Welcome to Watch Survival

Hello Bloggers and Readers and Survivalists and Gamers! I see you have found your way to Watch Survival. This web space is all about my favorite genre of video games. What you will get on Watch Survival is News and Updates on Current and Up-coming Survival Games.


Monday, April 29, 2013

Project Zomboid Monday! Official release update RC2.9 is open for public play.

That's right! Project Zomboid developers have released the latest test release version to the public! If you own the game you can now download the newest update.   Keep in mind it is still in testing even though it is public release so bugs may still be found and a few things still need work.  Read all about it below.

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2013/04/and-the-moment-youve-all-been-waiting-for-public-forum-test/

--copy and paste--

 
Hello everyone. The moment has finally arrived, and we’re both excited and terrified. ‘RC2.9′ is finally available to test on our forums! Go easy on us!
First off, please read these points before starting to play.
1) This is not an official stable release. This version has some known problems, but as far as we can tell all serious issues risking save games are resolved. However, this does not mean that save bugs are not lurking. Using this build you accept the possibility that it may not be stable.
2) The main focus of this public forum release is to figure out the issues we are having with some Intel graphics chipsets. We’ll also be making sure Mac and Linux builds work, and will upload those shortly (as in today). There may be other compatibility or performance issues, but we’ll resolve them asap and will be our main focus of bug fixing.
3) There may be a few hotfixes required to deal with any immediate issues. Bugs can crop up between any versions, so please be patient if there are any problems as we’ll quickly resolve them and upload a hotfix for any serious problems asap.
4) The game will be released on Desura as soon as the intel bug and any other undiscovered serious issues are resolved.
5) Things missing: Fire, NPCs. Double size. They will be dropped back in as soon as they are sorted. In case of fire and double size, that’ll be very soon. NPCs after Desura version.
6) Known issues, a few weapon sprites are missing, a few minor map issues. Various small issues with UI. All hopefully relatively trivial. We’ll work on anything that crops up. Restarting / reloading the game is often the best way to solve any glitches with for example the inventory stopping working, though hopefully these will be very rare and/or fixed.
http://www.theindiestone.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=12854
Have fun!

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Don't Starve Declares Official Release.

Don't Starve! The popular indie survival game has recently declared the game out of beta and onwards to an official release of the game. Don't starve fans don't worry though, the developers for the game have explained there will still be at least another six months of content updates even after the game's official release is live.  Find out more information below.



http://forums.kleientertainment.com/showthread.php?16180-We-re-Live!

Monday, April 22, 2013

Project Zomboid Monday Status Update Streams of Blood

Hello everyone and welcome to another Project Zomboid Monday.  We are getting closer to a public release of the new Project Zomboid Update. As such though a little more testing must be done and a few more bugs must be taken care of.  Read all the information in the Monday Status update below.

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2013/04/streams-of-blood/

--copy and paste--


Another week of testing in the can. As anyone who’s followed all the video action this week will know, it feels really close to that inevitable point where we say ‘oh what the hell’ and release. But not today, I’m afraid.
Before we start a link dump of the many hours of RC3 footage, we will discuss all of the current issues in the build, only one of which completely forbid a release. Little of this Mondoid will likely be news for forum regulars, I’m afraid, but this is for everyone else. Hopefully the streams and videos are doing more than a Mondoid ever could, anyway.
Excluding more trivial stuff, we still have a few more serious problems to resolve.
  • Save bug – For some unknown reason, the testers saves are getting corrupted very regularly. They will go to reload a world and their world data will be garbage. This will likely be something massively trivial, one byte of data getting saved but not read, or read but not saved, somewhere buried deep within the Zomboid code. This is the one show-stopper that means we refuse to release, since the danger of people losing hours of game-play (remember that loading and saving happens all the time as you walk around the streamed world) or worse a zombie fortress they have spent 30 lives building.
    While many people may say this doesn’t matter and they would still like a build, for every one of them there is a new customer who gets angry that our game destroyed their save. This is the one and only bug that means we’d completely refuse to release anything.The status of this is ‘ongoing’. It seems to be very common within our testers but whenever testing with a debugger attached, where we may be able to figure out what exactly is to blame (as I say, probably something really simple) it always seems to work perfectly, as if to taunt us. As soon as it’s reproduced, it may take minutes to solve. There is simply no way to remotely estimate it (but no, we’re not talking SIX MONTHS or anything, don’t worry!)
  • The second biggest issue (well, undoubtedly the biggest issue for those affected, but one where a release may actually aid us in solving) is problems running the game on some (not all) low end integrated Intel graphics. This is serious because obviously people with these cards have paid money to buy the game, and we can’t leave them out to dry. As much as it may be frustrating to those, it would be handy to get more data on this problem, so we would consider a forum release before this is fixed to help us trap it. We have made some limited progress, getting testers to the main menu and in some cases into a slightly graphically glitched game, but this one is also ongoing. It should be made clear though that this is a bug, not a performance bar raising issue. We’re doing nothing that shouldn’t be possible on these cards, so there’s no reason to worry about the long-term compatibility of your game if you are affected.
  • A third issue, which in all likelihood is related to the save bug above, is the ‘Langolier effect’, as its become known. Anyone who’s seen streams may have spied this a few times, where either the entire world becomes disjointed like an earthquake fault line, or more often you have areas of psychedelic void. It’s possible this is an independent issue but our suspicions are it will be solved the moment we fix issue #1.
  • More a cosmetic thing, but still seriously damaging to the atmosphere (even if many find it entertaining) is the moonwalking zombies. Seems that when zombies are reused (a memory / garbage collection saving tactic) after being killed off, they cease to be able turn to face the direction they are moving, leading to humorous but massively wrong looking results.
Only the first (and, out of vanity, possibly the last) bugs are stopping us from considering a release, but obviously we could not consider a Desura release until the second is fixed too. Desura members with intel cards may not be too happy to find Desura auto-updating them to oblivion. We should point out if we do do a forum release prior to Desura, damned if we’re falling into the same trap as before. We’ll get the intel stuff sorted, and get on Desura as soon as possible. It’s not fair how long those lovely people have had to wait for an auto-updatable version.
So that’s the situation. We’re so close we can smell it, but there’s that one last hill to climb. We’re overjoyed at how the videos and streams have been recieved, and moreso were even surprised ourselves how much it’s come together since testing began. It also only goes to show we made the right move holding it in testing as we did, as comparing the 24th build with the 1st would be quite eye opening (maybe we can do that for fun post release?)
So when? We know some rumours were circulating that it could have been today. Well sadly there’s no way we could comply with that, as much as we’d loved to have. Next week’s Mondoid? It’s possible. NOTE: It’s possible, not yes. It could be the week after. But yep, we’re really down to talking about these kinds of time-frames now. This is super exciting for us, and the last couple of weeks have been wonderful after a very long year. To see people’s reactions to the new builds has reminded us why we’re doing this and what all the work is for. It’s a happy time.
So now the update is out the way, let’s get onto the video link dump! We would recommend giving all these lovely peoples a subscribe, a follow, or whatever the equivalent is for twitch as they are all wonderfully nice and entertaining to watch. A word of warning though: There is a LOT of footage here, so firstly you’re guaranteed to see a lot of moonwalking zombies, or pieces of the universe mysteriously vanishing. You’ll also see a lot of Zomboid RC3 content laid bare. You may want to save it all as a surprise, or you may want to watch every minute of it. It’s your call.
Youtube
RingoD:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KB7Op5iFUng
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wmWJbp1xLw
Mathas:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTzyOlJQ4M8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwYdWCYpoJI
Ecky:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4D_IPUm1fo
Twitch
MiddleAgedBob:
http://www.twitch.tv/middleagedbob
Ecky:
http://www.twitch.tv/eckyman
dThunder:
http://www.twitch.tv/audthunder
nasKo:
http://www.twitch.tv/nasko_zomboid
There are probably other streamers or Youtubers we’ve forgotten, not because they weren’t wonderful but because, erm, there’s been a fair few of them. Apologies if so: let us know and we’ll add them to the list.
Oh, and if videos are a bit too revealing for your tastes, there’s also a nice cache of screenshots over at Watch Survival.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

New Minecraft snapshot! 13w16a Horses!

Minecraft has been keeping busy with all kinds of new things. I've not made a Minecraft post in a while so I thought I would include this one.  It is pretty awesome.  We get horses! Also Carpets and hay bales and a few other cool things.  All togather I'd say the new update is going to be really fun once it goes official.  Snapshot below. New launcher as well. 

http://www.minecraftforum.net/news/789-snapshot-13w16a-ready-for-testing/

--copy and paste--

Posted Image

Suddenly, out of nowhere...SNAPSHOT TIME!  What lies in store for today's amazing snapshot release?  Let's take a look!

FEATURES:

  • Added horses, based on the work of John Olarte (DrZhark), of Mo’ Creatures fame
  • Added hay bales
  • Added leashes
  • Added carpets
  • The “Respiration” enchantment now also helps seeing underwater

NEW MINECRAFT LAUNCHER?  YES!

Dinnerbone and Grum have been hard at work creating a NEW Minecraft launcher, with some pretty sweet features!  To get the snapshot, use the new launcher available in the link below. To return to 1.5.1, simply start the old launcher and play as normal.  That's all there is to it!

Want to send feedback on the new launcher?  Be sure to tweet @Dinnerbone, @Grum, or @jeb_ with your suggestions, or make a post right here!

GET THE LAUNCHER HERE:

Windows: Click here

Mac/OSX: Click here

Linux/Other: Click here

IMPORTANT NOTES
  • You might get an "unsafe" warning when trying to download the launcher. Disregard this, it is safe!
  • Don't forget to report bugs you encounter at the links above!  The launcher can be updated nearly instantaneously without additional downloads!

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Watchsurvival Survival games list updated, again! Darkwood

I found out about this game called Darkwood and how it is influenced by Project Zomboid and I had to check it out and I must say from the trailer I seen and the features they are presenting I am quite impressed. I bet it is going to be a great game!  I added it to the Survival games list and Checkout this trailer below.

Darkwood
Homepage:  http://www.darkwoodgame.com/

Trailer:

  

Watchsurvival Survival Games List Updated!

I've updated Watchsurvival's Game list page to include the following games. Also In the coming weeks I am going to be adding Certain labels to the watchsurvival games list to include things like (playable, not yet playable, ect) so everyone will be able to sort the ones that are currently playable now instead of having to find out by going to the game page first.  That will be coming soon. Thanks everyone for your support. Stay Alive!

In Dvelopment

Darkout
Homepage: http://www.darkoutgame.com/
Forums: http://www.darkoutgame.net/index.php

Edge of Space
Homepage: http://www.playedgeofspace.com/index.html
Forums:  http://www.playedgeofspace.com/forums.html

StarForge
Homepage: http://www.starforge.com/
Forums: http://www.forgeforums.com/

MMO

Salem
Homepage: http://www.salemthegame.com/
Forums: http://forum.salemthegame.com/index.php

Haven & Hearth
Homepage: http://www.havenandhearth.com/portal/
Forums: http://www.havenandhearth.com/forum/

Roguelike

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead
Homepage: http://www.cataclysmdda.com/
Forums: http://www.cataclysmdda.com/smf/

Thursday, April 18, 2013

The Dead Linger Development Roadmap

Sandswept Studios has released a cool new feature for their game The Dead Linger on their website called the Development Roadmap.  It let's you see exactly what they are progressing on and how the work is coming along and how close to beta/release the game really is.  It's a really awesome feature that some other games could definitely take note of.  Great Job guys. 

http://www.thedeadlinger.com/roadmap


Watchsurvival Present's Project Zomboid Running through hordes.

Hey everyone! I posted a quick video to display what it is like trying to run through hordes in the latest test release version of Project Zomboid.  I did this because in previous builds you could run right through them and not get a scratch on you.  As you can see in this video the difficulty in the newest to be released version is being ramped up a lot and things are a lot more risky now.  Enjoy the vid. 




Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Project Zomboid Internal Test Build Screenshots Part 2

Hello and well met survival fans!  I've taken some time to put up some more screenshots from the internal test build of Project Zomboid.  Enjoy! 
 
<Note to Everyone: Please keep in mind the following screenshots are from an Internal Test Build for testing purposes only and changes may be made before the official release of the update. Bugs may be spotted.>

http://i.imgur.com/rkpAMpr.jpg 

http://i.imgur.com/4oglVrE.jpg 

http://i.imgur.com/xdYNJPz.jpg 

4 http://i.imgur.com/wjyCcjH.jpg 

5 http://i.imgur.com/NsbhT6b.jpg 

6 http://i.imgur.com/LHcJn1n.jpg 

7 http://i.imgur.com/7h703ZP.jpg 

8 http://i.imgur.com/r3tKt6p.jpg 

9 http://i.imgur.com/7V332Uv.jpg 

10 http://i.imgur.com/D5LadZA.jpg 

11 http://i.imgur.com/BH4mrGe.jpg 

12 http://i.imgur.com/mdZ1suy.jpg

13 http://i.imgur.com/zKwATci.jpg

14 http://i.imgur.com/5AFBweZ.png

Monday, April 15, 2013

Project Zomboid Internal Test Build Screenshots from Watchsurvival.

Hello and well met survival fans. The Indiestone developers have taken the gloves off and gave permission for internal testers to share screenshots and videos from the internal test build.  I thought everyone may enjoy these screenshots in HD. Exclusively from watchsurvival.blogspot.com Enjoy!

<Note to Everyone: Please keep in mind the following screenshots are from an Internal Test Build for testing purposes only and changes may be made before the official release of the update. Bugs may be spotted.>





















Link to part 2 of screenshots: 





Friday, April 12, 2013

State of Decay Release Date announced and New Trailer.

State of Decay finally gives everyone a release date.  The date is set for June. I can't wait it is going to be awesome.  They also released a new trailer to make sure we stay excited.  Check it out below.

http://undeadlabs.com/2013/04/news/state-of-decay-will-be-in/

http://undeadlabs.com/2013/04/trailers/new-trailer/


Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Project Zomboid Monday Update: The blood. The Sweat. The testing.

The Indiestone gang is keeping us updated on all the new testing the latest version of Project Zomboid is going through.  Read all about it below.

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2013/04/the-blood-the-sweat-the-testing/

--copy and paste--


The game has been in testing for a little over a week now, and we’ve already had 5 versions and multiple hotfixes, eliminating a whole slew of map bugs, crashes, and making huge strides in optimization and reducing the memory used by the game.
While we still have a bit to go, we’re feeling really confident with the progress. The game isn’t at the stage we can call it truly playable, but each build sees testers being able to play for longer and longer – before a game ending issue strikes. As every bug reveals itself and is quashed, the testers get deeper and deeper into the game. As such, we’re super-excited to see where the game will be in a week or two.
Although we’ll release when the game is playable and fun, we’ re also going to be intent on trapping as many of the ‘game ending’ problems that plague the 0.2.0 versions as possible before the build is set loose. It’s no fun surviving for 3 months to have your game ended by a bug. The build’s getting there though, and we feel confident and comfortable to talk about the release being in a matter of ‘weeks’. (Still no promises on exactly how many weeks at this time!)
As everyone knows, the music will make a return in RC3. The looping bug that caused music’s removal has finally been taken care of, and its wonderful to be able to run around hearing Zach’s awesome music completely uninterrupted. Mash is continuing extending the map up until the last moment, so we can make sure the game world is as big as humanly possible, Binky is continuing creating animations that will further the game’s immersion and polish, Romain and Lemmy are killing off the remaining bugs and adding those features that slipped through the net while the game was unplayable.
We’ve also got some intense backroom fiddling from EasyPickins going on – who is continuing to refine the map creation tools that we’ll be releasing to the mod community post-launch, while Stormy is also back on board updating his reloading system for our lua-enabled mod system.
Latest from Romain is that he’s working on a new character info page which will list the character’s professions and traits (with tooltip descriptions, etc) which is important to see now since many of what were skills in 0.2.0 have now been moved to being dynamic traits that are gained and lost due to the player’s actions through the game – for example becoming overweight through eating too much and not having enough exercise. (Please note that the following image is a mock-up, but what ends up in the game won’t be a million miles away.)

People may remember a long while back we implemented a new particle driven blood system, which hugely improved the gore of the game. Sadly the method we used required way too much memory once blood accumulated, as well as breaking in numerous circumstances and resulting in bright glow in the dark blood. It was labelled as unworkable and removed from the game. That all aside, the tiled blood on the floors looked really naff (mainly due to some tiling issues) so it needed to be fixed. Well, we came up with another method to improve blood and were really happy with the results. Behold!


As stated in the annotations, ignore the ridiculously over the top bleeding at the end of the video. We’re currently balancing that. Even so, we think everyone will be happy to see the levels of gore we had back in the days of 0.1.5d (and improved gore at that!), another thing we missed dearly in the 0.2.0 days.
Finally, we want to thank everyone who bought a copy of the game during the 3 days we were collecting for Chloe’s indiegogo. We raised $4,030, which was quite incredible. Thank you everyone!

Watchsurvival News: Survival Games list updated!

Hello and well met everyone.  It is now 4am my time, but I am done with overhauling the Survival Games List page.  I hope everyone enjoys the new layout and finds it easy to navigate.  Leave some comments and let me know what you think!   Keep Surviving!

Monday, April 8, 2013

Don't Starve Update Trailer: The End is Nigh!

The new Don't Starve update trailer is out.   Looks pretty cool.  Check it out below and try to find the hidden Easter eggs and solve the puzzles.


The forum for discussion is listed here.
  http://forums.kleientertainment.com/showthread.php?14881-Update-Trailer-The-End-is-Nigh!

Friday, April 5, 2013

The Dead Linger 008 Build Released! No place is safe.

The Dead Linger has released a new update for us!  The 008 build is now live for everyone who has purchased the game.  This update was really cool and included a lot of good stuff.  Convenience stores are now included into the world generation.   Infection is now working inside the game and has to be managed and looked out for.  Zombie spawn rates have increased,  A lot of the item stats on gear is now working,  Flash Lights distance has improved.  Zombies now follow into houses and building correctly. Foliage is in around the world.  All kinds of good stuff.  Read the Blog below for more information and a video.  Patch notes also pasted below.

http://www.thedeadlinger.com/archives/1577

 --copy and paste--

Patch Notes:

    World Generation Changes:
  • The Swerts Convenience Store has returned, it’s back and better than ever!
  • Huge changes were made to loading and saving. Furniture and moved objects should now save in their proper location from now on. Your hay bale forts are now safe. (That said, we are still in Alpha and things can be unstable. We ask that no one get too attached to their worlds and inventory saves at this time.)
  • The ground in fields, farms, and forests is now filled with fantastic, fancy foliage.
  • Slightly increased the frequency of prisons.
  • We have increased the frequency of hills and mountains in the world. The world is generally less flat now.
  • Zombie Changes:
  • Massive Feature: Zombie pathing has been substantially updated in the following ways;
    • Zombies will follow you in and through buildings.
    • Zombies will properly stop to attack doors and windows, and they will break them.
    • Zombies can now climb through windows, over obstacles, and pull themselves up ledges.
  • Zombies should no longer twitch up and down when at the edge of a 1 kilometer terrain block.
  • Increased zombie density in most areas.
  • We are reworking the sound design of the zombies. There are new zombie moans, groans, screams, and general zombie noises to be heard.
  • Zombies will now hold position while attacking a door or window, and they have a new animation for this action as well.
    Gameplay Changes:
  • Massive Feature: The Infection system has been added to the game at a basic level. We will be improving this system further. Here are the basics, though we’ll leave much of it for you to discover;
    • Infection Risk now shows in your inventory as a bar, much like Hunger, Battery, and Stamina. The lower the Infection Risk bar, the lower your Infection Risk is. Keeping it low should be a high priority for survivors. There is always a very small chance to be infected, even if the bar is empty.
    • When you respawn from death, your Infection Risk is reset.
    • When you are attacked by a zombie, kill zombies in close range, or interact with infected material, you will gain Infection Risk. To avoid gaining Infection Risk, get items that reduce it, or avoid too much close contact with the undead.
    • When attacking you, zombies now have a random chance to bite you instead.
    • Every time you are bitten, you have a chance to become infected. There are a few tell-tales when this happens, if you’re paying attention.
    • If you are infected, you will soon know, and you will begin dying. There is no obligation to tell other survivors, and there is no cure.
    • When a survivor dies from infection, their corpse will return as a zombie shortly after.
  • Multiple new stat modifiers now work on equipped items. They are as follows:
    • You will move faster (walk, crouchwalk, and sprint) with items that increase Speed, (Example: Hi-Tops Shoes) and move slower with items that decrease Speed. (Example: Football Helmet)
    • You will reload faster with items that increase Reload Speed, (Example: Magazine Vest) and reload slower with items that decrease Reload Speed.
    • You will gain less Infection Risk with items that reduce Infection Risk Gain, (Example: Welding Mask) and gain more Infection Risk when wearing items that increase Infection Risk Gain.
    • You will steadily decrease your Infection Risk over time with items that steadily reduce Infection Risk. (Example: Gas Masks)
  • Huge fix to inventory: The inventory should now properly save between sessions, and backpacks should no longer be dropped or lost when reloading a scenario. (There can still be save corruption and some data can be lost during crashes, or if you ALT+F4 out of the game without allowing the game to save.)
  • Death sequences have been improved some.
  • Death messages now show on the death screen, depending on cause of death.
  • Survivors should no longer spawn high up in the air when entering a world.
  • Climbing speed on ladders has been increased by about 25%. You can also hold shift to quick-climb a ladder, but this uses stamina.
  • Stamina now recharges at half the rate while on a ladder, instead of not recharging at all.
  • When a survivor leaves a game, they are now properly removed from the player list count and scoreboard
  • Potential fix for a certain crash that sometimes can occur when eating food items.
  • The debug “d_player” now properly shows “100” as the value for maximum HP.
  • Fixed some issues where survivor’s dead body would set to their new respawn point before they were finished with the death sequence.
  • The Flashlight now projects about 10 meters further than it previously did, making it more effective outdoors.
  • Fixed a commonly reported issue (Thanks!) where survivors would sometimes get stuck and unable to move for no apparent reason.
  • Aim-Down-Sights (ADS) Sensitivity can now be changed in the Gameplay Settings menu. This allows survivors to have a separate aiming mouse sensitivity from their regular look mouse sensitivity.
  • Survivors will now experience themselves collapse onto the ground if they starve to death.
  • General Changes:
  • We have made dozens of fixes to performance and world save/load. You will find better framerate, less jittering, and less hiccups while traveling through the world.
  • Some graphical performance improvements on the backend. (Fancy complicated programmer stuff!)
  • Strange or abnormal characters in the server list will no longer crash clients. The characters will appear as a ? instead.
  • There are a couple new musical tracks in the game that will play during gameplay.
  • In the Audio Settings menu, the audio level sliders should no longer take control of the mouse cursor and should work properly now.
  • KNOWN ISSUES:
  • Weapons will sometimes use the wrong hand pose when swapping weapons using the new Weapon Set system. Walking or reloading will generally correct this.
  • Weapons will sometimes not drop properly, or float near the player after removing them from a weapon slot in the inventory screen. Swapping weapons again will generally fix this, but the dropped weapon may be permanently lost.
  • Multiplayer play is still somewhat unstable as we develop the game. Multiplayer play will always be receiving hotfixes and other updates as time goes on.
  • Grass foliage will sometimes appear on top of roads.
  • Eating a food item can sometimes crash the game. We are still investigating the cause.
  • Zombies can be hit while climbing through a window or over an obstacle, but it is unreliable. Survivors will sometimes have to wait for the zombies to fully finish climbing before they can be killed.
Please report any and all bugs to our Bug Forum!
What’s next?
In 009, we’re planning to add multiple new buildings, increase activities to do in the forest regions of the world, add fall damage, tidy up multiplayer play, focus on improving the visuals of the game (as well as adding more graphics options) and begin the start of barricading. There are also rumors of some new weapons on the way…
Linger on, Survivors!







fpsguru.com covers Dayz Developer Panel from Pax East.

Dayz and Rocket was also at Pax 2013 and They did an awesome developer panel showcasing all the newest and latest features of Dayz Stand-alone.   The website http://www.fpsguru.com/ covered their panel and put the video up on YouTube.  It's almost an hour long and gives us a lot of information and is pretty cool to see.  Check it out below.


State of Decay Pax Info 2013

State of Decay was at Pax and there was a lot of coverage there.  Most of the information has been rounded up for us by the State of Decay team.   Check out all the information below at the State of Decay Official blog or read copy and paste. 

<edit> I also found a 20 minute video that has some good video coverage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UuYoK0ACt4


 http://undeadlabs.com/2013/03/news/pax-east-2013-roundup/#more-5828

--copy and paste--


While most of the team toiled away on the last details and bugs (and if you want to know how those efforts might be related to the release date process, the answer is in our regularly updated FAQ), the intrepid team of Brant, Gronk, and me went to Boston for PAX East. If you were following us on Twitter or Facebook, or hanging out on the forum analyzing every single blurry cell phone picture, then… thank you! If not, read on.
Microsoft’s booth was our home away from home for three days.

As far as we could tell, this was all there was to PAX.

As far as we could tell, this was all there was to PAX.
We had a good neighbor – a team from a studio in Copenhagen, Denmark. They’re making a nifty platformer called Max: Curse of the Brotherhood. After three days of seeing the other team’s demo, we became mutual admirers.

photo(5)

State of Decay gear makes everyone happy.
The line to try out State of Decay was never less than an hour long, and all of our players were incredibly understanding and enthusiastic. Your passion for what we’re trying to do has always been the thing that kept us going, but during the PAX marathon, the energy of our players was the ONLY thing keeping us going.
We had to remember that we were representing the whole Undead Labs family back at the office. Fortunately, there was a reminder of the office in the game:

Hey, what's this?

Hey, what’s this?
Mostly we came back to the hotel and collapsed, but one night, we were fortunate enough to meet some future players in the hotel bar. A bar, mind you, that was a mile from the show and not near any public transportation. At 8:30 on a Friday. The attendees were hardcore! Sadly, I didn’t think to take the pic until the very end of the evening after some people had left. I won’t identify the people in the picture (they can out themselves if they want), but I will say it was a real joy to meet some of the people behind very recognizable names.

That is a fun group. I would expect no less.

That is a fun group. I would expect no less.
Overall, it was a fantastic show. When you’re working on a game, you get so you only see the flaws – and you get really nervous wondering if the ideas that seemed so great are going to turn out to be fun. Watching person after person get excited and walk away pumped about State of Decay, well, all I can say is that we are psyched. We can’t wait until all of you can play, give feedback, and post your own images.
Thank you for sticking with us this long. Not much longer, now!

At the end of the show, we were still standing. Barely.

At the end of the show, we were still standing. Barely.
Want to read the coverage that’s come out of the show so far? Here you go, in somewhat random order:
IGN: First impression
IGN: “The Most Awesome Games From PAX”
Kotaku
RelyOnHorror
RelyOnHorror (interview and video)
VGRevolution
Front Towards Gamer
Frontburnr
TrueAchievements
FPSGuru
Den Of Geek
Post It Gamer
Omnicomic
Game Informer
Polygon
4Player
Blast Magazine
OXM

If I missed any (and I know of a half dozen more still in progress!) please drop me a line at sanya at undeadlabs dot com.
Thanks again, and keep your eyes on the FAQ!

Monday, April 1, 2013

Project Zomboid Monday Status update Testing Times

The Monday status update for Project Zomboid is out!  This confirms more about closed testing happening and what all is going down.  According to this post the zombies have increased in difficulty by quite a lot. Performance for most of the testers appears to have improved over the older versions as well.  Check it out below at the link or read the copy and paste.

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2013/04/testing-times/

--copy and paste--


Yes, it’s true. As of 01:27 AM this past Friday morning the RC3 build (as discussed last week) entered closed testing. No, that’s not an April Fools gag. It’s a thing that actually happened. (Our April Fools jape comes toward the end of this blogpost and has been conveniently highlighted by the use of italics.)
So, yeah. We’ve got a small gang of hand-picked testers beavering away in Muldraugh and spotlighting everything that’s standing in the way of the revamped RC3 build being a fun and stable experience for everyone to gorge upon.
Early indications are looking good. Our main fear was that of performance – and thankfully we’re seeing better results than any 0.2.0 build ever had. Seeing as we haven’t implemented an option to turn off the shaders yet, this should hopefully trickle into a substantial performance boost for those who use low graphics settings.
That said, as expected, there are some clear issues we need to resolve. We’ve got a few crash bugs, music issues, a bunch of map niggles and a fair wedge of loot balancing to wade through. We’ll likely need to make some minor tweaks to the revised mouse-driven combat too – which doesn’t seem to be as immediately intuitive to established PZ players as we’d hoped.
Add into this the various new systems that were 90% completed but waiting for testing so we could balance and finalise them, and you can see that there’s still plenty for us to be getting our teeth into.
Work has been intense throughout the Easter weekend – we’ve had three internal test versions already and are due to release a fourth on this cherished Mondoid. It’s after the next couple that we should start to see more prolonged gameplay, and start balancing it up to a fun quota that’s acceptable in terms of widening the process to the whole community. It’s all terribly exciting.
We’re confident that the wait until release won’t be that long, but we’re certainly talking in the scope of weeks rather than days. The build needs to be enjoyable and as free of serious bugs as possible: after everyone’s long wait and the patchy nature of the 0.2.0 builds we need to be bang on the money.
So now, a bit of a video from internal test build number four. While we’re not quite at the stage where a full playthrough is possible, we’re celebrating going into closed testing by leaving all the bugs in the footage instead of editing them out or chopping together tiny videos. See if you can spot them all! We’ll look into a more in-depth gameplay video as soon as we can. (We see no reason why that won’t be possible next Mondoid.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=87XJ5vydsng

Now, some random, albeit random with a positive bias, quotes from a few members of the tester group. (Please note that surrounding these there were an awful lot of posts saying stuff like: “Exception: java.lang.OutOfMemoryError thrown from the UncaughtExceptionHandler in thread ‘Main’”).
“Zombies now have fast enough attack speed to make running through them a very bad idea!”
“I’m running the game on 1280*800 and I’m getting between 40-55 FPS with a lot of zombies on screen. So compared to RC 2.5, I’m getting about 5-15 more FPS with a lot going on.”
“There is no pausing or desktop popping on my Radeon 5700!”
“The warning and menu layout? Awesome.”
“The details (mailboxes, flowers .etc) Awesome!”
“It’s good to see shadows… it looks really different aesthetically. Also, I haven’t seen much of the map yet, but I’m digging what I’ve seen so far! It really looks like an American town with the flag poles and motel-like buildings… and grills in the backyards. Even graffiti. Loving it.”
“Performs 100000000% better than RC 2.5”
“Was just attacked by a small group of zombies while opening a window and MURDERED. Zombies are now finally a huge threat!”
“New night-time effects are incredible. And REALLY dark. (A good thing.)”
“The amount of zombies you have onscreen is pretty darn fun. It was great, trying to make my way out of the horde’s midst before nightfall while exploring the new homes. And look, washing machines! And kids’ rooms! (Why, I remember a suggestion on that just a few days ago…)”
“The extra strike on downed zombies looks and feels great. “
“Getting solid performance, it’s ridiculous! Possibly the best performance wise of any build so far, so gratz on the optimization! I’m getting around 60-75fps on general, full screen and res is 1920×1080 (my native). Then around 45-50 with a truckload of Zombies.”
“I got nom-nom’d by a zombie while moving some bandages from one bag to the other. Zombies feel really dangerous now – tough enough to cause the end of the world.”
So it’s time for our exciting April Fools joke! Wait for it…
We should let people know that due to the performance issues with lots of zombies, we’ve decided to offload some of the complex computational work for the zombies pathfinding onto the cloud, but as a by-product of that it means PZ will have to be connected to the internet at all times during gameplay. Hope you don’t mind.
So, did you fall for our April Fools joke? Do let us know in the comments. (As a further April Fools joke we’ve neglected to mention that comments are disabled. You’ll probably have to head to the forum.)
More as it happens Zomboidateers. :)