Alien Dawn News

Hello Everyone!

Jessica and I hope everyone is having a great holiday week.

This update focuses pretty specifically on narrowing down the issues that have been causing performance issues in the game, in particular towards the end of the game.

A big part of what makes an open world like this game function correctly, especially in VR, is making sure the assets in the game that aren't in your vicinity are turned off or disabled.

As an example there's no reason to have an NPC animating or moving if they are on the opposite side of the map as you are, and this goes for all the assets in the game whether it's weapons, vehicles ect. This idea becomes even more complex when you need to account for multiple players running around in the world too.

The main challenge in narrowing this down is that there are already over 20,000 objects in our open world map, and that is before the procedural elements are created and the items and enemies are spawned. So this part in itself can be a very time consuming task.

That being said, we are making a great effort to determine where all these assets and actors can be optimized, and we think with this latest patch we've made a big improvement in that. This is of paramount importance to us with this being a VR game, and we know you know how important it is for the game to run smoothly in those conditions.

Now that we're getting much closer to handling the large amount of assets loaded during gameplay, we can start to focus even more on adding new content, as well as continuing to address the suggestions many of you have brought up.

We're incredibly grateful for the people who have offered their help, and also those who have played the game and given us their encouragement.

Again, hope you are all doing well during this holiday and we look forward to continuing to develop this game and you being a part of it as we create it.

Very Best,
Christian & Jessica

Patch Notes Below:

12/28/21 (Early Access) v1.06

+ Added more details throughout open world level

+ Soldiers can now Melee Attack Players and Enemy NPC’s
+ Soldiers reload animation is now more reliable

+ Increased damage on Pistol, Shotgun & Sub-machine Gun
+ Increased Punch damage

+ Chemlight colors sync over network
+ Chemlights now have time limit duration
+ Chemlights hide if entering a vehicle and show if exiting

+ Revised all A.I. Camera shots
+ Revised Enemy spawn amounts and locations
+ Revised Skeletal Mesh LOD’s

+ Adjusted collision and position weapons for inventory | VR
+ Increased size of Vest Large Slots | VR
+ Disabled idle animation if crouched | Desktop

+ Fixed A.I. not turning off completely when leaving area that caused performance issues | All
+ Fixed bug where enemies stop moving towards end of game | All
+ Fixed some of the Ruined Buildings spawning incorrect texture colors | All
+ Fixed several bugs that were causing other performance issues | All
+ Fixed Weapon Slots on Vest for Overlap Storage | VR
+ Fixed highlight on vehicles blinking while driving in 3rd person | Desktop
+ Fixed bug where player couldn’t punch IF Idle | Desktop

🎅Hello Everyone!🎅

Alien Dawn is a part of the Steam Winter Sale starting today for 30% off!

If you're looking for a large group co-op experience that works for both VR & Desktop PC we would love to have you a part of the community.

❄️ Jessica & and I look forward to chatting with you and hope you're all have a great holiday week ❄️

We are making progress here people! And this particular progress is a direct result of reading your comments in the Steam forums and on our Discord.

This update focuses on 3 of the things we heard the most about.

1. IK Hand Placement

Many people have talked about the hand placement of the character in VR being in the wrong spot and it wasn't until a user, LCountach, described the issue to me in depth that I understood what the issue was, so thank you LCountach.

I think about what happens with some of these things, and because I'm constantly testing the game I become used to the way it works, which is a normal thing in game design but even more important in VR.

This is why the community can be so helpful and important to the design of the game.

2. Inventory Management

Another huge issue was difficulty grabbing items out of your inventory. You might think you're grabbing one item but you grab another.

To solve this I added a visible sphere at where the Grip point is on the hand of the character when it is overlapping the Vest or Backpack.

The Grip location also scales down in size when over the inventory to ensure you are grabbing that particular item.

Finally, some of the items stored in the inventory were either too big or in the wrong position, so I took some time to resize those.

3. Open World Level Complexity

We've also heard that the open world map feels a bit empty, and we of course agree. So Jessica spent much of her time since the last update working on adding several new buildings to the game.

These are really cool because I think they add a higher graphic fidelity to the game, but also are much larger than the other structures in the world. So now there are more indoor fighting locations, and I love where the work Jessica is doing is starting to go.

Wrap up.

Obviously everything can still be tweaked and improved, but we just wanted you to know that we are listening and working full time to make sure this game is as great as we all want it to be.

Looking forward to chatting more soon and thank you to everyone who has purchased the game and also those who have left reviews, it helps a lot.

Very Best,
Christian & Jessica

Patch Notes Below:

12/10/2021 (Early Access) v1.05

+ Added offset for Motion Controllers to match placement of users actual hands to character’s hands

+ Added visual glowing sphere to hands when over inventory to give accurate representation of the location of Gripping Component

+ Grip Sphere now resizes when over Inventory for more accurate Gripping

+ Fixed Mags removing from inventory when overlapping weapon that doesn’t need reload

+ Decreased size of some inventory items to reduce overlap between nearby items to make them easier to Grip

+ Tweaked IK elbow position on character
+ Increased size of shotgun pump static mesh collision for easier gripping

+ Added 4 new buildings types: Ruined Houses 1-3, Brick House Mansion
+ Added new Gas Station location

+ Added more Green Health Packs to loot table

+ Fixed Soldier Flashlights to turn off and on correctly when Day or Night
+ Fixed missing Tutorial Videos
+ Fixed most Zombies being stuck when spawning in buildings

​Hi Everyone!

Jes and I just got back from having our families in from out of town for the holiday and worked on a new patch last night, as well as put the game on sale for 30% off for the next two days (Nov 30th - Dec 1st).

For those interested in the sale we wanted to remind everyone that the game is both VR and Desktop compatible, so if you have friends that aren't into VR yet, they can still play the game co-op with you.

The small patch we released today is to fix some of the bugs that were causing crashes on some systems, so we hope that helps (v1.04b).

Moving forward we will continue to clean up the bug issues with the game and refine the gameplay, as well as listen to your suggestions regarding the issues you've come across, and start to add more new content.

Looking forward to what is next and talking with you.

Christian

Patch Notes Below:

11/29/2021 (Early Access) v1.04b

+ Multiple bug and crash fixes​

Hi Everyone!

Week 4 of Alien Dawn is in the books and we've got another update for you.

Full Body IK

The primary focus of this update was to fix the IK for VR characters when in vehicles so that all players can reach the buttons regardless of what the height of the character is set at.

In addition to that, the IK for the arms and body has been redone to make seeing your inventory easier, and more accurate to where your virtual hand is to the Motion Controller. This is something we've been wanting to improve, and also based on feedback from the community, and we will continue to refine this as we move forward.

Gripping

Gripping has been an issue, specifically on the Index. We did some extensive testing and revising of the code to make this better. The grip button can now be used to grab interactable items like the vehicle steering wheel and throttle as well.

Note on all Motion Controllers:

Trigger: Attaches Weapon to Hand until the Grip is Pressed
Grip: Attaches Weapon to Hand until Grip is Released

Animations

Another thing we focused on was adding idle animations to VR and Desktop, as well as some emotes to the Desktop version so they have another form of communication. This will also help when VR players take their headsets off so their characters won't stand in awkward positions.

Optimizations & Reviews

Other than that we did some more performance optimizations, as well as tweaks to the loot table to give a smoother experience.

We'd like to thank everyone who left a review, and of course anyone who has purchased the game, it is very much appreciated by Jessica and me.

Looking forward to chatting and playing with you again soon as we continue to release new updates to this game.

Very Best,
Christian

Patch Notes Below:

11/22/2021 (Early Access) v1.04

+ IK Arms can now reach all buttons in vehicles regardless of character or size
+ IK Hands match up closer with Motion Controllers and real life hands
+ Revised Arm and Hand IK code
+ Player can now see Vest inventory easier whether standing or crouching

+ Weapons will always attach if gripped with the Trigger
+ Weapons will detach if gripped by Grip Button and Grip Button is released
+ Vehicle Wheels and Throttles can now be gripped and released with the Grip Button
+ Secondary Grip point on two handed weapons can be gripped using the Grip Button

+ Added idle animations for VR and Desktop Players
+ Added emotes to F1 - F10 Keys on Desktop
+ Added swimming animation
+ Added new jump stunt to Dev Room
+ Added estimated correct height setting to Start Level
+ Added more loot to Houses

+ Fixed some holes in the level players were getting stuck in

+ Removed some unneeded actor Blueprints
+ Reduced replication amount on all items
+ Optimized some NPC animation settings
+ Resized loops in Dev Room

AI Camera
+ AI Camera cuts back to start when players disconnect
+ Removed shot of Airplane in Escape Mode

+Added New Patreon Subscriber “TedSan”
+Added New Patreon Subscriber “Matti”

Thank you!!!