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Infection Free Zone News

Major Update #4 Preview

[h2]Greetings, Survivors![/h2]

We are in full development mode. New features and content are being developed for Major Update #4 which we cannot wait to deliver your way. Still, due to the level of complication of some features, it might take us some time before we are ready to publish it for everyone to play through. While it's possible that the first open_beta builds with new features will come your way somewhere in January 2025, the default branch update is expected to arrive somewhere at the end of February 2025, or even at the beginning of March 2025.

Having said that, let's take a closer look at some of the cool things coming your way in the next Major Update. While this is not the full list of all new things that you can expect, the areas mentioned below are either the most interesting ones or most anticipated in our Surveys.

[h2]Land Elevation[/h2]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Land Elevation was showcased first in 2022, long before the game's release in Early Access. While this concept seemed extremely interesting to us, it also caused a lot of issues that we weren't ready to tackle at that time. Now, due to popular demand, we are doing our best to implement this feature once again. Land Elevation is not only meant to make the game look better but also to enhance the defensive potential of your Zones and increase the game's realism.

[h2]Planting Trees[/h2]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Many of you report to us that the amount of wood the player is able to obtain is still too low. At first, we wanted to solve this issue with trees regrowing on their own. While this solution helped a little bit, it still wasn't enough. That's why we decided to add an option to plant trees via area work. The areas previously unplayable due to resource scarcity should now be playable. On top of it, we are still considering adding a Forrester building. The Forrester would plant the trees on their own within their building's range. Let us know in the comments if that's something you would like to see in the game.

[h2]Car Workshop[/h2]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
We know that many experienced players start by looking around the map for the best available vehicle. They grab the nearby Sedan and drive around looking for trucks, vans, or SUVs to increase their cargo space. Sadly, sometimes the luck isn't on the player's side and no interesting vehicle can be found. The implementation of a Car Workshop will help deal with those situations by adding:
  • Car Construction,
  • Car Modifications and repairs,
  • Car Deconstruction,

In short, if you encounter 5 cars that you find obsolete, you can now deconstruct them all to construct a bigger vehicle that you desire. An option to upgrade your vehicles is planned too. Armored plates, spiked bumpers, enlarged tank, or additional trunk - the choice is yours!

[h2]Lairs of the Infected[/h2]



When fighting against the hordes, the player deals with separate groups of Infected that can be found during the night and large swarms that attack every few days. While there is no way to avoid the swarms that arrive from far away, we want to add an option to clear the smaller groups the player has to deal with at night. Identifying and burning down the Lair will provide the players with several nights of peace. While we still have to prepare for the swarms, it will now be possible to safely scavenge the nearby area at night in between those large waves.

Is that everything that we have in plans for Major Update #4? Absolutely not, expect to see more exciting news at the beginning of the next year! But for now, we want to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Thank you for playing Infection Free Zone and being with us. Your support means the world to us and we are extremely happy to have such an amazing community on our side.

Best regards,
Jutsu Games Team

Bugfix Update #16 - Workers Stability Update

[h2]Greetings, Survivors! [/h2]
This time we are coming to you with a small, but important change. It seems that sometimes multiple actions related to building, deconstruction, and assigning workers to those works could have resulted in exceptions and Bug Reporter launching during gameplay. We are happy to let you know that this issue was fixed.

[h2]Changelog[/h2]
  • Scripting backend has been changed from IL2CPP to Mono.
  • An issue with the most popular exception happening when adapting multiple buildings, canceling adaptation, and changing the number of workers involved has been fixed.

[h2]Major Update Preview[/h2]
While this update is relatively small, we are working on several new things at our internal branches. Expect a Major Update Preview somewhere towards the end of this week. We can't wait to show you some of the cool new features we are working on!

Best regards,
Jutsu Games Team

Bugfix Update #15 - Save System stability, Production cycle improvements

[h2]Greetings, Survivors![/h2]

We are happy to let you know that we have started working on the next Major Update! This is probably the last Bugfix Update this year, and we are focusing now on the new features and content for the game. While it might take us some time, expect some cool, new things coming your way on the open_beta branch. But for now - check all the recent improvements and bugfixes that we have prepared for you!

[h2]Changelog[/h2]

  • The amount of weapons dropped by Raiders has been increased and made dependent on the "Resources" Game Customization setting. On the default x1 modifier, the Raiders will now have around 75% chance to drop their weapon, while on x1.3 modifier, the chance will be 100%.
  • The Mood drop modifier has been significantly slowed down in situations where the player is losing the Living Quarters.
  • Gatherable resources from Aircraft wrecks will now depend on the Aircraft type. Smaller aircraft wrecks will now provide the player with 50 metal resources, while bigger aircraft wrecks are set to 100 metal resources.
  • A new Map Overview Emblem for the Scientist faction has been added.
  • The Save System stability has been improved.
  • An issue with Workers auto-assigning to Production buildings beyond the limit set by the Player has been fixed.
  • An issue with Squads not going to desired locations when sending them to POI or Mission markers has been fixed.
  • An issue with indoor path rendering not working as expected has been fixed.
  • An issue with Immigrants not having the desired number of weapons in some game modes has been fixed.
  • Issues with incorrect production cycle queuing have been fixed.
  • A new set of stability updates has been introduced to reduce the number of crashes in the game and improve the game's memory allocation.

[h2]The Steam Awards[/h2]

Today is the last day to nominate Infection Free Zone for The Steam Awards. We will appreciate you nominating us in the "Most innovative gameplay" category, or any other you see fit! The whole announcement about this event can be found HERE. Thank you for all your nominations! We are extremely proud that so many players keep enjoying the Infection Free Zone. And we hope that with all the upcoming updates, you will only like the game even more.



Best regards,
Jutsu Games Team

Nominate IFZ as Most Innovative game in Steam Awards

TO ALL SURVIVORS!


[h2]We need your help! [/h2]
Our dev team took extra care to give you a unique opportunity - to rebuild your own neighborhood after the apocalypse, using real geographical data.
Surely this is one of the Most Innovative gameplay ideas, and we count on your vote in Steam Awards!

Over 915 000 different locations from all over the world have been played so far!


(this map represents 6000 of the most popular cities that the players played)

[h2]Updates Summary[/h2]

By the way, now is the best time to review the game, after all the updates we have delivered since its Early Access release!

Within those last 6 months, we delivered 3 Major updates:


We also delivered 13 regular updates, rebalances, smaller features and fixes!
Check them all here


Thank you for staying with us
Thank you for all the positive feedback you provided
Thank you for playing the game regularly :)

Stay with us and stay tuned for future updates! We are cooking something special :)

Cheers
Jutsu Dev Team

FIXES, IMPROVEMENTS, REBALANCES

TO ALL SURVIVORS

We managed to cook another stable update this week. Check out what's new:

[h2]Changes[/h2]
- Newly turned infected look different now to avoid confusion.
- Custom buildings rebalanced - now they require 5x fewer minor resources instead of 2x
- Squads with pistols now automatically switch to more efficient machetes in close-quarter melee
- Workers now collect resources from unscavenged buildings when adapting them
- Raiders now have a 50% chance to drop weapons and ammo - previously they had 100% and were too easy a source of both.
- Some friendly migrants now might have firearms too, to compensate the raiders and be any challenge at all to raiders and the infected.
- Slight UI improvements - Current research is now shown in the main UI, as well as weather warnings.
- Radio log limited to 100 positions, greatly reducing save file size and loading time
- Trees that can regrow at the same time limited to 100 - be careful not to deforest your zone too fast! This also greatly reduces savefile size and loading time

[h2]Major bugfixes[/h2]
- crashes related to FMOD music system greatly limited
- old, troublesome post processes removed

[h2]Known issues[/h2]
- Workers still autoassign to any workplace after the last areawork or deconstruction finishes. Sorry about that.

This might not be the last update this year yet, but if it will be - be assured that we will use this time to develop even bigger and more important features - with land elevation, game replayability, extra customizations, and car workshop as one of our main priorities.