Survive the Nights News

Experimental Patch Notes - Alpha 1.15.2

We have released 1.15.2 on our experimental branch. There’s quite a bit of stuff to check over for this update and we’ll have a full devblog out when we hit default.

Please report bugs and issues in game using the F1 menu. If you'd like to track the patch progress and follow more closely with development, check our changelog and feel free to join our Discord.

How to get into experimental branch:

Open Steam and go to your games library.
Right click on STN and select "Properties"
Navigate to the "Betas" tab and select "experimental" in the drop down menu.
Close the properties window.

[h3]Patch Notes - Alpha 1.15.2 (Experimental Build)[/h3]

Chainsaw

Chainsaw weapon added!!!

Steam Deck / Controller Support

Added controller support using Steam Inputs API
Added Controller button glyphs to locations that show key inputs.
Acceleration/Braking in vehicles is now has an analog input. Allows for varied force.
Added on screen keyboard support.
Added custom quality settings for the steam deck.
Gyro support when aiming.
Steering is now an axis meaning it can take analog input.
Controller navigation added to main menus + bumper support for navigating inventory tabs.
Inventory, container and machine UI is placed nicely for Deck support.
Player movement is now an axis for analog joystick support.
Controller binding override so that Steams built in system is used.

Vehicles

'S' now properly functions as a brake input.
Vehicles can now be started with continuous input through the accelerator. Instead of lifting and pressing for each attempt.

Steam

Controller glyph support so that correct inputs are shown in game.
Initial implementation for Steam Controller Input support.
SteamSDK updated

Car Alarms

Zombies will trigger a car alarm when attacking vehicle while the engine is off.
Shooting a vehicle will trigger a car alarm while the engine is off.
NOTE: Car alarms not settable by players at this time (Something we'll add in the future)

Optimisations

Fix for small lag spike when shooting, hitting zombies or starting a fire.
Optimisations to loaded object amounts to improve load times and general performance.
Optimisations to item hovers.
Optimisations to cabin doors.
Small optimization for rendering of reflections
Terrain rendering optimized slightly
General reduction of shadow casters to improve performance

Quality of Life (QoL)

Items are no longer incorrectly combined when picking up.
Interact hold time slightly reduced.
It’s not possible to exit a vehicle by holding interact key while not looking at the exit point.
It’s now possible to initiate hold functionality with the interact key pressed before looking at the interactable.
Interact press action is now triggered when pressing Interact during the whole hold press sequence. This should limit the amount of frustrating press/hold actions.
Fixed players not being able to damage fortifications with a hammer by right clicking
Sorting the inventory is now instant
Move all and take all form containers/machines now working fully.
Move all and take all from both machines and containers is now instant.
Shooting holes added to cabin doors
Cabin doors optimized
Camera height tweaked for pickup trucks to make it easier to see out.
Fix for harvesting AI not working when killed with a vehicle.
Fix for rag dolls sometimes disappearing towards the edge of the screen
Quick connect function now only tries to connect to servers of the same version.

Tree Chopping

Fixed issue where last logs would take a while to show up when chopping up a tree stem.
Fix for not being able to chop down a tree sometimes even though you have the right tool selected.
Fix for extra logs being incorrectly chopped while cutting tree stem.

VFX

Wood chopping particles improved

Crafting

Hammer now craftable.
Axe now craftable.

Animation

Fix for camera animations being too intense in a lot of scenarios causing difficulties with fortifying, melee and tree chopping
Fix for camera shake not always working properly
Avoidance now cancels idle and inspect animations

Text in item hovers now matches size of text to prevent clipping in different languages
Item hover fonts improved
Quick play button is now slightly wider, 'New' label now fits and title now reads 'Quick Play' instead of 'Quick play'
Craftables that you can currently craft are now displayed at the top of the list.
Ammo is now shown in the weapons category.
Q and E to switch between fortifications now disabled while chat is open
Added red and amber colors to UI on fortifications indicating current strength
Added ping animation to house symbol when opening map
Added animation when placing map pin
Increased brightness of harvest machine hover outline during the night

Environment

Added container fort to northeast
Added container fort to southeast
Added container fort to northwest
Added container fort to southeast
Added central container fort
Fixed grass detail on terrain 32
Added chainsaw spawners to container forts
Added more scrap harvest machines to the entire world
Added scrap harvest machines to farm equipment
Added scrap harvest machines to magazine rack
Removed logout machines from camp beds.

Drops

Disabled matches since they are not used.

Localization

Item hovers are now localized
Updated Crowd in community translations 2nd March 2022
Default language now set to English. Fixes issues with the inventory breaking when launching with an unsupported language.

Thanks for the continued support and continued issue and suggestion reporting :). Below are some helpful links to anyone new and interested in the game. If you'd like to follow a bit closer, please consider joining our Discord. We're here, we're listening!

[h3]Links[/h3]
Discord: https://discord.gg/survivethenights
Patreon: https://patreon.com/a2zinteractive
Changelog: https://changelog.survivethenights.net
Twitter: https://twitter.com/STNgame
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/STNgame
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/a2zinteractive
Website: https://www.survivethenights.net
Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/a2zinteractive

Devblog 62 - 1.15 Preview

Hello all,

The team has been hard at work developing 1.15 and we’ve made some great progress. James and Andre have been cracking along on Steam Deck support which includes full controller support, something many have asked for. I’ve spent my time this week designing and placing small container forts around the world. John has worked on animation improvements and chainsaw animations. Below we’ll discuss just a little of what’s going on in this dev cycle. Remember to check out our Changelog for more details.

[h3]Steam Deck (Controller Support)[/h3]
We’re really excited to have the opportunity to work with the Steam Deck. It has also given us the drive to finally wrap our heads around controller support. This is a surprisingly complex feature to integrate into a project that hasn’t been designed from the ground up with controller support in mind. Andre and James have made some great progress and you can expect to see controller support in the 1.15 build.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Container Forts[/h3]
We’ll continue to ‘fill in’ our map as we move through development cycles. The 1.15 build will feature small ‘fortress’ like structures spread around the world made of shipping containers. These container forts, as we’re calling them, will be the main POI/area for players to find the newly introduced and very fun chainsaw. The forts will likely be upgraded as we move onto future builds and a few more added.

Container Fort Northwest

Container Fort Northeast

Container Fort Central

[h3]Resource and Item Combining[/h3]
We’ve had an issue lurking with item combining for some time now. To break it down in simple terms, the issue was items would combine on pickup. This behavior was intended and is desirable for things like boxes of nails, screws, ammo, etc. As an example, this system is intended to work as follows: the player has a box of ammo in their inventory with 9/20 rounds; they pick up another box of ammo with 11/20 rounds; the player now has a single full box of ammo 20/20 rounds in their inventory. Perfect! That’s exactly what you would expect to happen.

The problem starts with items like fuel cans and actual guns! As an example, you have a revolver in your inventory with 3/6 rounds. You find another identical revolver with 3/6 rounds and pick it up. You would expect to have two separate revolvers. However, the system doesn’t currently function like that. What would happen is, the system would take the ammo from the weapon that was picked up in the world and fill the inventory weapon then discard the second revolver. This is not ideal at all. James has sunk time into fixing this issue and you shouldn’t face anything like it after 1.15.

[h3] Chainsaw[/h3]
Oh boy, this thing is a game changer when it comes to gathering wood for fortifications and well shredding zombies. The team is really starting to bring the features together and we’ve tested initial implementation. How can you survive a zombie apocalypses without a chainsaw? Introducing a new weapon, melee item or tool into the game is a process we’ve tried to simplify. However, animations, drop creation, first person and proxy setups do take time. The chainsaw is currently in our development branch.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Don't want to wait for an experimental build? Join us on Patreon and gain access to everything in this devblog and 1.15 development builds.[/h3]

[h3]Links[/h3]
Discord: https://discord.gg/survivethenights
Changelog: https://changelog.survivethenights.net
Patreon: https://patreon.com/a2zinteractive
Twitter: https://twitter.com/STNgame
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/STNgame
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/a2zinteractive
Website: https://www.survivethenights.net
Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/a2zinteractive

Devblog 61 - 1.15 Preview

Hello everyone,

We’re working hard on the 1.15 patch, doing some much needed optimization and community found issue fixing. You can expect a 1.15 experimental build sometime soon, we’re sticking to our guns and plan on releasing an update on the first Friday of every month. Remember, these blogs only show a glimpse of what we’re working on if you want to know exactly what we’re up to check out our changelog.

[h3]Inventory Improvements[/h3]
We’re getting around to cleaning up some inventory issues and one the biggest reported issues is a fix for the ‘Move All’ and ‘Take All’ problems. Mainly the fact that under some circumstances the feature simply didn’t work. Moving items from inventory to machines as an example is now fixed. Along with these fixes, optimizations allow for the move to be instant.

Optimization to item hovers.
Move all and take all form containers/machines now working fully.
Move all and take all from both machines and containers is now instant.
Sorting the inventory is now instant.

Instant Take All | Take All

Move All | Take All working on machines

[h3]Crafting Improvements[/h3]
With the upcoming focus on fortifications, we’ve made some small largely requested changes to crafting recipes in the game. The player is now able to craft a hammer and an axe with simple materials like scrap metal and wood. We’ve removed the handle crafting and head crafting along with those drops. This should make felling trees, crafting planks and fortifying structures more accessible to the player early in the game.

We have also adjusted the initial crafting window to include anything that can be crafted with your current inventory right at the top of the list. After that, you'll see all craftables again in alphabetical order. This was a much requested feature from the community and you’ll see it in 1.15.

Anything You Can Craft at the Top of List

New Axe and Hammer Crafting Recipes

[h3]Fortification Improvements[/h3]
Fortification strength isn’t currently something that stands out when looking at say a plank on a window. We’ve watched many of you seemingly not even know you could further fortification strengths. Placing a fortification for the first time simply applies it to the window. It doesn’t apply it at full strength. The new system adds a little color to the mix allowing the player to easily see just how strong the placed fortification is. We’ve also spent some time fixing issues with damaging fortifications. You can see examples of the color change on strength readout and the working fortification damage below.

We will be expanding on fortification ideas in the coming builds so if you have any feel free to share. We plan on expanding on traps also with coming improvements to structure electrical systems it should make things very interesting.

Fortification Strength and Color Changes

[h3]Steam Deck[/h3]
You heard it first right here! a2z Interactive got its first bit of free gear. A couple of months ago, on a whim, James applied for a dev kit and just last week the Steam Deck arrived at the office. We’ve been working with it straight out of the box and the game runs great.

The Steam Deck seems to be a fantastic bit of tech and we’re super blown away by performance and excited to try and get Survive the Nights up and running properly on it for the Steam Deck's initial release! There’s a good deal of work to be done and we’ve already started the process of optimizations. Along with that, we’ll soon be introducing controller support. We hope the Steam Deck and controller support bring in a new batch of players wanting to check out the game.

Steam Deck Dev Kit

Feeling Pretty Special ;)

[h3]STN Running on the Steam Deck[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Weeklong Deal Reminder - 30% Off [/h3]
There are just a few days left to get 30% off Survive the Nights. The sale ends on Monday, February 14th. If you have any questions before purchasing, please join our friendly community on discord.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/541300

Thanks much for the continued support. We’ll keep on top of user reported issues so please feel free to share any bugs you find in game or on our Discord. If you’d like to see our devblogs earlier and gain access to our super secret up to date (somewhat stable) development branch please consider supporting us on Patreon.

Weeklong Deal - 30% Off Sale

Survive the Nights is now 30% off for a weeklong deal until Monday, February 14th. If you have any questions before purchasing, please join our friendly community on discord.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/541300

[h3]Links[/h3]
Discord: https://discord.gg/survivethenights
Patreon: https://patreon.com/a2zinteractive
Changelog: https://changelog.survivethenights.net
Twitter: https://twitter.com/STNgame
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/STNgame
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/a2zinteractive
Website: https://www.survivethenights.net
Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/a2zinteractive

Patch Notes - Alpha 1.14.4 (Hotfix)

Hello all,

We've released a hotfix (Alpha 1.14.4) to our default branch on Steam. You can find our patch notes below. Please report bugs and issues in game using the F1 menu. In case you missed it, the full v1.14 update can be viewed here.

[h3]Patch Notes - Alpha 1.14.4 (Hotfix)[/h3]

Mac builds working
Solo/host server version is correct (Solo working)