Something New for Everyone
16 November 2023
Happy Thursday, everyone! It’s your humble Community Manager Squid here, bringing you the newest news from the world of Terry Trueman and afflicted. What you may not realize is that by coming here and checking out this blog post, you’re unintentionally making history! Anybody who’s been with us longer than a minute knows that afflicted and 3rd Shift Studios are both heavily invested in our community.
To ensure that we maintain this focus, we’re rolling out a new initiative: A weekly blog post that details the work that has been done recently, things to look forward to, and important announcements that may also be shared in our Discord! This move is being made in the hopes of preserving historical records of how things are going, as well as to keep the community in the loop in one central place. From my point of view, providing these little windows into our operations can only bring better awareness to you all – the people who are actively looking forward to joining us as afflicted shapes up for its demo and tentative full release. I’m hopeful that this is as exciting for you as it is for us! Hopefully I haven’t put you to sleep yet, because with that short little intro out of the way we can actually start to dive in!
Return of the King
Before you get too excited, I do not speak of Aragorn, son of Arathorn. Instead, I speak of Manny, our Lead Developer and champion of the code project itself. He has recently returned from holiday, and we (3rd Shift) are glad to have him back. Manny’s been focused on project and network performance, reworking the zombie AI, and doing other normal developer-forward tasks to help us push afflicted forward. While there aren’t too many updates from Manny this week, I expect a plethora of exciting discussions from him in the next couple weeks.
Maps for the Demo
As has been discussed in previous communications, the team is pushing forward development on afflicted in pursuit of a publicly available Steam demo. This is still the case, and one of the biggest pieces currently being worked on is the map set for the Extraction game mode. Each of the maps is procedurally generated in chunks to ensure a unique map experience for each playthrough. The following sections break down the updates to the set of maps we’re currently focused on:
City
The cityscape is easily the most ambitious map being created for the demo. Built of city blocks, this map drives home the grit and chaos of urban warfare. Bryan M., the lead architect of the cityscape, has spent the last few weeks focused on ensuring a seamless generation of complex map blocks. This time has been spent on foundational improvements to the blocks themselves to ensure that the city makes sense to players and provides a believable atmosphere while fighting to secure Zombrie samples. Once the foundation is sound and map generation feels believable, chunks will be built out with details and atmospherics.
Desert
Led by our glorious leader and co-founder Ryan, development of the Desert map has been consistently pushing forward. The building of map chunks and detailing existing blocks to ensure the map conveys a sense of desolate abandonment is a slow process, but one that continues regardless! Time on the Desert is also split as Ryan is dually focused on it and the improvement of gameplay functionality.
Swamp
The place that has my heart the most (and not only because I’m the designer) is the Swamp map. As with the other maps, this watery and overgrown environment is procedurally generated by block. In the last few weeks, my own development on the Swamp has slowed as we evaluate prefab consistency and usage with the weather system we’ve started to implement across the other maps. We’ve also taken a closer look into the performance impacts of having so many damn trees (there are a lot)!
Getting Creative
Maps and code development are critical to the end state of the game, but we can’t forget about the creative side of the house either! These folks are kicking ass in their own way to support the project. Kim, our principal sound guru, is back from his own hiatus and is getting ready to punch out several works to make those in-game audio features drive home the atmosphere built by the rest of the team. He’s focused on making sure every interaction you have in afflicted sounds as good as it plays.
Bruce and Bryan C. have their own work on their plate, but this past week has been busy for both of them outside of afflicted. Even considering this, they're still making solid headway on the project. Bruce has returned to some animation work in support of both 3rd Shift proper and the game itself, and Bryan has been pushing forward the narrative of the story to make sure it makes sense to you – the players!
In Closing
Still here after all of that? I did my best to avoid going too deep into details to spare you from boredom (and to keep some of the mystery), but this is all important messaging! This is a passion project for all of us here at 3rd Shift, and we want it to be out to you all as much as you do. afflicted is going to be something great, and we’re glad to have you here along for the ride. This is only the first of these blogs, so I hope you’re already looking forward to the next one – I know I am.
Stay Cheesy Folks,
Squid Gumbo