PROJECT QUARANTINE - Development Blog #1 [March 2023]
Hello everyone!
It’s been a while since we’ve spoken, and so we’re publishing the first of many dev blogs to fill you in on everything that’s been going on since the release of our demo: PROJECT QUARANTINE. Many items on our to-do list that we want to share with you are not yet disclosable, so we’ll focus on topics that have shifted into a presentable state during March. Enjoy!
Since the release of the demo, we have addressed and resolved 57 bugs submitted by the community. We want to express our gratitude to those who have reported bugs, as it has been immensely helpful in improving the game's overall quality. After investigating a group of seemingly unique issues, we discovered that they were all connected to one primary system in the game: the inventory logic. These issues included gear, looting, frozen weapons, and money acquisition, all of which were caused by inventory-related problems. If you browse the bug channel in our Discord) server, you will likely come across the widely known recommendation to "f10 -> reset inventory" for nearly every remaining issue. As a result, we decided to prioritize rebuilding our inventory system from scratch. Drawing from our previous experience, we intend to make the new version of the inventory system more CPU-efficient, reliable, and we aim to address all remaining inventory-related issues in the next few updates.
We have made significant improvements to the AI system. Specifically, we have added animations to indicate when the AI changes its action state, such as taking and leaving cover. Previously, the AI would simply move in and out of cover, making it unclear what action it was taking. In addition, we have revamped the AI's thought process and behavior to make it more unpredictable. We will be providing a full breakdown of its thought process in an exclusive post for our Patreon supporters. We have also designed the AI's settings in such a way that the player can adjust the variables that influence its behavior within a certain range, allowing for a more personalized experience. Our intention is to redefine what difficulty means in the game, and while we still provide preset difficulty levels, we encourage players to explore this customization. As the game develops, we plan to incorporate difficulty levels into mission rewards and loot.
We are pleased to announce that we are currently working on a new map, which was revealed on our Twitter. In order to ensure that the map meets our high standards and to gather feedback from those who have funded its development, we will be offering initial playtesting exclusively to our Patreon supporters. This will allow us to identify and address any issues or imperfections before releasing the map to all of you. While we are not yet ready to provide background information on the map or reveal its full geographical setting, we can say that the map's main points of interest revolve around the path between the wilderness, a quarry, an industrial plant, and a military base at the foot of the mountain. For Quarry, we changed our level design process entirely. The map features lots of verticality with all ranges of strategic sightlines. We are excited to continue exploring this map as it is being built and look forward to sharing it with the rest of our community.
We are currently in the process of designing and modeling our first completely in-house weapon, the AK-74M. We are working hard to ensure realism and details of the gun models are respected, while balancing the optimization and efficiency of our workflow.
We have also been working on a new animation set for the upcoming SRS, the second sniper rifle in our roster. With this new animation set, additional reload poses are added to enable the player to cancel reloads at any time without interruption or lag. See video below:
We thank you all for your continuous support, and for over 70,000 downloads of the demo!
If you would like to support our development efforts, we invite you to become a patron on our Patreon page.
It’s been a while since we’ve spoken, and so we’re publishing the first of many dev blogs to fill you in on everything that’s been going on since the release of our demo: PROJECT QUARANTINE. Many items on our to-do list that we want to share with you are not yet disclosable, so we’ll focus on topics that have shifted into a presentable state during March. Enjoy!
Bugs
(F10 -> “resetinventory”)Since the release of the demo, we have addressed and resolved 57 bugs submitted by the community. We want to express our gratitude to those who have reported bugs, as it has been immensely helpful in improving the game's overall quality. After investigating a group of seemingly unique issues, we discovered that they were all connected to one primary system in the game: the inventory logic. These issues included gear, looting, frozen weapons, and money acquisition, all of which were caused by inventory-related problems. If you browse the bug channel in our Discord) server, you will likely come across the widely known recommendation to "f10 -> reset inventory" for nearly every remaining issue. As a result, we decided to prioritize rebuilding our inventory system from scratch. Drawing from our previous experience, we intend to make the new version of the inventory system more CPU-efficient, reliable, and we aim to address all remaining inventory-related issues in the next few updates.
AI:
We have made significant improvements to the AI system. Specifically, we have added animations to indicate when the AI changes its action state, such as taking and leaving cover. Previously, the AI would simply move in and out of cover, making it unclear what action it was taking. In addition, we have revamped the AI's thought process and behavior to make it more unpredictable. We will be providing a full breakdown of its thought process in an exclusive post for our Patreon supporters. We have also designed the AI's settings in such a way that the player can adjust the variables that influence its behavior within a certain range, allowing for a more personalized experience. Our intention is to redefine what difficulty means in the game, and while we still provide preset difficulty levels, we encourage players to explore this customization. As the game develops, we plan to incorporate difficulty levels into mission rewards and loot.
Map
We are pleased to announce that we are currently working on a new map, which was revealed on our Twitter. In order to ensure that the map meets our high standards and to gather feedback from those who have funded its development, we will be offering initial playtesting exclusively to our Patreon supporters. This will allow us to identify and address any issues or imperfections before releasing the map to all of you. While we are not yet ready to provide background information on the map or reveal its full geographical setting, we can say that the map's main points of interest revolve around the path between the wilderness, a quarry, an industrial plant, and a military base at the foot of the mountain. For Quarry, we changed our level design process entirely. The map features lots of verticality with all ranges of strategic sightlines. We are excited to continue exploring this map as it is being built and look forward to sharing it with the rest of our community.
Weapons
We are currently in the process of designing and modeling our first completely in-house weapon, the AK-74M. We are working hard to ensure realism and details of the gun models are respected, while balancing the optimization and efficiency of our workflow.
We have also been working on a new animation set for the upcoming SRS, the second sniper rifle in our roster. With this new animation set, additional reload poses are added to enable the player to cancel reloads at any time without interruption or lag. See video below:
We thank you all for your continuous support, and for over 70,000 downloads of the demo!
If you would like to support our development efforts, we invite you to become a patron on our Patreon page.