No More Room in Hell 2 News

Hello Responders!

We are looking forward to October and the Early Access Launch of No More Room in Hell 2 onto PC!

If you have not seen the Reveal Trailer yet, check it out here.

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Our developers continue to be hard at work on the next installment to the No More Room in Hell series, and October will be a celebration of No More Room in Hell and zombies.

Together we've now reached 750,000 wishlists on PC! We want to thank our community for showing their support and enthusiasm for our game, and we look forward to crafting its full release together during Early Access.

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We hope you enjoy this quick look at one of the many areas of the massive Power Plant map. The Army Checkpoint is located in the northern region, which we call the “Transportation Biome” in dev speak - it’s near the gas station we showed in our Summer Game Fest trailer. This region is quite dense with infrastructure, and through its environments tells the story of the initial parts of the (un)deadly pandemic, with parts of the population trying to flee to safety via transportation routes.

Today, we are opening the doors and letting the dead out - so you know what to expect throughout the spookiest month of the year!



Leading up to our Early Access launch, we will be showing off gameplay, talking to the developers about the horror at the core of the game, and revealing our plans for new content, features, and improvements to come to No More Room in Hell 2 post-launch!

What to expect on the path to Oct 22:

• Brand new gameplay footage, showing off not-yet-seen areas of the game
  
• A special roundtable video discussion with developers about Cinematic Horror
  
• A first look at our Early Access Roadmap for the game, detailing what to expect in future updates
  
• The Early Access Launch trailer, which introduces one of the voices of the Civil Recovery Corps (featuring some exciting voice acting talent we can’t wait to reveal!)
  
• Even more!
  

We’ll see you October 22nd for our Early Access Launch!

Set your calendars and get your squad ready to survive the zombie horde - No More Room in Hell 2 will be entering Early Access on October 22nd at the price of $29.99 USD!

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No More Room in Hell 2 is a terrifying 8 player co-op action horror experience, where Responders will go from spawning in solo and underpowered, to forming a stocked-up co-op squad ready to tackle the Power Plant and bring light back to the region.

Make sure you are prepared - the ever-present zombie threat looms over your Responder. If they die, that character’s progress is lost.

Powered by Unreal Engine 5 and led by a core team of veterans from Torn Banner Studios and Lever Games, No More Room in Hell 2 is to be an experience that will surprise and terrify fans of the co-op genre.



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Join our Discord to stay connected with the NMR2 community and to interact with our community team!

Responders!

Today at gamescom Opening Night Live we unveiled a new trailer for No More Room in Hell 2 that showed off 8 player co-op gameplay and a new area of the massive Power Plant map - the Church.

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Approach the Church however you wish, though veteran Civil Recovery Corps (CRC) leaders would suggest using stealth, as demonstrated by our team of responders in the trailer. Move through using melee to carefully and strategically pick off lone zombies - lest you are spotted by a Shambler, who will unleash an unholy scream that alerts other zombies to your presence.



Previously a meeting place for this rural Pennsylvanian community, the Church has seen some remodeling with the breakout of a growing apocalypse, and comes with its own unique objectives for responders to complete. Watch as a group of Responders use stealth to stay alive and pick off lone zombies using melee - until, that is, all hell breaks loose.



No More Room in Hell 2 encourages players to approach completing objectives in different ways, utilizing strategy along with whatever equipment or weapons they are able to scavenge. Complete the objective, and be rewarded with more supplies and weapons to aid in your mission.

Your path through towards the gates of the power plant isn’t about racking up the highest zombie kill count: survive together or die alone defending yourself with anything you can find, and earn rewards through completing objectives at critical CRC locations.

As you hunt for gear in the darkness, you may find the Shotgun, which can cause a lot of damage but alert the zombies, or a Baseball Bat that can be used in melee to maintain stealth. When it’s time to bring the flames of hell back to the undead, use explosives to create fires in the environment, inflicting damnation upon a zombie hoard.



Get your zombie survival plan ready, avoid being bitten, and we’ll see you around, Responders.

For the latest news follow us on Twitter/X and Facebook.

Join our Discord to stay connected with the NMR2 community and to interact with our community team!

No More Room in Hell 2 enters Early Access Halloween 2024, wishlist now!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/292000/No_More_Room_in_Hell_2/

Hello Responders!

Announcing No More Room in Hell 2 at Summer Game Fest was a surreal experience, and we’ve seen you asking to hear more about the creative process that goes into creating our game, and more behind-the-scenes looks. When we brought this to our artists, they got excited to tell our community about how they create the assets using our SMART material pipeline.

For those that haven’t heard the term ‘material pipeline’ before, Art Lead Jonathan Wiley (aka Cenelder) offers this explanation, “For those of you unfamiliar with what a "material pipeline" is, let me explain! When a prop is built in a 3d software, it is initially a flat colour (usually millennial grey). It doesn't have the grit, grime, paint, or colours that you would expect to see on a prop. So we can peel that prop like a banana, colour on the banana peel, and then wrap the peel back around the banana. The "material" is that props "banana peel," and defines how light plays on the surface, the colour, or how rough/smooth/shiny it is. Materials can be very simple, or very complex with built in procedural elements like darkening the ends of the banana. All of this talk about materials is making me hungry.”

While building the Power Plant (the sprawling first map for NMR2), we wanted everything created and placed by hand. It's a key part of our ability to create the most cinematic player experience, and tell stories within our key locations.

In talking to Wiley about SMART material pipeline, he spoke to the limitations that came with last gen tech, and what it meant to upgrade to SMART, a system created in-house by a collaboration between our Art and Tech teams that was built upon UE’s Custom Primitive Data system, for No More Room in Hell 2.

Before we upgraded to SMART, the process was more painstaking. Textures were authored externally; unique for some props, or using seamless materials that looked flat. You could place expensive decals all over the asset to bring some of that realism back, or create complicated detailed texture trims that you had to line the prop up to. “We didn't have enough geometry to be able to vert bake in details for edges, or concave. So things had more unique masks applied to them, or manual vert blending in limited capacity like adding moss to a structure,” says Wiley.

“But now we can bake the verts and recreate texturing tools inside the engine to very quickly modify the look in real time without having to make new materials. So we can change edgewear, grim buildup, and see the change in real time in Unreal Engine.”

What are verts though, and why does it matter when it comes to creating details?
“Basically we need enough geometry to be able to shade each vertex correctly,” says Paul Carstens, Principal Environment Artist. “Kinda like pixels on a screen, the more pixels the more detailed the image and the opposite obvs. More geo equals more detailed vertex shading for the SMART system to use”



Every prop, location, & item is handcrafted with the goal of fleshing out and bringing to life a unique, planned, and designed world, but that takes an immense amount of effort from our artists. Having a system in place to quickly adjust an asset on the fly to suit the place, the style, and the overall filth or grime saves our artists time and helps iterate on concept.

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A fire hydrant by the Gas Station shows the effects of the SMART System in action.

Our team spoke to what they’ve enjoyed about the changes SMART has brought to assets, and here’s what they love about this new process:

“The speed at which they can produce fairly decent looking assets. “

“Texturing/Surfacing speed (we can texture/surface an asset in minutes now compared to hours; Ability to change the appearance of a prop in Real-time in-editor (add rust, dirt, wear, etc.); Ability to have variants of surface treatment on the same source object; and Performance (huge performance gains project wide).”

“It has helped to increase the consistency and fidelity of all art assets while also reducing the time necessary to achieve that quality.”

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A different angle of the Fire Hydrant showing the SMART material changes, such as the colour becoming less saturated.

Wiley added, “It also helps with art direction and feedback cycles - we can ask for changes knowing that the artist isn't redoing their work, but just tuning a few values on the asset instance. It also lets us quickly swap material types on an asset - so you can take a wooden asset, and apply a burned wood material to it and it looks fantastic. Much easier to "kit-bash" assets into new context.”

What makes this all exciting for players is the amount of incredible detail and variation we’re able to put into each and every part of NMR2’s environments. With one of our goals being to make NMR2 feel truly grounded and realistic - as if you were experiencing a zombie apocalypse in your own neighborhood - this is just one example of how one of our talented team’s production techniques is helping to take the sequel to the next level.

Welcome SMART materials to NMR2, and we look forward to sharing more behind the scenes looks at how the game is coming together.

In the meantime, enjoy a final comment on the SMART system from Wiley. “Also I get to use a lot of big words when talking about it so it makes me look smart.”

(We would argue that he always looks smart.)


Take care Responders, and we’ll see you in August!

Concept art is more than just drawing a plan for a 3D artist to follow. Behind the 3D models, our artists pull from a variety of influences and references to evoke the feeling, the horror, and the fear that a player will be stepping into.

We took the time to speak to Pat Ingoldsby, our Art Director, about how the team viewed Light and Darkness, and played with it when setting the scenes. Players can explore in the darkness, hoping to avoid Zombies, or use their flashlight, which could alert fellow Responders to their location. There are tradeoffs, risks, and rewards for choices, even if it’s just about turning the lights on.

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Our Responders don’t have to tackle risky situations alone though! No More Room in Hell 2 delves into the idea of ‘Survive Together or Die Alone’, encouraging players to work together, whether to hold off a zombie horde while trying to get out, or coming together to protect a Responder working to complete a vital mission.

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We look forward to sharing more of our behind the scenes art with our community.

No More Room in Hell 2 enters Early Access Halloween 2024, wishlist now!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/292000/No_More_Room_in_Hell_2/

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