Alien Dawn News

Hi All,

I remember all the way back to watching the first random person play our game and watching them try to interact with the slide on the pistol and it not doing anything. After that I saw many others do something similar. It's not that I couldn't figure out how to do it because we had weapon interactions on the Shotgun and Grenade Launcher, but there were just to many bigger issues that needed to be solved before I had the time to make each weapon have interacting parts.

New Weapon Interactions
With today's update all the weapons that should have interactive slides do, as well as attachable scopes which was another thing people have been asking for since the beginning.

The game is running and looking better than ever with this latest update (v1.18).

On a side note, I recently received a bHaptics vest and wrist developer kit from the bHaptics company and will be working on adding support for that soon. Thank you to djstelo and jen for making this happen!

As always thanks to everyone who has left an honest review and continues to support the game, I hope you're all doing great as can be.

Xtian

2 New Weapons & 7 New Attachable Sights

11/11/2022 (Early Access) v1.18

Player can now Grab and Interact with Slide on Weapons (VR)
Player can now Grab Mag out of Backpack with Grip Buttons (VR)
Player can now see Map with Use Buttons (VR)
Player can now Drag Item to Hands from Inventory (Desktop)

Added New Weapon DE-357 & Mag
Added New Weapon M4-5.56 & Mag

Added 7 Attachable Sights
- ACOG 4X
- B-10 12X
- RedDot
- Holographic
- Reflex
- Iron 1
- Iron 2

VR Players can now customize all Rotational Axes for Motion Controllers
VR Players can now customize the X,Y,Z Locations of Motion Controllers

Added Physics Interaction Bullets when Hitting Physics Objects
Added Screen and Light to Tutorial Messages in VR Tutorial
Added Miss AutoStore Object Indicator (VR)
Added Two Additional Backpack Slots

Added Force Feedback for Gamepads on Desktop
Added Force Feedback Effects in Vehicles when Hitting Objects & Landing
Added Force Feedback Effects for Melee Weapons

Vehicles can now knock over Trees

Increased Standard Pistol Ammo Mag to 15
Adjusted Mothership Damage based on Difficulty Setting
Increased Fire Rate of all Weapons
Decreased Mothership Damage Distance

Big Improvement to Performance of Dragging Inventory Items on Desktop (Client)
Desktop Players can now go from Sprint straight to ADS
Updated Tutorial with New VR Controls
Removed Lean Toggle On

Fixed Radio Tower Rotating to far and stopping Player from Climbing
Fixed Tutorial Not Saving Completion

The other night I was watching my Dad play the game (he has over 200 hours in), and when he called for extraction at the Radio Tower the Extraction Point didn't appear on the Map.

I'd never seen this happen before so I thought it was a one off thing, but then someone mentioned in it in the Steam forums. Must be a bug from the last update.

Because of this we're releasing this new patch today in an attempt to fix that bug, among some fun new additions like the gigantic physics based Ferris Wheel that works in multiplayer.🔻



⚠️Moving forward I would like to put a group together to help test for bugs like the missing Extraction Point before releasing new patches. If you're interested in helping me out with this, please reach out to me on Discord and I will add you to this new testing group.

As always thank you to everyone who has left a review as well as continues to support the game.

Xtian


9/29/2022 (Early Access) v1.17

Added Virtual Keyboard for VR

Added Carnival Location to Map 1
Added Ferris Wheel
Added Merry Go Round

Added dust behind Vehicles IF traveling fast enough
Added more Particle FX for different Surfaces

Revised all Weapon held locations on Desktop
Revised Alien Dawn Game Icon
Revised Level loading image
Revised Video Quality Preset names
Sniper now always starts with full Mag
Main Menu is now smaller and closer
Idle animation now gets canceled when Inventory is Open

Removed Apartments Location

Fixed Glass breaking sound
Fixed Sandbags at Mini Base
Fix Trees Spawning wrong Mesh when chopped down
Fixed some world meshes being deleted incorrectly from Random Location spawns

Hello!

🏠 Home Screen 🏠

A focus of this update has been on revising the opening Home Level of the start of the game.

Instead of the Cabin it's now the Old Brick Mansion, and time was invested in adding higher quality models, along with more Physics and Player Interactions to this level.

There's still more to be done on the Start Scene Home Level, but it shows a step in the right direction to improving the graphics and game play interactions in the game.

🏆 Achievements 🏆

We've added Achievements to this version, with the plan for future versions to have the achievements unlock Modifiers for the various game modes. This new stat system also saves your progress to your Steam account, so your stats will now travel with you to different devices. Moving to this new stat system will reset any locally saved stats you currently have in the game.

*Working on adding Leadersboards to this soon*

🎥 A.I. Camera (Alpha) 🎥

Anyone that has been following ALIEN DAWN knows about the new type of Spectator Camera we've been developing to create movie like stories out of your game play. Previously this was only available on our official VoyagerVR server, but you can now experiment with it as a VR player on your own computer.

🔻 In addition to the updates mentioned above, here are several gifs of some new game play 🔻

[h3]More Attention to Physics Actors[/h3]
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[h3]New Focus of Player Interactions[/h3]
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[h3]Attachments - First Scope[/h3]
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-Xtian

9/20/2022 (Early Access) v1.16

Added Steam Achievements (10)
Added Player Stats to Main Menu

Added New Weapon - Sniper Rifle with Scope

Enabled A.I. Camera for VR Players
A.I. Camera now cuts to what the Player is shooting at
A.I. Camera now cuts to NPCs or Players on Death
Smoothed first person perspective of Player with A.I. Camera

Added New Sounds to Physics Objects
Added New Particle FX to some Surfaces

Glass Physics Objects now Fracture when thrown
Desktop Players can now Push Physics Objects
VR and Desktop Video Settings now save to separate files
Mothership now leaves randomly during Escape
Redesigned Opening Level House Home
Increased Distance Soldiers can See Player

Fixed Grabbing Mag out of Weapon with both Trigger and Grip
Fixed Crates disappearing sometimes when Exploding
Fixed Iron Sights on KA74

After watching many streamers, getting feedback on the forums and reading many reviews we decided to focus on 3 things in this update.

1. Performance

Performance is the first priority when it comes to VR. One of the most difficult things to do is an open world with hundreds of thousands of individual objects, in particular with multiplayer.

Version 15 of Alien Dawn pays specific interest to optimization and should solve many of the performance issues hindering the game, in particular frame drops that happen the longer you play, and in multiplayer.

2. Gameplay

An actual tutorial has been something we've thought was important since we released the game in Early Access in October of 2021, but there were other factors that needed to be addressed first.

In addition to teaching new players the idiosyncrasies of the Alien Dawn controls, it also demonstrates SOME of the graphic fidelity we will able to achieve as we optimize the game more because the tutorial is constrained inside of a smaller world.

3. Graphics

Graphics are improved in this version, but see #1 and #2. We also did a lot of general cleanup of the main menu and settings options to make things a bit easier to read and adjust.

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There's a lot more we want to do for the next update, but Jes and I thought these improvements were important to release ASAP for player's familiar with and new to the game.

Xtian

THANK YOU to everyone who has taken their time to leave a review of Alien Dawn.

8/22/2022 (Early Access) v1.15

Added Tutorial for VR and Desktop Modes

Added updated version of Escape Map 2
Added Proxy Meshes to view Shacks at long distances in VR

Added Splash Screen for VR when loading new Level
Added Screen Space Reflections to Weapons and other Items
Added Dust Mote Particles
Added TedSan Easter Egg

Melee Weapons now break when used multiple times
Revised “Never Hold Items” Grip option for VR
Revised Vehicle Interaction Buttons on Desktop & Gamepad
Cleaned up all game menus
Cleaned up many Actor Blueprints
Reduced Food consumption speed
Zombie Aliens now Attack even IF Alien Master is Dead

Enabled RHI Thread for improved Frame Times
Resolved Tick Enabled on Multiple Components Turning Off
More World Actors shut off when leaving Open World Areas for Better Performance

Fixed proxy textures on Ruined House 2
Fixed interiors for Mothership attack on Cabin 1 and House 6
Fixed Punching when still Gripping Item
Fixed “Never Hold Items” Grip option IF on for Desktop

8/6/2022 (Hot Fix) v1.14b

Quest and HP Reverb G2 Bug Fixes