Alien Dawn News

🚨New Trailer!🚨

Jes and I just finished creating the first real trailer for Alien Dawn and we're going to be posting it starting tomorrow!

If you enjoy it you are welcome to share it around so we can keep growing this community. We love making this game with all of you involved and we hope you continue to enjoy what we're doing.

On a side note, we'll be doing a lot more streaming on our Twitch channel and playing on the A.I. Camera server, so if you would like to join us just check our Discord or social channels.

Thanks for checking it out!
Xtian & JesV

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We've received a quite a few very nice comments over the last couple of weeks and we've truly appreciated your support. It makes a difference in our day to day work, so does the feedback.

I've talked about getting the game more stable so we can start to add more content. It's vital that the performance is at an acceptable level in VR, so adding more content was only going to make matters worse.

While it's still not PERFECT, we think a lot of progress has been made in that area, and we will continue to do so moving forward.

That being said, this patch begins the process of adding new content with a new weapon and a new enemy, along with several other very important fixes.

Our plan is new content with each new patch, making the game that much more rich.

LFG

Xtian


1/8/22 (Early Access) v1.07

+ Added New Weapon | Submachine Gun V14
+ Added New Enemy | Blue Submachine Gun Soldier

+ Added bullet spread to guns
+ Added tent to Exfil location at end game
+ Added new Patrons to credits

+ Vest now turns transparent when hand is over Vest in VR to see inventory easier

+ Adjusted Knife rotation to have blade facing the correct direction
+ Decreased size of Status Bars on Hud | Desktop
+ Increased size of Player Marker on Map
+ Increased difficulty of End Game Exfil sequence

+ Fixed 3D VR Main Menu not working as Client in Multiplayer

+ Decreased time between Mothership attacks
+ Optimized vehicles to turn off physics when not being used to improve performance
+ Added blocking walls in Dev Room so Players can’t fall out of the level
+ Game is now packaged uncompressed to follow Steams distribution standards

SIDE NOTE:

A lot of people have asked about the increase in download size with this latest update. This is partly because of the new content but primarily because the games pak file is no longer compressed.

I did some research on this and Steam and Epic recommend NOT compressing the pak file using Unreal's compression settings.

If you'd like to learn more about it yourself here are the links I researched:

Epic's Website
https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/Basics/Projects/Packaging/#compressingyour.pakfile

Unreal Forum Discussion
https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/steamworks-about-pak-compression/70432/7

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