Update Details (16th Dec 2017) - Big Map Expansion!

Hi guys. Today’s update introduces a large expansion to the world and offers a much greater space for players to explore, build, hunt, fight and survive. I’ve been meaning to expand the world boundaries for a long time and decided to spend some dedicated time and focus on doing so.

My hope is this expansion and new varied terrain will offer greater immersion and freedom for players. More varied build locations and base design potential, and present a more interesting challenge to orientate and navigate the world.

You’ll find a new river winding down the slopes of the expanded area, running down into a new big lake. Rivers and waterfalls will open up new possibilities for gathering and game-play mechanics for future updates. Many players have requested fishing, and I totally agree this would be awesome. I have some ideas of how the mechanic could work and will be putting more thought into it.

There are also new stretches of open beach and small inlets for players to explore:

The addition of the new lake area has also opened up some areas of deep water. I’m keen to expand on this, and give players meaningful incentives to dive and explore the depths. I personally love when games allow you to explore deep underwater. Please stay tuned for more on this.


New trees (increased performance)
I’ve gone ahead and replaced many of the old pine trees throughout the entire map. The old trees were very high-poly and put a lot of demand on hardware with their high alpha calculations for shadows and light shafts. They were also fairly small, making it hard to create a sense of density to forest areas. They were also somewhat dull with a very muted color palette.

The new trees are much lower poly-count (1/3 of the previous trees). They have a more dense foliage spread, meaning certain familiar areas may feel very different. I’m also using a fairly high saturation pallet for the materials, meaning the greens are way more vibrant. This should make the world feel more colorful.

The increased foliage density from the new trees may have an impact on resource gathering and predator/hunter encounters. It will be less easy to spot items and enemies in the world. I’ll be keeping an eye on how this affects balance (may need some tweaks). I welcome your thoughts and opinions on this.

I’ve decreased the fog density at higher altitudes, giving players better visibility. I’ve also decreased the depth of field over distance to account for the larger vistas.


Few other minor tweaks:

• Reduced hunter movement speed while sprinting.
  
• Added distance-based low-pass filtering for all footsteps.
  
• I replaced the (annoyingly) loud Unreal logo when booting the game for a quiet one (many players had mentioned this was hard on the ears).
  
• Added correct weapon impact sounds for many base items (campfire, lights, beds, switches, etc).
  
• Fixed issue where hosts of co-op games could not see water-based bullet impacts.
  

World expansion is something that will continue as the project continues to progress. However with this new expansion now merged to the main build, I’m excited to start focusing on new gameplay features and mechanics for the next update. I have a long list of ideas I’ve been eager to work on.

I hope everyone has an awesome holiday with their families and friends. Thanks so much for all the continued support for the project. I’m really looking forward to continue evolving the game into 2018. See you on the forums!

CG