Feb 23 - 0.6.0 Experimental Build 1

Hey Survivors!

We’ve uploaded 0.6.0 as a singleplayer only experimental branch that you can access in the Betas section of the Dead Matter properties. The name of the branch is 0.6.0-experimental

We wanted to get this patch out in full last Friday but we underestimated the amount of work that was left on 0.6.0 in terms of content as well as a few issues with the dedicated server that kept popping up in our playtests.

Our team has sacrificed a lot of their free time over the last week to try and get this patch out and with the hype from our blog post we feel that releasing a preview build is the best compromise.

Many things have changed in the game in the name of building a better foundation to further expand upon as well as injecting some more atmosphere into the project.

This update contains multiple new outfits, new weapons, an entirely new medical system and crafting system, tweaks to the lighting and foliage, an overhaul of the grotto bunker as well as dozens of minor QOL improvements. There is a lot if things that have changed and there will be bugs that come with that.

Part of us getting this branch off of experimental will come from bug reports and feedback from our community. We hope you enjoy.

This update wipes characters.


Additions:

- New Crafting System accessible via the Inventory Menu

- New Medical System

- Player Health is now a sum of all Limb Health.

- Player Health is now recovered via healing with a Medkit or the Trauma Bag.

- Chat is logged on servers

- Placed items are now saved

- Containers in houses you've claimed don't regenerate & are saved

- Gas pumps are saved

- Windows are now saved

- The last vehicle you drove is now saved and respawned when you join. If someone else drives it - you lose it

- Feedback reporter now has an optional screenshot upload

- Admins, superadmins, devs now have a badge next to their name in global chat

- You can search through placed backpacks without having to pick them up

- Press Alt to cruise control vehicles - they will maintain your current throttle until you change it

- Players can be run over by vehicles like zombies

- Server browser is now sortable by server name, ping, playercount etc

- Providence Research Facility (Grotto Bunker) has received a second overhaul. The bunker now has several locked off sections for you to explore once you find the keycard to unlock them. For now, there's still only two entrances (the cave and the elevator), but this will likely be changed in the map update.

- Added new keys and keycards to the world. They have a chance to spawn in dedicated spawnpoints or in certain container types. This also affects older keys and keycards. The RCMP keycard has some spots it can spawn, same with the Rats Nest Cave key, and Gate Key.

- Added some item actor spawns around the world. Mostly just keys and keycards right now, this is mostly meant to test out the system.

- Added new food ingredients for future cooking/crafting

- Added new crafting items such as scrap (metal, plastic, etc.), saw blades, motherboards, lawnmower blades, etc. A lot of these don't have a use right now, but will in the future.

- Added scrap boxes around the map that spawns scrap materials such as metal scrap and plastic scrap. These have different tiers, so the higher the tier, the better the scrap.

- Added ammo boxes that can be unpacked for random amounts of bullets. These will spawn in place of straight bullet stacks. Traders will also sell these instead.

- Added go-kart helmets to lockers at the go-kart track

- Added sledgehammer to our loot tables

- Added a new sub-inventory item, a suitcase. Can hold keys, keycards, currency, and clothing

- Added break down components to most moveable furniture actors and item actors. In the future, you'll need tools to break these down to get their components. For now, you can rip apart an entire sofa with your bare hands, congrats!

- Added loading screen hints regarding scrap and unique crafting materials

- New rare weapons vendor added to the world to provide access to premium weapons at a premium price

- Sliding patio doors and automatic doors added to some locations in the world

- New RCMP, EMT, and surplus combat clothing outfits added to the game

- New terrain material added to help the world to look far better

- Integrally suppressed 9mm pistol added to game

- Armor system has been added to the game, giving pieces of clothing different levels of protection from each other. Different kinds of armor protects different parts of the body, and take damage.

Changes:

- New database system

- New zombies, zombie spawning algorithms

- Add message in case /spawnvehicle failed

- Optimized soundscape performance

- Food Changes

- Food now has portions, instead of eating half you will simply eat a single portion instead.

- Protein now heals a small amount of HP.

- Carbs and Sugars now restore a small amount of Stamina.

- Soda, Coffee and Energy Drinks now restore a small amount of Stamina.

- Weather effect & fog tweaks

- Greatly reduced chat filter aggression

- Main menu has new sky

- Replace /removezombies, /removeanimals with /removeai

- Random character names should show up much faster

- Vehicle handling tweaks

- Upgrade to Unreal Engine 4.26

- Disable car doors detaching for now

- Updated claim build menu to match the rest of the UI

- Settings menu updates

- VOIP optimizations

- First person swimming animations have been added, as well as the inability to have a held item out while doing so.

- Added the /request [message] command (or /// ) that allows you to send a message out to server admins.

- Lights and light switches now save their states to the database (broken lights, and flicked switches).

- Elevators will also save their last position to the database.

- While not visible for this patch, quest items and quest containers have been added, allowing for more flexibility and freedom for the quests we'll make in the future.

- Something that might be a little more visible is the minigame system rewrite. Lockpicking has been affected by it, and while it remains the same gameplay wise, do report any issues you find with it.

- Removed car jacking/hot-wiring. It will be remade and added back in a future update.

- Refactored player death to make it cleaner and more flexible for future additions, such as death reasons.

- Added the /knockout [Player] [Duration] command which lets you render players unconscious, for admins and higher. You can wake up players with /wake [Player]

- Item values for common items have been reduced significantly. This mostly affects barter and food items as they spawned the most.

- Weapon and ammo spawns have been reduced significantly

- Food and drink spawns have been reduced significantly and separated into tiers. This mostly affects residential locations, at the moment.

- Clothing and armor spawns have been reduced and separated into tiers. On top of this, clothing sizes have also been reduced and take up less space.

- Backpack spawns have been reduced slightly and separated into tiers

- Civ/military crates and weapon boxes will now spawn weapon attachments as loose loot. Weapon attachments are also in their own tiered loot tables.

- Guncases no longer spawn explosives. Instead, explosives will spawn in their own unique crates.

- The RU and Military Jackets now have larger pockets

- Lockpicks will now stack up to 25 instead of 5.

- Underground locations have been given sky modifier volumes that allow for pitch black areas. This should help with any "dim" flashlights players were experiencing when exploring these locations

- Some food/ingredients will cause loss of hydration when eaten raw. This will receive a larger pass in the future.

- Some item previews have been adjusted to look better.

- Rags have been renamed to Cloth Scrap and can now be stacked.

- Unique crafting items have had their category changed from "Barter" to "Junk" to better differentiate them from barter items.

- Some bunker lights have been adjusted to not be as bright

- Several more items are now stackable (Ex. cardboard, leaves, etc.)

- Like before, sub-inventory items can only store certain items based on which sub-inventory item it is. (Guncase can only store firearm category items, coolers can only store consumable category items, etc.)

- Plastic and Metal have been renamed to Plastic Scrap and Metal Scrap. They have also had their inventory size increased (2x2 to 3x3) and have custom models.

- You can now search any item with an inventory without the need to equip it or put it in your own inventory

- Additional spawn locations for medical loot for use with the new medical system

- Police car now has a siren

- Starvation and dehydration no longer immediately kill you, instead leaving you in a critical state.

- Occupation changes

- The old skill system has been removed

- Characters are now built around two kinds of perks - occupational, and character-specific

- Occupational perks are perks that are built to lean into the specialization a given occupation may have within the game

- Character-specific perks are less specialized, and allow you to tailor your character to suit the build you're aiming for.

- The Chef, Farmer and Security Guard professions have been temporarily removed until systems to support their gameplay loops are in place.

- Repair Man has been renamed to Technician to better reflect their abilities

- Doctor has been renamed to EMT to bring them more in line with the game's lore, and also to focus more on their occupation-specific abilities

- Construction Worker - they are able to begin building structures at Level 2 without the increased material costs that other occupations need to pay

- Police Officer - they now take 75% less damage from friendly fire, allowing them to serve as a tank for players they're in a group with. In the future, they will be given further bonuses. Our intention is for the Police Officer to serve as a group leader for those who with to group up with other players and work together.

- New Occupation - Delivery Driver - Gain a 20% boost to vehicle acceleration and braking. Down the line, specialized crafting recipes will also be added for vehicle mods and upgrades.

- EMT (Formerly Doctor) - Ability to craft more advanced medical items.

- Firefighter - +25% max carry weight, additional damage and attack speed when using melee weapons.

- New Occupation - Blacksmith - Gain ability to craft lockpicks and armor repair kits.

- Technician (Formerly Repair Man) - Gain ability to craft a variety of items such as locks for containers and doors. Can craft many recipes that are available to everyone with less components or generic components in place of specific components. In the future will be able to craft more technically complex items.

- General rebalance of weapon damage and handling

Fixes:

- Fixed not being able to shoot while holding shift and not sprinting

- Fix exploit where you can modify/drop items while trading to duplicate them

- Fix vehicles not starting with handbrake on

- Fix hitching caused by items in houses

- Fix falling out of world - you now properly get placed back in the world

- Fix bunker ladders not always being climbable

- Fix some performance problems with the new sky

- Fixed some soundscape performance loss

- Fix crown vic not letting you look down

- Fixed bunker door not having any collision

- Fix growable items not always giving you the vegetable

- Fix vehicle engine audio not changing pitch

- Fix main menu lighting

- Fix vehicle headlines eating performance

- Fix VOIP mic selection, fix crash when changing VOIP mic

- Fix items in a vehicle staying floating in place if the vehicle despawns

- Pre-emptively fixed a possible bug with elevators that could occur when they became relevant while moving.

- Your legs no longer hit you in the face if you do a 180 while swimming.

- Fixed light IES textures not being disabled when a light is off/shot out.

- Fixed rotating furniture affecting your lean multiplier.

- Fixed recoil viewpunch not accounting for manual recoil compensation (vertically, you no longer will be facing the ground after shooting if you pulled down).

- Fixed an issue with the input manager when new inputs were added by us.

- The chatbox will now close when unfocused or when ESC is pressed.

- The pause menu (escape menu) will now close when escape is pressed.

- The teleport, bring and goto commands will stop all movement to avoid taking fall damage.

- Fixed issue where texture wasn't applied to water cooler

- Fixed several cracks in ground that players could fall through

- Fixed various minor terrain issues (grass coming through buildings, rocks floating, etc.)

- Fixed an issue where several buildings were missing from the map, thus leaving giant holes in the landscape

- Fixed issue where players could no longer progress through Rat's Nest Cave.

- Fixed issue where players would fall into ravines inside of Rat's Nest Cave and survive, becoming stuck. You'll now die the moment you fall into a ravine.

- Fixed issue where crafting items used in recipes weren't spawning in containers.

- Fixed broken containers that didn't even show their inventory. These were from our old container system that's since been deprecated.

- Fixed issue where weapon attachments didn't have the "Firearm" category assigned to them, thus making it impossible to store inside of gun cases.

- Fixed leather jacket preview mesh, it will no longer show up as the RU Jacket.

- Fixed collision on guardrails

- Fixed building missing from world

- Foliage has seen a number of fixes to make the world more coherent while work continues on the new worldspace