Survival Instincts

BUILD 33

So where are we with 33? We’re basically at the point where all the systems are in and operational (and fun!) within our separate development branches – and are now having various additions and tweaks made to them from fellow dev feedback. Creative Mode needed better ways to revert construction, for example, while Turbo’s furniture movement system needs some love to make it more realistic, reduce menu clutter and make sure it’s more in-keeping with the game. After some studious examination, and then elimination, of the bugs thrown up by Twiggy’s mid-week stream of Radio/TV then that end of the bargain is pretty much good to go – headphones have been added at the request of viewers, radio text judders when the player walks diagonally (henceforth known as ‘Twiggers’) have been reduced, more explanatory device names and brands have been introduced and commercials now play in more of the dead air. Meanwhile RJ continues to tie sounds together backstage in FMOD (as discussed last week ) and at this very moment is making sure that the sound of thunder is relative to the player – so it could either sound like it’s in the far distance or right overhead, giving you a true feeling of a storm passing over your safehouse. [The new thunder combined with some new music that’s been supplied by Zach Beever is pretty magnificent, even if we do say so ourselves!] What will come after all this is crossing the streams. We need to merging everyone’s code branches together into a glorious whole – make sure they play nice together and do a bunch of testing. As such, even though the stars are starting to align, we’re not standing on the edge of an IWBUMS release just yet. To ease that pain, then, we thought it might be nice to make a habit of the following.

THE TWIGGY POST-MONDOID STREAM

Twiggy has kindly agreed to stream current PZ dev builds after Mondoid publication [hopefully every week, but some contents may settle transit etc] and as such he’ll again be streaming Turbo’s Build 33 Radio/TV content today at around 1700 UK time for a few hours. So check out his Twitch stream here , and if you’re late to the party what with family, work and timezone commitments then you can watch the archived version should you wish. This comes with the added benefit of getting some great feedback from his viewers, some of which can go directly into the game (eg. the aforementioned headphones) during this stage of development. The narrative content also really seemed to go down well with everyone during the midweek stream, which was really great to see.

TRICKINESS

We’re not going to compromise on difficulty when it comes to Survival mode, but since the advent of Build 32 have seen a fair few posts asking for less of a raw deal when it comes to the zombie apocalypse. If players find Survival too difficult and First Bite too easy, then aside from burying yourself in fiddly Sandbox options there’s no direct way into a halfway house with a difficulty level that’s on a par with Survival prior to the introduction of the current Zombie Population System. As such, Build 33 will come with the new process in terms of starting a New Game – that will also open up different stages of the PZ narrative timeline for us to build on as future features are slotted in. First you’ll pick a Scenario that governs the game world and its zombies. ‘Initial Infection’ will take place the day before the current game starts (and will have extra radio/TV