
• Survivors can hold crouch (Default: Left CTRL) at the last second to mitigate substantial amounts of damage from a fall. We recommend using this technique often, or you will have very sore ankles.
• Added a message on the death screen for dying from fall damage.
• Massive Feature: Free-form nailing of wood for barricades and structures is now available.
• Boards that are nailed up to cover doors and windows will have to be destroyed by survivors and zombies before they can progress past them. Improperly positioned boards will not stop zombies. The effectiveness of a barricade is directly proportional to the positioning of the boards by the survivor.
• A message now appears in the chat box if the survivor tries to open a door that is blocked by something, such as a nailed up board.
• To nail a wooden object to another stationary object, equip a hammer and grab a 2x4 or similar piece of wood. (Default: Middle Mouse Button or C key) Position the board against a stationary object, and then press melee attack to nail the boards into place. (Default: Left Mouse Button) This process takes 1 second. This system currently does not require nails, but it will in a future build. Build well, Survivors.
• Survivors can remove a board by using secondary attack (Default: Right Mouse Button) while wielding the hammer. This will pry the board off of the surface after 2 seconds. This is the only way to salvage a board after it has been nailed to a surface.
• Doors can not be opened if there is a board nailed across them.
• You can now drive wooden 2x4s into the ground as posts. You can do this by equipping the Sledgehammer and grabbing a 2x4 or similar type of wood. Position the object vertically by rotating it (Default: Right Mouse Button) and hold it there, touching the ground. Then pound the object into the ground by using your melee attack (default: Left Mouse Button.) This action can only be done on terrain, such as grass or dirt.
• Items that can be nailed by a hammer can no longer go into your backpack while you are wielding a hammer. (Example: The 2x4 weapon can not be put into your inventory while holding a hammer. We found this causes far less annoyance for Survivors when they’re trying to pick up 2x4s to nail them to a wall.)
• There are now multiple nailable objects, such as varying lengths of 2x4s, and a few plywood sheets. They can be found in piles in random suburban backyards, or by chopping down trees and telephone poles.
• Note to builders: You can currently climb ladders while grabbing objects and holding them in front of you. This is working as intended. While slightly unrealistic, we feel that the gameplay gains a substantial benefit from this.
• Massive Feature: Trees can now be cut down by hatchets and fireaxes, and they will drop wood. Larger trees will take longer to cut down, but yield in more wood.
• Two new sharp weapons have been added; a one-handed Hatchet and two-handed Fireaxe.
• Fireaxes will cut a tree down slightly quicker than a hatchet.
• Cutting trees with axes will reduce their durability.
• Major Change to Sprinting: In order to improve long-distance travel, Survivors can now continue to sprint with no stamina, but they will sprint at a 25% slower pace and their stamina will not regenerate until they stop sprinting.
• Fixed a bug so that survivors can no longer go into crouch state while falling or jumping.
• Projectiles from a firearm will now shatter windows.
• Doors and many other objects now use a health value for destructibility. This means that weapons that do more damage will destroy doors faster.
• Doors generally take much more damage before breaking now.
• To prevent confusion, all forms of the crossair are now hidden during certain actions, such as swinging a melee weapon.
• Infection Diminish (the stat generally found on gas masks) now decreases Infection at 0.5% per minute, down from 1% per minute.
• Fixed a bug where objects, including draggable objects, would reset their rotation when the survivor lets go of them.
• Fixed a bug where objects grabbed by other survivors in multiplayer would not always appear in the correct place.
• Fixed some bugs involving survivors holding, dropping, and carrying items in multiplayer.
• Fixed a timing bug where melee and other action states would carry over for too long. Survivors should no longer encounter the issue where they would be unable to melee for a moment after a melee animation has ended. This also fixes an issue where guns would load rounds into magazines and firearms about twice as slow as intended.
• Netcode has been improved so that survivors are no longer sliding around as much as before in multiplayer games, and more accurately show their position at all times.
• Fixed a bug where the window-break sound was playing every time a window was hit.
• A stomach rumble sound now plays when you are getting hungry. It will also play if you enter the world while hungry.
• Other objects are starting to emit various noises when struck. This system is in preparing for zombie hit noises and other satisfying sounds.

Zombie Changes:

• Fixed a bug where zombies visual aggression range was much shorter than intended.
• Zombie sight range has been modified a bit to be more responsive and further distance. Zombies will pursue the survivors a bit more aggressively when they’re in proper sight range.
• Zombie spawn rates have been tweaked a bit. Starving Zombies will spawn slightly more often (33% up from 30%) whereas Healthy Zombies will spawn slightly less often. (5% down from 8%)
• Zombies now deal increased infection risk to survivors. 4% infection risk is added per hit, up from 3%. We are still investigating ways to improve the fairness and reliability of the infection system prior to adding more features to it.
• Zombies will now attack barricades at different speeds, depending on their level of decomposition. For example, Healthy zombies will hit doors and barricades more rapidly than Starving or Regular zombies.
• Multiple changes have been made to the way zombies react to survivors, particularly when the survivor is crouching. Survivors can now more easily avoid zombies by crouch-walking and otherwise sneaking about, as long as they’re careful.
• Sprinting will not draw the attention of zombies as much as it used to.
• Zombies will no longer slide about or animate a walk between hits against a door or barricade.
• Fixed a bug where zombies were not repopulating areas over time.
• Fixed a bug where the zombie knockback animation was not playing properly.
• Added extra checks to ensure that ‘invisible’ zombies would properly update and appear on screen.
• Zombies now update more often, especially when pursuing a survivor. Zombies should better represent where they are standing and should never not be visible when hitting a survivor.
• Added some small changes to zombie pathing and the way zombies detect when they need to use a path point. Zombies should pursue the survivors a bit better around complicated obstacles, such as stairs.
• Fixed a bug where zombies were not animating all of their actions properly. Zombie animations are now more reliable in general. Zombies will animate the proper motions more often, such as when pounding on a door or barricade.
• Fixed a bug causing Healthy Zombies to not use their attack animation.

World Changes:

• The new world save folder is called TDLWorld009. As usual, the game is in Alpha and data can sometimes be lost due to bugs. We ask that survivors do not get too attached to their worlds and inventories at this time, just in case.
• Large, looming 4-story office buildings now spawn in Town zones. These are filled with loot, as well as numerous undead, and provide a great vantage point over a town.
• A log cabin now has a 50% chance to spawn in any forest zone. This is a secluded and generally secure location, often filled with some unique treasures and items related to hunting.
• Terrain colors have been rebalanced to more realistic hues.
• We have created a system for randomizing house textures and the textures of other structures. Houses will now come in more varied colors. We will be adding more depth to this system later on, such as swapping out interior colors.
• Suburban neighborhoods now have a higher amount of trees in the yards.
• Transmission towers can now be seen looming across the fields and forests of the world.
• Many LOD models (distance imposters) have been updated. Farm crops no longer appear as solid green or yellow blocks from a distance.
• Grass clutter on the ground has been heavily optimized and should no longer cause the game to ‘hiccup’ as you travel. Unrelated hiccups may still be present, but far less often.
• Grass now appears much further out. You can disable the grass by unchecking the checkbox in the Main Menu, Graphics Settings screen. This may yield in some performance gain for lower end machines.
• We have taken some steps to reduce the memory usage and clean up memory usage in general. Survivors should experience less crashes due to running out of memory when traveling for very long distances.
• Barns are now a great place to reliably find piles of wood.
• The front doors on houses have received a new model and texture.
• Round hay bales now appear in wheat fields.
• There is a very low chance that an old cabin will appear on a farm instead of a farm house.
• Farms will now sometimes be found with only 1 grain silo, instead of 2.
• Swerts now only have a 1% chance of spawning in Suburban zones.
• Swerts now have a 20% chance of appearing in Town zones.
• Fixed a huge bug that was causing Town zones to never spawn.
• City zones (which looked similar to Suburban zones) can no longer be found in the world, as we prepare them for a much bigger re-appearance in the future.
• Town zones will almost always have at least 1 water tower.
• Suburban zones now have a very rare chance of having a water tower.
• City zones (which were currently identical to Town zones) have been removed until we have unique buildings (i.e. skyscrapers) prepared for them.
• The Swerts store has undergone some substantial texture changes to enhance general grunginess and wear.
• Small backpacks are a bit more common now, making them easier to find.
• Ground should now appear flat underneath Swerts store parking lots, and better match the curb edge properly
• Forests now have about three times as many trees as before.
• Fixed a bug that was causing road intersections to appear darker than intended.
• Fixed a bug that was causing road intersections to appear in off-center from where they should be appearing.
• Some object weights have been redistributed to better represent their real-world weight.
• Fixed a bug where doors would fly off their hinges and spin around in multiplayer games.
• Fixed a bug where some objects were appearing multiple times on top of each other in the farm and prison zones. This should yield in a small performance increase, and survivors should no longer find multiple doors in a single doorway.

General Changes:

• Inventory saving reliability has been drastically improved. Survivors should retain their gear between sessions much more reliably than before.
• Added a new sprint animation for 2-Hand Long animations, such as the Sledgehammer and Lacrosse Stick.
• Fixed a bug where the fog at the horizon was set to a longer distance than the horizon itself. Fog should now show near the far edges of the horizon.
• The default far horizon has been moved in slightly to increase performance.
• A bug causing the SK 63 rifle’s reload animation to appear strangely has been fixed.
• The F1 Control Help List that appears on screen during gameplay now automatically fades away after 30 seconds. It can be re-opened by pressing the F1 key.
• First person animations no longer default to ‘fist idle’ pose when the survivor enters various states such as jumping or crouching. Weapons now use the default idle animation when there is no existing animation to fall back to.
• Fixed a bug where the survivor could not press OK to disconnect if the multiplayer scoreboard is up when a server shuts down.

ROADMAP CHANGES:1. Survivor Gameplay

• Health and Stamina Systems - 50% to 60%
• Melee Combat and Melee Weapons - 30% to 40%
• Gathering Wood, Campfires, and Cooking - 20% to 40
• Barricading, Breaching, and Fortress Building - 20% to 40%
• Death - 40% to 50%
• Locking Things and Picking Locks - 10% to 20%
• Mobility, Vaulting, and Ladders - 10% to 20%

2. Creatures

• General Zombie Behavior and AI - 40% to 50%

3. Vehicles and Transporation

• No Large Changes This Build

4. The World

• Zones - 30% to 40%
• Building Variety - 20% to 30%
• Foliage - 30% to 40%

5. Servers and Multiplayer

• No Large Changes This Build

6. General Options

• Gameplay Settings - 30% to 40%
• Sound Settings - 30% to 40%

Upcoming Roadmap Estimates for Build 010: Hunting, Tertiary Items, Campfires, Throwable Items, Zombie AI, the start of Crafting, and more!

KNOWN ISSUES:
- There are sometimes strange looking ‘seams’ in the terrain on the edges of a zone. They do not adversely affect gameplay.
- There are still some rare crashes that will occur (Remember; this is Alpha,) and they generally occur more often in Multiplayer than Solo Mode. You can generally just restart the game and you're good to go.
- Inventories can still be corrupted and not save during certain crashes, but they are rare.
- Roads will sometimes intersect terrain.
- Grass will sometimes still appear on roads when you first enter the world and spawn near a road. If you leave the area and then come back, the grass will be gone from the roads.- Some of the glass panes on the office building do not appear with the correct rotation.
- Roads do not have collision and the terrain collision is currently used instead. Due to this fact, items can sometimes be hidden by falling on roads. We recommend that survivors do not intentionally drop items on road surfaces, or they might lose track of where it dropped.
- There are some bugs with throwing held objects, especially in multiplayer. The objects may not always throw or land in the same way from different survivor’s perspectives.

Please report any and all bugs to our Bug Report Forum!We predict some hotfixes will be released as well. We are already beginning work on Hotfix 009a to add some small fixes and additions. Stay tuned to our twitter on @thedeadlinger to keep up to date!Linger on, Survivors!Click here to comment!