No More Room in Hell News

Hey, Everyone! SufF3R here, with a brief update. The team has been busy working out way through the game, and we wanted to share a few updates with you all. In the recent months, our focus has been getting the game closer and closer to a first playable. We've made some tremendous progress with Cal, Muit, and Hawk joining us recently, but there's much more that needs to be done before we're ready to share our progress with you. 

While we're getting there, here are a few works-in-progress shots of the Night of the Living Dead map nay0r has been working on. 

In the screenshots below, you'll see a few shots of two rooms within the chapel. In the basement, what once was a place to dress the deceased has now become a make-shift hospital for survivors.

 

The upper room of the chapel has also been re-appropriated to be used as a place to store bodies.



Our boy, MzK, has also been working on finishing the animations for the MP5, MK18 (reworked), and the DT11. Please note that these renders were captured in a test environment and the crosshair and setting is for animation purposes and will NOT be in the final game.

MP5

MK18 (Reworked)

DT11

We're working away to make a game we'll be proud of, and a game that you'll enjoy. So we honestly appreciate your patience with us as we keep ramping production up! That's it for now, we've got a lot to go, and we'll commit to continuing to share our progress with you all.

Stay tuned for a little something special happening on Hallows Eve...

Share your thoughts with us and join the conversation on discord at discord.gg/nmrih

A beta update is available for No More Room in Hell. The major update notes are below.
A more detailed changelog will be available during the general release.

The beta branch can be accessed in Steam via the Properties -> Betas
tab using the access code:

testtest7890

You may report issues or provide feedback regarding the beta here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/224260/discussions/9/

If no issues arise, we hope to release this update to all users in the coming weeks.

• The workshop is here! It supports custom maps and addons packaged as VPKs.
  
  • During the beta, users will need to opt in by joining the workshop group: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/nmrihworkshop
• 15 new achievements are now unhidden and available!
  
• Fixes of the game's networking internals including lag compensation
  
• Improved demo recording/playback support, with additional features such as auto-record (see ds_ commands)
  
• Over 100 changes and bug fixes to the game
  
• Various UI changes including a new background and new loading dialogs
  
• Starting with 1.10.0, Mac and Linux client builds are being moved to a limited support policy. These builds are untested and may contain bugs. We will no longer provide troubleshooting support for these OSes. To report any issue, please be sure that the problem is caused by NMRiH and not your runtime environment or the source engine. Issues outside the scope of this policy will not be serviced.
  
• Staring with 1.10.0, running the game under dxlevels lower than 90 is unsupported. An override will be required and a warning will be printed at the top of the screen.

A special thank you to all the newest members of our testing team for their help in polishing this release, and to Felis, who is our newest programmer!

We're excited to introduce you all to our three new members: Cal, Muit, and Hawk. Each of them has distinct roles to help us get NMRiH2 to where we'd like it to be. To get to know them better, we've asked them a few questions about their role and who they are.

Originally posted by Cal

What do you do for the team?
Programming. My area is mainly working on gameplay, but we're too early into this so nothing specific on that.
What excites you most about NMRiH2 and it’s future?
Having a proper co-op FPS game to play especially where teamwork actually matters.
Does pineapple belong on pizza?
Does it belong anywhere? (Pineapple lumps, are the exception, not the rule)
What’s one thing you aim to accomplish in the next three months?
I don't have an answer for this one, I just can't think of anything.

Originally posted by Muit

What do you do for the team?
I focus on gameplay systems and narrative development, that's what I'm most comfortable with, but sometimes extra hands are needed for other tasks, and I have no problem doing those too!
What excites you most about NMRiH2 and it’s future?
I have worked with a lot of genres, but never got in touch with zombies. It's very exciting to work on a game that does this very well and knows how to entertain millions. I think that's a big enough reason, isn't it?
What's a cringe-worthy thing to happen recently that you can share with us?
Well, not recently, but a few years ago I gave a talk about Unreal Engine, and said "fancy" a couple hundred times in half an hour For me, that is pure cringe. (Note: Actually, that's more or less what cringe means right? Haha)
What’s one thing you aim to accomplish in the next three months?
Implementing the narrative system for story progression. That's the main task I'm working on and subdivides on a lot of smaller systems so I will enjoy it a lot.

Originally posted by Hawk

What do you do for the team?
I’m an Environment Artist, I create art assets and do the world building. The tricky part though is making everything feel believable, giving it that good ‘lived-in’ feeling. That’s what I strive to do, bring a bit of storytelling to the environments, so when players get a breather from battling the undead hordes they can have a look around and piece together what happened in the location they’re standing.
What excites you most about NMRiH2 and it’s future?
A replayable horror experience is something I’ve long dreamt of. I think we’re finding that sweet spot between the often aimless open world survival where you wander around without a real goal and eventually get bored of surviving and that of a crafted linear experience where everything is great, but you would probably never replay it since you know all the beats. And for the future, I am excited about the community getting to play it, sharing their feedback, and helping us finely tune the game to find that perfect balance.
Would you rather have to wear socks that are eternally wet, or would you rather eat only cold hot dogs for the rest of your life?
Bring on the wet socks! I love pizza too much (as my Adonis-like figure demonstrates) to possibly go on eating only cold hot dogs.
What’s one thing you aim to accomplish in the next three months?
Within three months, I would like the Night of the Living Dead map to be in a fully playable state. Not necessarily final art, but something we can test and get a proper feel for the game and the art.

Gas Station:Saw Mill:

Stay tuned for more blog posts coming up soon. We're excited to share even more with you in the next month.

SufF3R here, with a Spring update from the NMRiH2 teram.

As we're continuing to ramp up for the year, we'd excited to share with you an update from our dev team and the progress we've made in the past few months. Below we have a few updates, screenshots, animations, and a few tracks to share. Please keep in mind, that what we're sharing is again, a work-in-progress, so there's much more refining and smoothing-out that will happen.

Starting us off, we have MZK sharing his progress of the animated Sako 58.

Originally posted by MZK

Hey! I'm Parker, one of the animators for No More Room in Hell 2, and I have some animations I wanted to show off. I mainly wanted to show the "unload" and "single cartridge insert" animations, with the Sako 85 being a great example of taking from. Hopefully, these unload animations will immerse the player more than the original system in the Source game, which had no animations whatsoever. That certainly confused me the first time I found the key and found the slide of my handgun instantly locked back, but hopefully, this animation system should make things clearer in the sequel! I'll see you all soon, with more to show off by then!

Maxx, sharing some interior shots and development with the Brooklyn Heights map.

Originally posted by Maxx

Maxx here with an update on various art things, in particular, my work on Brooklyn Heights. Last time I did a progress update on here I was working a set of apartment interiors. This time around I'll be showing a couple of shots of a new office building interior Work in Progress. The lighting here is only for testing purposes and is on low settings. I have been continuing the work of building the pieces necessary to complete these new interiors. The goal as always is to build a space in an efficient manner where I can get the most out of each part I make. In the case of a building like this, I can model things like wall panels, ceiling overhead light boxes, decorative doorways, etc. and reuse them with each subsequent addition to the interior. This cuts down on the manual work I need to do which frees up time used for creating new assets and dressing an area. When an area is "dressed" with props and decals, it's often done in passes. A pass usually starts with the large pieces like props used for cover, or large pieces of furniture, and it works it's way down toward small decorative things like a calculator on a desk, a cutting board on a kitchen counter, a calendar on the wall, etc. I can, however, take the props we have and put together ready-made pieces like a desk with a computer, some papers, a telephone, and I can simply drag and drop it wherever I’d like. Often I take an area, and I'll start to define a couple of rooms with more props to "sell" what the intention is. At a later date, I loop back around to some of these areas and continue that motif with all the new props, textures and decals that I have made to support it. This all starts with me finding some interesting examples of interiors and design styles on Google or in books, and then I see where my creative instincts take me. It’s one of the best parts of being an environment artist!

Dman with a logo design for the Homeland Emergency Response Agency (HERA) inspired by the US Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Originally posted by dman

David ‘Dman’ here, I wanted to share a little bit of insight into our ‘HERA’ logo you saw on our first story document released a while back. HERA is largely inspired by the real-world homeland security/FEMA logos but also a hint of the old lesser known US Civil Defense insignias from WW2 era. As an agency in our universe, their designs will have a strong color palette with minimalist logos that are sharp and clear, keep an eye out for future story docs and later on in the game!

Thought, sharing an audio soundtrack sample and some ambient noise for the Night of the Living Dead map. Make sure give this track a listen with headphones on.

CLICK TO LISTEN NOW: NOTLD Ambiance Track CLICK TO LISTEN NOW: NOTLD Guitar Sample

Originally posted by Thought

I think what fuels my direction when composing music for NOTLD is the sheer sense of beauty all around the player when in the environment. The trees sway in the night breeze while the moon illuminates the corn fields. Leaves are falling off the trees, and you get a sense that it's a beautiful fall night. It's deceptive how peaceful it can be at times when you stop to appreciate it, which is what I try to capture in the ambiance. Even while experiencing something as horrific and terrifying as zombies chasing you, any moment of rest or seclusion is to be capitalized upon, and that's where I come in.

Along with Thoughts track for the Night of the Living Dead map, Erickanni, our newest member of the team has already made progress with some props.

Originally posted by Erickanni

Hey! May as well give you a quick update/content as I just joined and all — my names Eric, and I've just joined the NMRIH2 dev team for prop/environment art! So far, I'm just going to be helping create and push environmental assets out, and later build some more focal props down the line. Started tackling Night of the Living Dead assets, mainly the gas station area - Modeling/UV'ing some vital environmental props such as gas pumps, light posts, various signage, and typical environmental clutter.

Tom with a summary of developing our dynamic music system (DMS).

Originally posted by tom.wright

Recently I have been developing fundamental systems to house the Dynamic Music System (DMS)in No More Room in Hell 2. In modern titles, adaptive music is fairly common, but the original No More Room in Hell was one of the earliest games/mods to take advantage of combining game states and music, dynamically. NMRIH2's adaptive music system improves on the original game's music system in many ways; using a very advanced audio engine (Wwise) we can mix music on-the-fly, applying seamless transitions between Low, Medium and High-intensity pieces of music without disrupting the flow of the soundtrack. The music in the original game was a big contributor to the feel of the game, so it has been very important to expand on this while maintaining the mood that it provides. One of the issues with the original DMS was that when the gameplay changed intensities, the music engine would select a new piece of music with the appropriate intensity at random, then play it from the start. This meant that when the gameplay intensity was changing frequently, the player would hear the start of the same piece of music over and over again, never reaching the end. Wwise has a feature called Random Entry Cues, which means we can place many cue points throughout a track. Wwise will randomly select a cue point when it returns to that track, meaning that over the course of an entire game you should hear an even distribution of each section within a piece of music.

nay0r and an update on the Stockades mall map.

Originally posted by nay0r

Hey, guys nay0r here, just a quick update on what’s been happening recently. I’ve continued to work on our 3rd map the Stockade mall, which is going tremendously well. Since our last update, I have made tremendous progress on the layout, which includes an exterior/corridors/shops and an underground car park. Working on this map on my own I feel like progress has gone super well, over the coming weeks I plan to keep on adding size to the map's layout, then shortly after it will set dressing and working on lighting.

Cenelder showing off complex animations of zombies in "pursuit" mode.

Originally posted by Cenelder

Lately, I've been trying to get a lot of the more complex animations for our zombies ready. Once a zombie spots you in NMRIH2, their arms will be raised in "pursuit" mode. The animations will be a more natural way to identify if the zombie horde has spotted you! We've also made some attack animations to be blended into zombie movement, meaning that zombies can now walk AND attack which should make it a bit harder to abuse their AI. I've also been focusing on adding level-of-detail meshes for the zombies for performance so we can stress test the max number of zombies we can get on screen before a negative performance hit.

And finally, Xenon with an update on our zombie AI.

Originally posted by Xenon

Xenon here again with a small update from the AI side of things. So the AI timeline has looked something like this in the last month and a bit. Work on first pass player zombification when infected and death by infection or other causes. Next was some minor code changes/reworks for internal use. Then finally we come to what I've been working on recently which is the second pass on the zombies. This has mostly been adding new functionality to characters such as a buff/debuff system and an attribute system to manage stats of the characters/items. Things that I've yet to get to, but is on the chopping block are improved zombie pathing and a second pass of the stimuli system for more consistency. Plus a second pass on our soldier AI, as well as a second pass on our gore system!

A quick reminder again that the content shared is only a glimpse of what the game may look like in the future. There's much more for us to build and learn as we go.

Thanks for taking for joining us for this team update and we're excited to continue to share more progress in the near future.