Changelog
General
Reduced overall size on disk for game from aproximately 10.5gb to 8.5gb.
Fixed broken UV's on low quality water.
Dead/Ragdoll characters no longer fall through roads.
Fixed issue where not all items that should be spawning were being chosen.
Hospital specific props added.
Weapons now hide correctly when in placement mode.
Shooting locks no longer leaves a floating impact decal.
Own shadows now move up and down when looking around.
Machete now has weight.
Lock hasp and staple visualisation no longer casts shadows.
Fixed issue where floating impact decals would be left after shooting a light bulb.
Updated light bulb smashing effect to make it look nicer.
Quality of Life Improvements
Improved initial player spawn locations to create a more emersive new character experience.
Containers now show item quantity and capacity directly in the hover UI which saves the player having to open all containers when searching for loot. Example - Quantity 2/10
Added reload complete notification which gives info about loaded ammo and remaining ammo in the inventory.
Reload and consuming actions are now considered finished when the animation is 80% complete. Previously the player could open the inventory and accidentally cancel an action when it appeared to be finished.
Can no longer open the menu while in the player list.
Added walk and sprint lock support. Press = key while holding either walk or walk and sprint key to lock input.
Server IP now displays as name for servers that don't have a name input.
Player no longer freezes when escape is pressed to gain access to the menu. This could result in players being frozen in mid air.
Re-added correctly working kitchen container locks which had been removed in the previous build due to issues.
Improved melee impact sounds including punches.
Pills in pill eating animation are no longer pink.
Inspect readout now correctly shows overall health instead of calories in the overall health section.
Hotkeys no longer work while in the map.
Hitting locks with melee weapons now deals damage to the lock.
Added ability to hit doors to damage locks. The first available lock will take damage.
Fixed issue where the player could be unlocked while still in the menu when pressing escape to close the terminal window.
Added battery requirements to descriptions of flashlights.
Engine Upgrade from Unity 5 to Unity 2017
After being in unity 5 for over a year we felt with this update it was time to upgrade to newer version the engine. This will allow us to take advantage of newer features/optimisations and not fall behind on supported Unity builds. After extensive testing of the newest unity releases we felt that Unity 2017 LTS(Long Term Support) offered the best upgrade and stability at this time. Listed below are some of the advantages of upgrading the engine.
Shadow improvements
Culling of shadows casters in 2017 has been optimized, this means there will be less objects casting shadows resulting in better performance. Improved filtering algorithms should also improve the look of the shadows aswell.
Scene and Asset Bundle improvements
The new unity update also includes improvements to the loading times of scenes and assetbundles. These changes and several other small fixes we've made should help reduce the lag spikes when walking around in the world.
Particle improvements
New tweaks to the particle system will allow us to create more realistic and optimized effects.
Future proofing
Staying on newer builds of unity keeps us up to date with the newest features and support.
Performance
Optimised shader parsing during environment load which was causing spikes in performance.
Reduced memory garbage allocation associated with debug GUI in bottom right corner of screen.
Reduced memory garbage allocation when loading terrain environment.
Slowed the rate of world loading to prevent too many assets being set active in a single frame.
Improved scene unloading which could cause hiccups in fps.
Asset preloader added which pre loads assets during first load into game. Helps with large lag spikes caused by initial load of assets.
Enabled vsync by default which limits framerate to 60fps and stops the GPU running at 100% usage unnecessarily.
Terrain in distance no longer casts unnecessary shadows.
Reduced waters overall GPU overhead.
A project wide review and optimisation of over 3500 textures.
Removed some lag caused by player foot step sounds.
Improved performance to tree loading as the player moves around the environment.
Fixed large lag spike being caused by unnecessary reloading of terrain related textures.
Fixed lag spike being caused by premature destroying of terrains during world unloading.
Fixed lag spike being caused by unnecessary calculation.
Environment
Added 2 hospitals to the map and relevant surrounding design.
Fire station exterior design improved.
Added signs to police and firestions.
Improved exterior design around police stations.
School desks now function as containers.
Several police and fire station specific props added.
New signage added for police station. Can be lit with electrics
New signage added for fire department. Can be lit with electrics.
New red rolling garage door variant added for fire station.
New red door and frame variants for police and fire stations.
Fixed strange effect on carpark in terrain 8.
Fixed scenario where roofs could have snow on them when they shouldn't.
Outhouse toilet building loading distance fixed.
Tweaked position of police stations.
Designed hospital interior.
Added hosptial building to the game.
Added Interior design to the fire station.
Added New floor material for the fire station.
Added design to the police station.
Church reworked and designed inside.
Added locker variants. School and armoury types.
Reworked police station model.
Added meter and breaker to school building so that it can now be powered.
Added meters and breakers that were missing on buildings House_Wood_3_variant_3 and House_1_variant_1.
Fixed floating roads on terrain 27.
Fixed several materials in the finishing town that didn't have use effects.
Fixed missing material on truck docking area in large grocery store.