*NEW* UPDATE: Hotfix 15b is live! – Huge Performance Patch!
UPDATE: Hotfix 15a is live!
Hello Survivors!
It’s time for a new build in this little town of Halloween. Many horrors, both undead and buggy await you. Build 15 is alive on Steam, and it’s a crazy one. We’ve overhauled more systems than we can count, but we’ll try our best here! Read the patch notes to get the full scoop on what to watch out and what to enjoy. Click here to view the Build Page and Dev Vlog!
Check below for the detailed patch notes! You can also go download the update on Steam and play it right now!
Patch Notes for Build 15
“New Blood”
Notes:
- As with most updates, you will definitely need to create a fresh, new world when you play this update to ensure you receive all the new world changes. Do not play your old worlds with the new version, though it shouldn’t let you anyway.
- This build focuses on performance, completely new zombies, the first steps into a new sound system, and a whole ton more.
- We have just overhauled numerous systems from the ground up and we expect at least 3 hotfixes will be in store. In order to meet our Halloween anniversary, we were forced to cut a couple pumpkin-shaped corners. We’ll be gluing those corners back on very soon.
HUGE: Brand New Zombies!
- Zombies have been completely overhauled both in visuals and some behavioral changes.
- Zombies now spawn with randomized clothing and clothing sets (i.e. riot gear zombie)
- Zombie skin textures have been completely overhauled.
- Zombie pathing and physics load has been decreased by an insane amount. Buidlings now support a new ‘navigation mesh’ that the zombies use to compute their pathing and vaulting, meaning they move more realistically and easily through structures. We will be adding even more refined pathing in Build 16.
- Fixed an issue where zombies would sometimes glow indoors.
- Zombies are still in progress and do have some animation and rigging issues. Please report them!
- Fixed a bug where a zombie would sometimes drop an “unknown cube.” It was a typo on a banana, folks. Nothing to see here.
- This is a massive change to the underlying systems in TDL and there will be bugs. Please report them.
- Again, this is a massive change to the underlying systems in TDL and there will be bugs. Please report them!
HUGE: Brand New Main Menu!
- There is a massive new main menu system!
- Brand new Create World screen and World Select screen to help you better manage your worlds and provide some statistics on your world saves
- The menu has a cleaner look in general
- Survivor card in top right in preparation for character creation and multiple character saves
- News, Twitter, and a link to the latest Build Page can be found in the main menu.
- New splash art when loading the initial game that transitions to a start screen.
- Fixed a bug where the main menu would allow the GPU to run really hot. Main Menu has now been capped at 60 frames per second. In game you can also set your desired framerate cap in the Graphics Settings menu.
- Fixed a couple issues where the default graphics settings were really low, causing some Survivors to think our game had very bad graphics. (Hey, be nice!)
- Fixed a bug where the music slider would reset to 100% volume when the music looped.
- A lot cleaner navigation in the Settings menus
- Graphics settings screen now has a proper scrollbar
- Back buttons everywhere!
- And a whole lot more!
Performance Changes:
- Large improvements to the spiral world generator. In general, loading is a bit quicker.
- Better optimization of the far, very distant trees.
- Massive reduction to sounds and general RAM stored during gameplay. The new sound overhaul may cause some things to sound weird or broken for a bit, including some sound sliders. It should all snap back into place during the hotfixes and even more so in Build 16. Please be patient, but report any and all sound bugs you find!
- Fixed at least one periodic “lag tick.”
- Removed a TON of legacy (old) content, roughly 500 MB worth, possibly more.
Gameplay Changes:
- NEW WILDLIFE – Rabbit: You can kill, skin, and cook this NPC for food, if you can catch it!
- New Feature: Skinning inside the inventory. Small wildlife must be skinned while in your inventory, as long as you have a knife. Right click to open the menu to skin a rabbit.
- New Feature: You can now lean around corners (and still shoot) with Q and E keys, but this does not show up in third person yet.
- New Feature: Corn fields (and certain other foliage) now blocks line of sight of enemies.
- Keybindings will be reset. If you had custom keybindings, you will have to rebind them. If you have issues picking up items or other controls are not working, go press Reset in the key bindings settings menu and that should correct the issue.
- Zombie Bob’s size has been changed a tiny bit and he has new animations and has been brought up to the visual level of the new zombies.
- Buck spawning rates have been increased and tweaked some, depending on the area.
- There are 3 new Halloween-themed head items in the game. They will be permanent items and will not be seasonal.
- Really cool Aviator sunglasses are now in the game and can be picked up and worn.
- The Riot Gear set now has gloves and a belt to go along with it.
- Hiking Boots are now actually boots with a tall ankle, different from Hiking Shoes.
- Doors got a good kick in the pants. They should work a lot better for you now and doors should no longer go backwards.
- Fixed a case where the ‘grab hand’ would show up when you couldn’t actually grab an object.
- Fixed a bug where Survivors would sometimes get stuck in the death screen.
- Some guns now have new or slightly tweaked sounds when fired.
World Changes:
- Large improvements to the way roads sit on the terrain, making the dirt edges blend better
- Trees now have proper collision meshes, so you can interact with them in a more detailed manner
- Fixed an issue where some toilets or sinks would not have a texture.
- Fixed an issue where campfires would not continue burning or relight when you reload a world.
- Corn fields look a bit better than they did before
- Someone’s been carving pumpkins!
- Zombies are a bit more common on farms now.
- Trees and other foliage now fades between its “level of detail” models, for a much smoother look and less popping objects.
- Large improvements to the general sky system, yielding in better performance, better lighting, and a WAY better look. The new sunsets will blow your eyeballs right out through your brain socket.
- Buildings now have a bunch of new props inside them. The farmhouse, for example, has a lot more detail on the interior, including multiple new rooms and… Ahem, secrets to be found.
- Loot in general has been reworked in all the buildings and should be a little more balanced. Rotten food is a little more common and good food is a bit more rare.
- Reloading a world should, at least in many cases, not try to generate a new world on top of the existing one.
- There’s something out in the fields.
Misc Visual Changes:
- Sweeping improvements to the lighting and ambient occlusion in all structures and buildings for better appearance and better performance
- Fixed an issue where football helmet and other headgear would show purple or broken textures.
- Fixed an issue where a lot of items and furniture would glow in doors.
- Fires now have a completely new look, and they look rather awesome!
- Sniper rifle scopes now have some refraction and a more detailed scope view. This is a placeholder until we get our dynamic scope system in place.
- Small adjustment to the contrast on the Riot Boots inventory icon so it’s easier to see against the dark inventory.
- There is a new HDR effect when entering and exiting buildings. You will need to adapt to the light over a short period of time.
- There is a slight ‘frame interpolation’ or ‘motion blur’ now. We will add an option to disable this soon as we are aware some survivors are bothered by the effect.
- The entire screen has some new filters, including anti-aliasing. The scene in general looks much smoother and more realistic.
- Shadows are a bit sharper than they were previously.
- Prison has new loading screen art.
- Farmland has new loading screen art.
- The chat box no longer has a black background unless you are actively typing into it.
Console Changes:
- There is a new console command called “time” which allows you to set the time of day. Simply type “time #” into the console to set the time of day using a 24 hour clock (0 to 23)
- Words like “time day” “time evening” “time dawn” “time dusk” “time noon” and “time midnight” also work.
KNOWN ISSUES:
[These are not necessarily issues we plan to fix next, but they are issues that we don't need reported in duplicate, so if you encounter something on this list, just know that we know about it!]
- Multiplayer is buggy, but we’re on it. It’s switching over to one of our main focuses in the next 2 builds, and the immediate hotfixes to follow 15. Please report ALL multiplayer bugs and help us get the experience better for you online.
- Multiplayer animations are currently not working – we will hotfix this very soon.
- Ironsights are currently disabled (replaced with a zoom) while we gut some of our first person stuff to prepare for the new survivor model. Scopes are still fully functional (and better than ever!)
- Some head items do not sit on the Survivor properly, or may even float in third person. As this system is getting phased out rather soon, we have these fixes on a lower priority queue.
- Arrows can not be retrieved yet, and will not stick into targets — yet.
- Many animations are currently missing.
- Bike pedalling and turning animations are broken. They’ll come back soon!
- The third person camera currently does not collide with walls.
- Some items will look a bit strange indoors as we phase in our new lighting system. These issues should be fixed over time.
- Zombie hands and legs may appear black.
- One of the prison hexes (armory etc.) does not have a zombie navigation mesh yet, so zombies may act funny around it. (i.e. walking through floors and walls)
- There are no tacos in this build.
- Clients may not see the exact same looking zombies as the host. This will be fixed soon.
- Ammo in boxes and guns do not keep correct ammo count when trading between survivors in multiplayer.
- Animations will sometimes loop or get ‘stuck’ from time to time.
- Some survivors experience black screen with hands and nothing else. We have added a fix for this, but if you still experience this issue, run in Fullscreen instead of Windowed Mode. You can also try moving the window frame, which may correct the issue as well. We will be looking at a more permanent fix for this issue.
- There is a bug where you will sometimes plummet to the ground very quickly when dropping from a ledge. Holding Left CTRL right before impact will mitigate some fall damage. Watch your step! This will be getting overhauled soon with the new survivor model.
- The game and framerate will sometimes stutter for a short duration, especially when coming up on a town or new area. Your PC is most likely fine. It’s not you, it’s us.
- Lots of other very obvious issues that we’re going to be working on. (Welcome to Alpha!)
As usual, please report bugs on our Support & Bug Reporting forum.
Our plans for Build 16 (“Sirens of the City”) will be a new city zone complete with numerous tall buildings, Siren NPCs, Meta-Zone Regions, and a whole bunch more! We’ll elaborate on that as we progress. Stay tuned to our twitter for more information on that!
Linger on, Survivors!
