MID APRIL UPDATE

Hello, Survivors,

Anton here! If you did not get a chance to read last week’s blog post, I am the new Community Associate at Quantum Integrity Software. I will be writing blog posts twice a month to share the development progress on Dead Matter. Blog posts will be released on the 1st and 15th of every month. I want these blog posts to be informative and useful for the community, so I’ll be listening to your feedback on our various social media platforms. Also, I want to commit to our promise of transparency and ensure that these blogs address the needs of our community.

Today I will break down some of the changes the team has been working on for Dead Matter’s 0.8 update. The primary goal of 0.8 is to start refining the core gameplay loops of Dead Matter; as a team, we have decided that our focus should be on the quality of each gameplay loop. I should note that 0.8 is not the patch that will fix every game loop in Dead Matter, and the team views 0.8 as one of many patches coming out this year that will incrementally make Dead Matter a better game and worthy of a proper Early Access launch.

Before we go any further, we have some job opportunities we are looking to get filled. We are on the lookout for an experienced Lead Level Designer to help mentor, manage, and support our team of level designers. We are also looking for Animators, Programmers, and Designers. If you have the passion, skills, and a portfolio of your work, we would love to see it. Please explore our current opportunities on our website: https://jobs.qi.games/

Housekeeping

This blog section will be a reoccurring segment where we talk about what is coming up in the Dead Matter community. We will also use this section to make important announcements to our community. For this week's housekeeping, we wanted to give you all a look into the scope of the 0.8 patch.

A month ago, we shared some of the features that 0.8 would focus on improving. The team has decided to limit our scope in patch 0.8 to improving core gameplay systems. This scoping down does not mean we are doing less work on Dead Matter. In fact, the team is working hard on making core gameplay elements better than ever. This dedication means that we can deliver a better product and experience to our players. We believe that by adhering to this principle, we can make a far more intriguing and fun game.

That’s enough about what we are going to do, let’s talk about what’s been done since our March 10th update. Here’s a shortlist of features that we have spent that time working on, and feel confident on delivering in 0.8 at this time:

Dedicated Servers for Multiplayer - Dedicated servers have been set up for internal and Closed Alpha testing.
Weapon Animation Cleanup - Various animation cleanups for weapons have been done and are being worked on at the time of writing.
Improving our Map System - Improving the legibility of our maps through new UI elements.
Making Player Spawns More User-Friendly - Players can choose from premade spawn locations.
Improving Combat Systems - Combat improvements for dealing and taking damage.
Looting Improvements - Better loot container placement and world detailing.

There are other details about the 0.8 update that we won’t get into today, but we will address them in upcoming blog posts. Additionally, for transparency, some features we discussed in the March 10th blog post will be delayed to a later patch. The current list includes drivable vehicles and the other looting mechanics like alarm systems and lockpicking. The scope of these features bled out of our 0.8 update timeframe. We will return to them in future updates.

Also, our infected spawning fixes are in an early experimental and implementation phase for 0.8, so we cannot promise that it will be ready or fully developed for the 0.8 update. Either way, infected spawning will see a greater focus in patch 0.9.

We will talk more about the other features and changes coming to 0.8 as we get closer to its release in the near future.

Development Update

For this development update, I've invited our Lead Producer, Tim Perreault, and Game Director, NikZ, to talk about the development changes and progress the team has made on 0.8.

This update cycle started off with a lot of work centred on quality, performance, and fundamentals. While it probably felt a little slow going in the start since we were only fixing existing content, we have definitely picked up steam as we approach the end of this update dev cycle.

With the 0.8 update, we have started taking a slightly different approach to how we’re going to build out the rest of the game. Our design philosophy is to build out a breadth of features and analyse how they interact with each other. Then, we can begin to add increased depth to them. As we progress through future updates, we want to continually add and adjust features that will make Dead Matter a more cohesive experience.

0.8 will be the first update where this becomes evident as you’ll be able to explore the game loop around survival (needing food, water, and shelter). These features will be expanded on in the future to give many different options on how you secure them but for now a basic iteration will help demonstrate that loop and provide a building block for our upcoming work.

This overall approach is helping us to better define and theme updates as we drive towards the Early Access release.

-Tim Perreault and NikZ

Conclusion

0.8 will be coming out in the next couple of months. We will, of course, update you when we have a solid release date for 0.8, but rest assured, the wait will not be too long. It’s also worth noting that our updates will be hitting a more regular schedule after patch 0.8. As I mentioned before, these updates will build off of each other and focus on making Dead Matter the best game it can be. Technical details might not be the most exciting stuff to read, but these early changes are fundamental to our future development. As we continue our road to early access, we want to thank you all for your interest in Dead Matter and appreciate the support you all have given us.

We will have more information to share with you at the end of April, but for now, have a great month and try not to get bitten by any infected along the way.

Cheers,

Anton

Housekeeping

Development Update

Conclusion

End of April Update

End of March Wrap Up