The Infected News

Hey folks,

Today's update brings a couple of new features for the builders among us. We've introduced sandstone building parts, giving your creations a fresh, new look. Plus, we've added a basic pipe and plumbing system, so you can now connect water from the Waterhouse to your sinks.

[h3]Highlights of this update:[/h3]

• New Sandstone Building Parts: Build your dream structures with our new sandstone materials. They’re sturdy and stylish.
  
• Basic Pipe/Plumbing System: You can now set up a functional plumbing system to bring water straight from the Waterhouse to your sinks.
  

[h3]Looking ahead:[/h3]

We're still working on the following major updates:

• Unreal Engine 5 Upgrade: Chasing down issues and quirks related to upgrading to Unreal Engine 5. This is a massive task that has a fair amount of roadblocks.
  
• New Points of Interest and Environment Tweaks: Adjustments to enhance your exploration experience.
  
• AI Improvements: We’re working on changes to the look and behaviors of the AI to better suit the game and community feedback.
  

These updates are dragging on because they're incredibly time-consuming and difficult to get right, especially when things just don’t want to work.

On a side note, our developer has been busy with a move recently, which has sucked up a lot of time and energy. As that resolves, it'll allow us to refocus and ramp up development efforts.

We appreciate your patience and understanding. We'll keep you in the loop with our progress and share more details as soon as we can. Thanks for sticking with us!

[h2]Additions[/h2]

• ADDED - Various sandstone building parts.
  
• ADDED - New item: Sandstone. Can be obtained by destroying large boulders in the desert or placing mineral extractors in the desert biome.
  
• ADDED - Piping system to connect the Waterhouse to sinks.
  
• ADDED - New placeable: Water Relay, used to connect water pipes.
  
• ADDED - New item: Water Pipe
  
• ADDED - New placeable storage: Sandstone Crate.
  

[h2]Changes and Bug Fixes[/h2]

• CHANGE - Right click harvest and tooltip pop up now stays open.
  
• CHANGE - Mineral extractors will now extract sandstone and shale when placed in the desert biome.
  
• BUGFIX - Ghost barbed wire fences no longer damage AI.
  
• BUGFIX - Dirt Plot no longer shows Iron Ingot as a needed material when it should not.
  
• BUGFIX - Fixed conditions causing issues with tree re-spawns. Trees would sometimes re-spawn when they should not and vice versa. Trees may be reset on save files when loaded for the first time after the update.
  

Hey folks!

We're cooking up some cool new stuff that'll take a bit to wrap up. In the meantime, we're dropping an update with what's already good to go!


[h2]Additions[/h2]

• ADDED - Corner Half Walls in wood, brick etc.
  
• ADDED - Trader icon to the map.
  
• ADDED - ATV Trailer, 63 slots storage, can be recalled from garage, map marker.
  
• ADDED - New info trader tab.
  
• ADDED - Fireplace 1, larger heat radius.
  
• ADDED - Fireplace 2, larger heat radius.
  
• ADDED - New larger cave with 2 connecting openings .
  
• ADDED - Can now haul placeables like workbenches etc with the truck.
  

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• CHANGE - Gates now automatically open/close when approached in the truck/ATV.
  
• CHANGE - Plant fiber can now be used as fuel for campfires, etc.
  
• CHANGE - Reduced Coal Heater build cost: previously required 10 Iron Ingots, now down to 5.
  
• CHANGE - ‘One Click’ will now add all items to ghosts.
  
• CHANGE - Reduced camera shake when hitting trees and boulders.
  
• CHANGE - Trader locations are now marked on the map.
  
• CHANGE - Darkened cave interiors, reducing skylight intensity.
  
• CHANGE - Escape is now used to cancel build mode (instead of Tab).
  
• CHANGE - Adjustments to lighting and fog.
  
• CHANGE - Instanced larger cliffs to help reduce RAM usage.
  

[h2]BugFixes![/h2]

• BUGFIX - Addressed floating assets.
  
• BUGFIX - Resolved issue where Gas Generator would burn fuel when powered off.
  
• BUGFIX - Fixed potential UI sticking when quickly double-clicking in the trader interface.
  
• BUGFIX - Resolved elevation-related cave sound and light issues; ‘in cave’ flag now consistently registers.
  
• BUGFIX - Ensured that adding storage chests or crates on the truck bed aligns their rotation with the truck’s rotation.
  
• BUGFIX - Corrected various localization text issues.
  

Hey gamers! Wanted to pass along a quick status report on the game.

We're diving deep into community suggestions, and a major theme is folks not vibing with the AI. So the developer is on a mission to tweak the AI: animations/combat, and overall aesthetics. No set date yet on when this will go live – it's heavily in the works right now.

On a brighter note, the next patch (or two) will bring more community requests to life! Check out a sneak peek below. Quick reminder: detailed feedback with actionable changes gets our attention, so keep that in mind when posting to the forums, Discord, or Facebook - not just the thing you like or don't like, but also the why or how behind your feedback or request.

The tentative goal right now is to push a patch sometime in March, but we'll keep you posted!

Hi Everyone,

BUGFIX - Bug where players would sometimes have an issue getting on/off the ATV.

Sorry for my blunder.

Hey folks!

Today's update adds various new content, some balancing/changes and lots of optimization to various assets. There's also a few new holiday pieces to let you decorate for the holidays- hope you enjoy!


[h2]Content List[/h2]

• ADDED - Rooster, not needed for reproduction of chickens but grants 4 raw chicken when butchering from the barn.
  
• CHANGE - Chickens will now reproduce automatically over time.
  
• ADDED - New trader technologies are available for purchase.
  
• CHANGE- Various changes to the shield.
  
• CHANGE - "Tree chop" sound effects.
  
• ADDED - Repair Bench: you can now repair destroyed clothing, armor and shields.
  
• CHANGE - Small Rations now require cooked chicken instead of raw.
  
• CHANGE - The stone grinder used to provide 10 sand and 2 iron fragments every 25 seconds- the time has been increased to every 50 seconds.
  
• CHANGE - Can now Alt/RMB sand, clay, and cement in and out of cement mixers.
  
• CHANGE - Interacting with Stone Crates will auto-deposit all stones in your backpack.
  
• ADDED - New "Move All" button to help shift items to and from containers.
  
• ADDED - Sound attenuation to AI when stuck on spikes.
  
• ADDED - Christmas Tree that can be found in the decor filter tab.
  
• ADDED - Various wrapped gifts are now found in the decor filter tab.
  
• OPTIMIZATION - A huge reduction in draw calls from static meshes, which resulted in the RAM requirement being reduced to under 5GB and an increase in FPS.
  
• OPTIMIZATION - Found a FPS drop issue when using unreal engines default wire component. When a player had a large amount (50 to 100) of wire connections, a performance drop was very noticeable. To correct this issue, we changed the wire component to using a simple mesh and spline. Players may notice a small visual change to the connected wires.
  

[h2]Trader additions and changes[/h2]

• ADDED - Core Strength technology increases max weight by 25.
  
• ADDED - Lucky Raider technology will help you find better loot while scavenging through POI containers.
  
• ADDED - Iron Stomach technology let's you eat less and stay hydrated longer. 25% reduction in hydration and nutrient depletion speed.
  
• ADDED - Energy Boost technology helps you sleep better and increase your bodies energy level. 25% reduction in your energy depletion speed.
  
• ADDED - New Repair Bench technology from the trader.
  
• ADDED - New filter buttons in the trader interaction UI.
  

[h2]Shield Changes[/h2]

• CHANGE - Made the shield mesh smaller to avoid blocking the players view.
  
• CHANGE - Added shield sound effects.
  
• CHANGE - The Shield is no longer equipped by default: players must craft and equip it via the armor UI. The shield now has durability and can be broken or repaired.