Early Development Update #4 news

We are still working on nailing down details with our development partner and *fingers crossed* we should have a solid update on that next week. Looking at things, we decided to change the way we were working on the contract and just focus on the pieces we know we need for the pre-alpha demo. With a much more narrow scope it should be a lot easier for us to settle on the details and get them cranking on various tasks.

Most of our design docs are getting finished up with only a few outstanding topics left to completely nail down including a solid overview document, our base building/management functionality, and Kickstarter planning. When we get all of that finished up I think we will be in a really solid place to start gearing up for the Kickstarter as well as start to provide you even more juicy tidbits on all of our plans for the game and more details how everything will work.

We are also progressing nicely knocking out tasks for our sprints. We are already nearing the end of our second sprint and we are just under 50% of our tasks complete which puts us in a really good spot for getting everything together we need for the demo.

Last week we asked you all for your input and we are still looking for your thoughts! So to re-iterate the question “What are your ideas for the name of this game?” We are finalizing some of our thoughts and we are going to work on picking out the new name this week!

In addition to this we have another question we want to get all your feedback on. While we are going to be looking at numerous distribution options, including but not limited to Steam, Good Old Games, Humble Bundle and possibly self-distribution, we plan to work on the Greenlight process in Steam and very likely run any alpha/beta we might do via Steam since it takes a lot of extra management off our plates so we can focus on design and build, while Steam can handle getting the updates out to people. (NOTE) This doesn’t necessarily mean we plan to run it as Early Access on Steam simply that we will distribute alpha/beta builds via Steam. So for our next Community Question “When do you think we should start the Greenlight process on Steam?”

There are pro’s and cons for starting early vs waiting until the Kickstarter vs even waiting until the game is ready to ship. So what are your thoughts?

We’ve gotten squad movement to a good initial place. You can now organize your squad in a certain formation and get them to all move and end up in the same formation, while attempting to maintain the formation along the way. While working on this we’ve adjusted some of the pathing AI so that the characters can navigate between themselves more smoothly. Before, if two units ran into one another you would get a really sharp and edgy movement as they re-calculated their paths and adjusted. Now they are able to move a lot closer and navigate through one another in a more natural bob-and-weave fashion. So just for a general idea we put a bunch of zombies running through another big bunch of zombies in different formations. In the screenshot below you can see how instead of hitting each other and trying to move around each other they simple flow through one another. Now this is one of those features that we will continue to tweak likely up until release but it is at a really great starting point!

We pushed out another internal EXE for the whole team after Sprint one to review and give feedback on and this will be the first one with some music and SFX which is really exciting! Hopefully, we will be able to start showing you all some videos in the near future now that all the pieces are really starting to come together.

Chris is already starting to dig into some of the character building functionality in addition to our first steps on our combat system. Currently combat is extremely simple and random so it will be great to have a much more defined system that will allow you to make more strategic decisions.


We are continuing to grow the level adding in some new areas we had been discussing including the houses and a new small park area. We wanted to give you a good general overview of the current pre-alpha level build we are making. Keep in mind this is going to change a lot once we move into full production we are simply trying to create some diverse options within the urban environment for you to try and survive in for the demo.

You can see a lot of the newer areas where we haven’t added in decals to those areas yet and are still a work in progress but things are coming along nicely when only about two months ago we had just the center tile for the level.

On the modeling side we’ve got a new Zombie! You have all seen the new zombie concept we posted up but here is the finished model. We will upload the larger image a bit later so you can get a closer look but here is an early look.

As always we look forward to your comments, especially now as we need your input!