DeadPoly News

Three years? Not shot. Feels like just the other day I was sitting in my room playing around with what would become the first iteration of DeadPoly, but they say time flies when you're having fun I suppose.

The journey of releasing DeadPoly to the world is still hard for me to describe, and still feels like I'm in an episode of the Twilight Zone living the life I've always dreamed of. In so many ways, it's amazing after spending so many years daydreaming of being a fledging game developer to be sitting here typing this, but this journey also comes with a weight I'm carrying to not let everyone down. To not fail at providing the game so many of you have trusted me to get across the finish line. Every day I learn something new, or fix something that wasn't working, resolve and issue or bug someone has experienced, or implement new features and ideas in to the game, I'm one step closer to that goal and promise I've made to everyone who has joined in on this journey with us.

As we begin yet another year of DeadPoly, there's a lot of fun things nearing completion, as well as some less fun but needed things to push the game ever forward towards full release. Anyone who has been following the game for a bit probably knows I don't like spending an excessive amount of time making random content and usually favor spending that time on the work instead, that's definitely still the case, which is why the 3 year anniversary of the Steam release is just a wall of text instead of a bunch of fancy content. Sorry - but also, not really - I'm working on the game like crazy!

The next update is right around the corner which will finally start to give players a bit more to do and explore.

Systems wise I'm really hoping to get prone finished this year, along with greatly improving the vaulting / mantling system to allow the player to hop through anything you'd realistically be able to. All of the systems that are already in the game should be mostly rounded out and finished within the first two quarters of this year, and I'll start releasing information on the new maps and future plans for the game as well.

Getting DeadPoly on consoles is going to be a big part of this year, as I feel it will really help grow the playerbase and bring some of the PvP community back in to the game with a lot more people to play with.

Here's to another year chasing down this dream with all of you! Thank you for sticking it out with me.

[h2]Additions[/h2]

• Winter Holiday items have been added to the loot pools
  
• Unlocked achievements now add random things to the main menu
  

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Logout timer after engaging in PvP has been increased significantly
  
• You can no longer build while flagged for recent PvP
  
• Basically all loot containers besides the buildable safe are now lootable in PvP
  
• Random containers like backpacks can now drop random items inside when they spawn
  
• Controller trigger functionality has been swapped between left and right
  
• Removed overscrolling on the interact menu
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Military zombies should now drop more than a single bullet
  
• More changes to backend systems to prevent Fatal Error crashes, thanks for reporting these, please continue to do so
  

Note - Sorry for the extended Halloween event, life gets crazy around this time of year! The next update has a lot of good changes and additions that a lot of work went in to between these two updates. Bummer that this update seems small due to the work not being released yet, but excited about the next few updates for sure!

Hey Survivors,

It's Steam Awards time again. I'm normally pretty averse to advertising or promotions of this fashion, but enough of our amazing community has asked me to say something about it, so I figured it was something worth doing.

If you're willing, please nominate DeadPoly for the Labor of Love Award this year.

We are all very aware that DeadPoly is FAR from complete, and there's still a lot of things to be done, but I do feel like completely rebuilding the entire game from scratch in order to provide the best game possible to our amazing players is very in line with what this award is intended for.

I rebuilt the entire game solely because of my love for DeadPoly and everyone who has given their time to the game. Time is one of the truly limited resource we have in this life, and it means more than words could ever fully describe to me that your time has been spent on anything related to DeadPoly. Thank you! For real.

I'm also vividly aware that there are still quite a few in our community who aren't on board with the new version yet, and I promise you, I'm working on making sure there are in game options for those in the community who still miss the original (Legacy) version of DeadPoly. It just takes time, as most things do when being a solo developer, but I'm working on it.

Hello again, Survivors!

It has been, according to my notes, way too damn long since I posted an update with what's going on with DeadPoly, so first and foremost, I'm sorry for that. For the players who don't hang out in the Discord, you definitely get left in the dark with what's going on with the game. It can be really hard to balance working on the game with creating content about the game when there's still so much stuff I want to get done. I'm hoping to adjust a bit in this regard to start making better, more engaging content with what's coming down the pipe, but that's a whole other post.

I'll never be able to thank everyone enough who has continued to support DeadPoly, and patiently waited for each and every update with excitement and joy, and made my little dream of developing a game a reality. Seriously, though, THANK YOU! Getting to be on this journey with all of you has been one of the most kick ass things I've ever experienced, and we're just getting started! DeadPoly still has a long ways to go, and as long as I'm breathing, it will continue to progress forward at whatever pace I am capable.



[h2]Current overall priority list, loosely ordered...[/h2]

• The single largest focus right now is going to be finishing up Garden City's interiors and map as a whole. It is very immersion breaking with how many of the buildings are empty, and it just makes the game feel a lot more unfinished than I'd like. There's a lot of reviews and comments that point this out specifically, and they're absolutely correct.
  
• Overall game polish needs to improve quite a bit. The UI isn't even close to finished, but I'm going to start working on making sure the visuals for the game are in a better spot. I'm not a UX expert by any stretch of the imagination, so any help there with feedback is always welcome.
  
• Console release with full crossplay is inching ever closer. Hope to have some more news about this shortly.
  
• Fishing is getting close and should be making its way in to the game soon. It's not a super advanced system, but getting animation stuff worked out takes me much longer than most things, as animations continue to be my weakest point in terms of my overall knowledge and skills.
  
• Prone and left arm animations should hopefully be getting wrapped up soon as well. Again - animation timeframe limited, but it's getting there. The player character not holding the grips on the guns annoys the heck out of me, so I'll be really stoked to mark that one off the list.
  
• Many of the existing features in the game are going to continue to evolve and expand. Farming will get more complex, vehicles will get more parts like suspension components, radiators, tires, etc... to make them more fun to work on, as well as being able to adjust how they drive!
  
• Vehicles still need a lot of work in how they function and handle. Not happy overall with how ice skatey they still are, but making progress with cleaning it up.
  

[h2]PvP Changes[/h2]
I know that PvP is a big part of the game for many players, and I've been working with a lot of the more active players to start making some changes to the PvP in DeadPoly and try to provide a smoother, more enjoyable PvP environment. I'm vividly aware the traveling inventory system has thrown a wrench in the PvP gameplay and how the community would like to enjoy the game.

• Extended logout timer after engaging in PvP for all PvP servers to prevent players logging out immediately after a fight
  
• Further balancing and number tweaks in terms of damage and resource cost for raiding
  
• Explosives for raiding are in the works
  
• Extraction server setting is on the way along with Official Extract Servers. This will require players to extract from servers that are Extract Enabled in order to maintain their loot. Official Extract Servers will also have increased loot pools and other things to incentivize playing in a higher risk/reward server.
  

[h2]More stuff![/h2]
If you're a longtime DeadPoly player, it should come as no surprise that MORE STUFF is always on the way, but for the new players here - new items, guns, collectibles, clothes, objects, quests, events, etc... are always in development and constantly being added with each update. I don't see this changing any time soon. It's a big part of why I created DeadPoly in the first place, and is still one of the things I enjoy the most when playing DeadPoly myself.

[h2]Oh, also[/h2]
If you made it this far, you must actually care about DeadPoly at least a little bit, right? So here's an early reveal - I am currently pushing for DeadPoly to leave Early Access on January 12th, 2025, in just a few short months. I am not saying that DeadPoly is finished or complete by any measure, and I'm still going to be working on the game just as much as I always have, but I do feel that the game as a whole is quickly approaching the Early Access finish line. Most of the features I outlined when the game first launched in to Early Access are getting pretty close to being completed, and I've never wanted the game to perpetually sit in Early Access longer than it needs to.

Patch 0.4.2 is live, and adds the limited time Halloween items, along with a handful of bug fixes, stability changes, and performance tweaks.