Another Week Down…

Written By Cole Simchick

21 December, 2023 

Happy Thursday, folks! As always, it’s your Community Manager Squid Gumbo here with your weekly dose of cheesy updates for afflicted. This week greatly reflects the last in that we’re ripping and tearing our way through our internal task lists to bring the afflicted demo ever closer release. As I write this in the later hours of the night, don’t expect this to contain too much fluff, as I’ll let the rest of the team mostly speak for themselves. Without further delay, let’s check in on the team.

Staying the Course, Pt. II

Pressing forward as always, Ryan has continued his march to glorious progress. This man has been leading the charge and setting the example for the rest of the team, and that’s something to be recognized! From the main man himself, here’s what Ryan was up to this past week:

  • ZOMBRIE DNA ADDED BABYYYYYYYYY (He was very excited about this - as were we).

  • Completed the Zombrie DNA Tank system. This will show a %full of your max DNA quota.

  • Set the foundation for the Grated Escape Game Mode - complete with some announcements from BRUCE.

  • Added the Helicopter Extraction Vehicle.

  • Fixed the hit damage number animations.

  • Cleaned up a bunch more stuff and reorganized the project some more.

  • Fixed a bug causing clients not to see critical hit effects (damage numbers, impact effects, etc).

  • Added hit effects to the basic zombie AI. These AI will have simple hitboxes and not inherit from Agent Base for performance reasons. Larger scarier zombies will.

  • Further expanded on the inventory system so that NPCs can use this. I may end up changing this to something more simple as I don’t think having 100 fucking zombies with a networked inventory is a good idea. But hey... nice to know it’s generic enough to work in this use case.

  • Funfetti mechanic added to inventory.

  • Deleted a bunch of assets and scenes that will not be in the final product.

  • In the process of bringing on two more developers and an intern.

  • Added BLINKY_LIGHTS and LOUD_NOISES to extraction thingy.

  • Fixed a bug causing you to not shoot targets that are considered to be "too close" to you. This is fucking stupid. My crosshair is on the target, lemme shoot ‘em.

  • Fixed the kinematic hitscan weapon so the projectile visuals actually matches the data.

  • Made it so when you shoot dead corpses they wiggle around (Ryan needs to be mentally checked).

  • First iteration of Zombie Titan / World Bosses.

As I mentioned, the man is on a mission! It’s incredible, and hopefully he doesn’t run out of steam anytime soon. The progress is incredible.

Let’s Get Creative 

With the craziness of the holidays coming to a head for the most of us, Bryan has been lucky enough to see his work-life start to slow to a pace where he can really continue to develop his ideas for how afflicted should work. Lucky for me, he’s also compiled a nice list of his accomplishments since last week! Let’s take a gander:

  • Created a list of extraction voicelines, bringing life to our rootin' tootin' hero, Flint Westwood.

  • Started a document to bring some lore logic to the Zombrie DNA collection announcements BRUCE produced this week. I'm thinking a potential base droid that presents the players with tutorials and quality of life tips.

  • Fiddled and diddled with the 3rd Shift Studios logo, bringing it to life within various thematic backdrops... But if I'm bein' honest, this was just for funzies.

As always, Bryan’s creative mind never stops dreaming for afflicted and its future - and thank goodness for it. His driving thoughts are what guide rest of us as we continue driving the game forward.

And Now, for the Traffic 

I’m joking, of course. I don’t have the qualifications for delivering trustworthy traffic reports for {insert readers location here}. We’re really here to check in on everybody’s favorite BRUCE. His contributions this week really go hand-in-hand with changes from both Ryan and Bryan, as he works in tandem with them to bring creative visions to life. Did you see those recent Instagram posts with the extraction flow for Grated Escape? That was BRUCE on the glorious mic delivering those witty voice lines. And based on what I’ve been hearing, you should expect to hear more of that voice in-game.

Last in the Order: Yours Truly

It’s one thing to be the afflicted Community Manager, but it’s not the only thing I do around here! This past week had me really diving in to ways to reward our Cheesy Insiders (which may or may not involve my new 3D Printer). Aside from those thoughts, I also took some time to start on some additional icons for the demo, spent some time retooling a bunch of the Swamp map prefabs, and looked into more adjustments for gamepad support. As a long-time console gamer, I find controller support to be something that shouldn’t be overlooked!

In Closing

It’s been a long week, of that I cannot lie. But a lot has happened, and a lot has been accomplished! These next couple weeks are going to see a lot of changes as we push forward with development, and I’m super excited to show you all what’s to come.

 

Time for bed,  

 

Squid 

Cole Simchick
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